with the world rushing by—a memoir summit, a long drive with A.S. King, Carolyn W. Field, PA Librarians

The day before, I'd stood and talked memoir at Rosemont College. A beautiful young woman took this photo. She sent it to me. I treasure it.

(Thank you for the photo, Kelly. Thank you for the summit, Carla.)

The day of, I left in the early dark, drove an hour and change to a turnpike exchange, parked at a hotel, then waited for an already infamous rented Chevy Impala (gray) to find me. Behind the wheel? The marvelous A.S. King. Our plan? To get caught up after too much time apart, each of us moving in our own whirlish circles for months now, months and days.

We were headed west together—way west—through a state we both love, through the bellies of mountains with names like Blue and Kittatinny, past cornfields, barns, longhorns, Angus's ammo shop. King was receiving the Carolyn W. Field Award for Ask the Passengers from the Pennsylvania librarians. I was a grateful honoree for Small Damages. King (like the true sportsters we are, we long ago stopped calling each other by our first names) and I had stuff to say, secrets to share, worries to fluff out, appeasements to offer. We did all that, and then we arrived, found our way through hallways, found our way to K.M. Walton and Eugene Myers and Kit Grindstaff and Karl R and Chris Caputo, found our way to lunch, and then King gave her fantastic talk, and then I hollered "King!" and we signed some books, and we were back on the road again, and now the day was starting to get pink. And the sky was incredibly blue. And I kept trying to take photographs while King drove (and a fine driver she is), but mostly I got blur.

"Blur's good," King said.

And I guess, for both of us right now, it is.

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what I'm reading now

I woke at 4 this morning and had a choice to make:  with my corporate work suspended until Monday at 8 AM, how would I spend this sudden gust of unscheduled time?

Reading?

Writing?

I mean, let's face it:  I left my own Florentine novel in suspense at page 80—I left it, literally, mid-sentence, in a scene I never saw coming.  I left it several days ago, feels like weeks ago, feels like another era, and I don't know when I will get to it again.  I don't know if I'll remember what it was I imagined I was doing.

But.  There are four books I've been dying to read—four books that, if left unread, basically disqualify me to opine about the year in Children's/YA.  And I gotta opine.

Picture me reading this weekend, then, in the following order:

Code Name Verity (Elizabeth Wein)
Son (Lois Lowry)
Ask the Passengers (A.S. King)
Goblin Secrets (William Alexander)

My thoughts about Code Name Verity will be posted here tomorrow.

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A.S. King comes to town; we celebrate her love

Last night, at Children's Book World in Haverford, PA, A.S. King blew in through the back door (or perhaps she bobbled slightly) and that was it:  we were already in stitches.  Kate Walton and I had already arrived, claiming first-in-line privileges at this Ask the Passengers signing.  We'd been hearing all the good things—the many starry, best of things—about this newest King novel, and we were eager.

A.S. had been warned not to make me laugh (think of the damage to my gum graft stitches, I implored her), but she's unstoppable.  She roved, incautiously, from venison to rad eyeball wear to root canals to Rohm and Haas photography (yes, A.S. and I were working for this chemical giant at the same time, bizarrely) to chocolate pretzels (they're part of the root canal story) to streetwalkers to Poe to roach motels to wrecking balls to her electrical engineering talents to unventilated dark rooms—and the night hadn't even started.  She broke her don't-be-funny promise several times.  She read from Ask the Passengers and her forthcoming Reality Boy, and it was good.

But what was also good, or riveted to the good, was the feeling at Children's Book World, one of the best stores anywhere.  Kelly Simmons and Jenn Hubbard were also in the house.  The tried and true CBW entourage.  We had plenty of time just to sit and appreciate a writer who writes (in her gnarly radiating, radioactive ways) about love.

Now to clear away the corporate maelstrom that has had me down and out for weeks and find some time to read.

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Ask the Passengers: Launch Day for My Friend A.S. King

There's only one thing to do with my ole blog today, and that is to wrap my internet arms around my friend A.S. King, whose Ask the Passengers launches today.  I'm going to get my own copy at Amy's Children's Book World (Haverford, PA) event, one long week from today, October 30. But I know Amy, and I have read her books, and I therefore already know how grand this book will be.

Read about this multiply starred book here.  Order yourself a copy.

Amy, I'm sending you love.

Astrid is a typical teenager - -her family is dysfunctional, her "perfect couple" best friends are deceiving the entire school, and she's secretly crushing on a girl at work. She's got so much love and nowhere to give it, so she sends it into the sky, to the passengers of planes flying overhead. When Astrid's life suddenly begins to collapse, she has to find a way to change it--and she might just change the passengers' lives, as well.

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