My beautiful daemon

Is this not one of the most beautiful things you've ever seen? I was just looking up some fox images on google to see what their eyes look like (yellow, with feline vertical pupils) for a new character in Silksinger, and I found this. This is my daemon. I'm naming him. . . hm. I was going to say Ezmeril, which is the new character's name, but she's a she, and my daemon would of course have to be a he. So I'm going to say Jagjabal, which is the name of a not-nice character in Silksinger, one with lots of legs, but I dig the name. It is a bit wicked-sounding, but who's to say my daemon wouldn't be a bit wicked? Who's to say I am not a bit wicked? If you don't know what I'm talking about when I say "daemon," then get yourself HERE immediately -- IMMEDIATELY, I say -- and order this book and read it. Sheesh. Where have you been since 1995???

And on that subject, swoony swoon, check out this trailer for the movie:

Oh. my. god. Can't wait!!!
(Yes, I think the snow leopard is a good daemon for Daniel Craig!)

What's your daemon?

Here are some more fox pictures, just because they're so awesome:

Robot T-shirts! And, when good novels misbehave

Awesome Not a Robot apparel is now available at Jim's Cafe Press store. I love them! They come in a bunch of different styles, so check it out. (Jim says the "heat transfer" ones are best.)

Meanwhile, the Sunday Scribblings prompt this week is "First Job, Worst Job, Dream Job" so if you have something to say on that, hop on over there and link up. It's a great week to start scribblings if you've never done it before.

Thoughts on writing this morning as I flex my fingers and gear up for a day of hammering out new scenes (swimming upstream!) I belatedly discovered this post by Patry Francis, who was one of my first blog discoveries. Her first novel was coming out a few months before my own this past year, so I hungrily read about her experiences in advance of my own, and though she's not blogging as much as she used to, I find we still have much in common. We are both slaving over our third books, and find we have not joined the secret "writing is easy once you're published" club. It's still hard. It's still really hard. Novels misbehave. They're wayward teenagers; you think you've got them on their path, and then they up and join the circus, or a cult, or something! Okay, this metaphor not so good, because when it comes to a book that's veered wildly off course, the thing to do is let it go and start again, and I suppose the answer to a teenager who has joined a cult is not necessarily to let them go and have another baby. Not necessarily.

I've been hearing a lot of writers admit lately that it is only due to mulish stubborness that they finish their books. So keep that in mind if you're working to finish your first. Plus, according to Patry, muses like to eat blueberry pie, so you might try to keep your muse happy with food. Me, I would eat my muse's pie myself and then she/it (I think my muse is a goat with wonky assymetrical horns and a nonplussed look on its cud-chewing face) would head-butt me and tell me to get back to work already with my blueberry-stained teeth.

Quote, found on a new blog discovery:
"The real writer is the one who really writes. Talent is an invention like phlogiston after the fact of fire. Work is its own cure. You have to like it better than being loved."
-- Marge Piercy

Er, I had to look up "phlogiston" and it's really cool: it was, in the middle ages, a "hypothetical inflammatory principle" believed [falsely] to exist in all combustible matter. It was, like, an imaginary gas assumed to be an essential principle of fire -- the way this imaginary thing "talent" (or whatever) is assumed to be essential to writing. I do believe in talent, but I believe it's something we build while working. So, off I go to work. It's devils on the menu today. Wicked, wicked devils (and one sweet one). Tally ho!

the cutest couple on TV

The cutest couple on TV comes from the best new show on TV: Pushing Daisies. If you haven't seen it, it's a quirky, beautifully produced kind of gothic fairy tale romance thriller about a pie maker who can wake the dead by touching them, but only for a minute, or else someone else will die in their place. So what happens when his childhood sweetheart is murdered on a cruise ship? Watch and see. I just love the weird tone, bright colors, awesome production values (it LOOKS like a movie, kind of Tim Burtony, and reminds me even a little of Babe: Pig in the City, lookswise), awesome writing, and total sweetness. Ned & "Chuck" are just the cutest, and their yearning for each other is easily the most romantic thing on TV.

Here's the trailer for last night's episode:


And here are some pics. Look at the colors!

There have been 2 episodes so far, and if you haven't seen them you can download them at abc.com, somehow -- don't ask me how. Oh, and teeny tiny adorable Kristin Chenoweth from Wicked is on it, and also Swoozy Kurtz, who plays a mermaid who lost an eye to flying cat litter. It's that kind of show -- in a good way!

We tried to watch a few other new shows, like Bionic Woman and Reaper, but they didn't take. They were pretty lame, actually. We've even forsaken all but two old shows we were watching, including Heroes, which has gotten super boring and lame (See Jim's interpretation of this season's Heroes here.) So now all that's left is: The Office, 30 Rock, and Pushing Daisies. I hope it stays good, and ABC better not cancel it!!! By the way, the star of Pushing Daisies was the brother in the awesome-but-canceled Wonder Falls on Fox. If you haven't seen that, I would Netflix it even though it was canceled -- they managed to wrap up a satisfying story arc before going off the air and it too was so weird and yet sweet. I love that!

Faeries in Afghanistan!

