In Which I Apologize for Things That I Imagine To Be Problematic

This morning, I visited my publisher. For some reason, I was under the mistaken impression that I was there to meet my publicist for Knightley Academy who would, if I completely charmed her, hopefully help me to set up a bookstore signing for the release.

Publicists, you see, are generally very busy people who have to set up book tours for important people like Scott Westerfeld and Holly Black (with whom I share a publisher).

So there I was, early morning, following my publicist through the halls of the Simon and Schuster Fortress, desperately clutching my cup of coffee and wondering why we were in such a hurry and where, exactly, we were headed.

The Simon & Schuster fortress

We went into the publicity director’s office, where he was waiting for me. There was nowhere to put my coffee cup. My chair was that awkward height where, unless I sat at the extreme edge like I desperately wanted to flee at any moment, my feet did not exactly touch the floor. Yes, I am mini, now hush.

My publicist and I sat across from the important man in the big, imposing desk. And then he said, “so you know Knightley is getting a new cover, right?” Actually, man in the big, imposing desk, I did not know this. It had been midterms, you see, so my editor was being very lovely by not interrupting my study panic.

I was all, “um, what cover?”

And then everyone scrambled to find the new cover. Luckily my editor came in and saved the day and gave me a glossy, fabulous mock up of my just-approved new cover with a fantastic blurb from Tamora Pierce (“steampunky, subversive and enthralling!”) on it. I can’t show you guys the cover yet, but it is very, very awesome, and green, and it involves a castle.

I was sort of thinking that maybe everyone had expected me to panic over the cover change, and that was why they had taken me to this important-looking office. I tried my best to look un-panic prone.

Then, the publicity director told me that my book was “flagged,” which was why he wanted to speak with me.

Not usually a good sign.

I thought: Oh crap, they are not going to publish my book after all! They are canceling it right now. They made up this ruse about a new cover to judge how well I take shocking news. I bit my lip and waited for it.

“Your book has been flagged,” he continued, “because there’s been a fantastic response from buyers and we’ve been receiving a ton of enthusiastic emails about the series.”

Omg. Flagged was a good thing. Perhaps I wasn’t in trouble after all.

I ventured that I had brought a few copies of my marketing plans with me. I passed them out, and everyone flipped through these stapled minipackets I had prepared detailing my plans for how I was going to promote the series myself, since publicists are very busy with famous authors and, anyway, I didn’t mind setting up my own library visits.

“Multi-city book tour,” the publicity director read aloud, flipping through a packet.

I turned bright red.

“About that,” I quickly amended. “I was just going to stay with some of my old friends from college over Spring Break and thought that I could maybe visit a library or a bookstore while I’m in Boston and NYC. I was going to set it up myself and–”

“–What a fantastic idea.”

“Um, sorry? What?” I asked.

And then I was informed that they would be happy to set up visits to libraries, schools and bookstores in like a million cities, and they started talking about what was an appropriate speaker’s fee (I have only ever charged zero dollars and zero cents, but I didn’t say that), and which were the best independent bookstores for me to visit, and how it was such a good idea for me to do a book tour, and a zillion other incredible things that do not happen to mildly geeky graduate students who harbor an unhealthy Harry Potter obsession and sometimes write Twilight fan fiction.

I just sat there and listened to it all and waited to wake up to the sound of my alarm and head over to meet my publicist for real, because there was no way that this was really happening.

I shook everyone’s hands and said goodbye and followed my editor out to the elevators in a daze. And then she was like, “what are you doing right now?”

I didn’t think that “mentally pinching myself and wondering why this dream is incredibly realistic because I sort of have to pee” was the best answer, so I said “Oh, um, nothing, why?”

And that is how I wound up spending my afternoon drinking Diet Coke with my editor and going over the synopsis for Knightley 2, which is TOTALLY SERIOUSLY I AM NOT KIDDING called The Secret Battle Society (this is obviously subject to change, but come on, is that title not made of pure, ridiculous win?). We talked about the overall arc of the series, and polished up everything that was sort of vague and/or WTF-y in the synopsis and generally fixed all of the plot holes.

If you drink enough of this stuff, it makes plot holes disappear.

Since I worked on Knightley 1 while I was living in London (back when I was still cool, sigh) I had never had the opportunity to do this before in person, and it was amazing. I’d heard my editor was good (I’d worked with a different editor on Book 1) but wow, good does not begin to describe it.

Anyway, it is actually 6AM now, and no I didn’t just wake up. I, um, never went to sleep. I actually have to be at the NCTE conference in a couple hours (eep), and I probably shouldn’t show up as a sleepless zombie. But, seriously, this has been the most incredible day and I haven’t gone to sleep because I’ve wanted to draw it out as long as possible. Okay, I’m going. Goodnight.

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Studying

A group of my classmates and I are working on a project that involves popular culture and medical anthropology. Tonight, I was studying with a friend. Her pop culture topic is Twilight. Mine is Harry Potter. The resulting conversation ensued around 11PM, laptops out, whilst sitting at her kitchen table.

Friend: Let’s play a game.
Me: Is the game called ‘study quietly for 2 hours?’
Friend: No. Truth or Dare.
Me: Like, ‘I dare you to study quietly for 2 hours?’
Friend: No. We can ask each other a question every 30 minutes.
Me: Like, ‘Do you like Lacan?’ ‘No.’ ‘Okay, time to study for 30 more minutes?’
Friend: No. Interesting questions.
Me: Like, ‘Would you sleep with Lacan?’
Friend: What does Lacan actually look like?
We Google Lacan.
Friend: Ugh, no, I would not sleep with Lacan. Okay, time to study for 30 more minutes.
Me: Somehow, I knew I wouldn’t like this game.

