The Michelle Show

Maybe it's time to change, redux

2012-01-24T12:57:00.001-05:00

Last April, I did this, and promised to do it again if it was popular.

It was.

But lo! It is now January of the following YEAR and I haven't, in fact, done it again.

Don't feel like clicking the link but want to know what IT is?

Here's the scoop: You tell me the past 3 books you've read in the comments, and I recommend you something completely different that I think you'll like anyway.

Why? Because there are phenomenal books just waiting to be discovered by you in ALL genres and age categories.

As you all know, Blogger now has threaded comments, making a game like this INFINITELY easier. And so, from now until 11:59PM this evening (Tuesday, January 24th), I shall pop in here sporadically and recommend YOU a book that is completely different than the ones you've just read. A personal reading recommendation from me, directly to you.

And...GO!

***ETA: If you're under 14, let me know--some of my recommendations are bound to be very adult.***

Three months! (Maggie update)

2012-01-18T14:16:00.000-05:00

It's been three months since Maggie's first near death experience (when she was first diagnosed with lymphoma and our canine cancer adventure began) and one month since she almost died the second time. This post has nothing to do with publishing or writing or Mara Dyer or anything but Maggie, really, but I get so many tweets and emails asking for updates (thank you!!!!) that I thought today would be a good day to do it, so skip away if animal medical shenanigans is not your thing.

But if it IS your thing, here's the timeline:

Oct. 17th, 11PM: Returned from Book Tour Part I. to find Maggie in awful shape; anemia, blood infection, grossly enlarged liver, overburdened kidneys. Immediately took her into the e-vet- she was diagnosed with lymphoma hours later and the Wisconsin Protocol was put into effect immediately. She made an amazing turn-around over 3 days and then went on outpatient weekly chemotherapy drugs and had an every 7.5 hour medication schedule. A test revealed her lymphoma to be the uglier of the two types (T-cell), but the oncologist thought there was hope, so I wanted to give Maggie a chance.

December 5th: Right before I planned to leave for Book Tour Part II, she started coughing.

December 6th: Sitter brought her to the vet and she was diagnosed with megaesophagus. Still in remission from the lymphoma according to all of her bloodwork.

December 9th: Returned from Tour Part II. Maggie was hospitalized while I was away and was diagnosed with laryngeal paralysis. Couldn't keep food or water down and became dehydrated; required administration of 1300 mls of sub-cutaneous fluids daily.

December 12th: Became bladder incontinent at home, noticed third eyelid protrusion on her left eye.

December 13th: Tested for everything but couldn't find the source of her new problems (mega-e, lar par, incontinence or her eye).

December 14th: Hospitalization

December 15th: Still no answers

December 16th: Anesthetized for spinal tap

December 17th: Horrible reaction to spinal tap, debated euthenasia, emergency administration of Elspar (chemotherapy drug)

December 18th: MIRACULOUS turnaround: energetic and pain free, hungry, loving, and happy.

December 19th: Switched to CCNU (Lomoustine) for blood brain barrier treatment of her lymphoma, which moved into her spine but was in remission elsewhere. She was feeling awesome but still had the megaesophagus and laryngeal paralysis as well as the incontinence (requiring elevated hand feedings and many loads of laundry daily). CCNU killed her white blood cells, dropping them from 2000 (normal) to 107. Administered Neupogen ($700 per MILLILITER) which worked like liquid gold, as advertised, and brought her white blood cell count to 34,000.

December 20th - Partial CNS lymphoma remission achieved, no improvement with the megaesophagus, no improvement with the incontinence.

December 21st - through today: holding steady without any signs of aspiration pneumonia (the #1 leading cause of death in dogs with megaesophagus) and is clearly in remission from the lymphoma. Still requires the meds and the hand-feedings, but she is happy, hungry, and comfortable--her normal lazy self.

January 17th: After her second round of CCNU last week, we expected her white blood cell count to drop dramatically again but miraculously, it hasn't (she doesn't have the nickname "The Fighting Potato" for nothing). So we keep on keepin' on, like the baby monkey.