My book is in Afghanistan! I love it when my book travels the world -- it feels so appropriate, since Magpie is such an adventurous lass. Here it sits on an old tank -- I can imagine Magpie perched there for real, her dragonfly wings twitching, as she thinks sad thoughts about mannies and their wars.

And here is Magpie with her world-traveling kindred spirit, "Frida":


Frida is a human rights worker in Ghor Province in central Afghanistan. She blogs about her work there, about the amazing people, the orphanages, the frustrations of bureaucracy, and her efforts to keep her spirits up through yoga practice, reading, writing, and frequent excursions to happier places, like Portugal and her native New Zealand. She was going to be coming to Portland this month but now maybe isn't (boo hoo!). She and Magpie really are kindred souls -- they're both doing what nobody else (or very few others) are willing to do, and traveling far beyond the comforts of home to do it. She even describes herself as "a gypsy who likes to feather her nest" and Magpie is a "gypsy on wing."

I hope you will go and see the amazing pictures on Frida's photoblog. She gives Afghanistan a face that we just never see -- look at these people, these children.

Ah, yes. My sister just reminded me that there is another copy of my book in Afghanistan. My brother-in-law's brother, who is a soldier, has one too! Go, Magpie!

Now, an update about Vlad the Installer. Boo hiss! He lumbered in here yesterday, a big, soft-spoken Russian dude with a home-'schooled' kid in the car waiting to assist him (can you say child labor?), took a look around our old house with its furnace in the wrong place, and just didn't want to do the job. So he lied about how impossible it was and left with a shrug and a "sorry." Uhhh! I mean, he was totally unwilling to send his son down into our crawl space. The NERVE! (Seriously though, is it not weird he home schools his son as a furnace apprentice?) All this, after we spent hours with the annoying sales guy last week. DANG. So we called someone else and he came out and agreed our house is weird, the furnace is in totally the wrong place (in a closet in the bathroom) and to get it up to code there needs to be much creative problem-solving. He has a plan, though, and our fingers are crossed. If he doesn't come through for us, I might be wearing my fantasy alpaca foot pajamas this winter after all!

Have a fabulous day, all! Luckily it's not cold yet! I do love me some winter, but er, not without a furnace! Ach, listen to me -- in the spirit of today's post, I can only think about the orphanages in Ghor and how cold the kids are there in the winter, which prompted a woolens drive last year to ship socks and mittens and sweaters over. I wonder if there will be another one this year?

Esmé's Magic Bookroom

Ah, Esmé's bookroom. . . How can I describe this magical place? It's a fairy-tale apartment up several flights of winding stairs in a lusciously old-world looking building -- it has beamed ceilings, cool brickwork, arched doorways, and is inhabited by darling statues and artwork, robots and witches and hundreds -- nay, thousands -- of children's books. You just want to float from room to room touching things. Oh yeah, and you want to live here. But nobody does. It is just for the books.

Look -- here's the outside. And get this, these buildings are all bordering a park with no direct street access, so it's a quiet little oasis.



So, who is Esmé Raji Codell, and why does she have this amazing place? She is an author, librarian, and "certified readiologist," and in her own words:
"This private, non-circulating library and literary salon geared toward parents and elementary school teachers is dedicated to the principles found in How to Get Your Child to Love Reading by Esmé Raji Codell. Among them:
-- Reading is more than a skill; it's a lifestyle.
-- You can be your child's best teacher using children's literature.
-- No child is a lost cause when it comes to books any more than someone is a lost cause when it comes to falling in love; it's all about making the right connections.

It was located elsewhere until recently, and has only just now been moved into its current "Rapunzel's tower" location. Esmé hosted the "kidlitosphere" for brunch on Sunday and she was an amazing hostess. First of all, you must try this blintz recipe (You have to scroll all the way to the bottom.) I wanted to eat the whole thing! It was SO good. Plus, there was this fruit arrangment that looked like flowers!
I guess it was a gift from her husband, the artist Jim Pollock-- she too has an artist husband named Jim! And then there were the quiches and the bagels. . . yum! She said she'd been waking up from elaborate nightmares of not having enough food -- well, it was not a worry! Everything was exquisite.

Here are more pictures around the magic library:




And here is the bathroom:
A bird bath, plus theme books! SO CUTE! (Thanks to Mark for the photo -- I forgot to take one!)

She had also been a really fabulous hostess of the author/illustrator event on Saturday. If anyone is hosting something similiar, take note -- we've all been to events like this where there are lots of authors/illustrators in a room to meet & greet and they're usually sitting behind tables with their books, either for sale, or giving out bookmarks and postcards. And we don't know what to say to each other, sometimes, it's a little awkward like speed-dating. Well, Esmé's solution to this -- which was brilliant -- was to provide a poster, created by her husband -- that everyone could have everyone sign, kind of like a year book, and it gave the circulating a kind of purpose and ice-breaker that really got things going. Brilliant! Plus, the poster is a wonderful, colorful depiction of Johnny Appleseed (who, I loved to find out recently, was planting cider apples, not eating apples all that time, contributing to the boozing of America! Interesting story that, it's all about apple husbandry or whatever you'd call it, and the fact that if you plant an apple from seed, you will not get the same kind of apple as the one the seed came from. Apples are weird mutant things. You have to graft branches, not plant seeds, to get the kind you want. So cool! But totally off topic!)

