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Hello, my dear fellow bus riders!

What a lovely year we’re enjoying on the bus stop, no?  This February, the temperature never hit the -20s, like it did last year.  This March, the wind didn’t blow 60 miles per hour for a month straight.  And we’re getting rain in April!  Which makes everything smell so lovely, thanks to the water in the air and the blossoms on the fruit trees.  This is a wonderful time of year to be riding the bus, to get to spend those few wonderful minutes outdoors every morning and evening. 

We’re a smart bunch, aren’t we? 

And yet…

This has been floating around for a while, but I’ve only managed to post about it now.

I was a little sad to read that they’re closing down Encyclopedia Britannica.  The company is hanging around—they only make a fraction of their revenue from the encyclopedia anyway; I didn’t know this—but the actual Encyclopedia Britannica is soon to be a thing of the past.  And that bums me out.

What can I say?  There are a lot of terrific books coming out right now.  Written by people I’ve known for a long time.

I’ve known Leah Bobet and Brad Beaulieu since my days hanging around at the Online Writing Workshop.  Leah had arrived long before me, and so was already a sage presence on the mailing list when I stumbled along; Brad had been there longer than I, too, but not quite as much.  He and I traded a few critiques back in the day.

Anyway.  Excuse me while I wax sentimental.  Flash forward a few years, and wow!  Leah’s debut novel has just hit shelves in the US (it debuted earlier in Canada), and Brad’s brand-new second novel is out today.  He’s running a contest to celebrate and there’s still time (just barely) to win some major prizes.

It seems this is the weekend for Milkweed publishing news.  I was planning to sit on this for a few more days, but on further reflection, today seemed like the right day for another announcement. 

ARCs of The Coldest War have been sent out, and the audio edition is available, and the print and electronic editions will be appearing very soon.  That means the time has come for my publishers and I to put our collective heads together and turn our thoughts to the best format for Necessary Evil, the finale of the Milkweed Triptych.  We had to weigh a number of factors.  Most of all, however, we had to look for the best fit between the format and the story.

But once we considered all of our options, the answer became obvious!  Which is why Necessariy Evil will be published exclusively as a coloring book. 

We’re very excited about this.  It’s a perfect fit!  There’s even talk of an expanded edition that might come packaged with extra scenes as well as a box of crayons.  The details aren’t set in stone yet, but I’m confident that the coloring book format is the perfect approach for the final Milkweed novel.