Roundup, UK Release Day & Book Party Ahoy

It's UK publication day. Hurrah! Pip, pip! Etcetera.

Forgive me, UK friends. I'm a little tipped to the frazzled exhaustion end of the spectrum. I just looked around at the house when I walked in, which–let me tell you–after a few weeks of bouncing around here and there seems to have disintegrated into boxes, piles of books, and dog hair dust bunnies. So great to see Beth Revis again, to meet Meagan Spooner, Sarah Maas, and Susan Dennard (giveaway of all our books coming soon!), and to visit Malaprop's, as always, but I'm happy to say that Asheville is my last away stop for a bit. Order will soon be restored.

Some things:

• To celebrate UK release day, Jade at Ink Scratchers kindly did an interview with me and UK peeps can enter to win a copy of Blackwood.
• There's also a new, lengthy-ish interview over at My Bookish Ways, in which I talk about all sorts of madness–including my great love for Christopher Pike's Remember Me as a teen.
• Blackwood is sharing crazyfine company like Libba Bray's The Diviners and Malinda Lo's Adaptation on io9's Most Thrilling Science Fiction and Fantasy Books in September. Yay!
• Liz Burns reviews Blackwood over at her SLJ blog, A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy: "Other things I can say I love without being the spoiler queen: Miranda sewing and making her own clothes, and how that’s important to her as a character. The Blackwood family history. The small town feel. The way Blackwood captures a shore tourist town. (I grew up and live at the Jersey Shore, so loved her town / tourists bits.) The historical/supernatural mash up." (Liz is one of my go-to sources for recommendations, and one of my favorite reviewers to read, so particularly happy-dance-y over this one! And she really does do a fab job of avoiding spoilers.)
• Bookbitz review: "Blackwood blends the supernatural, the mysterious, and the everyday stress of being a teenager into a satisfying, and incredibly fun, story. What did happen to the Lost Colony? And will Miranda survive the truth?" *beams*
  

  photo by Katie Wardlow Decker

• Annnd our local daily paper, the Lexington Herald-Leader, did a profile story (thank you, Mary!), complete with a picture that I feel is even better with the context that my cheesy grin may be related to the fact that I said the following to the photographer (Katie Wardlow Decker, who was delightful) right before she took the shot: "I'll just lean here casually. Like I do this all the time. I just come here and lean against this shelf beside my book. Casually." I prefer hiding behind the book, like so, in this other shot from the story. (I have no excuse for babbling, however, except that I am admittedly a huge nerd. I did want to talk about the fact I'd been writing for ages though, because I hate the pervasiveness of the overnight success narrative. So, there.)

ANYWAY, the story is mainly to let local peoples know they should come to the launch party/signing at the most excellent Morris Book Shop on Saturday. There will be nibbles and donuts and a few prizes. It should be great fun! Come out if you can:

Sept. 8 at 6 p.m. : Blackwood Launch Party at the Morris Book Shop in Lexington, Ky.

And then everything will go back to normalish, right? Right. Or, rather, write. Because I miss it like crazy after a month of not writing.