E. Lockhart's Blog

More Chicago

Oh, I know I need to do the FAQ and the John Belushi quiz answers! I am sorry! I am on tour an it is madness!

We have left Florida without further mishap, amazingly.
Now, Chicago!
We are in the same building Oprah lives in.
My room is pink! I love it.

Yesterday we did a school visit at York high school and then had an early dinner with a great group of students, teachers librarians from Glenbard South. All the girls (they were all girls) had read How to Be Bad and had great questions. We also debated whether Edward in Twilight is a healthy kind of boyfriend for a girl to have.

There were balloons and a cookie-cake that said How to Be Bad!

Then we went to the lovely and well-stocked Anderson's bookshop (where you can buy the book online), and did a great event. Lots of people, lots of excellent questions. Thanks to everyone who came.

Lauren has been the video maven. She is getting extremely creative. We are hoping to have hilarious video footage for you by the end of the week.
Here are some hints:

a weed wacker
a hall monitor
a police officer
an escalator
dancing in the hallways

more later

xo
E

Chicago

Hello from Chicago!
Pizza. That thick Chicago-style pizza.
A fancy hotel!
So tall that I had to change my room because I was scared to be up that high. Now I am on a sane floor (15). (Sarah and Lauren like being up high. They are not as neurotic as me.)

I want to write about stuff properly and post photos, but it will have to wait until morning. For now, here is a list of our upcoming events (including one new one!)

THE HOW TO BE BAD TOUR

May 13, 2008
7:00 pm Barnes & Noble 55 Old Orchard Center Skokie, IL 60077 847-676-2230

May 14th, 2008
7:00 pm Tattered Cover bookstore 9315 Dorchester St Littleton, CO 80129
(303) 470-7050 NOTE: This event is Myracle and Mlynoswki only, no Lockhart.

May 19, 2008
3:30 PM Flintridge Bookstore and Coffeehouse 964 Foothill Blvd. La Canada, CA 91011

May 19, 2008
7:00 pm B&N Thousand Oaks 160 S. Westlake Blvd. Thousand Oaks, CA 91362 (805) 446-2820

May 20, 2008
6:30pm Vroman's Bookstore 695 E. Colorado Blvd Pasadena, CA 91101 626-449-5320

May 21, 2008
7:00 pm Not Your Mother's Book Club Books Inc. in Opera Plaza 601 Van Ness
San Francisco, CA 94102 (415) 776-1111

May 22, 2008
3:00pm Hicklebee's Childrens Books 1378 Lincoln Ave San Jose, CA 95125 408-292-8880

May 22, 2008
7:30pm Copperfields Books 140 Kentucky St Petaluma, CA 94952 (707) 762-0563

May 29, 2008
4:00 pm Borders 1499 Post Rd Fairfield, CT 06824 203-256-1619

May 30, 2008
7:00 pm Outback Teen Center, hosted by Elm Street Books, 71 Main St. New Canaan, CT 06840 (203) 966-4545

May 31, 2008
2:00 pm Barnes & Noble Country Glen Center 91 Old Country Road Carle Place, NY 11514 516-741-9850

June 1, 2008
1:00 pm Books of Wonder 18 West 18th St. New York, NY 10011 (212) 989-3270

From the Road!

Today Lauren, Sarah and I head to Chicago for more How to Be Bad excitement. Times and dates are here.

But first, we get a morning on the BEACH! Sarah has a hot bikini. Lauren has a hot bikini. As you can probably tell from the pictures below, I am temporarily a little pumpkin-shaped, but I, too, have a hot bikini!

We have had some great events and signed loads of stock at wonderful bookstores. Here's Lauren signing on the floor when we found a previously hidden stash of TTYL in the summer reading section:

Touring with Lauren is a little like touring with a really really nice rock star who will show you the sore under her nose (click on that link for lots more tour photos), buy you little presents (lip gloss!) and take care of you when you're sick. Because people who love Lauren's books LOVE LAUREN'S BOOKS SO MUCH they nearly faint when they see her. And she talks to every single person at length and they don't want to leave! It is pretty amazing. This happens even with bookstore owners.

