Like sands through the hourglass

Time is so surreal. I freak out a little bit each new year at this mark of time passing, because it makes no sense to me. I still feel like a kid, but someday my own kids are going to freak out, realizing that I was born in the last century. "You didn't have a computer? Or a DVD player? Or a cell phone? Or indoor plumbing?" Like that. When did I get old enough to sit back and reminisce about the old days?

This year was a good year. Despite the doom and gloom about the book industry and the catastrophe of this economy in general, I got to travel to many places and see that people are still passionate about books everywhere. I published the actor and the housewife and forest born, and received some of the most touching and encouraging feedback of my career, as well as some of the strangest and most alarming. (Becky Jack is evil? Forest Born is immoral trash?) Good times. 

My kids are great, my husband is the love of my life. We're alive and healthy and ready to become better people and do good things in the year to come. As for this blog, here are a few things I'm looking forward to in the coming year:

• calamity jack release next week!
• Release party at The King's English on January 9
• The winners of the rapunzel's revenge book trailer contest and the actor and the housewife book club contest (still time to enter...see here)
• Dean and I will be co-touring to southern California (and possibly other western cities) in February. How awesome to co-tour with my husband! That's almost as cool as Libba Bray!
• The reveal of my super secret project, all the stuff I'll finally be able to talk about with that, and hopefully good things to come of it.
• Yet another super secret project! (this one a few months off still, though)
• The completion of the Exquisite Corpse Adventure
• I'll be one of the judges in School Library Journal's Battle of the Books. The most talked about children's and YA books of the year battle against each other for the ultimate victor. I'll be assigned two of them and decide which one will go on to the final rounds. Don't know the books yet or the date, but I'll post my experience and decision here.
• Looking forward to a deadline-less future. I have no book slotted for future release. This is very good for me. With ten books in seven years, I really want time now to just write. I'm loving writing right now and am excited to just keep doing that this year. Maybe we'll have something ready in 2011, but I don't want to think about a date. Not now.

Thanks for journeying with me in 2009. We survived! That's nothing to sneeze at. And 2010 is our year, baby.