Hi hi hi! I’ve been in the midst of busyness, but I wanted to pop on to say a few things.

1. I was the keynote speaker last week at Random House Children’s Summer 2015 Preview. Beforehand, I was really nervous. Afterward, I was like

(I realize this photo of me in front of two other me’s is kind of intense, but I’m posting it anyway. I apologize.)

I talked about loving books so much as a kid that I slept with them, starting to write Denton because my acting career was making me miserable, the power of laughter, and using books to build empathy and battle our phone-cultivated short attention spans.

Random House awesomely supplied me with candy to throw into the audience at the end of my speech, much like Denton does at the end of his self-eulogy. But I forgot about it in the moment. My b, Random House. Thanks for the cool thought.

I met lots of lovely librarians and teachers and bloggers. And also some lovely RH folk I hadn’t met yet. Thanks for being so kind, everybody! Looking forward to crossing paths again soon.

Here’s a photo from that day of Denton’s fantastic editor Nancy Siscoe and me.

2. Denton is on the Indie Next List. Such a nice honor to be a recommendation of independent bookstores, which are wonderful, magical places.

3. I think the NPH Oscars backlash was a little over-the-top. Obviously NPH is gonna be just fine, but the internet has become an overwhelming and critical beast. I know choosing to infuse the internet with love instead of snark is probably less fun, but it’d be great to live in a world where that was happening more.

That’s all for today. I now return to the anxiety-provoking world of rewriting my second book in time for a very-soon deadline. Happy Thursday!