Joy Preble's Blog, page 47

Classes start tomorrow. Back to my education roots this year and teaching senior English - which I'd started to miss. So it's back to Beowulf and Canterbury Tales and Macbeth and a little Dante thrown in for good measure. We'll start w/Orwell's 1984 and eventually wander our way to the Romantics, the Victorians... a little Frankenstein, a little Dracula... And cause I've got "connections" now (in quotes lest anyone mistake me for a person with power - which when you tell civilians you've got ...

So what do I post?
Panic? Me?
hahahahahah.
Cause why would I feel panicked?
Because I have to sit through a solid week of school inservice?
Because I need lesson plans for 1984 - that pesky summer reading those 12H students were supposed to do. Oranges and lemons said the bells of St. Clemens. Room 101. Big Brother. 2+2 =5. Do it to Julia.

Okay - maybe that covered that topic.

Copy edits. Due on 8/23. Gotta finish that. Let me interject here that I am totally lucky to have the same exact copy edit t...

My original editor and I once had a conversation about history. "It's the small details," he said, "that make history feel real in fiction." And I agree. When you're establishing a sense of place and time, it's the little things - stuff that's specific to that city or town or time period or whatever. Like this Italian beef sandwich with two kinds of peppers that I just ate in Chicago at a place called Bobo's on West Irving Park. We had - very sadly - come into town for a funeral. Husband's...

Back from SCBWI LA. Always, always wonderful to listen, learn, and catch up with friends, my darling cowgirl agent, meet new people, just soak in everything. Plus LA. I've got a little love affair going with LA. Took me awhile - but I do. This trip, I got to explore Culver City, see the Culver City Hotel where the cast of Wizard of Oz (yes, munchkin shenanigans!) stayed, see Culver Studios and Sony... Plus a decent meal at a little restaurant called Rush. Next year, I vow to get out to Malibu...

Well, you all had the contest hat quite stumped! So many thoughtful responses and so much fab fairy tale love. That, coupled w/my celebratory mood in having FINALLY finished my HAUNTED line edits today - has resulted in one winner and two runners up! Yay!! So- drum roll please!

Our two runners up, who will be receiving Dreaming Anastasia and HAUNTED bookmarks, are:

Lynsey Newton - who won my fancy w/ her British spelling of favourite plus her comment about how she loved that in Beauty and the B...

Contest is closed, folks. Will pull the winner out of the contest hat soon and announce tomorrow! Stay tuned.

Til then

All right, so it took me a week to get this contest posted since I announced I was going to do one. But in defense of my slothful ways, I've been working the HAUNTED line edits so all of you can have an awesome DREAMING ANASTASIA sequel to read in February.

But to the point.
As I mentioned in the previous post, Sourcebooks has done a foreign rights deal and DREAMING ANASTASIA is going to be published in Turkish! In honor of this uber exciting moment, I am doing a giveaway.

First- here's what...

And in exciting news of the week - Dreaming Anastasia is going to be published in Turkish!! Is this awesome or what?

In fact, it's so thrilling that I think it is spurring me on for a contest. I will put on my contest hat and come up with something fitting. And some cool prizes.

So stay tuned!

Til next time...

Well, they spell it a little different, but yes! it's the same Baba Yaga from Russian folklore and Dreaming Anastasia. So if you're looking for a restaurant built in an old house in the Montrose area of Houston - one with a witchy name and decent vegetarian fare plus burgers and a pleasant latte, stop on by. And then you too, can bring home your very own Baba Yega mug! (although you don't have to follow my full example and shamelessly plug your novel by handing the waiter a post card. But...

Let me preface this post by saying that if you are reading this and are shamefully not a regular reader, you might want to read about the earlier part of the "cancer sucks" journey here.

Well, the radioactive iodine treatment is over now. It's just a matter of getting Mr. Metabolism back to where he needs to be and moving forward from there. As treatments go, this one doesn't totally suck. Okay, the low iodine diet wasn't the most varied thing in the world - when you remove dairy, fish, legume...