Scotland Adventure!

So, I only had a phone camera with me in London, and thus have no pictures of riding the London Eye, or of visiting the Tower of London with Taryn, or of eating a ridiculously giant hamburger at Garfunkel's, or of the two girls in pink dragon pajamas chillaxing on Leicester Square. Which is SAD. But I met up with my older brother and cousin after London, and Brother had a new camera and was snapping photos all over the place, and I stole them, so woo.

Also, I passed my tests! :D I'm in the film music program, going to be a student for a while longer. Really happy about that. Thank you, faculty, for deeming me worthy.

ANYWAY, pictures:

Big Ben. The person in the hoody up front is named Barnabas, and Barnabas is very serious.
Actually, I don't know who the person in the hoody is. . .

The coolest lampposts OF ALL TIME. Look at that crazy fish.

I like how politely the signs warn you of your possible death.

We were at Buckingham Palace just in time for a parade by the British marine veterans.

Castle in Yorkshire. Secretly a Best Western hotel. We had a room in that round tower and ate Chinese take-out while watching the worst Schwarzenegger movie ever made, ya know, AS one does when in a castle in Yorkshire.

This is Hadrian's Wall. Brother had us pose: Cousin was supposed to be the fearsome Scotch, and I was supposed to be the frightened Englishman, except I look a bit skeptical of the Scotch's efforts.

The Sea, the Sea.

Edinburghhhhh. I love this city so much. It's right up there with Prague now, I think.
Also, people are all like, "You aw 'ight?" by way of greeting, which always made me like, "Ummm, I thought so, but now I'm no longer sure."

More Edinburghhhh. All the buildings are very sooty, which makes it feel historically accurate.

The Edinburgh Dungeon. It's basically a spook house; they herd you past historically-garbed actors and sets and tell you creepy stories, and you get to ride a boat in pitch-darkness. It's mostly interesting, sometimes funny, except at one point there was a mock witch trial and the judge pulled a certain Lesley from San Francisco out of the audience to stand in for the witch, and called on the other visitors to boo her, which almost everyone did with great gusto. I thought that was mean and unfunny and crowd mentality at its lamest, and did not approve, so there.

I didn't have 30 pounnnnnd with me, so alas I will never have a lord and lady title.

I thought this said "Cafè Nerd".

So, if you're a really, really good writer, people will build a 300 ft. monument in the middle of Edinburgh after you die. (This is the Sir Walter Scott monument.)

We climbed said monument. Looked down. Watched folk unrolling a lawn.

This cheery little shop is where you supply yourself with ELEPHANTS and BAGELS! :D Apparently.

At the top of this hill called The Law somewhere in Scotland. It was so windy. You could literally lean straight forward, and the wind would hold you up.

The view from our hotel room in a little town, in the middle of a dark wood, somewhere in Scotland. According to the concierge, Queen Victoria stayed in the room next to ours. Wikipedia says he DOES NOT LIE.

Cool avenue leading up to a big manor that we didn't go inside, because we're cheap.

ME. AND LOCH NESS. AND LIKE RIGHT BEHIND ME WAS NESSIE, PEEKING OUT OF THE WATER, because why not, how do you know?

We were on this creepy gravel road after ignoring fifty bajillion "Do-not-drive-on-this-road-or-we-will-shoot-you-with-cannons" signs, and we were being total illegal rebels and peering into the deep, dense woods and wondering if cannibals lived there. Annnd yeah, that's the story behind this picture.

Favorite food discoveries:

Tea Cakes

You can get things *like* this in the US and Switzerland, but the UK ones have some sort of cookie base and they're amazinnnnngah.

Candy Bar Milk

This is basically a candy bar in a bottle. It's super healthy. xD I got the Snickers version, but was dumb and didn't take a picture, so all I can show you is the Mars stuff.

Crayfish

Mmmm, don't those look delicious? . . . No. And now that I've googled them I'm a little bit grossed out. Seriously, look at the one at the top-center and tell me that isn't the most disgusting thing you've ever seen. But I had them in a garlic lemon pasta above a pub in Edinburgh and they were the best.

And that was that! I had a great trip. Really happy I got to go. Next place on my list of places to visit is Versailles and Venice. Hopefully this summer sometime.

Bye. :)

Yessss!