Touring with Sarah, on the other hand is like touring with a very well-dressed and extremely energetic dervish. She has a blackberry. Stuff is going on on the blackberry. She has the best hair of anyone I know. She understands product. Grown ups come to our signings who have read every single grown-up book Sarah ever wrote (which is a lot of books) and they are total Mlynowski fans. And then she has a totally separate group of Bras & Broomsticks readers who I suspect might have magical powers.

Anyway, they are both awesome. I love traveling with them. Here is a backstage photo of primping in a bookshop bathroom before an event:
(Note blackberry; you can click on all these photos to make them bigger)

One highlight of our trip was Books & Books, where Lorena, Erika and Julie made HTBB t-shirts:

And as if that weren't enough, people read our "author tracker" emails and brought us cookies! (Sign up here to get them -- it looks like you're just getting mine but really they're all from all three of us.)

Another favorite shop of mine was Goering's in Gainesville. They have an ice cream parlor in there! For real! I got chocolate dulce du leche, and it was an extremely good ice cream experience. I think all bookstores should consider adding ice cream. What's with all the coffee?

More from the road (and the beach!) soon. Please come see us on tour. Or buy How to Be Bad from Books Inc, where we'll be later this month!

more tour

My eyes are rolling back in my head I am so tired, so i am just pointing you guys to Lauren's awesome post about the various debacles of our How to Be Bad tour. We are having adventures, I tell you that.
I have much photos. More tomorrow.

xo
E

Tour Report

So I'm on tour for How to Be Bad!
So far, fun city.
Sarah, Lauren and I started off in Atlanta. Sarah and Lauren did two school visits while I was at IRA (International Reading Association). I was on a panel with Gail Giles, Jerry Spinelli and Court Voorhees, whose debut novel The Brothers Torres is getting lots of buzz. It was a wonderful audience and I had a great time. Although I missed my ski hat. The conference center was incredibly cold.

Then we launched How to Be Bad at a Barnes annd Noble, which was especially fun because we DRESSED UP. Check the How to Be Bad page next week for video footage of us looking foxy.

Lauren's parents threw us a party and served waffles! (There are waffles in the book. Also alligators, a pirate hotel, adventure and romance). It was very glam and we felt very happy. Our friend the uber-cool YA novelist Alan Gratz came to see us (author of Something Wicked, Samurai Shortstop, etc.), which made us all glow with happiness as we stuffed ourselves with waffles. (There were also RED VELVET cupcakes. Ahh, the south!)

Then we drove to Jacksonville in the morning to go to the charming BookMark store.
Stuff happened on the road.
I am not revealing all, but suffice it to say, it was not pretty.
So...
we were late.
But people were still there!
They listened to us read and bought books and the shop itself was adorable.

Then we went to the BEACH, which is only a block away from the shop.
It was gorgeous! We breathed in the negative ions and felt rejuvenated!
Then someone
stole
my
shoes.
My
$14
Lands End
orange
slides
that I wore every day last summer.
I left them near the entrance to the beach so I could walk on the sand.
And now they're gone forever!!
Jacksonville is a hotbed of flip-flop stealers!
Although otherwise it is very nice.

Then we went bikini shopping. Because hey, it's Florida. And that's what people do here in their spare time.

Dudettes and dudes, come see us on the road. Bring your friends. We will be glad to see you!

How to Be Bad

How to Be Bad is in stores today!

Shanna Swendson's Disreputable History

Shanna Swendson is the author of Enchanted, Inc., Once Upon Stilettos, Damsel Under Stress -- and now the fourth in the series, Don't Hex with Texas. Booklist calls her work “one of the best romantic-fantasy series being written today." Which is saying a lot.

Shanna's on the Girlfriends Cyber Circuit with me and has been visiting my blog for ages. Check out her very amusing boyfriend list. You can visit her blog here, or buy her books here. Below, she answers my usual questions related to The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks. Find out why Don't Hex with Texas is her sneakiest book yet, her complicated definition of feminism, and her penchant for extremely subtle pranks.