So, wish me luck getting any work done today -- the furnace guy is coming to put in our new high-efficiency furnace. His name, apparently, is "Vlad" -- it took Jim all of three seconds to dub him "Vlad the Installer" - ha ha ha! I wonder if he'll have heard that one before. So, with a new furnace rather than our current useless antique jobby, it is just possible I will not be a poor little fleece-bundled icicle this winter, and also possible that I will not need to knit myself alpaca foot pajamas with alien deely boppers on top. I can stick to my oh-so-elegant polka-dotted fleece pj's and a satin smoking jacket! ha ha.

The "Vlad the Installer" thing prompts me to quote Bart Simpson: "Vampire is not a career choice." I guess Vlad found that out and had to get into furnaces instead!

First Annual Kidlitosphere Conference

So, Jim and I went to "Chicago"** (see note at bottom) this weekend for the First Annual Kidlitosphere Conference and one of the first things I learned is that I should always name my blog posts clearly to best attract google searchers -- it's called something daunting like "search engine optimization" or some such. Aiieee! Anyway, this conference was the brainchild of Robin Brande, and when I read about it early in the summer, I knew I just had to go and meet all these folks whose blogs I read. This stemmed from my monthly jealousy of "kidlit drinks night" in Manhattan and reading about all that fun. I thought: here's my chance to have a swiggy with lots of booklovers! That's really what I was thinking, I admit, of the fun, rather than the learning side of things. But once the one-day conference began, I began to understand I was "present at the inception" of something wonderful -- the blossoming of a wonderful community of bloggers into a force to be reckoned with!

If you're here reading this, you're probably pretty blog-savvy already, but most of us don't have to go back very far in our memories to recall the time we didn't know what a blog even was, or if we thought we knew, we really had a wrong impression. Well, for many many folks out there, that is still the case. So, there is this amazing online resource for lovers of children's books -- the "kidlitosphere" is emerging as a default name for it, though many do not like it -- but a lot of people who should know about it, still don't. That is, parents, teachers, librarians, and all other readers. In a nutshell, here's what it is: a community of bloggers who are passionate about children's books and who provide reviews, news, interviews, and all manner of other goodness on a daily basis.

Here is a sampling of kidlit blogs to check out:
Fuse #8 (Betsy Bird)
Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast (Jules & Eisha)
Big A little A (Kelly Herold)
BookMoot (Camille Powell)
Shaken & Stirred (Gwenda Bond)
A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy (Liz Burns)
MotherReader (Pam Coughlin)
Book Buds Kidlit Reviews (Anne Boles Levy)
Jen Robinson's Book Page (Jen Robinson)
KidsLit (Tasha Saeker)
Miss Rumphius Effect (Tricia Stohr-Hunt)
Planet Esme (Esme Raji Codell)
Bookshelves of Doom
Miss Erin

Here are some author blogs of attendees:
Gregory K. Pincus (a fellow Arthur Levine author!)
Ysabeau Wilce
Sara Lewis Holmes
Robin Brande
Barry Lyga's myspace
(I'm sure I'm forgetting people, for which I apologize!)

P.S. You can go to Big A little A for a much more exhaustive list of kidlit blogs.

There has been much snark from the "establishment" about bloggers as critics. What are their "credentials," the old-school book critics want to know? Who are they to tell you about books? Well, this is a populist movement. Again, it's a community that readers can engage in, in a way they absolutely cannot with traditional book reviews. There are all kinds of fun ways to participate, including online meet-the-author Q & A's, author tours, book-reading challenges, and even the Cybils -- "the Children's & YA Bloggers' Literary Awards" -- which are nominated by readers and selected by panels of bloggers. (And Blackbringer has been nominated! Yay!)

Anyway, it's a tight-knit community, and when Robin decided to create this gathering, she did not realize everyone would want to go to it, but they did, and so we came together as a pretty good size group on Saturday to talk about what we do! For me, it's a little different, being an "author blogger." I don't do book reviews, but I do want to be more involved in the kidlit blog community because I [heart] children's books, and I [heart] children's book lovers. We weren't extraordinarily organized, this being the first year, but there really was that feeling of being there at the beginning of something, the beginning of growing this organization into a more recognized resource for parents/librarians/readers. The early plan that emerged is to create an umbrella website that explains what the "kidlitosphere" is and links to the many websites and blogs that are out there. Ideas were discussed for reaching "you" and also, beyond "you" -- that is, folks who are not already blog-savvy. We tossed around ideas, but it was very much only the beginning of the discussion.

So, that's what this conference was about, as well as lots of talk about blog content, ethics and etiquette, writing book reviews, increasing blog traffic, and the like. Saturday afternoon, after that was all done, there was a display/signing for the attending authors, who included Ysabeau Wilce, Barry Lyga, Ellen Klages, Sara Lewis Holmes, Robin Brande, Esme Raji Codell, quite a few others, and moi. It was a real treat to meet everyone. I had just read Flora Segunda last week and loved it, and I was very excited to meet Ysabeau. Flora Segunda is a fantasy novel with a very unique flavor and world and a terrific character voice. Flora is the youngest daughter of a great but sadly diminished family, expected to go into the military barracks on her fifteenth birthday -- but she would prefer to be a "ranger" (a very adventurous spy) despite the fact there are no more rangers. There is also the matter of a banished magical butler, a captured pirate, frightening half-bird half-human warriors, a tough General for a mother, a mad father, and a best friend with a zest for fanciful hats. And a lot, lot more. Read it!

