Writing Angels

Happy Birthday Hallowed

2012-01-17T23:03:00.000-08:00

It's been a long but happy day. Hallowed is on the shelves! You'd think I'd get used to the idea, after all this time, but this year I was yet again struck dumb at the bookstore in sheer amazement that it was my. book. on. the. shelves!!!!! Wow. There's some sneaky little corner of my mind that still whispers, "Don't they know that you made this entire thing up? No, really. You made this entire Clara-the-angel-blood thing up. From your brain. That's all."

See? Don't I look dazed?

And there was a HUGE pile of my books at the Idaho Falls Barnes & Noble, in preparation for Saturday's signing, and posters with my picture on them all over the store. Talk about surreal. . .

See the lovely display and the bunches of books?

Yup. That's me.

This is a day that I am truly thankful for all the wonderful, supportive people in my life, most especially my writerly-super-hero agent, Katherine, my kick-butt-and-take-names editor, Farrin, and my sounding-board-and-support-system husband, John. I couldn't have done any of this without you three. (come on, group hug!)

Now I have to go to sleep, because I am doing my first ever Author School Visit tomorrow morning. For someone who teaches writing for a living, I am surprisingly nervous. Wish me luck!

And thank you, all you readers out there, all you book bloggers, all you friends and neighbors and colleagues, all you fellow writers, for making me feel so loved and so important on this very fine day.

Winners for the Final Hallowed ARC giveaway

2012-01-13T09:03:00.000-08:00

Thanks to everybody who posted, tweeted, and facebooked my Hallowed trailers this week! I have 2 winners for my contest, which my son drew randomly out of a tub with all the entries in it. He was rather disappointed when nothing spectacular happened after he drew the names.

The winners are:

Vetsy
Solange

Please email me with your mailing address and I will get your signed books in the mail TODAY, as I am going to Idaho tomorrow and won't be back for 2 weeks.

I always feel so badly for the people who didn't win. But take heart, Hallowed is, as I write this, 3 days, 15 hours, 9 minutes and 20 seconds from being released.

If you would like a signed copy of Hallowed (or of Unearthly), I've worked out a new deal with an indie bookshop nearby. Call them up (or email), order the book from them, and I'll stop by and sign it before it ships. Yay for indie bookstores!

Here's the bookstore information:

Diesel, A Bookstore
310-456-9961
cheryl@dieselbookstore.com

And now for some news:
I am doing 2 amazing blog tours this month, one for the UK and one for the Mundie Moms. The UK info can be found in the awesome graphic in the sidebar. I've already started with the Mundie Moms tour, that you can see here:

Stop 1 (an excerpt from Hallowed)

Stop 2 (a vlog interview, plus an awesome Team Tucker prize pack giveaway)

Stop 3 (a review of Hallowed)

Stop 4 ( today's post, my top 5 things to do in Jackson Hole)

and then these later stops:

14th- Books Complete Me, excerpt

16th- YA Bibliophile, review

17th- Mundie Moms, character interview & giveaway

18th- Novel Novice, guest post

19th- Anna Reads, interview & giveaway

20th- Fire & Ice, review

21st- Page Turners Blog, author interview & giveaway

23rd- GReads, review

24th- Once Upon A Twilight, guest post

25th- Hypable- interview

Whew! I'm tired just looking at that list.

And excited to be headed off to Idaho for my real life signing in Idaho Falls on January 21 at the IF Barnes and Noble, 1pm and my signing in Boise on January 28 at the Hyde Park Bookstore, 1pm.

See you there!

Hallowed Trailer for the US

2012-01-09T09:20:00.000-08:00

Yay! I am so happy to be able to share the US trailer for Hallowed with you, finally! I love this trailer. Live action!

I will give double entries for my final ARC giveaway to people who post this trailer to their blog, facebook, and twitter. Just leave your posts in the comments section.

Enjoy!

7 days until Hallowed hits the shelves!

Countdown for Hallowed

2012-01-05T20:25:00.000-08:00

Yesterday is my author birthday, when I officially became a published author. It's been one crazy/surreal year!

And now Hallowed go-time is less than two weeks away. I am so excited to be going back to Idaho for the launch, and I've got 2 signings going on there.

The first will be on Saturday, January 21 at 1pm at the Idaho Falls Barnes and Noble. I had my Unearthly launch at this Barnes and Noble last year and it was such great fun. I grew up in Idaho Falls, and so many of my old friends/neighbors/classmates/teachers came to the signing (I expect to see you all there this time too, guys, love you!), along with my very first teen readers that I got to meet in person. It was a magical day, and I'm so excited to get to go home again for the launch of Hallowed. Thanks so much to Kaaren at Barnes and Noble and my awesome publicist, Marisa, for making it all happen.

The second signing will be on the following Saturday, January 28 at 1pm at the Hyde Park bookstore in Boise, Idaho. I lived in Boise for 3 years while I was getting my MFA from Boise State, and in the general Boise area for 7 years when you count my 4 years in Caldwell when I attended College of Idaho, so it's a place close to my heart. (Plus my best friend lives there. Linds! I need bestie time.) I love Boise. Seriously, if I were suddenly to make a million dollars, I would probably pack up my family and move there. It is a great town.

I am also doing a mess of school visits, so you might see me at your school if you live in either of these areas.

In the meantime, I have to hunker down and finish Book 3, and, quite frankly, it's been kicking my butt. So many threads to tie up. I am going a little crazy here, but Clara is still making me laugh, which is the important thing. I am also doing two separate blog tours, which is keeping me plenty busy. See my shiny new UK blog tour graphic over there on the sidebar? Which means 2 things: I am going to be busy writing for other people's blogs for a while, so I probably won't be writing much on my own, but I have some really great blog posts planned for my tour (on the UK one, I'm doing separate posts about my thoughts on Christian and my thoughts on Tucker, sharing my Hallowed playlist, giving you a run-down on my dream film cast for Unearthly, and so on, and on the US one I am planning a couple of vlogs shot in Jackson and the Tetons. . . ) so please check it out.

It also means that I am mostly saying no to any interview requests I'm getting outside of these tours. I am getting 1-3 requests for interviews a day right now, which pains me, because ultimately I have to say no. I would love to do interviews, but I am out of time, folks. Book 3 has to get written if you want to read it next year.

If you super want me to do an interview, please ask to schedule it for after March 1, and make it 5 questions or less, and follow up with me about it. Things will calm down a bit in March.

Here is the awesome UK trailer for Hallowed. Post this trailer on your website, or share on twitter and facebook, and I will enter you in my final Hallowed ARC contest. Just comment below on what you did, 1 entry for each thing. I will give away 2 signed copies, winner to be announced January 12, so I can have it in the mail by the 13th before I head off to Idaho. (and if I miraculously get my advanced REAL copies of Hallowed before then, I will send those instead. Because they are SHINY.)

I also saw the US trailer for Hallowed today, and it was awesome!!! Watch for it to go live any day now. I will give you double points for sharing this trailer.

And now back to scribbling away on Book 3. Peace out.

Books I read in 2011

2011-12-31T21:36:00.000-08:00

Well, it's the last day of the year, which means that it's time for the "Books I Read" list. This year I read (give or take, not counting rereads or parenting books or pregnancy books or books I assigned my students) 70 books. That's a lot. My eyes are tired.

This was the year of the dystopian, which was great, because I LOVE dystopians. I have always loved stories about what happens after the world ends. So I really enjoyed myself this year. I am pretty easy to please, books-wise, most of the time. There were only 2 or 3 books this year that I really disliked. And my mama taught me not to badmouth other people, so I won't tell you what they are.

This was also a year that I started but didn't finish a lot of books, which is weird for me. I guess, what with the new baby and the book tour and the loads of writing I had to do myself this year, I had a shorter attention span. If it didn't catch me, I didn't keep reading it. I also bought probably 25 books I simply didn't get to this year. My list next year is going to be enormous, I have a feeling. . .

So, without further, ado, the 2011 list:

1. Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver. This was easily my favorite book of the year, which is funny because it was the first book I read. It took me a while to get into, as the opening chapters are long and detailed and you don't know why you need to know all this stuff, but trust me, TRUST ME, you need to know all this stuff, and once you get to the premise of the book you'll never look back. I loved everything about this novel. It was just superbly written, beautiful language, an interesting, emotional, creative story. Sigh. I wish I could read it for the first time all over again.

2. XVI by Julia Karr. I've had the pleasure of getting to know Julia a little bit in the Elevensies (which is a group of debut authors whose books came out in 2011), and she is awesome. Her book was in the first wave of the dystopians this year, but one of the better ones, I thought.

3. Across the Universe by Beth Revis. I felt oddly competitive with this book. Or maybe not-so-oddly, since it came out the week before Unearthly and hit the New York Times list, and every time I went into a bookstore that week there seemed to be a bigger pile of this book than mine. I really wished I could say that it was a terrible book. But it's terrific, seriously. One of the best first chapters ever written, I think. I get cold just thinking about it. And it's not like any other book I've read, which is another reason it's great. Plus everyone says that Beth Revis is just a lovely lovely lovely person. So I can't be too jealous. Or I shouldn't be. It deserves every bit of the praise it gets.

4. Ascendent by Diana Peterfreund. This was the sequel to Rampant, which made my top 5 list last year, and it was also spectacularly good. I'm going to make a list of my top sequels soon, and this novel is on it. It was even better than the first one, I thought. Gotta love the modern-day virgin unicorn-killing warrior.

5. Uglies by Scott Westerfeld. One of my student recommended that I read this series, since I said I liked dystopians, and I really liked it. I flew through the whole series in less than a week. My students are awesome.

6. Pretties by Scott Westerfeld

7. Specials by Scott Westerfeld

8. Delirium by Lauren Oliver. Now, we've already established that I heart Lauren Oliver. A lot. And I hearted this book, too, but I loved Before I Fall so much that I couldn't help but compare, and I didn't love this book as much as that one. Which is not to say that it's not a great book. It's got the beautiful writing, too, and is probably one of the best dystopians that came out this year. (goes and writes fan mail to Lauren Oliver. . .)

9. Glimmerglass by Jenna Black. This was one of those books I bought because I thought the title was beautiful. It turned out to be a good book, which is a plus. It was refreshing to read a fairy book again. Snif. I missed Melissa Marr this year.

10. Wither by Lauren DeStefano. I thought this book was gutsy as all get-out. It's such a gritty dystopian world, and DeStefano doesn't soften the punches. Oh yes, there were sister wives. And a teenager having a baby. And murder. And a strange disease that kills everybody before they turn 25. It was a crazy, crazy, ride, but DeStefano pulled it off by making us feel for the characters. I was still thinking about this book days later, and wondering how the series is going to end.

11. The Dark and Hollow Places by Carrie Ryan. I am a HUGE Carrie Ryan fan. I still don't think you can get a book much better than The Forest of Hands and Teeth. So of course I gobbled this book right up, and it was super-satisfying. I love that each book of this series is from a new, unexpected character's point of view. It makes each story so fresh, at the same time keeping us in the familiar, scary zombies-are-going-to-eat-us-all! world.

12. Clarity by Kim Harrington. I really liked this book, a nice thriller-type novel where the main character has a good dose of sass, which I find charming. It also had a great sense of setting.

13. My Blood Approves by Amanda Hocking. Okay, here we go. I know I said that my mama told me not to bad mouth other people, but. . . (bites lip). . .ACK! This book was truly awful. How in the name of all that's holy did this poorly-written Twilight rip-off ever become popular? After finishing the book (and oh yes, I did finish it; I had to keep reading because I couldn't believe it wasn't going to get any better. . .) I had to ask myself, is it me, or is this a truly horrendous book? Do I have a problem with self-publishing? Am I jealous? Am I stuck up? To which I came to the following conclusion: No. No. And no. The book sucks.

14. Entwined by Heather Dixon. This book does NOT suck. It is a lovely, lovely book, from its gorgeous cover (I vote for this book as maybe the prettiest cover of 2011, outside of Unearthly, of course :P) to its premise: a smart retelling of the twelve dancing princesses fairy tale. Such a challenge to write about 12 sisters and keep them all straight and make us care about all of them, but Dixon pulled it off. I loved this book, and I am grateful to Heather Dixon, because I really needed something fantastic after the Hocking.

15. Cold Kiss by Amy Garvey. This is a nice, super-creepy story about a girl who uses witchcraft to bring her dead boyfriend back to life. (Shudders. But in a good way, as it was a very good book.)

16. Divergent by Veronica Roth. Okay, so this is the go-to, you'll-like-it-if-you-liked-Hunger-Games book this year, and it deserves that reputation. This is an excellent, edge-of-your-seat read. I'm a fan.

17. The Vespertine by Saundra Mitchell. This was a refreshing read, a Victorian paranormal that was creepy in all the right places and romantic in all the right places and fun with pretty dresses. Plus it has the gorgeous cover. I love how she's looking over her shoulder as she runs; it captures the emotion of the book so well. I was in such dread for this main character and worried about what would happen to her. There was a moment near the end where I was seriously nail-biting over this one.

18. The Game of Thrones series by George R.R. Martin. I got into this because I started watching Game of Thrones on HBO. I was thrilled at how faithful the TV series has been so far to the books. The first book is awesome. I ate it up, and promptly bought the second, and ate that up, but at some point I started ignoring all the characters I wasn't particularly interested in (which is easy with these books since each chapter is from a different character's POV) and skimmed ahead for the Daenerys and Sansa and Arya and Cersei chapters. Yep. I am all about the female characters. The rest are all dumb guys with swords.

19. The Goddess Test by Aimee Carter. Liked it. Totally wanted her to end up with Hades.

20. The False Princess by Eilis O’ Neall. Liked it, too. It was refreshing to read a straight-up fantasy with a solid main character.

21. Starcrossed by Josephine Angelini. Love the cover of this one; it just screams Helen of Troy, with the storm lurking in the background.

22. Die For Me by Amy Plum. I really liked this one. Who would have thought that zombies (okay, sort of zombies) could be sexy. I also dug the Paris setting.

23. Hereafter by Tara Hudson. I also really liked this book. It was a ghost story done right, and I was cheering for the characters all the way, and sad about their dilemma.

24. Slide by Jill Hathaway. This is the very first book that I decided to blurb. Which of course means I loved it, if I am willing to attach my name to it. I think it's a perfect example of a writer getting all of the elements right: a great narrative voice, a simple but well-executed premise, tons of thrills (this book is a THRILLER-- there are definitely a few of those what I like to call Rear Window moments. You know, in Rear Window with Jimmy Stewart, when he's spying on his neighbor who he thinks is a murderer and Grace Kelly breaks into the scary neighbor's apartment to look for evidence, and then the murderer COMES HOME? And Jimmy Stewart can only watch it all helplessly? Well, Slide is like that. Gave me chills a couple of times.), and the story speaks to the voyeur in all of us, except in this case, the MC can't help but watch. . .

25. Red Riding Hood by a whole mess of people I'm too lazy to write down. I'm also too lazy to tell you what a hot mess of a novel this was. Watch the movie, which is also a hot mess, but at least there are pretty boys in it.

26. The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness. Oh my heck. You guys. This book. So I was doing a signing in Pocatello, Idaho, this past summer, and the manager at the Waldenbooks and I got to talking, and he told me his favorite book this year was this Patrick Ness book. People either love it or they hate it, he said. The language is all funny. And the characters can all hear what each other is thinking, and Ness gives it to us the way people really think, not coherent sentences but colors and images and a jumble of words and emotions. And the main character can't read or write since they don't have school because they can't have school because they are all thinking too loud to concentrate. So, like he said, the language is all funny. But it's beautiful, like reading prose poetry. The story is amazing. And there's a dog. The MC has a conversation with his dog (where he can hear the dog's thought, you dig?) on the very first page in fact. This book. Rocked. My. World. I promptly bought and read all the others, plus a short story he wrote about this same world. *hugs the Waldenbooks guy. . .

27. The Ask and The Answer by Patrick Ness

28. The New World by Patrick Ness

29. Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness

30. Hourglass by Myra McIntyre. There was a lot of hoopla around this book, and I get why. Time travelling is hot. And there's a hot guy (seriously, so hot, wow) and the light bulbs flare and break whenever he and the MC kiss. Wish I'd thought of THAT idea. Isn't the cover awesome? I love the pose and the dress and the way her hair trickles sideways to the floor.

31. Incarceron by Catherine Fisher. I'd been wanting to read this book for a while, since I keep hearing people talk about it, and so I finally did. And it was cool. That's the word I'd pick to describe it. Cool. The world-building is fantastic and I really worried and yearned with the characters.

32. Sapphique by Catherine Fisher. So of course I had to read the sequel. Also cool.

33. From Bad to Cursed by Katie Alender. I know Katie, so maybe I'm biased a little, but I thought this sequel in her Bad Girls Don't Die series was even better than the first, and I really, really liked the first. There's something I find so charming about the voice of this MC, and the way she handles all the crazy crap that's thrown at her. Last time a doll tried to kill her. This time she has to deal with a crazy-popular-girl CULT. Fun times ensue. I am also super jealous of Katie's book trailer, which her film-maker husband made for her:

34. Hare Moon (short story) by Carrie Ryan

35. Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer. This was a quiet hit with me, a story about a teenager who has to try to survive the chaos that goes down on Earth after a giant asteroid strikes the moon.

36. Birthmarked by Caragh M. O’Brien. Maybe it's because I had a baby this year, but the first chapter of this book KILLED me. The MC is a midwife, and the story had me in its clutches from the first page or so, and didn't let me go until the end, where I subsequently spent the next few hours wide awake in bed worrying about what would happen to her. And the sequel didn't come out for months. And I ended up liking the sequel even more than the first one.

37. Water Wars by Cameron Stracher. Another dystopian. By this point I was beginning to get faintly weary with dystopians, and they were all starting to run together a little bit, but I remember that I liked this book. As someone who grew up in a mountain desert climate where water rights can be something people shoot at each other over, I got it.

38. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs. I saw the trailer for this book, and I thought it looked ah-mazing (this may be the best book trailer EVER), and I went to the bookstore and bought a hard copy, because I wanted to enjoy all the beautiful and eerie pictures. Don't buy the ebook version of this one, you guys.

39. Personal Demons by Lisa Desrochers. A love triangle. One guy who's literally an angel. The other, not so much. How could I not like this? It was such a fun and playful read for me, especially since it is on a topic so close to my own.

40. Wolfsbane by Andrea Cremer. I need to reread this book. I read it without rereading the first of the series, Nightshade, which I really loved last year, and somehow couldn't connect with it this time. But I love Ms. Cremer and the subtle way she works her smarts and her philosophical questions into her books, so I really intend to try this one again.

41. Supernaturally by Kiersten White. Another sequel that I thought was equal or maybe even better than the first. Okay, no. Not true. I still LOVE the first one for the way it made me feel, experiencing Evie's world for the first time, but this one is bleeping good, too. I also had the pleasure of having breakfast with Kiersten last time I was in San Diego, and she was so smart and funny and I instantly wanted her to be my new writerly bestie. (puppy-dog eyes at Kiersten. I will still totally buy the waffles. You rock.)

42. Illusions by Aprilynne Pike. This book mostly just made me insanely curious for how it's all going to play out in the next, final book. I am team Tamani, btw. Mostly. When he's not being a pompous a**. I get to be on a panel with Aprilynne at the Romantic Times book convention this April, and I am soooo looking forward to hanging with her again. She was sweet enough to let me shadow her for a bit when she was touring in Idaho a few summers ago, and was so all-around nice and helpful to me a published-author-newbie.

43. 2010 Best American Short Stories. Okay, so I read this for my advanced fiction class, as I do every year, but I count it as recreational reading too. Some awesome stories in here, as there are every year. And a few I just didn't get. As usual.

44. Haven by Kristi Cook. Liked it.

45. Vanish by Sophie Jordan. This is another sequel that I definitely loved more than the first book. I liked the first book, mind you, but this one had me breathless in several places. And I felt so bad for Jacinda and all that she had to risk to get what she wanted, and all that she had to lose. But I am Team Cassian. Dragon-boy is hot. :P

46. Blood Red Road by Moira Young. I LOVED this book. It was at the very top of my list for a long, long time, the book I recommended when people asked me what my favorite dystopian was. I loved the language, the cadence of the prose, the rustic beauty of it. I loved that she had a pet crow. I loved that she ended up with a shaved head. I loved the sense of epicness (is that a word?) about her entire adventure. I heard that Ridley Scott is going to make this book into a film, and that made perfect sense. I can't wait to see it on the screen, but in the meantime I will be waiting patiently for the next book in the series.

47. The Near Witch by Victoria Scwab. I really liked this one too, more of a straight-up fantasy feel to it, which I liked. This is what Red Riding Hood wishes it was.

48. Fateful by Claudia Gray. Werewolves on the Titanic. I thought this was going to be cheesy beyond belief, but it actually was pretty good.

49. Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins. I don't read a lot of contemporary YA, but someone suggested this book to me, and I loved it. Great use of setting, great characters who seemed real and fallible but lovable. Great all around. Reading this book was like taking a big gulp of fresh air after writing a very heavy book myself, and reading a lot of dire and dark dystopians. It also made me want to put a streak in my hair and see an old movie in a Parisian movie house.

50. The Declaration by Gemma Malley. Speaking of dire and dark dystopians. This was a good read, and translated the vibe of a home for illegally made children in such a vivid way. And oh yes, it was very dark. It reminded me a bit of Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro, which I read and really loved last year.

51. Anna Dressed in Blood by Blake Kendare. Hands down the best ghost story of the year (sorry Tara Hudson, Hereafter was a close second, I swear). Anna scared me to death, and I also felt soooo bad for her and for Cas for having to deal with her. Snif. I totally want to see a mash-up of this and Anna and The French Kiss, hee hee. Anyhow. It was creeptastic. An amazing cover, too, I thought, which really captures the essence of the book without being too gory. Anna is both terrifying and beautiful in this picture. I love when a publisher truly gets the cover right for the story and not just what they think is going to get the reader to pick it up off the shelf.

52. The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin. Liked it. Also liked the cover, which again seemed to capture the essence of the book beautifully.

53. The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson. I haven't gotten this swept up in a fantasy since Graceling. This book is epic, and masterfully paced. And I so admire Rae Carson for giving us a heroine who's overweight and doesn't think of herself as worth much at the beginning of the book, and then slowly but surely, powerfully and unexpectedly, transforming her.

54. Eve by Anna Carey. The first page of the book made me cry, which I considered a good sign. I just. . . enjoyed this book, through and through. Got to the end and read the acknowledgments and was surprised to find that Anna Carey and I have the same editor over at HarperTeen. Yay, Farrin, for editing such a great book! I will definitely read the next one of the series.

55. The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater. I've been a huge fan of Ms. Stiefvater ever since Shiver, but she really outdid herself this time. This book was lovely in every way. I could not put it down. My husband would find me hiding from my kids in the closet with my kindle just so I could read a few more pages. I loved the mythology of this book, sprung to life. There was a scene with Puck and her horse and her brother in the barn that literally had my hand standing on end. I was laughing and nearly crying by the end. So. freaking. good.

56. Crossed by Ally Condie. Matched made my top five last year, but I didn't like the sequel nearly as well, although I can't say why, exactly. I can be meh about sequels sometimes.

57. A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness. This book lodged a terrible ache in my throat for days. Masterfully done. Only read if you're stocked up on tissues.

58. Prized by Caragh M. O’Brien. Scroll up to #36 to see my thoughts on Birthmarked, which I liked. I loved Prized even more. There was something so life-or-death about it, and it felt like an entirely new and different, even-richer world than the first book, in a good way. I also enjoyed the love square, and was never quite decided on which boy Gaia should end up with.

59. Shine by Lauren Myracle. I learned about this book because of the book award drama (I told you before I don't read a whole lot of contemporary YA) and I was so glad I did. It's an amazingly brave and well-told little book. I liked it so much I want to use it in my YA lit class in the fall. I have a feeling we'll have a lot to talk about. The setting here was so incredibly well-rendered, and the voice reminded me of Harper Lee, if Harper Lee was writing about hate crimes and sexual abuse.

