Oh, so many things going on in what after last weekend’s conference I like to think of as the O’Sphere:

Super agent to the stars Michael Bourret (you heard he was promoted to VP, right?) gives us a great example of how to post about “bad” publishing news without being a total Dirk Downer. (This was something I mentioned in my talk on blogging - if you become known for posting sad, scary, alarmist links that basically amount to “why you shouldn’t bother writing any more,” you will lose readers.)

Ecogeek Hank Green is also hopeful, but this time it’s about the environment. Which, I guess, might be slightly more important than the publishing industry. Read and respond to his post at YA for Obama.

Why so few books for young readers with African American characters? And when they do come out, where do they go and what happens to them? Varian Johnson ponders this issue, and invites nominations for 28 Days Later 2009 over at the Brown Bookshelf.

Speaking of underrepresented stories, the NJ Star-Ledger has a great article/interview on Robin Friedman and her book, Nothing, about a teen boy with an eating disorder.

Nominations for the 2008 Cybils are now open! Only until October 15! This is your chance to suggest your favorite and perhaps overlooked books from 2008. Jen Robinson explains how.

I’m on a panel for Teen Read Week with Ann Dee Ellis and Mette Ivie Harrison at the Salt Lake City Public Library. It’s going to be very fun, especially if Ann Dee brings New Baby and Old Baby and the bouncy chair and demonstrates Baby-O-Poult. Oh yeah, that is on October 14, 7 p.m.

A bunch of people I love have their birthdays. Libras rule!

On October 24, the UCTE/LA (Utah Council of Teachers of English/Language Arts) annual conference happens and will be pretty great, if you ask me. Paul Fleishman, Richard Peck, and yours truly will be speaking individually, and then all three of us will also be at…

The Utah Humanities Book Festival! Paul and I are on a panel of 2 on current trends in children’s and YA literature. A topic about which I should probably do some more thinking before October 25 at 2 p.m.

I turn 38. Which…I don’t know. This is the first birthday that makes me go, oh, I guess I really am on the slippery slope toward mortality. Of course that’s true from the day you’re born, but it feels more true now.

We get cable again? Time will tell.

A whole bunch of books come out, like John Green’s Paper Towns and, and…well, if you have a book coming out in October, post about it in the comments! Don’t let John hog all the glory!

I am back home, had a great time at the KidLitBlogCon. That is not the official name but that is how I like to think of it. It was great to meet so many of the amazing folks who make this community what it is. This is dumb, but somehow it didn’t occur to me until Jen Robinson’s presentation that most of these very passionate and dedicated and prolific blogging advocates and lovers of children’s literature, like, have day jobs. And kids, and all kinds of other responsibilities, and they really do all this for the love. For the love, people!

The biggest take away for me was that if I blog tour for my next book, it will be completely different than the one I did for Sweethearts. Someone made the point that publishers are new to putting together blog tours, and they still sort of think of it like an actual tour and each blog stop is a city. But it’s not, and you need to approach the medium in a totally different way. Next year’s conference is going to be in DC - Keep your eyes open for details! Hopefully as the conference gathers a bigger following in the coming years, there will be more publicists and marketing people joining in the conversation.

Among other fun things in Portland, I had great Cuban food, amazing Peruvian food, some decent airport sushi, saw the Rose Garden and the Japanese Garden, rode the choo-choo all around town, marveled at the many green waste management innovations, spent quality time with longtime LJ friends, made new friends, read good poetry, wrote bad poetry, and watched the planes come and go from the runway that happened to be so conveniently and loudly located right under my window.

Glad to be home. RIP Cool Hand Luke and Dow Jones.

Thanks so much, everyone, for all the comments and support. As I’ve been putting together the stuff for tomorrow’s ‘balancing the personal and professional’ talk in Portland, I’ve been thinking about how some topics and posts have this higher risk/reward ratio, and you can’t always predict how it will go but it’s worth doing.

On a much much much less serious note, I am all caught up with Project Runway and ANTM. Next week’s PR looks like it will be the best ever. In the preview, it seems like everybody is crying! Everybody! Even Nina Garcia! I am still fascinated by Kenley, as I am always fascinated by people who are their own worst enemy. (Hello, self.)

I’m leaving my laptop behind this weekend, which might be kind of dumb at a blogger conference, but I have some reading and sleeping and thinking and watching of cable to do. And anyway, my Blackberry will meet all my needs. So I won’t see you back here until Monday night or Tuesday. Have a great weekend, and I’m looking forward to seeing a whole bunch of you lovelies in Portland tomorrow.

