It’s official: the forthcoming YA fantasy previously known as GINGERFOOT has undergone a title change. Next spring, the book you will all want to run right out and buy five copies of will be called THE BONESHAKER. In honor of the title change, may I remind you what the book is about and why you’re so excited to read it and give it as a gift to everybody you know?

Strange things happen at a crossroads…and fourteen year-old Natalie Minks is about to find out just how strange her crossroads hometown of Arcane really is.

When Jake Limberleg’s Nostrum Fair and Technological Medicine Show creaks into town one summer afternoon in 1913, it doesn’t take long to make believers of the citizens of Arcane. Still, something about Doctor Limberleg and the colleagues he calls the Paragons of Science doesn’t seem right to Natalie. If she’s correct in her suspicions, Natalie will have to master both her fears and her unruly new bicycle to stop Limberleg and the Paragons before they destroy the only home she’s ever known–a place proving to be stranger itself than Natalie has ever suspected.

Inspired by American folklore, THE BONESHAKER is a mechanical fantasy for all ages.

A “boneshaker,” fyi, is a term for an early nineteenth century velocipede. They were called boneshakers because they were rickety machines that rattled and shook their riders unmercifully. If you’re a fan of bicycle history and you haven’t already got it, I suggest you run right out and purchase BICYCLE by David V. Herlihy. It is an absolutely fantastic account of–what else?–the bicycle, from its earliest incarnations up through the modern machines we use today. It will help you while away the time between now and THE BONESHAKER’s release next spring.

And if that wasn’t exciting enough, there is further book news: the cover art will be done by August Hall. I’m really, really excited about this. Here’s a link to some of Mr. Hall’s art, for anyone who’d like to experience some goosebumps:

http://www.allenspiegelfinearts.com/hall

What reminded me to post this: I got a box yesterday from my uncle Richard with copies of the five issues of BOOKS OF MAGIC that Mr. Hall did cover art for. So cool! Thanks, Ibby. Now,am I allowed to take them out of the plastic, or is that bad form? Someone please advise…

This book is going on my special bookcase, the one that used to be a pie-cooling cupboard and has chickenwire screens in front of each shelf. Only my very favorites go in the pie cupboard. Fortunately Tales from Outer Suburbia is very narrow, because there’s not much space left in there. If I can manage it, I will file it next to Barry Yourgrau’s Wearing Dad’s Head, because Outer Suburbia reminded me a lot of reading Yourgrau. Both books are made up of brief, perfect, odd moments just long enough to get under the skin, and in one case in Outer Suburbia, to actually make me cry (”Undertow”). Both books promise that the strange can–and likely will, if you bother to look–turn up right in your front yard and in your own family. If I was going to really geek out, I’d be tempted to start talking about Freud’s essay on the uncanny and how these books perfectly exemplify the way in which the familiar and the strange are so deeply intertwined, but I do my best geeking out after a glass of bourbon and I haven’t eaten yet today so the whole thing would probably result in a lot of misspellings and even longer sentences than this one.

And let me not begin to gush about Mr. Tan’s artwork.

In the negative column, you have to keep yourself from rushing through this book or you come up for air and not only is it already over, but you’ve also missed your subway stop. Unfortunately, although I tried to slow myself down, I wound up rushing from one story to the next way too quickly, and Tales from Outer Suburbia wound up being a one-way subway read (darn, had to go buy another book for the trip home). But I think that’s really my only complaint. Anyway I’m sure I’ll read it again.

It’s day four, and it’s 3:27. I really should be done by now. Granted, there’s been plenty of procrastination going on; I’ve updated the entire NBTC website at nagspeake.com; all that’s left to do is add the photography back in. I’ve updated my notes at The Expat. I spent yesterday evening following Annabelle Bechamel’s Twitter commentary on Brown/Faber 2. I even attempted to make the random drink she mixed while Jens Pulver got himself guillotined in the first minute of the first fight. (Find the recipe here: http://annabelle.nagspeake.com –and good luck to you.) I don’t know what the strange simple syrup she just happened to have in her fridge was, but oddly enough I tend to have a couple strange simple syrups in my fridge, too, and I think it’s a pretty safe bet that if you’ve got enough bottles on your sideboard, you can find something to mix with it that’ll taste palatable when you add tonic and an orange twist. I did, and then I had two glasses full of the result, so if there are a few typos on the sites I worked on last night you’ll know why.

Today, I have 77 pages left chock-full of line edits written in blue pencil. The day is half-gone and I haven’t even started.

I kind of think I could start being productive if I ordered a pizza. And maybe if I mixed up another one of those weird drinks.

Well, here we go. All new websites! Work begins today. New looks and new content coming to my sites here at the Clockwork Foundry and at the Expat as well the Nagspeake Board of Tourism and Culture, Annabelle Bechamel’s Magothy Treats site, and Violet Nelloweek’s Odd Trail Page.

How I get myself into all this stuff I really don’t know.

In the meantime, the countdown is on to next year’s release of  my first novel, Gingerfoot, from Clarion Books; for updates, join the Gingerfoot group on Facebook, and find me on Twitter (@KateMilford) if you are so inclined.