60. The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler. I liked this book, and I am addicted to facebook, so it felt particularly relevant and interesting, plus I was a teenager at the same time as these characters, so it really took me back. But as a book it didn't hold a candle to Thirteen Reasons Why. It was so much. . .fluffier. Not that I don't like fluffy at times. But from Asher I can't help but be slightly disappointed. Then I tell myself to give the guy a break and let him write a book that doesn't take him to an utterly dark place every day, okay?

61. Legend by Marie Lu. A bookstore manager and I were talking about dystopians a while back, and I mentioned some of the ones I loved, and she was kind of meh about them. There are so many dystopians, she said, that to stand out you really have to offer something fresh. And then she recommended this book. Which I found funny, because while I liked the book and enjoyed the story, it didn't strike me as particularly fresh. It struck me as trying to be the next Hunger Games, all the way down to the symbol on the cover. But maybe my meh about this book has way more to do with being just a tad burned out by dystopians at this point.

62. Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi. Or maybe I'm not so burned out by dystopians, because I loved this one. I'm a language girl, first and foremost, and the language of this book was gorgeous. I loved the strike-outs. I did feel like we suddenly were in an episode of X-Men right at the end, but as a die-hard X-Men fan, I kind of dug that. I also think that this cover is all wrong for this book, a clear example of the publisher (my publisher--eep! sorry!) trying to hook the reader with a pretty dress rather than trying to capture the essence of the book. It's a beautiful cover, don't get me wrong. But doesn't truly speak for the book, except for the strike-out at the top.

63. Tiger’s Curse by Colleen Houck. Bought this in hardcover because it wasn't available as an ebook. Very cool, interesting mythology.

64. Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi. Speaking of covers, I loved this one. Totally got it right, in my opinion. I also really enjoyed this book, and I immediately asked myself whether I thought this book brought something fresh to the dystopian landscape, and the answer was YES. I also liked the way Perry could smell how Aria was feeling, and I loved the singing element. This is a writer who doesn't lean too much on the visual, which I admire. And it was a tense and high-stakes story, too.

65. The Paris Wife by Paula Mclain. Okay, so this is not YA. But I couldn't help reading this. As some of you might know, I have a PhD in Creative Writing (no Dr. Hand jokes, please), and to get said PhD I had to specialize in an area of literature and write many many MANY pages of papers on this specialty, so that I could be, well, you know, a specialist. I chose Hemingway (and his contemporaries, but mostly Hemingway), which means I have read every one of Hemingway's novels and most of his short stories and poems and memoirs. And I have read many many MANY biographies. The point is, this book is a novel from the point of view of Hemingway's first wife, Hadley. When I first started reading it I was aching that I had not written this book. But Ms. Mclain did a beautiful job, both in capturing Hadley (I've always thought that was such a cool name: Hadley Hemingway) and in capturing good old Ernest.

66. Everneath by Brodi Ashton. One of the awesome things about my job is that I often get books far in advance of their release date. Like these next three, which my publicist sent me because I'm going to be touring with Brodi, Jodi, and Courtney in February for the Dark Days. Wow, does this one ever have a mouth-watering cover, (right?) and I thought the story within was very unique as a paranormal romance. She offered something fresh on the idea. I also liked that there was a countdown at the beginning of every chapter until all kinds of literal hell breaks loose.

67. Incarnate by Jodi Meadows. This was an awesome book, too, and not just because I'm going to be having lots of car rides and plane trips and giggling with these people, but seriously. Nice world-building. I hated her mother. I wanted her to get eaten by a dragon. I loved the danger that was always lurking in this book, and the idea of these people who had lived thousands of years in different bodies.

68. Wings of the Wicked by Courtney Allison Moulton. Ah, Courtney. You're doing it to me again, my friend. You kick major patootie. I've been reading this book in my spare minutes for the past three days, and it is a super cool story, always like reading a Buffy episode (in a good way, I promise). I just got to the part where that thing happens that is similar to what happens in my book (not the angels v. cars part, the other part) and omg. *Okay, so this isn't so much a review of the book as a message to Ms. Moulton but I can embrace that: Can't wait to meet you in real life, CAM! Squees and jumps up and down!

69. Bumped by Megan McCafferty. Cool premise. Maybe the God stuff in this book (one of the MCs is super religious, and I think we're meant to mock that a little, which kind of spun me the wrong way) made me uncomfortable, or maybe the world was just too high-tech for me. I like the low-tech dystopians, typically, the rough and tumble over the what I like to call 5th Element kind of futuristic world. Either way, not my cup of tea, really, although, like I said, cool premise.

70. Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor. #70! I'm not all the way done with this book yet, as I am currently working on my own novel and trying not to let my kids starve and my house be taken over my spiders, but I really like it, so far. I love that she has blue hair, and I love the rich, layered settings, and the subtle and not-too-in-your-face mythology.

Whew! That was a lot of books. I narrowed my favorites down to 10.

(drum roll, please)

My Fave 10 books of 2011:

Unearthly (kidding! kind of. . . kind of not kidding. . . of course it's going to be one of my favorite books this year. It's MY book. I published a BOOK. A real book with real pages and a real made-up story and everything. There is nothing that rocks so much as that. :P)

ahem, now the other 9 (i.e., the real list):
Before I Fall
The Scorpio Races
Blood Red Road
The Knife of Never Letting Go
Shine
Anna Dressed in Blood
Anna and the French Kiss
Slide
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

So tell me, any books I missed? What would you recommend for 2012?

Hallowed Giveaway and News

2011-12-06T21:34:00.000-08:00

Hi y'all. The YA tournament was so much fun! Whew!

I am up to my eyeballs in writing Book 3 right now, deep deep deep in my writerly cave, so I am taking a wee hiatus from blogging, but I want to announce a couple things.

First, I am hosting a Hallowed Christmas giveaway on Goodreads.
See here to enter (I don't think it officially opens for a few days, so check back):

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Hallowed

by Cynthia Hand

Giveaway ends December 25, 2011.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
Enter to win

I also wanted to announce a few tour stops. First, I will be in Idaho in January. I'm still nailing down the details, but I will be doing school visits in the Jackson Hole and Idaho Falls areas mid-January (definitely a reading at the Idaho Falls Barnes and Noble on Saturday, January 21. I will announce the time as soon as I know). I am also considering traveling over to Boise and down to Salt Lake City around this time, so stay tuned.

In February, HarperTeen is sending me to Texas on the Winter Dark Days of Supernatural Tour, with the lovely Courtney Allison Moulton, author of Angelfire and my hilarious horse-loving friend and fellow angel writer, and debuts Brodi Ashton (Everneath) and Jodie Meadows (Incarnate). I am so thrilled to be spending time with these ladies. Dark Days is awesome!

Here are the dates and times:

Thursday, February 16th – DALLAS – B&N Southlake – 5pm

Friday, February 17th – AUSTIN – B&N Austin – 7pm

Saturday, February 18th – HOUSTON – Blue Willow Book Shop – 4pm

In March I plan to do a few stops in my local area of Southern California, hopefully a reading at Pepperdine in Malibu and a few school visits and signings in Ventura County and Los Angeles County.

In April (11-15) you can catch me in Chicago if you attend the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention, for Teen Day, where I am on a panel, doing some speed reading, and signing and hanging out with a huge bunch of wonderful fellow YA authors. Seriously. So many amazing writers are going to be there. Like I will totally have to resist fangrrling all over the place.

That's all the stops I have planned at the moment. But there will be more. Oh, there will be more.

In the meantime, I'm going to go back to my cave and continue to scribble furiously.

YA Scavenger Hunt!

2011-12-01T11:46:00.000-08:00

This year I am pleased as punch to be involved in the YA Scavenger Hunt. This is where a whole bunch of YA authors have ganged up to show off our bonus content, help our fans become acquainted with other fabulous YA authors, give away awesome prizes, and have a whole lot of fun in the process. Each of us will post some exclusive, never-before-seen content from another author (plus a mysterious word in red you'll need to win a big contest at the end) and a link to the next stop in the scavenger hunt.

I am hosting the lovely Amber Argyle, author of Witch Song.

Here's what the book is about:

The world is changing.

Once, Witch Song controlled everything from the winds to the shifting of the seasons, but not anymore. All the Witches are gone, taken captive by a traitor.

All but Brusenna.

Now the traitor is coming for Brusenna, and ever her guardian can't protect her. Somehow, Brusenna has to succeed where every other Witch has failed. Find the traitor. Fight her. Defeat her.

If Brusenna fails, there won't be anything left to save.

Cool, right? I can't wait to read this! That's one of the great things about the YA Scavenger hunt; we get exposed to books and authors we might not have otherwise come across. I love the cover, too, something about the girl's eyes are so eerie and striking. And it's been a good long time since I read a story about witches. . .
Here's some info about the author:

Amber Argyle grew up with three brothers on a cattle ranch in the Rocky Mountains. She spent hours riding horses, roaming the mountains, and playing in her family’s creepy barn. This environment fueled her imagination for writing her debut novel.

She has worked as a short order cook, janitor, and staff member in a mental institution. All of which has given her great insight into the human condition and has made for some unique characters.

She received her bachelor’s degree in English and Physical Education from Utah State University.

She currently resides in Utah with her husband and three small children.

To which I say: !!!!! Hey, neighbor! She grew up in the Rockies riding horses and roaming the mountains, hmm sounds like my kind of writer. Must be a kindred spirit, is all I'm saying. Now even more excited to read the book.

And now we're on to el bonus contento. Below you'll find the never-before-seen first chapter of Witch Song 2. Make sure to read it all the way through to the end, because there's some stuff at the bottom on how to enter to win (pay attention to the word in red)the huge and super exciting prize package. (I myself contributed some very awesome Team Christian/Team Tucker paraphernalia, among other things.) And, of course, the link for the next stop on the scavenger hunt. Hint: It isn't me. Hee hee. But when you do find me on this hunt, you will find a very cool tidbit of bonus content from Hallowed.

Witch Song 2, Chapter 1

The shadows seemed to bleed darkness. Senna glanced toward the sky, searching for the moon that would not come. Not tonight. Even the strongest starlight was strangled out by the dense canopy. The temporary blindness was frightening, but it was also the reason she’d come. Darkness offered cover and protection—and insured that no one would notice her slipping away.

With each step she took, the roar of the waterfall grew loader. Finally, she reached the stair case carved into the side of the cliff. Mindful of the slippery steps, she climbed upward until her legs burned and she sweated despite the chill.

Finally, she reached the top and crossed the bleak expanse until she could hear the rhythmic crash of the waves against the cliffs. Glancing far down below her, she could see the frothing sea. She faced West, toward Tarten. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the Four Sisters—earth, water, plants, and sunlight. She could feel their pain—like a shriveled sore in her stomach.

Her tears started again, wetting the salty tracks she knew were already on her cheeks.

She couldn’t seem to shake the dreams that woke her every night. Dreams of a withered land and a dying people.

With all the strength she had, she sang.

Let not the curse of Witches
Destroy a land once bathed in riches
Plants, withdraw life to thy roots
Seeds sleep in the earth, send forth no shoots
Until the witches shall disperse
This hated and unjust curse.

She sang until her throat was scratchy and she could no longer hit the high notes. Then she stood staring at the land she knew was there, struggling to hold onto any life at all. Because of the witches’ curse, no rain had fallen in over two months—death to any jungle. But this one held on deep in the ground, waiting for the promise of her song to be fulfilled.

Through the stillness, one stone scratch on another. Senna whirled and looked back the way she’d come, her heart pounding in her throat. If the Discipline Heads discovered that she was subverting their curse, the punishment would be severe.

Senna saw nothing through the gloom. Hugging her arms around herself, she trotted back to the staircase and started the long descent. At the base, she plunged onto the path that wove between the tree houses like a river carrying its load of human cargo from one house to house along its banks. The trees towered above Senna, the tallest over eight stories high, the smallest just over two.

And each of those tree houses had once been inhabited by a Witch. Now they were all empy. Here, everything still bore the signs of the Witches’ final battle with Espen. A door leading into the tree creaked on its rusted hinges; a yawning hole where the latch should have been. Broken windows gaped like mouths with hungry, serrated teeth.

Glass crunched under someone’s feet.

Senna froze, tipping her head toward the sound.

The wind picked up, snaking through the dense foliage before tugging at Senna’s cloak. Ducking her head, she held her hood close. She could smell the freshness of plants and taste the damp loam. There was no indication that anyone had marked her sneaking away. No indication that she’d been followed. Still, she waited, as still as a mouse venturing into the cat’s lair. She’d been uneasy since she’d left her tree house. Some instinct inside her seemed to chant a warning: through the gloom, someone was watching.

“Who’s there?” Her whisper sounded like a shout in the darkness.

No answer. Her heart pounding, Senna hurried back to the warmth and safety of the inhabited part of the island. She wished Joshen were with her. The Discipline Heads had done their best to keep her apart from her Guardian. She hadn’t seen him in two months. Not since the Guardians had gone on a recruitment assignment.

Trying to calm her stuttering heart, she reminded herself she was safe on Haven. The witches’ headquarters was an impenetrable fortress—surrounded on all sides by cliffs that were in turn surrounded by the frigid ocean. The only way in or out of was for a witch to sing you in.

Still, the island had been breached before. When the Dark Witch had captured or killed all the remaining witches. All but Senna.

The thick vegetation to Senna’s left shifted against the breeze.

Someone was there.

Backing away, Senna’s hand went to her seed belt. Her practiced fingers automatically found the pouch of Thine seeds She heard a whooshing sound. Before she could understand what it was, something solid smacked into her temple.

Lights exploded behind her eyes. She staggered sideways. The thick foliage on left of the path shuddered. A black shape hurled out of the darkness toward her.

Senna didn’t have time for the Thine. Her mouth opened and a song poured out,

Plants, stop the man who’d halt my flight.
Bind him, though he fights.

All around the man, the dark forms of plants shot out, tripping his feet. He reached out, snatching her leg. She stumbled and fell, still singing. She felt the plants respond, twisting around him and pinning his arms down. She kicked free of him and scooted backward. She nearly sagged in relief. One more song, and he’d be wrapped up completely.

Something snapped behind her. Senna lurched to her feet. Someone barreled into her, wrapping their arms around her. Senna slammed into the dirt. She felt grit digging into her cheek.

Plants , stop—

The person behind reared back and jerked a gag into her mouth.

Knowing how helpless she was without her song, Senna drove her elbow back, catching the wiry attacker in the gut. The gag came free, but Senna couldn’t get the breath to sing. She twisted in his arms. All Senna saw was a face wrapped in black, dark eyes glinting. She punched as Joshen had shown her, putting all her strength into it. An explosion of pain erupted in Senna’s hand.

Her attacker tottered. Senna shoved him with all her strength. The attacker tried to hold on, but he wasn’t much bigger than Senna. Kicking her way free, she started running. She panted out a song.

Plants of the forest, hide my trail,
for an enemy, I must quell.

She was too winded for the song to be very effective, but it was the best she could manage. She chanced a glance behind her. In the darkness, she could make out the forms of her attackers chasing after her. And they were fast.

Even with her song weaving the plants behind her, Senna wasn’t going to outrun them. That meant she had to hide. She darted into the dense foliage. Plants whipped her face, making her eyes sting. She passed the tree and erupted onto another path. She followed it for half a dozen steps before darting back into the plants and flattened herself, her face pressed into the damp soil.

Footsteps pounded past her. They paused uncertainly, but they were good at this game. Without a word, they split up—Senna heard them searching for her.

Sweat soaking through the back of her green dress, Senna tried to slow her breathing. She searched for some kind of weapon, anything. A piece of shattered glass glinted in the starlight.

Keeping her movements smooth and even, Senna wrapped the edge of her cloak around her hand and picked it up. She chanced lifting her head. She listened for any sign of them, sweat rolling down her temples, before she scooted backward. When she bumped into the tree house behind her, she eased to her feet and edged around to the other side.

Her heart pounding in her throat, she waited. Nothing. She moved away from the tree, toward home, her senses straining for any sign that she’d been spotted.

Some instinct made her turn to look behind her. But it was too late. She already felt the gag biting into her mouth. Felt the knot go tight.

But her attacker had underestimated the rest of Senna. She whirled and struck with the glass shard. Above the wrapping over his face, her attacker’s eyes went wide with shock. A gush of warm blood soaked Senna’s hand.

She stumbled back in horror.

The attacker fell to his knees, his large hand on his stomach. Senna retreated, fear clawing her insides.

He watched her, his eyes unreadable. “You’re not safe, Brusenna. You won’t be safe as long as you’re here. Soon, all the witches will be dead.” His accent was harsh.

Who was this man? Why had he attacked her? Senna studied his shadowed face, trying to place him. She stretched a hand out to pull away the cloth covering his nose and mouth. Somewhere behind the man, the plants rustled as if someone were running through them.

The other attacker.

Snatching her hand back, Senna turned and fled, not daring to look back. Three times she fell, once so hard she feared she’d broken her wrist. She yanked on the gag, her lips cracking, and finally managed to pull it off.

Ahead, the warm lights of Haven came to view. She caught glimpses of lanterns gleaming inside the trees like distant stars. Had she really gone so far? When she finally reached her tree house, her breathing came in ragged gasps. She ran up the steps made of the tree roots and hauled open the door.

Her mother shot to her feet, her knitting falling to the floor. “Brusenna?

Senna snatched her mother’s hand. “We’re not safe!”

Where there more attackers? Was anyone safe? Senna didn’t stop until she reached the Ring of Power—a circular clearing ringed by tall trees. She darted to the center.

"What happened? Why are you covered in blood? What happened to your face?

Senna ignored her. She had to warn the others. She tipped her head back and sang.

Wind, carry my song across Haven
An enemy with purpose craven,
Has breached our border.
Wrecking havoc and disorder.

The wind whipped around her song, carrying its message all over the island. Senna heard it reverberating off the impassable cliffs. Within moments, Witches were pouring into the Ring of Power, some wearing little more than their shifts.

Prenny, her grey hair sticking up like a rooster tail, marched straight up to Senna. “What’s the meaning of this, Sprout?”

Senna held up her hand to shield her eyes from the bright lantern Prenny held. “Two men attacked me.”

Prenny’s face went pale.

Her mother snatched both of Senna’s hands and turned them over.

Senna suddenly felt overwhelmingly tired. “It’s not my blood.”

“Some of it is,” her mother said.

Senna stared at the puncture holes in her palm, her blood mixing with that of her attacker to run in garish streaks down her dress. The glass must have pierced through her cloak. As she looked at the cuts, they started to hurt.

Drenelle, swathed in layers of silk and lace came up in time to hear the last. She saw the blood on Senna’s hands. She gasped and whirled around. “Coyel! Coyel!"

Her mother lifted her skirt. “I’ll get my kit.”

Senna grabbed her arm. “No! They’re still out there!”

“Who’s out there?” Coyel, Head of Sunlight, asked as she came in.

Her mother pulled away from Senna’s grasp. “I’ll be fine. We need to treat your hands.” Short of physically restraining her, Senna knew she could stop her. She watched helplessly as her mother left.

Prenny took Senna’s hands in her own, clicking her tongue at what she saw. Senna winced.

More Witches gathered around Senna. All of them stared at her, fear in their eyes. Senna felt their gazes and wanted to hide. “Two men attacked me.”

“That’s impossible,” Prenny growled. “No one can get on the island.”

Senna met the old woman’s gaze. “Like they didn’t get on the island before?”

Prenny stepped back as if she’d been slapped. “The traitor is dead. All the other Witches are accounted for.”

Chavis marched toward them. The witch was Head of Water, and therefore their leader in battle.

“How many? Where?”

Senna pointed a shaking hand back the way she’d come. “Two of them. On the west side of the island.”

Chavis whirled around. “Witchlings and Apprentices in the circle. Arianis is in charge. Keepers in groups of four, one of those four a Water. Search the island. Senna with me.”

Senna glanced up in time to see Arianis shoot her a glare as she shooed the younger girls into a circle. The Apprentices locked forearms. The ground around them surged. Shimmering like an aurora, a cylindrical barrier rose into the night sky. Nothing and no one could cross until the Witches released each other.

As long as the circle held, the young witches were safe.

Chavis hefted her musket, loading a ball and tapping the powder into the frizzen.
“Sometimes a musket works better than witch song.” Chavis answered Senna’s unasked question. She handed the musket to Prenny and loaded the two pistols she always carried strapped to her sides.

Drenelle grabbed her lantern from the ground.

“Leave it,” Chavis said. “It will only make us targets and blind us to the night.” She started forward without another word.

Senna watched her, her whole body loath to go back into the darkness.

Chavis turned, her pistols gleaming in her hands. Senna’s arms seemed to burn with the memory of being shot. The taste of gunpowder on her tongue the night Bruke had died to save her. She couldn’t seem to move.

“Senna, you need to show us where to go.”

Going back into danger went against every instinct Senna had. She forced herself not to think of it as she stepped from the lantern lit clearing into the darkness beyond.

When they started into the uninhabited part of Haven, Chavis glanced at her askance. “What were you doing here?”

Senna’s mouth was dry. She had to swallow several times before the words would come. “I couldn’t sleep.” Her blood aching with fear, he stopped suddenly. Something at her feet was out of place. She picked up a sling shot, her hand automatically straying to her bruised temple.

“Here.”

Chavis pulled out her pistol. “Prenny and Coyel.”

Prenny handed her musket to Drenelle, who held it away from her body like might sully her white chemise. Then the older witch pulled out four glass vials. “Ready?”

Coyel crooned to the wind.

Wind, from above blow down on me,
Then spread the nips to any who lying in wait be.

The wind gushed down on the top of Senna’s head, billowing outward when it hit the ground.

As Coyel continued the song, Prenny tossed the contents of each vial into the air. The wind caught the powder, billowing it outward.

Even with the wind blowing the nips powder away from the packed group of witches, the back of Senna’s throat itched and her eyes smarted. She held her cloak over her nose and mouth and squinted through watering eyes.

Coyel stopped singing. She rested a hand on Senna’s shoulder. “Anyone the powder touched would erupt into a helpless fit of coughing.”

The witches strained, listening.

“Whoever it was, they’re gone now.” Prenny finally announced.

Senna wiped her streaming eyes.

Chavis stared into the shadows. “We’re not going to find anything on a night like this. Best lock ourselves in and wait till morning. We can do a thorough search then.”

Senna wiped her watering eyes on her cloak. “They could be long gone by then.”

Chavis cursed. “Why didn’t I think of that. Quick, to the entrance pool.”

Passing other groups of searching Witches, the five witches hustled as fast as they dared, their hands outstretched for balance, toward the only way in or out of Haven. Etched in the side of one of the cliffs was a stone archway. Briars and thistle grew thick over the entrance.

“No one’s been here,” Coyel said, her voice heavy with relief.

“Unless a witch sang them inside.” Chavis shoved her guns in there holsters. “One of us should have brought a lamp.”

Drenelle silk chemise rustled. “I did.” Senna heard the scrap of a knife down a striker, sending out a shower of sparks. One caught on the oil wick. Drenelle twisted the lever on a small, ornate lamp.

Senna nearly sighed in relief as light flooded the area. For the first time since leaving the clearing, she could make out the other’s faces instead of just dark shapes.

Coyel sang the briars and thistle free of the entrance.

Chavis took the lantern and eased down the steps, the light throwing harsh shadows on the carved walls. Senna stood on the mosaic stone floor, staring at the still surface of the pool.

Coyel let out a sigh of relief. “All the boats are still here.”

Chavis drummed her fingers on her gun. “Don’t be too relieved, Keeper. That just means they’re still here.”

I don't know about you, but I want to keep reading! To buy Witch Song on Amazon, click here!

And here are the rules to our ginormous giveaway. We’ve put together a puzzle with one keyword found on each website. Complete it and you will be eligible for a fantastic GRAND PRIZE which will include signed editions of books, signed bookmarks, jewelry, and many more exclusive gifts with at least one gift from EVERY AUTHOR! Woot!

