Exciting Things!

SO MANY exciting things to tell you! In mostly reverse chronological order, here are a bunch of them:

1. First, the most time-sensitive: I'll be reading/talking/signing with an AMAZING lineup of other YA authors at the NYC Teen Author Festival event at McNally Jackson Books tonight at 7pm! More info here at the NYCTAF website. I'll also be signing books tomorrow from 2:30–3:00pm as part of the No-Foolin' Mega Signing at Books of Wonder!

2. Second, my new picture book Marilyn's Monster is finally out and about, and Matt Phelan and I had a wonderful launch party for it at Children's Book World in Haverford, PA! If you missed the party, don't be sad! You can still come to my Marilyn's Monster party at WORD in Brooklyn on April 18!

3. Now that the whirlwind of new-book-coming-out stuff is calming down (a little), I can take a breath and tell you the super exciting news that Evil Librarian won the 2015 Sid Fleischman Award for Humor! I was completely blown away by this and still haven't quite recovered. I'm so honored and can't wait to officially accept the award at the SCBWI Annual Conference in Los Angeles this August! You can see more about the award and the full list of Golden Kite award winners and honorees at the SCBWI website.

4. The UK edition of Evil Librarian comes out on April 2! I received my lovely advance copy in the mail just the other day. >:)

5. Evil Librarian is on the 2015-16 master list for the Green Mountain Book Award! Vermont students will be reading and voting on the nominated books over the coming year to choose a winner (to be announced next May).

6. I'm very happy to share that I've joined the Writing for Young People MFA faculty at Lesley University! I'll be teaching starting this June, and am super excited to be working with such a talented group of fellow writers, including the also-just-starting-in-June Jason Reynolds!!

The Dragon of Trelian paperback! And stuff.

The Dragon of Trelian comes out in paperback on January 11, 2011. It will have an awesome new cover, which looks like this:

In other news, here are some updates about various things:

1. This July I graduated from the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults. Yay! But also :( because I will miss it very much. But mostly :) because it was two years of hard work and it feels really good to have earned my degree. And I have a whole bunch of wonderful writing friends/classmates/kindred spirits who will continue to be very important to me, even if I won't get to see them quite as regularly now.

2. I am experimenting with new designs for the blog. You are looking at this experiment right now. Like it? Don't like it? Let me know what you think.

3. ARGUS comes out on February 22, 2011. February 22 happens to be my birthday. There will quite possibly be a birthday-book launch party in the works very soon. I can't wait to show you guys the cover—Andréa Wesson's artwork is perfect! But, um, I have to wait, at least a little while longer. But as soon as I'm allowed I will post the cover here.

4. Still working hard on Dragon of Trelian sequel revisions. I'm in the third draft now. Stuff is happening, there is danger and magic and intrigue and there are new characters and old characters and someone may die. That is all I am going to say at this time. The pub date will be sometime in Spring 2012.

5. I am in another Gilbert and Sullivan operetta with The Village Light Opera Group! The show is Iolanthe and we just started rehearsals and performances will be the weekend before Thanksgiving and you should all come to see it. Don't worry, I will remind you as it gets closer.

6. I have joined the crew of Through the Tollbooth, which is a fabulous group blog run by VCFA graduates. There are new posts several times a week on writing-related topics, and you should definitely stop in there and take a look!

I think that's all for now. The summer has been a little crazy, but I'm hoping the fall will prove a little less so, and will include a little more time for posting, among other things. Yeah, I know I say things like that a lot, about how I'm hoping to post more often. I know it doesn't always happen, but I remain ever optimistic about these things.  :)

January 2010 Reentry

Got back Wednesday from the winter residency at VCFA, and it was as expected—awesome and inspiring and exhausting and happy and sad and wonderful. Ten days of lectures, workshops, readings, and events, with dear old friends and many new friends and brilliant writers and teachers. There was a moving memorial for Norma Fox Mazer, which I was honored to have the chance to attend. There were fabulous conversations over meals and hilarious late-night games of Exquisite Corpse (or Picture Telephone, as most of us called it) and also a kick-ass party thrown by my class (the Thunder Badgers) for the graduating class (the Sweet Dreams and Flying Machines) which involved a Wild West theme and much dancing and fun and cowboy hats.

