Last weekend I went to Texas for my very first time, and it was great. I had pickle chips, saw a friend from grad school for dinner, talked about Dickens and Peter Pan with him, met tons of smart, adorable children, and had a great reading with Book People. Thanks so much to everyone at Book People for making this happen!

My reading at Book People was with the fabulous Jacqueline Kelly, Newbery Honor winner for novel The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, which I’m reading now and love. Here we are:

One of the students (at Valley View Elementary, I believe. And, FYI, this happens to also be the name of my elementary school in Illinois) took at look at the cover of my second book and asked if those are zombies on the cover.

It was a good question, and for those of you who are curious about The Celestial Globe, which will be in bookstores on April 13, I will tell you what I told him: no, they are not. But they are a lot like zombies. They are creatures I made up, and they are called the Gray Men (or, sometimes, Gristleki). For the even curiouser, I’ll say that I had the idea for them while watching the movie The Lives of Others, which has nothing to do with zombies or zombie-esque creatures, but has a very gray color scheme. I found myself thinking a lot about the color gray, and how lifeless it is, and about the horrible things people can do to each other. And I thought of the Gray Men. Here, if you like, is a creepy scene from The Celestial Globe featuring them:

Even before Petra reached the edge of town, she saw smoke. She shoved past people on the street. When she burst through the last ring of houses, she saw the Sign of the Compass. It was burning.

She was only a few feet from her home and calling for her father when the first of the Gristleki slipped onto its two feet. Three more Gray Men oozed out of their crouched positions. Petra had seen nothing but the flames. She didn’t notice the Gristleki until they moved.

She skidded to a stop. The four creatures slithered towards her, their claws squealing against the cobblestones. They could have seized the girl immediately. They moved slowly because they liked it. They liked to savor the fear that would freeze her face as they grew closer.

The Gristleki were the color of ash, and covered in scales. Their skin was dry and cracked, as if something had sucked the fluids out of their bodies. But the most horrifying feature of the Gristleki was their shape. It was human. Even though they looked like skeletons with snakeskin stretched over the bones, and even though claws sprang from their hands and feet, the creatures looked like they had once been men. Four scaly skulls slipped closer towards Petra. Their faces had no lips. They had no eyebrows or eyelashes, as if they had been burned away. But their eyes were human.

One of them opened its toothless mouth. Petra stared into the black hole. She tried to move, but her legs were rooted to the earth.

“Petra!” Astrophil was shouting in her ear. “Listen to me: you have to run. Do you hear me? Petra!”

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“…and the heart of any living thing can be broken.”

That from Kate diCamillo’s The Tale of Despereaux, which very well may be one of the world’s perfect books. I yearn for the day when Eliot’s old enough for me to read it to him.

I have a few book events coming up in the near and somewhat near future. Not everything’s confirmed, but I should be posting some details soon. First, I’m going to Texas! I’ve never been to Texas! I’m excited about it. On Saturday, March 6^th from 3:00-4:00 pm. I will be appearing at Book People in Austin, TX along with a panel of other 2011 Texas Bluebonnet Nominated authors (did I mention that Cabinet was nominated for a Texas Bluebonnet award? It was!). I’ll also be participating in a couple of events for the NYC Teen Author Festival, which starts March 15. More on that soon.

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Good news! My novel, The Celestial Globe, received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly! Yay! Thank you, PW! If you’d like to read the review, here it is. And can I say how excited I was to have my review placed right next to Megan Whalen Turner’s? I love, love, love her books, and enjoyed Conspiracy of Kings (though I won’t say any more, because it’s not even out yet and I wouldn’t want to spoil anything for anyone).

It’s interesting, how just a phrase in a review can hook me. I haven’t read anything by Philip Reeve, but I think I’m going to have to read Fever Crumb, just because the reviewer in PW mentions that it has “foldable assassins made of paper.” Foldable assassins made of paper? Yes, please! How imaginative. How deliciously intriguing.

I’m very slowly reading through Wolf Hall, and otherwise I’ve just been reading for classes and poring over my friends’ manuscripts, each of which is very satisfying. This week I’m teaching Henry V and Tale of Despereaux (different classes). Can I confess that Despereaux made me teary-eyed?

For you writers out there, here are some words from Toni Morrison (pulled from the Paris Review interview collection I’ve mentioned in a previous entry) that I found wise and useful:

“The difficulty for me in writing—among the difficulties—is to write language that can work quietly on the page for a reader who doesn’t hear anything. Now for that, one has to work very carefully with what is in between the words. What is not said. Which is measure, which is rhythm, and so on. So, it is what you don’t write that frequently gives what you do write power.”

and

“…there is a line between revision and fretting, just working it to death. It is important to know when you are fretting it; when you are fretting it because it is not working, it needs to be scrapped.”

Indeed! On that note, I’d better get back to my revision before Eliot wakes up from his nap…

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For most of my life, I only had the vaguest idea that books were published by different publishers, and that this had an effect on how they were marketed and perceived in the world. If you had said to me, four years ago, “I am published by FSG, and FSG is owned by Macmillan,” I would have shrugged. It would have meant nothing to me.

