From the Nonexistent Harry Potter Prequel

J.K. Rowling’s been busy as a beaver lately. First, there was her commencement speech at Harvard. Then there were all those late night visits to Maureen. And now, she’s posted an 800-word excerpt of the “prequel I’m not working on” at Waterstone’s.*

To read the handwritten note:

1) Go to http://www.waterstoneswys.com/
2) Wait for the Flash-based portion of the site to load
2) Click the “Read our authors’ stories” link
3) Click JKR’s name from the list that appears

Be sure to read both sides!

In related news, my favorite comment from Sailor Boy, who has been reading Rites of Spring (Break)**:

“I knew Poe had a pet snake named Lord Voldemort. What I didn’t realize was that he actually is a Slytherin.”

To which I laughed out loud, then heartily agreed. Poe is a Slytherin, most definitely. Then we had a conversation about the Sorting Hat-potential of all the other characters in my series. He thinks that Amy is a Hufflepuff, which makes some sense to me, though there’s an argument that all of them, just by dint of being at Eli, are Ravenclaws. Alternately, that all of them, just by dint of being in Rose & Grave, are Slytherin.

So what do you think?

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* Thanks to Geoff for giving me the head’s up!
** Out in two short weeks!

Confessions of a Book Pack Rat

There’s always so much to do when you get home from a vacation. Like, unpack, and then look around in dismay at all the stuff (mail, email, bills, work, laundry — and seriously, there was more laundry, which makes me wonder what species of brownie or sprite was wearing my clothes when I was in the Caribbean) that somehow piled up while you were gone.

So Sailor Boy* and I spent a little while doing housekeeping and bookkeeping yesterday. And we came to the rather unfortunate conclusion that we have no more space on our bookshelves. The shelves are packed, two and three deep, stacked tight with all of our books — old school textbooks, from both undergrad and grad school, his novels, and my gazillion, fabajillion books.

My solution: buy another bookshelf. SB’s solution: Get rid of some of my books.

You’d think he’d know me better, after all these years.

His argument is that a good proportion of these shelves (or rows on shelves) are dedicated to TBR (i.e., “to be read”) and that a lot of them haven’t moved from that position in the last three and a half years. If I didn’t read these books in three-and-a-half years, I’m not going to read them now, he argues.

I say that’s untrue. After all, it was almost two years after Gina Black encouraged me to read Flowers from the Storm that it finally floated to the top of the pile and caught my interest. (It was great! Thanks, Gina!)

But I can admit that there are a lot of these books on the shelves that I am never going to read. I get a ton of books every year at conferences or trade shows (I have ARCs from 2006 BEA, books that might not even be in print anymore, that I have not read), and they are not all to my taste or interest.

But SB is afraid, with good reason, that if I start going through them and putting them into piles of “may read someday” and “will admittedly probably never read” — well, one of those piles just isn’t going to go very far. Because I like to believe I’ll read them all, someday. It’s someone’s book, that they labored long and hard over.

What to do, what to do…
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* For those of you following, Sailor Boy read both Under the Rose and Rampant this weekend, then lamented that he hadn’t brought Rites of Spring (Break) with us. Have you put in your order?

More amusing typos

I know I’ve talked before about my rather amusing typos and errors and the valiant attempts made by my editors to justify them. You know, rather than just admit that I have a problem with typing to sound, or just forgetting my character’s name mid-paragraph, or am actually writing a book about killer uniforms.

Sigh.

Amusing mistake of the day:

I have a character in my latest book who is Austrian. In my head, she is Austrian, has always been Austrian, has never been anything but Vienna born-and-bred.

So when I got a note from my editor wondering why she was speaking German rather than Czech, I was a bit taken aback. Do they speak Czech in Austria? I was pretty darn sure it was German. (Runs off to double check.)

Oh, no, it’s German, all right. My editor’s problem was that I’d listed said character’s hometown as Prague. Why? I have no earthly idea. I don’t even remember doing it. It is possible, in some early draft of the book, I’d made up a character from Prague, and somehow, in subsequent cut-and-pastes, she got attached to my Austrian. Or I may have had Prague on the brain (lately, it’s Copenhagen — more on that later).

Anyway, mea culpa. Off to listen to some Mozart. (Not so much penance, but.)

Wait til you hear the one about the lorry!

