Booking It

I have not blogged much over the past year and a half. It's not that I haven't had much to say, it's just that at first much of it was frustrated and sad and sometimes angry (as publishing and the world can cause) and then once I was back on track I had gotten out of the habit, was balancing a new job (more on that in a minute), had a bunch of life issues (some good, some not so good) and while I do blog regularly at YA OUTSIDE THE LINES, this blog, which I had curated so faithfully for almost a decade, fell to the wayside.

But. New Year. (Hello 2018!) New start.

Revamped Blog with a focus on publishing as always but through dual points of view: Author and Bookseller because since August of 2016, I've been the Children's Specialist at a wonderful indie bookstore here in Houston and it has taught me so much about the industry, helped me grow in a million ways, and informed what I write and how I write in ways I never expected. So I'll still be talking about writing and my own books and the writing classes I teach, and craft, and all the usual life stuff. Plus I get crazy wonderful access to ARCS -- so many ARCS! So we'll still be talking books a lot. Obviously.

Like right now I'm really excited for everyone to read Holly Black's CRUEL PRINCE, which drops this week. Oh how I've missed Holly's faerie worlds and this book will delight her loyal fans like me and those of you who have not read her before. Jude is a fully human child, as is her younger sister, but her mother had married a faerie and had a child (their older sister) and then escaped back to the human world. But her ex catches up with her and takes Jude and her sisters back to faerie. (Okay yeah, there's some shocking and well-told violence that happens first.) And now Jude is 16 and navigating a world that's not hers and the cruelty of handsome, cruel Prince Carden and his friends, and then it turns out that Jude (who is not truly at home anywhere by now) wants more. She wants power. And she's going to get it. Oh the political machinations! Oh the surprises! Oh this book!

We'll also be talking about what booksellers do and taking some peeks at things like what a buyer does and how it's totally amazing that we're in this reversal moment where indie bookstores are thriving while the big box bookstores are struggling to figure out what to do next. We'l probably have some chats about the Amazon factor. Because how can you leave out that elephant in the room? But let me repeat: Indie bookstores are thriving anyway.

I'll leave it at that for now.
I'm glad to be back.
Til next time!