Scavenger Hunt Puzzle
Directions: Copy and paste the words below onto a document or print it out and unscramble the words as you proceed through the Scavenger Hunt. Search for keywords, one on each website that will be highlighted in RED. When you are finished, fill out the google form, here.

1. NVSEIURE
2. MLTSIPIE
3. PEMETKIREE
4. IIHEDOMC
5. FMERLOAHTWER
6. DLENGO
7. IRDEEDEWLB
8. RSUERNEDR
9. AOCATTINA
10. AHNCEDNTE
11. GURENDOHY
12. GAUINDAR
13. RETECSS
14. EMCREAB
15. LORNDDWURE
16. AIRSFCCEI
17. RIASSMHCT
18. RWTHACES
19. RTAAENTNRSP
20. DETLGAN
21. YFNASAT
22. NTOAPHWYP
23. SLLESUOS
24. ECNNEOIP
25. LOENIOASTD
26. EORFWLWE
27. AREEHTFS
28. AAAOLRPMNR
29. HSIGDNA
30. DOBANADNE
31. LIECSHORCN
32. SPSESNEU
33. OTMYHLGYO
34. ELWLHAENO
35. TTOAINRTAC
36. UAUTFLBIE

37. BTRSUTEFEIL

Rules: To be eligible for the grand prize, you must submit this filled in puzzle before noon on Dec 4th Pacific Time. All the keywords must be in the correct place and you must include your full name and address. Entries sent in without name and address will not be considered!
And now on to the next stop in the scavenger hunt--click HERE.

The Clock Tolls 6--Winners of the Hallowed for Halloween Contest

2011-10-31T18:28:00.000-07:00

Okay, first let me start out by saying this was HARD. I had no idea when I came up with this little contest idea that I'd get such a big response, which is so cool. There were more than 100 entries, and I have to narrow the winners down to 4 (2 for the cover, 2 for the description). I wish I had like 100 ARCs to give out, seriously.

But, there can only be 4.

Plus 6 runner-ups, who will not receive Hallowed ARCs (boo), but who WILL receive any other kind of Unearthly-related stuff I can scrounge up, like bookplates and bookmarks and maybe Clara's favorite Halloween candy.

So, without further ado, the winners:

For the cover contest:

an entry by Jessica M. I thought this was gorgeous, first of all. And I liked how she incorporated the quote from Unearthly but gave it a whole new and devious meaning. Awesome. Congrats. An ARC of Hallowed is yours.

The other ARC will go to Roberta Mansfield, for this image:

This made me laugh out loud. Tucker's dismembered head was such a nice touch, and changing the name to Hollowed and having a hollowed-out space in Clara's chest. Classic. Plus fire and black wings and blood. Wow.

And now the runners up, who won't get an ARC but some other cool stuff:

Priscilla Peters, who sent me this lovely image:

Priscilla sent me 5 different entries, and they were all beautiful, but in the end I went with this black and white one. It was just . . . creepy. Bravo.

Christina Rose:

This was the first entry I received that really made me sit back and go, WOW. So Halloweeny. I loved it. I swear Clara's been looking a bit thin lately.

And last, but not least, Katie Kelly:

This was so beautiful and eerie and cool. I loved it.

Maybe this is torture, but I also want to mention Alexandra Torres, Ashley Ferguson, Faithe Maher, Kaylee Maddox, and Olliver Hood (Olliver's had this quote: "Simply brilliant"--The Devil, which also made me laugh out loud.) You guys made my top 10.

And on to the book descriptions.

Winner #1, funkelstein17, with this:

She´s waited such a long time for this day. It was October 31. Halloween. Night of demons and vampires. Her night. This was the night to finally fulfil her purpose. Clara Gardner, supernaturally beautiful and pale faced vampire, who had the ability to switch between dimensions - has trained for this day for years, mentally and physically. It was the darkest night of this year too, no moon, no stars, just blackness. Together with her mate Christian Prescott, scarred and red-faced king of demons, she´d do it tonight. Standing on top of a mountain near Jackson lake she´d raise her hand and with her high pitched scream a gap in space and time would appear like tongues of flames out of nowhere. Through the tunnel-like flame hole she would be able to see right into Cynthia Hands home, watching Cynthia writing at her desk while she was being completely oblivious to what was coming for her. Christian Prescott writhed in agony as he read Clara´s thoughts: Tonight Clara would torture Cynthia painfully to death if Tucker could not be her boyfriend anymore in the next book. He was determined to avert this, he was supposed to be her soulmate for eternity…

I was highly entertained by the idea of Clara torturing me to death if I separated her from Tucker.

Winner #2:
Mimi Valentine

Clara Gardner wasn't dead.

But every zombie hunter wished she was. Dubbed the legendary Severed Hand because of her missing right arm, Clara was one of the most notorious undead beings to haunt the Earth. She ate hearts and stole hands, as if to compensate for the she'd lost; according to rumors, she didn't even chew before she swallowed. There wasn't a single hunter who had managed to stop her wrath.

Until Tucker. Gorgeous, golden, and absolutely determined, Tucker Avery was one of the best zombie hunters out there... except he was dead too. As a zombie-hunting zombie, he was trusted by neither the dead nor the alive. Not that it mattered much to him. After watching his family die at the hands of a zombie and then being infected by the same guy, Tucker's only goal was to rid the world of all undead beings -- and then himself.

So it was natural that he'd take it upon himself to destroy the one-handed girl who haunted the boonies. Only problem? There were some things about the mysterious Severed Hand that not even the gory stories told.

Like the fact that, once upon a time when they were both alive, Tucker and Clara had known each other.

And she remembered him.
I picked this because, well, it was just an excellently written description. I want to read that book. And nothing says Halloween like Clara and Tucker as star-crossed zombies.

Runners up for this were Shannon (my agent liked this one!), Sara, and Gabi. Bookplates, bookmarks, and fun stuff for you!

If you didn't win, never fear. There will be more giveaways and contests in the future, and some not as difficult, I promise.

Whew. This was SO fun. Thanks for all the support for Hallowed.

Unearthly comes to PAPERBACK tomorrow! Tell your friends!

And now I'm off to trick-or-treat with my kiddos.

XO

C

Hallowed for Halloween Cover Entries

2011-10-31T09:53:00.000-07:00

Below you'll find a video I made of the entries (so far) for my Hallowed for Halloween contest. You guys. This has been CRAZY. There have been more than 60 submissions to the cover part of the contest alone, and they are wicked awesome. I have no idea how I'm ever going to choose two. Thank you so much for making my Halloween so fun and showing such support and excitement for Hallowed. You make me proud!

Enjoy!

Why I Love the CW

2011-10-25T18:20:00.000-07:00

Hi, y'all. I didn't intend to blog for a few days, (writing, writing, writing Book 3) but then some news broke yesterday and my tweeps are going wild and I thought I would clear some things up.

Yes, it IS true. Unearthly is being developed into a television series for the CW! This is so unbelievably exciting and surreal for me. I love the idea. I have been an avid CW watcher for a long time, my fave show for years and years being The Gilmore Girls. There's nothing like the rapid-fire dialogue from that show. <3 In fact, Unearthly was influenced quite a lot by Rory and Lorelei--I wanted the relationship between Clara and Maggie to be fun and friend-like and snappy like this (and there is a reference to the GG in the book, can you find it?). So I am soooooo pleased that my little book is being developed into a show for this network.

That said, it is being DEVELOPED into a show on the CW. This does not mean that it is definitely going to BE a show on the CW. Unearthly has a lot of hoops to get through before that happens. Right now we're still in the script phase-- Kevin Murphy is writing a what-I-am-sure-will-be-awesome script for the pilot. Then the network has to greenlight the pilot to be made, it has to be cast and shot, and then the network has to decide if it makes it to primetime. Like I said, lots of work ahead of us. So keep your fingers crossed, and thank you for all the squees and excitement and good wishes.

Love you guys! (collective hug)

P.S. The entries for my Hallowed/Halloween giveaway are AWESOME. Keep them coming. I will announce the winner at 6pm Pacific Time.

now: write, write, write, write, write. Book 3, book 3, book 3.

Get Hallowed for Halloween!

2011-10-21T21:53:00.000-07:00

Okay, so here's my contest for HALLOWED on Halloween. I am seriously so excited about this. I am going to be giving away four (count them, FOUR) ARCs of Hallowed!

There are 2 ways to win:

#1 Download this, the US cover for Hallowed. Aw. Isn't it nice?

Then, using Photoshop or Paint or whatever artsy program you like, dress up my cover for Halloween. Let's pretend, instead, that this is a horror book. Instead of "aw," we want, "ew!" The funnier, grosser, and/or most Halloweenlike, the better. (But nothing, you know, truly obscene or something that would traumatize a person under 12).

I'm not great with Photoshop, but I had all kinds of fun coming up with this example:

Bwa ha ha. I love it.

Anyway, mess with my cover. Then email it to me at writercynthiahand@gmail.com. Make sure the image is a decent size, since I've had trouble posting super large pictures or pictures in a strange format here before.

For those of you who are not artistically inclined, here is method #2 for winning your very own Hallowed ARC.

Let's read the description of Hallowed, shall we?:

For months part-angel Clara Gardner trained to face the raging forest fire from her visions and rescue the alluring and mysterious Christian Prescott from the blaze. But nothing could prepare her for the fateful decisions she would be forced to make that day, or the startling revelation that her purpose—the task she was put on earth to accomplish—is not as straightforward as she thought. Now, torn between her increasingly complicated feelings for Christian and her love for her boyfriend, Tucker, Clara struggles to make sense of what she was supposed to do the day of the fire. And, as she is drawn further into the world of part angels and the growing conflict between White Wings and Black Wings, Clara learns of the terrifying new reality that she must face: Someone close to her will die in a matter of months. With her future uncertain, the only thing Clara knows for sure is that the fire was just the beginning.

Awesome, isn't it? Makes you just want to jump right in and read. But now (you guessed it) you get to rewrite the Hallowed description. What if Hallowed were a horror novel? You can either write it like a really messed up, scary sequel to Unearthly, such as:

For months part-demon Clara Gardner trained to start the raging forest fire from her visions and murder the alluring and mysterious Christian Prescott during the blaze. . .

or you can toss the original story and start from scratch, using just the cover and the title, like:

Six years ago, Clara Gardner drowned in the icy waters of Jackson Lake right after the Halloween dance. For 364 days of the year, she rests peacefully in her coffin as a corpse. But every year on Halloween night she comes to life and claws her way out of the grave, determined to find Christian, the boy who jilted her, and literally eat his heart out . . .

Leave your description in the comments below (not on Goodreads or on Facebook, please, but here). Have fun with it! I can't wait to see what you come up with.

I will award ARCs to the 2 best covers and the 2 best descriptions, along with a few other little tricks and treats of my own. On Halloween night, sometime in between taking my kids trick-or-treating and lapsing into a candy coma, I will announce the winners.

*Yes, I will ship internationally, thanks for asking, although I only have ARCs in English.

Good luck, and Happy Halloween!

Library Time, Nixed Covers, and Sequel Syndrome

2011-10-18T21:13:00.000-07:00

I am into the hard-core writing to get a draft down for Book 3, so I don't have much time to blog these days, but I wanted to tell you that today, I put M in daycare for a half day, and I drove to Malibu and spent 4 hours in the Pepperdine library, writing my brains out. And it was wonderful. So quiet and uninterrupted. I got loads done. I plan to do it again on Thursday.

Things are heating up for Hallowed, the release date creeping closer and closer. I want to have some sort of ARC giveaway tied with Halloween (Hallowed on Halloween, get it?) but haven't hit on a great idea for how to do this yet. For as creative of a person as I believe myself to be, I am dreadful with contest ideas. Any suggestions on a contest that would be fairly simple where I could give away, say 3 or 4 copies of Hallowed? I am all ears and eager to give some away. . .

And there is one piece of news regarding the UK version of Hallowed. The publisher nixed the Christian cover. I am, of course, disappointed. I loved that cover. It was my favorite of all my covers to date, I think because it channeled the feeling of Hallowed so well. But the booksellers were nervous about a boy on the cover, so Egmont UK completely redesigned it with a girl. And it's very nice. But it's not Christian. Sigh. Oh well. Such is life in the publishing world.

Happier news: Kristi at The Story Siren blog, which is indisputably one of the best blogs, like, ever, read Hallowed! And liked it! Her exact words on Goodreads were "Holy shiz!!!! AWESOMESAUCE!!!" I laughed at that and breathed a huge sigh of relief. It's crazy how much more pressure I feel about whether people will like Hallowed, not because I don't think it's a good book--in many ways, I feel it's a better book than Unearthly, more sophisticated in the telling, more powerful and more emotional on all kinds of levels, but because it isn't Unearthly.

I'm that way about sequels myself. I fall in love with the first one, and then I'm all "meh" about the second one because what I really loved about the first one was being introduced into the world, meeting the characters, discovering what the story is about with them. And the second book is a middle book, typically. A book full of struggles, but not usually solutions. The book where the characters get hurt, they fall, and then they're going to have to get back up. Not saying that Hallowed is a bummer, mind you. Clara is still Clara, after all; she's still got her sense of humor, her sarcasm, her dumb jokes. She makes me laugh as much as she makes me cry. But she is absolutely smack in the middle of her emotional struggle in this book. And some people don't like middles. They like beginnings. They like endings. But not middles.

*Refrains from biting nails thinking about it. Refers you to a blog post by Kiersten White where she basically says the same thing but way more articulately here. Tells myself to STOP READING the FREAKING reviews!!!!!

Lol. I need sleep. And some more time in the library. That is all.

Wicked Lovely Day

2011-10-11T15:26:00.000-07:00

Today I'm sick. I got approximately 1 hour of sleep last night, because my baby is also sick. Croupy, camp out with a snuggy all night on her bedroom floor to make sure she keeps breathing kind of sick. Uh to the Guh. So I am trudging around in a yucky exhausted haze, coughing, rasping like a chain smoker, hating that today was supposed to be a writing day, and it has turned out to be a delirious every-part-of-my-body-hurts day.

But hark, what news from yonder email breaks? It is my editor, and through my yucky haze I am able to glean two pieces of ASTOUNDING NEWS that makes me feel super awake in a flash.

Piece #1: They have moved the release date of Hallowed up by one week! So the new date is: January 17, 2012! Yay! Y'all can get your Tucker-grabby hands on the book one whole week earlier!

Piece #2: MELISSA MARR has blurbed my book! Seriously, I need a pinch. For a better understanding of the utmost respect I have for this woman, see here, where a year ago I got so tongue-tied in MM's presence at the Smart Chicks tour that I totally forgot to get a picture with her. I was like, "ummmmmm, hi, I'm Cindy, please sign my. . .um, copy of Ink Exchange, I really liked it, I really like you, um. . .thank you so much, ummmmm," and that was it.

Those of you who know me well know that tongue-tied is not something that happens to me all that often. She is Just. That. Cool.

Squee!!!

(later)

(much, much later)

Wow. Note to self: don't squee with laryngitis. It hurts.

I having such a surreal moment, guys, seriously. I'm flashing back to my first days of writing Unearthly, when I said to myself, "I need to read more YA, right now!" and dashed off to the bookstore where I spotted this:

on the shelf, and I thought. Well, yeah, I gotta read that. And that night I was totally freaking over whether Aislinn would become the Summer Queen or if something terrible would happen to her. It was a magical story. I fell in love with reading all over again, reading that.

So, yeah. She rocks. I am so humbled that she would have even read Hallowed, let alone liked it enough to blurb it. I am so humbled, period.

What do you know? :) It turned out to be a wicked lovely day.

Vlog in which I show you my Unearthly corkboard

2011-10-07T21:17:00.000-07:00

And now for something completely different. A video I made, showing off the giant corkboard I used when I wrote Unearthly.

Enjoy.

The Good, the Bad, and the Pretty

2011-09-22T15:10:00.000-07:00

I know I've been MIA for a while. It's fall. This is always a crazy time for me, what with school starting and book deadlines and all that jazz. But I know y'all forgive me since I have been working so very hard on Book 3.

But today I have big news!

The good: the doorbell rang today. A guy put a box on my doorstep and ran. Normally that's cause for alarm and the box just may be full of dog terds or something, but this time it was a big box from HarperCollins. I smiled big when I saw it because awesome things come in boxes from HC!!!!

The bad: the doorbell woke up my daughter right in the middle of her nap and right when I was really getting smoking on my Book 3 work for the day.

The pretty: Inside the box was:

ARCS for HALLOWED!!!!!!!!!!

Now, before I get inundated with ARC requests, let me say: um, I can't take any ARC requests this time. Sorry. Truly, I am. I fully understand your need for a Tucker fix right now (he's on page 1, people)--oh yeah, and Clara too, right?

Never fear, I will be having some contests to give away the books in this box. But if you want an ARC you'll have to contact the publicity department at HarperTeen and/or go by the usual book blogger channels. Last year I tried to handle the requests myself and it was a mess and ended up with me wanting to crawl into a corner and suck my thumb, there were so. many. requests. And that was before most people even knew there was a Tucker.

So--YAY! Even though I've been on this published-author train for a while now, there's nothing quite like opening a box full of books with my name on it. Huge rush. Huge. I need somebody to pinch me. I can't believe this is my life.

Now I have to go calm my crying baby.

UK Cover for Hallowed

2011-08-08T07:05:00.000-07:00

I am allowed to share my UK cover for Hallowed! I love it so much! It has CHRISTIAN on the cover!

SQUEE!!

Okay, I should stop squealing over it and just SHOW YOU, right?

All right, if you insist.

Here:

Seriously, I am in total love with this cover. Swoon, swoon, swoon.

First off, I love that it's Christian. I wish that more YA books had boys on the cover; it'd be a change-up from all the pretty girls in their pretty dresses. I do love my covers with my pretty dresses, but still. . . Christian! Which is awesome because Hallowed is so much about us getting to know Christian better. (Not to worry though, Team Tucker, because Tucker gets his fair share of page time.)

I love that the clouds behind him are parted like wings.

I love his expression and his stance, hands on the pockets, very much the way that Clara sees him in her vision of the fire (except she always sees him from the back).

In short, it's beautiful. It rocks my world.

What Twitter has taught me about Unearthly

2011-08-01T16:10:00.000-07:00

And now for some YouTube fun.

I have a search set up for the word "unearthly" on Twitter. (Yes, there's a post forthcoming about why I should not read reviews--just as soon as I actually decide to STOP reading reviews, ARGHH, help me, I can't stop, I can't STOPPPPP. . .)

Ahem. It's been very educational, my daily Twitter search. Here are 10 things I've learned from Twitter so far:

1. The word "unearthly" is most often tweeted in terms of the time of day. "Why am I up at this unearthly hour?" is a common one, with lots of variations. Seriously. Search "unearthly" at any time of day and most likely you will find at least 5 or 6 people saying "Why do I have to be up at this unearthly time?" This reminds me that it's, as Tucker phrases it "the butt crack of dawn" somewhere in the world, all the time.

2. The second most common usage applies to beauty: "this morning the sunset was unearthly," or "so-and-so has an unearthly beauty." A lot of guys trying to pick up on girls, this way, or nature enthuists waxing poetically about how unearthly the earth is, which always makes me smile.

3. Unearthly is the name of a beer. I am so not a beer drinker, or much of an alcohol drinker, in general. Uck. I rather think beer tastes like bear pee (not that I have ever tasted bear pee-- but totally what I IMAGINE bear pee would taste like). But it gets good reviews, as beer goes. I am happy that Unearthly beer is supposedly good. There's a guy on Youtube who does a set of beer reviews called Greg's Beer Reviews, and I got a real kick out of watching this beer-bellied (of course, right?) long-white-bearded guy talk about the sophis-ocated taste of Unearthly beer. Awesome.

4. There is a Brazilian black death/metal Cookie Monster band (you know, the type where the lead singer sounds like he is the blue furry monster shouting "COOKIE!!!! COOKIE!!!!") called Unearthly. I would give you a link but I'd like to spare both your eardrums and the sight of this guy say, wearing a bloody crown of thorns or making a cross bleed or something else to do with fire and/or blood. Just picture a big tattooed guy screaming COOKIE!!! COOKIE!!! in Portuguese and you'll get the picture. . .

5. There is another band called Unearthly Trance. This one is a sludge metal/doom metal trio from New York City (basically the same thing as above, only screaming COOKIE!!!! COOKIE!!!! in English).

6. The original Doctor Who begins with an episode entitled "An Unearthly Child."
The clip is worth watching for the music alone. . .

"Well, it must be a simple answer. . ." Ooh-wee-ooh!!!

7. There was another 1957 film called The Unearthly. What's here is the MST3K mock-up of a commercial that ran during that film, not the film itself, but I thought this was funnier. Gotta love MST3K.

8. Someone WANTS to make a film called Unearthly. It's about a girl who is lost in the Bermuda Triangle, from what I can tell. A few days ago the producers started tweeting a lot trying to get donations so that they can make the film. This momentarily freaked out a lot of my fans, who thought that MY Unearthly was being made into a film and went WOO-HOO!! WOO-HOO!!! Oh.

(A timely update on the Unearthly film situation. The film rights for Unearthly have been sold, but as of yet, nothing is on film. Such is the way of Hollywood. Lots of hoops to jump through. Some things are going forward, but I'm not allowed to tell you about that stuff, sorry. Believe me, the minute Unearthly officially gets underway as a film or TV series, I will be right here going WOO-HOO, WOO-HOO!!!)

For all those disappointed by this, I direct you to these 2 Unearthly-inspired videos. Enjoy.

This video made me catch my breath, since when I was originally writing Unearthly, the Clara in my head bore a strong resemblance to Amanda Seyfried. Can anyone tell me what movie this footage comes from?

I thought this girl did a pretty good job casting my characters! The only person that really made me go, NO, NOT EVEN, was the person she chose for Maggie. This Tucker didn't much do it for me, either, but hey, well done overall.

9. A lot of people are reading my book. YAY!!!! Goodreads has this thing where it posts your progress on a book to Twitter. So I do my little Unearthly search, and voila! so-and-so is on page 235 of Unearthly! Often I flip to the page to see what part that person's on! It always gives me a little thrill, knowing that right at that very moment someone is reading my book! How surreal is that? Awesome.

10. I should not read the reviews. Most of the time they are good but every now and then I start my day by clicking on a link for a review and pbbbbt. (See back up at the top for me screaming for help--there needs to be a hotline for authors who can't stop reading the reviews.)

That's it. 10 things. Doesn't Twitter make us so much smarter?

Come Write With Me

2011-07-26T16:45:00.000-07:00

So. The hubs is out of town. With the son. They left this morning. I have never been away from him (son, not hubs) for such a long stretch before (almost 2 whole weeks!) and he could not understand why I totally got choked up saying goodbye to him. I loves my boy! I am so going to miss him!

That said, I have deemed this: THE WEEK OF AMAZING PRODUCTIVITY. I am currently working on three projects. One of them is Book 3, which is getting the lion's share of my attention. The other two. . .well, I can't tell you about those right now. But they are super exciting and I hope you'll get to read them someday.

Three projects. I know. I am officially insane. But one thing I am definitely liking about this multiple projects thing is that if I get burned out on something, then I can just switch and work on something else for a day or so. Which is great. There is no real sense of inertia. I am always moving forward on SOMETHING.

Can I just say, my job is awesome! I was channel surfing earlier this afternoon and hit on Millionaire Matchmaker, where I caught Patti saying something like: "if I made millions of dollars and didn't need money, I would totally be hooking all these people up for FREE." That got a chuckle out of me. Way to love your job, Patti. Now go tell a girl she dresses badly, needs to get her hair straightened (since guys only really like straight hair), and lose ten pounds by the mixer on Saturday.

I clearly do not watch that show.

ANYWAY, the point: I love my job so much, even if I made millions of dollars I would totally be hooking up all you people with new stories for FREE. But for now, it pays the bills, so I just get to feel extremely lucky that I have this awesome job. Writing rocks.

And this is THE WEEK OF AMAZING PRODUCTIVITY! I am going to work every day this week! A lot! Oh yes, I am. I am going to get my dear sweet little daughter into a regular napping schedule this week. Sometime around 10ish to 12ish and 3ish to 5ish. God willing.