My blog at the YA for Obama site is up today. I have to say that in the time since I wrote that, a lot has happened (like the economic crisis! and the will-we-won’t-we-debate debate), and my inner cynic has been nursed back to health. I hate campaigns, especially in these last weeks before the election. I would like to vote today. But I’m trying to hang in there! And now…

This is so not like me and I would rather avoid this altogether, but I know a lot of my friends, fans, and family are pro-life and I feel like I need to say something here about one of the big sticking points a lot of Christians have when it comes to Obama (and most of the Democratic party): abortion. I saw a comment on another writer-for-Obama’s blog that said if all us writers claim to be “for children,” how could we support a candidate that voted against a ban of partial birth abortion? I know there’s no answer that’s going to be satisfying. And I admit that Obama hasn’t voted the way I might like every time on this issue. I am pro-life, but in the context of 21st century life in a pluralistic democracy where the horse is already out of the barn, I am also pro-choice.

And I want to say a little bit about the big picture, which is how I view what it means to be pro-life. In a perfect pro-life utopia there would be no war. There would be no torture. No child abuse, no hunger, no homelessness, no terrorism, and yes, no abortion. The lives of unborn children and Iraqi citizens and American soldiers, villagers in Darfur, Katrina victims, the homeless, addicted, mentally ill would all have equal value. We would have a society where, when faced with an unplanned pregnancy, a woman would see many good options in the world in front of her that would make bringing the baby into that world seems not only possible, but desirable. We would have a society where all needs were met - through government programs, faith-based programs, community action, personal accountability, or, hopefully, all of the above. When I was talking about this with my mom, she said, “But I don’t understand why we have to have trade-offs among beneficiaries of a pro-life position.” She makes a good point. I hate the either/or nature of politics. “They are for programs, but we are for personal accountability.” “They are pro-life, but we will try to bring an end to the war.” Why can’t we have it all? In our hypothetical utopia, we wouldn’t have to choose one thing at the expense of the other. However, at this moment in history, my opinion is that Obama and the Democrats are more likely to better address more of the issues in a truly pro-humanity way. It is a far less than ideal situation. I know that. But as I said in a recent post, voting usually involves making some kind of compromise. Except now I wouldn’t say “usually,” now I would say “always.”

I never ever wanted my blog to be political, and I am already so tired of this, and I don’t enjoy talking about politics, like, at all. But I know that my participation in YA for Obama kind of forces me out of the closet here and that’s probably good for me. Now that I’ve written this, when anyone asks me about the Obama/abortion issue, I can just direct them here. I don’t want to have a debate. Honestly, I’m never convinced enough of my own rightness to get into a debate. I am all too aware that at any given moment, I could be wrong, so I take everything I say with a grain of humility.

All of this YA for Obama stuff is really going to enhance the discussion I’m leading at the Kidlit Blogger conference this weekend! I’ll be talking about balancing the personal and professional (and now political) on your author blog.

You know how when your dreams get all mixed up with something that’s on the radio or TV as you’re waking? So this morning I’m dreaming that we moved into a new apartment. By the way, I have this one a lot - I call it “the apartment dream.” Usually we have suddenly had to find a new place to live and find something that is either giant and strangely cheap, or expensive and strangely small, though if it’s a good dreamthe more I wander through the strangely small apartment the more rooms I discover. Anyway, in this dream the apartment was kind of smallish, but getting bigger, and we knew it was going to be a temporary living situation and I asked my husband, “Why did we completely pack and clean the other place if we’re just moving back in a month?” And then someone on the radio said that a Utahn won a MacArthur Genius Grant and I slid open the minivan door (I don’t know how we got on the street, and we don’t have a minivan) and found a letter saying that I had won the MacArthur Genius Grant! I was the genius Utahn! And it was for about $6,400. And there was another letter to tell me that I was a Guggenheim Fellow! And in my dream I was all, Wow, I didn’t even apply for these! And this will cover our rent on the new apartment while we keep the old one! When I woke up, I learned that the Genius Grant is actually half a million bucks, no strings attached.

Last night while working the KRCL phones I learned that a lot of people get high while listening to Dave’s show. And Sarah learned that not all music on KRCL features a didgeridoo.

I kind of keep forgetting that I’m going to Portland this weekend. It’s good that Delta keeps sending me little reminders! I’m looking forward to seeing a lot of you there. It seems like it will be a pretty cozy conference with a chance to meet just about everyone.