I took  some pictures of the B&N event this afternoon on my cell phone to post here, but when I got home from that (after running several errands) not only were the pictures missing, so were all my phone numbers and pretty much everything on the phone, and it wouldn’t connect to any service. It’s like I got hit with a personal EMP.
Did all the normal revive-your-phone bit, called Verizon, and it turns out this phone just sucks (it’s a refurbished replacement) and I have to go get another new one.
So, sorry about no pictures. It was a good event, and we’re grateful that the store invited us. Here’s hoping I can get a new phone before leaving for Atlanta, because I can’t imagine doing a trade show without a cell. It makes it so much easier to coordinate all those people.
Thankfully, I’ve been using the online backup service that downloads my address book daily or weekly or something, and all I’ll have to do is get a new phone and I can have all that restored–though I won’t get the pictures back, or any ringtones I bought (don’t think I did, since the 3 I bought on the last phone disappeared with the replacement), or my text messages (which I rarely do, but the ones I have I’d like to keep, especially the ones from 411 for numbers I never remember to program into my phone). And all my calls are going to voicemail rather than out into the void, so I’ll be able to call anyone back. I’m not ignoring anyone, I promise!

Whoa.

Whoa…

Just watched the first episode of Dr. Who season 4.

Whoa.

Yeah. It’s that good. I think you should start watching Dr. Who if you haven’t yet. This might be the best show on TV right now.

Also, just saw Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, and that’s also really good. Some great storytelling, combined with original characterization and some nice surprises. Definitely one to see.

Also: Lost? It wasn’t doing so hot for a while there, but I must admit catching up online all at once helped to put things together, and now I’m back into the swing of things.

And Supernatural last night–also quite hilarious. 

And Ugly Betty–still pretty good.

Are we seeing a pattern here? I’m getting out of the house tomorrow.

Actually, getting out of the house and doing a bookstore event. If you’re a teacher in the Seattle area (or anyone in the Seattle area interested in books), stop by the Northgate B&N tomorrow afternoon. Sasquatch Books will be there earlier in the afternoon, and I’ll be there representing Mirrorstone from 2-4. Have a good weekend!

“From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: After reading Forged by Fire, Sharon Draper’s novel about sexual abuse, a seventh-grade girl reported her phys-ed teacher, who has just pled guilty to molesting the girl and her three sisters.”

Perhaps I’m a little late to the discussion of this, as I haven’t had time to keep up on people’s blogs lately, but did you hear about this? After May 1, half the airlines I know of are going to start charging for checking a second bag. That means I’m screwed at Christmas, when I often go home for over a week (large bag) and take presents and nearly the kitchen sink with me (another large bag). I had joked about this day coming, but I’m still a little surprised it is. This is only going to make me less likely to travel by plane. Which means less likely to travel, period, because I ain’t driving anywhere either. Trains, perhaps? Bah. Guess I’ll ship presents by mail when I go home for Christmas this year.

Wherefore art thou, high speed rail?*

In other news, in the first week of May I’ll be down in Atlanta for the International Reading Association annual conference
. I really like this conference. I went for the first time last year when it was held in Toronto. I never need to take a whole lot with me for trade shows–unless we’ve forgotten something, but then we usually FedEx big boxes of stuff to the show floor–but I always end up bringing a suitcase full of books home with me. But not if I have to pay $25 for it.

*Well, that would only help me with about half the country. Seattle to Atlanta, for example, not so much.

 

I think the LOLcat caption of this one should be “Noa’s Ark kitteh not ready to sale” or something. The intent was to do a Noah’s Ark animals-as-sailors thing, as I had some sailor capes and some animal heads, and I was trying to figure out just how perverse I could get with my ever-patient cats.

It really was torture the kitty night–I couldn’t get both of them in the same shot together at the same time looking right.

There’s a new Writing Excuses podcast up today, as there is every week. They’ve had some good conversations and I think this is turning out to be a good resource for writers. So if you haven’t stopped by, try it out. 

