Guest Post at What Was on Her ...

Come visit me today over at Sandra Nickel's What Was on Her ... blog, where I talk about my most evil plan, karaoke favorites, and other fun things. Also, information you need to know about appropriate numbers of spiders.

BIG MEAN MIKE!

Look! It is the awesome, awesome cover to my forthcoming picture book, BIG MEAN MIKE, illustrated by the wonderful and amazing Scott Magoon:

The good news is that Scott Magoon is, as previously stated, wonderful and amazing, and the illustrations throughout are SO GOOD I CANNOT EVEN TELL YOU. The slightly-less-good news is that you have to wait until August 14 to get this book. BUT! There will possibly be an opportunity to pre-order a signed copy (stay tuned), and some of you will get to see MIKE sooner at BEA, if you come to my signing on June 6.

In the meantime, you should be reading The Princess of Trelian.

Saturday Six

1. Update: 2011 has been keeping me pretty busy so far. I've been teaching my class at Gotham Writers' Workshop, working on final revisions of my Trelian sequel, writing new picture book drafts, thinking about my next big project, doing a little freelance editing, and trying to still find some time to see friends and my nice boyfriend and go for walks and other things. I also got to spend a lovely long weekend at Kindling Words, recharging my writerly energy and wearing a fancy dress to a masquerade ball.

2. Twitter tells me that today is International Save Libraries Day. (Personally, I think every day should be International Save Libraries Day.) You can participate in the library love by going to your local library, joining if you're not already a member, and checking out a book or three. You can also use the #savelibraries hashtag on Twitter to show your support, and write to your local legislators to let them know libraries matter! I've just added a widget to this page in the column at right (thanks, ALA website!) that will help you identify and contact your local legislators.

(Thanks, Phil Bradley, for the library word art!)

3. I'm teaching a free one-hour children's book writing workshop for Gotham Writers' Workshop tomorrow evening, 6–7pm, at McNally Jackson Books in Manhattan. If you don't have Super Bowl party plans, come learn about writing for children, instead!

4. WORD Bookstore in Greenpoint is hosting a birthday/book launch party for my new picture book, Argus! It's February 22 (my birthday!) from 6:30–8:30pm. There will be cupcakes and books and general merriment. Grown-ups and children of all ages are welcome. I hope to see you there! If you're on Facebook, you can RSVP here or here (or both), but no official RSVP required—just come on over!

5. My former teacher (and current all-around person of awesomeness) Cynthia Leitich Smith is on tour for her new novel, Blessed! Check out the full schedule and go get yourself a signed book. NYC events start tomorrow and continue through the week.

6. OK, I think I really only had five things today. So I will use #6 here to remind you that The Dragon of Trelian is out in paperback as of last month, and you should probably go get yourself a copy. Or give it as a Valentine's Day gift to a special young reader (or old reader) in your life. Yay!

Scott Magoon!

I am VERY EXCITED to announce that the wonderful Scott Magoon will be illustrating my upcoming picture book BIG MEAN MIKE!

That is all. I just wanted to share. :)

p.s. "Upcoming" in the publishing world is of course not meant to imply "soon to be appearing" in any kind of normal-world-time sense. MIKE is currently tentatively scheduled for Fall 2012. But that is okay, because in the meantime there will be THE DRAGON OF TRELIAN PAPERBACK (this fall!) and ARGUS (2011, illustrated by Andréa Wesson!) and THE DRAGON OF TRELIAN SEQUEL (which will one day have a real title!).

BIG MEAN MIKE!

I'm very excited to announce that Candlewick will be publishing another picture book written by ME! It's called BIG MEAN MIKE, and that is all I will tell you at this time. :) Pub date still to be determined.

Candlewick will also be publishing my picture book ARGUS in Spring 2011 and the sequel to THE DRAGON OF TRELIAN...at some point after I have finished writing it.

In other news, I have finally updated my website a bit. You can see it here: www.michelleknudsen.com. I like the new colors; the old version was starting to seem a little boring. I'm still planning to have a real redesign at some point by some talented web designer-type person who is not me, but for now I'm having fun playing around with it myself.

In other other news, I had a wonderful time traveling around upstate NY with S. I hiked mountains and caught my first trout and swam in lakes and floated down rivers in tubes and saw a lot of lovely lovely nature.

Here is a picture of me enjoying nature:


And here is a picture of me enjoying nature on my boyfriend's motorcycle (I don't drive it myself, I just ride on the back. So usually he is sitting there in front of me, but in this case he is not because he is taking the picture.) Yes, those are fishing poles lashed to the back. That is the cool way to travel to fishing spots in the Adirondacks, FYI.


And here is a picture of nature for you to enjoy, without me in it:


Now I am back in Brooklyn, trying not to miss the lovely cool lakes and mountains. I am spending a little too much time looking at the pictures...