I am caught up.

Okay, not entirely caught up because there are several books I need to review for future columns, but the immediate stuff is all caught up.

I have sent the massive revision off to the wonderful agent. What we decided to do was blend the AK flying novel and the AK flying memoir (calling it still "The Map of My Dead Pilots"). This has created a blend of history, fiction and memoir. It is about the original bush pilots, the crew who worked at the Company with me in the mid 90s, the guys we knew, and also me and my father. It was not so crazy to blend as the characters/setting were all the same but I jettisoned some clunky memoirish stuff and fine tuned some history and, I don't know, made it work. It has the best opening chapter I ever wrote so that is something exciting. The concern has always been that the fact that it is partly fiction (the conversations mostly) that it won't sell to a pub. But I can't call it all nonfiction and the conversations really do help make it real. They are how we would have talked...but how could I say stuff from 15 years ago is true? Who remembers who said what? So fiction, but true fiction, if that makes sense.

Actually, any flying story is true fiction anyway so it all makes perfect sense.

Also finished my next column for Bookslut which is coming-of-age stories, several that folks have not heard of or at least mentioned much. One surprise was Tales of the Madman Underground which got a Printz honor and I LOVED. Great book for teens and must read for all YA fans. Can't talk that one up enough. John Green with some extra grit - more realistic but still idealistic. And has a great ending.

And I sent off a feature on diversity in MG and YA fiction to Bookslut that includes some cover discussion (of course) but not much. What it really has is a lot of quotes from a lot of folks. Kekla, Tanita, Neesha and Zetta all weighed in. Plus Susan at Color Online and Tim Traviglini at Putnam (editor for Flygirl) and Lee Wind and Bennett Madison and Steve Berman and Sara Ryan and Mayra Lazara Dole. And about a half dozen other authors who I quote with promises of anonymity who talked about publishing as POC and changing covers - some did, some didn't. What did I take away from all this? First, that some authors have changed covers with ease so it is a misnomer to say it can never happen. And these folks were not big name authors - so covers seems to be a case by case basis to me and I think it never hurts to at least ask. (I really think if you are afraid to even ask you editor about a cover then it is just sad. Just asking shouldn't be grounds for losing your contract.) Second, covers are a visual, yet smallish, part of the diversity problem in MG and YA publishing. I felt really bad for some authors - especially when you consider what some librarians and booksellers have said to them about books with brown skinned protagonists. It's horrible and it needs to change.

It's easy to blame publishers for lack of diversity but it is just as much about librarians and booksellers I think. (Gatekeepers all to one degree or another.) (And this discovery really surprised and depressed me.)

And I submitted a necessary review to Booklist on a book about feminism in the Middle East. Next up is a book on the politics of food and another on love in Burma. My editor continues to send me books that enlighten while completely freaking me out. At some point I'm going to get a cute and fuzzy bunny book, I just know it.

Also I received 18 books today - four of them were requested. If you're wondering where pubs waste money, well this kind of thing would be a good place to start. (All extras will be donated to Children's.)