Mickey Waffles and other NCTE highlights

NCTE rocked! I hope to be able to participate in this conference each year for a long time to come. Thank you to all the English teachers and teachers in training who came to my signing at the Sourcebooks booth and who came to our panel. I have huge love for our topic: "The Other Happily Ever After: Empowering Readers Through a Re-tooling of the Female Hero Journey" Our roundtable conversations wandered far and wide: Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights and Macbeth and Beowulf and Wide Sargasso Sea and Scarlet Letter and Twilight and Hunger Games and all the other wonderful YA out there with female heroes. We argued and talked and chewed on the female journey and literary works vs commercial and how marketing often dilutes the journey for the romance (ie - Team Peeta vs. Team Gale) and generally reminded ourselves of how all of us - teachers, writers, readers - need to be conscious of the subtext. It was heavenly to spend 90 plus minutes in this academic setting. (Okay being at Disney World didn't hurt, either) And yay to conference goers who are also bloggers and Twitter followers who introduced themselves to me! Windowpane Memoir, Angela from Dark Faerie Tale, Jennie Smith...

So thank you to NCTE. And thank you to my co-panelists: Janet Fox, Sydney Salter, Rosanne Parry, Danielle Joseph, Jen Dutton, (who asked our waiter Ismael at breakfast, "Do you tell people 'Call me Ishmael" in an impressively literary reference to Moby Dick) Lauren Bjorkman, Cheryl Renee Herbsman, Edie Hemingway. They are fabulous authors and humans. And great company for safaris and dinners and a late show of HP. And to Suzanne Morgan Williams - on another panel but still taking time to come support us - may you live long and prosper, my dear!

And so a little photo show. Check out me and Sarwat Chadda (Devil's Kiss. Dark Goddess) who came to say hi and get a Haunted arc! I am such a fan girl. Luckily my gaping jaw and babbling fangirly words did not deter this delightful bloke.

After dinner at Animal Kingdom Lodge: Suzy Williams, Janet Fox, Sydney Salter, me, Rosanne Parry


Thank you Waiter Ismael at Maya Grill for letting me order my Mickey Waffles off the kid's menu. Plus bacon! And Mickey's head in the butter.

Yes! Me and Sarwat Chadda - who also writes about Baba Yaga and the Romanovs and other wonderful stuff

Signing HAUNTED arcs at the Sourcebooks booth. Thank you Kay and Melissa for all your support

And the rest of the pics are: My sign at the Sourcebooks booth, me and my Mickey icecream bar, and me and Janet Fox with the bug from It's a Bug's Life at Animal Kingdom.

And the Winner of the Haunted arc is

Zoe.Bestel!!!!

Yes, Zoe, it is you. I shook the entries, plunged my hand into the contest hat and magic eight ball says... Zoe!!

Now let me say, the contest hat was a bit flummoxed this time. So many amazing entries. So many wonderful things that all of you are thankful and grateful for. I am not joking when I say that I teared up any number of times.

But go back to the contest post and read Zoe's entry. Then click on her profile and read her blog. Zoe is one fabulously articulate girl. I hope the ARC of HAUNTED finds her in her house in the "middle of nowhere." In Scotland!

Zoe needs to email me her address at joy at joypreble dot com

And if you're in Orlando/NCTE10 this weekend, I'm signing at the Sourcebooks booth at 2PM on Saturday. Perhaps you can snag a copy then.

A good weekend to one and all.

Six for Saturday. Possibly Seven. Let's See

Yes, I am getting just that uncreative with the titles. But desperate times call for desperate measures. The WIP is getting revised yet again. I've dug into another super secret project as well. Stuff to grade. Belated outing for husband's b day tonight. Mental packing for NCTE. And a bunch of other really cool stuff I can't tell you about. Plus that upcoming HAUNTED arc giveaway, coming soon too. And the day job. Let's not forget that. Just started Macbeth. "Out out damn spot."

And so...

