Kiss of the Damned

KISS OF THE DAMNED - that's a great title, isn't it? I wish I'd thought of it. Oh, wait - I *did*! Or rather, not me, but the Italian publisher of BANISHED, my first young adult novel.

This is one of those great surprises that come along now and then in this business. For reasons too complex to go into (which is code for "I don't really get it") you sometimes don't know that your book is being published in another country until it's actually about to happen. Like, in this case...tomorrow. :)

Yes, if you're one of my Italian-speaking fans, tomorrow you can pick up IL BACIO DEI DANNATI, with this smashing new cover:

Sadly, the blurb didn't translate all that well. "Action, family drama, a poignant love story: the ingredients for a compelling novel there are not really any." 

Where Are All the Grown-Ass Actors?

My daughter is at a midnight screening of Gatsby tonight with her AP English class. It was pretty cute - they dressed up in 20s flapper gear for the event.

That darn movie's getting a ton of attention. I've seen the trailer a few times, and I might be more enthusiastic about it if they hadn't cast the two most pre-pubescent looking actors in the business. Toby Maguire may be 37, and Leonardo - unbelievably - clocks in at 38, but they look like they should be cast for a Leave It To Beaver remake, only neither of them has the gravitas to be Wally.

I'll admit it: I like to see a beguiling actor or two when I go to the show. A man one could, so to speak, sink one's teeth into. And it's not about the age, really (though I'm always happy to ogle a mature actor).  I'm just weary of all the fresh-faced, barely-post-pubescent-looking fellows.

There was a great quote in the NYT summer movie preview a while back. In a review of "Hard Times," the writer says that Charles Bronson "looked as if he emerged from the womb needing a cup of coffee." I *love* that line - and the man he describes. He would have made a hell of a Gatsby.

What Is Important?

My maternal grandmother, Sophie Pickarski, lived to be somewhere around 90 (no one's quite sure of her exact age when she died a couple of years ago).  She was a collector of little bits, buttons and stamps and coins, things that cost little or nothing but entertained her mightily.

After she died, one of my dear cousins sent a box of odds and ends to me. I kept the button collection for myself and, per Gramma's instructions, passed the coins and stamps along to my children ("who knows, maybe you'll start collecting something" read her handwritten note). Tucked in the circa 1970 shoe box were a number of the inspirational pieces that she loved to clip from the newspaper and Readers Digest.  

I just had to share this one with you, from the 1960s. Carl Holmes, in his column "Mental Stimulators," quotes a psychiatrist and Jesus before arriving at these wise words from a one-time editor of the Saturday Evening Post - which Gramma circled in pencil:

"It is a good thing to have money and the things that money can buy, but it is good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure that we haven't lost the things that money can't buy." Carl goes on to enumerate them - a bit more windily than necessary, perhaps: health, character, loyalty, friends, and home.

Not a bad list at all, and I'm glad to say I think I hit every one of those nails on the head.

(Carl concludes with treacly eulogies to "a Baby's Smile" and "the Love of a Good Woman," but in the spirit of my grandmother's boundless good nature and faith in her fellow humans, I've forgiven him.)

Best Month Ever

So just to round out what was surely one of the best months ever...

First of all, my first-born got a much-longed-for job as a park ranger in the desert this summer, teaching survival skills (including dinosaur escape?)

...and Junior finally committed - she is going to be a Cal Bear in the fall!

I think I'm going to just bask in all this goodness for a while. Sometimes life just sparkles, and it's worth cherishing.

Thank You, Big Guy

Delightful News, Foreign Sales, All-Around Good Times!

So! Remember the other day I said I had a few more exciting bits of news to share? Well, now I can. There are four of them, to be precise - Brazil, Italy, Germany, and the UK. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

You guys know I work with the best team in all of publishing (pause for secret handshake with BP and AbZ), but there are a couple of people I've never introduced here before: Danny and Heather Baror of Baror International, who handle my foreign rights and work closely with my agent Barbara.

Danny Baror

You might think I adore these people because they just found homes for my books in several corners of the globe, and that is true. But what I really love about them? Same thing I love about Barbara: they've hung in with me for *years,* earning about four cents an hour on the time they have invested in me (and that's a generous estimate).

And they never gave up on me.

