It begins.
This afternoon Justine and I join Holly Black, Cassandra Clare, Alaya Johnson, David Levithan, and Diana Peterfreund at the Juvenilia Smackdown. We’ll be reading from our childhood and teenage writings. (OMG I spent the day looking at them and they are worse than I thought.) The immoderate Libba Bray will be moderating.
Monday, 3/16, 4-6pm, Tompkins Square Park branch of the NYPL, 331 E. 10th Street
We’re also participating in a tribute to Joe Monti on Wedneday, where I’ll be reading from Leviathan for the first time in public. And revealing art!
Wednesday, 3/18, 6pm, Mulberry Street Branch of the NYPL, 10 Jersey Street (Between Lafayette & Mulberry Streets)
And we’ll be at the giant Books of Wonder mass signing on Sunday.
But there’s much more stuff than that.
Update: For all you Italiano-phones, here’s an interview with me on the Italian Marie Claire website, about Midnighters.
Yes, you read that right, and I’m typing it again, because it’s that much fun:
Manga. Head. Explosive. Goo.
It’s a brand of hair gel made by Garnier, to create those delicious mohawk-tastic heads of hair just like your fave manga characters. Don’t believe me? Here’s the website.
And here’s a classic example of some manga heads:
Ganked from Crystal Tip’s flickr stream. And thank you to Kerri for the heads up on Manga Head Explosive Goo.
Can anybody find a photo of actual Manga Head Explosive Goo in a store? I need to see it.
Okay, now that that’s dealt with, a few more cool images, starting with a SCARY DOLL ALERT!
This is the Italian version of Peeps, published by Fazi. Although Justine can’t look at it, due to her scarydollaphobia, I love it and can’t wait for a matching treatment for The Last Days.
Hey, I just noticed the secret color-coded message in the title, which works in English as well as in Italian. See what I mean? Kewl.
And in Скотт ВеÑтерфельд news, we have Jonathan and Jessica looking very fantastical on the cover of the Russian Midnighters 2: Touching Darkness . . .
I could just look at foreign edition covers all day sometimes. So much easier than, um, writing.
Speaking of which, it’s back to the Leviathan mines for me!
Those of you who’ve read Peeps will no doubt remember toxoplasma gondii, the cat-borne parasite that can infect humans and change their personality. An old pal of mine, science journalist and blogger Rebecca Skloot, is a bit of an expert on toxoplasma, having written this article on whether the parasite causes “crazy cat-lady syndrome.” Fascinating stuff.
She’s just posted this charming video of a possibly toxoplasma-positive rat who LOVES its little cat friend.
For those of you who haven’t read Peeps, toxoplasma controls its rat host’s brain, making the poor creature seek out cats in hopes of getting eaten. This is because toxoplasma can only reproduce itself in the stomach of a cat. But as Rebecca points out, if the cat takes the pacifist route and simply refuses to eat the rat, it can stay uninfected.
Your move, Mr. Parasite.
In Other News
Justine is blogging writing advice for all of January. Many great posts and lots of good discussion about point-of-view, generating ideas, and how to get unstuck.
Stephenie Meyer fansite Twilight Moms has declared my Midnighters series its Book of the Month. Join the Twilight Moms discussion here. (Well, you have to be a mom, or at least 25, or married to be a Twilight Mom, but you can always read the discussion.)
Almost forgot to say that the new Midnighters covers are IN STORES NOW!
And for you online shoppers, here are multi-store links for The Secret Hour, Touching Darkness, and Blue Noon. (Check to make sure the store you choose is showing the new cover!)
Thanks to everyone at HarperCollins for re-launching this trilogy in such beautiful form.
I also forgot to mention that I’m appearing at the Park Slope Barnes and Noble next week. Details:
Monday, January 7
6:30 PM
Barnes and Noble
267 7th Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11215
718-832-9066
Here’s a map.
Hope to see you there!
In honor of the Jan 2 release of the brand new Midnighters paperbacks, here are a trio of countdown widgets for your websites and desk tops!
And because I never posted it, click on the thumbnail below for a full-size version of the new Touching Darkness cover.
To complete this purely self-promotional post, here are multi-store links for The Secret Hour, Touching Darkness, and Blue Noon.
That is all I have the brain for right now.
As of 6PM US Eastern Standard Time, Leviathan is 18,569 words long!
My first post on this blog was about the cover of Blue Noon, book three of the Midnighters trilogy. So perhaps it’s appropriate that my real first post on the redesigned blog is the redesigned Blue Noon cover.
And it’s timely too, given that all three books of the trilogy are being re-released together on January 2!
So here’s the new Rex:
For reference, here are all three of the new covers together. That’s Jessica on book 1 and Melissa on book 2. (Poor Dess and Jonathan!)
You can pre-order the new look books now. Here are multi-store links for The Secret Hour, Touching Darkness, and Blue Noon. (Check to make sure the store you choose is showing the new cover!)
Anyway, now that you’ve seen all three covers, what do you guys think?
