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As most of you know, us Southerns are pretty much shut down due to six inches of snow.

We never get snow so basically we are all trapped inside - killing each other, renting movies, and eating junk.

But......

I'm poking my head out of the snow for a minute to wish my good friend Beth Revis a wonderful launch day today.

I met Beth online a couple years ago way before we had agents. When we each probably had less than 10 followers and a dream. I loved meeting her finally in person this fall for drinks and am happy to see her day finally here after all the struggles and hard work.

Across the Universe is hitting the stores and everyone needs to go get this book. I got an ARC early last fall and loved the whole creativity and world building around this book.

As the spaceship Godspeed travels toward a new earth, the lives of 100 cryogenically frozen settlers hang in the balance after someone endeavors to quietly murder them. The other passengers aboard the ship have never known life outside its walls and are enslaved by the machinations of Eldest, their tyrannical leader, who divides them into three distinct classes. When Amy, a frozen settler from earth, survives being thawed in a murder attempt, she immediately bonds with Elder, Godspeed's lone teen and future leader. Amy’s individuality, her rebellion, and her fierce desire for freedom, inspire Elder to act on his own doubts and defy Eldest--his mentor and keeper--with shocking results.
The book's web site launches today so go check out the space ship blueprints! So cool.

Or check out all the stuff going on at Beth's site.

Happy Book Bday Beth! Can't wait to see you soar to the stars - at Godspeed :)

Ill announce all the ARC winners later this week after I dig myself out of the ice.

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Morning.

I couldn’t have asked for a better day for the Christmas e-release of my debut novel, DRIVEN. Not sure what the weather is like where you live, but here we have soft falling snow (not enough to make driving nutty or force the shovels out of storage–just pretty to watch as it falls). All in all I’m in a very Christmasy mood which I would like to share with you.

Soon, Amazon should be posting the Kindle version of DRIVEN for all to purchase (I’ll post the link as soon as it’s live). In the meantime, I would like to invite you all to a different kind of Christmas party–A virtual book launch party. Here’s the skinny:

When: Thursday, December 2, 2010 (yup, tomorrow) from 7 – 8pm (CST)

Where: DRIVEN‘s Facebook Fan Page (click here and you’ll be taken right to it). You’ll need to “like” the page to participate in the give-a-ways and the discussions.

Why: There will be gifts given away every ten minutes, time to ask the author about the publishing journey and the cast of characters (among other things), and did I mention gifts? (Oh yeah, it’s Christmas–I love Christmas)

What: Here’s the gift list–Two copies of Sandi Rog’s THE MASTER’S WALL, A copy of UNLOCKED by Karen Kingsbury, Brandilyn Collins RAYNE TOUR Trilogy (yup all three), one of the first paperback copies of DRIVEN, and a $25 gift certificate to Amazon.com.

Hope to see you there!

No Calorie e-Cookies.

After teaching all day, then heading straight to my favorite coffee shop for this afternoon's GIANNA Z. launch party, and signing books for two hours straight...I am pretty much out of words tonight.  Pictures will probably do a better job anyway, of capturing the brilliant fun and sheer joy of sharing this book launch with such amazing friends, colleagues, and students. 














Thanks so, so much to everyone who stopped by today - it was an afternoon I'll never forget.

Yesterday's launch party for THE BRILLIANT FALL OF GIANNA Z. at Flying Pig Books was...well...it was the stuff launch party dreams are made of.  So many kids, teachers, readers, and friends, along with a great place for a party -- the beautiful, light-filled Flying Pig Loft.  We got there early to set up...





We had a drawing for a free school/library presentation.  (Mrs. Althoff, congratulations!  My son drew your name out of the bag.  I'll email you today so we can start figuring out the details!)



I was excited that the silicone bracelets I ordered - red and gold swirled with the book title embossed - arrived on time!  And those are Nonna's famous funeral cookies from the book on the plate with the candy corn.  (If you weren't there to eat some, you can download the recipe from my books page!)



My daughter helped me set up by placing a sugar maple leaf on each chair before the guests arrived.  That's the tree Gianna and Zig are trying to identify in the book in the excerpt I chose to read, so I thought it would be fun for kids to follow along with a leaf as they tried to figure out whether it had teeth or lobes, a downy underside or not, milky sap...all those tree identifying things.

After the reading, kids had a chance to try their own hands at identifying leaves.  I set up a tree identification challenge - with photographs of three different trees and branches from each one.  Kids used the Watts Tree Finder guide - the same book Gianna and Zig use in the novel - to identify trees and win prizes.



And then it was party time!




Here I am with Flying Pig co-owner and picture book author Elizabeth Bluemle. Note her stylish accessories.


From left to right: Jo Knowles (jbknowles ) me, Cindy Faughnan (cfaughnan )

Jo and Cindy and some other friends made long morning drives to be here, and it just about made me cry every time one of them walked through the door. My friend marjorielight came over on the ferry from NY and brought her daughter Stephanie, who drove up from Albany for the weekend.  Stephanie is in graduate school to become a children's librarian right now, and she's one of my former students (also a survivor of the original monster leaf collection project that inspired my book!)


Me, Marjorie, & Stephanie

At the end of my reading, I took a minute to introduce the other authors & illustrators who were there.  In addition to Jo and Elizabeth, there were Sarah Dillard, Amy Huntington, Liza Woodruff, and Tanya  Lee Stone.  "Wow," my husband said when we were packing up the car. "You children's book people really support one another, don't you?"  We've talked about that before...how the people who work in this field are some of the nicest people around.  It's one of so many things I love about writing for kids.







The morning flew by like leaves in a gust of autumn wind... I hugged lots of friends, read from my novel, ate entirely too much candy corn, signed lots of books (including a bunch for far-away friends!  When I came down to the store after the party, Josie presented me with a stack of "virtual book signing" copies. If you ordered one, it's all signed and will be in the mail next week!) I'm so, so thankful to everyone who came out on the last weekend of summer and to the folks at Flying Pig, who always make an author feel so special. 

When the last book was signed, we headed to the nearby Shelburne Museum for a picnic with Jo Knowles and her family.  My daughter and Jo's son got to be pals at her launch party for JUMPING OFF SWINGS a few weeks ago, so it was great to spend the afternoon together. Sitting on the grass, exploring the steamboat Ticonderoga, and riding the antique carousel seemed like just the right way to end the day.

One of the many upsides to being a publicist is getting to attend launch parties for our books. Of course, organizing them is hard work, but the night itself can be a lot of fun. We OUP-UK publicists were last week at what is shaping up to be our party of the season for the launch of Winston Fletcher’s Powers of Persuasion: The Inside Story of British Advertising, which publishes here later this week. Below are some photos from the event.

Yesterday we posted a piece written by Winston Fletcher for OUPblog on when the British led the world in advertising.

Held at London’s incredibly beautiful Somerset House, we had a wonderful turn out including many of the great and the good from Britain’s ad-land, past and present. Winston gave an excellent speech where he confessed that though he had reached the top of his profession - he is the only person to have been both the Chairman of the Advertising Association and the President of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising - he didn’t work for long in the creative side of the business. ‘Why?’, you ask. Well, when he did work in the creative side, he was the one who came up with the strapline “Have no fear, your piles will disappear!” for a campaign. He then decided he was better suited to the business side of advertising.

Also in attendance was former government Culture Secretary Chris Smith who is the current Chairman of the Advertising Standards Authority. He is pictured below with Winston Fletcher.

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