Rites of Spring (Break) on Tour!

Still in the Caribbean. But while we wait for our plane, and for the “go live” date of my brand-new website, I thought we might talk about some of my upcoming appearances for the release of Rites of Spring (Break).

*Launch Party*
MONDAY, JUNE 30, 7 PM
Borders Books
11301 Rockville Pike 11301 Rockville Pike
Kensington, MD 20895
301-816-1067

*Bookstore Anniversary with Nora Roberts*
SATURDAY, JULY 12, 1-3 PM
With Nora Roberts (and other authors)
Turn the Page Bookstore (13th Anniversary Celebration)
18 N. Main St.
Boonsboro MD 21713
ttpbooks.com

*Virginia Signing*
WEDNESDAY, JULY 16, 7 PM
Barnes & Noble
1851 Fountain Drive 1851 Fountain Drive
Reston, VA 20190
703-437-9490

And, because I know you guys love teasers, a thrilling excerpt from Amy’s newest adventures.

Island-Bound

That’s me, today. Unfortunately, I am headed toward an island that’s being hit by a tropical storm.

Travel luck strikes again.

Pray for a swift break-up or movement of Tropical Storm Alma. Kicking myself.

In other news, I received my first trade review for Rites of Spring (Break) and boy is it spoilerific! So filled with spoilers, in fact, that this is all I can share:

An ideal summer read, whether island-bound or not. — Booklist.

Order it today!

Adventures and Productions

(My pal Vicki is starting on a quest in the fabulous world of manuscript submissions — head on over and wish her luck! Sailor Boy and I are heading on our own adventure this weekend. It’s entirely possible that we’re nuts, but here goes.)

I’ve been meaning to post about this for a while (in the sense that I’ve had this jpg on my desktop forever), but I keep forgetting. Who here has read the Shopaholic series? I had a really tough time with the first one, in that is scared the daylights out of me. I didn’t go to Starbucks for a month.

Now, I’ve never been in credit card debt. School loan debt? Yes, ridiculous amounts. Credit cards: not so much. I use my card in place of cash and pay off the balance every month. In fact, the year I graduated from college, this was a major problem, since my $500 limit wasn’t quite covering my monthly needs in Manhattan, and the company was refusing to up my limit, as I was “not a good credit customer.” I had no idea what they meant, since, according to what my parents had always taught me — I had great credit. Turns out, having great credit does not make you a good customer of the credit card company. So my friend convinced me (and it took a lot of convincing) to leave a small balance on my card for one month. Lo and behold, they upped my limit several thousand dollars.

Yes, it’s a ridiculous world we live in. Which brings us back to Becky Bloomwood.

Unlike a lot of chick lit heroines, I couldn’t get behind what I viewed as her extremely self-destructive behavior. I couldn’t identify with her, which I believed was the kiss of death for a book in this genre. However, I found her adventures hilarious, and I kept reading. And that’s when all that fancy lit analysis that had put me in school loan debt came flitting to the surface and I realized that though the Shopaholic series was packaged as chick lit, it was actually social satire. Becky Bloomwood was not an “everywoman” heroine like Bridget Jones or Amy Haskel. She was, in the literary sense, a clown. Not Helena, but Bottom.

Once I realized these things, I enjoyed the series much more. In fact, I loved it. Kinsella’s writing is brisk and amusing, and her take on the credit crisis is funny because it’s so spot on. My favorite was Shopaholic and Sister, where we got the fabulous foil of the frugal sister, Jessica. Though not quite as unkind to frugality as she is to shopaholism, Kinsella does have a few barbs toward those who make it a religion

So now they are making Shopaholic a movie, starring Isla Fisher, who I think is a great choice, as she played such a fabulous clown in Wedding Crashers. (No, I haven’t seen her in anything else.) I’ve heard that they are relocating the film to New York, which is a wee bit appalling, since I think that of the two, Shopaholic is way more relentlessly British than Bridget Jones’s Diary was. All the stores she shopped in and the upper-class git she dates named Tarquin of all things, and etc. But I guess they can just change Liberty’s to Barney’s or whatever.

No, what really gets to me is the clothes. Listen to a description of a standard Becky Bloomwood outfit:

I’m wearing all black — but expensive black. The kind you fall into. A simple sleeveless dress from Whistles, the highest of Jimmy Choos, a pair of uncut amethyst earrings. And please don’t ask how much it all cost, since that’s irrelevant.

