Phoenixville, PA

Last night, in search of a way to make the familiar new, we set out for Phoenixville, 25 minutes down the road, a town that was immortalized, perhaps not entirely justly, by Alice Sebold in her controversial second novel, The Almost Moon.

As passers through, we find much to love.

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Betty Boop, Jill Santopolo, Phoenixville, and the (famous) Melissa Walker Blog

Yesterday, post storm, the air shimmered, and Bill and I set off for Phoenixville, a former steel mecca that fell on hard times and has lately begun the long process of dusting itself off—fitting out old thick-walled buildings and cute Victorian structures with book stores and urban barber shops and trendy restaurants. It's the same town that Alice Sebold chose to skewer (along with human nature in general) in Almost Moon (she chose to see its ugliness; many of us prefer the sunny side).

The point is, Bill and I walked along in the shimmer and stopped at the windows and then we came to Betty Boop, who goes back with me a long, long time. My dancing maternal grandmother called me this (she also called me Rosie, hence the protagonist's name in House of Dance) and whenever I see Betty, I think of her. I have Betty Boop Christmas ornaments and Betty Boop cards and a little Betty Boop light-up, laser-into-glass replica, sent to me by my dear friend, Andree (you might have met Andree in my second book, Into the Tangle of Friendship).

Seeing Betty made me happy yesterday. Being in the shimmer always does. And when I woke this morning, I was in that happy mood all over again.

Which just got even happier, because the amazingly talented, perpetually generous Melissa Walker just posted the cover story that I wrote for her blog. This story talks about the genesis of the Undercover cover (what it might have been, where it might have gone), and a little bit about the genesis of Undercover itself.

http://www.melissacwalker.com/blog/2008/09/cover_stories_undercover_by_be.html

The story also mentions Laura Geringer, the editor who invited me to start writing young adult books in the first place and set me off in this new and unfathomably fulfilling direction. Sadly, Laura left Harper just three days after I finished the all-day, all-night-for-days-and-weeks marathon that yielded the second draft of my fourth YA novel, The Heart is not a Size. I have, as you can imagine, been living in literary limbo ever since.

(Note to self: Best not to combine your only child's flight to college with the loss of your editor with the loss of two major client projects (due to internal client issues) all in the same week; it can do damage. It can set you off doing all kinds of odd things like, say, vlogging.)

Late last week I learned that I do have a future at Harper with Heart. Jill Santopolo, also mentioned in the story on Melissa's blog, is taking me forward under the Harper imprint Balzer & Bray. She's whip-smart, reliable, funny, and promises me a night out on the town, if only I'd drink mojitos.

Who knows. If anything else happens here, I might just have to drink mojitos.

(For the record, you can meet Jill in my third novel, Nothing but Ghosts. Or you can meet the character she inspired — a good-looking, curly-headed blond guy named Danny Santopolo.)

For now, I'm raising my literary glass to Miss Melissa Walker, who has promised me an interview for my blog soon. Can't wait for that!

And I'm raising my glass to Jill. Yes. Absolutely. We are kicking butt with Heart.

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