For those who haven't heard, sandratayler is taking preorders for her picture book, Hold on to your Horses.  The book is a darling story about a little girl whose ideas run away from her and constantly get her in trouble.  Through a metaphor from her mother, Amy learns how to rein her idea horses in and keep herself under control.  The illustrations are fantastic, and the book would be perfect for high energy, highly creative children.


You can preview the entire book in PDF form.   (You can also buy the book here.)

I got to watch this book take form from draft stage on up, and I'm really impressed with the work Sandra's done, and also with the gorgeous illustrations (done by Angela Call).  Congrats to them both on their very fine work.

Things have been going slowly, and yet quickly. I've been writing every day (okay, I slacked off this weekend. But I'm back with it now) and the book is going well. It's a mess, but it's a first-draft mess, so that's okay. I'm having to hold back to keep from pushing myself to do more than I set as the goal, but I don't want to end up frustrated with the book.

I've also been having adventures in cooking. I've become mildly obsessed with learning to make things with what I already have in my kitchen, and with using the random things I've a acquired in the last month. Recent experiments have included fruit smoothies, peach milkshakes, and pasta salad, all of which turned out really good. (I've always wanted to know how to make that italian pasta salad you can buy at grocery store delis. It's one of my favorite foods, but it's too expensive to buy often. It turned out to be really easy and cheap to make, so yay.) It's nice to actually have time to mess around in my kitchen and see what comes out of it.

Today I got it into my head that I wanted to read Feed (by M.T. Anderson) to Drew while he worked. I knew I loved that book, but I'd forgotten just how brilliant it was. We're about halfway through it (it's not that long, but my voice hurts.) I've also been reading Kitty and the Silver Bullet (really amazing it's lasted so long without being read) and LOVING IT.

My life is boring, but that's okay. I needed the break. It's raining today and we took a break to take a walk in the rain...but now I need to get to work and get my writing done. *sigh*

It's bright and sunny today, and flowers are blooming--daffodils most especially. The trees have buds on them. There's a wind coming from the south to keep it from getting too hot. I sat in the sun and the breeze for an hour, and took a walk. So lovely.

My friends who are moving to Japan (!!! I am so happy for them.) gave us a ton of food that they can't store or take with them--which is wonderful. Our food budget is our second highest monthly bill, and now we're stalked up on a bunch of things for a while, which is wonderful. I'm so grateful to them, though I feel bad they aren't able to use it themselves.

Also, I'm done grading for the semester, except for the finals, which take a grand total of about an hour to grade, because they're short. :) Hooray.

Also, I stayed up way too late last night reading the last Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants book. Those are amazing reads; very serious looks into teen issues, despite the silliness of the title. I loved these books and I'm sorry there aren't any more, and I'm not really a big sequels person.

Also, I'm done with all my extraneous tasks for a while (only took me two weeks--there were a lot of them piled up) so I can get back to my revision. I'm hoping to have the full revision of the Royal Tongue wrapped up by the end of the week so that I can get back to writing my thesis next week.

Off to work.

People often ask me what my favorite book is. I can't really answer that question, not because there are too many books to choose from, but because some books are so different from other books I've enjoyed that I can't possibly determine which I like better. There's just no point of comparison.

Here, then, is a list of my favorite books, by genre.

Contemporary Young Adult: Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
Young Adult Fantasy: Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede
Classic Literary: Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Contemporary American Literary: The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
Dark Urban Fantasy: Kitty and the Midnight Hour by Carrie Vaughn (and sequels)
Epic Fantasy: Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson (and sequels)
Personal Essay: Leaping by Brian Doyle

I feel like I should have more, but those are pretty much the genres I read...with a little less in the epic fantasy department. Still, Mistborn is one of the top ten best books I've ever read, mostly because of the character development, so I think it counts.

Finally read Harry Potter 7 this weekend. I took so long to read it because I knew when I did it would eat my life...and it did. I really enjoyed the ending (which I had managed not to have spoiled for me, miraculously). I even enjoyed it enough to make up for my annoyance at the first 300 pages of the book in which our heroes knew nothing and did nothing. And I was really annoyed, so it must have been a very, very good ending. Also, it reads really, really fast for as long as it is. Rowling has a way of making 800 pages feel like 300.

And eat your life. At least there won't be any more books. I really don't need to do that again.