I don't know if y'all know this, but I wrote a lot of Unearthly while logged into Second Life. I am revealing my inner geek, I know. At the time I was stuck home without means of transportation, so Second Life was my way of getting out of the house and interacting with people, and it also has a thriving writers community, which was great. There I met my amazing and talented friend Alas Zerbino (Joan Kremer in real life) and we bought this little scrap of land in Second Life (for those of you unfamiliar with Second Life, yes, you can buy land there, yes that is crazycakes, yes, I know) and we set up a writing center there called Story Mountain, where I would occasionally teach some introductory fiction courses. And we set up a writing time during my son's naptime, and we both logged into Second Life, parked our avatars at our virtual offices, and worked for 2-3 hours a day, then shared what we wrote. It was like we were able to meet up and write together, even though we were 2000 miles apart.

Yep folks, that's me, as a virtual person, writing my virtual book, which became a REAL book. . .

Accountability is a wonderful thing. Alas was the very first person to read the very first pages of Unearthly, and I was so grateful for her shrewd comments and cheerful encouragement! (Thanks, Joan--HUGS!)

So, this week, wanna come write with me? If so, I'll be in my office in Story Mountain, sometime around 10ish to 12ish and 3ish to 5ish, PST. You call pull yourself up a virtual chair and write like a mad-person, and I will be right there with you. My avatar is Clarissa Tolsen, and a search of either me or Story Mountain will get you where you need to be. If you are not into Second Life (teens, please see my disclaimor below), send me a Tweet (CynthiaHand) or post on my Facebook wall and I will check in at the beginning and ending of my writing times to cheer you on!

(Clarissa Tolsen, the slightly blonder, slightly skinnier, WAY better dressed version of myself)

****Disclaimor. Second Life can be entertaining, and there are cool things to see there (the Sistine Chapel! The Emerald City! Mars!) and awesome ways to connect with other writers, but it is also a place where (like the real world) some pretty messed up stuff can go down. I don't recommend Second Life to teens, as I think there is a higher-than-usual proportion of really creepy creeps in Second Life, and people there are often not who they seem. Which sucks, but there it is.

So if you're a teen writer (yay you, I love teen writers! I used to be one, not so long ago!), from Wednesday to Saturday (and possibly next week, we'll see how it goes)touch base with me on Facebook or Twitter! Tell me your word count today! Tweet to me about what you worked on! But please don't create a Second Life account for my benefit. (shakes head)

We'll write together, you and me. Writing. Making the magic happen. Following our characters. Woohoo, I am stoked already!

Also, before I forget, today is the launch of two sequels I have been waiting for: Andrea Cremer's Wolfsbane and Kiersten White's Supernaturally! I am so excited to find out what happens to both Calla and Evie!

Heading off to read now.

Tomorrow: WE WRITE!

Unearthly deleted scene

2011-07-14T09:47:00.000-07:00

I thought it might be time to reveal one of UNEARTHLY's many deleted scenes. Most of these scenes were cut because of a single big change in the story: originally I had Clara and her family move to Jackson in August, just before the school year began. So I wrote about Homecoming week--and I based what they did on JHHS' actual homecoming week activities, culminating with the Powderpuff game and the Homecoming dance. Clara sets Wendy up for a date with King Brady from her history class. Clara herself gets asked to the dance by Jason Lovett.

My editor thought, and rightly so, that August to the next August was just too long a time to pass between when Clara arrives in Jackson and when the fire actually takes place. So she suggested that I have the Gardners move to Jackson in January. She also thought (and again, totally right!) that there shouldn't be two formal dances in the book.

So I rewrote the entire beginning of my book to take place in winter. And I cut Homecoming Week and the dance, and ended up cutting an entire side-story where Wendy starts dating the captain of the football team and ends up breaking up with him. Poor Wendy. In my editor's words, "Wendy always gets shafted." Her scenes so often get cut.

So, without further ado, here is the Powderpuff game, two entire scenes with Wendy that ended up on the cutting room floor. Enjoy.

*****
UNEARTHLY, first draft, Powderpuff game

Wednesday after school, Wendy hunted me down in the girl’s locker room to tell me the shocking news: she’d been asked to the Homecoming dance by Brady Hunt!

“Wow,” I said, watching her face carefully. “I guess you’re going to need my dress.”

“Yes, please,” she said. Her smile was genuinely happy.

So Tucker hadn’t narced on me.

“I still have the potato and the needle, if you change your mind about the earrings,” I teased.

“I’ll think about it.”

“Whoa, I was only kidding,” I said.

“It’s just, I didn’t even know that he’d noticed me,” she said. “It’s weird.”

“Never look a gift date in the mouth,” I said. I pulled a bright orange football jersey over my head. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into playing football.”

“The Powderpuff game is only once a year,” she said. “It’s fun. Wait until you see the boys dressed up like cheerleaders.”

I had to admit that sounded funny.

“But don’t expect me to do much,” I said. “I don’t know anything about football.”

“It’s not hard,” she said, as if she hadn’t grown up watching football. I’d watched exactly one football game in my life, one of Jeffrey’s back in California. Mom and I had both been hopelessly confused about when to cheer. Being strong and fast wouldn’t help me play this game if I didn’t understand the rules.

“Tucker’s not a cheerleader, is he?” I asked.

Wendy snorted.

“No way. He’s out of town with the rodeo team.”

That, at least, was good news.

“Come here,” she said, grinning. She smeared two black lines across my cheeks, then laughed.

“You’re one mean running back,” she said, dragging me over to the mirror. My hair chose that moment to slip out of its ponytail. I blew a strand out of my face.

“Kay Patterson’s knees will be quaking with fear when she sees us,” said Wendy.

“We’re playing against Kay?”

“Yep,” she said. “She’s on the black team.”

I grinned at Wendy, reached for the black face paint to mark her cheeks.

“Bring it on,” I said.

Christian was a cheerleader. When he came out onto the football field with the other boys he was wearing a tiny white tank top with a makeshift JHHS written on the front in marker, and an orange and black cheer skirt, unzipped in the back because it obviously didn’t fit. Someone had pinned the front of his hair to the side like bangs, and I’m pretty sure he was wearing lipstick.

Somehow, he still managed to look hot.

In spite of the fact that I didn’t have any idea what I was doing, I had fun. I took the ball when it was passed to me, threw it to my teammates when I saw an opening, jogged around where they seemed to want me to go, tried to tag the other side when they had the ball. I didn’t run too fast, or try too hard. My mom was watching, after all. I could hear her cheers from the sidelines.

It was all going well until the fourth quarter, when we started to lose the game. I wouldn’t have really cared about that except that Kay was so happily winning. She always seemed to have the ball, always seemed to be doing exactly the right thing. She looked amazing, cheeks flushed, hair dangling in one long, looped curl from her ponytail, eyes bright with victory. Not to mention that every time she made the tiniest little move, I could hear Christian cheering like she’d won the World Series or something.

It shouldn’t be legal, I thought, for anyone to be that perfect.

It would get on any girl’s nerves.

Then she actually tackled Wendy during a pass.

Whistles blew, and one of the coaches yelled a warning to Kay.

“Hey,” I protested, running up to help Wendy to her feet. “I thought this was tag football, not tackle.”

“Sorry,” said Kay lightly. “I forgot.”

“Don’t worry, I’m tough,” panted Wendy. But Kay didn’t hear her. She was already running down the field. Wendy looked at me and shrugged and gave this pathetic little smile, and I kind of lost my head. I’d show her a tackle. On the next play, I made certain to knock Kay down just hard enough to knock the wind out of her for a minute. Of course she was furious, but too breathless to make a fuss about it yet.

Then something unexpected happened.

Somebody shouted my name. I turned.

Suddenly I had the ball in my hands. I looked up, startled, right into Kay’s brown eyes.

Wouldn’t it be great, I thought, if I could just win this game right now? Leave Kay in the dust, for once?

The clock was about to run out. I glanced toward the end of the field. It didn’t seem too far away. There was a clear path, if I ran fast enough.

And I knew I could run fast enough.

I dodged Kay easily and then sprinted down the field. It seemed like everyone from both teams was running toward me. The crowd began to cheer wildly. Even the girls on the other team were screaming.

I stretched my legs and ran, tucking the ball under my arm the way I had seen Jeffrey do it that one time. The rest of the world slowed down. I could feel the crisp fall air on my face. My hair was out of its ponytail again and trailing behind me. The grass under my feet smelled freshly cut. The mountains in the background glowed a peachy gold, lit by the setting sun.

I was over the goal line. The noise from the crowd peaked in a big surge. Everyone was standing on their feet, shouting.

So this is what it feels like when Jeffrey wins a game. Not bad. I was starting to understand why he did it, why he refused to be anything but spectacular. It was a great, superior feeling.

Then I saw Kay’s face as she ran up the field toward me, and I knew immediately that something was wrong. She was smiling. Not just any smile, but a full, gloaty, victorious sort of smile. I looked around for Wendy. I spotted her much farther back, standing with her arms hanging limply by her sides, staring at me with an expression I didn’t understand.

I hadn’t run that fast, had I? So fast that I was suddenly freaking everybody out?

I spun around, looking from face to face. The girls in the orange shirts, my teammates, were looking at me in disbelief, shaking their heads. The girls in the black shirts were laughing.

I looked to the bleachers where the crowd was still standing. Jeffrey was laughing, clutching at his sides like some stupid cartoon character. Mom’s mouth set in a thin, disapproving line. I saw Christian, Christian in his cheerleader getup, running toward Kay on the field. He reached her, shouted something, and then lifted her up and spun her around in the air.

He was laughing too.

In a flash I understood what I had done.

I had run in the wrong direction. I had just scored, all right. For the opposing team. I’d lost the game.

I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. I stared at the football in my hands, then let it drop from my fingertips. It bounced away on the grass. I looked again for Wendy but she was walking away, they all were, my entire team walking off the field toward the school.

I couldn’t go back to the locker room now. Maybe not ever. I looked up into the stands and met Mom’s eyes. She grabbed Jeffrey by the arm and started to tow him toward the parking lot.

I needed to get out of there. I forced myself to walk slowly off the field, keeping my head down. I didn’t know where Mom had parked so I just picked a row of cars and started to wander down it. My vision blurred.

Mom pulled the car up next to me. I got into the back seat.

“Seat belt,” she murmured.

I fumbled with the seatbelt, finally heard it click, then slumped down and turned my back to the window.

Jeffrey coughed to cover a laugh.

“A little sensitivity please, Jeffrey,” said Mom in a low voice.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Let him laugh.”

Someone knocked on the car door from the outside, startling me. It was Wendy, still in her orange jersey, a big grass stain on the front from when Kay had tackled her. I hesitated for a few seconds. Then I rolled the window down. I wanted to tell her I was sorry, but the second I opened my mouth to speak a huge lump rose in my throat. To my horror I started to cry.

“Hey,” she said, reaching through the window and touching me on the shoulder.

I shook my head.

“It’s all right,” she said. “It’s just a game.”

I nodded miserably.

“I guess I’ll be the last one picked in P.E. from now on,” I tried to joke in a shaky voice.

She laughed. Invisible or not, she was a true friend.

“See you tomorrow,” she said. She stepped back, and Mom drove away from the school. I couldn’t stop thinking about the way Christian had run to Kay and lifted her up like that, twirled her around and set her down again, smiled at her like he was about to kiss her. Both of them still laughing at me.

That did it. I was definitely never going back to school.

*****
The next scene, I will mention, she was back at school. Hee hee.

Wow. Reading that over again today I am struck by a lot of things. Like wow, that was a long time ago. Unearthly has changed so much since then! I've changed so much as a writer since then that it reads a bit primitive to me now.

Cavewoman Cynthia writes football scene. *grunts.

But seriously. It amazes me how the simple act of writing and revising can change you from the inside out.

You might have noticed that the book was in past tense back then. About halfway through the revision process I decided to shift it all over to present tense (and you can't simply "shift" a book from one tense to another--you must, then, almost completely rewrite it, argh, but it was so worth it), because I liked the rhythm of the language better in present. It felt more immediate, and, because it was more immediate, I didn't have to worry about what Clara knew and didn't know at the time of the telling. (I could explain this more but it would wreck some stuff for Hallowed, sorry). I could simply be with Clara in the moment.

Another thing I'm struck by is how much Clara changed in that process. My editor and I were working, working, working to make Clara stronger as a character. Not that I think it makes Clara a real loser because she runs the wrong way during a football game (this idea stemmed from a particularly painful experience I had in fifth grade during a basketball game that pretty much squashed the idea of me ever playing competitive sports ever again. . .) but I don't see her strength in this scene. I only see her struggling.

All that aside, I still think it's a pretty cool scene. Wendy rocks. Poor, poor Wendy, always gets cut.

And there's Christian dressed as a cheerleader. Can't forget that.

On the Fourth of July and how dirty rotten piraters stole my air conditioning. . .

2011-07-07T10:58:00.000-07:00

July 4 is my favorite holiday of the year, for a number of reasons:

1) parades. I dig parades.

Me waiting for the parade, in my riduculous hat, which proves that you can take the hick out of Idaho, but you can't take Idaho out of the hick.

2) dressing up in fun-but-casual red, white and blue clothes

My DD is her 4th outfit, which even she thought was pretty fun. . .

3) good food, but not the kind where you have to slave all day in the kitchen to prepare

DS getting ready to chow down on corn. We also had BBQd ribs and homemade potato salad

4) summer--nice weather and crickets singing and cool breezes blowing and starry nights

5) fireworks. I REALLY dig fireworks, and I also love sparklers!

6) the movie 1776, which I endeavor to watch every year on the fouth of July. I always get a chill at the end where they are all signing the Declaration and then step into their place in the painting. . .

(this clip is not the signing part, but this really funny song about how the national bird was chosen).

And finally, reason 7) because it's an exciting day that you get to spend with family. Some years it's more exciting than others--just ask my Uncle Kim about the time my dad pointed one of those firecracker cannons at him. (On second thought, don't ask him--sorry about your pants, Uncle Kim. . .), some years somebody gets lit on fire or eats WAAAAAAY too much watermelon, but there's always togetherness, as a country and as a family. I like that. And there's always a moment of beauty.

This year my moment of beauty was sitting in my backyard in a lawn chair, my dear little baby snuggled up into my chest, seeing her wide, wide eyes as she watched her very first fireworks.

Le sigh. LOVE the 4th of July.

This year it was also slightly problematic that the 4th was on a Monday, and I had my very last round of revisions for Hallowed due on Tuesday at like 6am. So I had to fit all my parading and dressing up and cooking into much smaller time slots, and then ended up staying up until 2am revising like a madwoman, up again at 4:30 with the baby and right back to revising until 6. I had that "Idiot. I can't believe you did that" message from my body all the next day, but it was worth it. I got to have my Independence Day, and now HALLOWED IS OFFICIALLY IN PRODUCTION. Which means:

FREEEEEEEEEEDOMMMMMM!!!! I am done (okay, there will be copy edits, but that's not real hard) with Book 2. Finally! And now I am free to work on Book 3. (doing the dance of joy!)

Ahem. Anyway. How lucky am I that I get to do what I love, which is to write new books. I love my job.

There's a roadblock to all my creativity, however. It's called July. In Southern California. In a house with no air conditioner. Yesterday it was 87 degrees in the house when I sat down to write. Under these conditions, what typically comes off my fingertips is: Wow. Hot. So unbelievably hot. I need a cool drink. I need a cool shower. I need to drive to the store to buy something bogus so I can be in the cool car and the cool store. Bleh. I'M MELTING, what a world, what a world. . .

Yeah, it's not that productive.

But Cynthia, you say, weren't you complaining about this last year? Aren't you some hot-shot author now, with your book selling like hotcakes? Why haven't you bought an air conditioner?

Well, see. That's a funny story. Part of it is California's fault. That's right, CA, I'm looking at you. What it costs to buy a house in you is simply ludicrous. I could have 2 nice brand-new houses in Idaho for what we are paying for a almost-completely-unrenovated-since-1961 house in southern California. Pbbt, California. But I'm not complaining too much, since me selling Unearthly is what gave our family the ability to buy a home here. Otherwise, even though my husband has a great job, even though I teach to supplement our income, we simply could not have afforded to buy a house. And I love our house. But it doesn't have the frills. Like AC.

Shame on you, California. Shame. But I do love your beaches.

The other part of the blame lies with piraters.

Now, I say "piraters," as opposed to "pirates," because as the mother of a four-year-old boy I am obligated to think that pirates, the type with the eye patch and the shoulder parrot and the black flag with the skull and crossbones are awesome. I play the role of Captain Hook at least once a day, and my son is of course Mister Smee, and I've found that he listens to what I tell him to do way better if I phrase it like, "ARGHH, matey, methinks you should eat up all your waffle, otherwise I'll be forced to plunder it. . ."

Piraters are people who download free (illegal) copies of my book.

So not awesome.

Now, if you are one of those people who thinks it's okay to steal books, I will refer to you to Lilith Saintcrow's blog post on this subject. It has some spicy language, so be warned.

Right here.

I adore Lilith Saintcrow. Strange Angels kicks butt. And her blog is hi-larious. I am regularly stricken with writerly envy over her copious and amusing blog posts.

And on the subject of piracy, I agree with her one hundred percent.

I never thought so much about piracy until I became a published author. Sure, I'd heard of it. It wasn't something I'd ever dream of doing any more than I'd try to slip in the back door of a movie theater for a free movie or pocket a candy bar in a convenience store. My momma done taught me that's WRONG. But it really came to my attention when my own book started to be pirated.

The first time, it was a question on one of those question-and-answer websites, some girl asking where she could find my book for free. I felt obligated to respond. I said that I hoped that no one would help her to steal my book, but if she would provide the name of her local library, I would gladly send them a copy. She, of course, didn't reply.

Then I signed up for Google Alerts. Every morning I get a nice email from Google that tells me what Unearthly-related stuff has popped up on the web. Most of the time it comes up with reviews, and most of the time the reviews are nice (there's a blog post coming about why I should stop reading the reviews, and possibly why I should stop with the Google alerts--that's another day), but every now and then up pops a site that offers my book for free.

One such site, a few days ago, claimed that my book had been downloaded over 7,000 times.

7,000 times???!!! I thought. Holy crapzol.

Indeed.

Here's where the math comes in. I have had numerous estimates done on installing central air conditioning in our house. The lowest is 12,000 (yes, 12,000 US dollars, darn you California) and that was a rather seedy guy who, when I asked if that included the price for permits was like, "permits? you sure you want permits?" The highest was upwards of 20,000. Yes, 20,000 smackers. I know. Crazy.

I'm planning on 14,000-15,000.

You see where I'm going with this. On the hard copy of my book, I make about $2 for every book sold. If everyone who illegally downloaded a copy of my book actually bought a hard copy, I would make $14,000. (Of course, my agent gets 15% and I save about half of what I earn for taxes, but let's say for argument's sake that I just make that money.) That's 14,000 US dollars, people.

That's my air conditioner.

Pirating is not cool.

Now, before I get flooded with indignant emails/comments telling me how I've over-simplified this scenario on a massive scale, or how I shouldn't be writing for money but out of the sheer bliss of being a writer, or any of the other dumb-but-persistent things people say to justify themselves in this situation, I will simply say this: I don't write for the money. I write because I love it. But I also believe that I deserve to get paid for what I do, and I believe that pirating is STEALING. And my point in all of this is that, so often, people think that the little bad things they do, like slipping in the back of a movie theater or swiping a candy bar from a convenience store, don't really hurt anybody. It's not going to bring down Universal Pictures or Hershey, right?

Pirating my book is not going to bring down HarperCollins. But it does, in a very real way, hurt me.

I'll get my air conditioner someday. I'm thinking it will probably be next spring before I have enough money to fork over that much for an air conditioner. But for now, today, as I sit down to start work on Book 3, I will merely say, "curse those dirty rotten piraters!!!"

I need a popsicle.

Cover Reveal

2011-06-27T07:48:00.000-07:00

Yay! I get to reveal the cover for Hallowed!

I woke up this morning to discover that the cover had been loaded to Goodreads and was floating all over the web, which is kind of a bummer, since usually these cover reveals are a big deal and the publisher very carefully times when you can reveal them. :( No idea how it leaked out, but it leaked, so now I've been given the green light to show you all!

Yay! I get to reveal the cover!!!

So here it is:

Of course it will be all silvery and shiny like the UNEARTHLY cover was, so this image won't really do it justice. And it's blue this time. I will have to get me some blue sharpies.

I love it.

Mountains and lake in the background. Pretty cloudbursts. Pretty girl. Pretty swirly lettering with a feather.

Love.

Hope you love it too!

O Wondrous Night

2011-06-21T11:21:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I finished up the next round of edits for HALLOWED, which means that we're getting very close to having the book ready to send to production. Whew. This book has been a doozy to write, let me tell you, but of course it's totally been worth all the long hours, tears, and contractions (there was a time in February where I was having major Braxton Hicks contractions while I was trying to finish that round of edits, and they stopped pretty much as soon as I sent the draft off to my editor. Clearly I was stressed. . .).

There's a reason why writers talk in hushed voices about the terror of writing the sophomore novel.

For me, writing the second book was an entirely different experience than writing the first one. With Unearthly I spent every day for six months at my computer (generally during my son's naptime), moving along at the average pace of 800 words a day. It grew slowly, and I started nearly every writing session by circling back over what I had already written, revising as I went.

With Hallowed I didn't have anywhere near that kind of leisure. I was pregnant. Teaching two classes at Pepperdine. Working on marketing and promotional stuff for Unearthly. And running after my four year old, who no longer took his nap. To top it off, my husband had to go out of town for almost a month during the summer! It's no surprise that, under these conditions, the writing didn't exactly flow out of me the way it did when I wrote Unearthly.

During that time I wrote the following email to my agent. The subject line was : One of those nights! Woohoo!

I thought I'd share it now:
So, last night. Very hot. No AC. Been feeling horrid all day (see: hot, no AC, terrible stomach with no desire to eat anything, which only leads the stomach to become more terrible) then actually veered the car over 2 lanes when I saw the $2 sign for biscuit and gravy at Denny's. Haven't eaten at a Denny's in possibly more than 10 years. Ate the $2 biscuits and gravy, which was fine, but very Denny's quality. Drove to grocery store, bought sausage and milk to make my own biscuits and gravy. Came home. Really freaking hot in the house. Too hot to cook. Tried to write. Will's in daycare, which means I really MUST write, otherwise it is wasted money. Tried for a couple of hours to write. Like pulling teeth. Miserable. Finally went to see Inception (which I liked btw) just to cool off. Went and bought two huge fans. Picked up Will. Spent evening putting together the fans. Still too hot to cook. We ate cereal for dinner. No real writing done all day. Feeling failure stifling me like the heat. Still lately my writing has been uninspired, work, not play. Been feeling panicky about it, like can I do this? In such a short space? Pregnant and cloudy-headed and sick all the time and exhausted by 2pm? Why will this book 2 come not to me?!!!! How can a little life form the size of a pencil eraser be playing such havoc on my body?!!! Why now? Clearly casting around for a metaphorical paper bag to breathe into.

So, in essence, horrid day.

Fast forward to 2am, one of the big fans blowing directly over my bed. Woke to a huge crash outside my open window. Completely terrified, clutching baseball bat by the bed, cursing stupid insensitive husband who thought it was a great idea to leave his pregnant wife home alone. Crashing outside continues. Turns out to be a possum? Raccoon? Some large creature eating the plums out of our plum tree. I can actually hear munching.

I wait to fall back to sleep. Munching creature. Fan that sounds like an airplane taking off.

And then:

tidal wave of book 2 inspiration. I turn on the light, grab notebook by the bed, and write what turns out to be about 15 handwritten pages of notes. It just comes pouring out, complete with dialogue in places. A totally improved arc for almost the entire book, all the way to a few scenes before the end. So, in essence, an outline of the book, scene by scene, sometimes coming in order, sometimes not, but understanding completely how it all weaves together: Clara, Christian, Maggie, Jeffrey, Angela, Tucker, Wendy, even a bit of Kay. Kept going back to bed and having to reach over and turn on the light again to write just one more thing. And one more thing. And one more thing. Then laid in bed for an hour just wanting to write it all out, get it ALL on paper as quickly as possible.

