brilliant title of brilliantness

Apparently my complete exhaustion this morning meant I didn’t actually post that last post properly. But it’s there now!

Me?

I’m currently somewhere over Kansas and/or Oklahoma (the airplane map is kind of hard to read). Internet at 40,000 feet! I love the modern age.

I’m cold because I forgot to pack anything warm and I’m hungry because I forgot to pack food, but I got a couple of hours of ouchy-neck airplane sleep, so I’m not quite as sleepy nuts.

I probably won’t post much in LA. Or I’ll post, like, every day—who knows. But I’ll be around. My phone is not what one would call smart so my LA adventures won’t be tweeted very much, but I’ll have interwebs. So you won’t have to miss me too much.

peace out, pretty kitties

off to LA

After a 3-hour delay that is a story unto itself, I finally got home from my business trip to DC, landing in Boston at 10:30 last night. I returned to the lovely Logan International Airport at 5:30 this morning for my flight to LA (that’s 7 hours turnaround, for those of you keeping track). I am tired, I am cranky, the Virgin air people have already pissed me off, and it looks like I’m in a middle seat.

BUT.

I am on my way to LA! Hope to see you there!

UPDATE:

because I know you all care

I have found some nicer Virgin people and my seat has improved.

However, there is now a howling child in my boarding area.

aaaahhhhhhh

are you going to be in LA next week?

If so, you should come to this:

Also if you are there and you win Rae’s book I am going to be SUPER JEALOUS.

Also you know this event is legit because HELLO SPACECAT.

why you need to bring your spatula to SCBWI

Are you going to SCBWI?

Are you packing a spatula?

This weekend, at SCBWI’s Summer Conference, there is going to be some EPIC ZOMBIE TAG happening, and you need a spatula to participate. Don’t know what I’m talking about? You obviously don’t follow Hannah Moskowitz. She recently sold her first MG novel, ZOMBIE TAG, to Roaring Brook Press, and a key part of this book is a game called—are you keeping up here?—zombie tag.

Which all the cool kids will be playing at SCBWI. I don’t have details, but I know it’s going to happen. And you want to be there.

So bring your spatula and stay tuned. It’s going to be AMAZING.

Hannah outlines the rules of zombie tag in this post, but here are some of the basics:

For the best game of Zombie Tag, you need somewhere between 8 and 15 people. More or less can work, depending on the size of the house. Wil, the main character in Zombie Tag, plays with closer to 6 people, because his parents would never let eight kids in their house at once.

This game is played at night, in the dark.

–Your objective is: If you are a zombie, turn everyone else into a zombie. If you are a human, escape the house.

–If you are the victim of an attempted zombie attack, you have four ways to escape:

1) Fight him off with your spatula. Zombies are terrified of spatulas.

2) Hit him on the top of his head with the flat of your hand (gently, please) which is a zombie paralysis move that will freeze the zombie for ten seconds, allowing you to make an escape.

3) Run. Be warned, however: Zombies possess super speed.

4) Remember your BARRICADE post-it? [you don't because I cut that part out, go read the full rules] Slap it on a door and hide in a room. The zombie, upon encountering a barricaded door, must bang on it for thirty seconds to break the barricade before he can enter. This should give you time to find the key if it is hidden in this room, at which point you will need to find an alternate route or fight the zombie long enough to sprint to the door. Or, if the key is not in the room, it is enough time for you to call your mother and tell her you love her.

–If you are bitten, you become a zombie. But all is not lost! You now begin hunting the others with your zombie compatriots. And you win if everyone is a zombie at the end.

–If you are a human and you find the key, run like hell towards the front door. If you escape, you win! You are now the only hope for humanity.

You know you want to be there. See you in LA!

my favorite fuzzybeasts & upcoming events in gracetopia

Sunday in Gracetopia, and we’re lounging around in the a/c, reading, with our two favorite little beasties (and we’re not sure why this sentence is in the plural):

That’s Wednesday the Cat on the left and Roommate’s sleepyfaced pup on the right, and my big feet on the far right.

This is going to be my last calm day for a while, so I’m savoring every minute. This week I’m going to DC for work for a few days, which then leads straight into VACATION WOO! My work flight lands in Boston at 8pm and my vacation flight leaves Boston at 7am the next day—with the first episode of a NEW PROJECT RUNWAY SEASON in between—so THAT will be a fun 12 hours. But then vacation! I’m meeting up with a bunch of my friends in LA, and I don’t think the city’s prepared for how awesome we are.

