Angel Fish

I have two books coming out this year - Pink in August, and Angel Fish in September.

I've been working on Angel Fish for a couple of years now. It's about the Children's Crusade, which happened (maybe) in 1212, where a shepherd boy called Stephen decided that the only thing that would liberate Jerusalem from the Infidel was the purity and innocence of Children. He raised an army of 10 000 children, marched over the Swiss Alps (where a bunch of them died, due to a lack of important cold-weather gear like, um, shoes), and got to Genoa, where he said the ocean would part before him and they would walk across the ocean floor to the Holy Land.

This was problematic for two reasons: a) Greece was in the way; and b) it didn't work.

But two nice men called William the Iron and Hugh the Pig turned up and said that they were rich merchants who TOTALLY believed in the children's cause, and that would charter a bunch of ships to take the kids to the Holy Land. And Stephen said "well, of course that's exactly what I meant when I said the ocean would part." And off they went.

Except William and Hugh weren't merchants at all. They were PIRATES, and sold all the kids into slavery.

It's a feel-good kind of novel. I'll be posting the cover and an excerpt in weeks to come.

Mind Rain

Fans of Scott Westerfeld rejoice! For there is a book of essays about the Uglies series, and the first one is by me!

The book is called Mind Rain.

In Extras, the last book in Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies series, Aya tells us that when Tally Youngblood made the mind-rain fall, it cured all the pretties and changed the world forever. But Tally and her friends did more than change their world; they changed ours too.

Mind-Rain continues what Tally started, with startling, funny and insightful essays on the world, characters and ideas of the Uglies series, plus the short story that inspired Westerfeld to write the books in the first place.

Think you know everything about Tally’s world? After Mind-Rain, you'll never look at the Uglies series the same way again.

With Pieces From …

• Lili Wilkinson
• Robin Wasserman
• Diana Peterfreund
• Sarah Beth Durst
• Gail Sidonie Sobat
• Rosemary Clement-Moore
• J. Fitzgerald McCurdy
• Janette Rallison
• Linda Gerber
• Charles Beaumont
• Ted Chiang
• Will Shetterly
• Jennifer Lynn Barnes
• Delia Sherman

You can read an excerpt here.

Reading Matters

Apologies for the hiatus - in the last month I've delivered the Reading Matters conference, sent a book to press (!), am three weeks away from sending ANOTHER book to press (!!), and been struck down with a nasty (but swine-free) cold.

I will placate you with two things. First, a quote from Bernard Beckett at Reading Matters, when asked what his advice for aspiring writers would be:

Be alive to the absurdity of the world.

(Bernard also might have said something about how he would love to read a cross between Huck Finn and Twilight, and the words "drown the bitch" may have been mentioned, but perhaps I misheard.)

Second! Here is the final cover of Pink, complete with blurb and quotes from John Green and Simmone Howell! (click to make view fullsize)

Later this month, more news on the NEXT book, some other stuff I've been doing and a post about My Favourite Artist.