So I am published by FSG, and FSG is owned by Macmillan, which means that I, like many writers (how many? I don’t know…tons?) discovered this morning that my book couldn’t be purchased on Amazon. That’s because (if you don’t already know) Amazon wants to keep e-book prices at $9.99 and Macmillan wants to be able to charge whatever they want for them, which is about $12.99-$14.99 for adult new releases. I own a Kindle (though I don’t really use it for reading novels unless I’m traveling. I use it for personal documents) and it is nice to have books cheap. But it’s a little silly for Amazon to imply they’re driving for a $9.99 per book price because they’re looking out for their customers. They’re doing it because it’s a better way for them to make money. Amazon has said the Kindle is a “mission,” and of course it is: it’s a mission to sell Kindles and Kindle-only e-versions of books. It’s a mission to make money. That’s Macmillan’s mission, too. That’s really all there is to it—until Amazon decides to use its very extensive power to ban all Macmillan books from its website. And not just e-books. All VERSIONS of the book. Until Amazon updates its site, you can’t buy any Macmillan books.

Honestly? I have no idea how much publishers need to charge to make an e-book profitable, nor what prices Amazon needs to sell e-books at in order to make the Kindle “mission” profitable. I’m fine with the CEOs of Macmillan and Amazon fighting it out, because that’s capitalism. But I’ve got to say that it’s bullying of Amazon to pull Macmillan books. If Amazon really feels that it’s up to the customer to decide whether s/he wants to pay $14.99 for a bestseller, why didn’t Amazon just agree to Macmillan’s deal, or at least let customers decide?

Of course, I’m biased, and I’m just a cog in the machine. But, you know, it’s my machine!

On an interesting side note, I found out most about most of this via Twitter, and possibly my favorite tweet was my pal Mordicai’s, which was along the lines of “I have a monopoly on all the tweets I make.” Which—if I understand him correctly—is a wry look at Amazon’s claim that they have to eventually cave to Macmillan and put the “buy” buttons back on M. books because Macmillan has a “monopoly” on their titles. Which is technically true—no one else can publish Macmillan titles. But that’s because Macmillan bought them. It’s their property. Saying Macmillan has a “monopoly” on their titles is painting things rather scarier and grander than the truth. It’s like saying I have a “monopoly” on my house because I own it (N.B. this is just an example. I don’t own a house). Or that the Metropolitan Museum of Art has a monopoly on Van Gogh’s Self Portrait with a Straw Hat. Well, yes, because they paid tons of money for it.

Anyway, it’s all been very interesting. If you’d like to read more about the Amazon-Macmillan throwdown, I recommend John Scalzi’s blog.

In other, more personal news, I finished a new book! “Finished” meaning I finished the first draft. I’m pretty excited about it. It’s very different from the Kronos Chronicles.

Also, I was excited that Rebecca Stead won the Newbery for her fabulous When You Reach Me. It’s always good to see beautiful books win.

I’m back to teaching—Shakespeare and Children’s Lit (separate classes, though one could imagine a course so called). This week it’s the sonnets and fairy tales. I have a great job.

Otherwise, I’ve been reading Wolf Hall, the historical novel about Thomas Cromwell. I’m enjoying it so far—though not quite as much as Too Much Happiness, Alice Munro’s latest short story collection. I love Alice Munro. I read her stories and want to die, they are so good.

From time to time, I also page through the Paris Review’s interview collection. I’m not sure if it’s available for purchase or not yet. I think so? Anyway, it’s a must, I think, for writers. The interviews are fascinating! Did you know Toni Morrison writes just before dawn? The Stephen King one also convinced me that that man is a force. Very funny, too. I’m currently reading Marilynne Robinson’s (I loved her Gilead), and I rather liked this:

INTERVIEWER: Does writing come easily to you?

MR: The difficulty of it cannot be overstated. But at its best, it involves a state of concentration that is a satisfying experience, no matter how difficult or frustrating. The sense of being focused like that is a marvelous feeling.

Yes!

Note that I haven’t been reading much in the way of middle grade or YA….except Megan Whalen Turner’s Conspiracy of Kings. It was good! But now I feel a little lost…if you’ve got any children’s/YA suggestions, let me know.

Oh, yeah! And I think Cabinet of Wonders is available in paperback now, or should be. My cousin spotted one at her son’s book fair (yay Scholastic Book Fairs! I loved those things when I was a kid). But, you know, I guess it won’t be available on Amazon. Until they replace the buy buttons….

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Some scenes from the Santa Parade (NYC seems to have parades for everything. The Halloween Parade, of course, but also the Mermaid Parade. Maybe we should institute even MORE parades. Like….like what? The Insect Parade? The Pirate Parade?). We didn’t actually attend. More like we tried to navigate through the sea of Santas with a stroller to walk from home to Union Square. We saw elves, walking candy canes, reindeer, a Spider-man pulling a Santa in a rickshaw, and several Grinches in addition to Mr. and Mrs. Claus. The Santas in Washington Square Park (below) were chanting HO HO HO and

OH, the WEATHER outside is FRIGHTful, but the FIRE is SO deLIGHTful….

Santas in trouble:

So…if you could start a parade of anything in your hometown, what would it be?

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