Amazing News!
Hello all!
I know I should have posted this sooner (like, the minute I found out), but I’ve been either (a) leaping around my house shrieking with excitement or (b) totally in shock or (c) too mindboggled to even know what to say about something so wonderful:
Wings of Fire made the New York Times Bestseller List! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!!!!!
AND the USA Today Bestseller List! Aaaaaaaaaaaack!!!!!
Holy snorks, you guys, THANK YOU! I feel so so grateful — to my agent and editor and publisher for loving and supporting this series, to the designer and artist who made these AMAZING covers, and most of all to all of YOU for reading and buying the books! I am the happiest of happy bears right now. 🙂 🙂 🙂
In other news (how can there be other news?), I had a wonderful time at the Connecticut Children’s Book Fair last weekend — so many super-lovely people! Plus a big table full of my books!
Plus celebrities!
(That’s me with Strega Nona, Clifford the Big Red Dog, and Ann Martin!, author of the Babysitters Club and the Newbery Honor book A Corner of the Universe, among a million other wonderful titles.)
Me and Spot!
And I’m betting you know who that guy is. 🙂
I mean, my goodness! My kids are spectacularly unimpressed by the bestseller news, but show them a picture of me with Clifford and suddenly I’m pretty cool.
I also got to meet (and be a total fangirl at) Aaron Becker, who created that amazing picture book Journey which I blogged about last time, so that was also very exciting! (Spoiler alert, Jonah’s friends: you’re getting SIGNED copies of this book for Christmas! Eeee hooray!)
For anyone in the New England area, don’t forget there are two chances to catch me this week:
(1) Thursday (the 14th) at Wellesley Books in Wellesley, MA, where I’ll be signing and doing a brief presentation alongside lots of great authors: Max Gladstone, N. Griffin, Bret Anthony Johnston, LJR Kelly, Ben and Beth Oak, Greg Ruth, and James Whitfield Thomson. Of those, I’ve only met Greg, but he is AWESOME (by which I mean funny, interesting, and super-talented), so I’m 100% sure all the others will be fabulous in person as well!
(2) Saturday (the 16th) at Water Street Books in Exeter, NH, where it’ll just be me talking about dragons and writing and characters and world-building and being a night owl and goodness knows what else, so please please come join me! (Bring questions! I love questions!)
I’ve also just signed up to do another, sort of unusual event on Saturday, November 30th (the Saturday after Thanksgiving) — it’s part of a very cool nationwide thing called Indies First that was conceived by Sherman Alexie, and I’ll be at the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge — I’m not sure yet what time, but probably in the afternoon, and I’ll definitely post that here once I know.
The idea is we (the authors) get to pretend to be booksellers and recommend books to YOU, any readers who happen to wander into the store (say, for holiday shopping?). So I’ve spent the last several days coming up with my list for the store — a list of books they’ll definitely have on hand for me to recommend — and by “coming up with” of course I mean “narrowing down” or at least “trying to narrow down”. Ack, so hard! There are so many books I think you should read! (Which reminds me I need to do my favorite books of the year post before the holidays, but Hanukkah is so early this year…hmmmmm…)
And I get to recommend picture books, too, hooray! I feel like I should bring along my kids, who have passionate adoring opinions to share about books, except they usually express them by pulling every book off our shelves and spreading them around the living room (and all the other rooms in the house), which I’m sure the Harvard Book Store would really appreciate. For a while the ground floor here was taken over by “Jonah’s Library,” wherein he had all his books organized in very specific piles (animal books, Fancy Nancy books, transportation books, Toot and Puddle books, Richard Scarry books, superhero chapter books, anthologies, etc.), and WOE BETIDE the mommy or the younger brother who tried to move any of them without the librarian’s permission!
Oh, and the store will have my books, too, in case you’d like to get one or a few of those (signed!). 🙂
OK, I’d better post this and go to bed so I can be bright-eyed and fascinating at the Wellesley Books event tomorrow . . . by the way, I know I totally failed on the “blog every day for a week” front which I hoped to do over Halloween, and I think it’s mighty hilarious that I even thought that could possibly happen in the same week that I was (a) planning and executing a Halloween school party for 26 preschoolers and (b) writing up an outline for a major writing project with no wiggle room in the deadline. (Not Wings of Fire! Another super-exciting thing I have to tell you about in its own blog, hopefully very soon!) Ha ha, me of the past! I applaud and also laugh at your optimism and inaccurate assessment of your own time management skills!
More soon (I hope!) . . .
Quote of the Day: “One’s chapeau provides the perfect opportunity for a profound fashion statement. Your hat should not merely say, ‘here is my head’ but rather it should convey a sense of allure, mystery, even intrigue. Here moi’s chapeau is saying, ‘Oui, I have time for one quick chocolate malted in that cafe with the umbrellas that have tables on their handles, but then I must board the Oriental Express for a rendezvous with the Duke of Candelabra in the lovely, yet sinister, Kingdom of Rutabagia.'” — Miss Piggy, Miss Piggy’s Guide to Life (as told to Henry Beard)