Books AND Cupcakes!
Check it out! I’m doing a book signing!
Where?: Books of Wonder, an incredibly awesome children’s bookstore
at 18 West 18th Street in New York City
When?: From 5pm to 7pm this Thursday, October 26
With?: Two totally fabulous fantasy authors: Tamora Pierce and Laura Anne Gilman.
Tamora Pierce, of course, is well-known and best-selling and wonderful and much-beloved and writes terrific heroines like Alanna the Lioness — who doesn’t love her? This is her new book.
I’m also very excited about Laura Anne Gilman, because I actually worked on the Grail Quest trilogy at Harper, but not in such a way that I ever got to meet her or talk to her. So I’m looking forward to meeting her, because I love those books — they’re clever, creative, surprising, and very funny.
So even if you’re like, oh, I see quite enough of Tui, thanks (ahem, Kari), you should come anyway to see these two other very talented ladies and buy their books.
And if even THAT doesn’t convince you, how about this: Books of Wonder has a cupcake café! So there you go. 
In other news, hi Cyd! 
And what else have I discovered this week…
In Movies: The Prestige was TOTALLY AWESOME, and now that I know it’s by the same guy who did Memento, I really should have expected it. I don’t know that I liked any of the characters (I’m not sure I was supposed to), but the story was brilliant and brilliantly constructed. I love movies that do something surprising and unusual, and this definitely was both of those.
In Music: My new favorite song is “Fidelity” by Regina Spektor, and yes, it was in the Veronica Mars episode last week, so I’m probably twenty minutes behind the rest of the country in discovering this artist. But she’s fantabulous; I really like “Hotel Song,” too. Thank goodness for iTunes, and for message boards with alert fans who can translate and alertly respond to: “squee yippee Veronica & Logan 4ever and what the heck song was that please.”
In Books: I just read two strange and thoroughly enthralling books: The White Darkness, by Geraldine McCaughrean, and Feed, by M.T. Anderson. The former made me want to go to Antarctica, except not really, thanks, because of all the many ways to die there. Instead I am going to go find all her other books and read them because she clearly has a fascinating brain. And the latter got me thinking in its own crazy futuristic slang so I very nearly called Kari up to say, “Unit, this book is meg intense.” Also, what a great opening line: “We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck.” So: recommended! Both of them!
In Celebrity Gossip: T.R. Knight (George on Grey’s Anatomy) is awesome and I love him, even though I wish George would really fall in love with Callie already because she is mad awesome despite her haircut.
In Politics: Do it, Barack Obama! Dooooooooooooo it! Run for president now before the Senate makes you boring! We love you! Do it!
In Snuggles News: Sunshine got a haircut, so now she looks more like this:
which is to say, perfect and goofy in an entirely different way.
In TV: I am far, far behind on Meerkat Manor. Sunshine is not pleased. Battlestar Galactica gets more awesome all the time. And I still love Heroes, but when Hiro turned up at the end of last week in a somber samurai outfit with short-short hair speaking perfect English, my reaction was honestly noooooooooooooooooooooooooo! because that means he’s eventually going to lose the adorable glasses and the adorable wayward hair and the adorable geekiness and the adorable enthusiasm and the adorable Japanese-speaking and become as boring and serious and gloomy as some of these other characters (ahem, you know who you are) and that BETTER NOT HAPPEN, so I’m counting on Hiro to still be awesome despite all that, and hopefully it won’t happen for a long long time. And hopefully it won’t be because something Terrible and Dire and Depressing happens to quench his “yay! let’s save the world!” spirit (ruh-roh, Hiro’s friend…I’d be careful if I were you). And hopefully he’s still carrying his glasses in a pouch on his samurai belt or something. Hey, why can’t a superhero wear glasses in his superhero incarnation too? I ASK YOU. (and then I smack myself because yes, Gus does lose his glasses at one point, but that doesn’t mean he won’t get them back eventually, and anyway that was partly because I kept forgetting to write "and then he took off his glasses" before "and then he fell asleep". Glasses are surprising hard to incorporate into novel-writing, but should be much easier to remember in TV where there are entire departments in charge of props, don’t you think?)
In Crypto-Zoology: I should really stop watching “Is It Real?” on the National Geographic Channel, because I keep getting sucked into things like: The Loch Ness Monster: IS IT REAL?, only to discover that NO, it is always NOT real, which I might have guessed from the not-having-heard-about-concrete-proof-being-discovered in, say, the regular news. So, spoiler alert for anyone planning on watching them, but…apparently there is neither a Loch Ness Monster nor a Littlefoot/missing link/human-ape living in Sumatra. At least for now.
In Writing: I turned in another manuscript (more on that in a future blog) and celebrated by going wedding dress hunting with Kari, who, it turns out, looks amaaaaaaaaaaaaazing in eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeverything, much to the surprise of nobody.
So that’s all the news from here. Come to my signing on Thursday!