As the wishlists completely and utterly dominated my life for the last couple of weeks (you have no idea), I've missed a few other notes and updates. Here's a rundown of what I should have mentioned and a bit more::

1. The new issue of Eclectica Magazine is up with the wonderful news that our editor Tom Dooley & his wife Julie have both their lovely children now out of Haiti and living with them. Huzzah! I had three round-up reviews this time: one on three baseball picture books (Clemente, Aaron & Robinson), one on MGish Civil War books (homeschoolers take note) and one on books for all sorts of ages on famous historical events (including two great books on WWI).

2. What a Girl Wants took a break this month but the questions are out for May and June and we will be back with the usual suspects plus hopefully a guest appearance or two. Expect some reminiscing of both the fictional and nonfictional kind. (And that's the only hint I'm going to give you....)

3. The Summer Blog Blast Tour is scheduled for the week of May 17th and we are looking at about two dozen interviews with authors and illustrators of all kinds of books from the very young to the completely grown up. As usual I expect it to be amazing and surprising and extremely entertaining. The Master Schedule will, as always, run here.

4. I have been thinking a lot about the success of the wishlists and how much of it was driven through personal connections I have made with so many people via this blog, Guys Lit Wire and Twitter. I see so many tweets on #kidlitchat & #YAChat from writers asking how they should blog, if they need to have a blog and how agents want them to blog but all of them have questions about content and audience and subject matter and on and on. Although I am by no means a rock star, I do subscribe to the "Virtual Crowd Surfing" idea that Amanda Palmer has blogged about. The last two weeks I have completely been crowd surfing through the internet, and people have been greeting me with orders from the lists and/or passing me along to other folks they know so I could spread the message there. It is another example of why I am such a believer in this medium, especially as a creative person who relies heavily upon the feedback of others to generate interest and support for my endeavors. I have said this many times before but it merits repeating - connections made online got me an agent, got me reviewing for Booklist, and most recently have gotten me a paid writing gig with an Alaska newspaper (I'll link to it when it goes up). I value my creative writing time on one level and my blogging & tweeting on another but I value them all. And so far, in my experience, the time I have put into my online projects has paid off in more ways than you can imagine.

5. Finally, if you have a minute go weigh in on Jules' post about best & worst celebrity books - she's looking for input for purely academic purposes, promise!

[Post pic of Amanda Palmer crowd surfing.]