1. Tell me the sneakiest thing you ever did.

I’m trying to think of something, but I’m not really a sneaky person. I dream up a lot of revenge schemes but then I have a very short attention span and forget about them before I can actually do anything. There are a lot of people who’d be in huge trouble if I weren’t so easily distracted by shiny objects, but I think I have more fun dreaming up the schemes than I would carrying them out. Planning is so satisfying that by the time I’m distracted, I no longer need to carry them out.

2. Tell me the sneakiest thing that happens in your new book.

My characters do a lot of sneaking around because they have to deal with magical stuff happening at night without my heroine’s parents figuring out — and she’s living with her parents. So there’s a fair amount of crawling in and out of windows late at night and then hiding from cops on the town square.

3. Are you a prankster? Tell me a story.

I’m not a big prankster, but at one place I used to work there were a lot of pranks, and I thought it was fun to be in on them. I only initiated one, though. One of my co-workers had a lot of desk toys, and he was very precise about everything, practically lining things up with a ruler. Once when he was out of the office, I thought it would be fun to move a few of his desk toys by about a quarter inch and see if he noticed. The idea was to make a change so small that most people wouldn’t notice, but that might start eating at him throughout the day until he figured out what was different. But then another co-worker saw what I was doing and missed the point, and she just rearranged everything in such a huge way that he noticed the moment he came through the door, so that ruined my subtle prank.

4. Were you in any clubs or societies in high school? Did any of those club activities make it into your novels?

I went to a pretty small school, so there weren’t any clubs or societies other than the usual official school activities like sports teams, the band, newspaper staff, drama club, yearbook staff, etc. I did all of the above except for sports. I know a lot of schools have “band geeks,” but in my school at the time I was there, you couldn’t be cool unless you were in the band. Band was the big thing, and it was the most consistently successful organization in the school. We won just about everything, and were state honor band my senior year. Most of the cheerleaders and a lot of football players were in the band, but they didn’t march during football season. The drum major my freshman year is now the director of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders (after having been one of the top cheerleaders for years). So, yeah, band was cool at my school.

I did incorporate the band into the new book in a really fun way that involves using the high school fight song for working magic. I’ve been out of school for a very long time, and I can still play the school fight song from memory, so my much younger character could, too.

5. Do you consider yourself a feminist? Why, or why not?

That’s become such a loaded term that has totally different meanings depending on who you’re talking to. I think that women deserve an equal shot at trying to achieve whatever they want to do. I dislike the fact that we even need a term like “women’s fiction” since we don’t have to have “men’s fiction” and that things written by women seem to be treated as second class because books about things like relationships are considered less “important” than typical male subjects like war and power. But I also don’t have a problem with the idea that women are biologically and psychologically different from men — not lesser, but different — and I don’t like trying to pretend that they’re the same. So I guess that’s a complicated answer to a complicated question.

6. How does your answer to question 5 show up in your new book?

I don’t know that it does, other than that the women all apply their unique skills to resolving the problem, and one of the characters is chafing under the restrictions her traditional culture tries to keep her in.

7. The club in my book is called The Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds. If you were to found a secret society, what would it be called, and what would its mission be?

If I told you, I’d have to kill you.

NEARLY done, and tour!

oh, I KNOW I owe you people so much blogging -- all the FAQ questions yet to answer AND the big post with all the answers to the John Belushi quiz, but it is Saturday at 5:30 AM and I am up to finish Roo3 before I leave on book tour Monday. (Georgia, Florida, Illinois, Colorado California, Connecticut, New York -- all dates and times here.)

So those things will have to wait, but I promise I will get to them.

Now, can I just remind you guys I'm going on tour May 5? Please come see me. And Sarah Mlynowski! And Lauren Myracle! We will sign your books and chat and read aloud from How to Be Bad!