Marvelous night! O wondrous night!

This morning: thrashed of course. Exhausted feeling in my stomach. Need to take Will off to tee-ball.

But first I'm going to make us some biscuits and gravy.

Looking back, I honestly don't know how I made it through, except that I was determined to keep writing. And that's the lesson I get out of all of us. Sometimes it's not easy. But keep at it, keep jumping over your obstacles, and the magic will hit you when you least expect it.

Such is the mystery of writing.

Now I'm going to go play me some video games, for the one-whole-day I'm going to allow myself to simply waste my brain power before I start working on Book 3 (which I am totally excited to get to, btw!)

And, in you live near San Diego, come to my signing at the Mysterious Galaxy bookstore at 2pm on Saturday. I'll be there with Timothy Power and Greg Van Eekhout kicking off the Summer Reading for Teens and Tweens.

What color is Clara's hair, anyway?!

2011-04-15T20:45:00.000-07:00

So some of you may of seen the UK cover floating around the internet. It's beautiful, ethereal and provoking, I think, but when I first saw it some months ago, it kind of made me laugh. I've had four covers designed for Unearthly, and each one shows Clara with a different hair color! This kind of makes sense, since in the book, Clara is a blonde but dyes her hair (disasterously, I might add) to red in Chapter 2. But now I have them all.

Check it out:

Clara as a platinum blonde, in the UK.

Then there's:

Clara as a red-head. What I love most about this one is the orange, smoky forest. And, of course, the dress.

Then we have:

Clara in purple. Ha ha. Okay, so we can't quite tell what color her hair is, but she seems to me like a brunette. (That and I know the model has brown hair. . .)

And finally:

The raven-haired Portuguese Clara. I was drinking a glass of milk when my husband showed me this cover, and I literally spit milk all over the counter. It's a cool cover, that I will give it, but Clara was showing a bit more skin than I expected. Hee hee. My husband reminded me that everything is more exciting in Portugal.

So, what do you think? Which model seems the most like Clara to you?

I am waiting with bated breath to see what they come up with for the Hallowed cover.

In other news, Unearthly is coming to ebook (yes, I mentioned this before) on April 19, so just a few days now! You can pre-order it from Amazon here.

And it will be available in the UK on May 2. Woohoo! I got my box of UK editions this week, and I am completely charmed by the way they changed the word "Mom" to "Mum," as in "I find Mum standing at the kitchen stove. . ." Love it.

And tomorrow (takes deep breath) I am showing my face to the public again, at least in the authorial sense. I am thrilled to be taking part in the Ontario City Library Teen Book Fest in Ontario, CA along with Katie Alender, Nancy Holder, Alyson Noel, and Marlene Perez from 1-4 pm. There will be a question and answer session and a book signing, so if you live nearby, come by and see me! I will also (takes another deep breath) have my baby girl Maddie with me, as she does pretty well strapped to my chest (I taught my novel-writing class with her in a carrier on Wednesday, and she was fabulous and quiet and just looked at my students all perplexed while they cooed at her).

Cross your fingers for me that she cooperates this time.

Ebook and Live chat today

2011-04-06T07:05:00.000-07:00

So, big news! The ebook of Unearthly will be released on April 19! This is me SHOUTING it from the rooftops!!!! You can pre-order your copy on Nook here. Woohoo!

Ironically, this week my Kindle bit the dust. It's a first generation Kindle that was generously handed down from my dad's wife more than three years ago, and it has been with me through it all, including a killer rainstorm when my dad and I were out fishing one time and I seriously thought we were going to get struck by lightning, and my Kindle got soaked. It was a good, tough little Kindle. My precious. Sniffle.

So. I wasted no time in ordering a new one. There are books I NEED to read, and with a newborn it is so hard to get to the bookstore (although I have been in to Barnes and Noble with M once, and she was properly awestruck). I am sorry my old Kindle didn't live to see the day that it could house the official ebook of Unearthly. . .

Also, join me today at 5pm EST for a live chat on Inkpop.com about how to sell a trilogy to a publishing house. Here's the link to the "inktips" I gave for the event, on how to create a paranormal world, and here's the link for the chat. Yay! I love live chats!

First Things First

2011-03-26T16:26:00.000-07:00

I've got a lot to catch up on, clearly, and some very cool news, but first things first.

I had my baby on March 7! Hence I have spent the last almost-three weeks in a cozy cocoon of new baby bliss, just getting to know my little girl Madeleine Grace (Maddie). I am still in that stage where I can't stop staring at her in disbelief of how beautiful she is. She is the most precious little chunk (she was 9 pounds when she was born, good grief!) in the world, and we are all head over heels in love with her.

She also has her days and her nights switched, so I am TI-RED. At 8pm her eyes snap open and she is ready to rock for several hours. So she and I are up in the wee hours, which is hard for me because I am so not a night owl; I am a go-to-bed-at 10, wake-up-at-6 kind of person. But all in all, we're doing great. We watch late-night TV. She's a mellow baby.

I love this phase when she stares at everything like she's astonished, her mouth this perfect little O.

Ahem. Okay, enough baby gushing.

In other news, I've been assured that the ebook release is right around the corner, any day now, so keep your eyes peeled for that. Plus, rights to Unearthly recently sold in Brazil and Hungary. Woohoo! Conquering the world!
Speaking of Unearthly out there on the shelves, a while back I promised you a video of Unearthly in the wild. I made this video (below), and I tried to put in at least one photo from every person who sent me photos in February. The key word here is "tried." For some reason, some of the photos didn't turn out--I could see them fine in the thumbnail, but when I downloaded them there was a little bit of photo at the top and then gray all the rest of the way down. This sucks, since there were some awesome photos that didn't make it in my video because of this. I will post the video as is, but if for some reason YOUR photo didn't make it in, email the photo to me again, as a jpeg of reasonable size, and I will try again and re-release the video.

I love this slideshow, btw. It makes me feel so proud and amazed every time I watch it. So, enjoy!

Make a free picture slideshow

And the title for Book 2 is:

2011-02-03T12:33:00.000-08:00

HALLOWED.

(Happy sigh.)

I am so in love with this title, and so thrilled that the folks at HarperTeen loved it as much as I did.

The word describes something holy and revered, which I think works on SO many levels with what is happening in my book.

(Another happy sigh.)

In honor of the occasion, I'm posting 2 music videos, the first being the only song I could find with the word "hallowed" in it that I could connect with my book:

The second video is OneRepublic's "All Fall Down," which was one of those songs I listened to again and again while I was in the process of writing Hallowed that reflected the emotion of the book.

Hallowed!

FAQ and January Bookplate Giveaway

2011-01-30T10:39:00.000-08:00

Hi y'all.

It's been a long while since my last post, but I have excuses, of course:

Excuse A) I have been super busy launching my book and going on tour (more pics and recaps of the tour to follow soon.)

Excuse B) I have been SUPER busy working on edits for Book 2

Excuse C) On top of that, I just starting teaching for the semester at Pepperdine, a novel-writing class this time. My students rock, by the way, but then they always do.

Excuse D) I am still a mom and a wife and a home-owner, and I have to keep everybody in my family alive and fed and in clean underwear and my house from getting up and crawling away. This, regrettably, takes a lot of my waking hours.

So pick your excuse. But I promise, a time is coming pretty soon where the book will be done and the semester will be rolling along smoothly and then I will start playing CATCH-UP in a major way, starting with this blog.

Until then, I wanted to answer a few frequently-asked questions:

YES, there is going to be a sequel to Unearthly! I swear, I get like four or five emails a day asking me if there's a sequel. YES! See Excuse B! Oh so yes! There will also definitely be a Book 3, and quite likely a Book 4, so stay tuned.

The sequel does have an official title, but I'm not allowed to announce it just yet. I love the title, though, and it's the title I wanted almost all along for the book.

The sequel will be out, if all goes according to plan, in January 2012. I realize that this is a horribly long time to wait. I sympathize. But that's just the publishing industry. One year between books is pretty standard, or so I'm told.

I may be biased on the subject, but in my not-so-humble opinion, Book 2 will be worth the wait. :)

On to the second most asked FAQ: Will Unearthly be available as an ebook?

YES! There will be an ebook copy of Unearthly available, I swear. And SOON. I love brick and morter bookstores so much, and I love real, printed copies of books even more, but I have to admit that getting an ereader revolutionized the way I read. So I am extremely happy to know that Unearthly will be an ebook very soon. I promise, the second it's available I will be shouting it from the rooftops.

Question 3: When will you come to my city so you can sign my copy?
This is the part where I sigh wistfully. I would love to come to your city and sign a copy for you. But it's complicated. You might have noticed the basketball-sized lump on my belly if you've seen any of the current photos of me. Yes, folks, I'm creating a life right now. A girl, who I am oh-so-excited to meet. But the one drawback is that they won't let me go on an airplane after this week.

So, at least until early summer, I think, I'm grounded. I am doing a couple of events in the area, one in Los Angeles at Flintridge Books on February 13, 4pm. And the other sometimes in February at Pepperdine--we're still working out the details. But that's about it for a while.

So, if you want me to sign a copy of my book, one awesome thing you could do is to participate in my Bookplate giveaway. Here's how you do it:

1) Go to your local bookstore and take 2 pictures, one of Unearthly on the shelf in all its booky glory (make sure we can see the other books around it, too, as part of the fun for me is seeing what company I'm keeping), and one of you holding the book.

OR if you purchased your copy of Unearthly via the internet, simply take a picture of the book is some kind of humorous situation. Like this:

Sigh. I love this photo. Two girls fighting over my book. What author wouldn't love that?

Ahem, anyway, take a funny Unearthly picture!

2) Email me the photos, along with your name, address, and the name/location of the bookstore where you took the photos. My email address: writercynthiahand@gmail.com

THEN, I will:

3) add your photos to my Unearthly on the Shelf! compilation, which I will post to my blog sometime in late February.

4) mail you a bookplate, (I had these printed special and they are all purply beautiful) which I will sign so you can put it in your copy of Unearthly and therefore have a signed copy even if you can't make it to a formal signing! I also tend to throw in a signed bookmark, just because I can.

5) choose three (3) of these entries at random and mail them a signed and doodled upon (meaning, my little comments and pics in the margins every now and then) copy of Unearthly in hard cover.

Be patient with me on this one. I might not get to the actual mailing part for a couple of weeks, see Excuses A-D, but I will get to them. I am also extending the deadline for my giveaway to February 15, so you still have a couple of weeks.

Now I'm back to working on my excuses. . .

THE BIG DAY

2011-01-04T13:46:00.000-08:00

So, the day has finally come. Happy Birthday, Unearthly!

I opened my eyes this morning to that deep silence that only comes with snow, and sure enough, it was snowing in big fat flakes outside.

Happy sigh. Call me crazy, but I am an Idahoan at heart. Winter should have snow. Yesterday when I left Long Beach airport it was 54 degrees and raining. When I landed in Idaho Falls it was 4 degrees below zero. That's nose hair cold. And I went, brrrrrrr, le sigh.

So back to this morning. I bundled up and headed over to Barnes and Noble. In the doorway I was greeted by a big sign announcing my reading on Thursday (7pm!)

The whole time I was in the store with this half-shocked surreal feeling. My. Book. On. The. SHELVES!!! It was in the New YA section, the YA paranormal romance section, in a big stack on a table marked For Teens and, to top it off, it had its own special display! I could not stop staring at it. Seriously. My book on the shelves.

Honestly I'm still a bit speechless.

My book on the shelves!!!!

Books I Read in 2010

2010-12-31T10:39:00.000-08:00

Happy New Years, everybody!

As is my tradition, today I made a list of all the books I read in the year 2010. This year, I was surprised when I counted it up and discovered that I'd read roughly 56 books this year, most of them YA (although a few of them parenting, lol, you can tell I totally have a toddler). That's a little more than one a week.

When I told my husband this number, he said, "wow, I thought you'd read a lot more books than that." I don't know if that was a snarky comment on our Kindle bill or not, hee hee, but I felt the same way: I thought I'd read way more books than one a week. But maybe it only feels that way because this year I re-read a lot of the books I read last year, but didn't add them to the list.

I'm a fast reader. I usually devour a book in one day. Kindle is a very, very dangerous and well-beloved item in our house.

So, without further ado, the list:

1. Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher (awesome book to start the year with, one of those books I was jealous I didn't write)

2. The Giver by Lois Lowry (a classic, which I loved, and immediately devoured the series)

3. Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry

4. Messenger by Lois Lowry

5. The No-Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers : Gentle Ways to Stop Bedtime Battles and Improve Your Childs Sleep by Elizabeth Pantley (because my son was having this thing where he wouldn't stay in bed!)

6. Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer

7. The Shell Collector by Anthony Doerr (re-read--this is one of my fave story collections of all time, and this year I used it for my Writing for the Professional Market Class)

8. Best American Short Stories of 2009 edited by Alice Sebold (awesome collection, read for class)

9. The Dark Divine by Bree Despain

10. The Dead-Tossed Waves by Carrie Ryan (sequel to one of my faves last year, The Forest of Hands and Teeth. I loved that one. I really, really liked this one.)

11. Wondrous Strange by Lesley Livingston (took me back to my actor days doing Shakespeare. Nice take on fairies)

12. Angelology by Danielle Trussoni (I am REALLY SUPER picky when it comes to angel books (can't imagine why :)) and for some reason I totally could not get into this one, but it might have just been the wrong book at the wrong time this go around. I will try it again this year. . .

13. Voices of Dragons by Carrie Vaughn (refreshing to have a story about dragons)

14. The Body Finder by Kimberly Derting (LOVED this)

15. Beastly by Alex Flinn (also love a good retelling of an old story, of which Ms. Flinn is the queen, after Ms. McKinley, of course)

16. The Princess and the Snowbird by Mette Ivie Harrison

17. The Help by Kathryn Stockett (had to see what all the fuss was about, and I read it and understood exactly what all the fuss was about. An amazing book.)

18. Spells by Aprilynne Pike (got my copy at a signing I went to in Idaho Falls. Came home that night and stayed up reading it.)

19. Mudville by Curtis Scaletta (a book recommended by Aprilynne Pike at her book talk the next day. A baseball book, which I enjoyed.)

20. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (who doesn't love a little Hunger Games?!)

21. Fire by Kristin Cashore (a companion book to Graceling, which I loved. And I loved it maybe even more.)

22. A Kiss in Time by Alex Flinn

23. Strange Angels by Lili St. Crow (awesome, edgy and powerful book, I thought)

24. Dead in the Family: Sookie Stackhouse novel by Charlaine Harris (meh. I usually love Sookie books, but this one. . .meh)

25. Anne of Green Gables series by L.M. Montgomery (this was like .95 on Kindle, for the whole series! I read the entire series again in about a week, totally got my Anne fix!)

26. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

27. Bad Girls Don’t Die by Katie Alender (best YA ghost story ever. I met Katie at the Smart Chicks tour, and she's awesome!)

28. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins (ah, the end. I was a bit shocked by the violence in this one, where it didn't really stand out to me in the others. Collins is MEAN to her characters, yikes.)

29. Firelight by Sophie Jordan (It had me at that wonderful opening chapter with the flight of the dragons.)

30. Paranormalcy by Kiersten White (laughed my butt off the whole way through this one. Reminded me of Buffy in a big way. Loved it.)

31. Halo by Alexandra Adornetto (see again my note on angel books, but I was amazed at how accomplished this book was for having being written by a 17-year-old. Really solid angel mythology, too.)

32. Angel Star by Jennifer Murgia

33. Linger by Maggie Stiefvater (sequel to Shiver, which was one of my top 5 last year. Very good sequel, didn't have me on the edge of my chair the way I was through Shiver, but enjoyable through and through.)

34. I am Number Four by Pitticus Lore (Sigh. I read this and thought it was pretty good. Then I found out that it's a product of James Frey's exploiting-young-desperate-writers-because-he's-ruined-his-own-name scheme. Felt instantly a bit yucky for having paid money for this book.)

35. The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson (Great book, with a powerful, imaginative premise.)

36. Many Waters (reread) by Madeline L’Engle (This is one of the books that inspired me to write about Nephilim in the first place. Re-read it this year when I discovered it was on Kindle)

37. Fat Vampire: A Never Coming of Age story by Adam Rex (funny!)

38. The Scorch Trials by James Dashner (not so funny. . .but pretty good for a sequel)

39. If I Stay by Gayle Forman (Oh lord, I bawled my eyes out at the end of this book. It was beautiful.)

40. Blue Moon by Alyson Noel

41. Evernight by Claudia Gray (superstar and fellow Dark Days author! It was a superstar kind of book)

42. Ink Exchange by Melissa Marr (lerrrrrves Melissa Marr. Got a signed copy at the Smart Chicks tour)

43. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (This book sheared off the top of my head and dumped a million thoughts into it. Amazing. I could just keep chanting amazing.)

44. Guardians of Ga’Hoole collection by Kathryn Lasky (reminded me of Redwall, and I loved. Didn't love the movie, where they condensed the first 3 books down into 90 minutes!)

45. The Unidentified by Rae Miriz

46. Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare (I think this is Clare's best book to date, and she's written a lot of great books)

47. Angelfire by Courtney Allison Moulton (another fellow Dark Days writer, and debut. Courtney is a joy, and this book is a wild ride and a joy to read.)

48. Nightshade by Andrea Kremer (Loved this one, so smart and with such great setting! I love books with great setting!)

49. Rampant by Diana Peterfreund (Okay, so I am saying the word LOVED a lot--it's been a good year for books. But this one I LOVED in all caps, and it had me brooding about those darned wily unicorns for days afterwards.)

50. Pegasus by Robin McKinley (I loved this one, was totally engrossed, until the book came to a screeching halt in the middle of the story. I actually looked up her website to see if there was a sequel, which I knew there had to be. Turns out she had written this giant like 700 page tome and just cut it in half. I felt cheated by this, somehow. I'm sure there's a blog post of mine coming on this topic.)

51. Torment by Lauren Kate (haven't quite finished this one, but I'm liking it so far.)

52. Fun and Educational Places to Go With Kids in Southern California by Susan Peterson (for those times when I'm not writing like a madwoman)

53. Desires of the Dead by Kimberly Derting (Great book. Great sequel! Also fellow Dark Days author)

54. Once in a Full Moon by Ellen Schrieber (and another fellow Dark Days author, who I am so excited to meet this January. A fun read!)

55. The Book of New Family Traditions: How to Create Great Rituals for Holidays and Everydays by Meg Cox

56. Matched by Ally Condie (and I closed out with maybe my favorite book of the year. I LOVED in all caps with lots of !!!!!!)

Phew. That's a long list. And, as I mentioned, it's been a great year for books--I liked most of what I read.

My top picks, in no particular order:
Matched
Rampant
Thirteen Reasons Why
If I Stay
Never Let Me Go
The Dead-Tossed Waves
Fire
Paranormalcy

Now I'm off to work on my own sequel. . .

3 DAYS, 13 hours, 12 minutes until Unearthly. Don't forget to read my last post about my bookplate giveaway!

The launch (5 days away!) and my new master plan

2010-12-29T11:15:00.000-08:00

So, according to my fabulous new countdown widget, I can see that right at this moment I have 5 days, 13 hours, and 7 minutes until Unearthly hits the shelves. I am already starting to get that breathless feeling. This is actually going to happen. Wow.

Monday I am flying to Idaho Falls to have a launch party at my hometown Barnes and Noble, which is actually mentioned on page 218 of Unearthly. The party/signing/hugfest will be Thursday, January 6, at 7pm. I am so excited to get to see everybody, and to share in this amazing, life-changing time with them, and even more than that, I am super excited to see teens and actual readers from my community, so please, if you live nearby, drop by and see me and get a book signed!

I will be having other signings and doing other events over the next couple of months, so please see my website News page for the schedule. Yes, I have a brand spanking new website (you may have noticed I also have a brand spanking new matching blog design), and I love it!

I am also concocting a new master plan of how to connect with readers who won't be able to make it to any of my events. Here's how it goes, all through the month of January:

1) Go to your local bookstore and take 2 pictures, one of Unearthly on the shelf in all its booky glory (make sure we can see the other books around it, too, as part of the fun for me is seeing what company I'm keeping), and one of you holding the book.

2) Email me the photos, along with your name, address, and the name/location of the bookstore where you took the photos. My email address: writercynthiahand@gmail.com

THEN, I will:
3) add your photos to my Unearthly on the Shelf! compilation, which I will post to my blog in stages, with a big final post sometime in early February.

4) mail you a bookplate, (I had these printed special and they are all purply beautiful) which I will sign so you can put it in your copy of Unearthly and therefore have a signed copy even if you can't make it to a formal signing!

5) choose three (3) of these entries at random and mail them a signed and doodled upon (meaning, my little comments and pics in the margins every now and then) copy of Unearthly in hard cover.

Sound good?

Unearthly on the shelf

2010-12-21T07:01:00.000-08:00

This has to be quick, since I am still cracking, but I have to take a minute to WOOHOO about a couple of things:

First, Unearthly is on the shelves in Australia! I vaguely knew about this, but yesterday I was pleased as punch to receive these photos from a fan, showing my little book on the big bad shelf. Here they are:

Here Unearthly is featured on the YA Recommended Reading Shelf. I'm sensing an angel theme. . .

And here it is in the regular YA section. I like that the heading on the shelf is Teen Spirit.

What a rush, to see my book on the actual shelf! And only 2 weeks from today, I'll be able to see it there in person! Woohoo!!!

Ahem. So, second thing--my official HarperTeen trailer is live!

Woohoo again!

Now back to cracking. . .

Cracking

2010-12-20T08:06:00.000-08:00

I just received my first round of notes on Book 2 from my editor, which means, while it was nice seeing the light of day up here on the sunny surface for a few weeks, now I've got to dive down again. Back to the cave. And, like with my revisions of Unearthly, there are wrecking balls crashing through the carefully-constructed house that is my book, which is painful but necessary, even more necessary than last time.

Because this book has to be wonderful.

Here's why: This is a sequel. In my lovely editor's words, it has to be fabulous, in some ways even more fabulous, than Book 1.

Something that has kept me up nights is Richelle Mead saying, after she read my book and gave me that wonderful blurb, that she was laying awake at nights wondering what would happen next. As in Book 2. A few days ago, Melissa Marr tweeted that she was definitely going to read my Book 2. Melissa. Marr. These people, in my world, are rock stars. And they are waiting for my Book 2. As are the tons of readers who have read Unearthly and then promptly bombarded me with emails about how there has to be a Book 2, where's Book 2?, when's Book 2 coming out?, we can't wait for Book 2!!

No pressure or anything. :) It's a nice problem to have, my dad keeps reminding me. Yep. It's the kind of problem you dream about, as a young writer. And Unearthly leaves some definitely unresolved issues. Yes, I'm aware. Let me tell you about the first draft, which ended on the line, "Come with me." on page 427. Talk about cliffhangers.

So. Back to the writing I go. I've found that I always go through a seriously emotional process when I get notes back: first, I mourn. I wallow. I cry and feel stupendously sorry for myself. Then I rage. I contemplate killing off characters just because I can't think of how to deal with them anymore. I doubt everything. I seethe with anger, because my book, which I worked so hard on, is not perfect. Not even close to perfect.

And then I get over it. I accept that the book is flawed, that I, as a writer, even with all my fancy degrees and know-how, am deeply flawed. I tell myself what I tell my students: real, gut-wrenching, wrecking-ball revision is what separates the amateurs from the professionals. I remind myself that I trust my editor. I look back over the notes. I see the wisdom in what she's telling me. And then I get cracking.

Right now I am still cracking on Chapter 1, which is slow progress, but the book is shaping itself up in my mind and the first chapter of a sequel is a very tricky thing, dangit!

