Lisa Lutz is coming to town! She's touring for her second hilarious book – CURSE OF THE SPELLMANS. It is just as good as the first, THE SPELLMAN FILES. And since FILES won an Alex Award it can be considered a teen appropriate book and Chompoblog feels fully justified in recommending them to smart teens that like their heroines imperfect and sassy.

In February Aaron and I flew down to San Francisco to spend a day with Lisa and her former employer, a private investigator company. I'm still scared to list their names and stuff -- the stories they told us of past surveillances and tailings were absolutely spell binding. They were awesome. Lisa was awesome. We had the best time with her and walked around San Francisco and drank Irish Coffees.

Here are a few pics:

Here we are at the top of Lombard Street. The twisty street with an almost view of Alcatraz.

Here's Lisa probably surveilling someone while looking for the Buena Vista, the first bar to serve Irish Coffee. I'm pointing to its large sign across the street since I'm not good at surveilling, but am good at sign reading.

And here we are on our way home, at the bookstore in the airport. I like to spend my spare time at airports putting all my friends' books face out. I hope the books I covered up aren't offended. I think Mr. Ludlum will survive.

And, NO, the PIs didn't give us the secret pass code to look up all the dirt on everyone we know. Aaron and I DID learn about how to tail someone...we even did follow someone for a bit with Lisa and used some walkie talkies. Aaron was 'on point' which is in the front and Lisa and I were behind, ready to hop in a cab or run down an alley or something...UNTIL I saw a candy store. And then I abandoned the tail. Aaron said the only thing I could tail would be the Hamburglar and even then he doubted my skills. It wasn't a real tail...just a random person we picked off the street. So I didn't jeopardize any state secrets or insurance scams or whatever. And it was a really cool candy store. I bought some mango chili gum balls and Lisa got a gummy rat (the gumballs tasted like mango vomit, though, but hopefully the rat was delish.)

I really admire (dare I type it?) Desvernine Associates, Inc. for their warmth and heart and smarts. If anyone were going to nose around in my business I'd hope it would be them.

So the San Francisco prize trip to BE A SPELLMAN FOR A DAY was a blast. Thanks to Lisa, Desvernine Assoc. and Simon & Schuster for making us feel so welcome and organizing such a fun thing!

HERE is where you can tail Lisa while she's in Seattle:

Tuesday April 1
Seattle Mystery Bookshop
12:00 PM

Wednesday April 2
University Bookstore
7:00 PM

Thursday April 3
Third Place Books
7:00 PM

Ooh and she'll be on KMPS on Wednesday!

March has been pretty exciting. I think we bought a house and are moving even farther west than we are now. On our first outing with our lovely real estate agent I slammed my finger in her car door. It turns out I broke the tip of my finger and who knows if before or after they drilled a hole in the nail is when it got infected. So my left hand isn't my friend and I'm taking pills. All should be well in a few days. I do wish it was the middle finger and not the index.

AND thank heavens it isn't my right hand. Typing has been a chore, but sketching and having things to sketch has been awesome. Like sketching bits of our rental house and surrounding area that I'll be leaving soon.

And research sketching! I'm working on a personal dummy something set in a certain time period. Luckily there are loads of books and some movies set then, too, to look at and adapt for my own idears.

And researching how to draw hot teens! Sara has no idea how hard it is to draw someone hot and teenage. I might have her redo all the hot characters. Are teen boys ever hot? I can't have every hot guy looking like the only hot guy I know, Aaron (below is not Aaron) -- and besides, Aaron's WAY too old. It is difficult to look properly teenage AND handsome and the media isn't helping. Especially when most actors playing teens are ancient. Isn't the cast of High School Musical -- aren't they all over 40?

Kirby is back. I'm so glad. And not just because she brought me the best book!

We move to our new house the weekend of the Conference! I don't think I'll post much until May. There are lots of paints and slide whistles and pie plates to pack up. Plus critique sessions to prep for at the Conference which is almost sold out. If you haven't signed up yet what are you waiting for???

Happy National Grammar Day!

