On the infrequently updated blog!
I am not blogging because I am writing. Hard.
Here’s the latest on the book arrival dates: The new YA called The Truth Commission will be published in March 2015 by Viking in the U.S. and Penguin (Razorbill) in Canada. I’m revising like a madwoman. It’s been a tickle to write because I got to invent a fictional art-focused high school. I’ve always wanted to go to art school, but writing about an art school is the next best thing, esp. since I don’t have much in the way of art talent to take to art school. Another great thing about the Truth Commission is that it’s going to be the first of my books to have illustrations. And, for the sake of your eyeballs, they won’t be by me! The very talented Trevor Cooper is doing the art and I couldn’t be more pleased.
I’m also scribbling away on the sequel to The Woefield Poultry Collective (Home to Woefield in the U.S.) It’s due out in January 2015. As noted, the working title is The Republic of Dirt and it has also been a lot of fun to write. Why? Because it has a frequently renamed mule. Currently he goes by the name Captain Call (thanks to Larry McMurtry, my new literary hero. McMurtry’s work is a bit heavy to the torture, but no one is funnier or meaner or more generous or better at writing plains weather and peculiar people). Of course Republic features Seth, Prudence, Earl and Sara. Eustace and the Mighty Pens as well as Halloween and Christmas. What more could any writer want?
That’s pretty much it. When you write one book in the morning and work on another in the afternoons and evenings and teach in between you generate NO NEWS.
Seriously. Friends call and ask me what’s new and I give them page counts. You will be shocked to learn that people eventually stop calling when they realize they’d get livelier conversation from sediment at the bottom of a pond.
P.S. Thanks for condolences on the loss of Frank. We miss him. We appreciate your words. I’ve got some residual bitterness about his last days but probably won’t write about it. Unless it gets the best of me and I have to write a bit of flame-y stuff on the Infrequently Updated Blog.
xo