This whole revision process is complicated, this time around, by the fact that Unearthly hits bookshelves in 2 WEEKS!!! And I still have my website to finalize, swag to get organized, a gazillion interviews to do and a tour to prepare for. ( I am still stoked, so freakishly excited, about going back to my hometown of Idaho Falls for the launch! Not to mention the Dark Days tour!) Plus there's Christmas and family and finals week at Pepperdine.

This takes the word BUSY to a whole new level. There have been times over this past week where I've wanted to scream, to no one in particular: Just. Let. Me. Write!!!!!!!

Again, nice problems to have. This is also the part where my dad says something like "houses are built by putting in one nail at a time," and everybody in my life, my husband, my parents, my friends, all start chanting, "You can do it!" (Thanks, everybody in my life.), except my son.

He just wants to know why he can't have a candy cane for breakfast.

The Dark Days and Tour Dates

2010-12-07T18:36:00.000-08:00

Okay, so watch this. Go ahead, I'll wait. . .

Yep, it was awesome, wasn't it? The first time I ever watched this I sniffled a little. And every time I've watched it since then, I've got the chills. It's very, very cool--super surreal, as a matter of fact-- to be part of something like this.

28 days until Unearthly hits the shelves!

So. The time has come to announce tour stuff. Keep checking back, as this will change, but as of today, I will be going to these places on these dates:

January 6, 2011, 7pm: Barnes and Noble, Idaho Falls, IDAHO. This is a signing (my first signing!) but really, in my mind, a launch party, my dream location to launch my book from, as Idaho Falls is my hometown and a key scene from Unearthly takes place there (in fact, there is mention of this particular Barnes and Noble, even, on page 218 of my book). So, if you're in the area, please come out and I will sign copies of my book and try to appear authorial and dignified and not jump around all crazy and squealing. I don't know if I'll succeed. Come share this day with me!

January 13, 2011, 4pm: Copperfields Bookstore, Petaluma, CALIFORNIA (near San Francisco). This is the first Dark Days of Winter event, with me and the fabulous Ellen Schreiber. I can't wait to meet her!

January 15, 2011, 2pm: Borders Bookstore, Redmond, WASHINGTON (near Seattle).
Dark Days event, with Ellen Schreiber and--squee!--Kimberly Derting. I am a huge fan of The Body Finder and can't wait to read the next book, Desires of the Dead.

Sometime at the end of January/beginning of February: I will do a reading/signing at Pepperdine University, in Malibu, CALIFORNIA. Still working out the details. Stay tuned.

February 13, 2011, 4pm: Flintridge Books, Los Angeles, CALIFORNIA. This is a Writer2Writer event with me as the guest speaker.

And that's it for now! I am so excited about it, so eager to meet my readers, meet these amazing other authors, and just stoked to be out there in the real world with my book.

See you there!

News from Carlsbad

2010-11-16T08:11:00.000-08:00

So, all this time that I was in my writing Carlsbad Caverns, I accumulated a bit of news. We're seven weeks out from Unearthly's release on January 4th, and it seems like every few days something amazing happens. Reviews are pouring in like crazy on Goodreads, people are pre-ordering the book on Amazon, and all kinds of fun stuff like the completion of the book trailer is happening in the meantime. So keep checking back, because these things are all going to go live very soon.

The rights to Unearthly have sold in a number of foreign countries, bringing the total list up to:
Germany
Portugal
Spain
Poland
the UK
and Australia/New Zealand, which will publish in January as well, with this lovely cover:

Squee! I love my US cover oodles, but the Aussie cover really took my breath away! Just look at that smoky forest!

This past week a few of the big reviewers have run their reviews of Unearthly, and they've all been positive.

Kirkus Review said:
After receiving visions of saving a teenage boy from a forest fire, 16-year-old Clara Gardner (one-quarter angel-blood), her half-angel mother and her younger brother relocate from their suburban California home to Teton County, Wyo., so Clara can find this mysterious boy and realize her angel purpose. Despite the ever-growing surge of angel stories and its hefty length, this solid debut novel stands out with even pacing, fully developed characters, vivid descriptions of the West’s rugged beauty and Clara’s independent spirit. As she learns more about her gifts and angel lore—particularly fallen angels known as Black Wings—from her evasive mother and a fellow angel-blood classmate, Clara struggles with her mother’s expectations of her purpose (is she just a heavenly puppet?) and her desire to acknowledge her human side (does she have any control of her own life?), as well as her feelings for both Christian, the boy from her visions, and rodeo star Tucker. The cliffhanger ending, with an unexpected twist, leaves plenty to ponder until the sequel. A divine supernatural romance. (Paranormal romance. YA)

And Publisher's Weekly also gave Unearthly a STARRED review, which is beyond awesome.

To top it off, my author page on HarperTeen went live this week.

I've sent my draft for Book 2 to my editor now, which means I'm no longer caught in the tunnel vision of writing all the time--so I can actually pay more attention to all this stuff. I know I've said this before, but it's incredibly surreal. Yesterday I was chatting with fellow debut writer Courtney Allison Moulton, whose book Angelfire is coming out this spring from HarperTeen, and she said, "When are we going to wake up?" I knew exactly what she meant. This feels like the best dream ever.

Now to catch up on my emails. . .

Pressing SEND

2010-11-09T07:28:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I turned in a draft of the as-of-yet-untitled Book 2 (yes, for those of you who have just finished Unearthly and have been fretting over it, there is a sequel) to my lovely editor, F, at HarperCollins. It was quite the emotional experience when I pushed SEND. It took me back to this same week last year, when I sent F my first revised draft of Unearthly.

Here is one of the most important things I learned this past year:

I am extremely lucky/blessed to have an editor like F, who, in this crazy-busy day and age in the publishing world, still takes the editing part of her job so seriously. F has a gazillion things on her plate at any one time, (seriously, a GAZILLION) but she never loses sight of the book. She doesn't say, "okay, good enough," and move on to the next item on her to-do list. She stays with the book, with me, until the book is as finely crafted as it can possibly be.

Last year when I turned in a draft of Unearthly to Farrin, I thought it was pretty good. It was all polished up, in my mind.

I had no idea how much better it would become. It is worlds better. And that's all because of F.

I heart F.

So as I pressed SEND this time, I was so excited, because I knew that this new book was about to get the benefit of F's discerning eye and amazing brain. And I got so emotional about it, because I know that it's about to go from something "good enough" to something wonderful.

Pressing SEND also was a big relief because it means, at least for a few weeks (until I get my first round of edits back from F), that I can have my life back. You know how I talked about "the cave" before, the place where writer's mysteriously disappear to when they are working on their books? I have been in the Carlsbad Cavern of writerly caves this past couple months. As evident by my lack of blogging. Or emailing people back. Or doing dishes/laundry/pretty much anything else. All my time and energy has gone into WRITING. THIS. BOOK.

And now it's out of my hands for a little while. Le sigh. Now I can have afternoons at the park with my son. And homecooked dinners again. And time to knit, because it's getting cool out, (as cool as it gets for Southern California) and my fingers always get the urge to knit this time of year.

Take a deep, cleansing breath with me, won't you?

Smart Chicks Really Do Kick It

2010-09-21T16:17:00.000-07:00

I have been writing. Writing, writing, writing. Book 2, Book 2, Book 2. And sometimes talking about Book 2 to my husband, who patiently listens and even throws in his two cents occasionally as I try to work out my novel's issues out loud with him. And writing some more. And dreaming about Book 2. And listening to music that particularly inspires me for Book 2. And researching stuff I need to know about for Book 2, the rodeo, for instance. And talking into my voice recorder, which mostly happens while I am driving, the recorder swinging from my rearview mirror while I dictate dialogue and plot points and genius ideas, all for Book 2.

In other words, I haven't been doing much but writing these days.

But yesterday I made an exception, because the Smart Chicks were here. This is a group of YA authors who are touring all over the country this month, a fun and rowdy and talented group of women who all have amazing books. Last year, when I was writing Unearthly, I read all the YA books I could get my hands on, for research, I told everybody. But really it was because I loved reading them! And so many of those books were written by these women.

(Smart Chicks Pasadena from left to right: Rachel Caine, Alyson Noel (behind), Margaret Stohl, Melissa De La Cruz, Kami Garcia, Melissa Marr, Kelly Armstrong, Rachel Vincent, Mary E. Pearson)

I am a total fangrrl, is what I'm saying. So I packed myself up and made the one-hour trek in LA rush hour traffic to Pasadena to see them. Geek to the core, I arrived an hour early, went straight up to the info desk to grab my signing ticket (at these things, the lines to have the authors sign their books is so long they give you a number, so they can call you inside the bookstore in groups) and spent the next 15 minutes agonizing over which books I wanted to buy to have signed. Up until this moment I had thought the Kindle was the best invention ever. Now, because I read almost everything on Kindle, I had nothing for the authors to sign. There were just so many books, and so little money!

I settled on a few books, then headed outside to this nice little area where the Smart Chicks would be presenting. I found myself a good seat. I met all the women sitting around me. Seriously, one of the girls sitting right next to me brought more than 30 books from home to be signed. 30, people. Seriously. I was worried for her back, lugging that bag around. I was worried for the authors' cramped fingers.

A couple of my Pepperdine students showed up, so we chatted about the difference between literary readings and YA signings. Here's the difference in a nutshell: screaming. Especially when the Smart Chicks started handing out ARCs of their latest books. Screaming, jumping, wild cheering. That and I've never heard fans of Ron Hansen or Annie Proulx play MarryShagCliff, where the fans name the character from the author's book whom they would like to marry, the one they'd like to um, kiss, and the one they would throw off a cliff.

(Kami Garcia tries to explain how height was not a factor in who contributed more to the novel Beautiful Creatures, written by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl.)

The writers seemed be having loads of fun. I've been to some literary readings where the writers looked like they'd rather be getting their teeth pulled, so I found all the fun and games refreshing. And the fans. . .wow. Did I mention the screaming? My students, of course, were far too cool and sophisticated to get so excited as the wild-eyed, book-laden YA fans, but my student Lauren proved to be pretty adept at snagging stuff out of the air when the authors started throwing book-related knick knacks and gifts out to the crowd. My other student in attendance, Zach, was simply trying to maintain his testosterone level in this large crowd of mostly women. Oh, what students will do for extra credit. . .

(Melissa Marr answers questions from the fans)

I, for one, was encouraged by the enthusiasm of the fans. Some of these people could be my fans someday soon. And that was indescribably cool to think about. And humbling, in a way.

After the authors answered questions and played and riled up the fans, they retreated inside to an upstairs section of the bookstore. I was milling around with the other folks, waiting for my number to be called, when I bumped into another fabulous YA author/ fellow fangrrl in the audience: Katie Alender. Katie's book, Bad Girls Don't Die, was the best and only ghost story I read this year--I picked it up off the shelf of a Barnes and Noble because of its perfectly beautiful and creepy cover:

(This book was awesome! See Katie's website here)

I was so excited to meet Katie that I hugged her. She was nice enough to not get too freaked out. We had some time to talk as we waited for our numbers to be called, and it was so great, just shooting the breeze about our current deadlines and our experiences in publishing and our writing lives. I would have driven the hour just to meet her. I'm sure I sounded starved for companionship, but really, that's what I am. I need the companionship of other writers, YA writers especially! That's been largely missing from my life since I moved to California, and it's something I yearn for (here's the part where my husband says, "what I am, chopped liver?" and I say "no, dear, but you're my husband, you don't count" and he looks all offended). I need me some writing peeps!

Finally my number was called and I got to go inside and up the stairs, where the Smart Chicks were sitting at long tables signing copies of their books. First I got to meet Mary Pearson, who wrote one of my favorite books this year, The Adoration of Jenna Fox. I own this book on Kindle but bought a hard copy, I liked it that much. In fact, I remember turning to my husband after I finished reading it and saying, "Well, I wish I had written that." Very cool book.

I was completely tongue-tied when I got to Melissa Marr. I managed to get out that I had bought a book for her to sign for my old friend and college roommate, Amy, who adores Melissa Marr. A-dores. And she said thank you and then said something nice that I didn't catch because I was so star struck, and I totally forgot that I had my camera. Now kicking myself that I didn't get a picture with Melissa Marr. I did get pictures with some of the other authors, but most of them didn't really turn out because, in order to get a picture, the author had to lean forward and I had to lean way back over the table, which is not the best angle for me.

Everyone was sooooo nice. Margaret Stohl even pulled off her own name card and signed it for me when I told her how much I loved Beautiful Creatures, but alas, it was on my Kindle!

(Margaret Stohl's name card, which reads "Cynthia is a beautiful creature." Aw.)

After the signings I went back downstairs and found Katie again, who was still outside waiting. It was a long line, did I mention? She mentioned a group of YA writers in the LA area called the LA YAs. Woohoo, writing peeps! Then, after a little more talk with her, I went home. Through traffic (although not so bad now, as it was close to 8pm), in the dark.

(the drive home--don't worry, traffic was fully stopped on the freeway when I took this pic; I don't click and drive)

I didn't mind at all.

This Just In

2010-08-16T07:32:00.000-07:00

Wow, am I ever overdue for a post! The summer has flown by, and I am shocked that it's already time to start putting my syllabi together for the classes I'm teaching at Pepperdine this fall. Usually I get so excited at this stage, anticipating all the amazing students I'll meet this year and the great stuff I'll read from them and all the good talks and laughs we'll have, but this year I'm like, wait, WAIT, I haven't finished Book 2 yet! I thought by this point I'd have a first draft! I'm not ready!

Did I mention that the summer has flown by?

Here's the latest book news:

This week I signed my contract with RCR Pictures for the film rights to Unearthly! Woohoo! That contract was a fun read, just thinking about all the amazing possiblities, my book as a film or TV series, consultations, premieres, and my free copy of the DVD when it comes out! Now, to clarify, selling the option rights does not mean that the book will absolutely be made into a film--the producer still has to find a studio, a script, and a budget-- but it is the first step. And it is way exciting! (doing a little happy dance)

This was also a week for firsts, like my first author guest spot on a reviewer's blog. I contributed to the Angels v. Zombies week, which was such fun to be a part of. Angels kicked butt! (of course)

I got my first blurb for the book! I won't say who, since it's not officially on the jacket yet, but I am thrilled that a writer whose book I really enjoyed read my book and had such nice things to say about it. Blurbs are a hard thing, I realize now. I started out with such high hopes, asking a bunch of writers whose work I loved, and then, one by one, they all started to say, sorry, but I'm too busy, I don't have time to read your book. I tried really hard to see it from their side, and understand: they are usually working on the next book of their series, marketing the last book of their series, and have a giant pile of ARCs on their desks that publishers want them to read for blurbs. They are VERY busy. But it was hard not to become discouraged. My editor sent me a very sweet, encouraging email listing several of Harper's books that did very well without any blurbs at all, but I was still disappointed. And then this morning, lo and behold, a YES. And not only did she read the book, she loved it! It's a very good feeling.

This week Unearthly also pushed over the 1000 mark on Goodreads, of people who marked the book as "to read." It's crazy for me that more than 1000 people already want to read my book. This time last year I was just finishing my first draft of Unearthly, just thinking about sending it to me agent, and now. . . somebody pinch me.

Ow. Thanks.

Now back to writing book 2.

Hot summer days with no AC, and very few ARCs

2010-07-22T21:43:00.000-07:00

This is turning out to be such an interesting summer, one adventure after another. At the moment I am back at home trying to survive July in southern California with no AC. I have bought all kinds of exotic and wonderful fans in the last couple of weeks, but haven't yet given in and spent the bucks for a bona fide air conditioner. We've been holding out and saving our money to replace on existing 22 year old furnace and have AC installed at the same time. Which is expensive. So we're saving.

I grew up in Idaho, where my brother and I used to clap our hands with glee when it was colder than 20 below zero outside, because it meant there was no school and we could go sledding. That's cold so nippy it freezes your nose hair. Cold that crunches under your feet. Cold, I can deal with. I'm a champion with cold. (At least, that's what I say now, although when I was back in Idaho last Christmas everybody started calling me a California wuss. . . must have been all that wussy shivering I did.)

I'm a total wimp with hot. So this last week, when it got up to the high 80s (which meant it was like 85 in my house) I was like a wilted flower. I panted. I complained. I bought numerous fans and set them to blow directly on me. I went to movies just to cool off. Which was really a drag, because what I wanted to be doing was writing.

Another thing that caught me off guard this week was requests pouring in for ARCS. Right now I am getting between 2-4 requests for ARCs PER DAY. This is really great, because it means that people are interested in UNEARTHLY. I love that. But here are the amount of ARCs I currently have:

That's not very many. 9, in fact.

So, for those of you interested in getting your hands on an ARC, here's the deal:

Please email me at my gmail account, not my Goodreads account, since then I have to filter everything I do through Goodreads. In your request, please include all the relevent information about your blog or website or review AND an address to have the ARC sent to. That way I do not have to email you back asking for an address. What I will do then is forward your request to HarperTeen. They have many, many ARCs. Please be patient, since it takes me some time to sort out these emails and forward them in chunks to my people at HC, and it takes them some time to sort through them too. I would LOVE for you to read my book! If for some reason HarperTeen decides NOT to send you an ARC, and you really, really want one and have all kinds of good reasons you should get one, email me again. I'll see what I can do. In the meantime, please know that I will soon be setting up a contest or two to give away some of my ARCs. And that ARCs will also be available on various ARC tours.

Also: I love interviews, yes, I'd love to do interviews and chats and guest posts, because I LOVE the idea of having real (and virtual) contact with my readers! I love talking about Clara and her world! (I'm writing LOVE a lot this post, sheesh. . .) But again, please be patient. I am still working out my schedule for everything, so if you've emailed me about an interview, sit tight for a bit and I promise I will email you back. Also keep in mind that the book doesn't come out until January 4, so it makes more sense for me to appear more often in the month or two leading up to my release date. And, um, after January 4, when people can then rush out and buy my book. :)

Whew. And that's all I have to say about that.

My Cover is Showing

2010-07-12T07:44:00.000-07:00

Okay, so my cover has started to float around a little, up on Goodreads and the Harper catalog, so I think the time has come to reveal the cover myself. But here's the thing: the cover that's floating around is the cover for the ARC, not the official cover. My people at HarperTeen tell me that they're working on creating a digital copy of the REAL cover, which reflects how the image will appear when it comes out in hardback this January. The cover is being printed on silver foil with a violet overlay, which means that everything that shows up as white in the ARC image, will, in fact, be silver, and it's shiny and sparkly and when you turn the book in your hands you will be able to see much more of the background behind Clara.

So here's the unofficial cover:

Even this way, I think it's gorgeous. If you agree, please vote for it in the Goodreads Beautiful Covers of 2011 list here.

SQUEEE!!! I've been waiting for ages to share this cover! So glad I finally can! When I get the new and improved pic I will post that too!

Big Apple

2010-07-03T07:31:00.000-07:00

Just got home from a few days in New York City. It's been such a surreal week, completed by the fact that Drew Barrymore was on the airplane on the way home! And I was reading a real copy of my book (yes folks, the ARCs have arrived!) during the flight.

I'll back up. Here's my week:

Monday: Flew non-stop to JFK. Met my agent for dinner that night at a Korean restaurant. Had roast duck in lime sauce, wow, so good. I adore Katherine, and it was beyond wonderful to finally meet her in person. I felt like we immediately fell into a natural, easy friendship. And I was so thankful that she made a point to spend a lot of time with me this trip, just so I wouldn't feel alone, country bumpkin in the Big City.

Tuesday: This was the big day for me, the whole reason I came. In the morning there was a meeting about my book at HarperCollins. I came into the conference room and there, sitting on the table with the fruit tray, were three real copies of my book! The Advanced Readers Copies (ARCs, as I said before) have been printed. Yippee! (I tried not to shout yippee at the meeting. . .) There were lots of people at the meeting, enough that I finally gave up trying to remember everybody's name--my editor and her assistant, Katherine, marketing people and sales people and people in charge. And they all seemed to have read the book and liked it. I sat at the end of the table and they talked about how much they loved Unearthly and asked me questions about how I came up with different ideas and about the characters and about my schedule for winter.

After that they hustled me over to a studio and shot the author's video. That too was crazy surreal, especially when they had me look into the camera and say, "Hi Barnes and Noble readers, I'm Cynthia Hand, author of Unearthly," and then like 6 other bookstores, one after another. I hope the video turns out okay--it's so weird being a writer at this stage, because writing is such a solitary act and then suddenly they drag you out into the spotlight and you have to perform, in a way. I should be okay at this: I minored in theatre, was in probably 25 or so plays way back when, but I still thought it was hard. A lot of pressure, like this is a huge chance to connect with my reader, this is a part where I am actively selling my own book. I really didn't want to screw it up. But then I tried to remind myself that it will only get easier with time, just like with teaching when at first I was stiff and partially terrified during every class I taught and now I'm relaxed and enjoy myself so much. So too, with this marketing stuff.

After the video I hung out in my editor's office for a while and then we headed off to lunch (me, Farrin my editor, and Catherine, her assistant). Again, the food was amazing. New York definitely has some fantastic restaurants, and the people taking me out all the time always knew the best places, so I dined like a queen on my trip. Yum. And again, it was wonderful to get to interact with these people face to face.

After lunch I wandered over to Rockefeller Center and took the Top of the Rock tour, which meant I rode the elevator to the top and looked out on the city. I noticed, not for the first time in NYC, that I am not terribly comfortable in elevators crammed with people. I got someone to take my picture at the top:

Notice that I'm clutching a book--yep, it's MY book, actually an ARC wrapped in the hardback cover sample they gave me. Notice also the lavender shirt I'm wearing--my good friend Kristin Naca (HarperCollins poet herself) Fed-Exed the shirt to me at my hotel. She knew I was having a tough time deciding on what to wear, which she fully understood because she had to do a video interview with Yusef Komunyakaa for the MTVU award. So she sent me the shirt, which turned out to be perfect. It evens looks good with my book, which has purple overtones. Don't I have awesome friends?

That afternoon I headed downtown to Curtis Brown to meet up with Katherine again, and got to meet my other fabulous agents: Holly, my film agent, and Ginger, my foreign rights agent. So fun to sit in a room with them and just get to know them a little. By this point I'd been smiling so much that day that my teeth were all dry. Afterwards Katherine and I caught a movie (Cyrus, pretty funny) and had some dinner. Again with the delicious food.

It was a day that seriously felt like I could have dreamed it up. Even now it doesn't feel totally real.

Wednesday: my birthday. I woke up early and headed over to the Met (the Metropolitan Museum of Art). I had intended to spend a few hours there and then walk around Central Park but I ended up spending lots of hours there, since it was so huge and it had such amazing stuff! It has a whole Picasso wing! It had multiple paintings by famous artists: Monet, Matisse, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Cassatt, Degas, the list goes on and on. It also has an amazing Egyptian exhibit. (I'll load the pics to facebook.)

Then I went to Broadway to see Wicked. I have wanted to see this show for ages, since I've been an avid fan of Oz since I was a kid and read Maguire's book when it first came out. And it was great. I had to laugh at the little boy behind me who kept complaining, "Why do they always have to sing so high?"

After that I walked back to my hotel and rested for about an hour, then headed off again to the East Village for dinner with Katherine and Farrin at a little Mexican place. Again, spectacular food and company. Riding back to my hotel in a cab, I was overtaken by a wave of sadness that it was all over. The trip I'd been wildly anticipating for months was pretty much done.

Thursday: Airport. Drew Barrymore on the plane! And then home, home, home, where my son looked so delighted to see me that it totally melted my heart. Later, as I was putting him to bed I said, "I missed you so much. Every day I woke up and thought, where's my little boy? I miss him!" and he said, "I was right here, Mommy, waiting for you to come back." Aw.

It's good to be home. And writing again, moving forward into Book 2. And yesterday I got the galleys in the mail, my last chance to comb through Unearthly and make changes. So that's what I'll be up to the next few days.

