Good stuff this week

1 - The new bookshelves have arrived. I don't know why it is, but I can always think more clearly when my house isn't a mess. I've had some books sitting in piles on the floor for over a year.

2 - An ARC of DeVa Gantt's Forever Waiting is on its way to me. This will be one of these drop-everything-and-read-it books, so I won't be beginning any lengthy novels for a little while.

3 - Entries have started to come in for the historical novel title game. This is exciting - I really had no idea if anyone would take me up on the challenge!

4 - There is talk of a book blogger convention which would tag along after (or before) BEA in 2010. It sounds like great fun, and if it happens, I plan to be there.

5 - An article that I've been struggling to write for the past couple of days is starting to take shape.

6 - There have been many new historical novel deals in Publishers Marketplace. Judging by past practice, the titles on some of these will be changing before publication, but here are some of them:

CEZANNE'S QUARRY author Barbara Corrado Pope's THE BLOOD OF LORRAINE, at the height of the Dreyfus Affair, the town magistrate must prove that a mutilated baby is not a case of "ritual sacrifice" in order to quell the anti-Semitic hysteria threatening to engulf the town, to Jessica Case at Pegasus, by Mollie Glick at Foundry Literary + Media (World). [speaker at the Historical Novel Society conference in Schaumburg; her first novel was an HNS editors' choice title]

Dori Jones Yang's DAUGHTER OF XANADU, about a spirited young Mongolian princess who must decide between her growing attraction towards a young foreigner, Marco Polo, and proving to the Khan, and to herself, that she can be a bold warrior, to Michelle Poploff at Delacorte, by Michael Bourret at Dystel & Goderich Literary Management (NA). [this is a YA novel]

Suzanne Desrochers's BRIDE OF NEW FRANCE, pitched as pioneering meets Philippa Gregory, based on the riveting true story of the Filles du roi, the unlucky girls sent from the poor houses of Paris to the wilderness of New France to populate its new colony for King Louis XIV, to Adrienne Kerr at Penguin Canada, for publication in November 2010, by Samantha Haywood of the Transatlantic Literary Agency. [if it's a novel about historical women, the comparison to Gregory is almost a given. It's the subject that makes me want to read it, though]

Melissa Hardy's BROKEN ROAD, following several generations of one Cherokee family in their various quests for wealth, love, power and dignity, drawing upon the roots of their native mythology and sacred history to create a moving account of the intense love-hate relationship between two peoples that would ultimately end in the destruction of the Cherokee way of life, to Michael Callaghan of Exile Editions, for publication in Fall 2009, by Bill Hanna of Acacia House. [another great-sounding novel from Canada]

RITA-nominated author Susanna Kearsley's THE WINTER SEA, the story of a modern novelist who slowly comes to realize that her book about a little-known Jacobite rebellion and the people taking part in it might be more fact than fiction, to Deb Werksman at Sourcebooks, in a nice deal, for publication in Fall 2010, by Shawna McCarthy at The McCarthy Agency (US). [so glad this one will finally be available in American bookstores!]