Of course, I am obsessing about packing. I have an ENORMOUS list and a tiny suitcase. But i need a lot of outfits! and my weird travel guide to Florida! And a bathing suit! And I can't forget my hairbrush, like I did last time I went on tour! (Click here for blog posts from that epic journey.)

Lauren is having some trouble getting ready, too. Sarah is completely calm and making dinner reservations for us at fun places like Emeril's.

Suite Scarlett contest

Maureen Johnson's Suite Scarlett is out! (plus she has a shiny shiny newly designed website, which you should totally check out.)
You can win a free trip to NYC PLUS brunch with Maureen -- details here!

When I read an early copy of the book, back in January I said:

Suite Scarlett is about a family who runs a run-down but glamorous small hotel in NYC. They are eccentric and charming and broke. Scarlett, our heroine, is hired by strange and overwrought hotel guest Mrs. Amberson to act as general assistant -- which ends up entailing the theft of tuna fish, the committing of seriously unkind pranks, the redecoration of the hotel dining room, and the production of Shakespeare's Hamlet on unicycles.

Also, there's romance. And a sequel is in the works. There will be a whole series! This is MJ as you know her from her outrageous blog. A completely wild imagination and massive doses of hilarity. I loved it!

And I meant it. I am spending to day working on Roo3 feverishly before going on tour for How to Be Bad. (Come see us! Atlanta, practially all of Florida, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and some towns in Connecticut I am forgetting right now.) Dates, times and locations, here.

John Belushi Quiz

Wow. The responses to The John Belushi Quiz have been AWESOME and educational. Big thanks to Ally Carter, author of the Gallagher Girls books (I'd Tell You I Love You, But THen I'd Have to Kill You, etc.) for sending so many people over to my blog!

Anyway, I will do a big post in a couple days giving you the answers to every single thing, with humorous hair band pictures, Vespa photographs, Belushi video clips and an explanation of emulsions. (Hint: I bet you ate one today).
But meanwhile, I have to fix all my footnotes in Roo3, edit it and turn it in to my editor before going on tour for How to Be Bad, May 6!

So: Here as a quickie filler-in thing, are the most amusing answers y'all came up with – because even when you didn't know, you were witty! And when you knew, you were even wittier.

Also: No one has seen Point Break and EVERYONE LOVES QUEEN. This was a shocker. The most common response to that question was: Best Band Ever!!!!! Who knew so many people under 18 love the genius of Freddie Mercury?

3. What is ennui?_Ennui is boredom (also known as school).

6. What are Birkenstocks?_Old vegan-ey shoes in the 70's, right?
6. What are Birkenstocks? -shoes. they are fairly ugly in my personal opinion
6. What are Birkenstocks?They are the old german folk pants

8. What's a Vespa?_Sounds like a respitory infection
8. What's a Vespa? a indian god, and the princess from space balls

10. What is an emulsion?_*blinks with big, confused eyes*
10. What is an emulsion? Some word I should have known in my Chem test today.
10. What is an emulsion?_something u think is real but is really only something u imagined

12. Who is John Hughes? _I don't know, is he cute?
12. Who is John Hughes? Hmm. He wasn't one of the Beatles, was he? No, that was that other John guy...
12. Who is John Hughes? _Mmm....no idea. I know who Howard Hughes is though, but this won't help you.

14. Have you heard of/seen the movie The Godfather? Only heard of it. Some sacred guy movie.
14. Have you heard of/seen the movie The Godfather?_I've heard of it, but my dad told me I wouldn't like it.
14. Have you heard of/seen the movie The Godfather?_I've heard of it, isn't Morgan Freedman in it?

Help me with Roo3

I know I owe you answers to the rest of the FAQ questions -- and they're coming, I promise. But I am FINISHING ROO3! Right now! Like, I might get to the end TODAY!

So, now I need your help with something else.

If you are UNDER THE AGE OF 18, it would help me greatly in making sure Roo's footnotes are interesting and funny and not annoying/boring if you can copy the questions below into the comments (here on the blog, not on LJ, please!) and then answer them – quickly or at length as you see fit!

