TOUR DATES - October 2012

Exclamation point. Or upside-down person. Whichever.

Guess WHAT.

I have tour dates.

The public ones are listed below. I'm doing TEN (update: make that twenty) school visits besides those, though, in Colorado (Denver area), Michigan (Petosky area), Texas (Dallas area), and Illinois (Chicago area) and was told those aren't announced, because they're not open to public. So that's sad. But if you know me, or we're in some way vaguely related, you can shoot me an email and we can discuss options of disguising yourself as a twelve year old and sneaking in just saying hey in the parking lot, if you're in the area.

Also, I've been getting quite a few emails and tweets from awesome people asking to come do a signing in a specific city or town, which is of course very flattering, but you see, the US is sooooo huuuuuge and I'm not going to every state. Sorry...

Anyway, here are the events that will be open to everyone, and if you're nearby you should COME!

Oh, and if you know me from this blog, you can say "Scathing Jellyfish" and I'll give you one of those Are You Peculiar? pins from BEA. (Which is actually special, because I don't have many left.) (Update: never mind, I have a ton now. So you can ALL have one! :D)

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Monday, October 8th, - Charlevoix, MI

Charlevoix Public Library - public event

Book talk - 4:00PM, 220 West Clinton St
Charlevoix, MI 49720

Tuesday October 9th - Harbor Springs, MI

Between the Covers Bookshop - public event

Autographing - 3:30PM, 152 East Main St. 

Harbor Springs, MI

Saturday, October 13^th – New York, NY

New York Comic Con

Autographing – 11:45AM-12:45PM (Autographing Tables 2, 3, 4)

Hero’s Quest: Swords & Sorcery in Fantasy Fiction – 5:15PM-6:15PM (Room 1A08)

Sunday, October 14^th – New York, NY

Books of Wonder – public event at 1PM

18 West 18th Street  

New York, NY 10011

Saturday, October 20^th – Houston, TX

Tweens Read Festival – 9:30AM-4:00PM

Bobby Shaw Middle School

1201 Houston Ave.

Pasadena, Texas 77502

Coordinated by Blue Willow Bookshop

Tuesday, October 23^rd – Chicago, IL

Anderson’s Bookshop (Naperville) – public event at 7PM

123 West Jefferson
Naperville, IL 60540

(There may be two or three more coming. I'll update this post accordingly.)

:)

Hi, peoples.

This post was going to be all about my schedule, and how I'll be at such-and-such places at so-and-sundry times, but instead it isn't.

:)

Instead it's not really about anything.

:)

If, by chance, there is a sudden, unscheduled post on a NOT-Tuesday *gasp*, it's because I have all the tour times and have posted them.

:)

By the way, that picture up there is there because this song becomes stuck in my head whenever I think about book tour. Which kind of cracks me up.

:)

I'm tricking you into thinking I'm saying worthwhile things by smiling all the time. That's totally how it works in real life, too.

:)

Ok, ENUF. I'm flying out on the 30th I think. Blogging may be a bit sporadic, even the self-promo-y blogging I warned about in the last post. I may take to twitter more often, though. Twiterrrr...

I have to pack now. I have to buy chocolate for Everyone Ever. And also, since my brother is driving me around in the US, I need to find some road-trip music that I like and yet that won't drive him insane. ("What do you mean you don't like mumbly acoustic brit-pop, and Norwegian indie singers of ennui, and wild contemporary cello solos. What do you MEAN?)

I'm thinking I'll go with Daft Punk's Tron soundtrack, but then again, Brother has something against repetition. I don't KNOW. Suggestions are welcome.

Bye!

:)

Book Tour + Website + Release Day

I kind of suspect this blog is going to get annoyingly self-promo-y in the next few weeks, but I have no CHOICE,  you see, because that's the only thing I'll have to talk about that's halfway interesting.

So.

Tour

I'm going on tour in October! To places! In the US! I'm excited. I don't have all the final events and times yet, but I'll definitely post a tidy list when I do. Right now it looks like I'll be going to NYC and Dallas and Chicago and various other places, and if you are near one of them you should commmmmme.

Website

I have a website. It's a very pyootiful website. So pyootiful, in fact, that I think you should go look at it.

Now. O_O

...

