BEARS! Yaaayyy BEARS!
Excitement! Excitement! Excitement!
Seekers is here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You can buy it RIGHT NOW! And, dude, Al Roker thinks you should read it! (Check out that link for an excerpt, if you’re curious!) Seriously, he picked Seekers Book One: The Quest Begins for his book club on the Today show! I don’t actually have words for how exciting that is!! Oh my goodness!!!
I wish I could take more credit for it, but as I always say, the real genius behind Erin Hunter is the amazing, wonderful, fabulous, talented Vicky Holmes, who will be on the Today show talking about Seekers sometime in June. And you can bet I’ll be telling you when just as soon as I know, so you can all tune in for it, too!
Here’s my page about the Erin Hunter books I’ve written, which I realize I should really update. And!:
where you can read an author’s note about how we came up with the series — why we chose to do bears after cats. I love this idea, and I hope Warriors readers will, too. I love how bears, like cats, can be cute and funny sometimes but also fierce and noble and epic and dark, too. I think they’re perfect for Erin Hunter’s themes and style of storytelling, and I am so so so honored to be a part of this awesome team on the writing side now, after being their editor for so long!
One of the very best parts about this is that I don’t have to wait until January to read book two, which was written by Cherith — I get to read it soon-soon, because I’m working on book three right now (oh my goodness dark and thrilling and scary! Vicky is such a brilliant evil mastermind! I mean that in the best possible way, of course.). :-) I love finding out what happens next, just like you guys.
Also, all the research involved in writing these has made me even more aware of the sad plight of polar bears today. I’ve been watching all these fascinating bear documentaries…I think it’s interesting to see how different the different kinds of bears are, and in particular how HUGE polar bears are compared to grizzlies and black bears. I could watch the polar bear segment of Planet Earth about a million zillion times (approximately). (If that link takes you to the right place, click on the "Pole to Pole" habitat to get to the info on polar bears.)
(And then, if you have some free time — like, say, if it’s not 2am and you’re not trying to write a blog, TUI — check out their Mission: Planet Earth game. If you’re my age, it might remind you of a game from our childhood called Oregon Trail (just mentioning this game around people my age makes us all go "squeee! I remember that! omg, I died of typhus like so many times!"). Only in this case you’re managing several teams of Planet Earth cameramen and if you fail, instead of drowning in the Mississippi or resorting to cannibalism in the Rockies*, you miss out on capturing freaky things like the Belizean White Crab or the Gliding Leaf Frog, and then the whole world is left bereft of their cool-freaky photos, so you’ll have THAT on your conscience.)
Anyway, I hope lots of Warriors fans and anyone who likes bears will check out the Seekers series (and I really hope you like it!). Plus, isn’t this cover cool? I like it extra-much because it has special effects like the Warriors covers (like the font is raised and the bear inset is shiny and OOOOOO awesomeness!).
I love the Save the Date cover for much the same reason, because the title is raised and it’s SHINY SPARKLY PINK! Toooooooooooooo fabulous. :-) Yes, I’m getting more demanding, aren’t I? I used to be all: "hey, look, my book has a cover! WAhoo!" and now I’m like, "hey, why aren’t there any holograms on this? Sparkly foil? Raised letters? Pop-up monsters? Hello?" Apparently my ultimate goal in life is to become famous and wildly successful enough that ALL my books get special effects. Wouldn’t that be thrilling? OK, I know, I’m easily excited by little things. ;-)
All right, I’m off to bed, because I have to be up at a regular-person time on Thursday to visit splendid Stuyvesant High School and talk about writing, which I am REALLY excited about (yay people who want to be writers! yay talking about books!), despite the early-morning-ness of the whole situation (see previous Morning Birds post). More about that next week!
*Possibly I am making this up. Possibly we never got to eat our fellow pioneers on the Oregon Trail. But possibly sometimes they were totally asking for it!
P.S. I am SO HAPPY that So You Think You Can Dance is back!!! That last popper guy on Thursday’s show totally made my week! Hooray!
Quote of the Day:
Dwight: Jim, could you please inform Andy Bernard that he is being shunned? Jim: Andy, Dwight says welcome back and he could use a hug.
Dwight: Okay, tell him that’s not true.
Jim: Dwight says he actually doesn’t know one single fact about bear attacks.
Dwight: Okay, no, Jim, tell him bears can climb faster than they can run. Jim! Tell him!
— The Office