Toast

Penn Homecoming game against Princeton.
All of that debris on the track is toast.
We threw toast.
Yes.
There is a tradition of toast-throwing.

Octopi

This is a t-shirt design! Omg: http://karmasoup.org/shop.html

Me: So you know how the plural of octopus is octopi?
Classmate: Er, yes?
Me: Okay, so what if there was a pie that had only one octopus in it…would it be an OCTOPIE?
Classmate: It is imperative that we ascertain the answer to this question forthwith! Come, we shall enlist the help of a dozen supercomputers, which are conveniently located in the basement of the science center.

Um, it didn’t really happen like that. My classmate did not, in fact, reveal a secret underground lair of supercomputers which possess an uncanny ability to take awful puns seriously. She sort of looked around desperately, made some excuse about needing to sharpen her Sharpie, and ran out of the room.

Whatever, classmate. I have another joke that I am SAVING FOR YOU. It goes like this:

Q. How many octopi?
A. 3.14

I think she will enjoy that one infinitely more. Yes.

Day of the Dead

Since I didn’t get to dress up for Halloween (yeah, remember the Max from Where The Wild Things are costume idea? Didn’t happen. Apparently long underwear has a butt flap. And an, um, front flap. They do *not* advertise those facts on the long underwear websites. You would have wussed out on having nether-region flaps as well. Admit it), I dressed up for Day of the Dead instead.

Basically, I wore this to lecture. Including the awesometastic flip up glasses (only $10 from 80s Purple).

Admit it, readers: you are jealous. You too want to be the lone person in the medical ethics department who, instead of showing up to class in scrub pants, decided to dress as an Edwardian Steampunk.

Please Stand By

Normal blogging service will resume shortly. Previous posts are being transferred over from the old domain and will appear in full below. No, there is no excuse for my miscreant blogging, except an unreasonable addiction to Twitter.

Yep, there’s going to be a blog here.

You guys win. I’m currently tweaking this website to feature more internet stuff-centric, rather than book stuff-centric, content. Hence the current mess. Hence the sudden appearance of this, a BLOG, which shall be updated whenever there’s news. Or whenever I find a weird meme website about baby mops or bizarre text messages.

-Robyn

NYC and Me

I am currently in NYC, and it’s BookExpo America time, kidlets. Stand by for INSANE SCHEDULE.

If you would like to not-spontaneously run into me, I am going to be here:

Thursday:

4PM-6PM TEEN AUTHOR CARNIVAL, Jefferson Market Branch NYPL

Signing of Better Than Yesterday paperback, Q&A, giveaway of vintage English boarding school prefect badges, Cadbury’s chocolate, super secret contraband Knightley bookmarks, and other awesome people doing more awesome things than me.

7PM, The Diamonds Reading/Signing Extravaganza with Surprise Musical Guest (not me). Borders Columbus Circle.

My friend Ted. I will be cheering. Loudly.

Friday:

9AM-Evening: BookExpo America, the Javits Center, NYC

I’m in ur boothz takin ur ARCs. Also, wandering exhibition floor, video camera in hand.

Also going to Kidlit Drinks Night and BEAtweetup so come say hi!

Saturday:

9:30AM-10:30AM Driving Success With Teen and Tweens: Authors Share Online Success Stories panel discussion, Room 1E16, BookExpo America, Javits Center

I am moderating the Panel Discussion of Awesome starring the lovely Jessica Burkhart, Julia DeVillers, Maureen Johnson and Sarah Mlynowski.

10:30AM-5PM: BookExpo America

Back to wandering. And ARC-getting. And video-cameraing.

5:30-7:30 PM: S&S Pulse/Aladdin Author Thing.

7:30PM-9:30PM: Saturday Night At BEA YA/MG Drinks Extravaganza, Common Ground, NYC (206 Avenue A at 13th)

Julia DeVillers, Bennett Madison and I are co-hosting a massive drinks night. Please come.

Sunday:

BookExpo? Or sleep. Only time will tell.

Author Photos

I’ve been digging myself out from beneath a massive pile of work lately, so it’s not surprising that I’ve, well, forgotten to do one or two things that a person should never forget to do. Thankfully these things I speak of are in no way related to personal hygiene, or the paying of bills, but they are, nonetheless, problematic.

Let’s say, hypothetically, that I forgot to get an author photo taken. And, hypothetically, I realized this with, oh, 12 hours until I needed to hand in said author photo to my editor.

Yeah, I forgot about my own author photo, the one that goes on the back of the book, the one that’s really supposed to be a picture of Violet Haberdasher, since we all know that she’s the “real” author of Knightley, but Violet has been kind enough to let me pretend to be her–at least when it comes to appearing on the back of the book.

My housemates and I were on our way to the park (for reference, we wound up coming home with the Free Chairs of Awesome from my previous post), and I accosted one of them on the stairs.

“Ellie, help!” I whined. “I need an author photo. Would you just point this camera at me and take like ten pictures of my face? I can’t find my remote or I’d do it myself.”

She agreed, so I changed into a ruffly blouse, stood on the stairwell, and let my housemate take a bunch of photos of my face while everyone else waited in the doorway, rolling their eyes and being all, “Robyn, is this really time for a photo shoot?”

Now, you’d think that the photos would have come out horribly, but I had a stroke of luck: the awesome gods decided to intervene, and voila, here it is, my shiny shiny new author photo:

Squee! I love it!