Free ARC giveaway -- KISS ME AGAIN!

Look what I just got! ARCs of KISS ME AGAIN.
Gotta give some away. To enter: tell me your six-word memoir of your first kiss.


Here's mine:

 Onstage. Curtain call. Dad filming. Ugh.

Imperfect

My friend Deborah Heiligman just asked: at what age did it occur to you that grown-ups weren't perfect. Here's my answer -- what's yours?

Me: I remember watching Nixon resign, in my (shag-carpeted, wood paneled) den. I had just turned 7. I said to my parents "He looks like he is lying." They nodded. My mind reeled. I wondered for the first time what it meant that even powerful grown-ups could LIE, and then, further, how far up the corruption of the adults went -- if the president could lie, perhaps even Mr. David Johnson, the principal of my elementary school, could lie. But each time I had that horrible thought I pushed it away. No way. Not Mr. Johnson. No. It couldn't go that far.

Firsts

The real first day of school is tomorrow around here. Today's just orientation. 

 Heading out to eighth grade...

And senior year of high school.

The last first day they'll have together.

Ugh, can't start with "lasts" already or this year will pummel me senseless.

Anyway, there's too much to do around here to stop and sigh, for more than a moment.

Though that moment, it needs the stopping and maybe one quick sigh...

One time, as my then-toddler younger son and I were dashing from one thing to another, running late, hurrying, he tugged on my hand, slowing me down. "What?" I asked impatiently.
"Mommy?" he asked. "Do we have time to stop and smell these flowers?"

We didn't have time.
Of course we had time.
Was he teasing me? Was he making a weirdly astute and sagacious observation about priorities and pace and values? Or was he just sincerely interested in smelling the flowers? How many cliches could he possible have heard? He was still such a newcomer to the planet.

"Sure," I answered, warily, and didn't tap my foot or check my watch while he bent his face over the flowers and sucked in a big sniff. Then another. And another.

"Smell them, Mommy."

I bent down, a knee on the dirty sidewalk, to the raggedy flowers in the tiny patch of dirt fenced in near a scraggly tree. They didn't really smell like anything.

I turned to my son, his face now level with mine, his red lips wet and smiling. "Nice, huh?" he asked me, and threw his arms around me, planting soggy kisses on  cheek. He, unlike the flowers, smelled wonderful.

I scooped him up. "Really nice," I said.

He grinned.

Then we rushed off to our next thing, and the next, and ten minutes later, it seems, here we are. His last year before high school. His older brother's last year at home. Holy crap. Let me stop and breath this in for one honking second. Do we have time to stop and smell these flowers?

Seeing my boys smile, still -- getting those kisses even now that they are teenagers and I don't have to kneel down to be face-to-face (quite the opposite in fact), watching their strong straight backs as they walk away from me toward their next adventures... sometimes my heart is too exploding for my body. I have so much going on right now, so much to do, no time to stop -- and yet the stopping is up there near the top of my list of to do to day, too. Catch my breath, and my breath catches: look at where we are. Wow. Oh, my babies. Oh.

Last weekend, my mother-in-law described pulling up recently to a wonderful fancy birthday party for a friend of theirs, not sure they'd arrived at the correct entrance -- but then saying to my father-in-law, "Look at all these decrepit, fashrunken, fakrimpt people: we must be in the right place!"

Even in the stress of firsts, lasts, fashrukens,  and rushes, it is good to feel like we're in the right place.

Are you?

I hope you are, or heading there. (And on your way, don't forget to, you know, stop and...)

Love,
Rachel Vail

Flabbersmashed review!

Just received this lovely review from the July 2012 Booklist, about my newest book!

Flabbermashed about You.

Vail, Rachel (Author) , Heo, Yumi (Illustrator)

Jul 2012. 32 p. Feiwel and Friends, hardcover, $16.99. (9780312613457).

Vail and Heo first introduced Katie Honors in Sometimes I’m Bomabaloo (2004) and Jibberwillies at Night

(2008), both of which deal with common childhood issues, and now they’re back to tackle another: What

happens when your best friend makes a new best friend? Hurt doesn’t even begin to describe the emotion,

nor does angry or frustrated. Flabbersmashed. That’s what Katie feels when BFF Jennifer suddenly

forgoes cooking “imaginary broccoli-blueberry soup” with her in favor of playing warriors (the game is

“killing the bad guys”) with Roy. What’s different about this depiction of friendship is that, as sometimes

happens in life, there’s no reconciliation to be had. Katie needs to find the strength to move forward and to

realize that somebody other than Jennifer might also make a pretty great friend. The writing here is

evocative—“My whole self felt like a bruise”—and Heo’s mixed-media compositions play with

perspective and size, particularly as they capture Katie’s sorrow and loneliness. Change is hard, but if

Katie can do it, maybe other kids can, too.