Did you look? Because of my hypnotic stare you looked. Great. I worked long and hard on my hypnotic stare. O-O

The website was designed by Marissa Hussey, who is a really great web designer and very patient with certain people who change their minds every three seconds, so if you are prone to being indecisive need a snazzy author website built I totally recommended her.

Release Day

It's today. But besides being Book Release Day today is also a Tuesday, and Tuesday means classes until nine in the evening, so I don't have a lot of time to dwell on things. Editor has already sighted it in the wilds anyway, and I suppose I've mostly gotten used to the fact that it's out there for strangers to like it, or not like it, or just be kind of "eh" about it. I dunno, maybe it just hasn't sunk in yet. Right now, for me, knowing that it's in bookstores is mostly pleasant and faintly worrisome.

But rule number one for newby writers is definitely, "Don't freak out over things you have no control over," so whatever. I wrote a book, I worked hard revising it with my editor (and went a little bit insane for two weeks, but that's a WHOLE 'nother blog post), I did the very best I could do at the time, and now the book is not mine, but other people's, and you guys's, and the long-lost friend's who I don't really want to read it, but who wrote to me a few weeks ago and was like, "EEK, I'M TOTES GONNA READ YO FAIRY BOOK, EEK."

That's just how these book-things works, I suppose.

I very much hope you like that one I wrote. :)

Trailer Tuesday #9: The Peculiar

"But WAIT, Stefan, I thought you didn't do Trailer Tuesdays anymore, because they're out, or something."

Oh, but you see, a CERTAIN trailer was put on ze youtube, annnnd here it is:

SO? What do you think? Isn't it humble, declaring the book "one of the most anticipated of the year"? Yeah,  obviously I didn't write the copy. If I had, it would have said something like, "This is an okay book. It has creepy faeries. You could read it if you wanted to. Or not. Just whatever. . ."

But seriously, I think Harper made an awesommmme trailer, and I had tons of fun writing the music for it, and I hope you like it! I mean, doesn't it make you want to RUN to the nearest bookstore and buy ALL the copies? Yeah? Ok, maybe just one copy then.

Anyway. One more week, peoples. Like, literally, today in a week the book will be on shelves. I'm excited. :)

Harper, Harps, and Trailer Music

Muse Playing the Harp, by Antoine Auguste Ernest Hebert (Didja see, she has the whole, "I'm infinitely cooler than you," look going? Probably because of her superior hand posture.)

I don't know if I've mentioned this on the blog before, but The Peculiar is going to have a book trailer, and book trailers have MUSIC in them, and HarperCollins was cool and let me write the music for mine.

I can't show you the trailer yet, or the music, but I can show you the FAILS. There were many fails. Twelve, to be precise. Here's how they came about...

Wayyyyy back in the Spring I wrote to my editor and said something like, "Um, could perhaps, if it be ok, I write the trailer music, please?" and Editor said, "You may" and I said, "YaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaythankyouSOMUCH" and then, being all practical and time-efficient, I wrote twelve different trailer pieces before I had even seen the trailer.

Stefan composing. No really.

Of course, those twelve pieces all had to be scrapped once I got the actual video, because hello, you can't just write whatever you want, kiddo, and there are such thangs as mood and timing to consider. So the twelve music pieces were doomed to oblivion.

*movie voice* UNTIL NOW.

I'll show you three of the scrapped ones. The harpiest ones, since that's the title of this post. It's actually kind of a coincidence they all have so much harp in them. I was working with a new sound library, and the piano, which would normally be my go-to choice for the base-instrument, sounded awfullllll. So harp it was.

Below is my first try. It's kind of happy and drama-y, and it's played by an electronic orchestra which automatically makes it a little bit disgusting. But I like the 3/4 over 6/8. It gives it an off-beat without technically having an off-beat. Yes.



This next one is somewhat skin-and-bones. Not very polished. The theme is okay, and I think I might want to use it for a bigger piece someday.



 This one is only harp. No orchestra. Which really wouldn't have matched the trailer at all. It could maybe work for the super-sekrit-Russian-project's book trailer. :P But not so much for the shiny-gloomy book with the bird on it.



Did you like any of those? One, two, or three? I can put up some of the other pieces in later blog posts if you found that interesting. Or not. Let me know! :)