Hot Topic

2010-06-11T09:10:00.000-07:00

There's been a lot of buzz lately about angels being "the new vampire," the new wave of books that young adults are reaching for. This past April this article ("Host of books appear as angels become theme of new teenage reading cult") appeared in The Guardian, which discusses the trend and mentions a whole lot of upcoming angel titles. Then yesterday I read this article, ("Hot Wings: Notes On My New Best-Seller") in The New Yorker, which is a hilarious look at a writer attempting to cash in on the angel-market. I love her use of the word "mangel."

I thought the Guardian article was very interesting, and noticed with some relief that the angel books mentioned were very different than my own. And I had a good laugh at the New Yorker article. But to be honest, both articles left me a tad unsettled.

The reasons: First off, there's the idea that my book is part of a new craze sweeping the book world. I knew this. When my book was being considered by HarperCollins I knew that they were actively seeking an angel-related book, and I just hoped that my book fit the bill. And it did. Which rocked. It's good to have written something on a topic that people want to read about. My husband says that success in the publishing world is a lot like American Idol: most of the time it comes down to song choice. You need to choose something that's current and contemporary and showcases your talent in the best possible way. So I apparently chose a good song.

But here's the thing: in my case, it's completely accidental. I didn't write a book about angels because I thought that angels were going to be the new "it" thing. I wrote the book because Clara's story came to me so clearly and fiercely that I couldn't help myself; I had to write it. And it was a lot of fun to write!

Part of me kind of cringes every time I think about my book as part of a trend, because trends pass. Fads come and go. I want UNEARTHLY to be more than part of a trend. I don't want it to be dismissed as "just another angel book." But c'est la vie, I guess. Song choice. And I chose a song that everybody's singing.

The other thing that being part of a trend means is that there is pretty fierce competition. Or so I'm told. When I was first networking with other writers I came up with the idea of forming an angel brigade, a group for writers who wrote about angels, a kind of support system. I was informed early on (by other writers, not HC or my agent, mind you) that this wouldn't work because the other angel writers would be too competitive. Which makes sense. I think. But I myself don't really feel very competitive with my fellow angel writers. I think there's bound to be a few similarities between our books; just as vampire books usually have blood-drinking, avoidance of sunlight, fangs, superpowers, etc, so angel books will probably have wings, some element of bright light, maybe some ability with languages and a flaming sword or two--all part of the angel framework. But when I read the angel books, I usually just want a good story. Like any book. I don't feel particularly threatened by other angel novels because I feel like Clara's story is so entirely her own.

Okay, enough on the angel topic. I'm still working out how I feel about the whole thing.

Book news:
There's a lot of news, bear with me.

This month I sold the audio rights to the book, which means it will become a book on tape. I got wildly excited, for some reason, about the idea of reading the book officially, of having it be my own voice on the tape, but then I was told that this probably won't happen. My own voice, that is.
I sold rights to Australia! Woohoo! Thanks Ginger, my agent for UK/Australia, for staying up late to make the deal.
I also sold rights to Germany! The book will come out in German next summer, and I am totally happy over it. I was in Jackson when I heard the news and coincidentally sat next to a German family at a restaurant, and I wanted to hug them all. I wonder how they will translate the title UNEARTHLY. . .
There is one other thing that is not official yet, so I shouldn't share, but there is one more big woohoo in order!
one of my students made an awesome book trailer. She loaded it to facebook here. It was so exciting to see her take on the book.
Unearthly is available for pre-order on amazon! Still no cover image yet, but people can now order the book here.
I recently sent the opening chapters of Book 2 to my editor at HC. Commerce hard-core writing on Book 2.
Two of my fave YA writers agreed to read my book to see if they want to blurb it. Squee!
I booked my trip to NYC for later this month. I'm going to finally meet K in person and spend some time over at HarperCollins getting to know the team!

Other news:

I am home, finally. Just spent a month in Idaho/Wyoming/northern California, which was great, but I am glad to be home. And it's a new home; I moved in on a weekend and left on a Monday, leaving a lot of boxes to be unpacked. I've been totally occupied for the last few days, just finding places for things and discovering things about the new house. (I love the new house!)
I should wrap up this blog. More news later--and I'll tell you more about my trip to Jackson Hole.

Playing Catch-up

2010-05-20T08:05:00.000-07:00

So I've been busy: finals at Pepperdine, moving to a new house, and before the boxes were even unpacked I headed off to Idaho for some decompression time. Right this minute I am sitting in a hotel room in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. My room overlooks the Tetons and a horse corrall; I'm in bliss. But more on that later.

In my time of radio silence a lot has happened: I've sold the audio rights to the book and my agent is working on foreign and film rights, which is crazy. HarperCollins hired a model to represent Clara and shot the photos that will be on the covers for the first three books. Then they printed up a trial-run cover for UNEARTHLY and shipped it to me. I had to pretty much open the package, look at it, and then ship it back. (I wish I could show you, but I think I better wait for the big cover/launch date reveal until HarperCollins tells me. . .) Needless to say, it was a beautiful cover.

All of this is getting pretty surreal. This time last year Clara was a ghost haunting me, an image in the back of my mind. Now she's real-represented by a real, flesh-and-blood person on a real cover with real pages being printed about her. When I told my dad about Harper hiring the model (they had a casting call where over 100 girls showed up) he said: Good job! You're causing employment! I had to laugh at that. Yes, that ghost in my head is now keeping lots of people plenty busy.

So that's news. But the thing I REALLY want to write about is that I got to meet with Aprilynne Pike. In person. She came to Idaho Falls to do a reading and some school talks, and was sweet enough to meet me for dinner last week. For those of you who don't know Aprilynne (read Wings! Read Spells!), she's a HarperCollins writer whose debut novel, WINGS, spent 8? weeks on the New York Times bestseller list last year and whose sequel, SPELLS, debuted a couple weeks ago at number 4. See her awesome blog here. Not long after I got my offer from Harper I emailed Aprilynne and asked if she might mentor me a little bit, being that we're both from Idaho (Aprilynne lived in Driggs, which is very close to Jackson Hole, where my book is set) and we're both moms and writers, and all the HarperCollins people could not stop gushing at how great she is. And she and I have emailed back and forth for months, and she has given me such great advice and encouragement.

I will try not to gush at how great she is. Dinner was great; Aprilynne was friendly and fun and a font of useful information. Afterwards, I went to her reading, and I was so impressed with her easy, energetic presence in front of the crowd of adoring fans who'd gathered at the Barnes and Noble. She talked a lot about the publishing process and what it's really like (as opposed to in the movies where writers always write a novel in a montage that last a couple of weeks and then sees their book on the shelf almost immediately) and read from the book and made them laugh and signed copies and stood up to have pictures taken with them.

The whole time I was thinking: Wow. Wow. Wow. I hope I can do as well as this when my time comes.

The next day I went to my old middle school: Rocky Mountain Middle school and watched Aprilynne do a talk. And she blew my socks right off. Middle schoolers can be (hmm, how do I phrase this?) hooligan monkey children. Do they ever have a lot of energy! But Aprilynne immediately held their attention and got them involved and answered their questions. She was, in short, amazing.

See now, I'm gushing. Sigh. The whole thing was a great big dose of reality, a "this is what's possible" moment. And it was scary and wonderful. And, oh yes, surreal. Let's not forget surreal.

Afterwards I went up to my dad's house in the mountains and spent the next few days writing, writing, writing, on book 2. And then I came back to IF for a day and then headed up to Jackson. Tetons! Horses! More on that later.

The cave, part 2

2010-04-29T18:05:00.000-07:00

So there was a part of the cave experience I forgot to mention: copy editing. This was a hardcore process with many, many hours involved, after which I lapsed into a mini-writerly coma that I am just now waking up from. So now I am REALLY coming out of the cave. That and I just turned in the grades for the semester at Pepperdine and I am ALMOST done buying a house. So I am nearly to the light at the end of the tunnel, which, in my mind, is Book 2 and Idaho.

In May my son and I are off to Idaho for my bi-yearly visit I am totally stoked, as usual. Idaho's my heart's field. This is funny since when I was a teenager, I really desperately wanted to get out of Idaho. Now I can't wait to get home. So every year I spend a few weeks visiting my old haunts in Idaho Falls and going to Jackson Hole and the Tetons and Yellowstone (which are all, coincidentally--right? :) settings for UNEARTHLY), a week or so at my dad's house way up in the desert mountains, fishing and riding around on ATVs and antelope-watching, and a week or so in the Boise area catching up with the oodles of friends I have there. It's wonderfully restful time for me. That and my mom tends to watch my son in the mornings so I can write. Which is good, since the first few chapters of Book 2 are due very soon.

The highlights from this year's Idaho bliss will be going to a reading by Aprilynne Pike in Idaho Falls on May 11. She's a fellow HarperCollins YA writer who has been such a fantastic mentor to me during the publishing process. And I've never met her in person. And now I'm going to! Squee! (Aprilynne's on tour for the sequel (SPELLS) to her bestselling novel (WINGS). I'm determined to get a signed copy of both! Squee!!!

And I am returning to Jackson Hole High School. Last year the principal was super sweet and welcomed me to haunt the halls of his high school for a couple of days. This was such valuable time for me--I had written about 2/3 of the book before I arrived at the school, ironically the entire school section of the book, but even so there was SOOOO much I learned by going there. I took gads of pictures and interviewed the students and teachers on a whole range of subjects, and then I came home and rewrote a bunch of the school sections to make them more specific to JHHS, and I was amazed at how great that turned out--the school really came to life for me.

(me at the top of the tram at Jackson Hole ski area, last May)

So now I'm going back to do the same sort of thing with Book 2. But last year I was this dreamy little writer who flattered them by wanting to write about their school. This year I am a soon-to-be-published author with a major publishing house, and they know that people are going to read what I write, and I know that people are going to read what I write, and it feels very different. I just hope that I can convey my admiration of the school and share part of this amazing experience with them.

The crazy days have begun

2010-04-08T13:52:00.000-07:00

I have now officially entered production time. So far this week I've looked over the jacket copy and the galley copy of my book, written my bio for the back of the book, and sent an entirely new author photo to HarperCollins. It's all becoming more and more real.

Couple this with the fact that my agency is sending the book off now for certain foreign rights and film rights. So we're back in the time when crazy news could come in any day. And, in the meantime, more people are reading my book and every now and then I get a really wonderful call or email from someone who really loves my book. Already. And it won't be published until winter.

This is encouraging. I went through a little panicky time right after the novel went into production where I seriously could not step back from my book enough to know whether or not it worked. I completely trust my amazing and brilliant editor at HarperCollins, but I had completely lost my own sense of the book. So now it's great that some people who are involved in this publishing/agenting/acquiring rights process are letting me know that they love the book. It's a wonderful feeling to have even a few fans, even if they are at this point all professionals who are reading my book for professional reasons. It gives me a sense of just how much I'm going to love having YA fans and getting to connect with them.

Very exciting time!

Coming out of the cave

2010-03-31T07:24:00.000-07:00

Phew! What a couple of months it's been! I've been in what some of my other fellow writers call "the cave," where we all disappear for a while while we revise our novels. I am so happy to announce that UNEARTHLY went into production yesterday, which means that while there may be a few little changes here and there, I am largely finished writing this book.

Now comes the really fun stuff, seeing the cover HarperCollins comes up with and writing the acknowledgements and marketing and the part where my little Word file becomes a real book, like Pinocchio becoming a real boy. I am beyond excited. It seriously feels similar to how I felt when I got engaged to my husband and knew that this wonderful wedding day was looming in the future.

Oh, and for those of you who are curious, I picked photo #4.

More soon!

Author Photo

2010-02-16T14:01:00.000-08:00

This week, in addition to completing this round of revisions with HarperCollins (almost done, crossing fingers!), I also have to fill out my author questionnaire and send in a photo that will be my official "author" photo for this book. I am really stuck about which photo to send, so I'm asking for your vote. I've narrowed it down to four:

Choice #1: This one is ideal, because I am rather desperate to get a picture of the Tetons somewhere on my book (the mountains are an integral part of the setting of the novel) and this would be a sneaky way to do it. Still, the lighting is a bit off.

Choice #2: Here's another with the Tetons and again (argh!) the lighting is not great. My husband pointed out that in Choice #1 and Choice #2, you can tell that I'm taking my own picture.

Choice #3: I include this one in black and white because what's behind me is actually mud, which doesn't look great, but I like the picture well enough. One thing that good author photos evoke, I think, is the sense that the writer could represent the main character (good luck with this for me, ha!, since my MC is a 17-year-old strawberry blonde ANGELIC being).

And Choice #4: my go-to author photo, with books in the background. I think every writer everywhere has a photo like this stashed away, standing in front of books with a contemplative expression, like you're just about to sit down and whip out the next great American novel.

So, let me hear from you! Which photo would YOU see on the back of a book and say to yourself: "Hey, this writer looks like she could really tell the kind of story that I would love to read!"

Officially Signed and Noted

2010-01-05T21:56:00.001-08:00

Today I signed my contract and sent it to HarperCollins. I know it might seem a bit late for all of that, but it took a long time to get the contract smoothed out. In fairness to my agent, she had it ready for me to sign well before Christmas. But silly me, I had some questions I wanted to ask first, so I had to wait until everybody was back from the holidays. Yesterday I asked my questions. K, as usual, answered beautifully. (I seriously think I could watch K muck horse stalls and still think she was one of the most amazing people ever.) And so today, I officially signed my life for the next few years over to HarperCollins.

And now they can officially pay me. Woot!

I also got some notes back from F today.

Now, I've been waiting for these notes for a while now, and I was completely out-of-my-mind excited to get them, no matter what. I like revision--most of my published short stories are far, FAR different from their first drafts. There are two types of revision, I tell my students. The type where you come into the room and rearrange the furniture and dust the cobwebs and then stand back and admire the nice, tidy place you've made for yourself. And the type where the contractor informs you that the wiring is shot, and most of the walls will have to be torn down, and before you know it a sledgehammer is swinging wildly through your work. This is the part in all the home makeover shows where everybody has just a little too much fun destroying the old kitchen cabinets. And after the dust settles and you've carted all the junk to the dumpster, you roll up your sleeves and start rebuilding. When you're done, the place is at a whole new level of beauty, something you never even imagined before.

I'm all about type 2 revising. Really. And I intend to have a good attitude with F, as in confident, hard-working, amiable writer.

But when I read the notes, I vaulted straight into wallowing. Which I understand is completely irrational! When I read the notes now, a few hours later, I see the genius in F's ideas, her expertise at work, making the story tighter and stronger and better. She's not asking me to rewrite my book from scratch or cut something I absolutely loved or anything terribly drastic. But for about an hour after I got the email I stumbled around our apartment with a sheen of tears in my eyes, nauseated and stunned. I told my husband that it felt like I'd been hit in the stomach with a two by four. He had the good sense to hide his bafflement at my odd emotional reaction and just give me a hug.

And now, I'm back. Rational once again. Excited once again. Which is good, because tomorrow morning I am going to meet F in PERSON for breakfast!!!!

More tomorrow.

Books of 2009

2010-01-01T19:06:00.000-08:00

So today I put together a comprehensive list of the books I read in 2009. This year I read more books, did more writing, and listened to more music than probably the 3 years before that, combined. My creative self was definitely awake and hungry.

So, here it goes:

Water For Elephants, Sara Gruen
The Painted Veil, M.Somerset Maughan
Our Story Begins, Tobias Wolff
City of Thieves, David Benioff
The Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett
Unplugged Play, Bobbi Conner
Twilight, Stephanie Meyer (after seeing the movie on DVD)
New Moon, Stephanie Meyer (had to read the rest, didn't I?)
Eclipse, Stephanie Meyer,
Breaking Dawn, Stephanie Meyer
Graceling, Kristin Cashore
Eternal, Cynthia Leitrich Smith (after I started my book, I started to read the other angel-related books out there, for research)
A Great and Terrible Beauty, Libba Bray
Kissed by an Angel, Elizabeth Chandler
Harvesting the Heart, Jodi Picoult
The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Neffeneger (reread)
The Myth of You and Me, Leah Stuart
Wild Ink: How to Write Fiction for Young Adults, Victoria Hanley
Writing and Selling the Young Adult Novel, K.L. Going
Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv
Vampire Academy Series, Richelle Mead (thank you Amyjo, for donating this collection to me)
Angel, Cliff McNish
The Fallen, Thomas Sniegovski
Negotiating a Book Contract, Mark L. Levine (read the day I got the book deal offer from HarperCollins!)
Impossible, Nancy Werlin

Books I read on Kindle: (I got this is June, as a birthday present from my dad, and instantly fell in love. It threw open the doors, WAY, WAY open, to reading. It also busted our budget on books.)

The Host, Stephanie Meyer
The Book of Enoch (all the cool people are reading it)
Marley and Me, John Grogan (reread)
On Writing, Stephen King (reread)
Emotional Life of a Toddler, Alicia Lieberman
Dead and Gone, Charlaine Harris
Rebel Angels, Libba Bray
Wicked Lovely, Melissa Marr
Scream Free Parenting, Hal Edward Runkel (can you tell I have a toddler?)
The Shack, William P. Young
Anne Shirley Series, L.M. Montgomery (reread—all one file in Kindle! sent me back to the early days)
Grave Sight, Charlaine Harris
The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (reread)
Marked (House of Night) P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast
Evermore, Alyson Noel
Little Women, Louisa Mae Alcott (reread)
The Lightning Thief, Rick Riordan
The City of Ember, Jeanne Duprau
The People of Sparks, Jeanne Duprau
The Prophet of Yonwood, Jeanne Duprau
The Diamond of Darkhold, Jeanne Duprau
Playful Parenting, Lawrence J. Cohen
The Angel Experiment, James Patterson
Cirque Du Freak #1, Darren Shan
Glass Houses (Morganville Vampires), Rachel Caine
Wings, Aprilynne Pike
Bird Eating Bird, Kristin Naca
Hush, Hush, Becca Fitzpatrick
Meridian, Amber Kizer
The Savvy Author’s Guide to Book Publicity, Lissa Warren
Shiver, Maggie Steifvater
The Forest of Hands and Teeth, Carrie Ryan
City of Bones, Cassandra Clare
The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
Prom Nights from Hell, Meg Cabot and others
Wake, Lisa McMann
Bones of Faerie, Janni Lee Simner
Fallen, Lauren Kate
Beautiful Creatures, Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
What Happened to Cass McBride, Gail Giles
The Summoning, Kelley Armstrong
The Maze Runner, James Dashner
Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates
The Luxe, Anna Godbersen
Switch, Carol Snow

That's just shy of 70 books, not to mention the loads of samples I read on Kindle that I was too poor to buy! If I had the pick absolute favorites, I'd choose The Painted Veil, which was genius, The Host, which was my first Kindle purchase and I didn't put it down for 3 days, The Forest of Hands and Teeth, which had me up all night chewing my nails to see how it ended, and The Hunger Games, which I thought was pulled off just beautifully. In close second: Shiver and Wings.

Phew! When I look at the list I see myself curled up for hours and hours, lost in the world of books. Which was a wonderful place to be!

Novel Teas and High Aspirations

2009-12-31T20:31:00.000-08:00

When last I blogged, which I realize guiltily was about a month ago, I was waiting on the notes for my novel.

Still waiting. Which is really no big deal, in the larger scheme of things. I want my editor to take her time and be thorough. (I am trying to repeat this, as many times as necessary, until I relax.)

This lapse in writing has given me time to stew on my story and get a bit of headway into Book 2. Everyone, including my agent, my parents, my husband, and my readers for Book 1 (they simply just want to know what happens next) wants me to work on Book 2. According to my contract, the synopsis and first five chapters of Book 2 are due March 1. This alarms me. Not because I don't think I'm capable of writing so much new stuff in so little time (that I know I can do-- heck, the synopsis is already mostly done and I've written some good preliminary stuff) but because I don't feel like I'm in the proper mental condition to begin writing hardcore on the next part of my story. I'm in this terrible state of limbo, where I don't know if I'm going to have to make major changes to Book 1 or smaller ones. So as I dip my toe into the pool of Book 2, which is warm and inviting but will still take several months of hard laps to complete, I hesitate. My mind wanders back to Book 1. I think of scenes. I think of little changes I want to make. I wonder if F will want more of this character or that backstory, if she'll want me to cut 25,000 words or add 25,000. Either way, I would be excited, really. I swear. I try to imagine reading it as F does, and then my entire novel gapes open with the sheer possibility of all that it could be. And Book 2 fades from the forefront of my mind. I'm still treading water in Book 1.

Still, I tell myself, I should work on Book 2. I can't afford to waste time complaining about silly writerly things like limbo and burn my creative energy coming up with clever metaphors that describe my current situation. I need to WRITE. I'm getting mentally flabby.

When I first became a "serious" writer, I made myself get a ritual. When I was going to write, I retreated into my bedroom, where my computer desk was settled in front of a large window. I often slanted the blinds to block out the sight of the rabble of kids who were always hanging around the tennis courts below, and gazed up into th perfect blue sky. I made one cup of tea, Earl Grey, decaf, with milk and sugar, which I brewed in a special tea pot and drank from a special tea cup. In silence, I donned a long black sweater coat, sipped the last dredges of my tea, and began to write. I thought that if I dressed writing up in as much ceremony as possible, it would be easier. And, to some extent, it was. The ritual made me take myself seriously.

This Christmas, my dear friend Wendy sent me a package. It was tea, NOVEL TEAS, to be precise--tea bags with literary tags like "She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain" by Lousia May Alcott. At one point in my life, I would have squealed in delight at this incredibly sweet gift. Now, when I opened the package, I smiled at how thoughtful Wendy was to think of me, her "accomplished writer friend" as she put it, and I plan to thoroughly enjoy the tea, but it occurred to me that I haven't had a cup of tea in ages. When I wrote this novel, I always had to hurry and write before my son woke up from his nap. I had to get the words down before I had to see to dinner or the next mountain of laundry or stack of papers. I wrote in my office, at the kitchen table, in the classroom when my students were working on their own writing, I wrote with a voice recorder dangling from my rearview mirror on the perilous canyon road to and from Malibu, I wrote in a notebook on the shore of Jackson Lake, I wrote everywhere I could find space and time. I had no more time for ritual.

Funny how we change without noticing.

And now I tell myself: WRITE. My single New Year's aspiration: Write every day, shooting for the good ol' thousand words, until I get the notes and finish Book 1 and then finish Book 2.

There's a very cool story waiting to be told.

I think I'll have a cup of Novel Tea.

Waiting

2009-11-30T15:26:00.000-08:00

Right now I'm waiting to get notes back from my editor at HarperCollins. It's nerve-wracking business, this waiting. I've decided I'm not very good at just chilling while someone else reads my manuscript. I'm sizzling with nervous energy, checking my email every little bit, anxious to get on with the next part, the next step of this process. I am so eager to revise my book under my editor's care, just to see it become better and stronger and worthy of what I feel is the incredible honor that's been bestowed on me. I want to work!

Next week I'm teaching revision strategies to my creative writing students at Pepperdine. That's where I try to show them how much fun the revision process can be, how cool it is to tinker and play with a story, to tear down and rebuild and reenvision everything. I show them a really early draft of a story I wrote a long time ago, and then the published version that was printed years later, and together we marvel at how far a story can come. And when I read that old story, I am always filled with a sense of awe and mystery of how the story shaped itself into something wonderful. I get excited with the sheer possibility of writing.

Here's what I hope from this process with Unearthly: I hope that I understand clearly what to do, and have the ability to do it, be it big changes or little ones. I hope that I will be able to fix it quickly, but thoroughly. Most of all I hope that what emerges is a rock-solid book, of course, something I will look back on with a sense of delight and amazement that such a thing could come from me. And that I'll be able to survive all the stretches of waiting that are before me in the next few years.

And the title is. . . .

2009-11-23T18:07:00.000-08:00

That's right folks, I now officially have a title for my book!

I seriously didn't work even half this hard to name my son. I've been up late nights staring up at the ceiling, pondering, rolling different words and phrases around in my mouth like hard candy, seeing how they taste. I've received so many great ideas from my friends, family, and students (thanks, everybody, for your awesome possibilities!) and scoured the pages of my book looking for it to be hiding in there somewhere. And guess what? It was! This title jumped off the page at us from a list of words and phrases I found in the book during my last pass at revision. And the amazing people at HarperCollins agreed (unanimously, even!) that this is the one.

