But no one was really doing illustrated novels, not the way we imagined them. Wheeee!!! Jim and I have wanted to collaborate on illustrated fiction for a long time. For a moment, just let me do the Snoopy Dance about Goblin Fruit.

I’ll get into all that later down in this long, long post. And this weekend we got to hang out with the awesome Arthur Levine and the also-awesome Rachel Griffiths, who came up in publishing as Arthur’s editorial assistant and whose eyeballs were the first ones at Scholastic to read my manuscript - thank you for liking it, Rachel!!! This other book is called Goblin Fruit, and it’s for teens, and it’s creepy and supernatural and sexy and romantic, and it’s going to be fully illustrated by Jim! How AWESOME is that? Not illustrated like a graphic novel, but more like a lush old fairy tale book from the turn of the century with lots of beautiful black and white drawings and fancy borders and stuff like that. It’s unrelated to my Dreamdark series, which remains happily esconced at Putnam, with Silksinger on the way. I need to learn to smile a little more elegantly, perhaps cultivate a bit of “cool.” But whatever - I have had a lot to smile about! Before I launch into my many photos and exclamation points about Comic-Con and SCBWI, I can FINALLY share my exciting news! I’ve been sitting on this for a couple of months, bursting to blog about it, gnashing my teeth and wringing my hands, and now I finally can tell you: This is going to be a long post with lots of photos, in many of which I am smiling like an absolute maniac.

Thumbs up comic drawing