Do NOT use the internet or any other reference material. What I need to know is whether my teenage audience (you guys) will get these references or not – and whether Roo should include footnotes about them. So I want to know what you know/recognize without any research. Correct answers are not the goal. Showing me what references are on your radar already is the goal.

THANK YOU!!!!

1. Who was John Belushi? (you should know this if you read The Boy Book!)
2. What is a hair band? Can you name one?
3. What is ennui?
4. Have you seen the movie Moulin Rouge? The Baz Luhrman one.
5. What was Queen?
6. What are Birkenstocks?
7. What year do people in your school take the SATs? Junior or senior?
8. What's a Vespa?
9. What is anime?
10. What is an emulsion?
11. Have you seen the movie Point Break?
12. Who is John Hughes?
13. Have you ever read anything by Edith Wharton? What?
14. Have you heard of/seen the movie The Godfather?

Can't wait to read your answers!

NOTE: thank you for all your wonderful replies. Comments are now closed./E

I am in UR Iliad

from icanhascheesebuger.com -- this made me laugh today.

More FAQ

Some more questions submitted by you guys:

How do you get to the comment section on other blog posts?

You don't! Sorry. Most of the time I don't leave comments open. I already spend too much time fooling around on the internet – if my blog had comments every day, I would never write.

Which books will you, Lauren, and Sarah be signing on your How to Be Bad tour?

Pretty much everything! We are told the stores are stocking backlist, and we all three have books that have just come out in paperback. As long as the stores have 'em, we'll sign 'em.

Lauren will sign the TTYL series, Rhymes with Witches, the Eleven Twelve series, etc. with Twelve just out in paperback. Sarah will sign the Magic in Manhattan series (Bras & Broomsticks, etc.) with Spells and Sleeping Bags just out in paperback. And I'll sign whatever you want – Dramarama and The Boy Book will be new in paper. Most of the stores we're visiting are children's bookstores, so I doubt they'll have Sarah's adult titles. But the general interest stores might!

Will you or could you ever write a book with a male protagonist. Why or why not?

I'd like to try someday. But female characters do come more naturally to me, at least in terms of writing in first person. Sometimes I have to go back through my drafts and stop the boys from saying things like "Oh my god, I can't believe it!" -- in other words, my boys come out sounding like teenage girls until I rewrite them.

Paperback!

The Boy Book (sequel to The Boyfriend List) releases in paperback today.

Find out clever responses to catcalls, the care and maintenance of boobs, what to wear when you might be making out -- and more spurious advice from Ruby Oliver. Also find out what happened next with Jackson, Kim, Angelo and Noel.

You can read an excerpt here.

Sara Hantz's Disreputable History

Sarah Hantz is on the GCC with me and her new book is The Second Virginity of Suzy Green. (You can check out her blog here.)

After the death of her sister, former Goth Suzy moves to a new town and tries to be as perfect as her memory of the late Rosie. The new Suzy Green makes straight As, hangs with the in-crowd at her new school, and dates the hottest guy around. And since all her new friends belong to a virginity club, she joins, too. So what if she’s not technically qualified? Nobody in town knows . . . until Suzy's ex turns up.

Chicklish said: "This is a fabulous feelgood book, full of humour and engrossing twists."

Anyway, Hantz is much more like good Suzy than Goth Suzy, from what I can tell from her Disreputable History interview, but she has an awesome idea for a club and pretended to be a store mannequin on a regular basis! Read on.

DISREPUTABLE HISTORY Q&A

1. Tell me the sneakiest thing you ever did.
Gosh…… well I’m not really a sneaky person…. though when I was a teenager I’d take the bus to town and pay child fare, and then go into an 18 rated movie (is that sneaky, or does it make me a good manager of money??)