Heather Baror

I have to admit I don't really know how foreign sales work. I kind of picture Heather at the London Book Festival with a cigarette-girl style box suspended from her shoulders, filled with books. As the festival goes on, the hot sellers go first, and then the lesser-known titles, and finally the really esoteric ones, until she is left with...well, mine. And yet every year she packed them up again and brought them back and tried again.

Persistence, people! It's a grand thing. Here is the deal announcement. I couldn't be prouder to share it with you!

Sophie Littlefield's DOWN IN THE MOON POOL, in which two young men from the North Dakota oil fields go missing, and their mothers must bridge the class divide and form an uneasy alliance to discover the truth behind their disappearance amidst the desolate and hostile landscape of man camps, to Abby Zidle at Gallery, at auction, in a two-book deal, by Barbara Poelle atIrene Goodman Agency (NA). Rights also to Head of Zeus in the UK; to Goldmann in Germany; to Sperling & Kupfer in Italy, and to Novo Conceito in Brazil, in pre-empts, by Heather Baror-Shapiro at Baror International. Foreign: Baror International

I Love Today

I started today responsibly enough - I hauled myself into the shop for an annual checkup. Yuck, right? Luckily, I have a great doctor who's known me long enough that we can go through the whole fewer-potato-chips-more-kale conversation pretty quickly.

Then it was time to buy my deal present. One of the first lessons I learned from my agent was that that we should buy ourselves presents to celebrate major accomplishments. Turns out she and I were on the same wavelength with this latest deal - shoes! She thinks mine are too boring, but it was a real luxury to pay full price at Forward Motion where they fondle your feet assess your gait and help you select exactly the right shoe.

(Oh! And for my running geek friends - I bought a few pairs of these Balega Hidden Comfort socks. I've been a Thorlo fan *forever* but I was sick and tired of how matronly they made me look. The fondler salesman swore these wouldn't slip down. We'll see.)

Then it was time to head over to Rachael's for lunch. I should have known something was up when she said she needed a ride to Plot Lunch, but I've had a few things on my mind. It didn't even register that Julie's car was parked right in *front of her house*. (Yes. That is how absent minded I am these days.) Guess what? They were throwing me a Surprise!/Yay for Book Deals/Isn't Life Amazing party! There was champagne, laughing, crying, Julie's bean dip and Rachael's chicken tortilla soup, and even the dogs and cats joined in.

I'm not much of a photographer but I *am* proud of these portraits...

There were also presents: the rose you can see a glimpse of above, in a bottle hand-decorated with yarn (thanks Mary!) and a bottle of blue hair dye.  :)

A couple other wonderful things happened today too. But I can't talk about them yet. All I can say is that persistence is awesome and I'm pretty damn lucky to have a number of folks who never gave up on me :)

School Library Journal review of GARDEN OF STONES

School Library Journal has a great feature called AB4T - "Adult Books for Teens" - and this week reviewer Connie Williams included my book in her roundup. 

LITTLEFIELD, Sophie. Garden of Stones. 320p. Harlequin. Mar. 2013. pap. $14.95. ISBN 9780778313526.  

Adult/High School–In June, 1978, sitting at his desk in the dank San Francisco basement of Reg’s Gym, Reg is murdered. Hours later, Patty Takeda listens as police question her mother, Lucy, about her whereabouts at the time of the crime. Puzzled that her mother knows this man, Patty investigates. Seeking information about Reg at his apartment, she discovers a box labeled “Manzanar.” Once the box is opened, Lucy’s story is revealed through pictures and artifacts and later from Lucy herself. Growing up in Los Angeles as the beautiful daughter of wealthy Renjiro Takeda and stunning Miyako, 14-year-old Lucy’s life suddenly changed when her father died. Soon after, Pearl Harbor was attacked, and within weeks the Japanese American community was herded into camps where they experienced the starkest privation and disorder. Lucy discovered that the corruption of the camp overseers surrounded her beautiful mother in a way that caused her to take the most drastic steps to keep Lucy safe. Counterpointing stories between Patty’s 1970’s investigation of her mother’s past and Lucy’s own story, Garden of Stones takes readers into the internment camps and the horrendous decisions one must make when there are few options. Teens will gain insight into the tragic decision that created these camps and will find much to think about.–Connie Williams, Petaluma High School, CA