The Espressologist was sighted in the Pittsford, NY B&N Starbucks cafe -- but she's sipping on an ICED TEA instead of a coffee! Oh no!



Thanks for entering Deena!!

There is still time for you to take the Espressologist out for coffee too! Just read the details of the contest here and mail me a pic by 11/27.

First of all, Thing 1 wrote her first story today. It was this:

"A Princess"

And a princess
loved the prince.
The Prince
loved
the Princess.

The End.

So upon finding her writing this (she is five years old and very slow at writing so it probably felt like she'd written SHIVER by this point), I entered a motherly dialogue with her.

ME: That's a nice story.

THING 1: I skipped the Once Upon a Time. Because Once was hard to spell. And everyone knows that part anyway.

ME: True enough.

THING 1: It's a love story.

ME: A love story?

THING 1: In a love story, nobody figures anything out.

ME: *snorkles*

THING 1: But the prince loves the princess. And the princess loves the prince. I'm giving this to Grandma.

Anyway, I would like to point out that these views on starting the story where your plot begins (none of this Once Upon a Time stuff) and nothing but kissing going on in the way of plot is exactly how I came to write Shiver.

Out of the mouths of babes.

That aside, if you're in the Maryland/ D.C. area, I've been invited to sign at the National Press Club Book Fair tomorrow night from 5:30-8:30 p.m. in downtown D.C. With posh political luminaries. It is $5 to get in, but once you're in, there is 90 of us authorly types, including Chris Matthews, Gwen Ifill, a senator, Spike & Carla from Top Chef, and of course an author of werewolf kissing books. How can you stay away? I mean, seriously. if nothing else, it's the great start for a joke.

http://pubrants.blogspot.com/2009/11/really-good-might-not-be-enough.html

STATUS: Ugh. I’ve got 300 emails in my inbox.

What’s playing on the iPod right now? HAMMER AND A NAIL by Indigo Girls

I have to say that I’ve been shaking my head a lot lately. This market is just brutal.

Today I wrote a rejection letter to a really talented author. Previously published, had a really good manuscript but I honestly didn’t think I could sell it so passed on offering representation.

You know things are bad when as an agent, I’m passing on really good novels because currently I believe that really good might not be good enough in today’s market.

I really hope another agent takes it on and proves me wrong in a heartbeat. Is it odd to say that I’ll be really happy for the author if I see the sale announced on Deal Lunch? I’d really like to be proven wrong. I’d prefer it!

As part of the Winter Blog Blast Tour, the lovely Little Willow at Bildungsroman has posted this interview with me. Please check it out, along with this review of POSITIVELY.

And here is the complete WBBT 2009 schedule:

Monday
Jim Ottaviani at Chasing Ray
Courtney Sheinmel at Bildungsroman
Derek Landy at Finding Wonderland
Mary E. Pearson at Miss Erin
Megan Whalen Turner at HipWriterMama
Frances Hardinge at Fuse#8

Tuesday
Ann Marie Fleming at Chasing Ray
Laurie Faria Stolarz at Bildungsroman
Patrick Carman at Miss Erin
Jacqueline Kelly at HipWriterMama
Dan Santat at Fuse #8
Nova Ren Suma at Shelf Elf

Wednesday
Sy Montgomery Part 1 at Chasing Ray
Jacqui Robbins at Bildungsroman
Sarwat Chadda at Finding Wonderland
Cynthia Leitich Smith at HipWriterMama
Beth Kephart at Shelf Elf

Thursday
Sy Montgomery Part 2 at Chasing Ray
Laini Taylor at Shelf Elf
Jim DiBartolo at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
Amanda Marrone at Writing & Ruminating
Thomas Randall at Bildungsroman
Michael Hague at Fuse #8

Friday
Lisa Schroeder at Writing & Ruminating
Alan DeNiro at Shaken & Stirred
Joan Holub at Bildungsroman
Pam Bachorz at MotherReader
Sheba Karim at Finding Wonderland
Robin LaFevers at HipWriterMama

First off, I’d like to remind everyone of my event in Barrie this coming Saturday, November 21st! Stop by and chat, grab some swag, and get a book signed. Would love to see you!

