Happy Belated New Year

Yes, I am the lamest blogger on Earth. In fact, I'm not even typing this. My husband is typing as I am nursing Romy. This is how it's gotta be. So, here's the latest...

INTO THE WILD NERD YONDER is pretty much ready to go. My editor sent it to me for a final run through before they print up the galleys. I, of course, put that off til the very last minute. And once I started, I realized that there were things on many pages that I wanted to change. Not huge things. A word here, a sentence there, an occasional paragraph or two. But I think I definitely improved the quality. I took out adjectives that I saw I repeated, and I think I added more humor. Time will tell, I suppose. You'll have to be the judge. The book comes out this fall. I will keep you posted.

Ever since I started going to conferences, I have an addiction to fancy hotels. It's because you get such good deals on expensive deals when you go to conferences. American Library Association is coming to Chicago this summer. Which is so awesome because, since I'm not on the Selected Audiobooks Committee anymore, I haven't been to an ALA in what seems like a while (though it may just have been a year). This ALA is triply exciting because: 1) I have Romy to cart around which will be fun. We can get all the children's book illustrators to sign for her. 2) I'll get to see all of my librarian friends that I've missed so much. 3) Not only will the paperback of GET WELL SOON be coming out, but so will INTO THE WILD NERD YONDER as well at Matt's first author/illustrator picture book TROUBLE GUM!

Oh, I forgot I was talking about hotels...

Originally, I booked us a room at the Peninsula. This is, like, tre fancy. Normally, a $500 a night hotel. However, after some consideration, in seeing that it's so far north and we'd rather stay closer to Millenium Park, we switched hotels to someplace less than five-star.

James Preller, author of the upcoming MIGHTY CASEY (illustrated by my wonderful husband, Matthew Cordell), and prolific blogger, gave me a nice shout-out on his blog. You may know James from his popular series JIGSAW JONES, or his recent YA novel, SIX INNINGS. He gave me some delightful praise, with the Butterfly Award.


Which I now, shall pass on to my favorite blog in the world, MATTHEWCORDELLBLOGS. This is an illustrator to keep an eye on! Three books coming out this year alone. Boy's on fire. In addition to MIGHTY CASEY and TROUBLE GUM, look for the adorable TOOT TOOT ZOOM! by Phyllis Root in April.

I return to work in a little over three weeks (sigh). I think it will be ok, but I'll miss Romy terribly. And I'm a bit scared about the lack of sleep. I'm sure there'll be some tears. But there will be six weeks until spring break. And after that, the home stretch til summer. I like to think of summer on these days when it's -12 degrees outside. But summer wouldn't be what it is without these -12 days, so I don't mind so much.

Thank you to Matt for typing. See you in a few...