Arigatou gozaimasu!!

....which means, "Thank you very much!" in Japanese! (at least according to my Google sources.) Why am I expressing exuberant gratitude in Japanese?? Because I woke up this morning to the news that there was a bidding war among Japanese publishers for the rights to publish the Holt Sisters Trilogy (BATS, WTBW and TSTS) in Japanese, and we sold them for, shall we say, an extremely heart-warming sum. :) (Let's just say I briefly lost the feeling in my extremities when I was informed, and then I accidentally hung up on my agent's Foreign Rights Director, because my jaw dropped and pressed the "end" button on my phone.) So let's raise a toast to our Japanese friends, and to my lovely and gifted agent and his lovely and gifted staff. :) So this now means that my books will be published (or have been published) in Poland, Germany, France, Russia, The Czech Republic, China, Spain and Japan. This is one of the best parts of being an author, as far as I'm concerned—the possibility of connecting with people everywhere through stories.

In other fab news: We have a title for my next Pennyroyal Green book—The Dangers of Desire. How hot is that?? I love it! And the cover will be an appropriately dangerously sexy deep red, as sophisticated and sensual as POP's.

And speaking of POP:  below is a very cool countdown widget the HarperCollins provides for authors.  Studies show that it's much healthier to stare at the seconds ticking away on countdown widgets than at the Amazon rank. Hee! Just kidding. (Though it's probably only a matter of time before someone actually does a study like that.) But feel free to spread the POP widget around if you want!! Click on "get this widget" to grab the code or get it in some other format suitable for putting on your blog or website, etc. Because God only knows I don't want to be alone in my latest obsession. :)

Hope everyone is grand! We had a little rainstorm here, and now it's sunny and quite oddly warm. Not that I'm complaining in the least. :)

Get this widget!

Comments

[Diana]

Congratulations, Julie! :)

[Julie Anne Long]

Thanks, Diana!! How's are things going?? Wasn't today's weather odd? I loved how the day turned downright sultry after all that rain. Though we need more rain!

[Diana]

Hi, Julie. Things are well. I haven't been up to much--just mostly working.

I'm not a fan of rain, but I do understand that it's necessary. It's supposed to rain again tomorrow.

Oh, my sister and I had dinner at a restaurant called Nua in North Beach recently, and the food and service were both great. So if you're ever in that neighborhood, give Nua a try. Here's their website: http://www.nuasf.info/

[Julie Anne Long]

Man, Diana, that menu made me hungry. LOL. Thanks for the recommendation! Now I want to go check it out. I love Mediterranean food. My favorite restaurant (so far) for that sort of thing is actually in Half Moon Bay -- Cetrella. Beautiful and romantic but casual, too -- good for a date, good for dinner with friends -- amazing, amazing food (but expensive, so it's only a once-in-a-while place). I've never had anything there that wasn't roll-your-eyes-back-in-your-head fantastic. I think it might be my favorite overall restaurant, but I haven't tried every single restaurant in the Bay Area yet. LOL. There's a goal!! http://www.cetrella.com/.

[Diana]

Mmmm, that menu looks good. I love checking out different menus and even more--actually trying new restaurants. :)

[Megan]

Congratulations! We love sales of foreign rights!!

[Kathy K]

That's such fabulous news Julie ~ Congratulations!!

[Julie Anne Long]

Hey Megan!! How are things going?? Thanks for the congrats!! Foreign rights sales are always lovely little surprises, and this one was *outrageously* lovely. LOL.

And thanks, Kathy!! I know you already popped in at the MySpace blog. Thanks for visiting here, too!! :) I can never hear "congratulations" too often. LOL. I'm still figuring out the logistics of posting the same blog in two places -- if that makes sense.

[meardaba]

That's wonderful news, Julie! Hey, now you can really say that you're "all the rage in Japan"!

[Julie Anne Long]

Hey Mear!! LOL! Big in Japan! It's a dream come true!! How are things going? Are you in school? Decide on what you're going to study?

[Diana]

Happy Halloween, everyone! :)

[Kathy K]

Happy Halloween to you too Diana... and all the rest! It's unbelievably NICE here tonight. First time it's actually been, well warm for us; it's 10C (50F) and *knock on wood* no snow! Still there's only been about 30 kids... where've all the kids gone??

[Julie Anne Long]

Well, Happy Halloween, girls!! I just sent out a newsletter (you should get it tomorrow) and forgot to even mention it -- I've been working tonight on a bunch of stuff! LOL. But I can hear Halloween going on outside. And there's a nice big block party going on in Cole Valley, looks like. :) Next year I'll get out there -- wonder if the Castro will stay quiet this evening. Did you feel the earthquake, Diana?? Felt like a long one!!

Your weather sounds incredible, Kathy. Love a mild fall day. :) Ours has been kind of gray and drizzly, if not not TOO cold quite yet.

I'm going to have a snack-sized candy bar now. LOL.

[Kate]

Even better is the day after Halloweeen -- since I have no reason [we get zippo tricker treaters] "on sale holloween candy!

