Percy, my dear character...

There will always be a place in my heart for the PERCY JACKSON series. It was one of the first series I really got into when I joined a middle grade team at a NY publishing house as an editorial assistant. Actually, I got so into it that I made one of my coworkers read it too, and later I caught her reading it in front of her computer one slow Friday afternoon. Then we ooooo'ed and awwww'ed and complained about having to waiting until The Last Olympian came out. Then it came out, and we ooooo'ed and awwww'ed again - and complained about how there weren't any more books in the PERCY JACKSON series and fretted over whether or not the Kane Chronicles and the new Camp Halfblood series could be as good.

Then I heard that the movie was happening.

(insert fan-girl squealing here)

Then my former coworkers went to the NYC premiere, and I was totally jealous.

Then my new agent invited me to go see it with her when I went to New York a few weeks later, and that made it lots better. :-D

The best part of the movie was watching it with Jo. Actually, I was very afraid that she would be one of those people who disliked talking during movies, or moviegoers being generally loud (once, I had a friend who wouldn't let me sit next to her during a Harry Potter movie opening night, because she said I laughed too loud - I was scarred. Obviously. Since I'm blogging about it now, five or six years later).

Luckily, Jo had no problem with us whispering back and forth about what was cut, who was funny, etc. After I ran to the bathroom, she even told me what I missed without me having to ask. (Is it wrong that this made me heart her forever?)

Other highlights include:

• Grover. This guy is funny! PERFECT comedic timing. I feel like he's been in something else, but I have no idea what. He's a few years older, and a lot more into girls than the Grover of the books, but when I left the theater, I was still giggling over things he said.
  
  
  
• Uma Thurman as Medusa. For some reason, I found this incredibly entertaining. It reminded me a lot of her work in My Super Ex-Girlfriend (which in my mind was a film with a great concept that was tragically executed). Uma does evil well, I must say.
  
  
  
• The special effects. In particular, the rooftop scene with lots of water spewing around (see above) got my wow rating. It made me want to have some sort of epic power on top of Manhattan (or at least to give my main character an epic power).
  

What I wanted from the movie that I didn't get:

• A more awesome Annabeth. LOVED Annabeth in the books. This one was snarky to the point of me thinking that she had PMS for the entire movie.
  
  
• More from the gods. They were big, they were bad, and I think they only got 10 minutes total of screen time. I wanted them to be funny (like Hermes in the books!) and hang out with their kids. I wanted COSTUMES.
  
  
• The Fates to get a shout-out. Who else thinks that Judi Dench would be an awesome Fate? She could have played all three, and I would have gone home singing the film's praises from Penn Station (NYC) to Big Sky (MT). Sigh.
  

All in all though, a very good film. It wasn't the books and didn't have the same level of characterization (or wit), but as my wise and illustrious agent said, "It's a completely different genre." I liked it immensely - much more than other films I've seen recently.

Too true.

Okay, in other news, soon I will alone again in a snowy cabin. My dad and sister are already gone. My mom leaves tomorrow, and my brother leaves on Sunday morning very early. I am sad to see them go, but the idea of being alone with my manuscripts and getting things knocked out is doing a good job of cheering me up/distracting me.

However, let me show you my younger brother, who is wonderfully funny, even when he doesn't mean to be:


Where is his left leg? Well, he stepped off his board into a bunch of fresh powder and thus sank hip deep in snow. Since this little brother happens to be 6'3" (or more), his leg is about three feet long. Which means the snow was really deep.

Obviously, I'm the sweetest big sister in the world - I laughed really hard, took a pic, and shared it on my blog. :-o

(Okay, okay - if my little sister (who reads this blog) thinks this is unkind, she will tell me and I will delete this part of the post. And no one will know except those lucky early readers...)

Epic NY March Trip

(I know. I've been MIA again. I actually got back late on Friday, but I spent a few days recovering/procrastinating on blogging since I knew that this would be an epicly long post. I meant to blog while I was there, but I never got the chance.)

In no particular order, here are a few...

Awesome Things That Happened in New York Last Week

• I met my agent. She is even more cool and incredible in person - so cool in fact that I completely forgot to ask her if she would mind if I used her real name on my blog. Shall email her in a bit. (I also got to see her office and meet the head of her agency, an older woman so sharp and dignified that I aspire to be as awesome as she is someday.) We went to lunch and chatted about my manuscript (and revisions), query decisions, our families, and of course, about books. Especially about middle grade books, which we both heart like whoa.
  
  When we finished eating, it was a little too early to go to the movie, so we headed over to Borders to kill time. Have I mentioned yet how much I love bookstores? It's even more fun to go to a bookstore with someone who loves books and knows the business like I do. (In fact, I'm pretty sure it's one of my favorite things to do.) We couldn't resist buying something. My agent extraordinaire purchased Diane Zahler's The Thirteenth Princess, and I grabbed Frances Dowell's Falling In, which I promised to send when I finished so that my agent could read it (it was so good that I almost didn't want to let it go - book hoarder that I am). Afterwards, we went to see Percy Jackson, which was so interesting that it warrants its own blog post (so, stay tuned), and she even gave me a book to take home with me. (She gives me books!! Swoon.)
  
