Good things come in threes

This is a great week for the Mouse Nation:

1. Mousemobile will be in bookstores on Tuesday, October 1st.
2. I have just found out that Mousenet was nominated for the Magnolia Award for 2014. That's the Mississippi children's choice award, to go with Mousenet's nominations in Florida and Arizona.
3. Hyperion-Disney has just agreed to publish Book Three of the series: Mouse Mission!

A medal!

MOUSENET has won silver in the 2013 Readers Favorite awards–second place in the category 'Children–Fantasy/Sci-Fi.' 

Kirkus review of Mousemobile

Nice notice in Kirkus Reviews:

“Charming sequel to Mousenet. . . . Mouse Nation’s efficient, rational society, from Mouse Sign Language to legal proceedings, remains enchantingly believable. Closing the book, readers may wonder: Will these mice return, and can they really stop climate change? They will hope so.”

A new date for Mousemobile

For months, the official publication date for Mousemobile was October 15th, but the publisher has decided to bring it out a couple of weeks early. It will be here October 1st.  Yay!

A guest blog

I'm guest-blogging this week on the site run by Ginny Rorby, whose YA book "Lost in the River of Grass" won the Florida Sunshine State Young Readers Award last spring. Find her blog at http://grorby.blogspot.com/. Oh, and it's about what it feels like to have a first book published.

Double oops

Seems the reprint is back on Amazon - the "out of stock" of an hour ago must have been a glitch on their part. Whew.

Oops

Now Amazon says the 'Mousenet' paperback is temporarily out of stock again (see last post)! That was quick. They must have got cleaned out of their stock overnight, filling back-orders. But they should be able to restock fast - and Barnes & Noble has it.

it's back!

The paperback of 'Mousenet' has been reprinted and is now back on Amazon (and other sites) after a few weeks' pause. So here's a challenge. See how fast you can make it sell out again. (Then do the same for 'Mousemobile' when it comes out October 15th.)

Travels with Feet

I'm not one of those to put endless pictures of myself on the Internet when I travel: I prefer to photograph my feet. Click here for the latest travels with feet on the website I share with the Mouse Nation–www.mousenet.org.

Father of Mice

Mice are in mourning over the death of the well-known human Douglas Engelbart, the Stanford researcher who invented the computer mouse. Professor Engelbart played a very important role in the history of the Mouse Nation. If there had been no computer mouse I would not have had a dream that confused computer mice with the real thing, then I would not have written Mousenet, which would mean that the Nation never got the attention from humans that it deserves..

Finalist for an Award

Mousenet is one of six finalists for the Readers' Favorite Award given each year for children's books in the Science Fiction/Fantasy category. Final results will be out on September 1st.

She speaks, she speaks!

I did a recording for a site that has authors tell the world something about their names, and how they acquired them. So click here to find out how to pronounce me.

Mousenet reprinted

Have you been thinking of buying the Mousenet paperback from Amazon, or Barnes & Noble? And been put off by the fact that Amazon says it's "usually" available in one to two months, and Barnes & Noble gives the date of July 31st?

Take heart. The publisher tells me they're both wrong, and the reprint of Mousenet will be available in "early July." 

Mice Over Miami

I don’t often disagree with mice but we have a conflict over the NBA finals.  I can’t help wanting the Spurs to win, but mice are rooting for Miami. 

Why? 

They have long been concerned about Florida, because it’s so vulnerable to the effects of climate change. And they’ve been even more passionately pro-Florida ever since Mousenet was nominated for the Sunshine State Young Reader’s Award, to be voted on next spring.

You don’t suppose. . . Couldn’t be, could it? Say it ain’t so. When at the very end of Game Six it almost looked as if some powerful force had made its way into the officials’ heads? Into the Spurs’ suddenly clumsy hands? Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory?

The Mouse Nation at work?

Scarcity value

Yikes! The Mousenet paperback is all sold out at Amazon, and on the Barnes & Noble website, which says they won't have it until the end of July (when the reprint kicks in). But don’t despair, Mousenet fans. You may find it in stores–and  the hardcover version is still available on-line.

