Lazy Pig

I spent the weekend + a few days at my parents' home in Novi, Michigan. This was a great time to wind down the past few months and see my family after a while. Some big changes are afoot. My li'l sis is headed to the Big Apple for an internship with Goldman Sachs and my grandmother is coming to town to visit. Yay!

One thing that really touched me this weekend was seeing my old school in Detroit downtown. Just driving down Cass Avenue brought back a deluge of memories. I can't wait to go back there and talk to the 7th-8th grade students about my writing and where I came from.

A quick summary of my weekend: I ate, Manav ate, I slept, Manav slept, we watched movies and gossiped the hell out of the days and nights.

That's it. So, here we are back in Seattle, fat and lazy and just counting the hours till the weekend!

Some great things going on lately:

• One of my first crit partners Nadine Dajani's book FASHIONABLY LATE is hitting the shelves htis week. Nadine is an incredibly talented writer and her story of the Canadian-Arabic girl is going to be unlike anything you' ve ever read. Who knows...I might even have a giveaway next week!! Nadine will also be giving a workshop with the awesome Blossom Kan at Nationals this year on writing multi-cultural fiction. I am *so* excited for this seminar!
• I got *great* news from Kimani that they unveiled my cover at a recent sales conf and the reviews are really good so far. They want to put forth marketing effort because of the diverse multi-ethnic cultures (Indian, African and Cuban) in the book.
• One of my closest friend Kanishtha has just started a cooking blog. Take my word for it, if Kanishtha opened a restaurant, it would be chained within weeks. Her cooking is just *that* good. At her house, I've had Indian, Thai, Burmese, etc food. All excelllent, spicy and just divine. Check it out! Kanishtha's Blog
• The great Diana P has just signed a 2 book deal with Harper Collins for her Killer Unicorn series RAMPANT. Woo hoo! Only Diana could pull of a feat like this.

So that's the word folks! I am crazily finishing up edits to HOW LIAH MET ANA for my lovely agent and am thinking of ideas for Book 3. Not panicking. Yet :)

Happy Thursday!