Book Showcase in Hoover

First, a quick bit of self-promotion. There’s a book fair at the Hoover Library this Saturday, July 28th, with a bunch of great authors, including  local writer Keith Thomson, who writes super cool spy thrillers.

I envy Keith. It’d be nice to have such a great answer ready when someone says, “So what kind of books do you write?”

Keith: Spy books.

Gin: The first one is set during Depression-era Alabama and starts with a baby being thrown down a well, and the second one is about an archaeology dig and ghosts.

His answer is much more concise. And compelling. I am going to start writing about spies. Spies who are thrown down wells and haunted by ghosts.

I’m busy these days with normal kids-and-summer stuff, but I’m also finishing up a draft of another middle grade book. (My first, The Hidden Summer, will be out summer 2012.) The one I’m working on now is about a girl who finds the same odd message on bathroom walls all over town(messages appropriate for 11-year-olds, that is) and decides to solve the mystery.

I’ve also been in the middle of a rockin’ string of great books. Finished Hilary Mantel’s Bringing Up the Bodies, which was SPECTACULAR. I loved Wolf Hall, but I think I loved this one even more. Halfway through Eggers’ A Hologram for the King now, and adoring it. I might admire Eggers’ prose more than any other living writer’s. (Well, him and Toni Morrison, a bit of an odd prose pairing.) This review from the Sunday Times Book Review sums up Eggers perfectly.