2. Tell me the sneakiest thing that happens in your new book.
Suzy lies about being a virgin so she can join the Virginity Club

3. Are you a prankster? Tell me a story.
Hmm…… I remember when I was sixteen I worked in my fathers shop. He sold children’s clothes. When I was bored I’d stand in the shop like a mannequin then suddenly when people were looking in the window I’d move. It sure made them jump. And kept me amused for hours.

4. Were you in any clubs or societies in high school? Did any of those club activities make it into your novels?
No, I was too naughty to be in any…… like Suzy in her previous life.

5. Do you consider yourself a feminist? Why, or why not?
Yes…. I believe women and men should be treated equally in all aspects of life.

6. How does your answer to question 5 show up in your new book?
Suzy sorts things out for herself. She doesn’t rely on a guy to help her out.

7. The club in my book is called The Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds. If you were to found a secret society, what would it be called, and what would its mission be?
The Chocolate Club. It’s mission would be to invent the most perfect tasting, zero calorie, chocolate in the whole world, of which there was a never ending supply.

FAQ replies!

Thanks so much for all your awesome FAQ questions! I will answer them here on the blog in the next couple days, and transfer most of them to the FAQ page on the website as well. Your reward books will be mailed out by Wednesday at the latest!
Yay!

Do you ever do tours to the Midwest, or author visits?

I'll be in the Chicago area this May! Dates and locations for the How to Be Bad tour are here.
However, I'm just not in charge of where I go. My publicists are. I tour for some books and not for others.

Out of all your characters, who could you most imagine being best friends with, and who could you most imagine dating?

Dramarama is all about having a best best friend – and what happens when the circumstances of your friendship change. So Demi from Dramarama is certainly my idea of a great best friend, one I would like to have.
Dating? I am way too old to date any of my characters, but Fly on the Wall is my only romance – so I'd definitely say Titus from that book. He is hot, open-minded, vulnerable and artistic – my kind of guy.

Who are your favorite authors, YA or otherwise?

I have a lot of friends who are YA authors, and I love them and their work, so I'm going to give you an answer that EXCLUDES any and all people I'm friends or friendly with. Jaclyn Moriarty, author of The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie, The Year of Secret Assignments and the wonderful new The Spell Book of Listen Taylor – she's my favorite YA author. Her books are so amazing!

ask me your FAQ questions

Ask me your FAQ questions and win a free signed copy!
Of what? How to Be Bad (just signed by me, not Lauren & Sarah) or Disreputable History. Or if you prefer, a paperback of The Boy Book. Your pick.

I am updating my FAQ on my shiny new site. Now, I feel like I've answered every question anyone could ever ask me, but you, my faithful readers, you know what it is you really want to know. And if there's nothing you want to know, you can ask me something funny, which might make the FAQ page less full of long semi-intellectual rants about pedagogy.

So the deal goes like this. Ask me a question in the comments below -- here on the blog, not on LJ. First ten people (I will honestly be surprised if there are ten questions, but hey, I have books!) get a free signed copy of their choosing. You should not post your address on the internet, though! You should send it to me at elockhart@earthlink.net and put "free FAQ book" in the subject line.

I'll answer everything on the blog over the next week.

xo
E

Cake etc.

I am interviewed about knitting, cake, my childhood and other excitements over at the blog of Elizabeth Lenhard, author of Chicks with Stick!

I love this image

An image from Where the Wild Things are, the movie.

P.S. I am interviewed today over at Page Numbered. Learn how I choose names for my characters, what music goes with Frankie Landau-Banks, and more!

Updated Tour dates

This May I’ll be on tour with Lauren Myracle and Sarah Mlynowski for release of our book, How to Be Bad. I’ll also be signing The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks at all events, plus you’ll be able to get hot-off-the-presses paperbacks of Dramarama and The Boy Book. Also cold-off-the-presses copies of my others.
Lauren and Sarah will sign their other books too.

This is the UPDATED tour schedule. Please come out and see us!
Librarians and teachers, bring your kids!

GEORGIA

May 5th and 6th, 2008
IRA in Atlanta (Lockhart only). Speaking Tuesday morning the 6th , 9:00 am: “A Genre to Engage Every Young Adult Reader” — Coert Voorhees, Gail Giles, E. Lockhart and Jerry Spinelli. Signings and social events the 5th and 6th.

