Oh, wow, three whole stars!

OK, that wasn’t actually a very good picture to share, because it doesn’t have a lot of stars in it. February wasn’t exactly my most productive month when it came to drafting. April was much better–click over to the post to check out that pic and more.

In other news, the wonderful Krista van Dolzer of Mother.Write.Repeat. has sold her debut middle-grade novel to my very own editor, Shauna Rossano at Putnam! I’m so thrilled for everyone involved, but especially for you readers, who will get to experience the awesomeness that is THE REGENERATED MAN in 2015.

I can’t think of too much more news to share…well, except that Animal Planet is apparently coming to my house this weekend to interview me about parasites, but that’s probably a story for another day.

Happy May!

Speaking of that book, many people have been asking for updates recently, so here’s what I’ve got.

1) The book is still scheduled to come out in Summer of 2014. I don’t have an official release date yet.

2) My editor and I are still trying to come up with the perfect title. I’ll keep ya posted!

3) I recently finished a second round of edits on the book, and am feeling good about how they turned out. I imagine that there will be some more tweaking before the text is set, but for now, I’m pretty happy with where things stand.

4) My publisher is starting to think about cover designs, which is very exciting, and my editor asked me to share a few of my favorite MG covers. I have no idea whether they’ll end up influencing the ultimate design, but they are pretty so I thought I’d share a few here, too!

I love the nighttime cityscape and the silhouetted boy. And the title!

Oooh, the new Harry Potter cover–Diagon Alley by night!

YUM.

So, it seems that I am a fan of nighttime scenes and the color blue. Which probably means that Gladys will end up having a bright pink cover, but you know what? That would be fine. Pink is actually a really important color in the book, and also, MY BOOK IS GETTING PUBLISHED NEXT YEAR, so what do I have to complain about?

Come on by.

One of my favorites of 2012!

I have a new blog post up at EMU’s Debuts today: EMU’s Best Under-the-Radar Kids’ Books of 2012!

If you’re looking for a couple of book recommendations–or have some of your own to share–we’d love to have you stop by.

Another of my favorites of 2012!

As you may have noticed, this blog has been under the radar a bit lately, too. I have approximately 400 excellent excuses for that, but rather than bore you with them, I’ll just say that once my current round of edits on Gladys Gatsby get done (probably in March), I do have big plans for some exciting new features here. In the meantime, you can always catch me on Facebook or Twitter…and here are a few posts I’ve done elsewhere over the last couple of months:

Bring on 2013! @ Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire

Bouncer Interview with Tara Dairman @ Cupid’s Literary Connection (where I was “Bouncer Myrtle” in the still-ongoing Blind Speed Dating event)

It’s Launch Week for BLAZE! @ EMU’s Debuts (Seriously, check out BLAZE by Laurie Boyle Crompton, a terrific new YA book!)

I hope that the new year has been treating you well so far.

I have a new post up today at EMU’s Debuts called “Based on True Events”–it’s about the surprising way that reality sometimes sneaks into fiction. If you’re a fellow writer, I’d love to hear about a scene or aspect of your book that readers wouldn’t guess was drawn from real life!

The post also contains cute (and totally relevant) pictures of my former bunnies.

And Andy and I also have another post up on our travel blog called “Shark, Whale, Lamb-dog, and Other Foods of Iceland,” which clearly requires no further explanation.

Hanging out with some Icelandic rotten shark

Happy reading!

Post 1: An Icy Introduction

Post 2: Northern Exposure: An Icelandic Road Trip

If you are hoping to receive such a letter yourself one of these years, you might like to check it out. If you’re my mom or my aunt or someone else who isn’t sure what an editorial letter* is, you might be less interested.

So I turned in my first round of revisions on Monday, and am heading to Iceland (!!) for a week this Friday. When I get back, it’ll probably be time to start revising all over again, though I’ll try to squeeze in a travel recap post of sorts.

Happy Wednesday!

*For the record, an editorial letter is the long note that your editor writes you about all the aspects of your book that need some work, accompanied by a deadline by which you need to make the revisions.

• candy corn
• pumpkin and squash dishes
• hot chocolate
• stews
• CANDY CORN!

Oops, those were all food. Well, I also like the pretty leaf colors and that it’s getting chilly enough to wear jeans and hoodies again. And the fact that fall leads up to Thanksgiving, my birthday, Hanukkah/Christmas, snow, and finally, when it’s cold enough, adult footie pajamas!:)

Fall is the one season I have yet to experience in Colorado, but I have high hopes. It felt like summer lasted about nine months this year, and honestly, by the end of August, I was really over it. In fact, I started drinking hot chocolate about three weeks ago, even though I had to sit directly in front of my fan while I was doing it. But now fall is legitimately here, and the weather even seems to be cooperating and dropping by a degree or two each day.

So, what else have I been doing, other than not updating this blog much? Well, I received my editorial letter a couple of weeks ago, and since then have been hard at work trying to make Gladys Gatsby more awesome. Mostly this has involved shaking up the story’s timeline and adding bunches of new scenes that delve more into the personalities of secondary characters. It’s a lot of work, but it’s also undeniably fun to dig even deeper into the world I’ve created. I know my characters well enough at this point that I can stick them into just about any sort of situation and understand how they’d react; I guess that’s a perk of working on the same story for 5+ years.

It also helps to have an assistant to keep your manuscript pages warm when you’re not working on them. Or even sometimes when you are.

I’ve also been blogging over at EMU’s Debuts, helping to launch several of my Erin Murphy Literary Agency co-clients’ books into the world! For Jeanne Ryan’s debut, Nerve, we all taped kidlit-related video dares, and mine apparently scored me a few fans for life (yes!) and made a few other people sick to their stomachs (oops). In case you missed it and enjoy watching people read with their mouths full, here it is:

Happy fall, y’all!

Well, today the video results are posted, and holy moly, you have GOT to go check them out!

The EMUs, for example have an interpretive dance about dead chickens, a romantic ode to a doorknob, the world’s most painful conference critique section, and even yours truly stuffing her gullet while reading from MATILDA. (Happy belated birthday, Mr. Dahl!)

And The Thirteeners, for example, have a novel scene performed by condiments, an all-original movie trailer in which Bella Swan hooks up with The Count (yes, that Count, from Sesame Street), and the funniest story I have ever heard from the perspective of a carrot.

Seriously, why are you still here? Click! Go! And leave comments on both blogs for two chances to win a signed copy of NERVE!