ACROSS THE UNIVERSE cover

I'm determined to be a better social networker.  Part of me is intimidated by this whole world, partly because I feel so late to the party, and partly because I'm not sure I have quite the "voice" for it.  Also, I hate the sense that I'm being nothing more than a used car salesman up to one of his gimmicky tricks, or a politician vainly trying to disguise self-promotion.  All the above . . . eeck.

But I'm going to plunge into this anyway and I'll be using the Roecker sisters and Nathan Bransford as role models.

• The Roecker sisters: I really like the light and amusing feel of the Lisa and Laura Roecker's blog.  It's funny, informative, and just this side of educational.  I've already committed to memory their blogging manifesto.

• Nathan Bransford: he said somewhere (a tweet, a blog post?) that the purpose of social networking isn't to promote or self-promote or accrue a fan base or look impressive, but . . . (drum roll) to be social.  Ahh...the light switches on...

So having said that, let's get a move on.  I will now be more social by . . .

Talking about Beth Revis' Across the Universe.

Or more specifically, about the cover.

Although I've heard great things about the book, I've resisted buying it for the silliest of reasons.  The cover.  Actually, it's not even the cover.  It's what I thought was on the cover.  My problem is that I've only seen the cover in thumbprint size on blogs and whatnot. And for whatever reason, it looked to me like a really odd image: two pink amoeba, facing each other, one on the right, the other on the left, kissing each other with puckering snouts. It just looked freaky. And once that image became impressed into my mind, it became difficult to dislodge.  Like the old hag/pretty young woman illusion - once you see the old hag, the pretty lady vanishes. And every time I saw the Across the Universe cover,  all I could see were the two pink amoeba with snouts, puckering each other in a kiss.  You tell me you don't see the kissing pink amoeba:



Only yesterday, at the library, I finally saw the hardcover. And boy, was I wrong. The cover, actually, is not bad at all.  And I was way off. Because it's not two pink amoeba on the cover.  In fact, there's no amoeba at all. Just a really cool picture of a young-looking William Shatner.



Awesomeness.

I was a fool to misjudge the cover so badly.

Bologna Children's Book Fair

A formidable team from Inkwell (including my awesome agent, Catherine Drayton) just finished up four days at the Bologna Children's Book Fair pitching a number of books, including The Hunt, to foreign publishers.  I received some good news from the team last night - there are quite a number of foreign deals in the making, with publishers in several countries bidding for the rights to the book.  Pretty exciting.  I can't say much about them (yet) because nothing is final yet, but one deal that is final and which I'm ecstatic about is the signing with Simon & Schuster UK (press release here).  It's an incredible publishing house and I'm honored to be on their list.

The deal also created significant buzz at the Fair over The Hunt (here, here, and here) and I'm glad to be getting this early attention.  Can't let it sidetrack me, though, from the nitty-gritty task at hand: working on revisions. Any moment now, my doorbell is going to ring.  They'll be a package there, with edited manuscript and editorial letter.  Excited to read them, but, truth be told, with a little trepidation as well.