Happy New Year

Tony and I judged an awesome contest in the Guardian where kids made up their own monster and drew it.



Check them out. Pretty fantastic stuff.

3:06 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos

Merry Merry

Have spent the holiday being sous-chef to my dad, aiding in the construction of several Germanic feasts (he has very specific instructions; you wouldn't believe how he wants his celery chopped), and barkeep for the rest of the family, shaking up more than their fair share of martinis. Theo's mom had to jet off to Manila on Christmas day, but we partied on stoically.

Well, sort of stoically.

I did run out to buy Tiffany Trent's By Venom's Sweet Sting, Elizabeth Bear's Dust, and Libba Bray's The Sweet Far Thing and am looking forward to the orgy of reading to come in very short order. I think I am finally going to start the Lymond Chronicles too, so I'm considering myself more than a little doomed.

Hope that you are having a very merry (and only sort of stoic) winter.




p.s. Also still chatting at Faerie Drink. Will be there until New Year's Eve, so if you feel inclined, come and say hullo.

11:42 PM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Department of Did That Just Happen?

A short done by Henson Alternative featuring gay muppets trying to make their relationship work (called Tinseltown and watchable on the Logo site) had a bit at the end with Sampson in bed reading Tithe:



I hope he likes it.

11:40 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos

Happy Winter Solstice

Today, I got the supernaturally comfortable chair for my office that I ordered months ago and in which I am very happily sitting as I type this entry. In addition to the chair, many delicious seasonal beef logs and chocolate logs and cheese logs have arrived, as though some giant somewhere wants to fatten me up like a Christmas goose.

Mmmmm. Cheese log.

Movie stuff is going so fast that I can barely get my head around it. I have, however, just finished Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles: Book II: A Giant Problem. No doubt Kevin will be sending it right back with lots of places that I need to be clearer, to expand, and just be better, but the structure is there and the emotional stuff and I think I even get what needs to happen in the last book, so I am feeling very pleased with myself.

Come chat with me at Faerie Drink. I'll be hanging out in the forums (here) from tomorrow to the 29th.

4:07 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos

White Cat & Doll Bones - also Zombies

Am back from paradise and surprised to find myself surrounded by snow. Normally, I rather like snow, but right now I am missing the blue water and hot sands of Jamaica (Gwenda posted pictures). Aside from a ton of swimming, I actually got a lot done plottingwards and am feeling weirdly and happily refreshed. Altogether, our crew managed to finish two novels, plot and outline two more, finish a short story and start several others. Not bad, considering all the rum.

On the way back on the plane, a child three rows up and one over was happily chanting, "zombies, zombies, zombies! zombies come from the grave." Then, yesterday when I went to the post office, there was another little kid behind us in line saying, "vampires drink blood" and making a sucking noise.

I have seen the future this week...and they are clearly genre lovers.

While I was gone, news of the deal I recently made came through, so here it is:

Black Back to S&S

Karen Wojtyla at S&S/Margaret K. McElderry Books has signed Ironside author Holly Black for two new novels via agent Barry Goldblatt, who sold North American rights. The first title, The White Cat, a teen novel based on a fairy tale by the same name, will be published in hardcover in summer 2010, and the second title, Doll Bones, a middle-grade novel, will be out in hardcover in summer 2011. Paperback editions from the Pulse imprint and the Aladdin imprint, respectively, will follow.

Some people have asked if there will be any more Modern Faerie Tale books. Right now, I am working on the graphic novels I am doing for Scholastic, the Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles books, and White Cat. After that, I am going to decide what I want to do next, but considering I am now scheduled through 2011, I don't want to make any more decisions for a bit.

4:06 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos

White Cat & Doll Bones - also Zombies

Am back from paradise and surprised to find myself surrounded by snow. Normally, I rather like snow, but right now I am missing the blue water and hot sands of Jamaica (Gwenda posted pictures). Aside from a ton of swimming, I actually got a lot done plottingwards and am feeling weirdly and happily refreshed. Altogether, our crew managed to finish two novels, plot and outline two more, finish a short story and start several others. Not bad, considering all the rum.

On the way back on the plane, a child three rows up and one over was happily chanting, "zombies, zombies, zombies! zombies come from the grave." Then, yesterday when I went to the post office, there was another little kid behind us in line saying, "vampires drink blood" and making a sucking noise.