My cowgirl attire (note the awesome belt, borrowed from Nice Boyfriend):

There were also fun cowboy-themed items:

And cowboy-themed foods:

Also there was dancing and game-playing and a piñata shaped like a boot. Much fun was had by all!

During the rez we were also assigned our advisors for the next semester, and I am SO EXCITED to be working with the fabulous Margaret Bechard. This will be my final semester, which makes me more than a little sad, although at the end I will have an MFA, which will (I hope) help alleviate some of the pain of VCFA withdrawal. And of course, the VCFA community embraces alumni and keeps them involved, and so I know I won't really be saying good-bye to VCFA, just moving on to a new relationship with it. But still, I will miss being a student and going to residencies and all the rest. But it's too early for all that, really! Fourth semester is only just starting, and I have another six months before I have to think about graduating. So I will not think about that just now at all.

Another fun thing happened at rez, which is that I finished my first knitting project! It was a scarf. I am very proud. Many thanks to Madeleine, who got me started over New Year's and donated yarn and knitting needles and taught me how to knit and purl, and to the nice knitter/writers (like Sarah and Linden) at VCFA who helped me when I got stuck, and to knitter/writer/awesome VCFA faculty member Rita Williams-Garcia, who showed me how to cast off at the airport while we were waiting for our flight back to NYC. I am excited to start a new project, although I will have to figure out how to knit in the presence of my cat, who will no doubt want to involve herself with the yarn in highly disruptive ways.

And that is all for now. I have ridiculous amounts of things to do, writing and otherwise, and should get to work. Wednesday was all about getting home and seeing my boyfriend and my cat, and yesterday was all about cleaning up my apartment and trying to get oriented, and now I need to be all about the writing for a while. And then hopefully maybe soon I can think about some other things, like my apartment-fixing-up plans. I was briefly daydreaming today about hiring an interior designer to help me make the most of the space I've got and give me painting and decorating advice. This will probably not happen, as I imagine interior designers are expensive and so are new furnishings and as you may remember I was hoping to NOT spend money like a crazy person this year. But it's fun to think about anyway.

OH! Almost forgot to say I am SO HAPPY for my friend Rebecca Stead who WON THE NEWBERY!!!! Congratulations to her and to all the other award winners. YAY! :)

Bloggety Blog

There probably ARE people who blog less often than I do out there, right? I mean, even excepting all those people who do not actually have blogs. Once again, I am here to promise to do better. And now I will tell you all about how busy I have been and will continue to be and thereby lay the foundation for future infrequent blog posting.

I don't even remember where I left off. I will go check. *Consults previous post* Oh, right. Baltimore Book Festival! It was great. Had a lovely time reading Library Lion and an excerpt from The Dragon of Trelian, and signed some books and chatted with lovely authors and illustrators and bookstore people. And I bought a shirt from these nice folks. Then I spent a couple of days with my nice friends Bridey and Joe and little Evie, and went to Evie's third birthday party at a FARM with a PETTING ZOO and there were CHICKENS and BABY GOATS and OTHER FUN ANIMALS. I gave Evie books for her birthday, of course.

Last weekend I went back to Baltimore for the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association conference, which was awesome. I went two years ago when Library Lion received the 2007 NAIBA Children's Picture Book Award and once again I had a great time. Booksellers are really nice, fun people. And they love books. And there were other nice publishing types and authors and illustrators there as well, and I got to talk to people about the novel and hear about other authors' books and generally just had a wonderful time. Plus I scored so many free books that I had to send a box home from the hotel. Yay!

In other news, I am continuing to work on the sequel to The Dragon of Trelian, the first draft of which will be finished by the end of the year. And I'm still working on my critical thesis for my MFA, which will also be finished by the end of the year, but hopefully sooner—say, by my next packet deadline, which is November 10. ALSO working on a new YA novel for school, which started out great and fun and exciting but has been less great lately...still trying to figure out what the deal is with this story.

What else...on October 17 I will be at the Mandell School Book Fair, and on October 24 I will be reading Library Lion to help celebrate the opening of Brooklyn's new Greenlight Bookstore, and on October 31 I will be reading from The Dragon of Trelian while dressed as a princess at the New York Public Library Shop at the NYPL main branch. And on November 7, I will be at the FABULOUS Rochester Children's Book Festival in Rochester, NY, which is my favorite event to go to every year. This time I'll be doing a joint presentation with Rebecca Stead in addition to signing books and talking with kids and parents and teachers and other authors and anyone else who comes out that day! If you are in the area you should definitely come. This is the 13th year of the festival, and it just keeps getting better and better.

