My interview with Nancy Pearl
Posted: September 13, 2012 Filed under: Books, Me, News 4 Comments »Here it is! (I couldn’t get it to embed, sorry.)
I just want to say: thank you so much to Nancy Pearl, Paul, Deanna, the lovely folks at University Book Store, and everybody else who helped make this happen (Trinity, Robert, Konrad, Paige, Flann! You helped!). I had so much fun, I didn’t want it to end. I wanted to keep chatting. Maybe we’ll chat again sometime!
Last week of summer break
Posted: August 27, 2012 Filed under: Me 4 Comments »And I’m suddenly noticing all the things I’ve left undone. I have errands to run before my son starts school again (to say nothing of postponed fun to cram in! We haven’t done the PNE yet, and we’ve barely swum at all), so posting will be light for the next week or so.
Of course, there are bloggy things I haven’t gotten to yet, but they’re going to have to wait a bit longer. I have some fan art to post! (Confidential to M: I haven’t forgotten!) I was going to just stick it in a blog entry, but then my husband (who is more astute about such things than I am) said, “Um, that picture has spoilers.” Oops. So I’m going to put it in its own space, with spoiler warnings — when I get to it. Which I will. But not this week.
So much stuff! And things! More to do than I have corresponding brain cells with which to do it, to say nothing of hands. I could probably use some extra feet too, while we’re wishing, although that makes me an octopus in short order.
Enjoy the last of the nice weather, my dears (or the last of the awful weather, depending how you feel about that terrifying orb up in the sky). You may picture me running around like a chicken with its head cut off, unless that’s too gross, in which case you’re on your own for the metaphor. I haven’t got time to come up with a better one.
Back, and dithering on as usual
Posted: August 10, 2012 Filed under: Me, Writing process 1 Comment »The spam sure does accumulate when you’re not at home, doesn’t it? I knew I should have had someone picking up my mail and watering the plants.
(Pause a moment while I try to work out which part of the blog corresponds to plants. Some metaphors just don’t work.)
We visited my in-laws in the midwest. They threw a lovely party where extended family and old friends (including several of my husband’s high-school teachers) brought books for me to sign. I just heard that Seraphina is back on the NYT bestsellers list after a week off. My big extended family surely contributed to that! I signed about thirty books.
We also got to go to a Cardinals game. It was a nice, relaxing trip, a good chance to catch my breath after a busy July and fortify myself before an even busier September.
I have a few nearly-empty weeks to work on my sequel revisions. Excuse me if the posting here is light. I am going to need all the time-management tricks at my disposal, all the discipline I can scrape together to get this thing done in a timely manner. The good news is, I’m enjoying it much more this time through. It’s funny how you can work and work and not quite understand what you’re doing. I thought I was writing one book, but it turns out I’m writing a slightly different one, a book that was lying latent under the surface of the first but never quite revealing itself. It was only visible with a bit of time and distance — and the help of a sharp-sighted editor and a friend who asks irritatingly pointed questions.
Heh. Now it’s a whaling expedition. My editor cries, “Thar she blows!” and I hurl the question-harpoons after it.
The answer is always there. My brain is smarter than I am, and it knows what it’s doing. Sometimes it’s hard to have faith in that.
Thinking about listening
Posted: July 27, 2012 Filed under: Me, Music, News 14 Comments »I have a guest post up at Suvudu.com — The Top 10 Songs I Listened to While Writing Seraphina. It details my odd tendency to put songs on endless repeat and suck all the goodness out of them, like some sort of musical vampire.
I’m not sure how it’s possible, but I still love all those songs, even after the repetitions. You’d think they’d get old. Maybe they DO get old, and that’s what I like, treading those well-worn paths again and again. The familiarity. I have no idea. There is music I used to love that I’ve outgrown – most Beatles songs, for example, I get impatient with now – so that can happen. Other things I love even better with age. Is there rhyme or reason to any of it?
It bears thinking about. Can you use a specific piece of music to light up a specific part of your brain, and how is your written output different while under that influence? Because I’m sure I stop consciously listening to the music after a while; I have to, or I couldn’t be thinking about the words I need to write. It can be hard to maintain a strong feeling while thinking. Is music a way to keep that gate open, somehow, so there’s access to the feeling while I’m doing the problem-solving work writing requires?
