Him: (older, 60 maybe, dressed in very nice, very European-looking attire, carrying briefcase) (noting my Obama bumper sticker) How’s that hope and change working out for ya?

Me: (smiling) What?

Him: I said how’s that hope and change working out for you.

Me: (laughing) Are you really asking, or just trying to pick a…conversation?

Him: No, I’m really asking. How’s everything? How’s business?

Me: Business is good. I’m self employed, so…

Him: So am I.

Me: (laughing) Hey, what was the alternative? Sarah Palin?

Him: (laughing) She wasn’t even running for president.

Me: (laughing) But John McCain, you know, not in the best of health…

Him: (no longer laughing) I’d rather have a dead president than the one we have now.

Me: (smiling)(thinking: oh no)(starting to walk away)

Him: He’s just not the leader he was cracked up to be.

Me: (turning) Yeah, there have been disappointments. But there have been disappointments with every president.

Him: He’s bankrupting the country.

Me: (smiling) (thinking: up to you to finish this conversation, dude)

Him: (turning to his car) Well, it’ll all work out.

Me: (ten minutes later, thinking….) Yes, it will. It always does. One way or another. And I don’t put my faith in the government, so nothing is really a surprise or a letdown. He works in my building; I should have asked him his name, told him mine. Made a connection with someone who seemed to be trying to antagonize me. That’s what hope and change would have looked like.

I’ll be on blog break until nearly September, I think.

I’ll be around some—checking my email when I can, on Twitter now and then, and over at the Teen Fiction Cafe periodically. I will use this space if I have any exciting news or important info. But mostly I’ll be away.

In case you missed the news earlier, I deleted my Facebook account back in April, so don’t look for me there. I’m not available for appearances (including Skype visits) until mid-August.

If you miss your weekly dose of Zarr, there are always my books! If you haven’t yet read Once Was Lost, summer is a good time to take care of that. Okay, so it’s not exactly a beach read, but it is a summer story. The paperback will be out in January, but then it will be cold and you’ll have lots of homework. Brrr. Also, Geektastic is now in paperback.

Have a wonderful summer and I’ll see you back here before you know it!

What could be more satisfying than ordering a whole bunch of books for school libraries that really need them? Not much. Check it out, give if you can, and spread the word.

Meanwhile…

- The Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Writing is on at Hunger Mountain:

Bestselling author Holly Black will be the 2010 judge of the Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Writing at Hunger Mountain: the VCFA Journal of the Arts.

The Katherine Paterson prize was launched last year to honor writers of young adult and children’s literature. Writers may enter young adult and middle grade writing and writing for young children. Entries may be short stories or novel excerpts.

There is a $20 entry fee, and the postmark deadline is June 30, 2010. There is a $1000 prize for the winning entry, and three runners-up receive $100. The winner and the runners-up are all published on Hunger Mountain online.

Complete guidelines may be found here.

- The Morning News Tournament of Books has some fun with Nicholas Sparks. (There is also some good stuff about commercial vs. noncommercial fiction.)

- You know how I had that Facebook meltdown back during Advent? And you talked me into keeping my account? I did. But yesterday I finally got around to using lists to set it so that it’s basically only family that can interact with me there. I disabled my wall and most commenting, though everyone should still be able to see my posts. If you suddenly can’t interact with me there the way you used to, don’t feel bad. It’s not you, it’s me.

- I’ve had my MacBook a little over a year. It seems like I’m only getting about 2.5 hours out of my fully-charged battery these days. Or less. If you have a MacBook, please report on your battery life. Mine is the aluminum unibody, now sold as the 13″ MacBook Pro. Tell me what to do.

*I have none of these on hand, but My Three Sons seems to be doing the trick…

- How to let your agent earn his or her money. I already knew this. I’ve found that taking every single career question or publishing issue to my agent, first, has not failed me.

- It’s not only YA writers who are addicted to the Twitter. Some stuff other author tweeters are up to: Susan Orlean is tired of her Sirius station, Tayari Jones lost a pair of shoes in her apartment, and Colson Whitehead is busy revising but not so busy that he can’t find time to tweet about Lost. That gives me a strange sense of hope concerning my revision and America’s Next Top Model.

- Considering our reputation as a pasty people who spend every moment with our noses in books, a looootttt of writers are really into college basketball.

- Blogging is not, as I wondered, dead. It’s just different, and based on the number of responses and RTs on Twitter, I wasn’t the only one wondering. Thanks for all your comments here, there, everywhere. I’m glad I mentioned it, because now I don’t feel quite so Major Tom-y about it…floating in a most peculiar way, with my protein pills and helmet, etc.

Twitter is Educational.

Be fruitful and multiply. See you back here next week.

Some road songs (hi Justin!):

Car Wheels on a Gravel Road – Lucinda Williams

The Road’s My Middle Name – Bonnie Raitt

Guitar Town – Steve Earle

Ventura Highway – America

Interstate Love Song – Stone Temple Pilots

Next Best Western – Richard Shindell

And here’s one I bet you don’t know – The Girl Who Never Saw a Mountain by Vince Bell, from his masterpiece, Phoenix:

‘Cross the plains
like a rangefire,
lakes like inland seas.
Freezing fields of powder
full moon flying through the trees.

Got to get that one onto iPod before I leave. (What, you think that hobo doesn’t have an iPod wrapped up in his bundle?)

