Next to hit your bookstores and hopefully your bookshelves is the children’s book that’s been ten years in the making.  I’m not exaggerating. I’m not using my Russian hyperbole to make a point. I mean, these one hundred and fifty words you will read about a mommy and her baby have taken over ten years to reach you. I wrote them when my fourth baby was 18 months old.  She recently celebrated her twelfth birthday. In the intervening decade, I have written nearly a million and a half adult words. So now we know.Children’s books are much harder to write! The book is called I Love My Baby Because. I hope all the mommies out there love it, and their babies too. You can preorder it here and here for the US and UK, and it is out on July 31st, 2014.

I wanted to tell you all about the next novel I’m writing, a book I’m very excited about, called Lone Star. When I was a young girl growing up in Russia, I saw a movie called “Ballad of a Soldier.” I remember very little about it, except there was a girl, and a boy who was going to the front. They were on a train together. Then he hopped off.  He sang for her and played his guitar. She loved him. Lone Star is the Paullina version of that general theme, except in book form and with all the things I love in it, and I fervently hope the things many of you will love in it. Hint hint, wink wink.  I say no more.  I’ve said too much.

My friends and readers, My head peeks out briefly out of the water of my writing life. I take this welcome respite to tell you about a few things. I can’t wait for you to read Bellagrand. It is a heartbreaker, at the very least, the breaker of this writer’s heart. I love my heroine Gina, a passionate, strong, good woman, who wants nothing more than to love and to be loved.The book is about all the things that stand in her way. In this story, you will also meet Alexander, and you will witness the love that had made him and in the end that saved him, the love that offered him, years hence, the possibility of a new life. It was all borne out of Bellagrand, out of the lifelong love affair between Gina and Harry, Alexander’s mother and father. Bellagrand will be published in print in Australia and New Zealand in early December, just in time for Christmas—and in e-book. The print edition for the United States and Britain will hit the stores in February/March. I’m not going to Australia and New Zealand on tour this year—surely, you’ve seen enough of me?––but perhaps I can come back next fall.It’s the highlight of my year, talking to you great people face to face. As far as Six Days In Leningrad, thank you all, who have bought and read the e-book edition. We are working to publish the print edition for Father’s Day 2014, and it will come complete with many photographs of my life-changing trip to Leningrad in 1998.Until next time, keep reading, keep writing, keep coming back.

Hello readers, The second part of Children of Liberty is coming out on December 5th.  Gina and Harry have a lot ahead of them, and I hope you’ll feel for their joys and griefs as much as I did while writing about them. Here’s the cover — isn’t it lovely? Here’s a link to it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Hello readers, I know you have all been asking me for updates on any news with the film. I have a little I can tell you about the screenplay.  Over the summer I did what I thought was an impossible task: I cut a 220 page script to 150 pages, to make our Bronze Horseman movie 2.5 hours long. I managed to do this while leaving most of the things I love about the story in it. And then the best thing happened after the producer and director read the new version. They both said, that was good, but you’ve cut too much.  Have any words been sweeter to a writer? We now need you to put stuff back, they said, and to write a new scene here and a new scene there, and reinsert this joke and this line and this character. Well, if you insist, I said. So that’s what I’m doing now.  Once I’m done, the plan is to go into pre-pre-production in December and into pre-production in March.

Hi everyone, In honor of Valentine’s Day yesterday,  I am having another little giveaway of five signed books, this time for Children of Liberty. Here’s what you do to enter: Just complete the sentence “[Blank] makes me happy” and tell me why. It could be a person, a place, or, for you readers out there,  a book! Send your entries to the email address paullinasimonscontest@gmail.com. The contest starts today, and closes next Friday. We will announce the winners picked at random the following Monday, February 25th. And for those of you who don’t end up winning, Children of Liberty goes on-sale in the US on February 26th! Good luck, and as always,

My devoted readers and friends, I’m thrilled to tell you that our mutual dream of seeing The Bronze Horseman on the big screen is one step closer to reality.  ITA Productions, a British company, has optioned the rights to my book. The producer, Martyn Hall, and the director, Sash Andranikian, love Tatiana and Alexander, and want nothing more than to make it into an emotional visual spectacle of a film. Sash, from a long line of animators and movie-makers, is Russian-American like me. He has read all three TBH books, and tells me that he loves them all.  Martyn says The Bronze Horseman is the only book that has made him cry. They are looking to go into pre-production by the end of 2013, and to begin shooting early in 2014. So perhaps by the end of 2014, with a healthy dose of luck, we might have our movie. We are going to be working from a script I wrote, which is fantastic, though it does mean that I have to rewrite it, which inevitably means I have to cut it. As you all know from my books, brevity is hardly my strong suit. My editing process always results in my books becoming twenty percent longer, not thirty percent shorter, which is what Martyn would like. The good news is, the producers are promising that I will be on set to revise and add scenes as needed during filming, so at least we are going to have participation and some small measure of control in the creation of this magical thing called The Bronze Horseman, a movie. I welcome your comments, questions, concerns, and of course, casting suggestions. No, the film will not be in Russian.