A few more reviews of Seraphina out in the blogosphere:

* From Diana at Happily Ever After

* From Veronica at Mostly Reviews

Thanks so much you two!

In general I only link blog reviews, because I want bloggers to get some traffic out of it and because Goodreads reviews are all clustered together in one place already. Today I’m going to make an exception, however, because Phoebe North is a friend of mine, and because I don’t think she’s planning to re-post the review on a blog. So here’s hers. And thanks, old lady!

To change the subject slightly, here’s author Mike Mullin on Why Bad Reviews Rock. I’ll tell ya, his novel Ashfall – about the Yellowstone supervolcano – had not particularly been on my radar (I’m not keen on survival novels, generally), but it sure is now! An example of how Excellent Author Behaviour can also make a difference!

All right, enough about reviews! Coming next week: stupid love songs. No, really. There are some abysmally stupid ones I really love. Catch you then!

Here’s a nice one at Book Catching. Thanks, Stephanie! (This one may have some spoiler-y info, depending on your definition of spoilers. I don’t think it spoils anything, but I’m kind of spoiler-insensitive)

Bloggity-Blog-Blog reviews it for a second time, in more depth. Thanks again, Laura!

In other news: thanks to everyone who’s dropped by here the last few days, for all the support and kind words about the cover. This is all so exciting that I’m probably going to have to put a paper bag over my head and go lie down for a while.

Yesterday was my son’s first day back at school after vacation, and my first day back working seriously on the sequel. It’s always so hard to get started again, even if I take a weekend off. I don’t know why that is; it’s like being very flabby and getting back to exercise. When you’re really exercising regularly, though, you come back refreshed after a day off. Why would writing muscles get flabby so quickly? Maybe there’s something wrong with the analogy.

I usually refer to this ailment as “The Mondays”, since that’s when I usually get it. Yesterday I had the Mondays to end all Mondays, but it was Tuesday, which was just embarrassing. This morning was much better.

To these two reviewers, then, waiting for the sequel: I’m on it.

I have things to say and stories to tell, but for now, I think I’m gonna let this baby speak for itself:

That’s our North American cover, friends. I seriously can’t stop staring at it. Stories tomorrow, I promise.

Hi, all! I hope you’re all having a very happy Winter Holiday season. Today is Boxing Day in Canada, the day we all put on our gloves and punch each other in the face. Good times. Helps us stay mild and inoffensive for the rest of the  year. You wondered why Canadians are so polite? Boxing Day. You may quote me.

I’m really just popping in to let you know we have a North American cover, at long last. It is beautiful – I can’t stop staring at it – and Captain Editorpants says I’m to sit on it until the new year.

So yeah, I’m just here to tease you and make you wonder. What could be on it? (Hint: not a girl in a prom dress!) Will I like it better than the British version? (Hint: it’s ok to like them both; they’re very, very different) Why is Rachel TEASING ME?? (Hint: Boxing Day!)

I’m off on my holiday again – my friends aren’t going to punch themselves, you know! Meanwhile, here’s a nice little review from Laura Gjovaag, geared toward Amy Unbounded fans. Catch you in 2012, cover in hand!

I could play coy and pretend I never stalk myself online, but that would be a big fat lie. Now that Seraphina is out in eARC form, a few YA book bloggers have read and reviewed it. I don’t know what the etiquette is for linking to reviews, so I’ve tried to be even-handed. Not all of these reviews are gushing and enthusiastic, but they’re all thoughtful, well-considered, and full of good observations. Here are the ones I’ve found so far. Please note: some of these have spoilers!

The Zoe-Trope

Wear the Old Coat

Sassyreads

The Nocturnal Library

Cuddlebuggery (HI KAT!)

There are more reviews – both good and meh! – at Goodreads, of course. No bad reviews yet, but that’s a matter of time. I gave The Giving Tree one star, so I’ve got some karma lined up, surely. I’m sort of tempted to write a bad review myself, just to get it over with – because who knows how to poke me in the eye better than me? – but I suppose that’s cheating.

From Amazon.co.uk — it’s kind of awesome!

Just so we’re all completely clear: the US/Canadian cover will be nothing like this. I am not at liberty yet to say what it will be like, unfortunately. Still, this is very exciting for me.

