My Lady Jane

The new book!

For those of you curious about what's next for me, I should probably tell you about MY LADY JANE. It's coming out on June 7, 2016, published once again by the wonderful HarperTeen, and it is quite possibly (cover your ears, UNEARTHLY and THE LAST TIME WE SAY GOODBYE, Mama loves you, too) my favorite book that I've ever written.

Let me explain.

Writing THE LAST TIME WE SAY GOODBYE was difficult. It was a subject that had been tumbling around in my brain for a while, and it felt important to talk about, but I knew from the start that writing it was going to just about kill me. It was so hard, and there were so many days I wept copiously at my keyboard, but I did it and I was so glad I did. I am so proud of that little book. It's my heart's truth, right there on the page.

But needless to say, it took a lot out of me. I went into a bit of a funk after I finished writing THE LAST TIME WE SAID GOODBYE.

So I needed something else. Something that would be a joy to write. Something to make me laugh.

At this point I'd been talking for more than a year with my friend Brodi Ashton (author of the EVERNEATH series) about writing a book together. I had this strange little idea that we could retell the tragic story of the Lady Jane Grey. If you know British history, you'll know that LJG was "the Nine Days Queen," as she was the queen of England for nine(ish) days in the year 1553, before Mary Tudor kicked her off the throne and had her beheaded.

I thought we could rewrite Jane's story. . . as a comedy. And Brodi Ashton had the best comedic sense of any writer I knew. So it made sense to team up.

You should have seen the look on Brodi's face while I was trying to pitch her this idea. We were having lunch at Cafe Rio. I was yammering about how great the real Jane was--a book nerd even before book nerds were a thing, so smart and passionate and awesome, and how dare she get her head chopped off, a girl like that! We could write an alternate version, and we could write it so Jane lives! We could use magic in place of the religious elements of the real story! Then I started talking about this idea I had that maybe our magic could be that people turned into animals, and maybe Guildford, the guy Jane was forced to marry, could be cursed to spend his days as a horse, wouldn't that be funny, and then the story would kind of be like THE PRINCESS BRIDE and like SHREK and like LADY HAWKE and there's not really anything like that in YA, right, so it'd be so cool and it'd be funny and it'd be a blast to write, don't you think?

I am not great at pitching. Kudos to Brodi for keeping her face so carefully blank as she ate her salad and listened to me go on and on about how awesome it was going to be. "Sure," she said a the end of this conversation. "Sounds like . . . er, fun."

We didn't talk about it again for, oh, about six months. This time we were hanging out in Virginia with our friend Jodi Meadows. Somehow I got on the subject of this awesome novel about the Lady Jane Grey that Brodi was going to write with me (you're still going to write it with me, right Brodi? Right?) and Brodi turned drowning eyes to Jodi, hoping our friend would say something reasonable like, "Hmm, Cynthia, a comedy about a famous beheading? That seems a little far-fetched."

Instead Jodi said, "That sounds amazing. There's not much comedy in the YA fantasy market."

And I blurted out, "Hey, you write fantasy. You're funny. Would you like to write it with us?"

And Jodi (poor, dear Jodi) said yes, why yes she would. And Brodi looked relieved that now she wasn't the only person who'd been fool enough to agree to such a thing.

Fast forward six months. California. Jodi and Brodi were visiting to do a couple of events in Los Angeles and talk to my novel writing class at Pepperdine. And what did I keep bringing up, over and over and over again?

That novel about the Lady Jane Grey.

Sometimes I can be like a dog with a tooth in a towel, I tell you.

Me, Jodi, and Brodi that fateful week in California

There was a free day in the middle of that week. We were thinking about going to Disneyland.

"But instead, we could stay home and start writing this Jane Grey novel," I suggested cheerfully. "I mean, we could go to Disneyland any old time, but how often could we write a book together? And maybe there are three characters, and we could each write one and rotate chapter to chapter."

