Five for Friday

Happy Friday!
Can you believe it's almost May?

Here's what I'm obsessed with/getting ready for/having fun with, this week:

1. Still flying high from yesterday's PM announcement about IT WASN'T ALWAYS LIKE THIS, coming in 2016 from Soho Press. A girl. A boy. Two families that stumble upon a fountain of youth. And the crazy things that happen when you're stuck at 17 and searching for the boy you love.

Yeah. I kinda love it. I bet you do, too.
Tuck Everlasting meets Veronica Mars.
That's all I'll say for now.
(except that the blurb itself is on yesterday's blog post if you haven't seen it!)
Also that my agent, Jen Rofe, totally rocks.

2. Getting ready for this weekend's Houston SCBWI conference. I'm honored to be part of the local faculty, critiquing manuscripts. And looking forward to all the panels and sessions and just hanging out with authors, editors and agents. Yay!

3. Just ordered some fun giveaways for the A-WORD launch. Can you say cowboy boot keychains? They're seriously adorable. (Okay, I tried to type 'adorbs' but you know, I think I am officially done with the cloying cuteness of that word. There, I tossed that out there. Now you know.)

4. Finally watched most of The Trouble With the Curve w/Clint Eastwood and Amy Adams. Predictable. But sweet. A perfect rainy day/cleaning the family room/getting my head together before I leap into another project kind of movie.

5. Vampire Diaries is still holding my attention. There are far too many plot threads going on, some of which drag me from what I want to watch which is the Elana/Damon/Stefan triangle, but no matter. I'm still a fan. I do believe I could be a fan of The Originals, too, but I will need to actually watch more than the one ep I perused months ago. And it seems that perhaps this summer I need to catch up on Agents of Shield, which after its hiatus turned into a much stronger show. Sometimes, things just have to simmer a bit until the writers hit their stride. And I think this is one of them.

What are you doing/reading/watching this week?

What I'm Reading Tuesday and Getting Ready for THE A-WORD

So far, April is not exactly, as the poem says, "the cruelest month" but it certainly has been the busiest! It is now officially less than a month until THE A-WORD (Soho Press) on 5/13 and less than month until the A-WORD Launch Party at Blue Willow on 5/17 and less than a week until the SCBWI Houston conference where I am once again honored to critique manuscripts, which I have been reading and pondering and scribbling notes on. It is -- as of yesterday-- also exactly one year until FINDING PARIS hits the shelves from Balzer and Bray.

In fact, yesterday Harper Collins sent me my Author Questionnaire! This always makes me both giddy with excitement and also panicked. Because it asks questions that in essence say, "What hugely famous people do you know who will say nice things about you and this book and thus make people buy a bunch of copies?" Okay, it asks other stuff, too. But that's part of it. You'd think this wouldn't phase me by now. You would be wrong.

But still! Another book! The crazy wonderful of this is NOT LOST ON ME.

But I have not  yet posted my TLA post and so that will come tomorrow. Like I say, it's been a busy few weeks.

Also just bought tickets for the Grand Ole Opry for when we're in Nashville this fall. I am on the fence about this, but I am told I will love it. So there you go.

And now on to what books I'm obsessed with this week!

• Want a lovely, thoughtful, gorgeously illustrated picture book with an amazing story and message? Then pick up a copy of GRANDFATHER GANDHI, co-written by my talented Austin friend Bethany Hegedus and the grandson of Gandhi, Arun Gandhi. There is a post-9/11 story behind this book and it is just as moving and magical as the book itself. 
• Still plowing my way through book 2 of the Outlander series. Jamie and Claire. Scotland! Romance! War and rebellion! Weird historical facts about lice and medicine and childbirth! Scottish dialect that sticks in my head and makes me say to the dog, "you're such a wee piggie" and then try to speak Gaelic!
• Alternately also reading two prized galleys I picked up at TLA: WE WERE LIARS by E. Lockhart (to whom I shall always be grateful for blurbing Sweet Dead Life) and THE TRUTH ABOUT ALICE by Jen Mathieu, a talented and brilliant debut author from right here in Houston. (in fact we'll be signing together, along with Kristin Rae, on 6/28 at a co-sponsored event at BOTH Murder by the Book and Brazos Books!)

Both are must reads. LIARS has an enormous marketing campaign behind it so you've probably heard about it. Something has taken the main character's memory of a horrible accident and she is trying to piece things together. There is wealth and secrets and life-long friends and a love gone wrong and a powerful family and so much more. Mostly it's the writing. You may actually guess the secret early on. But Emily Lockhart's prose and style just thrill me. Such a cleverly crafted book.

Likewise for ALICE. Mathieu has hit it out of the park on her first book and it's receiving a very warm welcome. Multiple narrative voices. A small town. A girl named Alice about whom there are salacious and abundant rumors. And the truth that lies somewhere in between.

Actually it's a good pairing, these two books. And it's been interesting reading both while finishing the edits for FINDING PARIS, which is also about family secrets….

What are you reading this week?

HOUSTON WE HAVE LIFT OFF

Yes, I just went there. But I live here. I get to.

THANK YOU to Blue Willow Bookshop for such a lovely Houston launch of THE SWEET DEAD LIFE this past Saturday! And THANK YOU to my friends and fellow authors (including many of our fabulous Houston SCBWI chapter) and to the librarians and bloggers and fans and book lovers who came out to fill the house and make sure that ALL THE BOOKS SOLD OUT! You humble and honor me.

Now Soho Press and I hope you read THE SWEET DEAD LIFE and that Jenna's story resonates with you. Like all stories that mean something to me, this one is, at its core, about love. Not romantic love this time, but the love we have for the people we care about and the things we do for them. It is about unlikely heroes and siblings and the family we make for ourselves when the one we're given screws up. And yeah, it's also about angels and the battle between good and evil. There is a larger mystery at foot and somehow the Samuels family has stumbled into it. More will be revealed next year in THE A WORD. Jenna's journey has only just begun. And on another level, it's about a fourteen year old girl-- an age where we are powerless and know it-- whose brother sacrifices everything for her. And still annoys the hell out her, which is as it should be.

Plus, okay, it kind of sometimes skewers the wasteland that is the suburbs. But only sometimes.

If you'd like someone else's take on it, my friend and fellow SCBWIer, Vonna Carter, just posted THIS.

Okay. Let's have some pictures, shall we?

Reading from SWEET DEAD LIFE

With my youngest readers... good little sleepers

My very first beta reader for the ANASTASIA series, former student and Houston actress Kara Ray

Making some point...

Awesome cookies from Posh Cookies

Jennifer Matthieu and Chris Mandelski duked it out over angel trivia
Blogger and Media guru Maria Cari Soto makes me smile

So many great Houston authors/SCBWIers, including Dede Ducharme, Sophie Jordan, Vicki Sansum,  Chris Mandelski, Crystal Allen, Vonna Carter, Kathy Duval, Jennifer Matthieu, Suzanne Bazemore, Dotti Enderle, Kristin Rae, Jessica Capelle, Amy Rose Thomas, Laura Ruthven, Tina Wissner

And of course none of this would be possible without my partners in literary crime, the team at SOHO PRESS: Publisher Bronwen Hruska, Senior Editor Daniel Ehrenhaft, Publicist Meredith Barnes (a former Houston girl), and the rest of the gang including editor Juliet Grames, who create beautiful books with their authors and curate their lists with care and thoughtfulness and a nimble brilliance that takes my breath away. I only hope to live up to your high level of expectation.

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...