I have seen the future this week...and they are clearly genre lovers.

While I was gone, news of the deal I recently made came through, so here it is:

Black Back to S&S

Karen Wojtyla at S&S/Margaret K. McElderry Books has signed Ironside author Holly Black for two new novels via agent Barry Goldblatt, who sold North American rights. The first title, The White Cat, a teen novel based on a fairy tale by the same name, will be published in hardcover in summer 2010, and the second title, Doll Bones, a middle-grade novel, will be out in hardcover in summer 2011. Paperback editions from the Pulse imprint and the Aladdin imprint, respectively, will follow.

Some people have asked if there will be any more Modern Faerie Tale books. Right now, I am working on the graphic novels I am doing for Scholastic, the Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles books, and White Cat. After that, I am going to decide what I want to do next, but considering I am now scheduled through 2011, I don't want to make any more decisions for a bit.

4:06 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos

How Email is Not Better Than Paper

Well, due to various confusing circumstances, I appear to have lost an entire year's worth of email. So, uh, if you sent me something recently and I didn't reply to it, please send it again.

And, if you send me something like say the new version of your novel (you know who you are), please send that again too.

Okay, now I am ready for a vacation. Only two hours until I have to wake up and get on the plane. I am just keeping my fingers crossed that nothing worse happens in the time remaining.

4:03 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos

HollyCorp

On my schedule, my publicist had scheduled last week as "nervous breakdown," but I wound up with a cold instead. I have been lounging around in the basement, watching criminally bad television and letting my hair get very greasy.

Today, I washed the hair, left the basement and became a corporation. It's not actually called HollyCorp as in the title of this post; the corporation doesn't have an official name yet, although HollyCorp makes me think of LexCorp. Theo suggested Black & Black which put me in mind of a detective agency, but was also vetoed as I do not plan to do much in the way of detecting. We are probably, predictably, going to be The Black Arts.

On Wednesday, I am going to Jamaica where I look forward to spending a week snorkeling, hanging out with a whole bunch of friends and maybe even doing a little bit of writing. Oh, and drinking some of the most fantastic coffee in the world.

So, if you were going to be a corporation, what would you call it?

3:20 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos

Day Late, Dollar Short

I'm here in New York again for NCTE. Yesterday, I bought new shoes because I didn't have any that weren't (a) high heeled or (b) glorified sandals. The shoes I bought, despite being Aerosoles, gave me so many blisters that I used up Jo Knowles entire stock of band-aids. Then I got stuck in such terrible traffic on my way to the Javits Center that I was 15 minutes late for the 21 Proms signing and missed the part where we all actually, well, signed.

Not my day, right?

This seems like as good a time as any to admit that I have been having a hard time blogging lately. Having a movie on its way out is really surreal (like last week when Theo and I were driving home and when we were about to get off on our exit, he said "what's that?" and I looked and that was a GIANT BILLBOARD with Jared's face looking down at me, as--part of an advertisement for the Spiderwick exhibit at the Eric Carle museum--and I nearly swerved off the road). All my problems seem kind of silly: Which of the dresses I bought will I wear to the premiere? When will I be able to stop going to cocktail parties and get some writing done?

And, even weirder, sometimes I feel like if I talk about it, my good fortune will fly away. Or turn out not to be real after all. How superstitious and crazy is that?

3:19 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos

WGA Strike and General Writing

Although I'm not now a WGA member, I'm observing the strike (by not writing any film or TV stuff, although I can't explain why I was doing that in the first place) and am fully in support of the WGA writers. Joss Whedon and Doris Egan (writer/producer of House) have excellent posts about why the strike's important. The WGA East site has a list of ways people can support the writers as does fans4writers (I sent along some pizza money).

Luckily, I have lots of books to write anyway. Despite needing to do lots of revisions on A Giant Problem, I find myself getting more and more drawn into figuring out stuff for The White Cat. I feel the haze of obsession coming over me.

I know a bunch of you are doing Nanowrimo and a bunch of others are working to other deadlines. Tell me, what is it that first makes a project come alive for you. Is it a character? An idea? An image?

With Tithe it was an image; with Spiderwick, the characters' names; with Valiant, a bunch of ideas; with Ironside it was an idea again. This time, it's a feeling, an image and also a strong sense of place.

3:18 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos