I'm coming to you from my brand new and very fancy MacBook. I was all excited to create a video blog post to talk about our recent trip to New Orleans for the ALA's annual conference, but then I couldn't make the video thing work. I can, however, post photos, which will allow me to show you the progression:

First, I was working hard on figuring it out. Then I became slightly frustrated. And then I got depressed, quit, and inexplicably turned black and white.






Clearly, I am not cut out for video blogging, or vodcasting, or whatever they call it. I'll just have to make do with words. Stupid words.

I will soon post pictures of the Printz Award reception, and I can guarantee you that they will be absolutely hilarious, because I had the flu and looked a pale shade of green the entire evening. So anyway, I had to give my speech seated so as to prevent fainting, and I missed the first minute of Betsy Partridge's speech on account of how I was puking. But it was by far the best bout of stomach flu I've ever experienced in my life, and I honestly don't think I could have enjoyed the event any more than I did. Plus everyone got two standing ovations, which was really fun. Margo Lanagan and Betsy Partridge both gave great speeches; you should go bug Margo and ask her to post hers online. (I will post mine if and when the ALA and I can agree it is legal for me to do so; Margo, residing as she does in a foreign nation, is presumably exempt from such rules and regulations.) Markus Zusak, whom I--like all god-fearing Americans--adore, wasn't able to attend because he has recently acquired an infant. But he gave perhaps the best videotaped remarks I've ever seen in my life.

Aside from all the librarians you get to meet and/or see again, the highlight of these conferences is seeing authors. On this trip, I had a particular blast meeting Sarah Dessen, who aside from being an excellent writer and a fine gambler bears a faint resemblance to my wife. Anyway, I realize that namedropping is disgusting and vulgar but: David Lubar Brent Hartinger Lisa Yee Adrienne Vrettos M. T. Anderson Scott Westerfeld Justine Larbalestier David Levithan Coe Booth and on and on.

As for New Orleans: It was great. Great! The ALA was the first major conference in New Orleans since Katrina, and I can report that they were great hosts. There were signs everywhere welcoming us and thanking us, and although obviously the city itself has been devastated, bringing conventions and tourists back is an important part of the rebuilding process. (I did my part to restore the economy by losing money playing roulette.)

So listen up, car insurance sales professionals and auto parts manufacturers and biotech analysts: New Orleans is open for business, and it's a hell of a fun place to have your next convention. After all, 18,000 librarians can't be wrong.

Sarah and I are off for New Orleans this morning for the American Library Asssociation's annual conference. Any of you attending the conference (and you're missing out if you aren't, because it's always a blast, which is to say that there are a lot of free cocktail parties) could possibly be interested in this information, although honestly I understand if you'd rather go to book signings by, like, Judy Blume or Scott Westerfeld or David Levithan:

Sunday
10 - 11 AM: Signing copies of "Looking for Alaska" at Permabound (booth 1847)
2-3 PM: Signing "Alaska" at the Penguin booth (1549)

Monday
11-Noon Signing at the Penguin booth again (still booth 1549)

Tuesday
Printz Award reception. I have attended this a few times, but it should be especially fun this year.

Other than that, I'm just going to hang around the convention center and try to snag free galleys, which seems to be the main extracurricular activity at these conventions. I will report back on any promising finds post haste.

I'm coming to you from our basement apartment in Chicago. It's very dark in here, on account of how I refuse to turn on the lights because I just saw An Inconvenient Truth (which I highly recommend). And then I logged on to climatecrisis.net to see how much I am personally destroying the world. It turns out that even though I don't own a car, I am destroying the world slightly more than the average American. This is a pretty depressing thought. So no more electricity!

So the main difference between now and the last time I wrote in this blog--other than the fact that I used to be exposed to sunlight on a near-daily basis--is that I got married, and then I went to the British Virgin Islands, and then I fed an iguana:
Feeding the iguana was pretty fun, as was the rest of our honeymoon, but the highlight of the week was definitely the actual wedding. It was beautiful, and Alabama was beautiful, and Sarah was outlandishly and unfairly and indescribably beautiful, and we just had an absolute blast. At any rate, having now been married for a little more than three weeks, I think I can safely recommend marriage to my single friends.

In other news, here is the cover of my new book, An Abundance of Katherines.
I hope you like the cover. But even more than that, I hope you like the book. Advanced Readers' Copies (or ARCs, which are like regular books, only paperback and riddled with errors) of Katherines have started to leak out into the world, and the response so far has been wonderful. But then again, everyone could be lying. You can never tell. Incidentally, there will be ARC giveaways on my myspace (do you say my myspace or just myspace or my space? Only God knows for sure) in the next month.

Tomorrow, I promise to post some thoughts about great German words and a brief summary of Katherines.