This is my friend Lisa Graff (author of fabulous books and stylish Longstocking) holding a German copy of The Cabinet of Wonders in a real German bookstore. Huzzah! (or, um, how do you say “huzzah” in German?) I think the cover’s fetching. You? Any comments on it?

I hereby promise not to post any more posts about BSG. I mean, at least until The Plan comes out…

And, as part of that promise, I will very belatedly describe my experience as part of the NYC Teen Lit Festival. It was awesome. I couldn’t attend all the events because the ever-charming, fourth-month-old Eliot has dibs on most of my waking hours of the day, but I had fun when I did. I was part of a “round robin” story involving zombies and crime-fighting drag queens. It’s called Szechwan Panda. If you’d like to know more, check our Barry Lyga’s website. He gives the lowdown on the story created by him, me, Blake Nelson, Lizabeth Zindel, Martin Wilson, Sarah MacLean, Madeleine George, Bill Konigsberg, Coe Booth, and Sarah Darer Littman. You can read the text and/or view it all on YouTube. I’m the one in the orange t-shirt. Notes to self:

Project!

Don’t rock back and forth.

Argh!

I know these things. I project and stand fairly still when I teach, give a conference paper, or do a reading (I think). But I was super nervous about doing that round robin thingy. My hands were shaking. And somehow I forgot everything I supposedly knew about basic stage presence. Oh well. The story was crazy fun (emphasis on the crazy).

I also attended the huge author signing at Books of Wonder. It was great to meet so many people (Hi, Sandi from Tennessee!). Hayley Anne Perkins had the intriguing idea of collecting favorite words from authors and integrating them into a story. My word was force majeure. I’m not sure I’d really call it my favorite word, but she handed me a doorstopper of a dictionary and it was the first one I found that I liked. Her website is here, if you’d like to search for her story.

Headlining news in the Land of Eliot is that he has figured out how to pull a pacifier out of his mouth and steer it (with greater or lesser success) back in. Clever boy! He hasn’t quite figured out that he needs to let go of the pacifier if he wants it to stay put. Of course, I could be misreading the situation. Maybe he knows full well, and just likes to keep putting it in and pulling it out…