And then on December 12, I'll be reading and signing books at the Elmira Barnes & Noble in Elmira, NY.

And because I apparently did not already have enough on my plate, I am in the ensemble of the Village Light Opera Group's fall production of Starship Pinafore. You should all come see it, because it will be AWESOME and a lot of fun. If you know me personally, you can email me directly for tickets. Otherwise, you can get them online here. Performance dates are:

Friday, November 13 at 8pm
Saturday, November 14 at 8pm
Friday, November 20 at 8pm
Saturday, November 21 at 2pm
Sunday, November 22 at 2pm

And, as always, I have been playing lots of Facebook Scrabble and reading lots of books. (If you are curious about what I'm reading, you can always check out my reading list on Goodreads.)

And I suppose that is enough for this update. I should get back to work!

Excuses

Real life continues to interfere with my efforts to post things here with any kind of regularity. What are my excuses this time? Here you go:

1. My poor cat has been in and out of the hospital over the past two weeks, first because she ate an enormous piece of string for some reason (like, the biggest piece of string EVER) and had to have surgery to get it out of her intestines, and then because she became super-sensitive to her insulin during her recovery and went into insulin shock and nearly died. Oh and also her incision is infected. BUT the good news is that she gets to come home this evening, and I will hang out here with her as I deal with my second-most stressful blog-interfering item, which is:

2. My final packet deadline of the semester. The cat drama really set me back, and so now I am racing to get everything finished. My revisions are done, but I'm still working on my new pages and my essay. I'm a little sad that the semester is almost over; it has been so awesome working with Cynthia and I will miss having her thoughtful eye on my work and receiving her encouraging comments. I feel really good about the progress I've made this semester, though, and I'm actually almost sort of looking forward to working on my critical thesis starting in July. (I'm sure I'll feel differently once I'm actually in the thick of it, though. CT definitely = kind of scary.)

3. I also got called for jury duty, but luckily only spent the one day (Thursday) and was then dismissed. If the timing had been better I think I would have liked to serve on a jury. The selection process was really interesting, and I'm sure the trial would have been even more so. Oh, well. I'll get another chance in 8+ years.

4. Oh and BEA was here in the mix, too.

5. Plus there's all the rest of the regular life stuff, like cleaning my apartment and finding things to eat for dinner and trying to get outside for walks once in a while and occasionally getting to see my friends. But that stuff is always there, of course.

OK. I suppose I should try to get back to work, assuming I can manage to block out the ridiculously loud music pumping in through my closed windows. I like my neighborhood, but nice days on the weekend = very loud outdoor BBQs and I suppose I really am going to have to get myself a pair of noise-canceling headphones if I'm going to get anything done this summer.

as usual

Behind on blogging, writing, and everything else. Today I had a four-item list of things I wanted to do. Most were biggish things—making a plan of attack for the rest of packet 2, finishing getting my tax stuff assembled for my rescheduled tax appointment, dealing with some of my email backlog—but still, only four. So far, at 7:26pm, I have only crossed out the one small item on the list, which involved making a quick phone call. Sigh.

I did accomplish some other stuff today, including a couple of things that had been hanging over my head for a while and were good to get done. But I keep putting off the two main things I need to address—packet and taxes—and I know that I just need to stop jumping around to other things and focus already. FOCUS, ALREADY! They're both just so big and overwhelming. Well, actually, I did the worst of the tax stuff already, I think, so that won't even be so bad to just finish up. But the packet stuff is so...much. Hard to get my head around all the stuff I need to do. Which is exactly why I need a plan of attack. Especially since I was totally sidelined for the past week with what I believe was the very first time I have ever had the flu. (It was extremely unpleasant. I do not wish to repeat the experience. Ever.)

While I wasn't doing the big things I needed to do today, I joined Twitter. Not sure yet how I feel about that, but it seemed to be time. Lots of VCFA types on there, and you can follow VCFAwriters as a group if you would like to hear about all the great things VCFA students, faculty, and alumni are up to.

Oh and also—last Sunday was my birthday. Had a lovely Italian dinner with good friends the night before, which turned out to be good timing since the flu took me down out of the blue on Sunday night.