Saturday, November 21st, 2:00 – 4:00pm
Chapters – Barrie
76 Barrie View Drive
Barrie, ON

I also have three new appearances to announce, as part of the 2009 Debs Holidaze Tour. I’ll be in New York on December 6th with several fellow Debs, and a bunch of Debs will be joining me here in Toronto in early January:

Sunday, December 6th, 1:00pm – 3:00pm
Books of Wonder
18 West 18th St.
New York, NY
(with Sarah Cross, Deva Fagan, Neesha Meminger, Kate Messner, Shani Petroff, Jon Skovron, and Michelle Zink)

Thursday, January 7th, 7:00pm – 9:00pm
Indigo – Yorkdale Shopping Centre
3401 Dufferin St.
Toronto, ON
(with R.J. Anderson and Neesha Meminger)

Saturday, January 9th, 2:00pm – 4:00pm
Indigo – Eaton Centre
220 Yonge St.
Toronto, ON
(with Neesha Meminger, Sarah Ockler, Rhonda Stapleton, and Lara Zielin)

For the full list of Holidaze tour dates, including Chicago and the San Francisco area, click here.

Hope to meet a bunch more of you in the next couple months!

Originally published at Megan Crewe - another world, not quite ours. You can comment here or there.

We fired up the random number generator and the Random Number Gods have spoken! The winner of this months' Debsness bag is:

learningtoread!!!

Congratulations! I will be contacting you for your mailing address shortly so we can get this Debsness bag into your hot little hands!

December 15, 2009 at 12:01am EST is your LAST chance to win! Stop back by and see us, and thank you again for celebrating with us!!

2009 DEBUTANTES' HOLIDAZE TOUR - Updated Itinerary!

New dates are highlighted in red!

NEW YORK

Dec. 6, 1-3 p.m.
Books of Wonder
18 West 18th St.
New York, NY
Including: Megan Crewe, Sarah Cross, Deva Fagan, Neesha Meminger, Kate Messner, Shani Petroff, Jon Skovron, Michelle Zink

CHICAGO

Dec. 5, 1-3 p.m.
Borders
161 N. Weber Road
Bolingbrook, IL
Including: Cynthea Liu, Saundra Mitchell, Aprilynne Pike, Kristina Springer, Darcy Vance, Lara Zielin

Dec. 5, 7-9 p.m.
The Book Cellar, Inc.
4736-38 North Lincoln Avenue
Chicago, IL
Including: Cynthea Liu, Saundra Mitchell, Aprilynne Pike, Kristina Springer, Darcy Vance, Lara Zielin

SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA

Dec. 5, 3-4 p.m
Borders
588 Francisco Blvd. West
San Rafael, CA
Including: Lauren Bjorkman, Cheryl Renee Herbsman, Malinda Lo, Sarah Quigley, J.A. Yang

Dec. 8, 7 p.m.
Menlo Park Public Library
800 Alma St.
Menlo Park, CA
Including: Lauren Bjorkman, Cheryl Renee Herbsman, C. Lee McKenzie, Sarah Quigley, J.A. Yang

Dec. 9, 12 p.m.
Petaluma High School*
201 Fair St.
Petaluma, CA
Including: Lauren Bjorkman, Cheryl Renee Herbsman, Malinda Lo, Sarah Quigley, J.A. Yang
* Open to the public, but visitors should check in at the school office when arriving

Dec. 12, 2-4 p.m.
Barnes & Noble
119 Colma Blvd.
Colma, CA
Including: Lauren Bjorkman, Cheryl Renee Herbsman, Malinda Lo, C. Lee McKenzie, Sarah Quigley, J.A. Yang

TORONTO

January 7, 7pm
Yorkdale Indigo
Yorkdale Mall
3401 Dufferin St.
Including: R.J. Anderson, Megan Crewe, Neesha Meminger

Jan. 9, 2 p.m.
Indigo
Eaton Centre
220 Yonge St.
Toronto, Ontario
Including: Megan Crewe, Neesha Meminger, Sarah Ockler, Rhonda Stapleton, Lara Zielin

Florida Marlins' Chris Coghlan named National League Rookie of the Year



Dude, I am SO happy about this. I loved watching Cogs develop over the course of the season and after the All-Star break, it really started becoming evident that he had an absolute legitimate shot at the RotY despite the fact that the Marlins are a bargain basement team and they never once played a nationally televised game, so the rest of the country had very little opportunity to see what Marlins fans (all twelve of us) got to see every day. Oh, and he did it playing a position he hadn't played since Little League and hitting in a completely unfamiliar spot in the order.

Just a few highlights:

On May 8, Coghlan made his big-league debut, going 2 for 4.

On May 10, in Denver, Coghlan made his first start for the Marlins in left, batting second.

On May 30, he took over for Emilio Bonifacio in the leadoff spot.

