Hard copy

It was months ago that Impossible first showed up on the New York Times bestseller list for Children's Paperbacks (The "Children's" designation always sounds odd to me, but we won't quarrel.) And it's been back several times since, on and off. At first, of course, making the list was a thrill, and more than enough reward. As time wore on, however, something was missing. When Nancy dreamt of making the list (and, trust me, dream she did), the image included the actual New York Times, that is to say the off-white, foldable, ink-smudgy hard copy that can pile up so quickly in the entryway. She did not dream in web page form. And a clipping from a hard copy makes a great memento. We like our talismans, even if it does look funny to spell the plural that way.

But one of the quirks of the hard copy form is that not every list is printed each week. The NYT publishes several lists, and one of the drawbacks of the old-fashioned form is that there are space considerations. They may print all the news that's fit for same, but that forces them to make hard choices about what is and isn't fit. And they've apparently decided that their readers don't need to see each and every list each and every week, which is as may be. The result of this for Nancy was that, given the vagaries of timing, her several irregular appearances on the list (up to eight as of this writing) somehow never managed to coincide with those weeks in which the Children's Paperback list was printed up in the hard copy.

Four months later, the stars finally aligned, and there it was! Impossible, in smudgy ink, on the very list of Nancy's fantasy! We quickly purchased a copy, and snagged another from a friend (we read our NYT online -- see previous note on entryways), and voila! We now have it!

Young and In Love

Who? Us? No, no -- Nancy may look young, but I'm still not sure that we qualify. There are plenty who do qualify as young and in love in the pages of the books called out in the post of that title on the School Library Journal. The very first exemplars of the type in the article are none other than Lucy and Zach from Impossible.

Nancy on Nancy

Here's a nice little interview of Nancy by blogger Alisa M. Libby.

It's a book!

This weekend Nancy submitted the completed manuscript of Extraordinary, her new novel that's due out this fall. As is her custom, she put a whole lot of thought and work into this book, and now she's ready for some rest and relaxation.

Dickens used to get depressed after finishing a book. Nancy, not so much. Good times in our household...

ALA!

The American Library Association held its midwinter conference in Boston this year, which means we just had a busy week. We were hosting various of Nancy's writer chums, Jane Kurtz had book signings for the new American Girl launch (click through to her blog for pix), and of course there were social gatherings, not the least of which was dinner with Sibert Medal winner Tanya Lee Stone, followed by a reception for her and her fellow YALSA non-fiction honorees.

At the conference itself, friends in the form of librarians, writers, and publishing folk were thick on the ground, to the extent that it was hard to get more than two feet at a time on the conference floor. Normally this would be an opportunity to scoop up advance reader copies from the publisher booths, but Nancy only got to half of the booths she'd intended to, and I got bageled on ARCs altogether.

The best part of it all was when the weather forced us to stay home and miss the awards ceremony. That meant we could stay home in our slippers and robes, watch the webcast, express ourselves freely, and be surrounded by dear friends.

It was a very good week. Hurry back, ALA!

La théorie du moustique

Today Nancy got her copies of La théorie du moustique, the French translation of The Rules of Survival.

While the titles are wildly different -- the French translates to "The theory of the mosquito" -- one presumes that the stories are the same.

I'm hoping to test that théorie by reading the French and English side by side. The idea is to learn some French in preparation for our belated "real" honeymoon in Paris this spring.

It will be interesting when we're over there to see what sort of buzz the book is getting, in terms of shelf space and mindshare of booksellers and librarians. So far, none of Nancy's books have taken off to any great extent overseas, but there's a first time for everything...

Goodies in The Picnic Basket

Impossible was recently a featured book on Deborah Sloan's The Picnic Basket. Click through to see a series of nice rated reviews from librarians, teachers, and other readers.