May 6, 2008
7:00 pm Barnes & Noble 2900 Peachtree Rd NE Atlanta, GA 404-261-7747

FLORIDA

May 7, 2008
4:00 pm The Bookmark 299 Atlantic Blvd Atlantic Beach, FL 32233 904-241-9026

May 8, 2008
2:00 pm Goerings Book Store 1717 NW First Avenue, Gainesville, FL 32603
352-377-3703

May 8, 2008
7:00pm Borders 8285 Red Bug Lake Road Oviedo, FL 32765 407-977-3385

May 9, 2008
7:00 pm Store Event/Teen Band Night Books & Books 265 Aragon Ave Coral Gables, FL 33134 305-442-4408

May 10
2:00 pm Barnes and Noble Plantation, FL

ILLINOIS

May 12, 2008
7:00 pm Anderson’s Bookshops 123 W Jefferson Ave Naperville, IL 60540 630-355-2665

May 13, 2008
7:00pm Barnes & Noble 55 Old Orchard Center Skokie, IL 60077 847-676-2230

COLORADO

May 14th, 2008
7:00 pm Tattered Cover bookstore 9315 Dorchester St Littleton, CO 80129
(303) 470-7050 NOTE: This event is Myracle and Mlynoswki only, no Lockhart.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

May 19, 2008
7:00 pm B&N Thousand Oaks 160 S. Westlake Blvd. Thousand Oaks, CA 91362 (805) 446-2820

May 20, 2008
6:30pm Vroman’s Bookstore 695 E. Colorado Blvd Pasadena, CA 91101 626-449-5320

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

May 21, 2008
7:00 pm Not Your Mother’s Book Club Books Inc. in Opera Plaza 601 Van Ness
San Francisco, CA 94102 (415) 776-1111

May 22, 2008
3:00pm Hicklebee’s Childrens Books 1378 Lincoln Ave San Jose, CA 95125 408-292-8880

May 22, 2008
7:30pm Copperfields Books 140 Kentucky St Petaluma, CA 94952 (707) 762-0563

CONNECTICUT

May 29, 2008
4:00 pm Borders 1499 Post Rd Fairfield, CT 06824 203-256-1619

May 30, 2008
7:00 pm Outback Teen Center, hosted by Elm Street Books, 71 Main St. New Canaan, CT 06840 (203) 966-4545

NEW YORK

May 31, 2008
2:00 pm Barnes & Noble Country Glen Center 91 Old Country Road Carle Place, NY 11514 516-741-9850

June 1, 2008
1:00 pm Books of Wonder 18 West 18th St. New York, NY 10011 (212) 989-3270

Megan Crane's Disreputable History

What names do you call your sister?
A) Adopted
B) The lesser loved child
C) Wicked Witch of the West
D) Sister? What Sister? I pretend she doesn’t exist ever since she stole my prom date.

Take the What Kind of Sister Are You? quiz on Facebook.

Names My Sisters Call Me is the new book by Megan Crane, author of Frenemies and frequent visitor to this blog. Go here to read our 2006 mutual Beatrice interview which confusingly starts with the conclusion but which is interesting anyway because we went to the same college at different times and went to grad school in the same subject and ended up with very similar careers. And go here to my blog from long ago to read her boyfriend list!

Names My Sisters Call me (buy it here) is a "beach read" about a newly engaged woman who tries to use her engagement party as a way to reconcile her estranged sisters. After all, they're all grown-ups now, right? But it turns out that family ghosts aren't easily vanquished, and neither are first loves. Reconnecting the sisters also means reexamining every choice Courtney has made in the past six years, right down to the man she's about to marry.

Here, she submits to my Disreputable History-based questions, in which she reveals the secret to walking in extremely high heels:

1. Tell me the sneakiest thing you ever did.
I went to summer camp for years, which honed my sneaky skills. I was a master of getting in and out of the cabin in the dark of night, and while I was not the ringleader of rule-breaking missions to raid the camp kitchen (that would be my infinitely more sneaky friend Holly), I definitely held my own.

