Climbin' ol' Rocky Top

Thanks to the good graces of the University of Tennessee Center for Children's and Young Adult Literature and the Knox County Public Library, Nancy will be discussing Extraordinary and signing copies in Knoxville, Tennessee at the East Tennessee History Center at 601 S. Gay Street on Friday, October 29, at 7 p.m.

Rocky Top seems like a good place to spend the Halloween weekend. Lots of people will be wearing orange (it is the home of UT, after all), but you can go one better and show up in costume. As the song suggests, it remains to be seen whether she'll ever come down.

High Test Girls!

The High Test Girls will be back in town this weekend for their annual writing retreat. This is not only a very good thing for sub-adult readers, who will inevitably enjoy the fruits of their labors this week, but it's fun for those of us who get to pick them up at the airport and have the odd dinner with them and things.

Have I ever introduced them properly? Here's the line-up of children's literature All-Stars:

Franny Billingsley

Jacqueline Briggs Martin

Toni Buzzeo

Dian Curtis Regan

Jennifer Jacobson

Jane Kurtz

Joanne Stanbridge

Deborah Wiles

Nancy Werlin

It's going to be a very good week...

Black Mirror discussion guide

Teachers: Jennifer Richard Jacobson has put together a very well thought out, handy discussion guide for Black Mirror. It offers a lot of ripe questions that are sure to get the conversation hopping. If you aren't already teaching Black Mirror, this guide might persuade you to give it a shot.

Monstrous mash-up

Nancy continues along her merry blog tour, this time on Book Crazy, where she is asked to do a mash-up in the form of bringing two fictional characters together. It's an interesting exercise. Personally, I'd like to see Jeeves working with Huck.

Nancy, from the start

Dr. Jennifer Buehler of readwritethink interviews Nancy in this podcast, and they cover pretty much the whole of Nancy's writing career, eventually settling in on Impossible and Extraordinary. If you'd like to hear the story, get comfortable, settle in, and enjoy.

The blog tour continues

In the next two stops on her blog tour for Extraordinary, Nancy visits the Book Smugglers to discuss the inspiration for the book, and Lesa's Book Critiques to talk about her love of essays.

Austin awes teens

OK, that subject line was bad. And it's surely been done before, sadly. Anyway, the delightful city of Austin just hosted its Teen Book Festival this past weekend, and Nancy was part of it. Betwixt panels, she gave this podcast interview along with Ellen Hopkins and Sophie Jordan. She talks about betrayal (trust me), the faerie realm, and her audience.