Some cool stuff including quite belated Book Expo audio & video

Two cool book-person things today, and then some belated Book Expo audio and video!

First cool thing: Thank you, Patrick Rothfuss! Thank you, that is, for recommending Blackbringer on his blog today! If you don't know Patrick Rothfuss, he is the author of the incredibly awesome fantasy tome The Name of the Wind (sequel due out some time in the nearish future; can't wait!) that I kept raving about last year. I loved that book, and I hereby declare that even if you're not a "big fantasy reader" (so many people aren't; I don't get why they're not, but so it is), you'll still love this book. It's just so freaking good. So man am I thrilled to get Pat's endorsement. I'll admit Jim and I couldn't help taking a few peeks at the oh-so-mysterious Amazon rankings** and noticing a very drastic spike today for all of my books!!! Ah, the power of Pat. THANK YOU!!!

(Also, his blog is really funny; you should definitely read it!)

Second cool thing: this morning Jim and Clementine and I had breakfast with Cheryl Klein -- editor at Arthur A. Levine Books -- and her boyfriend James. They're in Oregon on vacation, and joined us for aebleskiver at this little Swedish place on Clinton St. (Yum!) We talked about books and movies and plays and other good stuff, while Clementine slept like a little kangaroo joey in my *pouch*. Just like she is now (only earlier it was the peanut shell sling, and right now it's the moby. We're getting the hang of "baby-wearing" -- she's my cutest accessory EVER. We've been out to lunch and dinner too, and even to a movie -- District 9, and she slept through the whole thing up until the very last five minutes, which I had to miss. Still: it went well! And the movie is AWESOME!)

**My fellow Putnam author Royce Buckingham summed up perfectly the silliness of author's watching their Amazon rankings: he said it's like befuddled cats batting at birds on a TV screen. So true! What does it all mean? Apparently, next to nothing. But still, it's about all we have to look at, so we do :-)

Belated Book Expo stuff!!!
This is reaching back a few months, but you might recall that Lips Touch was one of six YA titles for fall selected to be presented on the first-ever YA Editor's Buzz Panel. This was super-exciting, and even better was the fact that Scholastic brought Jim and me to New York to attend! Well, I thought I'd have links from the panels to post right away, but I could never find them! Today, at last, Jim happened upon them:

1. The first is audio of the YA Editor's Buzz Panel, with my fabulous editor Arthur Levine talking about Lips Touch. The whole panel is on here, but Arthur talks first -- after the great and super-flattering intro by David Levithan (I mentioned before how he compared the experience of meeting Marcus Zusak to the experience of reading my book; how great is that?), so if you wanted you could listen to just the first 10 minutes or so. But the other books are really interesting too, so you could listen to the whole thing. Or not.

Here's Jim and me with Arthur in the Scholastic booth, sharing the Lips Touch love [heart heart flower flower; we love him!]

And with Arthur and David:
David Levithan is Editorial Director at Scholastic, and is also an author. His new book Love Is the Higher Law just came out; you may know, among other titles, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, which he co-authored which Rachel Cohn, and which was a movie last year starring Michael Cera. He's also one of the nicest people you'll ever meet. David Levithan, that is, not Michael Cera, though I genuinely hope that Michael Cera is nice too. It would suck if he wasn't, you know, since his "persona" is so nice? I would hate to find out that he's an a**hat!

2. And here, video of the YA Author's Buzz Panel, where I talk about Lips Touch and Jim flashes some glimpses of the artwork. And yeah, all the other authors are there too :-)

Okay. That's all. Cheers!