Thursday, August 8, 2013

A Quickie Update

I haven't been blogging much as there's a deadline looming in my near future, but this week I'm up in the Bay Area on a work trip for my day job. Sitting alone in my hotel room at night is making me stir crazy, so I thought I'd hop online for some quick updates.

First and most exciting--we've sold translation rights for THE LOST PLANET in Spain! This is my first foreign sale and I'm so thankful to New Leaf's incredibly awesome subsidiary rights director, Kathleen Ortiz. I'm super excited to share my book with Spanish readers!

Last weekend was the summer SCBWI conference in Los Angeles, which was a blast as always. This was my fourth year attending, and I couldn't help but marvel at the changes that have happened since that first conference:

Year 1: clueless writer with a completed mess of a manuscript and no friends
Year 2: aspiring writer with a manuscript in revisions who'd started to make a few new friends
Year 3: querying writer who had just received an offer of representation the day before the conference
Year 4: soon-to-be-published author with a two-book deal!

These days I don't attend the conference so much for the content being offered as for the chance to spend time with "old" writer friends and make new ones. I also hosted the always-delightful Ghenet Myrthil at my home and had a ton of fun getting to know her better. And as an added bonus, my agent was on the faculty this year and I got to spend a bunch of time with her, which was so awesome. I seriously still have to pinch myself some days because I can't believe I get to work with her. She's the best!

I'm spending the weekend in beautiful San Francisco with my husband, but starting next week I'm going to be on a mega-tight schedule and will probably not be blogging for a while. So enjoy the rest of your summers, and I'll see you on the other side!