OK. Update achieved, I guess. Still time to make progress on my list. Focus, focus, focus. Srsly!

December 2008 Wrap-Up

Fellow VCFA'ers Rachel and David and Gwenda inspired me to also try the first-line-of-the-first-post-of-each-month-of-the-past-year thing. Which produced the following, which mostly just makes me realize that some of my first sentences are very long and that I should probably strive for punchier first lines in 2009. And maybe try to be a better blogger overall, so I can spend less time explaining/apologizing for not posting. No first sentence for August, and December's is the first line of this post. Which is either cool and full-circle-y or kind of lame...can't decide. Anyway:

Here's hoping the new year brings good things to everyone, all around. I was settling down to begin work on writing (well, reading and prewriting for) my first critical essay in 12+ years (part of an MFA application, due March 1) and I had a sudden urge to check that I'd locked the front door and there was a large spider climbing the wall in the front hallway. I seem to be continuing my trend of not blogging very regularly. I was honored to be interviewed by First Book as part of their celebration of National Library Week! All right. Found out last night that an appointment today was being canceled, so I find myself with the gift of a suddenly free morning. So clearly this posting-at-least-once-a-week thing is not exactly happening. Okay, so I kind of skipped August. I'll be reading and signing Library Lion at the NYPL Library Shop at 2pm this Saturday, October 18 - please come by if you're in the area, and bring your kids! Got back today from Rochester, NY, where I attended the 12th annual Rochester Children's Book Festival on Saturday. Fellow VCFA'ers Rachel and David and Gwenda inspired me to also try the first-line-of-the-first-post-of-each-month-of-the-past-year thing.

Hmm.

So what's been going on in the last month or so? First there was the Savannah Children's Book Festival, which was great fun and only got rained out at the very end, which wasn't so bad considering what the weather reports had been suggesting. I had a wonderful time with old and new writer friends, including Katie Davis, Elizabeth O. Delumba, and Charles and Debra Ghigna. I also got to meet the amazing Mo Willems, which was very cool. And I bought way too many pralines at the candy shop across from the restaurant where a bunch of us had dinner after the festival.

While I was in Savannah I also spent a few days visiting my mom and Bob in Richmond Hill. We had a great time even though I had to work a lot while I was there and didn't get a chance to play Boggle even once. I did, however, manage to get a delicious Chic-fil-a sandwich on the way to the airport. Thanks, mom! :)

I had a lovely Thanksgiving with dear friends (Ginny, Len, Bridey, Joe, Ryan, and Evie) in Maryland. I made the cranberry sauce for the first time, and was very excited about this as evidenced by the many, many photos I took of the cranberry sauce in progress. A sampling:






There were, of course, all the other delicious Thanskgiving items, like stuffing, which is the very best part of all, and turkey and sweet potatoes and everything else. Here is what my plate looked like just before I began the traditional eating of way too much:

Earlier in the day there was also the new tradition (for me, anyway) of the lasagna lunch, and Joe actually made a special mini cheeseless version just for me:

Okay, okay, enough pictures of food. Everything was so good, and best of all was getting to spend quality time with people I love.

After Thanksgiving, unfortunately, I came down with a terrible cold which became a terrible sinus infection and kind of knocked me out of the world for a couple of weeks. Took FOREVER to get really better, and I ended up needing to ask for an extension on my final packet for school. But eventually I finished Packet 5 and then plowed through the surprisingly time-consuming end-of-semester paperwork and now I am officially done with my first semester! Can't wait for the next residency in January, when I will get to see all my school friends and find out who my next advisor will be.

I also finished final changes on The Dragon of Trelian, and then the final final changes, and then the last couple of really final last-minute changes. And now it's done! Or at least, I am not allowed to make any more changes. :) The ARCs have been produced and look great (although they were printed with the pre-final changes, so the last rounds of fixes are not reflected therein). I am also now allowed to share the cover art, which looks like this:


Yay! The cover artist is the fabulous Antonio Caparo.

The official release date for the novel is April 14, 2009. Why not go ahead and preorder your copy today? :D

In between all of the above I have been doing the usual watching of Netflix, playing too much online Scrabble, and having fun with some of my favorite Brooklyn people. One particular favorite Brooklyn person whisked me off to Vermont for a much-needed wonderful weekend getaway and later to Connecticut where I had a lovely Christmas with his family and met some very nice new people and learned how to make gravy and play Rummikub, among other things.

