Oh, Misha.

I could watch him dance forever. Choreography by Twyla Tharp, another fave.
This is for you Dramarama readers.  

 

The Emily Jenkins newsletter is out. Click here to read it online. Click here to subscribe. (At bottom of page). It includes tour dates in October for Toys Come Home.

My good friend, bestselling author Lauren Myracle rocks on with her bad self for Banned Books Week at the LA Times. It is very funny and also very serious.

Check out this great list of books about bullying. The Boyfriend List is on it. (By the way, Invisible Inkling, under Jenkins, is about bullying too.)

And this excellent list of YA books for the theater lover -- which includes Dramarama. I want to read them all! (Well, I have read half of them already -- but I want to read the rest.) Jazz hands!

When I am not cleaning up cat barf and over-caffeinating and sweating through power yoga class that is really freaking hard -- I occasionally put on an outfit and go somewhere glam. Last week I went to Maureen Johnson's book launch party for The Name of the Star, which I am so psyched to read.  More about the event on the Figment blog. 

Anyway, I went with Sarah Mlynowski and David Levithan. It was author-packed, but also reader and librarian packed as well. We lost David pretty quickly to a hoard of nerdfighter Will Grayson Will Grayson fans, but Sarah and I tried to get snacks before they were permitted, and the nice Books of Wonder staff let us have wine. But NOT cupcakes. There were juiceboxes, too, natch. 

Maureen looked beautiful (picture snagged from here) and was extremely funny. What's more she gave out YA Saves T-shirts (which you can buy here  at my web-designer's awesome site -- and 100% of MJ's proceeds, about $8 a shirt, go to Reading is Fundamental) and you got MJ fridge magnets with every book purchase. The best kind of swag.

At one point, Maureen called out to me and said, "E. Lockhart, how bad was your writing when you first started?"  -- apropos of her advice to writers, which is essentially "Dare to SUCK"  -- watch the video here.

Anyway, I was taken aback and just yelled "Really really bad" -- which is true. I agree with Maureen's advice about suckage, completely. 

Anyway, it was a really fun night. Now back to, you know, cat barf and writing. 

xo

E

Over at The Millions, an article all about Ruby's Doctor Z! Well, only kind-of. But it is all about therapy in YA fiction, and uses Roo's definitions as a way of structuring the essay, in part, and talks about The Boyfriend List at some length. 

Also, lots of people have emailed or tweeted me about the cover to Esther Freud's Lucky Break, which comes out in the USA in October. (It's British. Freud is a seriously respected novelist, author of Hideous Kinky which was a film with Kate Winslet, and she's related to Lucien and Sigmund and lots of other interesting Freuds.)

The answer is that yes, they can do that. The image is a stock photo. That means that a photographer has it represented through a stock agency, and publishers (or others) can buy rights to use it. Those rights aren't exclusive.  Then they can manipulate it (you can see the cover designer for Dramarama tinted it). 

It's not surprising that such a lovely dressing room photo was chosen by two designers for very similar books.  Lucky Break is about three drama school students in London, and the way their fortunes pan out over 14 years. Here's an excellent review from The Guardian. I am dying to read it. And here, if you don't know it yet, is all the scoop on Dramarama, which is the most autobiographical of my books. 

A bit of inside news: The black line across the girl's face on the cover of Dramarama was put there at my request. Sadye in the novel has a large, distinctive nose. The model's nose was so obviously not that -- I felt that seeing her nose made it impossible to believe she was my character.

Scroll down to see my tour dates for Toys Come Home. 

Happy Fall!
XO
E 

Jane Russell died recently. For all you Dramarama readers, and really, for anyone else, too, here she is in her prime:

 

Hey Dramarama folks: Look here at Broadway's brightest and best, promising "It Gets Better." A must for theater fans and any gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgendered or questioning teens.

I saw Kristin Chenoweth sing this at Carnegie Hall when I was researching Dramarama. (Hard job I've got, I know!) Now, here, and via The Amateur Gourmet -- Alan Cumming sings it! Taylor the Latte Boy.

Enjoy! You can thank me in Toblerones. 

Video of the awesome columnist Dan Savage and his partner Terry: "It Gets Better."  Must-see viewing for anyone young who's gay or questioning.  Share it with your friends and the kids you know!

 

Thanks to bookseller and picture book author Elizabeth Bluemle for the link -- and also to Jack Lechner, who wrote a musical based on Savage's book The Kid, all about the process of adopting his son.

related: Librarian and author Sara Ryan’s GLBT Booklist

Rock on, Daniel Radcliffe.

Original Broadway cast of Grease, singing Summer Nights. Enjoy, Dramarama folks. xoxo E

YA author Karen Healy makes a list of theater novels for teenagers, including Dramarama and Maureen Johnson's Suite Scarlett -- but also a lot of others that sound great! 

In other news, I am deep in the rewrite trenches.  Every author has books that go easy and books that go INSANELY HARD.  The one I am working on is one of those.  I think I am changing every single sentence and the entire structure and most of the plot. I mention this because I think it is nice to know that other writers struggle, too. 

xo
E