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As a prelude to her World Domination Tour with Shannon Hale on the west coast, Libba Bray dropped by our little children's section at Bookpeople here in Austin. She did a lovely presentation, read from her book, and did one of the longest signings I've ever seen. Yes, part of this was because she drew a huge crowd, but some of it was due to the fact that Libba was willing to chat with every fan who came up with a book. She has to be one of the most personable and friendly authors I've seen. As a terminally shy person myself, I always admire anyone who can put more than a sentence together when talking to a perfect stranger.

But as great as Libba's large event was, my favorite part of the evening happened earlier during our "Coffee & Tea with Libba." We held a drawing for four lucky people to come chat with Libba before the event. Here's Libba with the winners making the universal "W" sign for winner. Libba is in the center.



This more intimate event was a fascinating question and answer session moderated by our kid's buyer. Since one of the winners also happened to be a writer, there were lots of writing questions asked. What I found most inspiring was Libba's frank discussion about the art of revising. Like many writers, Libba has a more organic, unoutlined method of writing. She finds that she writes best this way but does have to revise more. Her first draft of her latest novel, The Sweet Far Thing, was 540 pages. She received back from her editor a full 12 single-spaced pages of notes and comments. She then went back in 2 months and rewrote 400 of the 540 existing pages. I find this story both daunting and inspiring at once. In 2 months she rewrote 400 pages? She said she pulled 2 all-nighters and several 18 hour days, but still . . . That's impressive. I think if faced by a prospect like that, I might just cry. But it's inspiring to think that this nationally best-selling author still has to do copious rewrites just like the rest of us. She doesn't automatically generate beautiful prose. Ah, there's still hope for the rest of us.

Hello, dearest readers. What follows is an interview with Libba Bray, author of the Gemma Doyle Trilogy. (The third book, The Sweet Far Thing, recently came out. You can see our review of it if you scroll down.) We asked her 13 questions, because 13 is a most excellent number. So, read on, the Dark Lord commands thee! (Warning: VERY LONG POST.)

Zombies, all the way. Unicorns would only exist so that zombies could feast upon their flesh and fashion their horns into mod zombie breast plates.

Because it's finally nice and cold and I'm actually wearing a sweater today, today's song is Ten Degrees and Getting Colder performed by Nanci Griffith.

I don't read many picture books anymore, so sadly I haven't had the opportunity to get to know the work of Mo Willems. But I know he has a legion of fans in the kidlitosphere, so I thought this would be of interest. Book Expo America (BEA) just announced the line-up for its children's book and author breakfast, to be held June 1 at the Javits Center in New York:

...this opening-day breakfast will feature Mo Willems, author of Knuffle Bunny too! A Case of Mistaken Identity (Hyperion Books for Children); Jacqueline Wilson, author of Candyfloss (Roaring Brook Press); and Daniel Pinkwater, author of The Neddiad (Houghton Mifflin Children’s Book Group). Libba Bray, author of The Sweet Far Thing (Delacorte Press) will be the Master of Ceremonies.

Tantalize by Cynthia Leitich Smith (Candlewick, Feb. 13, 2007) is now available. Here's a peek:

In my various canoodlings on the series of tubes sometimes known as the internet, I stumbled on this interesting little posting by one Cecil Castellucci (author of this year's Boy Proof).

That's right, ladies and gentlemen. Move over NYC Kidlit Drink Nights. There are NYC Teen Lit Drink Nights carrying on right under our very noses. In actual fact, I believe the Teen Drink Nights came first. I recall Cheryl Klein once mentioning that the whole reason we even chose Sweet and Vicious as a good location was that editors and YA authors were already meeting there.

The real crime here? Seems to me that Coe Booth and Siobhan Vivian of the Longstockings blog should be posting recaps of these YA meetings. I mean, we're talking big teen authors here. Picture moments like Libba Bray discussing matters with E. Lockhart (a.k.a. Emily Jenkins). This constitutes useless gossip and as the harbinger of gossip in all its uniquely useless forms I, for one, wanna know when this kind of thing goes down. Heck, I didn't even know Libba Bray was local.