The Rules for Hearts

1. Overheard in an elevator. Business casual woman: “Is this a Sci Fi Con?” Dealer wearing innocuous t-shirt and jeans: “No, comics.” Business casual woman: “Oh, comics…well, I just love the outfits!”

2. Speaking of elevators: there weren’t enough of them. After waiting for one for twenty minutes, at which point we took the stairs up to our room. On the seventeenth floor.

3. Man taking a doggie sticker: “That’s my lucky dog!”

I informed him that he was correct.

4. Woman taking a gun sticker: “That’s what my heart looks like.”

5. Best outfit on anyone during the whole show: the three-year-old girl in a Spiderman muscle costume. I’m sorry I don’t have a photo.

6. Sean’s latest genius object: Smokin’ Zombies!

7. Useful Tip: When there is a bottle of fancy water on the table at the hotel restaurant, do not assume that it is on the table because that is the only kind of water they serve. Assume that if you open it, it will cost you more than eight dollars.

7.5. Conversely, do not assume that just because a restaurant has a dumb name, that it will not be a good restaurant.

8. Admonition from a gentleman passing by the table: “Don’t let the loonies get you!” He paused. “Unless…they already have!”

9. Ninety five percent of the announcements made over the PA system, I completely could not understand, what with the noise in the room, the distortion, et cetera. Fortunately, the one that I did was about a gentleman who had lost a fanny pack containing pain medications. I’d been wondering whose fanny pack was underneath our table.

10. When you come to the end of an intense convention weekend, it’s great to have a task to accomplish.

It was a good thing we decided to check the tires while we were still in the parking lot.

I call it the Rockwell Deviance Quotient.

It measures how much one’s holiday experiences diverge from the media ideal.

I haven’t quite figured out the actual numerical part, but it might be like when you’re using a level and you assess how many bubbles off plumb something (or someone) is. So your holidays could be, say, four Rockwells off.

Like mine.

In other news: Steve and I are now in Columbus for the Mid-Ohio-Con, and we’ve already met some lovely people who totally know some of my friends at the Ann Arbor District Library, because as Steve says, all towns are small when you deal only with the literate.

Here at the Undisclosed Location (a.k.a. my parents’ house in Ohio), catching up on email, deleting comment spam (Why, why are the spammers so deeply attracted to the post about Rules being a Junior Library Guild selection? It’s harder hit than any other post, by far…) preparing for another small, low-key Thanksgiving, it’s hard to believe that I was at ALAN just a few days ago.

The theme of the workshop was about finding a sense of self and place in young adult literature. Our panel was about place in different genres within YA, and I’m still thinking about it. We each had about five minutes, and I’ll give you a tiny snippet of  what we said. Cecil Castellucci talked about how a scene (punk, movie monster-making, etc.) can be a place, how a city can be a character, how art itself is a safe place for a lot of us. Holly Black talked about how description in fantasy needs to suggest, even before any fantastic elements come into the story, that the reader is someplace unexpected, where anything might happen. Garret Freymann-Weyr discussed how inextricable place is from memory. I talked about how in Rules, Battle adjusts very quickly to Portland, and the very ease of that adjustment to a new place underscores how hard it is for her to connect with and understand her brother. (I also told everyone about the anxiety dream I had the night before, appropriate for a conference full of English teachers: that all of us had to relate our own work to the Great Gatsby.) Jo Knowles talked about how an abuser can make every place feel unsafe, but also how places can, eventually, be reclaimed. And Ann Angel did a search for all the places mentioned in the anthology she edited, Such A Pretty Face, and saw that the places mentioned most often — bathrooms, locker rooms, bedrooms — were all locuses of anxiety about where the characters fit in the world.

I was so glad to have the chance to be part of the conference.

More soon, but right now, it’s sunny and I’m going for a walk.

Back from a fabulous weekend farther north in the Pacific Northwest. I have four (now three) days until I head East for the National Conference of Teachers of English and the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents, and that panel I’m on with my awesome partners in YA novel crime.

One of which is my birthday.

I am suffering again from an attack of Too Many Open Tabs. Heading home in the Now It’s Really Winter darkness on the rain-slick road, I start listing all the tasks I have to finish before I get on the plane Friday morning. “Don’t talk about them while you’re driving,” says Steve.

About the weekend: once again, thanks to everyone who came to my writing workshop on Saturday, and thanks to the Lynnwood Library for hosting. Like I said, the library did great PR for my appearance. I’d seen the website graphic, but it wasn’t until I got to the branch that I saw the fliers and bookmarks. Very cool, but somehow disconcerting to see my own face smiling out at myself.

It was such a quick trip I didn’t get to see everyone I’d have liked to see (although it was excellent seeing everyone that I did) (but some of you were out of town). But I wanted to get back home as fast as possible since I knew I’d be leaving again so soon. I’m sure I’ll be back up there before too long. For Emerald City Comicon if not before.

Back to the tabs.  I was writing that list of things I had to do, and then the list expanded to multiple categories, with multiple items under each one. I didn’t even have that much coffee today, but the little hamster in my head was running running running in its wheel, and I didn’t know how to slow it down.

Then I remembered I had some reading material that had just come in on hold. To wit: I’m A Lebowski, You’re A Lebowski: Life, The Big Lebowski, And What Have You.

I did not pour myself a White Russian. I poured a different beverage. But I stopped scribbling furiously on my to-do list, and I started reading. Didn’t stop til I was done, with many pauses for cracking up. It was exactly what I needed.

And now, in not especially Dude-like fashion (maybe more like Maude? Or Brandt?) I can cross an item off my list. Because one of them was about how I should blog.

I told you it would. This scene was a little challenging to read because I can’t do guy voices so well and I have a bunch of unattributed bits of back-and-forth dialogue. But you do know that it’s Battle and her brother talking, so I hope you can tell who’s who.

Download Act I, scene ii.

ETA a geeky question: Does anyone know how to change the icon associated with a podcast in the iTunes store? I was using the Empress cover as my icon while I was reading it, but now that I’m embarked on reading Rules I’d like to change it to the Rules cover. I did change it in my .xml file using the <itunes: image> tag, but somehow the change isn’t getting picked up in the iTunes store. Any help much appreciated.

P.S. Yes, for new readers, you can subscribe to my podcast via iTunes.

So you’re blithely going through your daily online reads, and suddenly, a post hits as though it fluttered down from the sky in a priority mail envelope addressed to you.

Never mind that the post’s author had no notion you’d respond this way. Regardless, the messages resonate: Knock it off. Get it together. Figure it out. 

What’s it? Whatever you think it is.

Yes, I am just about to take off again for parts known and unknown.
2 pm Saturday, November 10th, I’ll be doing a Teen Writing Workshop at the Lynnwood Library in beautiful Lynnwood, Washington. (Thanks for making such a cool graphic advertising it, Lynnwood Library webfolk!)

Exactly seven days later, at 2 pm Saturday, November 17th, I’ll have a signing at the National Conference of Teachers of English in equally beautiful (but in a different way) New York City.

And then, on Monday the 19th at 1:30 pm, I’ll be on a panel for the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents Workshop, with several illustrious compatriots: Holly Black, Cecil Castellucci, Garret Freymann-Weyr, and Jo Knowles; we will be illustriously moderated by Ann Angel.

10 am Saturday, November 24th, I’ll be at the Mid-Ohio Con, mostly to sell comics, but I’ll have some Rules and Empresses on hand, too.

I’m excited!

(Also kind of tired just thinking about it.)

But mostly excited!