Jim and I had both read The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy & Gothgirl by Barry Lyga many months ago and it is a terrifically fun read, especially for comic book nerds, but not only, about a smart kid following his creative passion; the awkwardness of adolescence comes right off the page at you.

Sara Lewis Holmes' first novel, Letters from Rapunzel sounds like a fairy tale book but isn't -- it's about a young girl coping with a parent's hospitilization for depression, and the way she uses her imagination to get through a very difficult time -- it deals with tough subject matter in a whimsical, fun-to-read way, yet without treating it too lightly, which is quite a feat.



I've already mentioned Robin's terrific first novel, Evolution, Me & Other Freaks of Nature about a girl who is ostracized by her church group after taking a stand against their intolerance -- and how this affects her freshman year of highschool.


The book I wanted to read but didn't get a chance to yet is Ellen Klages' award-winning The Green Glass Sea about scientists' kids living at Los Alamos during the development of the atomic bomb.





So many cool books to read!

And here are some photos:
Our fun dinner table-- clockwise from the foreground guy with the beard -- he is PJ Haarsma, author of The Softwire; Besty Bird, Gwenda Bond (who in addition to having a great blog is writing her first YA novel), Christopher Rowe (sci fi writer), Ysabeau Wilce, Scott Christianson, Jim, Me, & Barry Lyga. Had such a great time hanging out with Betsy, Gwenda, and Ysabeau! Jim & Christopher had the brilliant idea of sneaking across the street to buy vino at Target, for which there has been some wrist-slapping -- sorry, Robin!

In the blue chairs: Anne Boles Levy, Kelly Herold & Besty Bird. In yellow: Sara Lewis Holmes; on the floor in pink: Adrienne Furness, in black: Jules & Eisha; and in white: Tricia Stohr-Hunt. In the back: Greg Pincus and Liz Burns, and others.

Jim with Christopher and Gwenda, who are from Kentucky, and Andrea Ross and Mark Blevin, the power-podcast duo behind Just One More Book.

Betsy Bird, Liz Burns, Camille Powell, Jen Robinson (& her sig. oth. Mheir) and Pam Coughlin.

At Esme's library (there will be a whole post tomorrow on Esme's AMAZING library) From left: Bill, Anne Boles Levy, Esme Raji Codell, Pam Coughlin, Camille Powell, me, Liz Burns, Greg Pincus.

And here's everybody:


So, it's been decided that next year's conference will be right here in Portland, Oregon, which will be wonderful. I will be helping Jone organize it, and I can only imagine right now how much will have happened within the community by then!

P.S. For some reason she's not in any of these photos, but thanks also to Faith Hochhalter for bringing the bookseller's perspective (from Changing Hands Books in Tempe, AZ) and for being fun and such an enthusiastic supporter of kidlit -- espcially fantasy & sci fi -- and of children's book authors!

** (We were really out by O'Hare, not in the city, and dummy that I am, I made our travel arrangements to not give one single window of time to actually go see the city, not even from afar, so no, we did not actually go to Chicago, drat it. Another time!)

Introducing Persephone. . .

LOOK. Look at what an amazing blogger-reader-knitter-writer new friend MADE for me. Made for ME. I am blown away. Truly. I mean, look! Her name is Persephone Goldwater (the doll, that is, the doll-maker is named Heather.) and she has luscious pink hair and is just a little goth (her purse has a skull embroidered on it) and she has a wee pink heart tattoo on her wee knitted tush and she has outfits, and she has MY BOOK. Can you believe it? Someone made this for me.

I am speechless. Persephone arrived in the mail today while Jim and I were nearing the end of a drag-out all-day furnace-wrangling. That is, we have to replace our 50-year-old dinosaur of a furnace, and we had furnace salesmen come and look and scratch their heads over how exactly to bring our weird old 1924 cottage remotely up to code, how to vent some sort of combustion out of some sort of pipe and make it all sweet and safe and legal and dang was this ever boring and endless and then, the mailman brought me Persephone. This changed my whole day. This day is no longer the day of boring furnace purchase. It is the day of Persephone. Looky, here are her little undies:

And her little skull purse:

Her wee little favorite book (heart!):


And see how she has her pink bangs swooped over and fixed with a teeny barrette? Look familiar?

