4. Kingston WritersFest. This was my first festival as an author, rather than as reader and fan, and it’s hard to imagine a better experience. It was so well organized (I had a handler! She had extra pens slung on her hip!) and attended (great questions from younger readers) that I will be spoiled forevermore.

3. The award. The Canadian Children’s Book Centre’s inaugural John Spray Mystery Award, of course, which I accepted at a swanky Toronto gala in October, with a baby in the crook of my arm. Goodness. The whole thing’s a bit like an opium dream, now.

2. Reading, reading, reading. I just don’t feel like me if I’m not reading. (That’s why I left academia: it sapped my desire to read for pleasure, and that made me intensely suspicious of myself.) Of course, I have reading slumps, and false starts, and phases when the longest thing I want to read is a New Yorker article. But I also have glorious sprints (and marathons) when I’m utterly consumed by a book, torn between the greed of reading it and the impulse to ration it out, so it lasts longer. I had so many of those amazing episodes this year, which is especially miraculous in a year I didn’t expect to read much (see item below). You can also click here for some bookish highlights from the blog.

1. Our daughter (of course). My entire year was built around her: expecting, planning, hoping, dreaming, followed by the bliss, exhaustion, jubilation, anxiety, and all-transforming magic that she brought. She also gave me a gift: a break from writing that, while wonderfully enjoyable in its own lazy way, only sharpened my desire to get back to it.

What were your favourite experiences or things of 2011? What are you looking forward to in 2012?

Elsewhere on the internet, I was on Salon last week, talking about YA book-to-film adaptations: the worst ever, in my opinion, plus one I’d love to see (hi, Erin!).

And my dizzyingly accomplished friend, Jill Murphy, has been ruminating on Rumination, recently (say that 10 times fast). I gave her my $.02, but you should read Jill’s blog for all the other insight and wit you’ll find there.

During my PhD program, I had to write two comprehensive exams, aka comps: they were supposed to make me a specialist in English literature in general, and Victorian literature in particular. Think they can’t test you on all of English literature? You’re right. But they can try, and that’s even more frightening.

The process began in May, when my fellow candidates (hello, Katharine and Tanya and Sean!) and I received suggested reading lists from our professors. We read hundreds of books – fiction, non-fiction, poetry, lit crit, history. We researched ideas and movements and philosophies and clubs and quotations and obscure sidekicks and and and and… you get the picture. This would all culminate in two 4-hour exams in December.

It’s fair to say that we all went a little crazy, that summer and fall. I developed a thing about colour-coded index cards. I tested pens for nib size and ink flow, and practiced handwriting as much as possible so I could write for 4 hours straight without cramping up. I made a nightmare of a timeline (17 pages!) to represent the history of English literature and refused to take it down, even though it freaked out my officemate (sorry, Katharine). I calculated how much time I should spend on each subsection of the exam. I wrote practice exams. And I read. I read like I’d never read before, and never will again: with anxiety digging its nails into my shoulders.

The first exam – the General – went smoothly. I even thought I’d passed, though actual results would take a couple of weeks. The next day, we sat down for our Specialist exams. I opened the sealed envelope and took out 3 blank booklets, for writing my answers. And… nothing. No questions.

I looked inside the envelope: still nothing.

I looked around the exam room: the other 3 had different exams and were all busily reading through their questions.

My first thought was, “They’re messing with me.” My second was, “This is an elaborate game. They want me to create my own questions, as well.” My third, “I’m doomed.”

It took me a long time to persuade the invigilator that I had thoroughly checked my envelope and that yes, I was very, very, very sure that I didn’t have any questions. She then left the room for what felt like 3 days, in search of the missing questions.

I was in a blind panic. The only thing I could do (apart from weep) was to write a list of every Victorian novel I’d read in preparation for this exam. I was on page 2 when the invigilator came back with the missing exam.

It’s a happy story in the end, friends. I wrote. I passed. (With distinction, even.) And I haven’t written an exam since. But every December, I think about that exam, and about exam-takers everywhere. If you’re in the midst of finals right now (or will be soon, in January), I’m thinking of you, too. Best of luck!

We were in Toronto for the Canadian Children’s Book Centre’s annual awards gala, and I came away with the best news possible: A Spy in the House won the inaugural John Spray Mystery Award! Here’s what the judges had to say: ““In A Spy in the House Lee has got Victorian London right; this is what Dickens’ world really smelled like, literally and morally… Interesting and unique, Mary Quinn is a strong character who can think on her feet… I loved this book from the first line to the very last… A great read for a young adult of any age…”

I’m astounded, and thrilled, and humbled, and so grateful to a long list of people:

- John Spray of the Mantis Investigation Agency, who created and funds the award;

- My husband, Nicholas Woolley, who is my first and best and most ruthless reader;

- My agent, Rowan Lawton of PFD, who first envisioned the book as a YA novel;

- My editors, Mara Bergman of Walker Books UK and Deborah Noyes Wayshak of Candlewick Press, for honing my manuscript to its present form;

- All the booksellers, librarians, and teachers who are its passionate advocates;

- And finally, I am so very grateful to you, my readers, who are fervent about Mary Quinn and her circle. It’s a joy and a privilege to write these books. Thank you for your support.

