Woe is me. . . but not really

Look what came back to me today. My current boomerang.
Yes. Silksinger. This time, she's typeset, and I get to read her. . . AGAIN. Good thing I love this book. Note: be sure only to write books you rillyrilly love, because you will have to read them minnyminny times. Also: try to keep them short. This is not something I have managed to do, but it seems like a good plan right about now.

Typeset, and without the art (which Jim is working on now), she comes in at 439 pages. Blackbringer is 437. Huh. Pretty close!

So, this weekend I have a reading date with my Dreamdark crew: Magpie and Talon, Whisper and Hirik, and multitudinous imps and hobgoblins and faeries and devils.

This is going to be a year for me of many exciting moments. I will get two boxes of ARCs in the mail, and two boxes of new books. This is the "Back to the Future" moment I've mentioned before -- how all writers I know seem to remember the minor scene in that movie in which the Crispin Glover character gets a box of books from his publisher. Only aspiring writers take note of that scene, and we remember it forever.

I will also read reviews, which I hope will be good, and I will see the German edition of Blackbringer, not to mention the very beautiful paperback, which I am going to show you NOW:
Isn't it gorgeous? I love the new type treatment, and you can't really tell here, but the type and the image of Magpie and Calypso are spot-laminated so they stand out shiny against the misty matte background. It's scrumptious. And I'm very excited that Holly Black blurbed the front cover. Thank you Holly!

I'm also very excited that Firebird chose to use Magpie as the lead page to their section in the Penguin Young Readers catalog:


I'm giddy about 2009, for lots of reasons. GIDDY. So if I seem to be complaining about having to read my own book again, know that I am doing so with a sense of total grace and gratitude for the year that is upcoming.

Now, on to something very funny. Well. One of the Cybils shortlist titles in sci-fi/fantasy, selected by me and my co-panelists, is Lisa McMann's Wake, a book I read in one sitting (well, one "lying" because I was in bed and didn't fall asleep until I finished it at 1:30 or so). When I posted about it, a friend in Arizona emailed to tell me essentially, "Yeah it's great, and did you know she wrote it in seven days?"

At which point I swore violently and laid curses in the general direction of Arizona, where Lisa McMann also lives, because, you know, just because. Because writing a good book in seven days is just plain showing off!! So, this same friend from Arizona, a YA book enthusiast and his wife, a 6th grade teacher and also a YA book enthusiast, were in Portland last weekend and when we got together for lunch, they had this gift for me, a copy of Wake inscribed, by Lisa McMann, as follows:
Tee hee. I find this very, very funny, and it's made funnier by the fact that the book was handed off at night between car windows in a parking lot, the way FBI agents meet informants in TV shows. All clandestine-like. So, thank you Daanon and Michelle for the gift of the book, and thank you Lisa McMann, for good-naturedly rubbing my nose in your absurdly fast writing abilities. :-)

[psst. I don't really think she was showing off. I'm just jealous. And I really liked this book. It's about a girl who has the very bad luck that, whenever someone falls asleep in her vicinity, she gets sucked into their dream. It's a thriller and a romance, and an unputdownable read, AND the sequel is coming out in like 17 days or something. It's a good read for adults or teens, and you can count on it for teen reluctant readers, because it is so fast-paced.]

[Totally off the subject, but I want to say Halleluja to PRESIDENT OBAMA for rolling back the "gag rule" today. As I understood it from previous reading, Bush's first act in office eight years ago was to deny funding to any NGOs around the world that provided abortion counseling or services. This effectively meant depriving women and families in desperately poor countries of not only abortion (that is, hypocritically depriving them of a service that is still legal here), but birth control and HIV prevention, as well as other life-saving counseling and services. Well, that funding is now restored. Thank you, President Obama, for your first three days in office. Off to a good start!]