And there's more! There's a spangly tube top and some black undies with a pink ruffle, and there are two pairs of shoes (both knitted!) and did I say she has a tattoo (I do not. Persephone is more daring than me -- but perhaps now I shall have to get a heart tattoo on my tush to match my knitted alter-ego!). And her wings are removable. And she has brown eyes, like me. Heather did an amazing job on everything -- the detail is so much fun. She wrote to me that she loves miniatures -- so do I. I have a splendiferous big dollhouse in the gargage that my dad built for me when I was eleven, and some day, whether I ever have a daughter or not, I think there will be a dollhouse renovation with bright colored paint and curtains and a dollhouse weather vane and little foods and tea kettles, and maybe faeries will live in it, or maybe it will be a haunted dollhouse inhabited by dollghosts -- pure white dolls with diaphonous veils, and maybe there will be a skeleton in the attic and a dragon curled up snoozing in the basement. The tower room will definitely be a writing room with a wee typewriter in it. I could never write on a typewriter, but I don't think a miniature computer would be so cute, or go so well with the dollghosts. I [heart] wee little things, and this little version of my book that Heather made is so sweet -- and the fact that there's a little goth tote to carry it in? Wow. Heather got the pattern for Persephone from Knitted Babes and adapted it -- and I think you will all agree with me that Persephone is totally cuter than the dolls on the site, though those are all very cute too!

Can I pause again to marvel that a blog friend made me this amazing gift? How wonderful are bloggers? Thank you so much, Heather! When you said you were sending me something, I never imagined it would be something so special and personal. I LOVE her!

Plans for alien winter writing pajamas

Feeling I needed a change of writing scenery this afternoon, I gathered up my laptop and went to. . . the living room. Drastic! It's about 15 steps to the living room sofa from my writing room door. Er, ten maybe. Ten small steps? I don't know if it helped. Today has been a pretty decent writing day anyway, all rainy and dark outside, yum. All I've been doing for weeks is writing, and it's amazing how life just compresses itself and goes sliding by. It's like life hunches and creeps low in passing so I won't notice and feel bad that it's going by without me. Humph! Thanks, life! Here I sit wiggling my fingers over the keyboard. . . Well, you know, this is where I want to be. I just happened to notice that it's fall already, and that took me by surprise. Yesterday it hailed giant white hail in such enormous quantities someone might have thought some god or other was trying to kill them, but I did not think that, because I have been very good lately and done nothing to anger the gods. Nothing! And if they get upset by cupcake consumption (which I can't imagine), that came later, so cannot have been the reason.

So: all this sitting in one place while life and seasons slide by. It is, as far as I can tell, is part of being a writer. A big part. The sitting and doing the work is indisputably a very big part of the whole being a writer thing. I am sure it is possible to find balance, I just really really want to finish this book soon so I am shunning balance and letting life slip by, in favor of this other life that involves faeries and devils and dragonfly caravans and so far is only here in my little head and my little computer and has yet been read by no one except partially by my husband.

I actually did dip out of the house for a little while yesterday. Very daring of me -- I risked being brained by those hailstones some angry god flung down here to punish one of my neighbors (could NOT have been my fault this time!) My college roommate was in town and I hadn't seen her for a while. I picked her up at her hotel and took her to meet Alexandra at Saint Cupcake, where we. . . ate cupcakes. You see, I will leave the house for cupcakes! And pomegranate margaritas, but that was later. In the evening, I ate more cupcakes, and wrote more words, but that big bite out of the middle of the day was a problem for my work routine, because I am not a multi-tasker. I need my mind to be clean of all other thoughts, uncluttered by the angst of friday evening traffic or whatever. And if I have to leave the house, well, there's the whole leaving-the-house-wardrobe to consider, and the necessity of using an appliance or two on my pink hair and putting on some mascara and some tall shoes. All that stuff that is required to go out in public! It throws off my stride. That is why I am not leaving the house much right now.

Oh, and TV -- not going to be a distraction this season. Watched a few premieres last week, and I say, "Phleh." Unimpressive. Except for The Office, which was brilliant as ever. I didn't really feel like I had to watch any shows again. I mean, I'm sure I will. I do get a little fried by the end of the day and besides, I'm finishing some knitting projects -- at last -- that I started last spring. See, I don't watch TV in the summer, and I only knit while watching TV, so summer is not productive knitting time. But now that it's getting cold out, I want my alpaca blanket and my alpaca silk & cashmere stripey scarf. Both are almost done. Don't know what I'll make after that. What I want to make is a full set of alpaca foot pajamas to wear in my very cold writing room this winter. I will make it so only my face emerges, like it's one of those extreme wet suits for very cold water, only instead of rubber it is all alpaca. Won't that be cute? I'll look like a fuzzy alien hard at work. Ooh! Yes, that's it. I'll knit little alien deely boppers on top of the head, with felted pom poms on the ends! Just picture me looking like that as I write this winter! Only, not really, because I am only a rudimentary knitter and couldn't actually make that if I tried.

Ta!

when people are grosser than my villains

I know, I know. One look at this little guy and you think: Yum. I want to drown that tiny songbird in armagnac, roast it, and eat it in one bite. Right? Well, if not, you must not be French. Okay, okay, not all French people eat ortolan, and plenty of people around the world do horribly gross things to all kinds of critters. I am not targeting the French.