And that's how MY LADY JANE was born. Because I shanghaied my two besties into writing a book with me instead of spending the day at the happiest place on earth. But it worked out, because now that book is a REAL book, and it's going to be out this summer.

I loved every minute of writing MLJ. We each wrote an opening chapter that day in California, each taking the point of view of a different character: Edward, Jane, or Gifford (who you'll notice that we slightly renamed). We talked about the story a lot and hashed out plot points and revised a little, and then a couple months later we met in Utah to hide away in Brodi's mountain condominium to really work on the book. The days went like this:

We'd get up, eat breakfast, shower and get coffee.

We'd spend the morning writing and brainstorming and giggling to ourselves at our own jokes.

We'd eat lunch.

We'd write hard all through the afternoon and finish our individual chapter.

We'd eat dinner.

We'd sit around the living room with our laptops and read our day's chapter out loud to each other, and we'd laugh and laugh. Sometimes we'd laugh until we'd cry. We'd make suggestions. We'd plot. We'd plan for what we'd write the next day.

We'd stay up late talking.

And then we'd get up the next morning and do it all over again.

It was the most fun I'd ever had writing anything. It was exactly what I needed. Fun fun fun.

At the end of that week we had twelve chapters of a novel, and we'd fallen in love with the story of Lady Jane Grey.

A comedy. An adventure. A fantasy. A story about friendship and loyalty and love and being true to yourself.

It's so good, you guys, the best book I've every written a third of. Seriously. And the best part is that now I get to share all the joyful fun with all of you.

If it sounds like MY LADY JANE is going to be up your alley, please check out our website, The Lady Janies for more information about where you can pre-order the book and join our new fan club.

Trust me. It will be good for a laugh.

Um, Hi . . .

Hey, guys.

Sorry I've been MIA for like a month. I've been on tour, and then recovering from being on tour, and then getting ready to go on tour again. It's all very tour-related. Here's the new video that recaps the Dark Days of Winter tour I went on in February with Brodi Ashton, Tahereh Mafi and Veronica Rossi. It was so much fun, and I miss these ladies so much.



So it's a good thing that my writer bffs Brodi Ashton, author of the Everneath series, and Jodi Meadows, author of the Incarnate series, are coming out to Los Angeles for a string of events next week. We are doing the whole shebang: school visits, a signing at the Thousand Oaks Barnes & Noble on Friday, March 15 at 7pm, and a signing at Books, Inc in Mountain View on Saturday, March 16 at 5pm. (Yes. This is the bookstore that appears on page 377 of BOUNDLESS. In hell.)

And I will be traveling again at the end of April: San Diego, Phoenix, Houston, Miami. Check the Events tab for the details.

And also in May.

And June.

I'm a busy woman.

I'll try to blog more, I promise.

Oh, and here is also a large clip from our Cary, NC stop in the Extras section, if you'd like to hear me talk about writing about a real place like Jackson, WY, and why, if I hadn't been trying to impress my husband, I would never have gotten published. And you can see Brodi Ashton blow kisses.

Endlessly and YA Author Week

Hi, y'all! Today I'm off to do a YA library event and signing with Kiersten White, Marie Lu, and Robin LaFevers! Love those ladies and their books!

Yes, for some reason they put up a copy of my UK Hallowed, but hey, it's all good. If you're coming to Oceanside, see you there at 4pm! Be sure to get a few of my Unearthly temporary tattoos!

Also, big happy book birthday to Endlessly, the amazing and fantastic end to the Paranormalcy trilogy by Kiersten White. I am totally going to give Kiersten a big ol' awkward hug and say congrats! Because it is a great book. I blurbed it, actually. Like this:

“There’s not a character in YA fiction that I enjoy reading more than Evie’s. Endessly had me in its clutches from the first hilarious page to the last breathtaking sentence. A fun, heartfelt, and dynamic ending to a marvelous series.”

So yeah, I dug that book. A lot. Check out the trailer.

Hallowed Giveaway and News

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.

What color is Clara's hair, anyway?!

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.

Smart Chicks Really Do Kick It

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.