So one of the things I was off doing for the last few weeks was visiting my lovely editor at Scholastic and meeting a whole bunch of amazing wonderful sales & publicity folks at their summer 2012 sales conference, where I was invited for both (a) lunch and (b) delivering a presentation.  (Note that they led with the lunch and then were like “oh, and p.s. PRESENTATION GO!”, which is an excellent way to get me to do anything, because As If I would ever say no to lunch.)  😉

I read from book one of my upcoming dragon series Wings of Fire (coming in summer 2012!) and talked about my inspiration for the series – dragon books I’ve loved, creating a dragon world, how you might feel if you were the subject of a prophecy, hey look a photo of my adorable baby!, nature vs. nurture and fate vs. destiny, things that annoyed me about Lost, reading too much about parenting . . . hopefully it all sounded on topic at the time!  And hopefully you’ll get to hear all of that one day if I’m ever reading at a bookstore near you, or else I’m sure I’ll talk about it here in some definitely-not-mini blog. 

Among the many awesome people I met were the other two authors presenting, Sarah Mlynowski and Kate Messner.  Knowing I was going to meet them, and because I’m an inveterate teacher’s pet at heart (my life is one long quest for extra credit), I bolted out and read a couple of their books beforehand:

Ten Things We Did (and Probably Shouldn’t Have):  HILARIOUS.  All the things that can go wrong when a teenage girl is allowed to fend for herself (let’s just say buying a hot tub is one of those ten things . . .) with VERY cute boys around and inevitable ensuing complications.  Too funny!

Gimme a Call:  Brilliant premise . . . AND hilarious!  (A 17-year-old high school senior gets the opportunity to call herself as a freshman, and starts changing things in the past which affect her present – in the funniest, cleverest ways; I could not put this down.)

Sugar and Ice:  I am not usually a sports book kind of girl, but this fascinating ice skating story was also about mean girls and friendships and balancing your life (plus a cute boy!); I really loved the characters (especially Claire, the heroine) and found the whole book totally irresistible. 

And after hearing their presentations, I have to say their new books sound SO funny and fantastic!  I can’t wait to read them!  I’d say hurry up and get here, Summer 2012, but actually I have two or three books to write before then, so maybe it’s OK if it takes its time. . . .

(Kate wrote a lovely blog about the conference (with pictures!), in a much more timely fashion than me – yay, and thank you, Kate!)  :-)  :-)  :-)  And a big thank you to Scholastic for inviting me (and feeding me!) and for being excited about my shiny new dragon series – I’m still floating with joy from meeting so many wonderful people and hearing so many encouraging things.  You are the wind beneath my (dragon) wings!  (Oh, just you wait . . . the puns I am storing up for next summer, mwa ha ha. . . .)

Tomorrow: I will probably talk about television, because we can’t have this blog getting too literary and thoughtful, can we?  😉

Toddler’s Favorite Books of the Day:

      
Hondo and Fabian and Fabian Escapes, by Peter McCarty