News

Headline says it all! There will be a reading, Q&A, and signing at 3:30 PM at Back Pages Books (289 Moody St.) in Waltham as part of the Watch City Festival. We went last year and loved wandering around meeting all the different artists, seeing the parade, and just being part of a great day.

The weather is supposed to be 80 degrees and fair, bring your parasol!

We’re over the moon* to see that Steampunk! is a finalist for the Indies Choice Book Awards. As two former booksellers (who met while working in a bookstore) this means a lot to us. Plus, there are a lot of great books on that list!

For poetic justice I kind of hope Shine by Lauren Myracle wins in the YA category. Also, I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen must win the picture book award. There’s still half a chance we will be at BEA, you never know, so maybe we will see in person who wins.

* Ok, so we’re actually in New Zealand at the Writers Week, but it is very away from home and it is awesome to be here so it is sort of like being over the moon.

And this week we get to meet Dylan Horrocks, whose Hicksville we’ve been a fan of for years. I even bought a second copy of it (somewhere, where?) because it was signed. Which explains, I suppose, why I do not have it here. Eek!

The Guardian and the Observer both served up great reviews of Steampunk! this week—that’s the UK cover to the right!

The run in on the Observer review—which makes sense if you read the previous review of a Jill Wolfson novel—is hilarious:

“The only cure for hissy fits this Christmas is to stomp off to a cosy corner with a copy of Steampunk! (Walker £9.99) – and perhaps suggest that your teenager reads it too. This anthology of “fantastically rich and strange stories”, edited by Kelly Link and Gavin J Grant, is firmly in the tradition of Jules Verne and HG Wells, and is packed with grotesque automata, devilish toys and tricksy time machines. Kelly Link’s own contribution, “The Summer People”, adds fairy folk and US backwoods gothic to the mix in a chilling tale. Slam the door very loudly and make sure you’re left alone for the duration.”

Mal Peet in The Guardian says:

“Steampunk! is a plump and handsome book consisting of 14 stories, two in comic-strip form, by American and Australasian writers, eight of whom are women. It’s a delicious buffet for anarchic teenagers whose minds strain at the leash of teen fiction.” All right!

The LA Times has a lovely list of holiday picks—mouse over the covers to read comments—including this lovely Steampunk! book of ours!

I’ve got my own quite different kind of list on Indiebound (of course!). Haven’t added many books, recently. Too busy catching up with the to-be-read stack!

You can read Holly Black’s lovely dancing automaton story, “Everything Amiable and Obliging” on Storyville!

And, Wired’s Geekdad blog reviewed the book and said: “All fourteen tales are enjoyable, but I especially liked Clockwork Fagin and Oracle Engine — the former because of the fun and interesting ways the author offers up to show this group of misfits taking control of their own lives and the latter because of how the author took an ancient Greek story and updated it with some gears and steam.”

They’re recommending Steampunk! for the holidays! Which is a good fit as four of the fourteen contributors are from Oceania: Garth Nix, Kathleen Jennings, Dylan Horrocks, and Elizabeth Knox.

Kelly and I will also be in Australia and New Zealand next spring (autumn). We’ll be in Brisbane for a couple of weeks, then head to Adelaide for the Adelaide Festival Writers Week and then onto Wellington, New Zealand, for the Wellington Readers and Writers Festival.