Basically, the deal with her is that she has lymphoma, which, thanks to the CCNU is not killing her, and a second condition, megaesophagus, which also isn't killing her, but makes taking care of her really labor intensive. Below is our regimen:

7AM: 650 mls of sub-cutaneous lactated ringer solution (using an 18 guage needle) (megaesophagus)
9AM: Denamarin (hepatoxicity from the lymphoma or the drugs)
9:30AM: Cisapride (megaesophagus)
10AM: Keppra (epilepsy), Phenobarbital (epilepsy), Metoclopramide (megaesophagus), Prednisone (lymphoma), Prilosec (megaesophagus), Tylenol with Codeine (arthritis)
Hand-feeding #1 with 20 minutes of post-meal elevation
Laundry Load #1

3PM: Laundry Load #2
Handfeeding #2 with 20 minutes of post-meal elevation

5PM: Denamarin
5:30PM: Cisapride
6PM: Keppra (epilepsy), Phenobarbital (epilepsy), Metoclopramide (megaesophagus), Prednisone (lymphoma), Prilosec (megaesophagus), Tylenol with Codeine (arthritis)
Hand-feeding #3 with 20 minutes of post-meal elevation
6:10PM: 650 mls of sub-cutaneous lactated ringer solution (18 guage needle) (megaesophagus)
Laundry Load #3

1AM: Denamarin
1:30AM: Cisapride

2AM: Keppra (epilepsy), Phenobarbital (epilepsy), Metoclopramide (megaesophagus), Prednisone (lymphoma), Prilosec (megaesophagus), Tylenol with Codeine (arthritis)
Hand-feeding #4 with 20 minutes of post-meal elevation
Laundry Load #4

I sleep between 2:30AM and 7:00AM if Maggie will allow it and for a couple of hours during the day. Oddly, she tends to have a TON of energy these days (more than she's had in her entire life) and is always up for food so it's difficult to get more than a couple of hours of sleep at a time. But Maggie is family, and I could never give up on my family. And for all of you who are still talking about, writing about, recommending and buying MARA DYER when I go offline to take care of her? Thank you for not giving up on me.

Gifts

2012-01-16T15:08:00.001-05:00

I have had a fear of reading the hardcover version of MARA DYER long before it came out.

Once I turned in copy edits, I couldn't bear to look at it again, because it was too late. There was nothing I could do to change it. No more sentences to tweak, no more words to change. To this day, if I give a reading, I read from my old annotated, much abused ARC. It makes me feel a little less...panicked.

But last night found that I had to check something against the hardcover. And so with much trepidation, I reached for one on my shelf. I opened it.

And saw this:

It has been such a blur, such a whirlwind since September 27, 2011, that I forgot I even asked the wonderful people who came to the launch party to sign MY book for me, old school yearbook styles. Their words next to my words made me smile, in a way I never thought opening my own book could.

I received a gift a few months ago, back during those wildly hectic launch days, orchestrated by Lori at Pure Imagination:

She gathered a number of bloggers together and typed up their thoughts about quotes from the book and attached them with ribbon:

Then she placed the cards on their corresponding pages:

There must be at least a hundred of these tiny typed cards and the time and effort and organization that went into such an incredible gift astounds me. I didn't have a chance to leaf through it when it arrived because I got the package literally on my way out the door for my month-long trip, and when I came home, I came home to this, which has taken over my life. And then I left on the second part of my tour and came home to a very sick Maggie once again. But last night, after the happy accident of finding my launch copy, I opened up the ARC that some of you amazing, wonderful bloggers contributed to and read your words.

Publishing is a weird business and authors have weird jobs. We bleed on the page to make a living and have to make you care about our stories without letting on that we care what you think of them. And so I do my best not to read what you write about MARA DYER; for better or for worse, my book is me, and I don't want to get hurt.

But I read your words last night. And I haven't smiled like that in a long time.

Untitled (Mara Dyer #2) Sneak Peek!

2012-01-03T16:34:00.000-05:00

So, on January 3rd, 2011, I posted this.

Since today is January 3rd, 2012 (How? HOW???) I thought I'd post this:

There will be more news, soon, about little things like the RELEASE DATE and TITLE and COVER, so stay tuned <3

2011

2011-12-30T05:44:00.002-05:00

Hi, friends.

I've missed you. It's been a long, long month for me as I've been working around the clock to make sure that I would remember 2011 as the year I published my first novel, not as the year I lost my best friend. And I am able to (cautiously) say that things look like they're looking up for her--she is still extremely high risk, but she feels GOOD and happy, and that makes ME feel good and happy as she runs around the house looking for (even more) food.

Which means that I'm able to finally have some time to think about other stuff. Like the last twelve months.

