August-September 2010

I just got back from SCBWI in LA which is always an adrenaline rush. It was such fun to have the opportunity to speak at this conference as I attended for years in my “one-trick-pony” days. (The long years between the time when Moonstruck sold (1992) and Notes from a Liar and Her Dog sold (1999). It felt great to have a keynote spot there. I pretended I was talking to the person I used to be sixteen years ago.

I am a very shy person and yet I feel comfortable—even happy—talking to an audience of 1100. How that can be? Just one of the many incongruities of my life I guess.

It was great to hear Gail Carson Levine—one of my daughter’s absolute favorite writers, the debonair and erudite MT Anderson, the hilarious Jon Scieszka and Mac Barnett and so many other great speakers.

So what’s up for the next two months … mostly just writing I’m pleased to report. I get to be Moose again which is always so fulfilling—though the challenges he is grappling with in book #3 are pretty intense.

As for the good news to report … I’m delighted to announce that Bloomsbury has bought No Passengers Beyond This Point in the UK and Australia. I have never even been to Australia. My characters are much better traveled than I am.

Also I know this is going to sound weird but I just found out No Passengers Beyond This Point will have a dump. For those of you who don’t know, a dump looks like the image over there on the right.

In author land a dump is big time. I will restrain from making up or down in the dump jokes, but I can report I am feeling delightfully dumpish today.