VLOG needs you

Some of you out there know that one of my favorite non-writing activities is performing in community theater productions of Gilbert & Sullivan operettas. The group I perform with in NYC is The Village Light Opera Group — a wonderful organization that has been around for more than 75 years, bringing G&S as well as other plays, musicals, and theatrical offerings to the NYC community.


Like many other theater organizations, we rely greatly on contributions from theater-loving folks to keep our group going. Recently, VLOG was fortunate enough to receive a matching grant from a very generous donor, who has pledged to match every dollar we raise by January 31, 2012 up to $10,000.


If you love theater, or Gilbert & Sullivan, or community organizations, or tax deductions, or me, I hope you will consider helping us to meet our goal! Even a small amount would be greatly appreciated, and the website is set up to accept donations starting as low as $5.00. You can donate online here, and can also send donations by mailing a check to:


Village Light Opera Group
PO Box 143
Village Station, NY 10014


Thank you! :)

Friday Five

1. Tonight is opening night of Iolanthe! Performances this weekend only!! You can buy tickets here. Come see me and the other ladies of the cast work some fairy magic. Also, there are Peers of Parliament and a half-fairy shepherd and a lovely young ward of chancery and a general abundance of awesomeness, set to music, with occasional dialogue.

2. I am very pleased to announce that I'll be teaching a course with Gotham Writers' Workshop in 2011! It's Children's Book Writing I, and it meets Tuesday nights, 7–10pm, January 18 through March 29. You can enroll online through the GWW website.

3. The third and final part of my blog series on sequels is up at Through the Tollbooth today. Click on over for more Q&A with Ellen Jensen Abbott, Cinda Williams Chima, Janni Lee Simner, and Jill Santopolo.

4. I'm currently scheduling school visits for the spring 2011 semester. See the School and Library Visits page on my website for more information.

5. Have you come across Hyperbole and a Half yet? It makes me happy.

Visit me at the Tollbooth! Also: Iolanthe!

I'm blogging this week over at Through the Tollbooth. Come on over today for the first of three installments about the pains and pleasures of writing sequels.

Also - if you're in the NYC area, you should come see The Village Light Opera Group's production of Iolanthe this weekend! It's our 75th anniversary season and Iolanthe is one of Gilbert & Sullivan's most beloved operettas. There are fairies (I am one) and peers of Parliament and a love triangle (kind of a love pentagon, really) and beautiful music and dancing and general awesomeness of all kinds.

Performances are this weekend only:
Friday, Nov. 19th @ 8pm
Saturday, Nov. 20th @ 2pm & 8pm
Sunday, Nov. 21st @ 2pm

At our new theater:
The Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University
3 Spruce Street
New York , New York 10038

You can buy tickets here.

Also, you can watch this fun promo trailer:



You can see more about the show at VLOG's Iolanthe website.

Yay!

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.  :)

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!