From now until late December/early Janaury I'll be keeping a low profile on the Internet while I concentrate on the Yesterday sequel and other projects. That means minimal Facebook, Twitter and blogging time, but I'll still be checking email. You can also find me guest blogging at Adventures in YA & Childrens Publishing on December 5th. There'll be a Yesterday/My Beating Teenage Heart giveaway there too so don't forget to toss your name in the hat if you're curious about the books!

As for the Yesterday sequel, I don't want to give too much away but I can say it's called Tomorrow and is from Garren's point of view. The future's reach is long and Freya and Garren are not safe in the Vancouver of 1986. No one is.

Speaking of not being safe, I watched Flight earlier today and it had one of the best airplane crash scenes I've ever witnessed in a movie (right up there alongside United 93 and The Grey). If you're thinking about watching Flight, definitely go...unless maybe you're intending to fly anytime soon.

Fairly early on in the movie there's a scene in a hospital stairwell that let me know Flight was going to offer more a whole lot more than I expected in terms of character development. As persuasive as the trailer is, the film itself is much more compelling. Denzel Washington could, of course, convince a person of anything and between his brilliant performance and a script that never overplays emotions this is one of the strongest dramas I've seen this year.

I also watched Skyfall recently (I was never a huge Connery fan and was entirely won over by Daniel Craig back during Casino Royale so it's no surprise that I enjoyed this latest Bond offering too) and have been tensely following Olivia , Peter and Walter's ongoing battle in 2036 in Fringe. Peter Bishop, damnit, what have you done? In case I haven't mentioned it before, in my opinion Fringe is the best thing on TV right now and I'm simultaneously savouring every minute of its fifth and final season and mourning its imminent end. If you haven't checked out the show yet but like your sci-fi offbeat, super smart and with strong, likeable characters, I highly recommend starting at the very beginning. Fringe isn't the kind of thing you can just dip into and hope to understand but damn it's worth the time you'll dedicate to it.

My mom's moving house shortly and my brother was home from L.A. for a couple of days to help her pack things up. I spent a good chunk of Friday and Saturday pitching in with the effort so now have two sets of clothes covered in a fine layer of dust. But what a trip down memory lane!

While I'd either gotten rid of or taken most of my things in previous years, some stuff I didn't expect was still lying around, including notes I'd taken about my first trip to London, England —a vacation my best friend and I paid for with our summer jobs when we were seventeen, a letter one of my cousins had written me when I was thirteen informing me he'd beaten my Pac-Man score (must have been a lie!), and a letter from my aunt which included the comment that I was developing a very impressive super ball collection. Yes, I actually had a super ball collection when I was a kid! See the below photo.

As well as the things you can see in the picture, I rescued a copy of The Detroit Free Press from February 9, 1986 and issue of Time Magazine dated December 23, 1985 that I'd boxed eons ago. Actually, I'd kept a good few newspapers from that period but I just didn't have room to take all of them home with me so tossed most of them in recycle yesterday. It was interesting that I'd saved so many in the first place—I guess I thought someday I'd need a time capsule to consult (perhaps sensing that in the future I'd write a book set in the 80s??). Seeing as I'm about to resume work on the Yesterday sequel I'm extremely eager to have a read of that old copy of Time and the Detroit newspaper.

And can I just say, my old View-Master is every bit as cool as I remembered! I can't imagine what younger generations would make of the thing but I absolutely adored my View-Master and looking through the slide reels of Star Trek (both animated and from the original TV show), Charlotte's Web, Charlie Browns, Land of the Lost, Scooby Doo and Planet of the Apes (the TV show) brought my enthusiasm back in waves.

You'll also notice my extensive Smurf collection from when I was eleven and twelve. Considering how many decades they've been packed away, the Smurfs remain in admirable condition. I was gleeful to discover some of the Babar books from my earlier years too. I am no less fond of Babar now than I was then and my heart leapt to see them. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to dust myself off and go play with my stuff!