Sights! Lights! Nights!

Spent a day with our sister and brother in New York last week; while the Media Source office (in Soho) has mostly recovered from Sandy, staff in New Jersey and on Long Island had horror stories and hellish commutes. (OTOH, their office is surrounded by chicness and restaurants, whereas we have a Holiday Inn, Hess Gas, and a Dunkin’ Donuts. Where would YOU rather work?)

Jane Austen (Mansfield Park) and Garth Nix (A Confusion of Princes) accompanied me on the Limoliner and were very pleasant companions. As was my hostess Elizabeth, who coached me in taking the subway all by myself from her apartment on the UES down to the office. (“Let’s start you at a station that only has one line,” she tactfully suggested.)

Jason, Roger, Mary; photo by Mark Tuchman

The main purpose of the trip was to interview Holiday House‘s Mary Cash and Lee & Low‘s Jason Low for the Magazine’s upcoming special issue, themed “Different Drummers,” due in March. Mary and Jason had a lot to say about the joys and challenges of independent publishing, and the issue will also feature a cover by Paul O. Zelinsky and contributions by Barbara Bader, Eugene Yelchin, Polly Horvath, and Jack Gantos, different drummers all. I only wish we could continue our motif of unconventionality into the review section and refuse, on thematic grounds, to cover anything that’s part of a series. ONE issue out of SIX, is it too much to ask?

I did NOT go to the National Book Awards dinner (too rich for my blood/wallet) but honored the occasion by reading the fiction winner, Louise Erdrich‘s The Round House on the trip home. It’s good, and with enough YA interest to make me feel like I was (happily) on the job.