- I keep forgetting to link to the shiny, shiny The Best of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet
, which comes out in August and will include a couple of the Dear Aunt Gwenda columns. (Preorder now!) The cover is so pretty; you can see the more or less final version, along with some concepts that weren’t chosen at the designer’s blog (he’s also the chief designer at Payseur and Schmidt and so must have had a hand in the gorgeous design for Nicola’s memoir, and he did the fabulous cover for Liz Hand’s Generation Loss too). (Oh, and you might also be interested in his illustrations for Ted Chiang’s "The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate" for Subterranean.) - Colleen explains her master plan (mwahaha) behind organizing the Summer Blog Blast Tour, which will be taking the kidlit-o-verse by storm next week, including this space, with a host of interviews with fabulous, fabulous authors. I’ll have fun little interviews with Cecil Castellucci, Bennett Madison, Holly Black, and Ysabeau Wilce. Master schedule linkage shortly.
- Yatterings has an interview with Delia Sherman and Theodora Goss about editing Interfictions, a new anthology of kick-ass stories also known as interstitial work.
- Maureen advises taking other writers to lunch to work out your plot. (I just married one.)
- New English children’s laureate Michael Rosen slams education policy: "There is a huge push on to create an environment – in nurseries, and reception, and year ones and year twos – where books are secondary to the process of reading. This seems oxymoronic to me. We must, must have at the heart of learning to read the pleasure that is reading."
- A fab Lizzie Borden poem over at Theresa’s Witty Staircase.
- Do as Carrie says and buy some books from Soft Skull and McSweeney’s. They need you.
- Mr. McLaren offers some thoughts on coming technology developments using pron as his prognostication tool.