Jonny Wins at "King of the Blues"

Forgive me, but I have to indulge for a moment. Last night my 16-year-old son, Jonny, blew them all away at King of the Blues. The best part was that he was the youngest contestant and before he played, the MC was teasing him about having to bring his mommy (me) along to sign off on his paperwork. Afterwards, it was clear that Jonny was in a different league. He totally rocked. Watch the video here. Also, check out his band's myspace page.

On a literary note, the fabulous Greg Leitich Smith, author of Ninjas, Piranhas and Galileo (Little, Brown, 2003) and Tofu and T. Rex. (Little, Brown, 2005) wrote a very nice review on Brothers. Check it out here. Thank you, Greg!

This and That

Wow, it's been a while. Let's see, several nice things have happened since my last post. First, my good friend Cynthia Leitich Smith threw this amazing launch party for her new book, Tantalize, which is already in it's third printing! Ed was my very charming date, and we had a wonderful time. Cynthia handed out some door prizes, and one of the Austin teen librarians, Alison O'Reilly, won a copy of Brothers. I'm very excited because she has decided to begin a teen librarian book club and will be discussing Brothers at their first meeting. I am invited!

Also, I've decided to go with the serial killer story for my next book. I've done most of the research (some of it was pretty sickening) and I've got a general idea of the main characters and plot. This past weekend I attended a writer's workshop given by the amazing D. Anne Love and she inspired me to get organized. This time around I'm going to try an outline. We'll see how that goes.

Another piece of good news is that I did NOT get accepted into the MFA program at Texas State. I will admit at first I felt dejected and after a few tears I got sort of ticked off (just who do they think they are?), but then I realized that their faculty must be WAY too literary for me, so I'll just go back to writing books. Instead, I think I'll take up a new hobby, and maybe do something really daring like take a drawing class, or a kickboxing class.

Last, but not least, Jonny hooked me up with a myspace page. Cyn was the one who suggested I take the plunge, and since Jonny thought it would be a good way to promote his band, (i.e. make friends with my readers) I figured, why not? Jonny saved me a full week's worth of work trying to figure the whole thing out, and set it up in ten minutes. Yes, ten minutes. I've got to write my profile and beg for friends, but at least it's up and running.

Finally, Jonny has entered the King of the Blues national guitar competition that is being held tonight at Guitar Center in Austin. Wish him luck!