Readers' awards

The Big Cheese wouldn’t turn up his nose at any award, but it’s deeply gratifying to be nominated for readers’ awards. The book gets read and judged and lobbied for and voted on by real kids! Hordes of them.

Mousenet has now been nominated for its second of these awards: the Grand Canyon Reader Award in Arizona. Voting happens next spring for the favorite among ten intermediate books published in the last five years. Yay!

Mousenet reviews

Just got a wonderful review by Jen Robinson on her Book Page  site.

Not wonderful in the sense that she loved everything about the book (she had some reservations) but she read the @#$!! thing, and thought about it, and gave her review the sort of care and detail that one would wish for in – oh, I don’t know – maybe an editor?

This contrasts with another review on a site that shall be nameless that put the action in Seattle instead of Greenfield, Oregon, and sent my protagonist to school in Ohio instead of Oregon.

Jen felt that my treatment of climate change became a bit too dominant at the end of the book, and she’s rightly nervous about messages in children’s books, though she adds, "I have admittedly very finely honed radar when it comes to messages inserted into fiction." Others have also been a little uneasy with the climate change element, but I just came across a review on the site of Climate Today that takes a different view: 

“This children’s book is a very soft approach to the topic of climate change for ages 8- 12- maybe a good place to begin. I read and enjoyed it, then passed it on to a 10 year old girl who couldn’t put it down. The one page (out of nearly 400) where the strategy is explained makes sense- except we just need humans to do it! Now!”

And the reviewer quotes:

“We can help people save the planet
one opinion leader at a time,
one politician at a time
one family at a time.”
Prudence Breitrose, author

Nice of him to attribute the quote to me. Actually it came from the Mouse Nation’s advertising agency.

Watching the Amazon flow

One of the things authors do, of course, is to watch their Amazon sales rank. When the hardcover of Mousenet first came out at the end of 2011, it checked in at a respectable 33,000 out of the three million or so books that Amazon deals with.

 After the first few weeks, it settled back into six figures, where it chugged along quite cheerfully, with a big boost towards the low end of that range when the paperback came out last February.

 So there we were on a Nile cruise ship where you had to pay through the nose for fifteen minutes of Internet. I used some of that expensive time to check up on the old mouse and could hardly believe it. That day, 14,000. The next, 11,000. Yesterday, under 5,000 and change. Suddenly, the mouse has roared.

 No, it’s not because kid word-of-mouth has suddenly made my book the next big thing–it’s the Florida effect. The Sunshine State Young Reader Award. Every year, third through fifth-graders select their favorite book from a list of fifteen–and Mousenet is on the list. Yay!

Things to do as a late bloomer

I’ve added to my list of things to do while being, shall we say, mature.  The list already had first and second books, with two more in the works, and learning to ski.

 Then there was that scene on Highway 280. . .

 Okay, I knew I was going too fast as I overtook some slow cars, but didn’t realize how fast until I saw the Highway Patrol car, half-hidden, ready to pounce. That’s when I looked at my speedometer. Eighty. I slowed down, of course, and thought I might get away with it, but no–that lovely display of flashing lights came looming up in my rear view mirror. 

I’m not proud of my speeding ticket, but it was kind of nice to hear the cop say–when I asked–that catching, shall we say, mature ladies in Priuses didn’t happen to him very often, if ever.

The Right to Bare Arms

I have a complaint about one aspect of television that is quite small in the scheme of things, but (in the view of mice) could set the wrong example when it comes to burning up heating fuel.

     It’s the fact that certain woman anchors and guests persist in wearing summer clothes, even in the middle of winter.

     What’s the message–that intelligent and successful women should dress for summer all year round, and to hell with the thermostat? 

All the Mice for Half the Price!

Next Tuesday  is a big day: “Mousenet” gets launched in paperback. Ask for it at your local bookstore.

And get ready for the sequel, “Mousemobile,” which appears on October 15^th.

Tommy

Here’s Tommy, in a triple role. As the firstborn of my youngest niece, he’s the newest member of my family. As a mouse aficionado, he has adopted my totem animal. And as a Tommy (even if he spells his full name Tomos, as befits a Welshman) he’s a model for Megan’s new half-brother. That Tommy appears in the book I’m working on now–Mouse Menace. And yes, mice show up in his crib too.