So the title is. . .

UNEARTHLY

What I love is the sense of mystery and possibility in this simple word, and how it operates on so many levels that speak to not only the arc of Clara's story, but the world she comes to know.

Yay! So glad that it's settled! So excited thinking about this word on the cover of MY book. (And now, we do the dance of joy!)

Ahem. Now, back to work.

Stephanie Meyer and Pudding on the Brain

2009-11-21T23:06:00.001-08:00

Tis the season for Twilight. I realized this in Nordstrom's, where I was perusing the makeup counters and came across the new Twilight lip gloss: Venom. It's this strange mix like those science experiments in grade school where you put oil and water in a 2 liter soda bottle with a little food coloring and spend hours shaking it up and watching it separate. With Venom, it's a clear substance and a dark red stuff churning around in a tiny $16 container. The clear stuff is a gloss with a plumper in it, which tastes like cinnamon and is supposed to irritate your lips enough to swell. The red stuff is meant to stain your mouth the color of blood. And in the five minutes I was standing there, the clerk sold three vials.

Twilight lip gloss, people. A sign of the apocalypse? :) I can't help but wonder if Stephanie Meyer thinks it's absolutely bonkers too. I've been thinking a lot about Stephanie Meyer lately. I remember her in those earlier interviews, where she was just aglow with the excitement of it all. She was having dinner with her characters, in costume! She was sitting on a movie set while they shot the meadow scene! Could a writer's life get better than that?! And last week I saw her on Oprah and she looked. . . strained. And I wondered, have we crossed the threshold where everything's gone from really super cool for her to where it's just totally insane?

Lately I've seen a lot of attacks on Stephanie Meyer and the Twilight saga. I can't cruise around Facebook without seeing some comment about how lame Twilight is and how stumped people are (especially other writers) by its success. Some of this I rack up to the anti-mob mentality. In order to feel like they are true individuals with good taste, many people will staunchly oppose the "it" thing. Titanic. Harry Potter. Twilight. And there's something to that, I suppose. I cried like a baby at Titanic, but even I was ready to chuck my radio out the window when "My Heart Will Go On" came on for the umpteenth time every hour. There's such a thing as death by overexposure.

Like most "it" things, I came to Twilight late. I'd heard of it. But I was busy. I only started to pay better attention when the movie came out. I love movies. And I love vampires. I am a Buffy fan to the core, and a big fan of Sookie Stackhouse to boot. So I rented Twilight the weekend it came to DVD. The first thing I remember thinking about it was that I would have LOVED it when I was sixteen. I would have been writing fan-fic about Bella and Edward for sure. And at age 30, I still found it mysteriously compelling.

So I went off to Barnes and Noble and bought the book. Then went back that afternoon to get Book 2. And the next day to get 3 and 4, which I read in less than 48 hours. After I finished the series, I sat down, stared at the mound of books on my desk and thought, I could do better. Now I have to laugh at the outright arrogance of this assumption, but my novel hadn't come to me yet. I wasn't thinking in specific terms. I was just thinking that I was a writer, a practiced, educated writer, and I could write something better. I could immediately see Meyer's flaws. The books seemed to me full of rookie mistakes, which makes total sense as Meyer never wrote so much as a short story before she came up with Twilight. I joked that if I had to read that Edward's voice was like velvet one more time I might have to choke somebody. I would have, in those days, completely agreed with Stephen King in his infamous interview last February (Meyer is a good storyteller, he claims, with something unique and compelling to offer her readers, but "can't write worth a darn.")

But that was BEFORE I wrote my novel. When my novel did come to me, not much later, Stephanie Meyer was constantly lingering in the back of my mind, and not simply because of her success, not because she supposedly sold Twilight for a $750,000 advance or made 52 million dollars last year or all the other things that make her the epitome of what it is to be a triumph as a YA writer. But because I knew more about her by then. She was a mother with small children. And one day she just started writing, not to become a gazillionaire or a world-famous author, but because she wanted to know how a story ended. And she wrote to find not only the story, but herself again.

I could relate.

And I was finding that being a good storyteller is a heck of a lot harder, in many, many ways, than being a good writer. I've always had a good ear for the language. But the story, the complexities of the characters, the way you have to keep all their threads untangled in your head, the way you must set them in tense, powerful moments that resonate with the reader and follow through with them, that, is really freaking hard. And with that kind of thing, the proof is in the pudding. And Stephanie Meyer is all pudding, no matter what you think of the writing itself. Her story speaks to people. That's undeniable.

When I find myself tempted to come to Stephanie Meyer's defense these days, I remind myself: pudding. The girl can take care of herself. So I'm content to simply cheer for her, to show solidarity for a fellow writer. And I try not to envy her for her incredible success. And I try to allow myself to dream of big things, because sometimes big things happen to unsuspecting people, and sometimes the little things can change absolutely everything. Sometimes the universe gives you a gift. A story. And it's worth it.

I know that even if my book doesn't make a dime, that's the case for me.

YA Soul Sisters

2009-10-29T15:03:00.000-07:00

I've been reading Steve Weber's Plug Your Book, which is all about how to use the internet to market your book and yourself as a writer. Too soon? You'd think so, since my novel is not due out for more than a year. But Weber claims that, in the ideal world, a writer would begin to publicize a book 3 years before it's published! Crazy, I thought. But then I was a good student and got right to networking my bad little self.

In a week's time I've made connections, some by email, some via facebook, with tons of YA soul sisters: Melissa Marr, Aprilynne Pike, Cassandra Clare, Alyson Noel, Richelle Mead, Carrie Ryan, Becca Fitzpatrick, Lauren Bjorkman--the list just goes on and on. And everybody is so incredibly welcoming. It's like they're all sitting in the nice warm waters of the publishing pool, and I come to the steps and timidly say, "I'm a debut author with HarperCollins, book out next year. Can I join you?" and they wave me over and call out, "Come on in, the water's great!" I got goosebumps (which you'll find ironic, if you know anything about the book) when Maggie Stiefvater responded to my facebook friend request with a sweet congratulatory message. I read her novel, Shiver, a few weeks ago during a time when my own revisions were really making me sweat, and her book was so lovely, so tense and well thought out and beautifully written that it gave me hope that my book could be good too.

I wonder if writers in the other genres are even half this sweet?

Like a Madwoman

2009-10-26T20:07:00.000-07:00

Bear with me, people. I've got a November 6 deadline to meet. Which means that I am currently revising. . . (see above)

More posts around Nov. 7. I swear.

Get Smart

2009-10-16T18:05:00.000-07:00

Every time I call my dad this week, he asks, "Are you any smarter today?"

A funny way of putting it, I guess, when he's basically just asking for the latest news on my book.

I always say, "Yes, I'm smarter."

Boy, am I ever smarter.

Things I learned about the publishing process so far, things I will tell myself if I am lucky enough to ever have this happen again:

On celebrating the sale of your book: Consider your health, please, for the love of God, please think about your poor body and what will happen if you march yourself over to Barnes and Noble and order a huge Pumpkin Spice latte. The combination of adrenaline over your amazing news and the gigantic dose of caffeine will have you shaking like a leaf within twenty minutes. Eyes like roadmaps of Georgia within an hour or two. Finding previously undiscovered patterns in the plaster on your ceiling at three o'clock in the morning.

Then, when you continue your celebration the next night by enjoying a heavy Italian dinner and two glasses of chianti plus a glass of champagne at the end of the evening, you will suffer. You will remember that you don't drink. That you typically go straight from fine to sick. You will feel like crap when you are supposed to be feeling great.

Just say no, dear.

On the passage of time: Time moves differently for you and the publisher. When a publishing house says that they want to publish your book fast, this does not mean fast in your time, but fast in publishing time. As in Winter 2011. Which seems like a long way off. Take back what you said in the previous post about your book being on the shelf in a year. But, you will quickly learn, fast in publishing time also means FAST. As in "you need to have a polished draft to your lovely editor for the first round of editorial revisions by November the 6th, 2009." As in "final draft due January 11." As in "quick, we need your ideas for the book's cover in the next twenty minutes so we can present them in a meeting."

Roll with it, C.

On your priorities: Remember that you have a family. People who count on you to think about them once in a while. If you forget this and spend a week floating on Cloud 9, your head in your book all day, talking about nothing but your book, your book, your freaking book and how exciting and terrifying and crazy your all-important book is, they will inevitably revolt. Your husband will get that glazed look in his eyes whenever you open your mouth. Your kid will resort to jamming play dough into his ears.

It's a pretty steep learning curve.

WHOOHOO!

2009-10-09T18:53:00.000-07:00

Turns out I didn't have to wait very long today. K called me around 8:30 a.m. "I have great news!" she said. I sat down. Then she told me that HarperCollins wants to sign me for a 3-book deal on my series. She talked about some of the details that she was still working on with the contract, explained that it might be a month or so before it is all finalized, but "there are no deal breakers," she said, so it's really a done deal. She advised me to have a glass of champagne tonight.

Then she asked me if I was still there. For once, I was completely speechless.

"Yes," I stammered. "But you'll have to send me some of what you just said in an email, because there's no way I'm going to remember it all ten minutes from now."

She laughed and said she would. Did I mention that I heart K?

Since then I've been in a bit of a daze. I took my son to the park. I called my friends and family. I received about a hundred congrats in different forms on Facebook. I still couldn't quite make myself believe it was all true until, during my son's nap, I went to Barnes and Noble for a celebratory Pumpkin Spice latte. I stood in the middle of the store, breathed in the smell of coffee and new books, and promptly started to cry.

At that moment it hit me that I have changed careers in the past 24 hours. Before: adjunct professor in creative writing and SAHM. Now: Novelist. From now on, I am actually going to be paid to write. Better still, I am going to be an Author. A year from now, my book will be on the shelf in that Barnes and Noble.

It's no wonder I started sniffling.

Then I bought a copy of Mark Levine's Negotiating A Book Contract and read it from cover to cover. Good stuff.

I don't know a lot of the details yet, like when the book will be published or what's going to happen next. But it is, without a doubt, one of the best days of my life.

Big Day

2009-10-09T06:01:00.001-07:00

So today's the day (supposedly) that the decision gets made. I'm trying to keep cool, go about business as usual. But during my workout this morning my heartrate was unusually high, and there's a quivery excitement in the pit of my stomach, followed by moments of intense dreaminess (oh, to publish my book! For money! For a career, finally, in writing!), trepidation (oh, the disappointment if it's rejected! The pain!) and resignation (I realize that the whole thing, at this point, is completely out of my control).

And so the hours creep by. . .

A Week to Wait

2009-10-03T08:11:00.000-07:00

K informed me last night that the editorial board will meet NEXT Friday (I think that this Friday is when F submitted the manuscript to them). So I have an entire week to hold my breath.

Another Small Step in the Right Direction

2009-09-30T20:02:00.000-07:00

Here's the news for the week: the editor at the publishing house, F, likes my book. She will be submitting it to the editorial board (the people who really make the decision) sometime in the next few days, and hopefully they will decide to buy it. She had a list of suggestions for changes and questions she wanted me to answer about the book and the series as a whole, but overall she liked the voice, the story, and the writing in general.

So for the past few days I've been working hard, steady, and with great energy. And K has been working tirelessly as the intermediary between me and the editor, passing F's notes along to me and my revisions back to F. K says that even if this publisher decides not to buy the book, she thinks that she'll be able to find a place for it somewhere. So, no matter what happens, right now I am brimming with hope and possibility.

It's a very exciting time.

The New Scoop

2009-09-22T17:37:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I realize that I haven't posted in a while. But I have a good reason. I was busy. Really, really ridiculously busy, working on my novel. But for today, I can make time. Because today was a monumental day in the life of this humble writer.

Today my agent submitted my book to a publishing house. Which one, I probably shouldn't divulge just now, but suffice it to say, it's one of the Big Ones.

How this came about is a bit of a complicated story.

When last we left our heroine, she had just heard from her agent and was feeling a tad discouraged by all the work she had ahead of her, all those chapters to revise and pages to comb over. She knew—okay, it’s weird talking about myself in third person—I knew, when I sent the novel to my agent, that I still had some major revisions ahead of me. I was just hoping to do those revisions with a publisher. Silly, idealistic me.

So when K gave me a page-long list of revisions she wanted me to work on before she submitted the novel to a publishing house, I was disappointed, and thought maybe I’d given the draft to K too soon. I looked over the novel again and it looked lumpy and malformed. How could I ever have thought it wonderful? I stuck out my lip for about two days, then stretched my fingers and started again at Chapter 1.

I worked on Chapter 1 for about a week, and by the end of the week, I was excited again. I could feel the story shaping up. Even in that short time, I felt I knew my characters so much better than before. It was great progress. But it took a whole week. And I had 19 chapters to go.

This brings me to Wednesday morning, September 9th. When there was a very big email from K.

Here’s what it said in a nutshell: K has a friend who is a YA editor at the big- publishing-house-which-will-remain-nameless. K was chatting with this friend when she just happened to mention my novel. Her friend confessed that the publishing house was “desperately” searching for a YA novel on the exact subject of my book. K elaborated on my story, which seemed wholly different than the other manuscripts that were currently under consideration at the publishing house. Her friend said she was dying to read it! K said that I was currently revising the manuscript, and it could be a while before it was ready, but would the editor consider taking a look at the first few chapters and a thorough outline? Her friend said yes, she would.

What do you think? asked K in the email.

What do I think? I think I’d better get my butt to work on the next few chapters and a thorough outline! And so I set off, fingers blazing.

K didn’t impose any real timeline on me, but she also emphasized that the publishing house was currently looking at other novels on my subject, so it would be a good idea to get my manuscript in there FAST. To say that it was a stressful week is a laughable understatement. I won’t get into the details, because they aren’t pretty. It involves major overhauls of Chapter 1, a sudden death in the family which took me to Oregon for five days, and me chewing my fingernails to the quick out of sheer nerves.

But I finished. I polished up Chapters 1-3 and sent them to K on Saturday around midnight. Then I fell into a fitful, exhausted sleep. I talked to K yesterday, and she liked what I’d done, and she emailed me this morning to report that she’d submitted the manuscript to her friend. She said it would be a week or two before they made a decision about whether to buy my book.

Crazy. Oh brave new world, this land of the publishing house.

So you can see now why I didn’t have time to write on the blog.

I’m a little hesitant to write now, truth be told, in that way that women wait until after the first trimester to tell people they’re expecting. I’m expecting, although I don’t know exactly what it is I’m gestating. The idea that the publishing house could actually BUY MY BOOK sends a blast of excitement straight to the pit of my stomach.

But there is also the very real possibility that they will choose another manuscript. If that happens, K assures me that she’ll just take my book someplace else. Which is wonderful. Did I mention that agents are better than peanut butter? When I wrote that, I had no idea just how awesome my agent was. She’s given me such amazing, shrewd suggestions without once coming off in a negative or pushy way, read hundreds of pages multiple times, sometimes overnight, suffered my incessant phone calls and panicky questions with grace and humor, and simply encouraged and reassured me at every turn. I heart K!

And who knows, by this time next week she may have sold my book. Stay tuned.

Big News

2009-09-02T14:50:00.000-07:00

I'll have to make this brief, since I want to be working on my novel during my son's precious nap time.

I have officially heard from my agent. I broke down and sent her a very casual, "hi, just checking to make sure you got my manuscript, I'm available to discuss it whenever you're ready, thanks for reading," email on Friday and on Monday afternoon I came home from lunch to a long, detailed reply. K said she'd read my novel over the weekend and had enjoyed it. Woot! Then she talked about similar books on the market and encouraged me to read them and become more savvy on what the YA readers expect and like. She followed that up with several very specific and spot-on suggestions for revision. "This draft just needs a little of work to get the details just right. YA readers are tougher judges than you’d think!" she wrote.

And then: "I’d love to represent this for you if you’re up for making revisions. Congratulations on completing what I imagine is a very early draft of a much tighter, stronger novel."

These last few weeks as I have been waiting for her reply I've imagined three possibile responses: 1) "this book is not my thing, I just wasn't grabbed by it, best of luck" (which is fairly normal agent speak) 2) "the book is good but needs some work before I'll try to sell it" and 3) "the book is fantastic, it blew my socks off, I've sent it to all the biggest publishing houses and they've already sent you this ginormous check." I had ruled out number 1, simply because I have some degree of faith in the story I'm telling and I know K likes my writing, plus she had already seen/liked the synopsis for my novel and asked to read it. I understood that number 2 was fairly likely. But I was really, unreasonably hopeful for number 3, the way you buy a lottery ticket and sit waiting for the numbers to be announced on TV.

And darn it, you never have those right numbers.

So when I read K's email I was hit with a surge of pure adrenaline and a crazy mix of elation and disappointment. It took me hours to smooth myself out. In the end, when I floated back down to rational thought, I was left with this: this was a very good response. K ultimately wants to sell my book as much as I do (or at least half as much as I do, which is plenty), and she needs to make sure it's solid enough to make a real, honest-to-goodness attempt at it. Her job is not to pat me on the back and tell me how great my book is. Her job is to sell it.

So I am back to the draft, every single day between the hours of 2 and 5. Revision Round 3, which yes, does make this a fairly early draft. I have to remind myself that I started writing this novel in March. Just six months ago. And I may still have a long journey ahead of me before I move to the next stage. I need to be patient.

J recently pointed out to me that my last blog post was a tad melodramatic, me going on and on about waiting for K when she'd only had the manuscript for 3 weeks, which is a very short waiting period in agent-time. Plus, our kid didn't really smell funny and there was no leaning tower of dishes in our sink, thank you very much. So here, all joking aside: I need to be patient. And hammer away on my book. And then be patient some more.

In the meantime, par K's suggestion, I got my college roommate and bestest bud Amy, who is a high school math teacher, to round me up a group of students to read the manuscript. I am eager to see how that turns out, as most of the people who've read the book at this point are people my own age or older.

Writerly Limbo

2009-08-25T15:27:00.000-07:00

K has had the manuscript for over 2 weeks now, and still not a peep. The first week I was fine. The second week was harder, because I knew that she was probably in the process of reading it, but I was determined to be patient. This week it is taking all of my willpower not to pester her. Literally. I have no will to fend off sweets or resolve to keep my kitchen floors clean. I have eaten almost an entire raspberry sour cream pie and there’s a heap of dirty dishes in my sink and my kid is starting to smell funny. All my energy is being used to restrain me from emailing K (or even worse, calling her) and saying plaintively, “So, you read the book yet? What do you think? Huh? Do you like it? Do you think you could sell it? Huh? Do you? Do you?” If I lived in New York I’d be pacing outside her building right now.

She’d better get back to me soon, is all I’m saying.

In the meantime, I've heard from a few friends I sent the book to, all sunny, positive reviews and pats on the back. Even from my super smart literary friends, which feels wonderful but a bit suspicious. These are your friends, the little voice in the back of my brain whispers. They love you. They’re obligated to love your book the way a mother loves her ugly baby.

So I discussed the first half of the book on the phone with Cali, former Boise State M.F.A. alum and confidante. Cali generally speaks her mind, which I’ve always found refreshing. I had no doubt that if she found my baby ugly, she would just come out and tell me. We sat with the document open in front of our respective computer screens 2636 miles apart, and I took a deep breath and prepared to examine the warts.

“Okay,” Cali said, “page 19. I really had a problem here.”

Here it was. The truth. I prayed earnestly that I would have the capacity to fix whatever the problem was. I prayed I wouldn’t go crazy in the process. I prayed that I wouldn’t end up on my patio making a bonfire out of the whole darn novel.

“I want more,” she said.

This, nine times out of ten, turned out to be Cali’s request. More description. More inner narrative. More explanation.

Phew. Sure, I can do MORE. I just cut 25 pages from the novel before I sent it to K. It looks like a skinny kid to me anyway. So I am back to work, writing more, filling out the bare places, and falling in love with my story all over again.

All the while waiting, in this strange writerly limbo, for word from K.

Dynamite Days

2009-08-18T15:54:00.000-07:00

When I was first learning to write short stories, I printed and cut out tiny pictures of writers I admired and taped their faces all around the outside edges of my computer monitor. Whenever I sat down to write I could feel their serious eyes on me: Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Walker, Richard Ford, Virginia Woolf, Flannery O' Connor, Rick Bass, Louise Erdrich, Tobias Wolff, Jane Smiley (who was in her picture always smiling--I appreciated that) and anybody else I loved at the time if I could locate a decent picture. I vividly remember J seeing my computer for the first time, when we'd only known each other for a few days. He stood in front of the monitor and went around the edge identifying the writers, knowing them only by their faces since I hadn't labeled them. He knew them all. My heart gave a little flutter watching him -how could it not?

My favorite picture was a little photo of Hemingway in the bottom left corner of my screen. It was taken while he was on safari in Africa. He's in a tent, sitting at a table with his glasses on and a pen in his hand. He's leaning into the table, holding down the page with his left hand as he writes with his right, his lips slightly pursed in concentration. His whole body seems oriented to the writing. I love that.

Hemingway once wrote, "There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges." In other words: sometimes you struggle. In the photograph it might look like everything is going so easy for good old Ernest, the words just flowing out of his pen. But it also might have been one of those dynamite days.

I have been going through a whole week of dynamite days. I don't want to beat myself up too much about it, considering that I just finished a novel, I'm on pins and needles waiting for my agent to read said novel, I have a sprained ankle, my husband just had major surgery, the school year is about to begin, I have a two-year-old who has decided this week to stop taking his afternoon nap, and my babysitter is currently on vacation. It's okay, I tell myself, if the words are not just winging their way off my fingertips. I still want to write. I still show up, plunk my butt down in front of the monitor, and set the charges. That's about as much as I can ask of myself at this point.

The Eagle Has Landed

2009-08-10T19:58:00.000-07:00

So usps.com tells me that at 1:01 p.m. this afternoon, my novel arrived at my agent's office. It could be sitting on K's desk this very moment. This fact makes me a) completely excited and eager to know what she thinks, yet determined to be patient and just let the woman read (because she's a busy person with, no doubt, a tall stack of manuscripts on her desk) and b) nervous, like a mother sitting on the edge of an uncomfortable chair in the waiting room of a doctor's office, waiting to hear whether her child is basically healthy or major surgery will be required.

A word about agents: they are the best thing since peanut butter, in my opinion. I feel extremely lucky to have this woman who I can email out of the blue with a new project, who is so encouraging and enthuiastic about my writing. The week I first connected with K was a good week for J and me: he won the Stegner Fellowship and we found out we were moving to California. K worked for Watkins Loomis then, and she had seen my story "The Sugar Shell" in The Iowa Review and liked it. I'd had a couple of agents contact me about the story during that time, which blew my mind, but I gravitated toward K. She was professional but approachable. My office mate at UNL was conferencing a student the first time K called, so I dragged the phone out to the hall, sat on the floor against the wall, and explained my current project to her. I hardly knew how to talk about the novel, let alone sell it. But right away she latched on to what I was attempting to do with the novel, and it was like immediately having a cheerleader on the sidelines. A cheerleader who really knows how to sell your book.

Seriously. Better than peanut butter.

A few years ago K moved to a larger agency, one that began in 1905 and represented some of the greats like D.H. Lawrence, C.S. Lewis, A.A. Milne, and Ayn Rand, not to mention the huge list of amazing clients they are currently working with. I am awestruck looking at the list of writers these people have helped, and thrilled beyond belief to have K and that agency in my corner right now. It truly makes me want to write my best.

Speaking of which, I began writing the prologue for book two of my series, which is tentatively entitled Broken Wing. I expected to throw myself right into the action where I left off in book one, but then I thought: prologue. Book one has a prologue. Shouldn't book two? Suddenly I was writing a completely different scene about a moment when my main character was seven years old. I was literally following her home from school. It's marvelous how that happens; you sit down to write and something truly unexpected shows up on the page. I don't know if I'll keep the scene, ultimately. But in spite of all my whining about starting the second book before I had fully celebrated the completion of the first, it felt good to be writing forward again, after weeks of revising in circles. It felt really good.