I've still got a bunch of things to take care of for school before the January residency, most significantly trying to revise as much of my novel-in-progress as I can before handing it off to my next advisor. We also received our workshop books, and I'm looking forward to reading everyone's pieces and getting ready to discuss them at the rez.

I guess that's everything for now. Probably won't post again before the year is out, so here's wishing everyone a wonderful final few days of 2008 and a happy, healthy start to 2009!

Write or Die

Hats off to Dr. Wicked. I have been having a terrible time getting moving again on my novel-in-progress for school, and while clicking around the internet, procrastinating up a storm, I read about Dr. Wicked's Write or Die application on schoolmate Rachel Wilson's blog. As the evening wore on and I had accomplished little more than starting two or three new games of Scrabble on Facebook, I decided to give it a try. And wow.

	1152
39
lab.drwicked.com

Hooray for negative reinforcement! And enforced freedom to write without stopping. I set a goal of 1000 words, then started typing. Afterward, I pasted the result into my Word doc and spent a little more time going back over the text, changing all the straight quotes to smart ones and adding/editing a little bit as I went along. And now I feel like I'm moving again.

p.s. My final word count for the day after my post–write-or-die once-over was 1273. Yay! I've got a daily 1000-word goal for the novel (every day between now and December 6 except for Thanksgiving) as I try to push through to the end of the first draft. Don't get too excited—"first draft" is a very generous description here, considering there are huge gaps in the narrative and lots of skipping around and things that already need changing in the early chapters...but still. Getting the major events sort of worked out through the end would still be awesome, and should make revision next semester a little easier than it would be if I hadn't yet figured out where the story will end.

Three Weekends of Reading and Signing

This Saturday, November 1, at 1 p.m., I'll be reading and signing Library Lion at Best Bargain Books in Centereach, NY (WalMart Shopping Center, 217 Middle Country Road). Please come by and say hello!

The following weekend, I'll be reading and signing at the Rochester Children's Book Festival on Saturday, November 8. If you're in the area, this is a GREAT event with lots of authors (more than 40!) and fun activities and wonderful people. I've been going to this festival for about five years now, and it's one of my favorite annual events, both because of the author friends I get to see while I am there and because of all the great kids, parents, teachers, librarians, and other folks who come out for it every year.

The weekend after that, I'll be presenting and signing at the Savannah Children's Book Festival on Saturday, November 15. This is another fabulous event with multiple authors, including Marc Brown, Katie Davis, Charles Ghigna, and Mo Willems! Plus, it's in Savannah, where you can get delicious Chick-fil-A and pralines (yum!).

Somehow, in between all of these events I will be keeping up with my reading and writing for school, going over the pages of The Dragon of Trelian ("pages" are when the publisher sends the text all laid out in pages for the first time, in the same typeface and everything that will be in the book, and it's my last chance to make any significant changes), and finally really getting to work on a sequel to TDoT, which so far is just some vague ideas and a page or two of notes.

And sometime soon I will need to work on editorial revisions to my upcoming picture book ARGUS (no pub date yet, but we're looking at 2011 at the earliest, sigh) and hopefully one of the other picture book manuscripts I'm working on will come together into something my editor will want to publish. There are three or four I'm actively working on right now; I will give them some code names for further discussion, because that's fun and will let me avoid having to talk about their actual prospective titles or what they are about:

Picture Books Currently in the Running:

1. Codename "Secret" (has been through multiple drafts, still trying to find the right approach)
   
2. Codename "Baker" (first draft completed; will be included in my next packet for school so I can get some feedback from my MFA advisor)
   
3. Codename "Two" (latest draft currently with my agent for her thoughts)
   
4. Codename "Mike" (revised version currently with my editor)
   
5. Codename "Frank" (first draft in progress)
   

Okay, the fifth one is currently only one sentence long and so obviously has quite a ways to go, but it's a good sentence, and I'm kind of excited about it, so I'm still going to consider it as being in the running.

But speaking of writing...I should get to work. Blogging doesn't really count, I guess.

whiny and growly

If there's a fly in my apartment, doesn't my cat have a responsibility, an obligation, to chase that thing down and catch it? She should be running after it with her eyes all wide and crazy and her mouth making little unconscious chewing motions. Instead she just lies there on the floor, kind of glancing up with annoyed disinterest whenever it buzzes by. I have tried urging her on with both supportive words and general mockery, but to no avail. Some predator. Lazy thing.