I finished my tests! You know the tests? These one's I have been whining about on twitter and on the blog and irl? They went well overall I think. Everyone was nice. The other candidates were nice. I knew most of the things. Except I kind of flubbed playing the f-sharp minor cadence during oral theory, so afterwards I was like:

 

And then during the admission discussion, when asked where I'm going to be in ten years, I was like, "I have no idea where I'm going to be in ten years. . . " which is like the wrongest of wrong answers. But I don't even know where I want to be now, let alone in a decade. Whatever. Honesty is rarely an immediately helpful trait in human relations.

Anyway, WE SHALL SEE. :D I'll hear whether I can continue music-y things in a week or two. In the meantime, The Whatnot is being made into ARCs, and I'm road-tripping in Merry England with Taryn Albright and my older brother, and I so excited. I hope you guys are having a grand time.

Bye. :)

Sächselüte

If you can say that word up there I'll give you a cookie.

But you can't, so I won't.

Unless you did, in which case here's a cookie.

Ba-DUM.

Basically it's this giant parade in Zürich, and when you're in primary school you get the day off and go watch hundreds of children in historical costumes walk around the Old Town and throw candy (if they feel like it—sometimes they don't feel like it and eat all the candy themselves, in which case BITTER ENVY ENSUES) and at the end a snowman is put on a pyre and gets his head blown off in this very stone-age ritual sort of way, and everyone's like YAAAYYY, because the faster his head is blown off the better the summer will be.

It's very scientific.

If you'd like to see the slow demise of the snowman, I found a video. The snowman's name is Böögg, because I mean if you had a snowman, wouldn't you name it Böögg? I would.

Anyway, I'm going to post ALL THE PICTURES. I didn't go to the parade this year, but my mom did, and Little Brother did, too, so I'm stealing their photos:

Mr. Bögg before his fiery demise. He looks so calm and clueless, smoking his pipe. He doesn't realize that in a few hours his head will explode and everyone will be happy about this.

Be-costumed kids. This is basically the whole parade. Note all the candy bags.

Horsesssss. Mom likes horses muchly, so there were lots of horse pictures so sort through.

Shadow's all like, "STAHP, I want this discarded flower."

"Let me eat cake, and you can just watch."

More be-costumed kids.

Be-wigged French children.

The Lady in Plum is looking far too happy today. You should be off kidnapping changelings, why are you even in Zürich.

Period-correct accessories.

HORSES.

Candy accident.

PANTALOONS.

Haha! Camel.

A funeral band? Of sultry, serene-sounding bagpipes? I guess.

I want the socks.

Cheerleaders and pom-pomsssss, just becausssssse.

Isn't this the creepiest? Like, in the red? Like they're little vampires or something.

And lastly, remember how a few months ago I posted this blog of Little Brother's photos? And you guys were all very nice and cool about it? So he was encouraged to start his own photo-blog, and I think his pictures are great. If you peeked in once in a while, he would think you even cooler.

Bye. :)

2nd Book Deal!!!

AHHHH.

So, Greenwillow/HarperCollins bought two more books. And I get to write them. And I'm freakishly happy and grateful about this.

Here's the announcement that was in Publishers Weekly yesterday:

I've been sitting on this news for about six months, which actually HASN'T BEEN TERRIBLE, as I've been busy with other things. But yeah, so exciiiiited, you guysssss. Greenwillow is awesome and so is my editor, and I'm just really happy I get to work with them longer.

I don't know if I'm allowed to say anything about the second book in the deal, but here are six points about the first book:

1. It's called Dead Man's Palace. Maybe. Except my mom hates this title. She thinks it sounds like a book about pirates, which is not ideal, because there are no pirates in this book. D'you guys like it, or no? I don't know what my editor's opinion on it is, but if she hates it, too, then it will NO LONGER be called anything like Dead Man's Palace.

2. It's YA. So I can make it scary. (Haha.)

3. It's a standalone. 

4. It's going to be a wayyy different style for me. With The Peculiar and The Whatnot, I spent a ton of time  on pretty writing and a historical faery-tale-ish tone, but this one is going to be more of a bare-bones, survivalist-type thriller, and characters will DIE, and things will get CRAZY.

5. I shan't say if there's any fantasy in it or not. However, it is does take place mostly in ze now, so the people in it will draw from real-life, much more than the characters in the faery books. (Not like REAL, real life, though. Don't worry, real-life friends. I won't put you into books and air your deepest darkest secrets.)

(Unless they're really juicy secrets that lend themselves well to YA books.)

(I kid, I promise. . . xD)

6. I'm DETERMINED to make it sharp, fast, and surprising, and I'm going to work at it until it is.