No idea. But seriously, neurologists of the world, maybe y’all should get on that! I’ll be interested in knowing the results.
My MTV interview
Posted: July 25, 2012 Filed under: Me, News Leave a comment »Bah, I can’t seem to embed this video, possibly due to my being in Canada, but if anyone would like to see the live clip I did from SDCC a couple weeks ago, here it is. Considering how little sleep I got the night before, I managed to be reasonably articulate!
Thanks to my hosts at MTV, and to my publicist, Paul, for setting this up.
Seraphina’s wonderful opening night
Posted: July 12, 2012 Filed under: Me, News 14 Comments »Tuesday evening we had a charming soiree at KidsBooks, a wonderful children’s bookstore here in Vancouver. It was by invitation (mostly — we had a few walk-ins too, which was awesome). I invited everyone I could think of, and was delighted with how many people came. I even had friends come up from Seattle and Vancouver, WA!
As I had long threatened, there was cake:
It’s a girl!
The first forty-five minutes or so were spent greeting people. I knew pretty much everyone who came, so there were a lot of hugs. It was nice to be able to have my very first event in the company of friends.
Then I did a little reading. Here’s Phyllis Simon, one of the owners, introducing me. Thank you so much for your kind hospitality, Phyllis!
I’m the one on the right. Thanks again to all the KidsBooks staff!
Apparently I make a lot of faces while reading. My friend Liz Edgar caught this one:
Then I signed books. This picture is me at the very end signing stock for the store, which is less interesting, but it’s the only picture I seem to have gotten of my local Random House rep, Trish Kells, who helped arrange and coordinate the whole event. That’s her in the pink. Thanks, Trish! It was wonderful!
We had this down to a science by the time we got through that pile.
Here are a few more pictures from Liz, who is an excellent photographer, just to give you a little more flavour of the evening.
That last picture is my husband, looking tired but happy. That about sums it up for all of us at the end of the day.
Interview at The Enchanted Inkpot
Posted: July 11, 2012 Filed under: Me, News Leave a comment »Hello, friends! We had a wonderful time last night at KidsBooks, and I will be posting pictures as soon as I get my act together. In the meantime, here’s a bit of fun: Deva Fagan interviews me at The Enchanted Inkpot. Ms. Fagan asks some really insightful, interesting questions, which were fun for me to answer. Enjoy!
Update: just had to pop back and share this review at Lytherus as well!
Today’s the day, darlings!
Posted: July 10, 2012 Filed under: Me 9 Comments »I’m supposed to be napping, because was up at ridiculous o’clock this morning, like a kid on Christmas. And I do find myself at a slight loss for words, here, now that it comes down to it.
Let me merely say: my heartfelt thanks for all the support, encouragement, and enthusiasm. This has been a very long journey. Some of you have been on it with me from the beginning; some are just newly joining in. Thank you each and every one.
Another interlude
Posted: July 5, 2012 Filed under: Me Leave a comment »Technically this one is musical as well, but the music isn’t as good because it’s me singing it. I suddenly realized that because I missed choir practice last week, there’s an entire song I don’t know at all. It’s our conductor’s idiosyncratic arrangement of “Bring Me Little Water Sylvie.”
“Idiosyncratic” makes it sound dreadful. It’s not. It’s quite good. It just has a lot of accidentals and some interesting but counter-intuitive dissonance. Also, the MP3 he sent me features him singing the alto part falsetto, which gives me the giggles.
So I am trying simultaneously to learn the alto part and write blog-tour posts. My success rate at each is about what you might suspect, although I think I’ve about got the song down. I’ve been singing along so automatically that I forgot I was doing it when I answered the door for the FedEx guy.
Curiously, the lyrics at that moment chanced to be perfectly apropos: I can hear you callin’!
FedEx, it appears, selects its delivery dudes for unflappability. This is why.
Ten dumbfounding facts about me
Posted: July 2, 2012 Filed under: Me, News 3 Comments »These went up at Book Chick City while I was out of town, and I failed to notice until after I’d already posted yesterday. But if anyone’s interested in ten amusing and largely silly facts about me, here they are.
One thing I failed to mention, but could have, is that I am completely incapable of resisting a jigsaw puzzle. My son recently got a jigsaw puzzle of the Rosetta stone. It’s either extremely cool or it’s going to make me go blind from squinting at tiny Greek letters. Probably both.
