Monday, February 4, 2008

May I Be Struck Dead By A Tomato If I'm Bragging

Now that I think about it, I killed off a lot of characters in a lot of different ways in Life As We Knew It and the dead and the gone, but not one of them died from a vicious tomato attack. Let alone a kindly tomato attack.

Both Anonymous Glen and I have noticed a sudden dearth of comments for my most recent post. My theory is you've all tired of my endless discussion about the Possible Third Book. I can hear murmurings of, "Shut up and write," wafting in the distance.

And to think I was going to tell you that there's a chance that Will will neither be hung nor sent to the coal mines. But I guess no one cares (sorry, Will).

My life is very strange these days, or at least my time sense is. LAWKI seems like something in the long distance past, yet there's always news about it. d&g hasn't even been published yet, but I feel like it's been around for ages. My mind is completely focused on P3B (okay, yesterday, it was focused on my friend Geri's surprise birthday party, and the Super Bowl, and watching the European Figure Skating Championships because I was too nervous to watch the Super Bowl. Oh and politics. My mind's been focused on politics too. And maybe a few other things, now that I think about it, like cookies. My mind is always focused on cookies).

I do have some LAWKI announcements to make. For those of you who don't obsessively count the number of states that LAWKI is nominated for young readers awards in (and to the best of my knowledge, no one obsessively counts that), the list to the left is up to 12. I snuck Illinois in one day last week (or maybe the week before; even I don't obsessively count), and last night I added California. I'm particularly pleased about CA, not merely because it's big and glamorous, but because it limits its nominations to three per category. This gives LAWKI a mere 2 in 3 chance of losing, as opposed to Illinois, where it has a 19 in 20 chance.

Speaking of awards LAWKI has not yet lost, thanks to the ceaseless efforts of the Knife Club, LAWKI is one of the last two books unsplatted by tomatoes over in Coventry. I'm delighted and surprised it's made it that far, and I'll be stunned if it makes it any further- it's up against an extremely popular book. My thanks to everybody around the world who voted to save LAWKI from tomatodom.

As a result of my not quite obsessive googling, I found out today that the audiobook of LAWKI, read by the incredibly talented Emily Bauer, was named to the YALSA 2008 Selected Audiobooks for Young Adults List. 21 audiobooks are so listed from a two year period.

And I really am going to ALA. I got a confirmation e-mail today from Harcourt. They've already arranged my accomodations, two nights at the Bed Bug Motor Inn.

I'm itching to get there!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello, Anonymous Glen here.

Oy-vey! The book you're against is Twilight! Well, I gave you my vote, but I really did enjoy Twilight. (Although I think a good editor should have knocked 125 pages off of it.)

But you know what they say about the bigger they are...

Anonymous said...

No, no, no, no, no! I'm not sick of hearing you plan your new book! I find it so interesting! its just sometimes I don't know what to say and I haven't been able to check your blog the last few days because of school!

I will be giving you my vote even though I'm a huge Twilight fan [but I like LAWKI more!]

@Glen: Twilight wasn't that bad. I think it was New Moon & Eclipse that needed heaps of pages knocked off it!

PS: what about you getting a myspace? =P have you been thinking more about that?

Dawn said...

I second that emotion Caroline! I have been swamped with work these past couple of days and have not been able to post (or reply to my very lovely email) recently. PLEASE--Keep talking about the third possible book. You notes are the only thing making the whole waiting for the P3B doable.

Glad to hear you are staying at the Bedbug Inn--I will be staying there too! Although...I hear all of the accomodations in Anaheim leave something to be desired.

On the plus side, even the Bedbug Inn is located right next to Disneyland!

Susan Beth Pfeffer...you just wrote another amazing book and are going to the ALA conference this summer...what are you going to do next? You're going to Disneyland!!

-Dawn

Anonymous said...

Hi from Coventry
I am personally so glad the Coventry kids took to what I thought was one of the best books I had read in ages and believe me you do have some very genuine UK fans ... I see where all the votes and comments are coming from! If you win will you come to our Award ceremony???? Meet the Lord Mayor etc etc!

Susan Beth Pfeffer said...

Hi to Anonymous Glen and to Caroline (who I hope will friend me over at MySpace)and Dawn, my next door neighbor at the Bed Bug Motor Inn, and Anonymous From Coventry-

Happy Super Tuesday (hey, I love any and all holidays).

I think the odds on my winning the Coventry Award are about as good as Ron Paul getting the Republican nomination, but trust me, if the close to impossible happens, I'd be thrilled to visit Coventry, attend the Award ceremony and meet the Lord Mayor. Assuming I don't have to curtsey.

I wouldn't even curtsey for Ron Paul.

Anonymous said...

I found LAWKI from the YALSA audio book list. My YA lit class required us to listen to one audio book from the list, and I was going to cheat and listen to the first disk and read the rest since I don't have time to listen to all the hours it would take. The discs came first and I started listening. Well I couldn't stop to wait for the book to come in, and I listened all night long, and they had to pry the ear phones out so I could work the next day.

Ok,gushing may be embarasing, but there it is. I really liked the book, and I gushed to my whole class tonight about how great it is. As a future librarian, I think this is the sort of book we need. It certainly is the sort of book that I'd recommend, heck I recommended it to my class and several adults. Someone in my class mentioned that there was a sequel, which I now find is a companion book? I am looking forward to it.

Susan Beth Pfeffer said...

Hello Sarcare and thank you for your comment. Trust me, I love gushing.

I think so much of the credit for the audio version of LAWKI goes to Emily Bauer for the amazing job she did. But I'll cheerfully take whatever credit is left over.

If you want a sample of the dead & the gone (the companion book, coming out June 1), there's a link on the left side of the blog to the Yankee Stadium scene. I think it gives a pretty good sense of the flavor of the book.

I hope you'll continue to comment here. We're a friendly and lovable bunch.