Dessert with LK Madigan; Powells attacks me with beautiful books, and a new journal cover is collaged

Yesterday afternoon I had the treat of meeting a local YA writer who I first met over the blogs: LK Madigan (cool name for an author, noh?), whose first novel, Flash Burnout, is coming out next fall. I love meeting bloggers in person, and I love talking to other writers, and best of all, I love meeting writer-bloggers in dessert restaurants for chai latte and plum tart! {In defense of my diet, I had a small bowl of '0 point vegetable soup' for dinner, and did a very sweaty hour of cardio late last night!} It was really fun talking to Lisa about our respective writing journeys, where we're at with our current books, and stuff like that. And when I got there, one of the first things I noticed was an ARC of this book, which I just preordered the other day, sitting on the table. I guess Lisa and Sarah are in a group of Debut 2009 authors together, and read each other's ARCs and write notes to each other in them. How fun!

[Reminder: Kidlit Blogger's Conference: Sept 27, just around the corner. If you haven't signed up yet, do now. Come, come. Jone and I worked out the schedule the other day and I think it's going to be awesome. Debates are in progress where next year's will be. Definitely East Coast, possibly D.C.]

On the way to our meeting at Sweet Masterpiece**, I had to walk by Powell's, and a powerful whirlwind (it may have been a djinn, come to think of it) swept me into the store where I found myself, to my utter bewilderment, buying a travel guidebook to Morocco, and a lovely and expensive bestiary called Fabulous Beasts and Demons. (I am a sucker for books about beasts and demons, especially fabulous ones. No, really. You should see my bookshelf.) Both these books are research for the new, weird thing, which shall henceforth be called NWT, or ooh, how about "Newt." It has nothing to do with newts (yet, anyway; you never know), but this will be our secret codeword.

So, the other night, I didn't feel like writing anymore, so I ambled upstairs to my sadly underused art space in the studio Jim and I share (and in which he is mostly alone these days, as I mutter in my writing room, downstairs), and I occupied myself with collaging the cover of my "Newt" notebook. You know about me and my Clairfontaine journals? Well, I'd been writing in this one for a whole week with its plain boring cover, and I was just about fed up with all the plainness and boringness. So, propped up by my most recent Powell's purchases:
(There was a title on it too, which is not Newt, but I sneakily obscured it, so nobody who is a faster writer than me can steal it.) Oh, and this collage came semi-pre-collaged. I cut out the lady face and body from an old collage zine called "Play," and I painted on her a little and put a butterfly on her head. I think she's real purdy.

**looking up the link to Sweet Masterpiece, I see one of the reviewers tried a dessert there that was a hazelnut dark chocolate fondue with a side of bacon that was so good it made them want to cry. It does sound good, too, doesn't it? In a super decadent way?