Of course, I can't really throw stones in the laziness department, since I have done pretty much nothing but lie on my couch for the past couple of days, nursing this horrible cold. It may actually be a sinus infection at this point; it's starting to look that way, anyway. I got sick on my last day in Oregon, where I was visiting my dad, and have been feeling pretty awful ever since. And the timing is not very good, because I have tons of writing work to do. I have enough resistance to writing when I'm healthy; when I'm sick like this, the thought of actually trying to be creative is almost painful to contemplate. Pretty much everything becomes almost painful to contemplate. I turn into a big baby. To be fair, it's a really bad cold/sinus thing... we're not talking a little bout of the sniffles here. I actually threw my back out coughing yesterday morning. And my head is all heavy and yucky and I'm generally just feeling weak and gross and unable to muster much energy for anything other than pressing the buttons on the DVD remote.

Waaah. See? Big whiny baby. And I'm missing out on all kinds of fun social things this week, including some live music tomorrow night with someone I'd been looking forward to seeing. I suppose it's possible I'll wake up feeling 100% improved tomorrow morning, but somehow I doubt it. (In addition to whiny, being sick makes me grumpy and pessimistic. Grrr.)

Anyway. Oregon was great, and it was good to see my dad and some old and new friends while I was out there.

I haven't posted any photos on here in a while... here's one of my dad and me at the International Rose Test Garden in Portland:



Back to whining: there is some sort of pep rally or something going on at the school a few blocks from my house, and there is lots of VERY LOUD drumming and shouting going on. I am all for school spirit, but it's been going on for hours and it's one more obstacle to actually being able to concentrate on reading or writing or anything else productive that I should be trying to do. GRRRR!

My next due date for school (Packet 3!) is October 7, and I've got 30-40 pages to write on my novel, plus tons of reading, one new essay to write, and one old essay to revise. I have not yet started any of these things, except a tiny portion of the reading. And I don't really know where the novel is going, which complicates the whole "write 30-40 pages" thing. But my advisor gave me some very helpful comments, and permission to jump around in the timeline, which makes me feel a little less anxious. It also means having to trust that eventually all the jumping around will work out and I'll be able to work everything into one coherent narrative... but that's the part of writing that I always have trouble with, the trust and the acceptance that there will be lots of revising, and no matter how clean and right I try to make the first draft, revising is PART OF THE PROCESS, and not punishment for not getting it right the first time or in any other way something to try to avoid. Revision is where the real book comes together. I know this, intellectually; I just need to keep working toward truly accepting and believing it.

As my VCFA friend David has said: Hail the process!

I am trying.

And now all I can hear is Yoda's voice in my head: No. Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try.

[And after Yoda frees the X-wing from the bog...]

Luke: I dont- I don't believe it.

Yoda: That is why you fail.

Sigh.

Um, August?

Okay, so I kind of skipped August. Here's what happened: I did some writing, I did some reading, I tried to win tickets online to see Hair with my friend Steph but we never won, I went to the gym, I made a difficult decision and later reversed it, I received loving care and attention from friends, I went out, I stayed in, I stressed about Packet 2 (that part is still ongoing), I saw Hellboy 2 (so good!), I bought new earrings, I got two MRIs (but apparently I'm fine), I visited the library several times, I cooked bluefish from the farmer's market in my grill pan and it was delicious, I ate too much frozen yogurt, I made good use of Netflix, and as the month wrapped up I had a wonderful weekend off the coast of Maine with some very lovely people.

So far September has been mostly about writing/reading stress and getting ready to visit my dad in Oregon next week. I've still got another essay and many more pages of my novel-in-progress to write before Monday morning. So clearly it was time to procrastinate by updating the old blog here.

I should probably get back to work, though. Just popping my head up to say hello.

July 2008 Update

So clearly this posting-at-least-once-a-week thing is not exactly happening. Maybe I should be shooting for once a month. Ah, well. It's not like blogging is the only thing I'm not doing as much of as I would like. (Hello, writing, reading, exercising, cleaning my apartment, spending quality time with friends...)