In this scene, she also states that she’s spritzed with Chanel.

The point is, Becky’s wardrobe is classic. She’s all about brand-print scarves and cashmere sweaters and designer black dresses and Armani suits.

And then this is what they put her in for the movie:

Well, they got the clown part right, at least.

Seriously, what’s with that? I heard the costume designer is the same chick who did Carrie on Sex and the City, which is pretty obvious, but Becky is not Carrie. She doesn’t dress like Carrie. She’s not a Carrie knock-off. I don’t think Becky Bloomwood would ever wear this outfit. I’m hoping it’s some sort of elaborate dream sequence.

Keeping my fingers crossed.

“They don’t like water”

This is my parents’ puppy. They are “waterproofing” him.

I don’t think he’s a born water dog. Poor little thing.

Note how EVERYONE gets a puppy but me!

I love the loc

Lovely, lovely day.

I may have mentioned that I was dog-sitting this weekend. I have serious dog envy, folks. Now, I’ve known Gracie for seven or eight years now (a fraction of the time I have known her human, who is my best friend) so we understand each other pretty well. Gracie is gorgeous (she’s a random-breed that, back in Florida, would have been called a “Florida red dog” and we keep seeing “Gracies” all over town), well-behaved, spoiled rotten, and a little princess. She sits around with her paws crossed. And she growls whenever she doesn’t get her way, deep in her throat, like a little lion.

And I mean when ever she doesn’t get her way. Like, after I’ve taken her for her evening walk, if I dare to refill her water bowl before getting food in her dish. Or if I wake her up past her bedtime. Or if I sit on her side of the couch. Or if I don’t scratch her neck for the appropriate number of hours.

Love that dog.

But alas, her humans came home today, so I am again petless.

This morning I went to the Library of Congress, and I got my research card, which I find rather more exciting than you might think about the whole “getting a library card” process. Strangely enough, it was a far more simple process to get into the Library of Congress than it is to get into my own local library. But the LOC Madison building is this vast, windowless, monolithic slab of marble downtown, where every floor is zoned in colors and the staff give directions like “walk to the end of this hall, then turn right, walk to the end of that hall, go past all the reds, and when you hit the blues, that’s where Room 140 is.”

The main LOC building is one of my favorites in all of Washington.

After I got lost trying to get my card (process is simple, fun, and organized), I got lost trying to find the lecture hall where Melissa Marr was speaking about folklore and incorporating same into modern stories. Great speech. I know she’s a once and future teacher, and I can see why — she’s such a natural. I always sound like a doofus when speaking to strangers.

Or even not strangers. I completely forgot my whole spiel at my wedding — all I got out was “I’m so excited to marry you — let’s do it right now!” Still kicking myself over that one.

I was one of the few non-librarians present, and I had a great conversation with the librarians about manga, and steampunk, and why publishers change formats mid-series. Afterwards, the man in charge of the presentation invited me to lunch, so I got to hang out with Melissa, a few librarians, and a Lit PhD candidate, and learn more about her upcoming projects and Harper. Rebecca, the student, is writing a thesis on Rumor Theory, which I wish I’d gotten to chat with her about more, since it sounds so intriguing.

Also, a great band name.

This afternoon, I had a nice long chat with my YA editor about the final tweaks on Rampant, the state of romantic comedy, unicorns we have known, whether or not SB should read my books, and Rites of Spring (Break) — OUT IN A MONTH!!!!!! — an ARC of which she read on her vacation. (She’s a fan — not an editor — of my adult books.)

I’m a little scared of my two editors ever meeting. That much awesome in one place would surely cause a rift in the space-time continuum, right?

Then I had pizza with my best friend, her husband, and Gracie. She was very sweet to me, perhaps trying to show her humans what a good babysitter I was. Or, you know, apologize for the growling.

The Friends and Family Plan

One of the really nice things about WordPress* is that I can write blog posts in advance and them schedule them to appear, so on days when I can’t check in — not even to change something from “draft” to “published” — we can already have posts raring to go. Just think of it — there will be no more two-week long dry spells like in January, where you heard nothing as I sludged, enfeebled and sick with some sort of named British flu bug (the Brits like to name every “thing that’s going around”) across the continent of Europe in search of the perfect settings for Rampant.