Martha Brockenbrough, all-around great gal, SPOGG founder, SCBWI member, and writer is also the originator of today -- National Grammar Day.

She's getting loads of sweet coverage -- this morning my radio alarm clock woke me up with her KPLU interview. I'll be recording KING TV all day, too.

Below is an illustration from her book, THINGS THAT MAKE US [SIC]. Out in the Fall from St. Martin's Press with chapter illustrations by me.

Here is the text that should go with this family tree:

600 B.C. Here lies the Roman alphabet
400s A.D. German influence
500s Old English
600 St. Augustine
1066 Norman Conquest
Three major influences on English are (duh) English, Latin, and Norman French
1399 Henry IV
1500s Shakespeare
(shout out to Jane Austen)

I'm hoping to buy Martha a Grammartini while she corrects my grammar in this post.

Lordy, there are so many bloggers who posted minute-by-minute coverage of the SCBWI NY Conference that I don't feel the need to say much. Other than I enjoyed it immensely. Before and after the conference I was working my patootie off hoofing it to portfolio drop offs and meeting with the coolest of people and finding candy and cupcake shops and seeing old friends and making new ones.

Here are some non-conference related photos:

First, our hike in Central Park. Sara and Jolie, both in black, are near the Dairy building and looking at the lawn HORRIFIED by what they see--

A hawk eating a squirrel. Ladies, it's just the Circle of Life...

What's that? Why, yes! We were lucky enough to see The Lion King and get a backstage tour after the show.

Here's Sara getting too close to a hyena puppet head for our guide's comfort.

The puppets were amazing. My favorite was the elephant and the smaller silhouette puppets and nature scenery bits. The stampede scene was very cool, too!

Sara had to leave us a day early, but on the advice of a super groovy editor Jolie and I found our way to a scrumptious cupcake spot. Sara has a web presence, but Jolie, here's my public request for you to start a blog!

My favorite illustrator, Ali, and her sis-in-law, Alicia, were my roomies after Jolie took off. We hit some good restaurants and made a few portfolio drop-offs before leaving JUST in time for a snow storm which delayed all our flights, I think.

I AM ready to move to New York. Aaron would be on board if I could only teach Bebop how to use the subway and get Logan a paying job -- I think then we could afford it.

Kirby Larson's paperback tour for Hattie Big Sky is over, but boy, could you feel the love of her new and old fans!

Kids that love books are so amazingly wonderful. They ask such great questions and I'm sure their presence at events or their interest at school visits is what makes children's authors and illustrators glad to be alive and anxious to create more good work.

And Kirby is amazing. I listened to her school presentation many many times, but was completely enthralled each time and learned something new to boot. And always different, intriguing responses to Kirby's questions and different, interesting questions from the kids for Kirby.

Here are some photo highlights, but read all about it at Kirby's super blog.

Queen Anne Books event lady extraordinaire, Tegan, made delicious German Chocolate cupcakes. Did you know if you move those cupcakes around you can spell: YAH, IT A HOOTER? Which is maybe a more appropriate phrase for Ballard than for Queen Anne.

View Ridge Elementary has a super awesome librarian and lovely lovely readers.

Dudes and dudettes, Sakai Intermediate School might be too cool for school. The building is amazing. Their library is the coolest library I've ever seen. They even have Playaways (which I've only ever seen at Office Max and on Betsy's blog)! Hattie should be on a Playaway!!!

Not pictured: My favorite moment at a school event – I was sitting in front of a bunch of 5th grade boys before Kirby was about to start her presentation and people were still being seated. I asked the kids what grade they were in, if they'd read the book, what class had they just come from...and one of the kids, tired of small talk, asks me, "Are you her daughter?"
I said, "No, I'm her driver*."
His eyes got as big as saucers and I'm pretty sure he's now convinced that Kirby and ALL children's book authors roll with JK Rowling in Hummers.
He said, "Wow. My friend's dad has a driver. They have two of everything."
"Two drivers?" I asked. But then we were shooshed by a teacher and Kirby started her presentation and I became her human slide show remote control advancer.

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