Laini Taylor's Blog, page 10

Interview at Meg Cabot's blog!!!

Amayyyyyyzing . . .

An interview up with me at . . . Meg Cabot's blog!!!!!!!!!!!

MEG CABOT!!!

THAT was an email request I was thrillllled to get back before the holidays.

MEG CABOT!!!

If you're not a kid-lit reader, Meg Cabot is the awesome author of many wonderful YA and middle grade books (and adult books too), of which The Princess Diaries series is the best-known, on account of the movies. She has a slew of awesome books, both series and stand-alones -- it blows my mind how prolific she is. S...

Yay, YALSA!

Thank you, YALSA! Lips Touch has been named to YALSA's Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults of 2009. Yippeeee!! (YALSA is the Young Adult Library Services Association, the YA branch of the American Library Association) As ever, I [heart:] librarians:-)

The complete list is here:

Brennan, Sarah Rees. Demon's Lexicon. Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing/Margaret K. McElderry. 2009.
Griffin, Paul. The Orange Houses. Penguin/Dial Books. 2009.
Herlong, M.H. The Great Wide Sea. Penguin/Viking. 2008....

baby toes, book awards, and blue people

Miss Clementine is no longer content to take our word for it that her toes are delicious. She wants to see for herself.
I think she likes 'em :-) If you listen you may be able to hear a nice slurping sound!

In other news, big congrats to all the winners of the ALA (American Library Association) awards today! If you don't follow children's literature closely, these are kind of the Academy Awards for us. I'm most excited that my friend and local Portland author LK Madigan won the Morris Award for...

breaking in the new journal

So, I got a new sketchbook/journal (after that last post on journaling), and I broke it in, and yay! So much fun! The first two pages are more art than text -- a little drawing, a little collage, a few random song lyrics from an Elizabeth Mitchell song I've been singing Clementine. Anyway, I love these little characters! I'm not sure where they came from, but I have an idea where they're going. More on that later. Maybe.
(Click to enlarge.)

And guess what. They're paper dolls! Look what's unde...

You will go in the direction you are looking.

Though January is already half gone (huh? whuuuh?), I've only just been able to think over the coming year and my hopes for it. I'm not calling my thoughts "resolutions," not that I think there is anything wrong with resolutions. They get a bad rap. So many people make fun of New Year's resolutions as pointless and made to be broken, but I say it's not so. It's good to be mindful about your life. Your life can be something that happens to you, or it can be something you build, consciously and...

Parisian things

Hey guys, Stephanie Perkins is in Paris. Lucky girl! I suppose it's not really luck, though. She made a plan and made it happen. But first . . . she wrote a book. Her first novel, coming this fall from Dutton, is set in Paris, and her third novel will be set there too, so this is a research trip. How wonderful are research trips to awesome places?

Five or six years ago Jim and I took a trip to Prague to research a graphic novel we were planning. Then, post-Prague, I realized the graphic novel ...

Do you really really really like to read books? And would you perhaps like to write a fairy tale retelling?

Do you like to read books? Would you like to read them in a canoe on a magnificent lake that looks like this?
Or maybe at the end of that dock? Or in a meadow, or in a beautiful cabin with light streaming in the window?

Reading reading reading, a juicy stack of wonderful books, and taking breaks for yummy meals prepared for you, in the company of other lovely kindred spirits who have also been living inside books all day?

Can you just imagine it? Elizabeth "blue poppy" MacCrellish has imagined i...

Oh wonderful, oh magical, oh beautiful 2009!

2009 has been a wonderful, magical, beautiful year around here, and I'm sad to see it go. I feel like I'm standing on a dock waving a hanky as this fantastical ocean liner is pulling away. Farewell, 2009! Thank you for everything!

I spent half the year growing in strange new ways.

And the next half nurturing a tiny, beloved new creation.

I loved being pregnant, and as for motherhood . . . Motherhood surpasses anything I could have imagined. I keep wanting to try to capture it in words, but so fa...

#196 -- New Leaf

For the New Year: a new leaf. Any thoughts?

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

What a nice New Year treat -- the CYBILS short lists!!! (Children's & Young Adult Blogger Literary Awards) Both Silksinger and Lips Touch have been shortlisted in their respective categories: Middle Grade Science Fiction & Fantasy, and Young Adult Science Fiction & Fantasy. Thank you so much, panelists!! I'm thrilled!!!

As always, there are really intriguing sounding books on the lists that I have never heard of -- it's very exciting. I'm making a slew of requests from the library today. If y...