Pre-orders and Kiwi Cravings

Thanks to Kiersten White, a fellow HarperTeen author who as a debut novelist is understandably keeping close track of these things, I discovered that the fall 2010 list has finally made it to pre-order status at Amazon. Kiersten’s book, Paranormalcy, is out September 21, a week before Ascendant. (September 28). I have to say it’s always fun to see the listings go up. It’s usually the first time I see things like proposed page count, suggested retail price, and ISBN. Yes, authors sometimes find these things out from Amazon, too. I have a friend who first saw her cover when it went up on Amazon.

In case you were curious, the ISBN numbers of Ascendant are:

• ISBN-10: 006-14-90024
• ISBN-13: 978-006-14-90026

Those numbers will really come in handy if you wish to order Ascendant from book retailers other than Amazon.

Speaking of covers, I saw an early version of Ascendant‘s recently. V. exciting stuff. One thing I really like about the cover concepts behind this series is how hard Harper works to nail down Astrid’s emotional state in the pictures they choose of her. I know from talking to my editor that they look a lot before they get the right picture that portrays what she’s going through in each novel. As those who have read Rampant know, Astrid’s duty rest very uneasily on her shoulders, for more reasons than one, and it’s this conflict that forms the core of Ascendant. This is the book where environmentalism comes to the fore, folks.

Also, zombies.

(Speaking of the confluence of zombies and unicorns, did you all see this ridiculous pack of lies Sarah Cross posted on Justine’s blog the other day? My hair is NOT that long.)

In other news — and perhaps it’s the knowledge that my antipodean friends are enjoying their summer right now while I’m snowbound in DC — I’m finding that I’ve had the most insane cravings for New Zealand food recently. I’ve been drooling over photos of pavlova, which I could make here, you know, if I knew anything about whipping egg whites. I’ve been making a ton of lamb dishes. And I’ve been craving two things that I can’t actually get here, and those two things are:

• glucose energy candy
• hokey pokey ice cream

I know, I hear you now. “Glucose energy? I’ve got news for you, Diana, all candy has glucose energy.” Yes, but only in New Zealand do they actually have a candy that CALLS itself that, that advertises its benefits as glucose energy, that features commercials in which a harried kindergarten teacher doles out little dollops of glucose energy to her oddly lethargic charges so they can go out and act like madmen on the swingsets again.

So here’s a story. I was hiking the Tongariro Track, which is a three-day hike on the North Island through a (mostly) volcanic wasteland that is famous primarily for being the Mordor set in Lord of the Rings. (It’s actually gorgeous and often sunny in real life). And I was tired, because, not being a New Zealander (like, you know, Edmund Hillary), I don’t think of anything less than a ten day trek into the wilderness as (and I’m quoting here) “a bit of a wander.” So I was sitting, trying to catch my breath, and a very nice Kiwi woman dropped by and, concerned for my lack of stamina, offered me a few pieces of her glucose energy candies. (They are fruit-flavored hard candies.) Sailor Boy and I made much merriment out of the way she called it glucose energy, and chocked it up to the whole “separated by a common language” thing, like how they also sell “Sultana Bran” cereal and put “capsicums” on their pizzas. But, it turned out that glucose energy is a real brand, and they have TV commercials which are so incredibly awesome I remember them six years later.

And the other thing I remember and long for and will probably be the very first thing I buy if I ever return to Aotearoa, is hokey pokey ice cream. Hokey pokey ice cream is the best ice cream flavor in the entire world, and, in New Zealand, it’s also the second most popular flavor. Like if you walk into a gas station and they’ve got three bins of ice cream it’s probably going to be vanilla, chocolate, and hokey pokey.

See this girl? Want to know why she’s so happy? Because she just bought two liters of hokey pokey ice cream for like $3 NZ and it’s got 15% more hokey pokey pieces in it. Tip Top is not expensive and yet, it’s still really, really good. Ice cream in New Zealand (actually, all dairy in New Zealand) is delicious.

NO ONE IN THE US MAKES HOKEY POKEY ICE CREAM! This is a travesty. Hokey pokey — they say it’s like toffee, but it’s not, really. It’s like… butter pecan ice cream without the pecan, and little pieces of semi-hard caramel studded all throughout. Someone please import this stuff.

Oh, and meat pies.