Speaking of Rampant, I got an email from a friend today reminding me that she’s been waiting for this book for over three years, and she still has to wait another 12 months. And I feel for her, truly I do. I feel for her decidedly more than I feel for the person who was standing behind Sailor Boy in line at the cafeteria three years ago when he was describing the book to one of his classmates, and who said, “What is this book called and where can I buy it?”

I often wonder about this complete stranger, and whether she will remember the 1L talking about his girlfriend’s fantasy novel and connect it, sometime in 2009, with Rampant. That would be nice, I think.

Meanwhile, both she and my friend are going to have to wait a year. Because no, I don’t have the ARC. I also can’t promise anyone one, since I don’t know if I’ll have giveaway ARCs in my possession. And it wouldn’t be for a couple of months, anyhow. When I know, you’ll know. Promise.

I am, however, making a single, self-made ARC, which is neither easy nor inexpensive, but that I promised to someone very special so he could read it on his upcoming vacation. He had to beg a lot.

And he’s my dad. So if you aren’t my dad, share a comparable amount of genetic material, or are currently married to me, the answer is no. Sorry.

Currently, there are seven people who have read the full manuscript: Me, Kristin (HC editor), Ruta (HC), Deidre (Agent), Carrie, Justine, and Marley. Actually, there may be more at Harper; I don’t know. And there’s someone else at the agency reading it right now. But that’s it.

Sailor Boy has not read it. Nor has he read Rites of Spring (Break). I know, shocking. His argument is that he is present while I am writing it, and hears me alternately groaning or giggling about the process, so it’s almost like he already knows what happens. It’s a bit like being a fan of a baseball team without watching any games, but maybe he likes the uniform or something. He does promote it to random people in the cafeteria, after all.

But it makes me wonder about the friends and family plan. I encouraged everyone I know to read my first book. People who don’t generally read novels about cute co-eds who say “Dude” and talk about how Everything They Needed to Know About Relationships They Learned From Jane Austen.** People who don’t read novels, full stop. People who wouldn’t be caught dead with something pink, and that’s including their steaks. My dad and brothers read it. My uncles read it. Heck, my childhood dentist read it.

But I don’t think it’s a statement about me or our mutual respect and affection if they decline to read it. After all, I’m sure I’m not so keen on said dentist’s articles for the Journal of American Dental Health.*** It’s my job. Not everyone has to be “into” my job.

Let’s go back to my dad. Like most people , his first reaction to “I’m writing a book about killer unicorns” was best described as “Whaaaaa?” But once I gave him the full-court pitch, he became quite enthusiastic, and has maintained this enthusiasm ever since. He’s read all of my books, and has said, several times, that he’s especially excited about Rampant, which he thinks is “more his style” than the chick lit.****

Followed up by the repeated requests for the extra-special ARC for his vacation. Isn’t that sweet?

SB is similarly excited. He pitches the story to anyone who will sit still enough to listen. He did it today, in fact. But he hasn’t read it. Which is too bad, because I think that this is also “more his style.”*****

Should SB read my books? I don’t know, what do you think?

THIS IS WHERE THE POLL WOULD BE IF I KNEW HOW TO MAKE POLLS WORK ON WORDPRESS. SINCE I DO NOT, PLEASE CLICK HERE TO VOTE.

“Others” and explanations in the comments section.

* Those of you who have emailed to say their offices block WordPress, never fear. It’s getting dedicated server space shortly.

** I’d go ahead and claim this title/premise, but I’m pretty sure Karen Joy Fowler already did, and made a mint.

*** Disclaimer: I actually don’t know if my old dentist writes articles, or indeed if this publication even exists.

**** Keeping in mind, of course, that this is the man who named me after Mrs. Emma Peel (I narrowly escaped the moniker Leia.)

***** Keeping in mind, of course, that this is the man who, despite his constant reminders to pack light during our backpacking excursion through Oceania, thought nothing of bringing a complete omnibus version of The Lord of the Rings.

Big Changes Are Afoot

Get ready… (a hint) — yes, I know htat you are reading this post AT wordpress…

In other news, my friend Justine gave me a heads up as to a new review of Secret Society Girl on the Book Blog, Bookshelves of Doom. My favorite quote?

This book almost got me hit by a car.

Every writer likes to hear that one! Read the whole thing here!