First things first:

I have a slew of good news to share…

– SPELLBOUND has been selected as a Midwest Booksellers Choice Award finalist!  You can read the list of amazing nominees here: http://midwestbooksellers.org/book-awards/.  Winners will be chosen in October.  Whee!!

– THE SECOND SPY made the Summer 2012 Kids’ Indie Next List, where it’s in incredibly exciting company (See ‘Ages 9 – 12’): http://www.indiebound.org/kids-indie-next-list

– A new interview, conducted by Anne Nesbet (author of THE CABINET OF EARTHS) is available for your reading and commenting pleasure at The Enchanted Inkpot.  Please check it out, and then wander around in the inky depths for a while.  There’s a lot of great stuff to discover.

I’ve just wrapped up a revision of the soon-to-be-titled Shakespeare-ish YA project, which taught me not only how many different ways I can approach and reassemble one story, but how many words I can type in a single day without starting to misspell EVERYTHING.  (Apparently my maximum is around 20,000.  Then my arms start to go numb, and I can’t remember how contractions work anymore.)  Now, I return to Volume Four of THE BOOKS OF ELSEWHERE…