PROJECT BOOK BABE

I have a great event to tell you about, if you're in the Phoenix area or if you're not but would get to the Phoenix area to attend it. It's Project Book Babe, on April 4, and it's a fundraiser for fabulous bookseller Faith Hochhalter, who is going through chemotherapy right now for breast cancer. Faith has done so much for YA authors over the past years, as buyer at the wonderful Changing Hands bookstore as well as helping organize author visits, doing extraordinary promotions, and spreading the enthusiasm of reading YA to teens and adults alike. So, her author friends want to help her out during this not-great time, and are throwing a whopper of a charity event.

The line-up:
Shannon Hale (The Goose Girl) (One of my favorite writers!!!)
Stephenie Meyer (Twilight)
Brandon Mull (Fablehaven)
Frank Beddor (The Looking Glass Wars)
Janette Rallison (My Fair Godmother)
James Owen (Here There Be Dragons)
PJ Haarsma (Softwire series)
Jon Lewis (Revenge of the Shadow King)
Chris Gall (There's Nothing to Do on Mars)
ME!!!

I am so excited to be part of this, and so deeply impressed with all the hard work the organizers have put into making it happen.

Tickets are available in a range of prices from $25-$300, each level coming with different perks, including signed books. The event itself, in a high school auditorium, will feature live music and a panel discussion emceed by Shannon Hale who is a natural at such things. If you've ever seen her speak, you know what I mean. Tickets go on sale Tuesday, and I hear tell they're expected to sell out fast, so head on over to the Project Book Babe website and take a gander.

Besides the main event, there will also be an online auction of signed books from many different authors besides those above, and all proceeds will go to offsetting Faith's medical costs. I'll post more info on the online auction later; I'm not sure when that's happening.

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Another cool thing: Blackbringer has just been named to its first state reading list, for which I am THRILLED and hope there will be many more! Thank you so much, fabulous librarians of Oklahoma! To see Oklahoma's Sequoyah Book Awards Master Lists for 2009-10, go HERE.

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OOH! And yet another cool thing: I've been invited, for the first time, to contribute a story to an anthology!!! It's a YA anthology, and I probably can't say more about it now, it's still very much in the planning, but I'm very excited. In general, I am all-around very excited these days. Can you tell? Makes it a little hard to concentrate on writing, heh heh. No, I've been writing, and am having so much fun with my new book. My mind is all a-fizz with it, kind of the way my belly is fizzing with a baby (daughter!) squiggling around in it :-)