It's just, it's weird when I see a casual news reference to something that educated, wealthy people do for fun that is the kind of thing a gross devil or imp character might do in one of my books. Really! If you haven't heard the news, France is having to crack down on illegal hunting of the protected songbird, the ortolan, because people are eating too many of them, in the method described above. But it gets weirder. Tradition for eating ortolan dictates the diner shroud his head with a napkin and eat the bird with his face hidden. Shroud the head. And, apparently, they taste kind of like hazelnuts. Dare I ask why not just eat hazelnuts? Or is it too fun to eat a species to extinction? Where can I get a good snow leopard steak? Anyone know?
Ah, sorry. Sometimes I just can't believe it. Us. We're such a creepy species. Seriously, there's a villain in Silksinger that might do this, and in the context of a book in which devils do gross and terrible things, it would still seem really gross!

In other random bits of learning, I just discovered a very cool place name: Kekexili. Isn't that awesome? I love exotic place names. This happens to be one of the wildest regions on Earth -- a remote part of the Tibetan Plateau that is the third-least populated place in the world, after Antarctica and Greenland.

And this: tarantulas can live up to 30 years!!!

P.S. The plea still stands, to post an Amazon review for Blackbringer. Thank you!

. . . and then it was TV season. . .

(this penguin video has nothing to do with my post; I just like it.)

So, TV season. Heh heh. Not that I'm going to be spending evenings in front of the TV now. Can't do it. But it has not escaped my notice that TV shows are suddenly starting. It's that golden time of year for TV watchers when a smorgasbord of potential shows is laid out ahead, the suck-factor as of yet undetermined. In the coming weeks, shows will drop like flies. Some might even get one week before getting yanked, as if ever a show could win its audience in one episode! Others will stick around. Being an acknowledged nerd, and seeing how a plethora of nerd-friendly shows are gearing up, there will be some VCR action in this household. Just can't watch em when they're on. Gotta write, but around 10 pm, I expect we shall transfer our tushes from the writing room bench/studio chair, respectively, to the sofa. Knitting in lap (me, not Jim.)

Tonight: Heroes.
update: Heroes was a big predictable snore.
Tomorrow: Reapers. Maybe. Yeah?
Wednesday: Bionic Woman. Oh yeah. NOT American's Next Top Model. Never again, I pledge.
Thursday: The Office, Thirty Rock. (Love.)

So that's a lot of shows. I think I'm even forgetting some. And -- oh yeah -- the World War II doc on PBS. We taped it last night but didn't watch it yet. I thought it would make a nice replacement for America's Next Top Model this season -- ha ha. Those two shows in the same paragraph -- snort!!! I admit to having watched ol' drag queen Tyra Banks in the past, but last season it swerved decisively from "guilty pleasure" to "guilty way-displeasure" and I'm through with it. Too bad -- I hear there's an autistic model on it this season. Now that's great television.

But like I said: 10 pm at the earliest. It's all writing and meals these days. I've barely left the house! I'd been wanting to go to the pear harvest festival out at Hood River this past weekend, you know, stock up on pears and alpaca yarn, actually do something that I can post on my blog as proof of having left the house. But when Saturday rolled around I was way into finishing this section of the book. Couldn't go. And I'm so glad I didn't. It was a rare writing day of grace. Finished the section around 11 pm -- yay! And wanted to take a bow for my devil muse and my stinky-breathed dog. Thank you, thank you. But, lest ye think my life is all work and no play, we did leave the house this weekend, to go not only to the grocery store, but to Office Depot for ink. Awesome! And at the grocery store they were selling apples that taste like grapes which is so so wrong, and of course I had to try them, even at about a dollar apiece. (They do taste like grapes! Weird!) We had friends over for dinner last night. Made stuffed butternut squash and an apple-upside-down cake. That was fun. I'm going to prepare all food upside down from now on with a layer of butter and brown sugar on the bottom of the pan.

Oh, I have a question. Is it totally bad to solicit Amazon reviews for one's book? I mean, is it a shameless, undignified thing to do? Somebody please let me know if it is and I'll delete this paragraph. In the meantime, if you've read [and liked] my book, I would love it if you wrote an Amazon review. Thank you to Christina who left a comment to my last post saying Blackbringer was the first book she ever left an Amazon review for. Thank you!

(And more penguin hijinx.)

Yay for SCBWI!

I've written plenty in praise of The Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators, and here's another "yay" story. (Click HERE for the original version.) Amber Matthews, who is a blog friend who I got to meet in person in San Diego and Los Angeles this summer, just won runner-up in the SCBWI work-in-progress grant, and got the congratulatory email from a Very Prominent Editor! How often does a writer get an email from a Very Prominent Editor telling them s/he likes their work in progress? Not very, I'm guessing! Yay, Amber! May this be magical writing adrenaline for you to finish the book!

And p.s. She has a one-year-old, which explains her blog name "Naptime Writer," and let's all cross our fingers that Amber does not get deployed to Iraq -- for many reasons, including, so she can finish her book faster!

It was the wonderful feedback and encouragement of an editor I met through SCBWI that inspired me to keep working on Blackbringer. And I know Jay Asher won a grant from them, and at the various conferences I've heard other stories of books that won grants and went on to publishing success! It's a phenomenal and RARE opportunity to get your manuscript into the hands of editors!

Northwesterns (and beyond), be informed: Arthur Levine will be speaking in Seattle next April at the regional WW SCBWI conference, along with an amazing roster of others, including Chris Crutcher, Mo Willems, the Newbery triple threat of Susan Patron, Kirby Larson & Cynthia Lord, five editors, four agents, an art director, the fabulous Betsy Bird, and moi. (And others too!) Don't miss it!

