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

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

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

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?!

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

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

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:

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!