Books and Tours and Trips, Oh My!

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Okay, I’ll get to all the stuff in the title in a second. But first, a recap of 2015…
2015 was a weird, strange, amazing year. Thanks in much part to The Great Greene Heist, I was all over the place—Minneapolis, Phoenix, Chicago, North Texas, Houston, Los Angeles, etc. I participated in a number of national conferences and visited some great schools. A personal highlight was giving a keynote at the National SCBWI conference this summer.

I was in the big room, y’all. The big room.

A whole bunch of people and little old me at the 44th SCBWI Summer Conference (Photo by Paul O. Zelinsky)
I also sold a book–a stand-alone middle grade. It’s supposed to come out in 2017…if I finish it in time.
 
2016 looks to be even more awesome.

As stated in the title of this post, there will be more books, trips and travel this year. I’ll be kicking off the year with a book launch on Jan 23rd for To Catch A Cheat, the second Jackson Greene book. The book has already received a starred review from Kirkus. (You can still pre-order a signed copy from BookPeople.)

I’ll be going on tour to support the book in February. Dates and locations are still being confirmed, but the tour schedule includes:

Tuesday, February 2 @ 6:00 PM
Books Build Conversations (w/ Stephanie Seales and Sara Hines)
Falmouth Public Library (w/ Eight Cousins Books)
Falmouth, MA
 
Wednesday, February 3
School visits w/ Eight Cousins (Falmouth, MA)
 
Thursday, February 4 
School visits w/ Odyssey Books (South Hadley, MA)
 

Thursday, February 4 @ 6:00 PM
Author Event at Odyssey Books (South Hadley, MA)

Friday, February 5 
Visits w/ Anderson’s Bookshop (Chicago, IL)
 
Saturday, February 6 @ 2:00 PM
Event at Anderson’s Bookshop – La Grange
La Grange, IL

Monday, February 8
School visit with RJ Julia (Madison, CT)
 
Tuesday, February 9
School visit with Parnassus Books (Nashville, TN)

Wednesday, February 10
School visits with Children’s Book Wold (Haverford, PA)
 
Thursday, February 11
Scholastic Summer Challenge school visit at Lake Nona Middle School (Orlando, FL)

Friday, February 12
Visits with Watchung Books (Montclair, NJ)

This will be my first official book tour. I’m super excited, but it’ll be hard to be away from the girls for so long. (Especially considering that I’ll be participating in a week of visits in Hong Kong later this spring–my first international book trip!)

In addition, I’ve got another book coming out on April 26th. Here’s the cover for my Spirit Animals book, The Return:

Don’t Meilin and Jhi look fierce?

And that’s just through April. So all in all, there’s a lot going on in 2016. Hope to see you on the road!