The longer I am a published author—and the more I am aware that’s not very long at all, really, and that I’m just starting out—the more I am interested in people who have had careers in any creative profession for 10, 20, 30, 40 years. I especially like listening to those who have made comebacks, or who take their careers in directions that critics or fans don’t understand or appreciate. Because, you can grapple with all kinds of anxiety about making people happy with your work, or not rocking the boat, but if you don’t figure out how to let that go you will be pretty miserable, I think.

I love this Fresh Air interview with Rosanne Cash. When I first heard this, I thought…damn, I want to be friends with her. Wisdom, humor, humility. (You’ve got to listen to the whole thing, not just read the transcript excerpt.) Rosanne Cash’s’ web site. (I’ve been thinking a lot lately about her song “This World” from the Interiors album.)

Steve Earle is another person I admire, and whose work I’m a fan of. He made this big country-rock-rockabilly splash in the eighties and early nineties, nearly destroyed himself with drugs, wound up in jail, then went on to make all these great bluegrass, roots rock, alt-country, and political albums. Here he is singing “Close Your Eyes,” which on my emotional playlist for Sweethearts is Cameron’s song to Jenna. Lyrics. (As a reminder: if you pause the video and let it buffer up for a few minutes, you shouldn’t get stops and starts, though YouTube has been a little difficult today.)

This song is from The Hard Way album, which I own. You can, too. (Is there an IndieBound equivalent for record stores? I don’t know the PC place to link…I guess the main thing is to buy it new, not used, so artist gets royalties.)

Finally, here are Cash and Earle (older, balder, hey, time gets us all and at least he’s sober and still a gorgeous man in my book) reflecting on some stuff then doing a rendition of “Guitar Town” together. You have to watch American cheese propaganda first…

Your account has been deactivated from the site and will be permanently deleted within 14 days. If you log into your account within the next 14 days, your account will be reactivated and you will have the option to cancel your request.

What is this, the Hotel California? In the age of caller ID, data recovery, aggregation, the archived cloud…it’s awfully difficult to do anything rash. Or, I should say, too easy and too consequential, and at the same time too difficult to do something rash and get away with it, like delete your entire inbox, disappear your Facebook account without leaving a trace, dial the number of someone you shouldn’t call, come to your senses, then hang up… I pity children today who don’t know the thrill of making a good crank call.

Anyway, you know what the Facebook thing reminds me of? Back in my online poker-playing days I learned that if in a moment of clear-eyed determination you wanted to cash out your account while you were ahead, the automated cashier would tell you yes, you can cash out, but the transaction takes 7 days so if you want to come back during that time and gamble your money away it will be right here waiting for you.

After a phone conference with the fabulous yet sensible Coe Booth, I was convinced to let my Facebook account live. But, I am cashing out, at least on particular ways of using the Internet: As a platform for being right or proving other people wrong, as something to which I feel daily obligated, for having conversations that are best had over lunch, coffee, or an adult beverage. Reacting out of context. Saying anything that can too easily be misread. (This past week I discovered you really shouldn’t try to debate all of the implications of the Haiti disaster or why Rush Limbaugh is wrong about everything in 140-character bursts.) Cashing out on listening to the little voice inside me that asks, “If I’m not being right, demonstrably smart, witty, savvy, and getting good reviews as a person, writer, blogger, social networker…do I matter?” I was talking to one friend about this and she brought up the idea of the performative self, which led me to ask, “You mean there’s a NONperformative self?” Huh. Who knew.

Oh, so you’ve heard me talk this talk before? I waffle, I know. Of Web 2.0 sometimes I think, “MY GOD IT’S BRINGING ABOUT THE APOCALYPSE!” Other times I see it’s pretty useful, and brings about some good things. But, generally I’m feeling more urgent about this as an issue for society and humanity and our ability to listen, think critically, love, create, and live lives in which “interaction” does not always mean with a screen. How to balance that with a career that benefits from connectivity during the long stretches of time between books, in an industry that has many interesting and important ongoing conversations facilitated by aforementioned apocalyptic technology—that’s the question, that’s the figuring out that needs to be done. I’ll tell you, it’s temping to go off the grid completely. In the last year I have come so close to pulling the plug on everything but the house phone. That’s a reaction, of course. I’ve been thinking through what I’m reacting against and trying to problem solve instead of running away.

The big old experiment in the laboratory of my brain continues.

In other news, I am so thrilled that Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me won the Newbery Medal. I loved that book. Though it’s brand new, it somehow managed to feel like a piece of my childhood, and I can’t think of any other book not actually from my childhood that has done that. Congratulations, Rebecca! And congrats to all of the ALA winners and honor books. The only other books I’ve read that won something are Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco Stork and Flash Burnout by LK Madigan. Loved and blurbed ‘em both.

Now, where were we? Oh yeah, in 2009! So long, sucka.

Before I forget, I added some items to my calendar while I was away, such as the Montgomery County Teen Book Festival (TX) this month, Much Ado about Books Festival in Jacksonville, FL next month, a local library appearance, and the Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing coming in April. The details, insofar as I know them, are here. More exciting stuff to come, too.

What else did I do while I was gone? I deleted my Goodreads account. I de-pimped my Facebook page. (Actually, my finger hovered awfully close to total deletion of Facebook, but I restrained myself. For now). I culled my Google Reader feeds by about 50%. And, of course, I worked. I worked and worked! Yet there is more, ever more, to do.

My major goal in 2010? Accept my limitations. I truly and sincerely want to do IT ALL. My annual to-do list more or less boils down to “Be Perfect and Prolific and Unimpeachable in 62 Areas of Skill, Interest, and Human Relations.” Not going to happen. It’s just not! So, letting go.

It’s good to be back. I hope you all are off to a roaring (but peaceful) start.