I'm a little over a week into re-entry after my first residency at The Vermont College of Fine Arts. It was everything everyone said it would be, and more. Met some wonderful people (you can visit some of them online - see the list of VCFA peeps in the right-hand column); attended excellent lectures by faculty, visiting writers, and graduating students; received wise and helpful guidance from my awesome workshop group on two picture book stories I have been struggling with; enjoyed the (mostly) lovely Vermont weather; and was introduced to the addictive anagram game Snatch, which promises to haunt me for years to come. I was also assigned my advisor for the semester: Uma Krishnaswami! I am so looking forward to working with her for the next several months. Now I just have to actually stay on top of all that work... I've got 20 to 40 pages of creative work and two critical essays due August 12, not to mention tons and tons of reading.

I'm starting a new middle-grade novel for my semester project, and will be working on some new picture books as well. I'm also hoping to continue work on two other novels in my, uh, spare time (hahahahahahahahahaha)—a sequel to The Dragon of Trelian and a new, unrelated fantasy novel. Wish me luck. Wish me lots and lots and lots and lots of luck. Please.

In other news...Library Lion has been nominated for another state book award! It's the 2009 Nevada Young Readers' Award in the picture book category. Hooray!

And...I sold another picture book to Candlewick! It feels too early to share details, but I am very excited. I will post more about this when it feels appropriate.

So, with everything I've got on my plate, I have no idea how often I'll be able to post, but I'll try to pop my head up whenever I can. Hope everyone out there is having a good summer and doing fun things and enjoying life in general. :)

Reading Lists

I need to find a better way to keep track of the books I want to read. How do other people do this? Right now, I have a list on notepaper in the back of my datebook/planner, I have a Word file on my desktop, I have a list in Visual Bookshelf on Facebook, I have a somewhat outdated list on my website, I have a few things saved in my Amazon wishlist, and I have scribbled notes on post-its and little pieces of paper scattered around my desk.

This is not especially efficient.

I would love to have just one master place to keep track of books I want to read, but each of the above systems has particular benefits not shared by all the others. For example, the Word file is great because I can cut and paste reviews or listserve comments to help me remember where I heard about the book and what made me want to read it and why. But the scraps of paper are great for when I'm not at my computer, or when I am at my computer but Word isn't open and I don't feel like waiting for it (my computer is getting a little old and slow, and those extra few seconds it takes to open programs can sometimes feel like hours, and I am often late, rushing, or just impatient and have no time for such things). And the datebook list is great for when I'm out somewhere and I see a book in a store or get a good recommendation from a friend, but then sometimes I forget that I even started that list until the next time I'm out and someone gives me a recommendation.

As so often happens in various situations in my life, I find myself wishing for the Star Trek computer arrangement, so I could just say to the air around me, "Computer. Add Jumpy Jack & Googily by Meg Rosoff to Master Reading List. Include note that I read about it on the PlanetEsme blog." And Majel Barrett's voice would say, "Acknowledged. Title and note added." (I fear that technology is still some years away, unfortunately. Along with the holodeck. Sigh.)

I've got a new list now of books to read before my first residency at Vermont College, and those are currently divided on little pieces of paper titled "Get at Library," "Requested from Library," and "Ordered from Amazon." I will post them here, sort of as a backup (in case I lose my little pieces of paper) and also in case it is interesting to anyone. These are mostly just the novels and books on writing; there are also many picture books I want/need to read, but I'll have to tackle those another time. Maybe a library day where I try and read as many as I can at the library without checking them all out and carrying them home. I certainly can't buy them all; gotta save my moolah for tuition and besides, I'm already at full capacity on my bookshelves.

Anyway. Novels/stories and craft books I'm reading/going to read before July:

The Underneath by Kathi Appelt
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
What's Your Story? A Young Person's Guide to Writing Fiction by Marion Dane Bauer
Spacer and Rat by Margaret Bechard
Trash by Sharon Darrow
The Painters of Lexieville by Sharon Darrow
Odd Man Out by Sarah Ellis
The Art of Writing for Children by Connie Epstein
Writing Books for Young People by James Cross Giblin
The Vanishing Point by Louise Hawes
Waiting for Christopher by Louise Hawes
The Gate in the Wall by Ellen Howard
Naming Maya by Uma Krishnaswami
The Broken Tusk by Uma Krishnaswami
Keturah and Lord Death by Martine Leavitt
100 Best Books for Children by Anita Silvey
Every Time a Rainbow Dies by Rita Williams-Garcia
Rex Zero and the End of the World by Tim Wynne-Jones

If anyone out there has some awesome system of keeping track of their reading list(s), please share!