So that's done, and now it's back to the revision. I really want to blow through the last seven chapters this week, so I can get to that ending that I need to replot and rewrite. I'm scratching the old ending entirely, and I've had some ideas for a new ending that I'm very excited about.

Off to work I go.

I am supposed to be reading a number of books and giving feedback to a number of people. I am also supposed to be reading Goose Girl for class. (My life is so hard...I have to read YA fantasy for homework. Poor me!) Instead I used a $10 gift card to the bookstore to purchase The Second Summer of the Sisterhood by Anne Brashares and read it all in the last 36 hours.

Good book. Even better than the first one, maybe. This book makes me want to go back to Haylee's Journal (which is up for a rewrite later this summer and then will get shuffled back out again. It is to date my most rejected book, and also my most commented-upon.) It makes me want to write contemporary fiction again, because I love it so much. It also makes me despair that I will never be able to write a book so good as that.

It also made me be bad and order books three and four online. (Used...that makes it okay, right?) I have so many things I'm supposed to be reading, but I always seem to devour the contemporary YA first. The rest of it sits around and waits for me to make time, as evidenced by my growing backlog of books-I-own-but-have-not-read and manuscripts-to-critique. (Which I need to do very soon. Sorry, Kristy, for being such a slacker friend.)

Anyway--updated reading list for 2008. I have realized that I read a TON, when I count all the unpublished stuff. Some of the unpublished things are the best things I've read all year, though. So it counts.

This semester I have no books to buy, no assigned texts to read. This means I can finally read all those books on my shelf I've been meaning to get around to. (Although I have noticed that one reason my list of books read is shorter than I'd like is that I read and critique between 10,000 and 30,000 words a week of unpublished material. That's a lot of reading.) Hooray for books. Happy, happy, happy.

Read in 2008:
Kendra by Coe Booth
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Spike: After the Fall
Buffy Season Eight: Time of Your Life
Angel: After the Fall #1-15
Treasure Hunters by Jeff Smith
Ghost Circles by Jeff Smith
Old Man's Cave by Jeff Smith
Rock Jaw by Jeff Smith
The Dragonslayer by Jeff Smith
Eyes of the Storm by Jeff Smith
The Great Cow Race by Jeff Smith
Out From Boneville by Jeff Smith
Buffy Season Eight: Wolves at the Gate
Buffy Season Eight: No Future for You
Buffy Season Eight: The Long Way Home
The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clayson
Bunnicula meets Edgar Allen Crow by James Howe
Greywalker by Kat Richardson
Different Hours by Stephen Dunn
My Grandfather's Blessings by Rachel Naomi Remen
Rebel Angels by Libba Bray
Looking for Alaska by John Green
Catalyst by Laurie Halse Anderson
Bounty Hunter by Bob Burton
Mr. Monster by Dan Wells (unpublished)
Unforgettable by Eric James Stone (unpublished)
Best Foot Forward by Joan Bauer
What My Mother Doesn't Know by Sonya Sones
A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray
Book of Souls by Bryce Moore (unpublished)
Goblin Quest by Jim Hines (aloud with Drew)
Peeps by Scott Westerfeld
Wake by Lisa McMann
The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson (aloud to Drew, unpublished)
Looking Back by Lois Lowry
Characters and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card
Totally Joe by James Howe
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson (Aloud to Drew)
Everybody Worth Knowing by Lauren Weisberger
Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson (aloud with Drew)
Scribbler by Brandon Sanderson (unpublished)
Kitty and the Silver Bullet by Carrie Vaughn
The Teraport Wars by Howard Tayler (unpublished)
Feed by M.T. Anderson (aloud to Drew)
Forever in Blue by Anne Brashares
Girls in Pants by Ann Brashares
Alcatraz vs. The Knights of Crystallia by Brandon Sanderson (unpublished)
Kismet by Chris Kugler (unpublished)
Specials, by Scott Westerfeld
Farm Life by Kristy Kugler (unpublished)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
Goose Girl by Shannon Hale
The Second Summer of the Sisterhood by Ann Brashares
The Ordinary Princess by M.M. Kaye
Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson (aloud with Drew)
I Am Not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells (unpublished)
Ichabod by Bryce Moore (unpublished)
Alcatraz vs. The Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson (aloud with Drew)
Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
Bunnicula by James Howe (aloud with Drew)


Note: "Unpublished" books were unpublished at the time I read them. Some of them are now published...even more of them will be in the future.