Library Time, Nixed Covers, and Sequel Syndrome

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wicked Lovely Day

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

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

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

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

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

Squee!!!

(later)

(much, much later)

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

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

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

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

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

Vlog in which I show you my Unearthly corkboard

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

Enjoy.

The Good, the Bad, and the Pretty

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

But today I have big news!

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

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

The pretty: Inside the box was:

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

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

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

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

Now I have to go calm my crying baby.

UK Cover for Hallowed

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

SQUEE!!

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

All right, if you insist.

Here:

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

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

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

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

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

What Twitter has taught me about Unearthly

And now for some YouTube fun.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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



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

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

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

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

Come Write With Me

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

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

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

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

I clearly do not watch that show.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Heading off to read now.

Tomorrow: WE WRITE!