— Ann Kelley

Here's some art from the book, starting with the cover:

I think Yumi Heo really outdid herself with this book. If you loved Katie and took her into your hearts and homes with Sometimes I'm Bombaloo and Jibberwillies at Night  -- thank you! I love hearing from families and teachers who have found creative, inspiring ways to discuss Katie's struggles and triumphs with their own kids. I'm so excited to have a new Katie Honors book now to share with you.

Much love,

Rachel Vail

Birthday meditation

 I woke up yesterday morning, on my birthday, thinking, hmmm:

I am 36.
Wow.
36.
6x6.

I don't particularly FEEL 36, but then I've never particularly felt any age. Like when I was a kid and turned 7, or 8, or 9, and people asked how it felt to be a 7 (or 8- or 9-)year-old and I honestly didn't feel any different so I didn't know how to answer. "It feels fine," I'd usually say, and adults would laugh. I had learned by about age 5 that saying something like "it feels fine" with a raised eyebrow led most adults to laugh and think I was smart and ironic instead of just baffled.

36, I mused, my eyes still closed, yesterday morning. Well, that's not so old. I'm cool with being 36. I'm 36, I repeated in my mind, trying it on for size. Thirty-six. Wait a second. 36? How can I be 36? My kids are about to turn 13 and 18. I had them when I was 28 and 33. I'm no math scholar but I can not be 36.

Hold on.

I'm 46.

Ooops.

My eyes opened.

46.

I am 46. Wow. Forty-frigging-six???

Well, okay. 46. And how does that feel?

It feels fine.

Kisses -- and a poem

Here's a poem I just came across on facebook that I really like: Monet Refuses the Operation

And here, for a different kind of fun, is a link to Storycrush where I am the guest-blogger today -- about the All-Time Great Kisses Ever. WITH LINKS. Warning: lots of kisses. LOTS.

Come and comment -- add, debate, argue, agree. Of all the stuff being debated these days, won't it be good to argue about which kisses are actually even more wonderful than which other kisses?

Love and kisses,
Rachel Vail

Writing Lying Down

Here's what happened:

On July 1st, my husband and I were planting two new small trees, given to us for our birthdays by my parents. Crepe Myrtles. We each dug a hole. I was faster than my husband, and proud of how perfect my hole looked. In fact, while he went to get the bag of fertilizer stuff to put in the bottoms of the holes before the trees were placed inside, I decided I was such a primo hole-digger, I'd held him out with his hole, show him how it's done.

Second shovel in, I hit rock. My foot slipped off the shovel and into the hole. And something in my back went pop.


Hubris. Gave me a big oh, yeah? You think you are so awesome, do ya? As hubris always frigging does.

I will not go into the horrible details, mostly because I am sitting up, here on July 17, a thing I can only do for very short stretches, still, before I have to go lie flat again. Suffice it to say that when my husband carried me into the house it would have been wayyyyy more romantic an event if he had been a linebacker, I had been a ballerina, and mostly if I hadn't been screaming my head off in pain.

Much better now. Can actually walk around a bit. Though when I walked out to the drug store yesterday, a block away, it took about half an hour and I almost had to stop to cry on the way back.

And I LOVE SUMMER. I love running in the heat and boating and biking and kyaking and way planning to (re)learn to waterski this summer. Also I have BOOKS to write. And friends to meet at outdoor cafes where we should be drinking cool white wine and laughing! Also, picnics! Yoga classes! And jumping on the trampoline with my little guy. And just wandering around in cute platform sandals.

And sitting up when I type for an HOUR at a time. Or even standing!

Hubris, you really suck.

Still, that hole I dug was sweet.

JUST KIDDING.

I am SOOO going to get in great shape when I can. My core muscles will be SOLID, so my back won't be tempted to go all zig-zaggy ever again. Meanwhile I spent some time compiling my list of best kisses in books, movies, plays, etc. -- for a great blog called STORYCRUSH. I'll link to it as soon as it's up. And speaking of kisses... there are some fun contests going on where you can win a free ARC of my upcoming sequel to IF WE KISS. It's called KISS ME AGAIN and it's coming out this winter. Here's the link!

And in all the excitement, I have not yet gotten to celebrate the publication of my newest picture book! It's a sequel to my book SOMETIMES I'M BOMBALOO -- this one is called FLABBERSMASHED ABOUT YOU and it's about your old pal Katie Honors on the day her best friend chooses somebody else, not Katie, to play with. Which makes Katie feel quite flabbersmashed. See it, and reviews, here.

As soon as I am up and about, I promise to run some kind of giveaway for FLABBERSMASHED -- but if you go out and get a copy before then, will you let me know? Send photos and I'll post them! Same with if you get a JUSTIN CASE book (starred reviews of the first and second JUSTIN CASE books, and a Q & A about writing JUSTIN here) -- I've gotten some really adorable shots of kids reading the JUSTIN books and have some ideas for putting something cute together... send more!

Okay, though -- back to the floor for more of my rug imitation, for now. Send me lovely pictures of your glorious summer...

Love,
Rachel Vail