Why LA? you may be asking. (Or not, but I’m answering anyway.) SCBWI! That’s Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, for those of you playing at home, and their annual summer conference is happening next weekend. I’m not attending the conference itself, but I’m going to go hang with my friends who are going. Expect pictures! If I’m not too busy lying on the beach. (It’s a hard life I have, I know.)

So yeah. This is my last day to myself for a while, so I’m just going to sit here with the pets and drink some wine if the bugs would be kind enough to stop kamikaze-ing into my glass, and read Chew, which I highly recommend, and write a bit, which I also highly recommend.

And here’s one more fuzzybeast picture because AWWW:

Peace out.

a day in topiaville

I am totally disorganized. But in a totally organized way. My room looks like piles of stuff, but I tend to remember in what direction I throw bills, or health insurance stuff, or receipts, or letters, or whatever.

Occasionally I try to organize. Which is great. My room is all shiny and big.

But then stuff like this happens:

Last weekend I organized the shit out of my room. It sparkles. It shines. I can see the floor. I got an organization folder thingy where I keep pay stubs and other stuffs I might need. I moved bookshelves. I DUSTED. All in all, it was really exciting.

Then last night I got home and was like, “oh I need to call my insurance company about this random bill.” (routine eyecare—no worries, y’all, I’m just being charged when I should be covered.) So I was like, “I threw the letter over here.” Except that area was now COMPLETELY CLEAN. Because of the organizing. And I was like, “FUCK FUCK where did I put it???” So I start going through things, and there are only a few piles left of “sort through this stuff” and I dashed them to the four winds looking for this bill. And then I was like “WHERE CAN IT BE I don’t have anywhere else to look I CLEANED everything!!!”

And then I go “oh wait.”

And I go look in the organizational folder, in the front section that I dubbed “To-Do.”

Ta. Da.

This is why I don’t clean or organize. I always outsmart myself.

all hail SPACECAT

I think it is time.

I think you are ready.

Are you ready?

It is time, dear readers, to share with you the secret of Gracetopia. What makes us great. It is not what you think. Or, if you’ve been paying attention, maybe it is exactly what you think.

So what makes Gracetopia so glorious? Let me tell you. We are protected, you see, dearest readers, by that greatest of creatures. Feared from here to the planet Shadow, worshiped by young and old across galaxies and times. She watches over us and keeps us safe and makes sure we always have white wine and ice cream.

I speak, of course, of that elusive entity known as SPACECAT.

This is SPACECAT:

all hail

Fear her. Worship her. Love her.

She will maybe deign to thump her tail in your general direction.

(Side note. We thought about dressing up Wednesday the Cat as SPACECAT but then considered how quickly we would be dead vs. how cute she would be, and the cuteness lost. Barely. Maybe for Halloween.)

from the trunk: a sideways nose and other stories

Another in the “wtf was I doing?” trunked novel series. This is from the same story as last time, but a much different version. No, I’m not going to give you any context.

“So where are you going?”

“I need to find another wizard, one who isn’t trying to kill me. I don’t know how, really, but I thought I’d start by going to Alvin Todd’s house and poking around.”

“You don’t want to do that,” said a voice that seemed to be coming from just outside Nan’s second-story window. Both girls jumped to their feet.

The window was open slightly; a pair of hands pushed it open more, and a scruffy-looking white boy leaned forward and rested his chin on the sill.

“If I might offer my services?”

The boy, about 17 or 18, was blond and good-looking and smiling broadly at them. He had a strong jaw and blue eyes and the general look of an unshaven Hollywood heartthrob, except that his nose seemed to be partly sideways.

“Who are you?” Edie said.

“I am the mysterious hero in the dark cloak who will be rescuing you this evening.” He pushed the window open further and climbed in. He was indeed wearing a dark cloak, a rather tired-looking one, over jeans and a t-shirt and leather lace-up boots. He bowed.

Ah. Hmm.

Yeah I don’t really know what to say.

(Alvin?)

MUNCH

This post is about a month late, but you’re a forgiving crowd, right?

In June a new comic came out that—well, let me put it this way.

If the words SEA BEAR AND GRIZZLY SHARK don’t have you running out to your nearest comic book shop, you are reading the wrong blog.

Ryan Ottley writes and draws Grizzly Shark and Jason Howard writes and draws Sea Bear. I personally prefer Grizzly Shark slightly, but both stories are entertaining. They involve things like this:

HEE HEE HEE

The comic has a website, here, where I discovered that this is only a one-shot and not a full-on series, which is REALLY DISAPPOINTING.

SO. Head over to your local comic book shop and buy yourself this comic. Because really now. Sea Bear. Grizzly Shark.

superheros

This is  a closeup of one of my bookcases and it pretty much defines me as a person.