  It was really fantastic to meet her in person. I'm even more sure that our tastes are totally in sync as far as middle grade goes and that we have the same vision for my manuscript, and I'm even more excited to be working with her. (I know. I didn't think that was possible either.)
  
  
• My good friend Maria Gomez and her boyfriend Josh had their first Alice's Tea Cup visit ever...and I got to see Maria's face when she realized how huge the scones are. Pumpkin is the best kind, just fyi. (We had an epic sushi dinner in Astoria afterwards. I was sooo full that I couldn't walk, and we had to take the bus back. But Maria and I agreed that it was totally worth it.)
  
  

• My dear friend Arielle (once, my roommate during our freshman year of high school) let me pick whatever I wanted to do on her day off Wednesday. So, we visited the Brooklyn Public Library and two bookstores (I know - the book-related theme shocks you), including...The Strand, which I actually missed like whoa. As far as organization and variety goes, other used bookstores have a hard time competing. They say 18 miles of books, which is kind of hard to believe until you go there and walk around. I bought so many books that I had to visit UPS before I went to JFK so that I could still carry my carry-on without any trouble... :-p
  
  
• Arielle and I stalked dog parks. Not to actually dog-nap anyone's puppy, but to daydream about how awesome it would be to have a dog of our own. Someday. When we stop moving around and traveling so much... :-o
  
  
• Arielle and her boyfriend Zack introduced me to L'asso, a fantastic pizza place about a block away from the more famous Lombardi's, and shockingly enough, we ran into one of Arielle's friends/another Vassar grad sitting at the very next table. Sometimes, it is a small city after all.
  
  
• Lauren Oliver's Before I Fall hit the New York Times bestseller list in its first week!!! (insert squealing here) I'm so happy for her! Let everyone witness that I blogged about it before it was famous. (Yes, I do keep track of these things. I also read Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me before it won the Newbery, but I wasn't quick enough to blog about it before the annoucement. Sigh.)
  
  
• At Wine and Roses, I had an abbreviated drinks with old co-workers, including the other editorial assistant who used to be on my team and has since left New York but took a train into the city a day early to see me. Yay!! (She was coming in to the City to go to Lauren Oliver's book release party on Friday.) I was so glad to see them and soooo sorry that I had to leave early to rush over to a dinner engagement.
  
  
• Kirsten - my fellow CPC graduate and an editorial assistant at MacMillan - had tea twice at Argo Tea under the flatiron, and I basked in her loveliness. She has to be one of the nicest people I've met ever. Every time she asks "How are you?", she really wants to know.
  
  
• Lunch with author/editorial assistant Alexandra Bracken and our mutual friend Maria Gomez turned into an epic quest for Red Mango in the Rockefeller Center. For those who are curious, it is above NBC Studios's gift shop and probably only intended for tourists, not for determined publishing peeps. Discussion topics included random whatnot that editorial assistants are forced to do, how working as an editorial assistant while aspiring to write can drive you batty, and the upcoming publication of Alex's debut novel, Brightly Woven, next week!! I haven't read it yet, but I'm totally buying it when it comes out. :-D!!!
  
  
• Thursday night, five of my friends from college jumped through hoops to have dinner with me in L'Annam, a nice little Vietnamese restaurant at Union Square, and I was really touched that they all came. Also, amazed that we changed so little. We were possibly a little calmer, but whether that was because it was near the end of the workweek or because we're older and wiser (haha), we'll never know for sure.
  
  
• The weather was awesome for most of the trip, but on Thursday, the sky turned gray and the wind blew cold. It was also the day when I had five appointments on my calendar. In the lull between people to see and places to be, I took a thirty minute rest in one of my favorite spots for downtime in New York, Central Park Lake.
  

I cannot count how many times I have walked over this bridge.

Um, once, right in front of those rocks you can see in the distance, I fell into the lake.
Shh, don't tell the Park Service peeps...

A couple geese also swam by to make friends.
Sadly, I had no food to offer them, and they swam away...

All in all, an incredibly fantastic, very busy trip. I am so glad I went, and I am still recovering.

I'm Still Alive, I Promise.

I know, I know. I haven't been as full of digital chatter as I usually am. I have a good reason: a sinus infection. It kicked my butt and gave me fever. :'-(

I got antibiotics and kicked its butt back. (insert evil laugh here.) I am feeling much better.

(For those of you who are now worried about my health, since I was sick twice in one month, I promise you that I'm fine. Sinus infections are routine for me at this point. I've gotten them at least twice a year since college. I think it's the cold climes I choose to live in. Must move to California, place of sunshine and warmth and coastal breezes...sigh...someday, ie. after revisions...)

