New Book Out TOMORROW

I'm working on the as-yet-not-finished new book like a beast this week, but I wanted to pause to give you all a gentle reminder:

THE AFTERLIFE OF HOLLY CHASE IS OUT TOMORROW!


via GIPHY

This is not a drill, people!

Also, for my Boise friends: I AM HAVING A LAUNCH PARTY ON THURSDAY AT 7PM. Please come. Please, consider this your opportunity to support me as your friend. Because there is nothing sadder for an author than a book event with only like five people in attendance.

via GIPHY
(This is literally the gif that came up when I typed "sad author." I was like, aw. And then I remembered that Snooki wrote a book. AW.)


I will read from the book, if you want. I'll tell you about my adventures in Hollywood this past month, including the time I was licked by Jerry Zucker's dog for an entire hour while I was trying to pitch Holly Chase as a movie. I'll pass out signed Christmas cards and bookmarks and answer all your burning questions.

Fun will be had, I promise. No pressure to buy the book. Just come, and I will be forever grateful.

Click here for the Facebook invite.

Backstage

Tomorrow THE LAST TIME WE SAY GOODBYE is on the shelves. I have nervous stomach. This is normal. Usually it feels like Christmas Eve at book launch; I'm excited that the day has finally arrived, and nervous to see if readers will respond to it, and thrilled to see the real book on a real shelf in a real bookstore. Usually at this point I'm swimming in newly-purchased swag, exhausted by all the blog tour stuff I've been writing (one year, I think it was with HALLOWED, I actually wrote nearly 20,000 words worth of interview/marketing stuff in the weeks leading up to publication. Good grief--that is like 1/4 of a book!) determined to enjoy the day (which to me means a mani-pedi, lunch out, and a trip to the bookstore to see the book in the wild), and just slightly nauseated.

But this book feels different.

Last night I had a dream that I was backstage. I spent my high school and college years as an actress in local theaters, so this is a typical dream of mine. It usually goes like this: I'm backstage, nervous, and then I go out there and either a) can't remember my lines and have to improv the whole play (which I suck at, btw) or b) go out there and get that beautiful-and-slightly-out-of-control high of simply letting myself go. That's when the magic happens. I perform, but it doesn't feel like performing. It feels like me.

You can tell I miss the theater.

In last night's dream, I was waiting backstage in that cozy blackness with the smell of sawdust and hairspray, waiting, waiting, for the show to begin. I took my place at center stage, and the curtain rose. Slowly. There was a huge crowd out there in the dark, the biggest crowd I'd ever seen. A spotlight flared up on me. Silence fell over the crowd. And I felt. . .

Naked. Not physically naked (although I'm sure I've had those dreams, too, gah), but naked in the way that  all of those people had come and bought their tickets to see ME. Just me. Standing there in front of them. No lines. It wasn't that I'd forgotten them so much as there were no lines, in this play. No costumes. No makeup or fancy hairstyles. Just me.

And I had a choice: improv (which remember, I suck at) or let go.

I took a deep breath, and woke up.

It's hard to describe how vivid the dream was, or how perfectly it captured what I'm feeling now, as I wait for February 10 to arrive, the day of my book, this book that I put so much of my heart (and tears) into.

Tomorrow.

Happy Birthday Hallowed

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.  



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?