By the end of the season, Coghlan had emerged as not only one of the top rookies in the majors, but also one of the top leadoff hitters in either league, ending his inaugural campaign with a .321 average that place him sixth in the NL.

Only the New York Yankees' Derek Jeter had a higher on-base percentage than Coghlan's .397 figure among major-league leadoff hitters with at least 400 at bats. Jeter finished at .409.

Coghlan did most of his damage after the All-Star break when he hit. 372 and set rookie records not seen in decades.

His 113 hits after the break tied for the most by any NL hitter -- rookie or veteran -- in the past 45 seasons. His 47 hits in August were the most by a NL rookie in a single month since Wally Moon put up 52 in July of 1954. As if to prove that feat was no fluke, Coghlan had 47 more hits in September.

Coghlan became the first NL rookie in history to lead the league in hits after the Al-Star break.

I love when underdogs do well.

People frequently ask what happens during the holidays in the publishing world: if things slow down or if they speed up. Well, my response is that they do both. During this time of year, I find people are often making an effort to clear the decks before the end of the year. With Thanksgiving creeping up fast, and the various December holidays hard on its heels, there can be a certain amount of distraction. You know--food, shopping, cleaning, wrapping, relatives, travel plans, and so on. However, there's nothing more depressing than coming back to your desk after the first of the new year and finding a huge stack of old business waiting for your attention.

Does that mean you should not send out queries this time of year? Of course not. You should base your submissions schedule on your own state of readiness, not on whether you think an agent might be too busy to look at your project. The truth is, we're always busy, and you want to slot yourself into the queue as soon as you feel your work is polished and ready to go out into the world. Response time might be a little slower, but if you wait to query until January, then you'll still have a wait, and you'll be behind everyone who ignored the calendar. The most important thing is the quality of your writing; let that determine your submissions schedule, not the month of the year.

Hi everyone! I've been seeing some awesome covers (congrats!) and I thought I'd add mine to the mix. I FINALLY got permission to show off my FINAL final cover, so here it is.




I about fell over when I first saw it. :)

Saturday at the Faerie Fest and at Changing Hands went bonkers good... for the first time, ever, I had to go to the hotel after and actually ice my shoulder (from drawing). LOTS of happy fans....

Lots of school visits planned - then at Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego tomorrow; Vroman's in Pasadena on Wednesday; Every Picture Tells A Story in Santa Monica on Thursday, and Whale of a Tale in Irvine on Friday.

This weekend, Teen's padded computer laptop cover fell off her bed and into a corner. No problem, right? Except her bed is like this:

There is no way to get into that far corner, and the bed weighs hundreds of pounds. So I said, let's unwind a coat hanger and see if we can snag it.

One coat hanger wasn't long enough, so I hooked two together. It was hard going, so she held the flashlight and I fished around, scraping the coat hanger against the wall.

And eventually, it came into contact with one of these:

Boom! Flash of light! Most of the house went dark.

But:
- I didn't die. I didn't even get shocked.
- For a long while, it looked like we had fried the wires, but the third time was the charm on trying the circuit breaker, and we got everything back.
- And I even managed to snag her computer cover!

http://www.megcabot.com/diary/?p=1204

I’m back from the Miami Book Festival. Did you miss me?

I missed you. Except for those of you I saw at the fair. Which was AWESOME, by the way. I got to meet so many fantastic readers (as well as authors Sue Corbett, Peter Lerangis, ...

This week a number of authors will be interviewed around the blogosphere in the Winter Blog Blast tour.

Check out the tour schedule at Chasing Ray.

I will be featured on Kelly Fineman's blog, Writing & Ruminating, on Friday!

Happy reading!

So my bro is a poor PhD student with brilliant ideas about plastic solar cells. He wrote up a blog entry at the link below, and if he gets enough votes on it, he can win some much needed cash and I can get an Xmas present from him this year! :) If you have a second, just click on the link, then click on the grey VOTE box on the right. Thanks! I'll repay your kindness if you ever need some internet votes some day! :)

http://www.scientificblogging.com/intellectual_clutter/blog/plastic_solar_cells_science_expectations_and_challenges_0

About the books

Black is for Beginnings is a companion book to the BLUE IS FOR NIGHTMARES series.