Novel update, MFA, and Behind the Book. And cookies.

All right. In the interest of avoiding having the most boring blog EVER in the history of blogging, I'm going to try to post more often. Like, a lot more often. Like, at least once a week. If not more than that. I have no idea what I'll have to say, but I'm hoping things will come to me. Sort of like that other kind of writing, where half the battle is to actually show up, and then sometimes you suddenly find yourself working on a story.

I'm also going to pretend that at the very least, I have some friends and family members out there who are looking at this thing occasionally (hi mom!) and so I won't feel like I'm posting into the abyss. As always, comments are very welcome, just so I'll know you guys are out there, occasionally checking in.

So, update. Right now I'm working on reviewing copyedits on my middle-grade fantasy novel, which is currently scheduled for a February 2009 release and which still does not have a title. Title selection has been proving extraordinarily difficult, and we are running out of time. Also, this copyediting stage is my last chance to make text changes with abandon, so it's kind of a high-pressure experience.

In other news, I've been accepted into the Vermont College MFA program in writing for children and young adults, which I am very excited about. The first residency is in July, and there is lots of preparation going on and plenty of stress and positive anticipation in about equal measure. It is going to be a LOT of work, but it will all be good work—writing the kinds of things I want to be writing more of, critical work on topics that relate to my writing, and reading other students' work and books by members of the faculty and more great children's literature and books on craft and other things.

In other other news, I had a fabulous school visit yesterday with a great class at P.S. 274 in Brooklyn. This visit was through the Behind the Book organization, which is a literary arts nonprofit group that does wonderful things in schools. If you'd like to help support them, please visit their website to volunteer or make a donation. The students I met with are working on creating their own books, and next week I get to go back and hear their first drafts and help them with revising! I can't wait; all of their ideas sounded very exciting and I know they are going to come up with some wonderful stories.

One last thing: I was up in Ithaca last weekend to visit some very dear friends, and I was shocked to discover that the Ithaca Bakery has stopped making my favorite cookies (chocolate chip walnut). They now only make regular chocolate chip, no nuts. This may not seem like a big deal to some people, but those cookies are one of the things I really look forward to on my Ithaca visits, and I am greatly saddened to think that they are gone forever. If you live in Ithaca, please add your voice to mine in asking them to bring the walnuts back! I don't see why they can't make both kinds—with walnuts and without—and thereby keep all their devoted customers happy.

Spider Drama and the Critical Essay

Why do the spiders seek me out? Why? Why?

I was settling down to begin work on writing (well, reading and prewriting for) my first critical essay in 12+ years (part of an MFA application, due March 1) and I had a sudden urge to check that I'd locked the front door and there was a large spider climbing the wall in the front hallway. He looked a little big (and especially agile) to try catching in a cup, and he was right near the front door, so I thought I'd just try to get him to climb on the end of the broom and then I could transport him right out into the hallway. I'm not sure I succeeded, however. He deftly avoided my first few attempts to load him onto the broom, and then I *think* I got him successfully out into the hallway, but then I lost track of him. So he may still be lurking in my entranceway (ugh, what if he gets inside my SHOES??) or he may be hiding in the brush of the broom (I can't make myself look too closely in there to check), or he may be hanging out in the hallway or crawling into someone else's apartment. Or, I suppose, back into mine. I guess this is why people kill them instead of just evicting them. But I can't bring myself to do that.

And of course now I can't remember if I locked the door again after evicting (or not) the spider with the broom. So I have to go back over there and check. It's not like I can be afraid of my front hallway forever, anyway. But right now I'm still in that post-spider-sighting stage of feeling like things are crawling on me.

(Checked the door; I *hadn't* locked it. Although it had been locked the first time when I originally went over to check before the whole spider drama.)

Maybe it's time for more exposure therapy. Ugh.

Anyway. I suppose I'll try to get myself back to a place where I can concentrate enough to do some close reading. Wish me luck; it's been a long time since I wrote an English paper. Hopefully it's like riding a bike. Fingers crossed. I just wish I didn't have the extra obstacle of now being on spider alert.