Thanks to my husband for noticing it was up!

Ooh! That spooky eye!

* I dreamed that I’d written the sequel in Persian up to the halfway point, and was terribly stuck as a result. I couldn’t even go back and read what I’d written, because it was all in Persian. I finally found someone who could translate it, but then the alarm went off before she was three sentences in.

* Now I’ll never know what happened, which is too bad. It looked much more exciting in Persian, but then, maybe everything does.

* Did anyone catch the Simpsons on Sunday? It was so much like my life that I was falling off the couch,  laughing and weeping. Lisa, in particular. She was writing a novel and her procrastination techniques were just epic. EPIC. Toward the end, she said, “A hard deadline will really help me focus!” and I completely lost it.

* I have concluded from this that I would make much faster progress if only I had Neil Gaiman here to bring me beer and tase me. Surely that could be arranged? Don’t tell me he’s busy. I watched the show. We all know better. “British Fonzie”, ha ha ha.

* In other news: my agent and editor surprised me by getting Christopher Paolini to read my book. He has written me a nice blurb, in fact, to go with my collection of blurbs from Tamora Pierce, Ellen Kushner, Naomi Novak, and Alison Goodman. What a nice surprise! I’ll have to put it up on the front page with all the blurbage.

* Five blurbs is, I believe, enough to make a hand in Blurb Poker.

* Hello, darlings! I have returned from my weekend away, only to find that the world did not have the good grace to pause in my absence. Silly world! When will you ever learn? Rachel on vacation means you should definitely take a break as well, and not accumulate more things for me to do.

* I am working up my final knee-jerk blog post, but it is long and time is short. It will be up tomorrow, I hope. Edited to add: erm. Nope. Thursday or Friday. I overbooked today, and something had to give.

* I am bending NaNo to my will, using an algorithm of my own devising to convert “Time Spent Working” into “Fake Word Count”. That way, I can still see my progress on the handy graph, even as I go in and condense, weed, and improve all the crap I just wrote.

* Because seriously, I just wrote fifty pages where Prince Lucian Kiggs was there, but not there. He’d been replaced with Folger’s Crystals, or something — but I DID notice! I just didn’t know where the hell he had gone or how to get him back. I found him again (in my head!) over the weekend, so that was nice. He’s good people, is Kiggs; robot Kiggs just wasn’t cutting it.

* But that’s what the relentless page count was driving me to. That, and ZOMG adverbs! And redundancies of all kinds! And… and an obsession with Porphyrian plumbing!

* Er. With regard to that latter: my plumbing fixation is well-documented. The only time I have ever felt I may have lived a past life was when I visited Housesteads Fort on Hadrian’s Wall and found the Roman latrines utterly engrossing. Was I once a plumber for the Empire? Oh gods, I hope so.

* Until tomorrow, friends. Writing this doesn’t count toward my word-count algorithm, alas.

The sequel to “Wrestling the Knee Jerk” is turning out to be kind of long, as the wise among us probably predicted. It looks like I won’t get it up until tomorrow or Wednesday, since I got behind on NaNo over the weekend and need to catch up.

It’s funny: over at the NaNo site they were all like, “It’s the weekend! Time to really start chugging ahead!” Except that no, the weekend is harder for me. I have this family, see, and I like to spend time with them.

I have a small amount of news. I’ve put up a “Buy” tab (see top of page) because Seraphina is already available for pre-order some places. There’s still no cover, but don’t let that deter you! There’s bound to be a cover someday.

Someday, too, I will have to tell you about the long cover Odyssey we’ve been on (parts of it, anyway). I had NO IDEA approving the cover was going to involve so much drama and heartbreak. I will never look at covers the same way again.

I leave you with a song that’s been going through my head lately, by one of the old prog-rock greats, Genesis. Here, for your listening (and young-Peter-Gabriel-watching) pleasure, I present “The Return of the Giant Hogweed” —

Someday I intend to write a scholarly paper in which I compare this song with Rush’s “The Trees” — two narrative ballads about plants! Either that or put them in a cage together and watch them fight, except I’m pretty sure Hogweed would win. The Hogweed is invincible, after all.