Let’s start this week with some really fun news, shall we?

THIS SATURDAY, JUNE 25, I will be appearing at the Borders in Springfield, VA, to do a reading and signing for MECHANIQUE!

I’m excited about the chance to go back to the Borders I haunted in high school, buying books for extra-credit research. I’m ridiculously excited about the chance for my family to see me read something that is not a middle-school report! I am slightly less excited about the fact that my grandmother and my sister have been going through family photos and will probably be coming with ammo. (There was a photo of me in my lone dance recital outfit. It was just as great as I remembered, for every possible value of “great.” Element of my dance costume I had somehow forgotten – built-in extra strap of hot-pink sequins right across the collarbone, just in case the rest was a little subdued.)

I’ll be there from noon until 2mumble, and if you’re in the area, I would love to see you there!

Wow, this snuck up on me! Oh, summer, why are you only ever a blur of airports, weird clothes-packing choices, and horrible baking sun right down the concrete wind tunnel that is Manhattan?

This Saturday at 3:00pm, I’ll be appearing at the Jefferson Market Library in Greenwich Village for a TEETH event!

Readings? Maybe! Paneling? Possibly! Throwing shade on some recent vampire tales? Maybe not from the nice people, but from me, you bet!

Bonus: since I’ll be appearing alongside Holly Black, Jeffrey Ford, Steve Berman, Delia Sherman, and Ellen Kushner, I can totally coast during any important discussions and just do a lot of listening and nodding like Indeterminate Bureaucrat in an action movie. (You should come by and watch me! I’m super good at it.)

So, as it happens, next Wednesday, March 16, I’ll be joining Carolyn Turgeon for a reading at KGB’s Fantastic Fiction series!

Mechanique’s pub date is still several weeks away, so it won’t be available for purchase at KGB because of how time travel hasn’t been invented yet. However, there will still be a way to snag some ARCs!

If you are interested in an ARC of Mechanique, you can (if all goes well) take a ticket at the door*, and after I read I’ll draw for three copies!

If you are unable to make it to the reading and are still interested in an ARC, I’ve held a couple of copies in reserve and will be doing a giveaway online, as well, through some magical plan I will think of very shortly.

I’m a huge fan of the KGB reading series, and am thrilled about this reading. Hope to see some of you there!

* Actual location of “door” yet to be determined, but the big honking roll of tickets will be hard to miss, both because they are brightly colored and also the kind friend who is handing them out is very tall.

Tonight, I am packing my bag (questionably, as per usual, and not helped at all by the fact that it’s going to be anywhere from 17 to 55 degrees while I’m there, so I’m thisclose to just packing pajamas and a coat).

Tomorrow I’m headed to Boskone.

I’m mostly going to be hanging around (I have a busy schedule of people I’ve promised to heckle), but after my joint reading with John Langan at World Fantasy, he apparently turned into a glutton for punishment, because we’re going to do it again this weekend! So Saturday at 3pm, I’ll be the opening act for the John Langan Experience. Hope to see some of you there!

This could apply to any of these three things. (Sometimes I’m organized!…this is not one of those times.)

1. I had a blast this weekend at Capclave and the Steampunk Indie Market! There were definitely a few moments of scramble, especially as regards the travel logistics of being in two states in 24 hours (I am still not sure why, no matter what city you are in, Amtrak boarding descends into the race from Ben-Hur), but it was totally worth it to be at both events. Thanks to everyone who came out to my readings! (Special thanks to Raj, who came to my rescue at the Steampunk Indie Market, and did not make a point about the obvious superiority of the battery life of iPhones.)

2. I have an article out today in Lightspeed! “Five Planets that Will Kill You Dead” helps you avoid disaster by pointing out four exoplanets (and one jerk planet in our very own solar system) that are bad choices for spaceship crash-landings. (It also talks about pudding.)

NERD NOTE: This article got scooped by actual science! The originally researched final planet, Gliese 581 d, got overshadowed as a headliner landing zone by the discovery of Gliese 581 g, the “Earth twin” planet also wheeling around in Gliese 581′s habitable zone. AND IT WAS AWESOME. SCIENCE!

3. I will be at World Fantasy this weekend! I will be reading there, Saturday at 1pm, for those who want to hear a teaser from Mechanique!

Otherwise, though, it’s nothing but handmade ice cream for DAYS. I am really looking forward to it all, except possibly the part where I get home tonight and realize I haven’t packed yet. Whoops.