Next week, they’ll be interviewing me, so don’t miss it. I’ll post a link when it goes up. In the meantime, there’s the YALSA podcast from Support Teen Literature Day in which Kelly Czarnecki interviews me about fantasy, teens reading, and contests. I can’t seem to do a direct link, so look for #47. Heck, listen to them all–they’re also a good resource for librarians especially, but also anyone interested in teens and their literature, because they talk about all sorts of important issues relating to YA lit and serving teens.

My friend* is currently traveling in India visiting another friend. He’s been to Laos several times (where he speaks the language, hence the Lao on the blog) and to several other countries but never to India. The other friend is working on a documentary for a small school for a few months, so they’re meeting up and doing some touring at the end of her stay.

His last two entries have had me rolling with laughter. I want to go there and experience this myself someday–though perhaps without the getting sick part. Or even closer to home–just going somewhere I haven’t before, perhaps doing a world tour by visiting all my old roommates from Mexico, Brazil, Canada, England, Korea, and Belgium. (I seem to be forgetting someone.)

Speaking of traveling, I’ve been thinking of going to Mexico for a while. I finally got back in touch with an old roommate from there, who is now working in the Benemerito School in Mexico City. And I have been looking for her email all
night, and it seems to have disappeared. Did I forget to move it from the junk mail box? I hope not. (Even if I never make a trip down there I wanted to write her back!) But that means I’m back at square one at getting a hold of her, and LinkedIn seems to have closed the loophole where I could send her brother an email without subscribing if I tried to add him as a friend. Google is failing to find me a homepage for the school (Benemerito de las Americas) and my Spanish is rudimentary at best. Can anyone suggest a good way to find someone in another country, where you go to find that kind of information? It’s hard enough in the U.S., even with phone directories online. I’m lost when it comes to searching in another country (unless you’re talking about family history–then I do much better).

*Did I mention how much I envy all my friends who have traveled the world like this? I’ve been to Canada and Scotland, so that’s a start, but I have plans for something fun soon. There was a sale on Mexico flights last month and I’m kicking myself that I didn’t just up and go.

If you haven’t seen today’s PW Children’s Bookshelf, go take a look at more coverage of Operation Teen Book Drop. (Scroll down to “In Brief.”)

see more crazy cat pics

This week I’ve been up to my ears in the duties that most people outside of the writing/publishing world think that an editor spends all her time at: proofreading and copyediting. The truth is that the copyeditor and proofreader are different people from the editor, and that I as the editor do a lot of what might be termed managerial duties at this stage–sending the manuscript out and receiving it back in, accepting and rejecting changes, and then keeping an eye out as I’m going through those changes for anything the author, copyeditor, proofreader, and I might have missed in previous passes.

It’s actually kind of fun, but in a much different way than earlier on in the life of a manuscript. This step in the process really brings in my detail-oriented side. Comparing details and thinking about minutiae perhaps might not be as exciting as the developmental stage, but it’s an important step in the life of a book. The extra eyes of the copyeditor and proofreader are vital to making sure that I haven’t missed typos, grammatical problems, blue eyes here and green eyes there on the same character, and other mistakes–mistakes that readers will always catch. 

The thing about being an editor is that you’re looking at different versions of the same text four, sometimes five or more times. When I’m first editing, I’m not looking for grammatical problems because if a character isn’t working, the text might change dramatically. Not to mention that typos can be introduced in the course of even small revisions, so it’s best to leave the detail work until the big picture is taken care of. 

Perhaps likening this to the installation of a new bathtub will help: you don’t caulk the seals of the old tub and then rip everything out and put in the new tub, because you’ll just have to recaulk (can you tell I just learned how to caulk a tub last weekend?). So leaving the details until the third or fourth pass is necessary. 

But that means that by the fourth time I’m reading it, the eye can easily elide over mistakes, even very obvious ones. This is why another pair of eyes is crucial to catch those last few errors. And then it comes back to me, the one who knows the project best (on the publisher’s side–it also goes back to the author for one last look), to be sure that it all comes together.

So that’s what I’m doing this week–working on bringing it all together for a couple
books in various stages.