[Kathy K]

LOL... yeah I made my dh pick up some cheap halloween candy last night... I mean, our youngest is 15 now and she's not trick-or-treating... I need my candy fix somehow!!

[Julie Anne Long]

Hey girls -- what's your favorite halloween candy?? I confess to a love of SNickers. :) Little, teeny, delicious Snickers. :)

[Diana]

Oh yes, I definitely felt the earthquake. I'm so bad. I know that when there's an earthquake, I should take cover under a desk, etc., but I usually just sit there (or lie in bed) and wait until the earthquake is over. The earthquake the other night was long enough that I was about to get under the computer desk, but I didn't. It did scare me, though.

[Tomoko]

Hello,
I'm a Japanese. And I am happy to hear that your books will be published in Japan.
Domo arigato.

[Julie Anne Long]

Hi Tomoko!! :) I'm so delighted to have a Japanese friend, and to be published in Japan. :) It's such a pleasure to connect with people from all over the world, particularly since authors spend a lot of time alone in their offices, staring at their computers. :) If you haven't yet read my books in English, I can't wait to hear what you think of them when they're translated into Japanese. I hope you'll keep me posted! :)

And Diana -- well, I confess I do the same thing with earthquakes, because we become a little blase about them. After the '89 quake, I was of course jumpy as a cat for a while, but that jumpiness eventually wears off. But this recent quake, though moderate, made me a little nervous because of its duration. The one in '89 started like that for me..I remember thinking..."Oh, it's just an earthwquake." Most of them are little jolts or waves, and then that's it, so you wait it out - ho hum. But then...it just didn't STOP. It went on for an eternity. (30 seconds is an eternity in earthquake terms). So I started to get just a wee bit nervous over this last one. All's well that end's well. :)

[Kathy K]

My favourite halloween candy ~ first off, anything without nuts... deadly allergic to those; otherwise I'd have to choose between Smarties, Mars bars, or Rockets... depends on whether or not I'm in a chocolate mood, but it's probably more the rockets... I've got a thing for sour candy! (and no, that's not because I'm a sourpuss *grin*)

Geez, if we ever had an earthquake here I'm not sure if I'd recognize it... but tornadoes... you get those stormy skies that are a sickly yellowy-green colour and THEN I get real nervous. Not that we have a lot here in Edmonton, but the one that we had 20 years ago was enough to scare the heebie-jeebies outta anyone!

[iCe]

oh... oh.. congratulations! I hope you post the cover of what they're publishing there in your blog. I always love Japanese covers, and I compare different publishers' covers from the one I have. Haha, and sometimes I have to restrain myself from buying a book in a language I don't understand just because I like the cover.

[Julie Anne Long]

Hey iCe! Thanks for the congrats! :) And I know -- I love seeing covers from other countries, too!! Can't wait to see the Japanese covers. It's such a kick to see how differently every country interprets the story with an image. My Polish cover for Beauty and the Spy is very cool -- I'll have to scan some of them and get them up on my website or blog somehow! And it's funny -- I remember when the Polish version of BATS arrived -- I wasn't even sure which book it was until I flipped through the pages to find the words "Susannah" and "Kit." LOL. It's really a gas to see your stories in other languages. :)

[Ranurgis]

Big congratulations, Julie.

Wonderful for other countries to get you lovely books.

I know I've been absent for a long time, but then so have you. (wink)

I'm commenting hardly anywhere at the moment. I'm also hoping to switch ISPs soon. This one is getting more and more on my nerves. However, I'll try to let you know when that happens or I might go to an address that's not bound to a specific ISP. It's just too much trouble changing when you decide to leave one.

I now have a laptop though it's not yet running as smoothly as I'd like. There's just too much to learn about these thingies nowadays.

I'm looking forward to the new book. Looks very interesting. Is the "green" cover in honor of "Pennyroyal Green"? Whatever it is, I love green.

I must admit that I'm having problems with series whose titles are too similar. I ended up buying two of the same books several times because I confused them. Unfortunately it's not always easy to return them.

However your two titles aren't too similar unless you think of the meaning too much. Your abbreviations, POP and DOD should help though.

[Julie Anne Long]

Ranurgis!! Thanks for the congrats!! I was just thinking about you! Glad you're doing well. But struggling with ISP's can be maddening -- I could write a book about it. Don't worry -- I'm not tempted to do that. LOL. Cool that the green cover fits right in with Pennyroyal Green, isn't it?? HOpe everyone makes that connection. :) I'm pretty excited about POP -- Kathy K. read the book and she gave me a great big enthusiastic thumbs up, which warmed my cockles. :) I've had a few other similar reviews from a few other dear readers, too. Hope it's the shape of things to come!! And I'm having a great time writing DOD (good acronym!! I really must continue to think of titles with good acronyms!!) -- really fun, interesting characters (to me! So far!) and a lively circumstance. Hope we'll be seeing more of you here!

[Microsoft Office]

I’ve been opened to listen and understand what the bible says..god