Authors Scott Westerfeld and Justine Larbalestier

We read Peeps by Scott Westerfeld a while back. I've pulled a few exerpts from an article about him and his wife. Follow the link for the rest.

Meet the East Village "It" Couple of Young-Adult Lit

Teen-fiction authors Scott Westerfeld and Justine Larbalestier are living the dream. Major industry talents from Holly Black (author of Valiant) to David Levithan (Boy Meets Boy) routinely drink and schmooze in their spacious East Village digs. They cultivate fans and colleagues on their heavily trafficked blogs, enjoy upscale working vacations in Mexico, and migrate yearly between New York and Sydney. They rack up frequent-flier miles visiting libraries and book conventions to promote their latest literary efforts. And, most importantly, they finance this haute-bohemian lifestyle by writing speculative and fantastic adventures for smart adolescents. . . .

Justine's Magic or Madness trilogy (which ended this year with Magic's Child, Razorbill/Penguin) blends Australian Aboriginal folklore (and personal wish fulfillment) with the theoretical physics of a dimensional doorway leading from Australia to the mean streets of lower Manhattan. The reality of magic in this series simply gives its 15-year-old heroine a more cerebral perspective on the difficult choices she's forced to make. . . .

Between his dark-fantasy Midnighters trilogy, his teen-vampire books, and his speculative Uglies quartet, Scott has close to 2 million books in print. Besides his official website (scottwesterfeld.com), there are also growing numbers of user-generated message boards and fan sites where fans flock to discuss his characters and plots. "Teenage fans feel a lot of ownership over the books they love," says Scott. "They take me to task over decisions they don't like, they demand sequels, they dress up as characters. A lot of them already comment on my blog, so part of touring is meeting a community in live space that I already knew online. . . . "