Prophetic nightmares. Near-brushes with death. Killers pursuing her and her friends. Stacey Brown knows that being a hereditary witch isn’t all it's cracked up to be. BLACK continues the harrowing adventures of Stacey and Jacob in the wake of Jacob's brush with death. Ever since he lost his memory, Jacob hasn't been able to remember Stacey - his own soul mate. He leaves Massachusetts, returning to his childhood home in Colorado, hoping to jog his memory. What he remembers is Kira, his ex-girlfriend. As Jacob works to piece together his past, will there be room for Stacey in his future?

Laurie says, “When my editor approached me with the idea of writing a graphic novel, I was very intrigued because it gave me the opportunity to not only try something new, but to really picture the book as a movie.  I have a background in screenwriting and wrote BLACK IS FOR BEGINNINGS in screenplay format, adding in ideas for illustrations and sidebars. It was an absolute thrill to write – to have the opportunity to work with an illustrator, and to see my work come to life in this way.  BLACK IS FOR BEGINNINGS does not take the place of a regular prose novel in the series. It is a companion piece, complimenting the entire series as a whole.”

Deadly Little Lies is the sequel to Deadly LIttle Secret, (the first book in the TOUCH series). It starts up a few months after Ben’s departure at the end of the first book. Camelia’s spent those months researching everything she can find on psychometry (the ability to sense things through touch).

Ben returns to school, but he remains aloof, and Camelia can't get close enough to share her secret with him. Camelia makes the painful decision to let him go and move on. Adam, the hot new guy at Knead, seems good for her in ways Ben wasn't. But when Camelia and Adam start dating, a surprising love triangle results. A chilling sequence of events uncovers secrets from Ben’s past – and Adam's. Someone is lying, and it's up to Camelia to figure out who – before it's too late.

What the critics are saying
"The half-million readers of Laurie Faria Stolarz’s paranormal mystery series will be happy with this shift to graphic style, offering as it does the pleasure of putting faces on characters, its visualized eeriness and vibrant displays of emotion...The graphic style allows Stolarz to distill the story while simultaneously dropping hints about Stacey and Jacob’s supernatural talents, luring new readers to the series." - Kirkus Reviews

"Taking Stolarz’s Blue Is for Nightmares series into the graphic-novel realm is a bold idea, and it pays off in this morbidly entertaining and surprisingly romantic page-turner." - Booklist

About the author
Laurie Faria Stolarz is the author of several popular young adult novels, including Deadly Little Secret, Deadly Little Lies, Project 17, Bleed, and the bestselling BLUE IS FOR NIGHTMARES series, which has sold over 500,000 copies worldwide. Stolarz's titles have been part of the Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers list, the Top Ten Teen Pick list, and YALSA's Popular Paperback list, all through the American Library Association. Born and raised in Salem, Massachusetts, Stolarz attended Merrimack College and received an MFA in creative writing from Emerson College in Boston. For more information, visit Laurie's website at www.lauriestolarz.com.

I asked, Laurie answered
A. What's the scariest thing that's ever happened to you?  Bonus question:  have you used it, in any way, in a book?
L. When I was doing the research for PROJECT17, I went to the abandoned mental institution on which the book is based.  Growing up, the former mental hospital was rumored to be haunted (there are actually unmarked graves on the premises).  Once I really started delving into the research, visiting the place took on a whole new meaning (knowledge really IS power).  I was so horrified that I couldn’t sleep at night.  So, yes, I have used this fear to write a book.


A. Mystery writers often give their characters an unreasoning fear - and then make them face it.  Do you have any phobias, like fear of spiders or enclosed spaces? 
L. I’m the biggest wuss ever, even though I write this scary stuff, too.  You name it – bugs, critters, haunted houses, dark places, basements, attics, creaking noises at night, horror flicks, abandoned places, the list goes on and on.  I use all of this in my writing.


A. Do you have a favorite mystery book, author, or movie?  
L. I love Stephen King and Robert Cormier.  I also love The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold and Our Secret History by Donna Tartt.  As for movies, I love the Scream trilogy, though I have to watch most of it with a pillow over my eyes.  I also like I Know What You Did Last Summer (but again with the pillow).  I’m not into the mega-horror stuff that’s out now.  If I watched any of that, I’m not even joking when I say I wouldn’t be sleeping for days.


A. At its heart, every story is a mystery.  It asks why someone acts the way they did - or maybe what will happen next.  What question does your book ask?
L. What happens when you fall in love with someone who could possibly kill another, including you?


A. Is there a mystery in life that you are still trying to figure out?
L. I think there are so many mysteries in one’s life.  Unraveling those mysteries and getting to the answers – and finding new mysteries along the way – is what we’re meant to do I believe.