My excuse for being late to my doctor’s appointment a couple days ago was really, really good. Even as I stood at the north end of Union Square in Manhattan with my fifteen minutes of just-in-case-I’m-late time ticking away, I was thinking, this is a really good reason to be a couple minutes late. Don’t get me wrong, something would’ve made me late anyway (I admitted as much to the doctor approximately five minutes before he informed me that chronic lateness was a common indicator of adults with ADD and then proceeded to rattle off a list of five other things that mark me as one of those fortunates), but this was a particularly, unusually good reason. I was waiting for my editor, Lynne Polvino, who was on her way out of her office with an advance readers’ copy of The Boneshaker for me.
My novel, in actual book form for the first time. On the train from 14th Street to Park Slope I held myself very still so as not to jump around and aggravate my fellow commuters. I flipped through the book, looking for the illustrations. I flipped through and read my favorite parts. I smiled until my face hurt. I yanked it out of my bag the second I got to the appointment and waved it in my doctor’s face. He played along like a champ, turning pages and oohing and aahing over Andrea Offermann’s gorgeous cover and illustrations, the font, the blurb on the front from Charles de Lint.
It really is a beautiful thing. I’d show it to you, but I’m currently without Photoshop and MS Paint and I tried and failed to work together for ten minutes before I decided I had better things to do with my time than lose more minutes I’ll never get back screaming at a photo-editing program. I’ll add an image as soon as I can. (Edit: here you go!)
Now, as if having the ARC alone wasn’t exciting enough, posts from last weekend’s ALA in Boston are starting to pop up, one or two actually mentioning The Boneshaker. Here’s one that even sports Jake Limberleg’s handsome spectacled face in its accompanying image: http://tinyurl.com/ygftcsp.
It’s out there in the world now, I guess. Mysterious advance readers, hope you love it as much as I do.