Podcasties

Look: podcasts of me reading from Blackbringer:

Prelude, Chapters 1 & 2

Chapter 4

Thanks, sweetie, for being my tech monkey as well as my art monkey!

And, a new review of Blackbringer (or at least, I only just found it while, ahem, googling myself -- not that I do that often!) at The Green Man Review. Again I say, these book reviewers can write. This one's so well written! (And awesome!)

Thanks, Shannon & Robin

This is so cool -- Shannon Hale, whose books I love has a short interview posted on her blog right now. . . an interview with me. Jacksmoke! How cool is that?

I confess I have greedily read all the comments to the post, and it was lovely to be talked about (hee hee)! I was amused (ahem) by one "Dante" who felt it necessary to not only criticize my hair, but to inform Shannon that in fact to be "sassy" is a bad thing, and. . . that all we Americans are eejits and shmoes for calling The Golden Compass "The Golden Compass" rather than its British title, "Northern Lights." Gee, Dante, aren't you a ray of commenting sunshine! Thanks for the feedback! Ha ha.

But enough of Dante. Thank you Shannon! Did I say how much I love Shannon's books? I recently reread and reloved The Goose Girl, which I mentioned a few posts back, and I'm really hungry to read her first adult novel, Austenland, which came out this year. One of my not-so-guilty pleasures is Jane Austen fan fiction -- there are many out there who would have me (and my fellows) feel guilty about it, as if we're somehow subverting the Legacy of Jane, but I don't see it that way. Austenland isn't really fan fiction, like say "Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife", because it's contemporary and not about the actual characters, but it still treads on hallowed ground for the Defenders of the Legacy. Sounds so fun! I also loved and posted about Shannon's [Newbery Honor-winning] Princess Academy some time in the past year.

And thank you Robin Brande for reading my book while flying across the country and even in the cab at the risk of car sickness! Robin is the author of the new book Evolution, Me, and Other Freaks of Nature that I read last week -- it's a really terrific contemporary teen novel (young teen and mid-grade okay too) about a hot topic: the teaching of evolution and "intelligent design" in public schools. I thought she handled the issue brilliantly, created the perfect character and point of view that made it a great, fun read besides being "topical", and has provided something really valuable and relatable to the debate. Yay, Robin! She's also the organizer of the kid-lit blogger conference coming up in Chicago in a few weeks -- I can't wait to meet everyone!

While I'm talking about books, I need to mention this one too: The Arrival by Shaun Tan. Holy cow. This book is so, so, so beautiful. This is a wordless graphic novel that, well, words can just not do justice to. You gotta see it. It's an art book, telling a story entirely in pictures. From beginning to end, this book captures the overwhelming strangeness of new experience for an immigrant entering a new land, the shock of the unknown all around him, the arcane and beautiful and inscrutable ways of a foreign place. Tan takes the art to the level of the surreal, in order to give a universal understanding of the utter alien-ness of new experience. And it is SO COOL. You just want to pore over the art, examine every gorgeous detail as the story unfolds. Check this OUT.

How cool are 11-year-olds?

How cool are 11-year-olds? They're pretty cool! I just got a photocopied letter sent to me by the folks at Cricket Magazine, which they forwarded because the very cool eleven-year-old who wrote it cited my Cricket cover as one of her two favorites ever (thanks!!) It was very thoughtful of them to take the time to send it on to me, and what I especially loved about the letter was nothing to do with my cover. It was this:

"When I grow up, I want to be a singer, actress, a writer, a fashion-designer, an animal conservationist & an earth conservationist. I mostly want to be a singer, actress & writer. If you know of any modeling agents, give me a shout-out."

I love that. I remember that. Well, I had no modeling delusions, coming from a family of average height (and width), and I never could sing, but just that huge zest for the future and all its possibilities, as if the future is a whole bunch of balloons you're holding, as many as you can get your hands on, and no one can tell you what you can and can't BE.

Check out why I [heart] the internet so much:

"I believed, at twelve, that I could be a scientist. I read a book a day. I believed I could be a writer, an actress, a professor of English in Rome, an acrobat in a purple spangled outfit. Days opened for me like the pulling apart of curtains at a play you’ve been dying to see.

My life was like a wild, beating thing, exotic, capable of unfolding and enlarging itself, pulling itself higher and higher up like a kite loved by the wind . . . There in front of me, my own for the taking. And then, suddenly, lost.

—Elizabeth Berg, The Pull of the Moon

(I have had bits and pieces of that passage floating in my head since I read The Pull of the Moon years ago, but the book has escaped since then and I never got around to looking it up so I could quote the passage, and now -- just now -- I put "Elizabeth Berg," "acrobat," and "purple" into Google and that came up all over the place. Awesome!!! How did people function ten years ago?)

Anyway: yeah. That's what it was like for me. And I think it was twelve when the magic started to slowly evaporate, when I started to release, one by one, the balloons of possibility. There must be so many balloons up in the sky. How do we keep that from happening? Obviously every kid can't be a model, but how do we keep them going, dreaming, striving, past twelve, to sixteen, to eighteen, to college? How do we make sure their dreams stay safe? Is that as hopeless as trying to make a kid believe in Santa forever? No, no. It can't be. Because dreams are real.

