There is a rumor around that Johnny Depp was interested in buying the big cattle ranch in the middle of our little island, but the deal has fallen through. Too bad. I had fantasies of running into him at the grocery store when we were buying zucchini squash and socks, and I would convince him to make a movie of

This is Strawberry Festival weekend here on Vashon Island, sometimes called Mayberry on the Water. We have art and game booths, animal rescue displays, carnival rides, beer gardens, and lots and lots of food that is really bad for you. This morning was the parade led by Vashon Island Veterans, followed by the fire truck, antique tractors, politicians waving and cheerleaders cheering, tap dancers

Elizabeth, Agent Terrible, and I just had a long conference call with publicity and marketing people from Clarion and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. They had lots of great idea about getting Alchemy and Meggy Swann out there to readers. Spring 2010 will be very busy with book tours, store visits, conferences, blog tours.  I will be in Los Angeles in April,

Often I’m asked why I started writing. I was almost fifty after all. Why did all of a sudden I decide to write a book? Because I had an idea for a story about a girl who lived a long time ago and I wanted to know what happened to her. I wanted to know what she did and felt

Last week I read two very different books. Down Sand Mountain is the delightful story of a boy in a Florida mining town in 1966. It’s a lovely book about important things, and Dewey’s voice is wonderfully distinctive, funny, sad, and true. You’ll be crazy about him. I highly recommend you read it. The other was The Marvelous Hairy Girls,

My good friend Olivia Moats of Fresno, California, just sent me these pictures of Tip, her pet rat. Isn’t she beautiful? Tip is the sweetest rat I know—and I’ve met lots of rats—and likes to run in her wheel, eat popcorn and pistachio nuts, and take naps in someone’s sleeve. Tip and her family visited last winter, and she was

Alchemy and Meggy Swann is three steps closer to being a real book. First, I finished the copyediting. That’s the part of editing where I have to change commas to periods and periods to commas and argue about spelling and grammar and odd turns of phrase. It’s also the part where I secretly snarl at my copyeditor but really shouldn’t

I have two new friends, Jillian and Mitchell. They are still young and weigh over five hundred pounds. Each. Oh yeah, they’re pigs. I don’t mean they’re sloppy eaters or especially messy—I mean they’re pigs. The new book I am planning, Will Sparrow’s Road, has a character who is a pig. She’s a trained pig called The Duchess, and she

For Mother’s Day we went on a tour of chicken coops here on Vashon Island. It was sunny but breezy, the chickens were lively, and I had a great time. I never knew there were so many kinds of chickens: fuzzy footed chickens, frizzled chickens, speckled chickens, chickens that lay blue eggs. Then my beloved daughter gave me my Mother’s Day present:

Thanks to the generous Tamara of Bookman’s in Tucson, I was given a copy of Gail Carson Levine’s newest book, Ever. In a mythical land, the mortal Kezi and Olus, the Akkan god of the wind who loves her, face seemingly insurmountable trials, but if they succeed, they will become immortal. The story is filled with romance, suspense, action, and