Helloooo! I didn't meant to go poof vanish-y, but I did. And I'm afraid the next week or two is likely to be more of the same.
However, I didn't want to miss saying that the Bluegrass Writers Studio faculty and students showed Jenn and I a fabulous time last weekend. And it was so nice having her here. If there's any agent on the planet who is more willing to answer questions and be candid and explain how this crazy business we call pub works, well, I don't know them. (And this is just one of the many reasons I feel so lucky she's my agent. And my friend. <3) We also talked about the new secret book, which I'd just sent her to read, and much of my AWOL-ness this week has been because I'm revising (spoiler alert: she likes it; whew). After a bit from Blackwood, I read a little section of it at my reading–audience choice, and in my experience, people always want to hear from the new secret thing–and burbled about it afterward and was very much relieved at how enthusiastic people were. And they sold out of copies of Blackwood after the reading, ever happy-making. My husband, the original Christopher Rowe, is in this program, and so I went back last night to see Justin Cronin read and hang out and people still wanted to talk about the new novel. This is the kind of thing that makes a writer happy.
Having Jenn in town meant I finally got to meet a couple of other local authors previously only known on the twitter machine: Andrew Shaffer and Tiffany Reisz. Not to mention, one of my favorite things in life is taking visitors to our fab local bookstores and favorite restaurants, and I got to do that too. Puck the Dog, who is famously picky and hates everyone, loooooves Jenn. So there. A great weekend.
Anyway, I'm busily trimming away bits of research loveliness that aren't strictly speaking enhancing the story (or unstrictly, let's be honest!), and doing a bazillion other things, and still trying to catch up on reading I owe people and wearing the wrong earrings together by mistake, etc. But I shall return victorious or triumphant or something or other. I also managed to take no pictures, so no pictures to share.
But I do have a few little Friday hangovers:
- The Woken Gods was included in i09's 2013 Essential Science Fiction and Fantasy Books Preview. Yay. (Also, panic. Let's be honest. That's THIS year. It's okay, though, months and months away. Breathes.)
- The Gandalf Problem-Solving Flowchart.
- What a story does to the brain.
- Anita Silvey's daily children's literature almanac has a fascinating entry today, about Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH author Robert C. O'Brien, who never appeared in public because his contract with his employer, National Geographic, had a non-compete that forced him to write under a pseudonym and keep his identity secret–even when he won the Newbery.
- Toby Buckell kindly posted some thoughts he shared with his intern about being a writer. This is a must read. Bookmarked, to point people to.
- Chronicling teen bedrooms.
- Saladin Ahmed wrote a great piece on worldbuilding for ye olde NPR, "At Home in Fantasy's Nerd-Built Worlds."
- Pickpocket profile in the New Yorker. (Hat tip to Matt for the pointer.)
- "Exhaustion is not a status symbol"; thought-provoking WaPo piece.
- And, the post of the week without question, Jo Knowles' beautiful blog entry about living your life.