Another cool kid: I just got an email (Umm, how much do I love getting emails from kids who've read my book? Thiiiiiiiiisssssssssss much!) Not sure her age, but she read 29 --TWENTY NINE -- books this summer and Blackbringer was her favorite. Swoon, swoon! Oh, and she wrote about my character Talon for a school assignment, which gives Talon a life beyond the book in a way that is like the time a certain lovely Miriam (and another voracious reader) dressed up as Magpie for Purim! This kind of thing makes fireworks in my head. Thank you, kids, for reading! Thank you, lady at the post office today who asked me when oh when will the sequel be out? (not soon enough). Thank you!

Oh, and then there's this: I've gotten some emails from "kids" that seem a little fishily like grownups pretending to be kids. But I could be wrong. It was just a little weird. I wonder if other writers have had this happen. I would suspect my peculiar best friend of inventing child personnae just for fun, getting whole new email accounts to cover her tracks, but it didn't really read like her um, unique voice. And speaking of Alexandra, she met a very wonderful 8-months-in-the-works goal today. Congratulations!! And, oh yeah, are you ever going to start blogging again?

P.S. Favorite headline of the day: "Nebraska State Senator Sues God."

Come See Everything

Jim just came into the writing room a little bit ago to replay the frustrating conversation he had just had with the water company over why our bill is so high considering we don't water our yard, don't run the dishwasher, and barely bathe -- just kidding. We totally bathe. But the other stuff not so much, so why $80ish a month? I don't get it. It's like the price of bottled water coming through our taps! Anyway, he was sitting there telling me about how inane they are at the water company and I was listening (I swear) but I got a little fixated on his T-shirt, with the above image which he drew for a band three or four (or five?) years ago. I dig it. And staring at it, I started to really dig it. "Come and see everything." They're lyrics from a song by the awesome Portland band, Floater. They go like this:

"And as the sum of all fears
Becomes the drum in our ears
And someone unlikely says
Come and see everything
Come out and see the whole world. . ."

Awesome. The whole world.
So, of course, my mind goes immediately to the latest issue of the claw to my soul that is National Geographic Traveler magazine, delivered yesterday. (Nat'l Geo Traveler, Nat'l Geo Adventurer, and Sierra Club magazines are the triple claws to my soul.) The October issue is the so-painful 2nd annual "Tours of a Lifetime" 50 of the World's Best Trips! issue. Sigh Like: 18 days aboard a three-masted sailboat in the Seychelles with stops for snorkeling to see the rare Aldabra tortoise etc etc (only $11,580!) or -- a total steal at $1,340 for 22 days, my weird obsession with Borneo could be explored, [former] headhunters included (and seriously, if a backpack full of large-denomination bills were to fall out of the sky into my lap right now, I would take any willing friends and family off to Borneo to watch bats and eat weird spiny fruits with [former] headhunters! I am so serious.) And how about this: 42 days of conservation work in Madagascar for only $4000! Or, OH GOD -- a journey through Iran to learn about weaving. They call that one a "Magic Carpet Ride" just to kill me. Claw. to. my. soul.

Come and see everything? Yes please. Or. . . I'll stay here and finish my book. Did I say "sigh" yet? Sigh.

(And yes, sweetie, I was still listening about the water company!)

[update -- after reading this post, Jim said that for my sanity he was going to cancel my subscription to National Geographic Traveler and get me National Geographic Homebody instead. Ha ha!]

So, boo hoo for poor me. Wah wah. Whatever. My mind is in the faerie Himalayas and that's something, right. (not the same!!!) Speaking of song lyrics (was I?), here's this quirky song by the quirky Grandaddy, and it's about an office group winning a day in the countryside as a prize for selling the most stuff and how that day affects them. Love it! Especially the refrain about the sprinklers that come on at 3 am. Check it out:

The tale I'm gonna tell
Is about the group who couldn't say
Together they discovered with each other the perfections of an outdoor day

They had won some kinda prize
For selling way more stuff than the other guys
They were the shrewdest unit-movers
So their bosses got 'em tours of the countryside

Holly saw a certain bird
But she couldn't work up any words
She kinda lost her shoes and lost her mind
And smashed her phone upon a fallen pine

Darryl couldn't talk at all
He wondered how the trees had grown to be so tall
He calculated all the height and width and density
For insurance purposes

And at the desktop there's crying sounds
For all the projects due
And no one else is around
And the sprinklers that come on at 3am
Sound like crowds of people asking
"Are you happy what you're doing?"

And at the desktop there's crying sounds
For all the projects due
And no one else is around
And the sprinklers that come on at 3am
Sound like crowds of people asking
"Are you happy what you're doing?"

Becky wondered why
She'd never noticed dragonflies
Her drag and click had never yielded
Anything as perfect as a dragonfly

And then the supervisor stood
Right in the creek and it felt really good
And that's about the time he finally realised the importance of this day
And that's about the time he realised
That he was with the group who couldn't say
Hey hey
And they felt so good it hurt forget the words
They were the group who couldn't say