Monday, March 10, 2014

The Colours of Madeleine


Oh, look, I'm just always here blogging.  It's too much, you know.  It's like I can't stop talking.

Ha ha.  I haven't been here since 2011. I  can't believe it.  I knew it had been a while, but I honestly didn't know it had been that long.  Time!  It's crazy these days.  I'm very sorry.  I think part of the problem is that months go by and then how can anything be significant enough to justify breaking the silence?  It's like when you run into a friend you haven't seen for years, and there is too much to say, which translates into having nothing to say.  If you'd seen the friend all the time you might say, 'I had to get a new car battery this morning' and 'I'm finally over that ear infection', but as it is, you only say, 'Oh yeah, I've been great.  Busy.  You?'

Anyway, I do want to blog again one day, but this is not a real post.  This post is only for three reasons:

(1)  To tell you that I am blogging somewhere else for the month of March 2014 


This blogging takes place at a website about books for young people called Inside A Dog.   I hope very much that you will join me there.  Here is a link to my first post.


(2) To tell you that I have written two new books.  



One came out a year ago, so this is timely of me, mentioning it now.  Ha ha again.  The other one only just came out, so that's more like it!  A Corner of White is the first in the 'Colours of Madeleine' trilogy, which is set partly in our world and partly in the Kingdom of Cello.  Madeleine Tully lives in Cambridge, England.  She begins writing letters to Elliot Baranski, a boy who lives in the farming province of the Kingdom of Cello, through a crack that has opened up between worlds in a parking meter.  The Cracks in the Kingdom is the second book in the trilogy.  Madeleine and Elliot must work together to locate Cello's royal family - who have been abducted and brought here to our world - at the same time as they try to find a way to break open the crack and find a way to travel between worlds.


(3) To show off about the two new books.  


A Corner of White won the NSW Premier's Literary Award (Ethel Turner Prize) and the Queensland Literary Award (Griffith University Prize), and was shortlisted for the Western Australian Premier's Book Awards. In the US, it was a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book, has been named a finalist for the Nebula Prize (Andre Norton Award), and was a Kirkus Best Book of the Year, a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, a Horn Book Fanfare Book, and a Los Angeles Public Library Best Book of 2013. Paul Gagne of Scholastic Audio Books produced a superb audiobook of A Corner of White, filled with perfect performances, and it was chosen as one of Audiofile Magazine's YA Audio Books of the Year.


The Cracks in the Kingdom, Book 2 in the Colours of Madeleine trilogy has already received three starred reviews: 'Madcap, whimsical, smart and even heartbreaking, but Moriarty never drops the dozens of balls in the air. By turns coming-of-age and wild adventure ...this volume complicates the characters, expands the world building and sets things up for a grand finish ... Even better than the first' (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).

I hope you have all had a wonderful three years.  I look forward to chatting again.  By the way, I owe some of you replies to beautiful and sometimes heartbreaking letters.  Thank you for those, and please know that I am thinking of you and will reply.

See you all again in five or six years.  Ha ha.  No, seriously, that could easily happen.