The Power of One Good Friend

I've been trying to write this post for a year. Brace yourself, it's going be long and weepy, but sometimes these things just need to be said because it's important to say these things out loud (sort of). So here it goes:

One morning last October I was packing up and getting ready to leave Yellowstone National Park, where my family had been staying at the Old Faithful Inn for a long weekend. My cell phone rang. I smiled when I saw who was calling: my friend Joan Kremer, who had been my off-and-on writing partner for the past six years.

"I was just thinking about you yesterday," I said as I picked up. "Happy birthday!"

But on the other end, there was silence.

"Joan?" I asked.

Nothing.

"Silas?" I said, thinking maybe Joan's baby grandson, whom she adored and was often joyfully babysitting, had gotten ahold of her phone. "Silas?"

A throat cleared. Then, in a faltering voice, Joan's wife, Brenda, told me that Joan had suffered from a sudden brain hemorrhage the day before. She'd been in the hospital all night, surrounded by her family, but there hadn't been anything the doctors could do.

"She's gone," Brenda whispered.

After I hung up I sat down on the edge of the hotel bed in total shock. Just like that, my friend, who I'd spent hours upon hours talking to and laughing with and goofing around with, was dead.

Gone.

I spent the first several months in that stage where I couldn't get my brain around what had happened, where it felt like there'd been some kind of awful mistake. Joan can't be gone, I'd think. There was just so much I had to tell her. I never got to tell her, I kept thinking, how she kind of saved my life.

Hiking with my son in Westlake Village, CA

Rewind seven years. My husband and I had just moved to southern California so my husband could start his new job at Pepperdine University. We had very little money at first, and only one car. Every day my husband took the car to Pepperdine, and I was stuck at home with my toddler in a city where I didn't know anyone.

To say that I was unhappy during that time is such an understatement that it almost makes me laugh. I was deeply depressed--a touch of postpartum, a dash of guilt that I clearly wasn't "enjoying the time" with my baby, a whole lot of cabin fever. I was bored. I was wildly lonesome--the kind of lonely that caused me to start up conversations with the grocery store clerk just so I'd have a flicker of adult conversation. The second my husband crossed the threshold of our apartment I was like an excited puppy waiting at the door. The problem was, he was usually exhausted at the end of the day, trying to get on his feet in his new job.

It was not a good year.

In April of that year I heard an NPR story about a new internet phenomenon: SecondLife, a virtual world sort of like The Sims but where the inhabitants were all real people and the content was all created by the players. It wasn't a game so much as a social experiment, NPR claimed, and it cited colleges setting up virtual campuses to hold virtual classes and people doing cool things like recreating the Sistine Chapel and having poetry readings attended by people from all over the world.

I was intrigued. I was also, as I've said, dull-eyed bored, so I thought I'd check this Second Life thing out. So, one day during my son's nap, I created a profile, put together an awkward avatar, and stumbled into another world.

My avatar at the virtual Sistine Chapel

I'm always a little hesitant to talk about SecondLife, honestly. It shows off my geek side, sure. There are some incredibly cool things to see and experience in that place--yes, there IS a virtual Sistine Chapel, where you can fly up and get a closer, private look at every nook and cranny, which is SO cool-- but there is also a very seedy underbelly. It can be like a gigantic costume ball where everyone is wearing masks. Real money is constantly flowing through that world--money for virtual clothing for your avatars, virtual property that you can rent, virtual furniture you can buy for your virtual property, sounds and textures and animations for sale to make your experience more and more lifelike, and it isn't really surprising that the best selling items in SecondLife have to do with sex.

It can be a creepy place, is what I'm saying. But I guess, like anything, SecondLife is what you bring to it.

So there I was, duck-walking around a self-proclaimed "writing center" in SecondLife--somewhere that people had set up to hold these aforementioned poetry readings and serve as a resource for writers--when I literally (or virtually, I should say) bumped into an avatar named Alas Zerbino.

Like me, Alas was new to SecondLife. She quickly introduced herself as a freelance writer and educator who'd heard the same NPR story that I had and come to check it out.

So we decided we'd check it out together.

Alas Zerbino and me in the virtual Vincent Van Gogh exhibit

At first we were just merry traveling companions. There's a lot to do and see inside Second Life, and from pretty much that first day, Alas Zerbino and I experienced it together. We went to poetry readings and fiction writing groups. We explored the Emerald City and the planet Mars and the inside of the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh. We shopped. One of our favorite things was to collect a bunch of free hair demos (in SecondLife, you have to buy your hair the way one buys a wig, already styled, but most places will let you try on a demo first) and then try on the silliest ones and laugh our butts off. In the beginning Alas wore her hair in an updo--a cascade of curls. Over the years we both went through a series of different looks, but Alas always sported auburn hair, large brown eyes, and a hint of a smile.

We were a bit guarded with each other at first. We were both wary of the dangers of the internet, and we didn't give out our real names and locations. We didn't voice chat--only type. But over the weeks and then months that Alas and I hung out in that virtual space, the details of our lives started to trickle out. We started to talk about more than just our writing. Alas Zerbino slowly became Joan, and Clarissa Tolsen (which was my avatar's name) became Cynthia, and we spent less time exploring and more time just finding cool places to talk.

Joan and me literally hanging out

It didn't add up to that much time that we spent together, really, maybe one or two hours a couple of times a week, but it made a HUGE difference in my life. Suddenly I had someone to talk to, and not just someone, but Joan--Joan who was quietly funny and whip-smart, sympathetic yet capable of calling a spade a spade when the need arose. We were both writers and mothers. Her younger sister had died when Joan was a teen--my younger brother had died when I was twenty. She was older than I was, in the next stage of her life, with two kids in their late teens / early twenties who she was constantly worrying about, but she remembered her early times with her kids so well. We had so much, we found, to talk about.

After so long feeling completely adrift, I felt like I'd found myself again. And it was all because of the power of one good friend.

It was about a year after I met Joan when I had the idea for UNEARTHLY. At the time it seemed like a huge undertaking--WRITING A NOVEL!-- one that I had tried before and pooped out on long before I'd finished. When I told Joan about it, she was the best cheerleader. Not only did she urge me to just start writing, she offered to write with me. By this time Joan and I had pitched in to get our own little spot in SecondLife, a place we called Story Mountain, which was basically like a big ski lodge where Joan and I compiled all the SL information about writing and writers into one beautiful reference location and where I taught intro classes in creative writing from time to time.

My alter ego working on my real book.

So for the next six months after I had the big idea for UNEARTHLY, Joan and I showed up every day at Story Mountain to work. We both set up virtual desks with virtual computers and directed our virtual avatars to sit at those desks and type while we sat at our own real life computer and wrote. We wrote hard for a couple of hours, and then we retreated to a couch in my Story Mountain office. We copied and pasted our day's work onto a virtual notecard and traded. We read each other's work and offered advise and encouragement. (Click here to see a transcript of one of our discussions of Unearthly.) And then we showed up the next day, and the next day, and the next.

At the end of that six months I had a novel, and within a year, I had a book contract with HarperCollins and my life would be forever changed.

And it was all because of the power of one good friend.

Joan and me in Chicago

I met Joan is real life once. I came to Chicago for the Romantic Times Book Convention. Joan and Brenda drove down from Wisconsin. I remember that I was a little nervous to meet her in person, and I knew I was being silly. We ran up and gave each other a big hug and then found a spot to hang out and talk. I shouldn't have worried; it was just the way it always was--totally comfortable. Sure, we weren't as thin or as well-dressed as we were in SecondLife, but guess what? Our friendship wasn't based on looks, obviously. We had a great time.

