What a year, and some updates.

I'm a bit flabbergasted, really, at the continuing popularity of that quirky little novel-illustrated-with-photos I wrote awhile back, which debuted on the New York Times bestseller list last June and has remained there, somewhat stubbornly, for 56 weeks now. This bestseller-ness is something of an abstract concept (what does that mean? how many books? etc), but to put things in context Quirk Books crunched some numbers and used the results to create a nice infographic, which among other factoids points out that if you stacked up all the copies Miss P has sold to-date, they would be taller than Mount Everest:

In other words, I should feel very lucky, and I do. It's been a year of meeting engaged readers and passionate booksellers and librarians and being pleasantly weirded out by the fact that strangers seem to be at least dimly aware of who I am (this happens at book conferences and the like, not at, you know, the mall), and being made to feel welcome in this little corner of the book universe we call YA by a cadre of brilliant and charming and disarmingly unpretentious writers, several of whom I am grateful now to call friends. Even without an Everest-surpassing stack of sold books, all of that would've made for a very excellent year.

Hey, how about a little Q&A?

Q: When's the next Miss Peregrine book?

I'm working on it now! But second books are hard, especially if you want them not to suck, which I do. It'll be coming out in 2013 though exactly when in 2013 I'm not sure yet.

Q: What do I do till then?

You can pre-order Talking Pictures, my purdy coffee table book of captioned found photographs which comes out October 16th. Think of it this way: if Miss Peregrine was a story I made up about photographs I found, then Talking Pictures is photos that already have stories attached to them, written by anonymous hands years ago. (If you haven't seen the video where I explain what the heck a "talking picture" is, watch it here.) And oh, oh! There's a new cover for the book, which I'm really fond of:

Q: Are you doing any signings or events in my town?

I'll be at Comic-Con on Friday, July 13, for a signing at Quirk Books' booth, #1636, at 2pm. And I'll be giving away photos from my vintage photo collection! I don't have any signings scheduled after that, but things are always cropping up at the last minute, so I'll be sure and trumpet it from the treetops if something gets set up.

Q: Are you going to make any more videos?

Yes! I'm just not sure when. They take me forever, and book-writing also takes forever, and because I get paid to write books but not to make videos, book-writing tends to win. But I really miss making videos, and if I don't get back to it soon I'll be super pissed at myself. So: yes!

Thanks again for an amazing year. I can't wait to see what the next one brings.