So it's 2012

...and my blog has been sorely neglected! (For excuses, I offer you a bout of bronchitis-turned-to-near-pneumonia that took me down for most of November and December; NCTE; Thanksgiving and Christmas travel; general holiday madness; and an enormous pile of submissions that only gets larger, no matter how much reading I do.) So sorry, dear friends. Mostly, I have been busy, busy, busy making books. But I've been writing lots of blog posts in my head of late, so I hope to share some of those with you very soon.

But in the meanwhile, here are a few assorted (and some much-belated) tidbits from this editor's life to catch you up to date.

1. I bought two amazing books from The Intern, and cannot wait to introduce her incredible voice to the YA world! Here's the "official" write-up from Publishers Weekly, or you can hear more about it on her blog.

In a two-book pre-empt, Molly O’Neill at HarperCollins’s Katherine Tegen Books bought North American rights to Hilary Smith’s YA debut, Midnight at the Radio Temple. Laura Rennert at the Andrea Brown Literary Agency said the novel, which is scheduled for summer 2013, is a coming-of-age story about a teenage musician who uncovers shocking family secrets during “an unforgettable summer of love and chaos, music and madness.” Smith was behind the formerly anonymous publishing blog, The Intern (www.internspills.blogspot.com), in which she chronicled toiling away as an unpaid laborer in the editorial department at a nameless publishing house; the blog became something of an industry phenomenon in 2009, drawing, at its height, 10,000 visits per month.

2. The exceedingly lovely readers of Goodreads chose Veronica Roth's DIVERGENT as their favorite book of the year, the top award in the annual Goodreads Choice Awards. Cue a beaming editor. (Speaking of DIVERGENT, did you know it's only 95 days till INSURGENT comes out?)

3. I have some amazing books coming out in 2012, and I'm working on some fantastic projects for 2013 right now, too. I'll tell you about them in due course (i.e., I won't torture you too much by telling you about things you can't read yet), but in the meanwhile, I've just got to say that my authors and illustrators are some of the hardest-working and most brilliant and talented people I know.

4. My beloved alma mater Marquette University just did a career profile on me in their alumni magazine, which makes me feel ridiculously grown-up and reminds me just how lucky I am to have my dream job. If you'd like, you can read it here.

5. I'm thinking about starting a (semi-) regular blog series higlighting books about the craft of writing. I get asked for recommendations a lot at writers' conferences and thought it might make good blog fodder. Would that be of interest? Shout-out in the comments if so. 

Okay, more soon, I pinky-swear! And until then, you can find me on a much more regular basis on Twitter.