Whaaat! The website’s been totally redesigned! I’m very pleased with how it came out. Thanks to Bentley Holmes-Gull for his design chops and technical savvy. I highly recommend him. He did a spectacular job!

There’s lots of new stuff! (Not too much, mind you. I know you’re busy.) For instance, here’s information about having me visit your school, library, or bookstore for an author event.

But I’m most excited about the new gallery of Order of Odd-Fish fan art! Today I want to feature one artist in particular.

In the summer of 2009 I discovered, via Twitter, some cool cut-paper art from The Order of Odd-Fish. The artist’s name is Max Pitchkites, and I was so impressed by what he’d done that I asked for more!

This ranks among some of the most brilliant art that’s come out of Odd-Fish. Max is now doing cut-paper scenes for each chapter of the book. So far Max has finished 13 of the 28 chapters (1-3, 5, 8, and 21-28).

Please, please, check out this gallery of Max’s cut-paper Odd-Fish art I’ve set up. It includes all the chapters he’s completed so far, along with commentary from him and me.

But I can’t resist including all the images in this post, as long as I have your attention. (In the interests of brevity, I’ll restrain myself from commenting on the images, but you can read all my ecstatic praise, and Max’s commentary, in the gallery.) Above, we’ve already seen the fish vomiting the lodge into Eldritch City, the ruby palace, Jo meeting Korsakov and Sefino, Mr. Cavendish’s head gone amok at the Dust Creek Cafe, and Ken Kiang. Below, we have even more great cut-paper art, such as Jo decoding her father’s message, and blacking out in the Dome of Doom:

And Ken Kiang’s musical:

Jo venturing into the Eldritch City asylum to confront the Belgian Prankster, and the Wormbeards lodge:

The riot outside the Odd-Fish lodge:

The All-Devouring Mother rampaging through Eldritch City, gobbling everything she sees:

And the final feast at the Odd-Fish lodge:

Again, I recommend checking out the gallery to see the complete collection, with larger-sized images, along with praise from me and commentary from Max.

Thanks, Max, for some unforgettable Odd-Fish art. I can’t wait to see how you will top yourself next!

Last week the Parlor reading series kindly hosted me reading from my work-in-progress, The Magnificent Moots. (The audio is online; see the bottom of this post for details.)

The Magnificent Moots is a science-fiction comedy that’s like a combination of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, Douglas Adams’ The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and the movie The Royal Tennenbaums. With a generous dollop of the 1970s television special Battle of the Network Stars thrown in for good measure.

(Check out this amazing clip from Battle of the Network Stars, which culminates in a footrace between Robert Conrad and Gabe Kaplan—you know, the teacher on Welcome Back, Kotter. The cigarettes! The track suits! The insane political incorrectness! And the come-from-behind Cinderella moment at the end! It’s priceless!)

Anyway, I’m about midway through writing Moots. The story follows the adventures of the brother and sister of the Moot family when they are invited to compete in an interplanetary Olypmics. This story is woven together with legends about various historical Moots from bygone eras.

The most exciting thing, to me, is that Paul Hornschemeier is on board with illustrating it! I’ve sung Paul’s praises before; he did the brilliant cover for the upcoming paperback version of The Order of Odd-Fish.

The illustration at the top of this post is of King Cornelius Moot, whom I mention in the prologue. Here’s another one of King Cornelius. I can’t wait to see what else Paul comes up with!

So at the Parlor, I read the prologue and the first chapter of The Magnificent Moots. Then there was a question-and-answer period. Most of it is captured on audio, and you can listen to it here. It’s a rough draft, and much too long. But if you’re interested in what a work-in-progress sounds like, here it is!

Due to technical difficulties, only the prologue is available for listening, because chapter one didn’t record well. So some of the questions in the Q&A might not make much sense.

Thanks to the Parlor reading series for inviting me, the Green Lantern Gallery for hosting us, Terri Griffith for recording, Joanna MacKenzie and Caroline Picard for organizing it, and thanks to everyone who came and asked questions! I had a great time.

A few weeks ago the Schaumburg Township District Library’s Teen Corps captured an author in the wild.

I was that author.

They tried to keep me penned up in their library, but I caused too many problems. Tackling the patrons, biting the teens, eating the books—apparently, these are all frowned upon. When I was good, they let me wear my Happy Jacket. When I was bad, they put me in the Trouble Bucket.

Stern discipline for a simple beast.

Finally they realized I was too much trouble, and they set me free. It’s all chronicled in the above video.

Special thanks to Teen Coordinator Amy Alessio for inviting me, and to Dan Schnepf for his editing magic!