1. My new editor Leah Hultenschmidt is one cool chick. And she is coming here to Houston SCBWI on April 9th to speak!! Somehow Leah is balancing being senior acquisitions editor for not only the Sourcebooks Fire YA imprint but also the Casablance romance line. I need to ask her if she sleeps. I'm sensing the answer is no.
2. The new back cover copy for HAUNTED looks so spiffy I about peed my pants.
3. The great thing about going to NCTE this year is that a. it's in Disney World and b. I get to be there with all my fellow unrepentent geeks and so when I say things like "Who wants to go to Animal Kingdom" or "Who wants to go to the movies one night and see the new HP?" I get lots of takers. Yay! I am just bummed that I won't have time to get to Universal for HP experience. Another time.
4. Am totally and completely miffed at ABC Family for removing Friday Night Lights reruns from its late afternoon line up. Seriously? You guys showed one season and then poof it's gone? Whywhywhy? This was my 5 PM treat while I was tearing around the house trying to create some semblance of order, dinner, life. Sigh...
5. I love agent Jen this week. I was having one of those mental apocalypses. You know the kind - where you decide that you are just too stupid to do what you have to do and you also had to sit in workshops on Moodles and Prezzis and the new planning software called Forethought (for which you have another not so school appropriate name) and a committee that you weren't on created a late work policy that is so complicated that you wonder what the hell they were thinking - and you imagine yourself running away to a desert island only you can't afford to... And eventually you solve your problem yourself and email her and she emails back and tells you, "I wasn't ignoring you. I just have learned to leave you alone and let you figure it out on your own when you get like this." And then I think - yes! That's exactly what I needed.
6. Ran through HEB just now for a few groceries and it was Thanksgiving on a mini plate giveaway day! Some lovely lady handed me a tiny platter of turkey, brisket, cranberries, pumpkin pie, stuffing, green beans and a mushroom crepe. I could have had cheese too, but I thought that was overkill since I'd sampled the sushi and some guac in earlier aisles. Okay, some of it was rather salty. But wow!
7. Renewing one's passport through the mail is an easy task. Unless one sends a check with the wrong amount.

Til next time...

It's My Favorite Day of the Year

Yup. That extra hour of sleep. Waking up this morning before 7 and still feeling rested. Yahoo, I say. (of course, I spent my entire extra hour grading papers but whatever)

Getting ready for NCTE in Orlando. I am in deep love with my panel's topic: "The Other Happily Ever After: Transforming and Emp[owering Readers Through a Re-Tooling of the Female Hero Journey." Our roundtable topics will be: Boys, Sex and Other Bumps in the Journey; Happily Ever After Endings vs. Stronger After Ending Journeys; Strength via spiritual and emotional journeys in addition to the physical; Recognizing, Trusting and Empowering the Younger Female Hero's Journey.

I guess the NCTE folks thought it all sounded nifty, too; they listed us in the Sunday Highlights of sessions in the Council Chronicle mag that I received. In any case, if you're at the conference, come see us in the ballroom from 1 - 2:45 on Sunday 11/21. (me, Danielle Joseph, Janet Fox, Jen Dutton, Cheryl Herbsman, Lauren Bjorkman, Rosanne Parry, Sydney Salter, Edie Hemingway) And on Saturday 11/20 at 2PM, I'll be signing HAUNTED arcs! Possibly a bunch of them. Possibly giving away bookmarks.

Speaking of HAUNTED - methinks that I need to come up with an ARC giveaway. So be watching for that. I'll probably wait til after Thanksgiving, so that I can come up with a really great contest idea. Some kind of fabulolus holiday swagilicious package. Sounds good, right? So who would be interested in that?

And oh! Reading Lauren Oliver's Before I Fall. I am in love with this book. It is emotionally wrenching. Took me a bit to get into to it; the main character is at first largely unlikeable. Mean, shallow and far too real for comfort. But this doesn't last. Mean Girls meets Groundhog Day. But a lot more than that. And such spot on characterization that I'm in awe. The layers keep peeling back in this one. Brilliant.

Til next time, my dearies.

Oklahoma and other stuff from the middle

That would make a great title, eh? Don't steal it; I call dibs.

Back from Oklahoma and Encyclomedia. Loved the event. Librarians rock! You guys asked great questions during our panel and you were ever so gracious to come to the signing area at the Best of Books booth and say hi later. Plus Oklahoma City! Why haven't I been there before? Please ask me to come back.

Thanks to Stacy Nyikos for arranging our panel even when she couldn't be part of it herself. And to my co-panelists: Janet Fox, Fran Cannon Slayton, Bonnie Doerr, Denise Jaden - you are all made of much awesome.

