M.E. Breen

Two grand new posts today from the Darkwood blog tour, on fairy tales and polar bears, respectively:

Cafe of Dreams

Never Jam Today

Thanks April, Noel, and Robbie. You make me feel like Walt Whitman.

Thanks to Maggie at My Utopia for her excellent interview questions — I hear this was her first author interview, but she asked questions like a pro. They were fun to answer and got at the heart of some of the things that are most important to me about the book.

And thanks also to April at Cafe of Dreams for her review. I am going to make sure that Alex Jansson, the artist who did the cover art, sees this paragraph. And I’m going to paste it here, because it makes me feel good.

“Surprises are abundant throughout Darkwood, as is magic and a search for truth. I found this to be a wonderful and enjoyable story. It is a book with the power that once you begin reading, it is oh so hard to put down, without furtive and wishful thoughts and/or glimpses to get back to it. I really enjoyed the author’s style of writing, her characterization and her ability to being the story to life within the pages. I also want to mention the fact that I love the cover. It is almost mesmorizing with it’s ability to draw a person in. It seems to beckon and call out to be picked up, opened and absorbed.”

Reading reviews of your first novel makes you feel a lot of different things. And by “you” here I mean “me.” I don’t know why I always write “you.” Maybe I want the company.

Sometimes reviews make you feel like this:

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

Except usually you do let it.

More often you feel like this:

To live, to lie awake
under scarred plaster
while ice is forming over the earth
at an hour when nothing can be done to further any decision

And sometimes even like this:

He chose a halter from among the rest,
And with it hung himself, unbid, unblest.

If instead you’re feeling blessed, and by this I do mean you as well as me, and it has nothing to do with writing, you get a moment of this:

The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze decor,

A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.

You know then that is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down.

Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” Adrienne Rich, “Incipience,” Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queen, Wallace Stevens, “Of Mere Being.”

Minus the “ums” and “likes” and hand flailing and panicked Do I have something in my teeth? Oh my god there is something in my teeth! expressions:

Becky’s Book Reviews: Interview with M.E. Breen

Many thanks to Becky for inviting me onto her blog and for the thoughtful questions, especially the one about the time machine. . .

Darkwood’s pajama blog tour starts today and goes through Wednesday, 6/24. The bus pulls out of the depot at http://kidzbookbuzz.com/

Here is a list of the items on the bus:

-me, M.E.

-pink and yellow fake satin duvet

-six pillows of varying degrees of orthopedic usefulness

-running sock I thought I lost last year!

-laptop

-New York Times Sunday magazine open to picture of Rafael Nadal

-Infinite Jest, because http://infinitesummer.org/

And here is the bus driver:

Next stop, food court.