2. Tell me the sneakiest thing that happens in your new book.
Courtney, the main character, tells her fiance a lie to sneak off and see her ex-boyfriend sing in a club.

3. Are you a prankster? Tell me a story.
Most of my pranks involved camp shenanigans; the ones that didn't I'm advised not to speak of without benefit of counsel...

4. Were you in any clubs or societies in high school? Did any of those club activities make it into your novels?
I was in student government, and Chorale. I don't think either of those have made it into any of my novels. That's probably because I don't exactly have fond memories of high school; coincidentally, neither do my characters!

5. Do you consider yourself a feminist? Why, or why not?
I absolutely consider myself a feminist, with great pride. Feminism is about thinking women should be equal to men. I think we should be; therefore, I'm a feminist.

6. How does your answer to question 5 show up in your new book?
I think feminism allows us to imagine all kinds of different women doing different things, instead of just a few shopworn stereotypes. There are four intriguing women in my new book: Beverly Cassel and her three adult daughters. They couldn't be more different from one another: an office manager, a concert cellist, a professor, and a bartender/artist. They're all feminists, too, because if it weren't for feminism, none of them would have the professions they hold.

7. The club in my book is called The Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds. If you were to found a secret society, what would it be called, and what would its mission be?
It would be called the Society of Stilettos and it would be dedicated to teaching women everywhere that they can, in fact, walk in high heels if they would only lean back and walk on their heels. (Seriously.)

P.S. Here's Megan's blog!

Another interview -- and new website

I am interviewed on Debbi Michiko Florence's literature website! Find out how I sold my first book, how I got the idea for The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, and more.

Also, though tiny bits are being fine-tuned, I want to announce that my website has officially been redesigned and there's a new URL: www.e-lockhart.com.

The old URL, theboyfriendlist.com will still work -- you don't have to change your blogroll or anything -- but it will point instead to THIS BLOG, rather than to a homepage. Then from this blog, people can easily get to the homepage.
Curt from Skytemple and Theo Black made clever animations for all my books -- go check it out.

Friend us on MySpace

The How to Be Bad MySpace Page is up!

For my new book, How to Be Bad, c-written with Lauren Myracle and Sarah Mlynowski, due in stores May 6.

The page is chock-full of fun stuff:

• Travel photos from our mis-spent youth! (me wearing strange pants in Paris! Lauren leaping around in a crazy striped outfit! Sarah consuming half a watermelon al by herself!)
•Video from our Florida road trip
•Photos of us in goofy t-shirts and with Disney characters
•How to be bad -- in a good way
• Embarassing podcast of us reading from the book
• Contest to win a signed advanced reading copy
• True stories about how "bad" we've been

Come visit us, friend us, and tell us your own stories.

x

Show Tunes. You know you love them.

Even though Marc Acito claims, below, that no one else has written books about theater geeks
(Ha! and since I know you've already read my Dramarama, go right now and read Maryrose Wood's My Life The Musical),
I love him and his video (below) anyway.

Have you busted into song lately?

Shouldn't you?

This morning, I sang on the street: "I'm quick on the trigger. With targets not much bigger than a pinpoint, I'm number one! But I lose all my luster when I'm with a bronco buster. No, you can't get a man with a gun!"
It was a good way to start the morning, though possibly embarrassing to my companion.
Sing it out, people. No shame.

(Dramarama comes out in paperback this May, by the way. And Acito's Attack of the Theater People is the sequel to How I Paid for College, a truly awesome theater geektastic reading experience, though full of many ADULT situations, for those of you not yet old enough to join the army).

Anyway, here's the video. Enjoy!

PW Interview

Sarah, Lauren and I did the PW Q&A! Click to learn everything about how we collaboratively wrote How to Be Bad, which comes out May 6.
Beware of flatulence and alligators.