Extra bonus round: Got to hang later with my ABLA "sistahs" - the fabulous Cynthia Liu and Tammi Sauer - who made me laugh until my stomach hurt. And did you know that our room at the Colcord Hotel had its own doorbell?

A few pics:

Cynthia Liu showing everyone how to Skype at the Hot Spot on the Encyclomedia convention floor.
From left to right: Janet Fox, Bonnie Doerr, Denise Jaden, Fran Cannon Slayton, Cynthia Liu, me, Tammi Sauer. (and beverages)

About ready to present: Fran, Joy, Bonnie, Denise, Janet

Later we brainstormed more panel ideas. Janet and I got ourselves psyched up for our next appearance together - in Orlando at NCTE in November on our "The Other Happily Ever After" panel (more on that soon) And then I flew home. Thanks Southwest. Happiest airline ever.

In other news: HAUNTED arcs are filtering into the world. I'm planning some tours and signings. If you'd like me to come to you or your school, give me a holler. I'll pass it on to the fine folks at Sourcebooks.

Haunted: wacky evil mermaids, a love triangle, more blue-eyed Ethan, more brave bff Tess, more Baba Yaga... and definitely some kissing!

til next time...

Random Thoughts on lots of stuff, including Haunted

Classes start tomorrow. Back to my education roots this year and teaching senior English - which I'd started to miss. So it's back to Beowulf and Canterbury Tales and Macbeth and a little Dante thrown in for good measure. We'll start w/Orwell's 1984 and eventually wander our way to the Romantics, the Victorians... a little Frankenstein, a little Dracula... And cause I've got "connections" now (in quotes lest anyone mistake me for a person with power - which when you tell civilians you've got an agent and a publicist they sometimes do, which often makes me giggle) - maybe we'll get some author Skype time in with the Sourcebooks author Bekka Black, whose cell novel iDracula is coming out at Halloween. We will see...

Copy edits are just about done. Okay - that's a longer story. But that's what the cabernet is for, right?

Brainstorming for my upcoming Dreaming Anastasia 1 year anniversary post. Yes! 9/1 will be one year since my debut novel debuted! The phrase, "May you live in interesting times" has been rattling through my head. But more on that soon. One hint: something new and thrilling is brewing with that first novel. Let's just say that when readers comment, Sourcebooks listens... (I promised I wouldn't tell. So I'm not.)

Getting a lot of questions about HAUNTED, which is awesome. I'll be part of the Crossroads Blog Tour that Judith Graves has organized for October, writing part of a ghost story with other authors for Angela and Tynga at Darkfaerietales.com and telling a real life scary story for Jessica's Haunted Halloween event at Confessions of a Bookaholic - both events also in October.

Fall is filling up in many ways: if you're an Oklahoma librarian, you'll see me at Encyclomedia on the New Voices panel; if you're an English teacher, I'm part of a Retelling the Female Hero Journey panel at NCTE in Disney World in November. And of course on February 1st, HAUNTED will arrive in stores!

We're still working on the back copy, so this is not exact, but here's a preview:
Anne Michaelson’s world turned upside down last year when handsome, blue-eyed and temporarily immortal Russian Ethan Kozninsky showed up. Now six months later, Anne still has powers she doesn’t fully understand. She’s still dreaming about Baba Yaga’s forest. And she’s definitely still got feelings for Ethan, even though she’s got a new boyfriend—the very normal and very sweet lifeguard Ben Logan.

But things are about to get even more complicated. There’s a wicked Russian folklore mermaid stalking Anne. With her heart torn between Ben and Ethan, Anne’s search for the rusalka’s identity reveals deep and startling secrets -- including the true source of Anne’s powers.
As the romance heats up, so does the danger. Will Anne’s powers be enough to help the rusalka get what she wants? Or will the longings of her own heart get in the way?

And so it goes.

I think I've got a birthday in there somewhere. Glad for that. :)

Finally got rid of my beloved pink Razr phone today; I am now a Blackberry girl; hope it's not beyond my learning curve. Oh little Razr phone - how forgiving you were each time I dropped you. How slow and primitive you were each time I texted.

Til next time...