Rachel Hartman's Blog, page 26

Huzzah!

I’ve been nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award!

For the non-Canadians among you, that’s a Canadian award. The Governor General is the Queen’s representative in the Canadian government, a ceremonial and Constitutional position. Here’s the Wikipedia article, which explains the office in more depth than I’m prepared to.

Of course, my husband and I had a good deal of fun this morning imagining what would happen if I won. I’m still pretty new at being Canadian. I assume one dresses up...

My beautiful jigsaw puzzle!

Remember me mentioning that a friend had made a puzzle for me, laser-etched in black lucite? Well now it can be shown:

It’s even prettier in person. The black parts are all shiny.

The best part, though, is that the puzzle contains numerous custom-shaped pieces. My initials:

Musical instruments:

Crumhorn, drum, violin, lute

And two characters from my old comic series, Amy Unbounded:

That’s Lalo, the original dragon in human form, and Amy herself.

Pretty neat, huh?

Now, I need to make a little legal di...

Home! And an event today

Ah, it’s good to be back! The leaves started changing in my absence, and it’s nice and cool (compared with LA!). My son and dog are glad to see me – can’t speak for the frog or ‘mander – and my husband managed to leave Japan before the typhoon hit. All’s well.

Can’t quite relax yet, though! This afternoon at 2pm, I am appearing in the Authors Tent at Word on the Street, an annual celebration of books and literacy. The Authors Tent is on Homer, across from the library. If you’re available, come...

Last day of US tour

I’ll be at the Santa Monica Barnes & Noble tonight at 7pm!

And then tomorrow I go home. I’m ready to be home, friends, although in some ways it feels like this tour has zipped by at lightspeed. It’s been exciting and exhausting, together.

Thanks again to all the wonderful bookstores, schools, libraries, author escorts, the good folks at Random House, and above all the amazing READERS who listened so attentively and came out to see me in five cities. Y’all were great, and I appreciate your time...

In San Francisco, they kept me hopping

Hi, all! I know it’s been a few days since I checked in, but I was so busy in San Francisco that I really didn’t have time to sit down and post very much. I gave talks at two lovely schools in Petaluma, and then had a pizza party at Copperfield’s Books on the first day. I want to give a big shout-out to all my new friends in Mr. K’s class, who drove all the way down from Santa Rosa just to eat pizza and ask awesomely intelligent questions!

Then the next day I gave talks in two more schools, Cr...

Sunny Sunday in Seattle

I only have one event today, and no travel, so I slept in until (almost) eight. Yes, that counts as sleeping in for me.

I can walk to Pike Place Market from my hotel, so that’s what I did for breakfast. I had never been there before, but was eager to see it. I love public markets. I know they get a little touristy, but I don’t care. I love the pyramids of produce, the crush of the crowd (something I’m not fond of in other contexts, but it somehow seems right in this one), the inevitable busker...

Good morning, sunshine

Chicagoland, you were wonderful. I spoke at four Naperville middle schools and was so moved and awed by the kids’ enthusiasm. They asked wonderful questions. At one school they lined the hallway with pictures of dragons in my honour. I was really touched.

Events at Warren-Newport library, Anderson’s Book Shop, and B&N Old Orchard went beautifully and were excellent good fun. Thank you, thank you, to all the librarians and bookstore staff who made these happen. I felt so very welcomed, and agai...

Greetings from the road!

Hello darlings! I’m on tour. Please do check the “Appearances” tab, above, to see where I’m going to pop up next! (hint: Chicagoland!)

I hit the ground running yesterday, starting with two school talks. To my new friends at Haverford High School and Radnor Middle School, thank you so much for having me. You were wonderful listeners, and asked good questions. And I do believe I glimpsed some future writers out there in the audience. It takes one to know one; I recognized that look. I look forwa...

My interview with Nancy Pearl

Here it is!(I couldn’t get it to embed, sorry.)

I just want to say: thank you so much to Nancy Pearl, Paul, Deanna, the lovely folks at University Book Store, and everybody else who helped make this happen (Trinity, Robert, Konrad, Paige, Flann! You helped!). I had so much fun, I didn’t want it to end. I wanted to keep chatting. Maybe we’ll chat again sometime!

More thoughts on the blues

So my father-in-law, who is a big fan of the blues, apparently read my confused gibbering on the subject a few weeks ago and decided to help me out by getting me a nice introductory book. Thanks, Mike!

I’m enjoying it so far; I love reading about music, and the early bluesmen and -women were a colourful crew. The one fly in the ointment, as you can probably guess – and as I discovered while writing Seraphina – is that words can only approach music obliquely. I still needed to hear it for mysel...