Look! It's the promo video for Uncommon Criminals, which came out in late June. I loved Heist Society, so am very psyched for this next book, from Ally Carter who wrote the Gallagher Girls books. 

Now that you've had your entertainment for the day, I will just tell you what I'm up to.  This month my new picture book, Small Medium Large (written as Emily Jenkins) hits stores.

It's a great title for elementary teachers as it's full of amusing vocabulary and it's all about relative sizes! Here's a link where you can look inside the book at Tomek Bogacki's awesome illustrations.

Then Toys Come Home comes out Sept 13th -- and in October Paul O. Zelinsky and I are going on tour to support it. It's the third in the series that started with Toys Go Out - now called the Toys Trilogy! 

Sorry no Lockhart books for a little while longer. I have been busy busy busy, writing, writing, writing -- just not on the book I am supposed to be writing. My agent is like, "you are avoiding something!" -- and it's true. But then, I have written entire novels procrastinating other projects. My first and second published books were written trying to avoid my dissertation. 

Now I am off on a family holiday for a week, so I can legitimately not write. Then I will behave myself, I swear!

I am reading The Magician King by Lev Grossman on vacation. If you haven't read The Magicians yet, you must.  You will love, love, love it. (But it is an adult book with some adult-type language and situations.) Anyway, I am an adult and I am really into it. I read half of the Magician KIng in ARC form on loan from novelist Robin Wasserman, author of Skinned, Crashed and Wired --  but I kept it too long and other people were bugging Robin to read the ARC, so I had to give it back unfinished. Then my local indie didn't have it, and I ordered it, and it didn't come in on time!

Then it came in last night, and I made a special trip to get it, and I have it in my bag for delicious reading. 

Happy August.

xo

E

The How To Be Bad eBook promo (in earlier blog post) is over. But we sold a ton and I am so happy our book reached all those new readers! 

I am in a coffee shop. I am supposed to be writing but I am kind of STUCK. I always get stuck about halfway through a book.

This time, halfway through the book I went to LA for three weeks, crashed the car three times (just fender benders, no one hurt), went to the Magic Castle, had my wallet stolen, had two amusing actor encounters, even got a little inside scoop on the Rock of Ages movie (!!!! you know I can't wait. Roo's dad can't wait, either...) and generally felt like I had a proper beachy touristy Los Angeles experience. 

I also watched more TV than usual. There was cable at the place I was staying. Usually, I don't have cable. Do you know what? So Random on the Disney Channel is really hilarious. I am also into iCarly now. The Fred episode from season two really won me over, where they throw all these talking cabbages. Here's the promo for that episode.
 
And did you know novelist Jennifer Weiner has a sitcom on ABC Family? It's called State of Georgia and stars Raven Symoné. Clip! 

In other news, here is a great librarian article about why you should read YA and what the heck YA is -- by someone who actually understands it very very well.

xo
E