In the past few years we didn't log in to SecondLife as much. I became monumentally busy with all of my Unearthly stuff, and I had another baby. Joan finished her novel and shopped it around for an agent, but didn't have any luck. But she was tough--she just kept working on it, revising and revising. And then along came Silas, her grandson, and Joan threw herself into being the epitome of the loving grandmother. We both got caught up in other things, but every now and then we carved out a little bit of time and found a place to work together--a virtual cabin or a virtual beach, wherever we could put down some virtual laptops to work. We'd write and we'd talk, and it was always like picking up right where we left off.

Joan and I writing together and also 1500 miles apart

This is the last picture I have of Joan and me: the two of us as avatars writing together. Today, on what would have been Joan's birthday, I pulled it out and looked at it, and finally let myself have a good long cry over the loss of my friend. I wish I could call her right now and say thank you, for being my person when I desperately needed a person, for being my cheerleader and my writing partner and my friend. You showed me just how much power one good friend can have in changing a life.

Thank you, Joan. Love you. Wherever you are.

In Which I Inundate You With News and Cool Stuff

Hello, y'all! I've haven't been around the blog much in the past couple of months. I was tired. Then I was sick. Then tired again. Then sick again. It was a lot of sick and tired.

This is what happens when you finish a series.

But there's a lot happening in the next few weeks, and I have to get off my butt now and tell you all about the great stuff that's coming:

1) RADIANT! Is coming out! In 2 days! To celebrate (and because it feels kind of weird that this is ebook only, therefore my fans won't have anything tangible in their hands when they buy this book, I am going to do a little promotion. THIS WEEK ONLY, buy or pre-order a copy of RADIANT, take a screenshot of your screen confirming the purchase (here's an awesome page with instructions on how to take a screenshot, if you don't know), email me (writercynthiahand@gmail.com) the pic along with your mailing address, and I will send you a little autographed special something. So you will have something to hold in your hands.

note: If you buy on Amazon, there is a little tab where you can email me saying you purchased the book directly, if you don't want to go through the trouble of messing with the screenshot, but please remember to add your address to the email.

Here's my screenshot. Yes, I just bought my own ebook. I may have to give myself an autographed special something now.

2) BOUNDLESS is coming out, in like 50 days! I will be having a special promotion for that too, but I'll tell you about that later.

3) TOURING! I will be doing a whirlwind of touring this winter for Boundless. Check my events tab for the full details, but in a nutshell I will be going to:
Salt Lake City (UT)
Idaho Falls (ID)
Boise (ID)
New York City (NY)
Huntington Beach (CA)
Decatur (GA)
Cary (NC)
Cambridge (MA)
Washington D.C.
Redondo Beach(CA),
Thousand Oaks (CA)
Jackson Hole (WY)
Kansas City (MO).
And that's just what I know about so far!

4) UNEARTHLY is dirt cheap right now! (Well actually, it might be cheaper than dirt. I mean, have you seen the prices of high-quality dirt these days? I'm just saying) Ahem. The ebook version is only 2.99 for the next few weeks, so if you haven't started the series yet (or you know someone who you think would like it), now is a very good time!

5) HALLOWED is coming out as a paperback. . . the day after Christmas! However, it's not a hard release (meaning that the bookstore can put it out whenever they get the shipment) so you could check before Christmas if you want to give it as a gift (or buy it with Christmas money, which is what I always do. . .). You can pre-order the paperback here. Here's the link for the Hallowed audiobook, if you know someone who likes to listen to the story.

Wow, I'm kind of light-headed after all that shameless self-promotion. I should go do the dishes now. There's nothing that will put you in your place in the universe faster than scrubbing dirty dishes.

*Rolls up sleeves.*

Signing off.

What Twitter has taught me about Unearthly

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?

Unearthly deleted scene

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.

First Things First

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

FAQ and January Bookplate Giveaway

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

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!!!!

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

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?

News from Carlsbad

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. . .

This Just In

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

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

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!