Update: It has been pointed out to me that this is actually Jonathan. He’s got the acrobat symbol over his eye, after all. Man, us authors can really miss the obvious sometimes.
Except, um, this guy doesn’t really look Hispanic. Hmm . . .
Okay, still at World Fantasy. Lots of cool YA authors here. Mostly have been hanging out with Garth Nix and the rest of the Aussie contingent, and keep running into Holly Black and Cassie Claire, who turn out to be in the same hotel as me.
More later on con activities, but first lots of Halloween cossies to share. From the Uglies books, this from Jamie and Nona:
And Tamir (too old to trick or treat, but went for the Special treatment anyway):
And finally Ally B. From Arkansas, who also dressed up to take some littlies out:
And this interpretation of Shay’s “nest of snakes” tattoo, from Colorific:
And Tara-wa as a Cutter:
And a trio of hoverboarding Smokies:
And from the Midnighters side of things, a darkling-proof pumpkin!
And Dess and Melissa:
Sorry if I missed anybody, I’m darting in and out of my hotel room. Hope you had great Halloweens!
A while back, a perplexed reader sent me a link to a movie with the following title: Sarah Landon and the Paranormal Hour.
The pitch for the film on MSN Movies reads: “A 17-year-old (newcomer Rissa Walters) returns to her hometown of Pine Valley just in time to discover a dark secret about two brothers and the terrors of the ‘paranormal hour’ between midnight and 1 a.m.”
To answer your burning question: this has nothing to do with me or Midnighters. And if you check out the movie’s website, you will see why that makes me breathe a sigh of relief. That has to be the most woeful trailer I’ve ever seen.
Hmm, the film stars Brian Comrie and Dan Comrie, and in the production credits we also find:
Director: Lisa Comrie
Screenwriter: John Comrie
Screenwriter: Lisa Comrie
Story: John Comrie
Producers: Fred Comrie, John Comrie, Lisa Comrie
Did the whole family get together over Labor Day and make this thing?
Still, this is not an outrage to Midnighters fans. “Paranormal time” doesn’t mean anything about time freezing, and in any case borrowing ideas is what genre is built on. (I love Heroes, for example, which is a massive mash-up of concepts stolen from decades of comics.)
But I do have one serious misgiving: this film looks so incredibly bad that it may single-handedly ruin the notion of midnight being in any way cool.
It opened back on October 19 and grossed a little over $500 per theater on its first weekend. Let’s do some math! About 51 people saw it per theater over Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, which at $10 a ticket means about 17 people per day. And your average theater shows a film, what . . . six times a day? So about three people showed up for the average showing.
Ouch.
Did any of you see it?
At our reading at Books Inc. tonight, we ran into more awesome fan art. Long-time commenter Liset came in with this retro Team David shirt:
And note the Midnighters-y line on the botttom: “With love for Flyboy too!”
On top of which, I scored this awesome piece of So Yesterday-themed art:
Thanks for all these little touches of sweetness to offset the rigors of touring.
Tomorrow is insane, between a school visit, a signing, and flying to Seattle, so there may well be no blogging. But don’t forget the last few dates of la tour:
Wednesday, Oct 10
3:00pm-4:30pm
Hicklebees
1378 Lincoln Ave
San Jose, CA 95125
School event followed by in-store reading/signing
Thursday, Oct 11
7:00pm
Shorecrest Performing Arts Center
15343 25th Avenue NE
Shoreline, WA 98155
Books will be sold by Third Place Books
Public presentation and signing.
Friday, Oct 12
4:00pm
Edmonds Branch Library
650 Main St.
Edmonds, WA 98020
Books will be sold onsite by Barnes & Noble
Monday, Oct 15
7:00pm
Joseph-Beth Booksellers
161 Lexington Green Circle
Lexington, KY 40503
Reading/Signing
Ciao for now.
Quick Note: If you’re commenting about the book Extras, please be kind to your fellow readers and use the Extras Spoiler Page.
The author of A Wrinkle in Time has left us. Her work is one of the things that made me a writer, a science fiction and fantasy fan, an avid reader. Hers were the first books I read that mixed math and magic, the quest and the quantum. To put it simply, without L’Engle’s tesseracts, Midnighters would have no tridecalogisms.
Here are a few more thoughts I put down for New York Magazine‘s Culture Blog.
And here Gwenda Bond quotes L’Engle at length on what authors know or don’t know about what their novels mean.
According to the NY Times obit, A Wrinkle in Time has sold six million copies since 1962, but lately moves only 15,000 copies per year. One copy a year for every 20,000 Americans? Somewhere, IT is having a good laugh, and getting ready.
How many of you guys have read her work? (Believe me, you should.)
Shay's Story, a graphic novel version of Uglies, is OUT NOW!
The Uglies series has been adapted into graphic novel form, with the events of the trilogy told from Shay's point of view in three volumes.
The first one comes out March 6, 2012!
Click here to contact Scott Westerfeld.
Jill Grinberg
Jill Grinberg Literary Management
info@grinbergliterary.com