While I've been MIA, things have been happening in the publishing world:

1. Harper Teen Pays Seven Figures for Debut YA Trilogy:

Rachel Deahl -- Publishers Weekly, 3/5/2010 9:44:42 AM

In a major pre-Bologna acquisition, Laura Arnold at Harper Teen pre-empted North American rights to a debut YA trilogy by Josephine Angelini. Mollie Glick at Foundry sold the series--the first book is called Starcrossed--and said she pitched it as "a Percy Jackson for teenage girls." Foundry's Stephanie Abou and Hannah Brown Gordon will be handling foreign rights at the Bologna Book Fair, and film rights are being handled by Angelini's manager, Rachel Miller at Tom Sawyer Entertainment.

In Starcrossed, which brings Greek tragedy to high school, a shy Nantucket teenager named Helen Hamilton attempts to kill the most attractive boy on the island, Lucas Delos, in front of her entire class. The incident proves more than a bit inconvenient for Helen, who's already concerned that she's going insane--whenever she's sees Lucas (or any of his family members) the image of three crying women appear to her.

The murder attempt does have an upside though, as it ultimately leads to Helen's revelation that she and the local heartthrob are, in fact, playing out some version of a weighty ancient love affair. (Said female apparitions are, in fact, the Three Fates.) So Helen, like her namesake, Helen of Troy isn't going crazy, she's destined to start a Trojan War-like battle by being with Lucas. This then begs the unfortunate question: should she be with the boy she loves even if it means endangering the rest of the world?

The second book in the trilogy, Persephone's Garden, follows Helen's journey to the Underworld, and the third book, Ilium, chronicles the final battle between mortals and the gods. Harper Teen is planning to publish Starcrossed in summer 2011.

This totally blew my mind. I mean, I know some of the players involved. I even follow them on Twitter. I saw the excitement even before I knew what the excitement was about.

I have mixed feelings about advances that are high enough to be newsworthy, but I think this one will definitely earn out. I mean, Did you read description of the book? Does it not sound awesome?? I'm already plotting on how to pull strings and snag a galley..... :-P

2. Lauren Oliver's Before I Fall was released in stores everywhere...


...even in Bozeman, Montana.

I know I said this in my last post too, but it's true here too - You have to read it. I admit, I'm not the biggest fan of this genre. I haven't read other teen weepies like If I Stay or Th1rteen R3asons Why (I have this thing against sad endings), but the pre-pub buzz for Ms. Oliver's novel was so good that I begged a galley off a friend.

Before I Fall deserves every nice thing that anyone has said about it. It totally changed my mind about the weepy genre. It is destined to become the favorite book of multitudes of teens. In five years, all the copies in the picture above will be battered and dog-eared, the tell-tale signs of many reads and re-reads.

Do yourself a favor, and read it now - that way, you can say you read it before it became a bestseller/won such-and-such awards/got so famous that everybody knew about it.

3. On the same day she emailed me to make sure that the bears hadn't eaten me, my awesome agent J. invited me to go see The Lightning Thief with her after our lunch on Tuesday. Eeeeeekkk!!! I know - I can't believe I haven't seen it yet either, but I want to. Desperately. It totally made my week.

A few things have happened here in Montana too:

1. Spring has begun to crawl up the mountain. This means that the weather has moved away from sub-zero temps and started to look more like this:

This means that mud season is upon us. At the base, the landscape has turned from white to brown, and on either side of the road, rivulets of melted run-off thread their way to the Gallatin River.

I'm crossing my fingers that the snow lasts long enough for my little brother to get here and snowboard to his heart's content. He's spending his Spring Break here, and if he can't get out to snowboard, he's going to be bored out of his mind.

2. Also, I'm off to NYC tomorrow to see my editor, my agent, and oodles of friends. The excitement abounds like whoa.

Of course, my little brother will arrive at the airport an hour before I return. That means that I must clean the cabin unless I want him to see how I've been living and thus be teased/blackmailed until the end of time. I spent a significant part of yesterday and today cleaning. I even vacuumed and made his bed. It was epic.

3. Revisions are everywhere. I still haven't received my editorial letter from my editor, but I've been plowing ahead with revisions for J., agent extraordinaire. Earlier this week, I went into a mild panic, thinking that a month had been wasted since I hadn't finished my revisions in the three weeks since the arrival of J.'s letter. (Note: when I'm sick, everything tends to look like the end of the world.)

Then I started typing up all the new scenes...and realized I had written 20K. Not all of that 20K will make it into this manuscript, of course (one scene has three different beginnings I need to wade through so that's 6K cut right there), but it did make me realize February was actually productive, not just full of illness.

I have maybe three more new scenes to write, and then I revise my revisions. I'll be cutting and pasting the chronology of these new scenes the way a dealer shuffles cars. Then a line-by-line edit or two.... (starting to feel mildly stressed)

But first...laundry! And packing! :-D