Warmest congratulations to my fellow finalists Jan Markley, Allan Stratton, Marty Chan, and Norah McClintock. Long may mystery novels for young people continue to flourish!

Our daughter is finally here. She is, possibly, the loveliest baby in the history of babies. (No, I’m not biased. Why do you ask?) And there are so many things I’d forgotten about newborns! Among them:

1. Their breath smells magic. You want to inhale when they exhale (the opposite of what you do with adults).

2. The Poo Cannon. Their timing is impeccable. Enough said.

3. Finally, if you spend your days and nights nursing, changing diapers, helping them sleep, and maybe returning some phone calls or going to the doctor (one or the other; not both), that’s a full and exhausting life, my friends. I have the involuntary twitch under my left eye to prove it – just like Harkness.

So while we’re all well, and utterly in love with our new girl, and marvelling at the miracle of her existence (we made a person!), my blogging will be sporadic over the next few weeks. Thank you for understanding, and I hope you’re all having a splendid June. We certainly are.

It doesn’t sound ominous, and yet it’s making me a bit crazy.

And then Google found a fan-made book trailer for the Agency – the first that I know of!

Who is this person? Where did she or he find all that great B&W footage? Mysterious maker of book trailers, thank you for doing such gorgeous work on this one! If you’re reading this blog post, do leave a comment!

But sometimes, it’s good to meet fellow writers in real life. The whole tenor and pace of conversation is different, face to face. When you share a physical community, you have more things in common. And it’s pleasant, when writing alone, to know that someone a few blocks away is doing much the same thing. That’s why I’m so pleased to announce the creation of Young Kingston, an online and real-life community for children’s and YA writers in southeastern Ontario. (If you follow me on Twitter, this is the mysterious, bookish-but-non-book project I talked about a while ago.)

Check us out! Say hello! If you’re a teacher or librarian, you can apply for grants to subsidize the cost of school visits from one of us. And if you’re a traditionally published writer of kidlit in and around Kingston, Ontario, drop us a line. We’d love to meet you.

It’s true that Spy was first published in 2009 in the UK. But it was such a theoretical debut. I never saw it in the shops. I didn’t do any events because I was, well, here. So this is the year that things became real. The year I became, officially, a novelist. And oh, I’m sorry to see it go.

This is the year I met so many passionate readers and writers of YA fiction. The year I found an online community of bookish souls. The year I made friends with other working writers. The year I first read aloud my own prose to a crowd of people (then joked about it to the same crowd, just for fun). The year I received fan mail. The year someone looked at me in a store and asked, “Are you Y S Lee?” (True! It happened just this week.) The year I felt confident answering the “What do you do?” question with, “I write books.”

It’s been a rich, hectic, tumultuous, joyful year in so many other ways. I have tons to celebrate and even more to look forward to. But I’ll never have another year quite like this one. And right now, that feels bittersweet.

What did this year mean for you? And what are you looking forward to in 2011?

P.S. My last blog post of the year will be next week at the Book Smugglers and I’ll be running a little contest to celebrate. Join me then!

Los Crimenes del Big Ben

To me, it looks like a film poster but apart from the title font, I can’t quite explain why. And the title, translated, is The Big Ben Crimes – Another Mystery for Detective Mary Quinn. What do you think?

Queen Victoria has a little problem: there’s a petty thief at work in Buckingham Palace. Mary Quinn takes the simple case, going undercover as a domestic servant. But before long, a scandal threatens to tear apart the Royal Family.

One of the Prince of Wales’s irresponsible young friends is killed in disgraceful circumstances. Should the Queen hush things up or allow justice to take its course? Mary’s interest in this private matter soon becomes deeply personal: the killer, a drug-addicted Chinese sailor, shares a name with her long-lost father.

Meanwhile, James Easton’s engineering firm is repairing the sewers beneath Buckingham Palace. Trouble is, there’s a tunnel that’s not on the plans. Its purpose is unclear. But it seems to be very much in use.

These overlapping puzzles offer a perfect opportunity for Mary and James to work together again… if they can still trust one another. This is Mary’s most personal case yet and she has everything to lose.

And that’s The Traitor and The Tunnel, coming in spring 2011 from Walker Books UK and spring 2012 from Candlewick Press. [Edited to add: just had word from Walker that the UK pub date is now August 2011. I apologize for the misinformation!]