This year, I:

Turned 29
Published a book
Finished another one
Saw the first one go into a reprint
Watched it sell in 12 countries
Was floored to have five brilliant authors say wonderful things about it very publicly.
Was reviewed in the LA Times
Watched Lainey Gossip tweet about it
Saw my name (and my book) in Star magazine
Was interviewed on a stage at BEA by a kind and generous blogger
Listened to my editor speak more eloquently about my book than I ever could to a packed room
Signed with the literary agent of my literary idols
Speed dated with librarians at ALA
Discovered the Fudrucker's veggie burger with two geniuses at 2AM in New Orleans
Went on a book tour
Flew to a state I've never been to with two awesome authors I'd never met before
Fought with the bestselling living poet in America over Twilight
Watched dolphins swim at night with a wildly talented author (and fellow Gollum fan + demon baby aficionado)
Saw my 11th grade AP English teacher at NCTE, where I was invited to talk about my book.
Was told by an author I've admired for a decade that she's been looking forward to my book for months
Was interviewed on NBC in Chicago
Found out my love of Marilyn Manson is shared by a YA author I have a girlcrush on.
Saw the most amazing T-shirts in the history of T-shirts
Toured (and had a midnight room service + pajama party) with an author I greatly respect whose books I adore

In 2011, I made so many new friends. I've had wonderful times with many old ones. I watched my brother and one of my best friends marry his perfect match. I watched my other brother and best friend launch his second kickass business. I've seen my mother find the happiness she truly deserves. I've watched my family grow. I've been blessed to share more holidays and birthdays with my grandparents, aunt, uncle, and cousins. I've spent 80 days traveling and have been blessed to be able to buy Maggie some extra, good time (literally).

In 2011, I watched dreams come true that I never knew I had.

In 2012, I hope all of yours come true, too.

Cassie & Michelle Do Long Island

2011-12-08T04:17:00.004-05:00

Heyyyyyyyy you guys! How have you been?

I have been WONDERFUL. I have been doing Lots O' Stuff. And I've been tweeting about the stuff, but realized I haven't been blogging about it! That ends now.

Earlier tonight, I had a signing with Cassandra Clare. Her newest book came out yesterday. It's effing phenomenal. It's called CLOCKWORK PRINCE. You might have heard of it?

That's what I thought :)

We were at the Carle Place in Long Island, which shall henceforth be recalled as the place where THE COOLEST THING EVER happened to me:

The SPECTACULARLY AWESOME bloggers from @readwriteramble made T-shirts. WITH QUOTES FROM MY BOOK.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH *breathes* AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA

AND THEY ASKED ME TO SIGN BOXES OF ANIMAL CRACKERS.

But seriously. Did you see those shirts? Click to embiggen. Because I am telling you, they were made with puff paint. By hand. And the amount of text was heavy and detailed and...I just can't even. I CAN'T because...really.

Ladies? Thank you forever. Forever forever forever. FOREVER.

There were other amazing, phenomenal people there tonight, too:

That would be Casey, who was ALSO wearing a MARA DYER T-shirt, of the "Who is Mara Dyer?" variety, and her friend Ari. They are both smart and lovely and wonderful. Also, Casey is Mara's advocate in the YA Sisterhood tournament. Mara's first match is on December 15th, and Lori from Pure Imagination & Casey have resurrected Mara Mondays to lead up to it. Speaking of which, in case you'd like to ALSO show your love for Team Mara? Grab a button here!

Despite the gross drizzly rain, so, SO many people showed up to say hi and have us sign their books. I do not have pictures of all of them, because this is about 1/4 of the crowd.

But because the event was in NY? Some of my most beloved NY people came out:

Those are my family people in the green room place. They have a sixth sense and they can find me WHEREVER I am and they found me in there signing books, and gosh, I love them so much.

They love each other, too. Above picture is my cousin with Jeremy, the littlest bro. This one.

And, like I said, I was there with Cassie. I have only this picture to show for it, though. You're just going to have to trust me:

Other cool stuff that happened recently?

That's MARA DYER. In the December 5th issue of Star Magazine.

And this happened, too.

I'm positive I tweeted about it, but realized I never mentioned it here on the blog: Lainey (as in Lainey Gossip) read MARA DYER.

Her blog generated one of my favorite lines in the book. Go visit, and see if you can figure it out. In other words, I am a big fan. A HUGE FAN. I will forever be proud of having given her a sunburn in the Maldives.

Tomorrow, Cassie and I head to DC, where we'll be signing at the Bethesda Library.

I CANNOT WAIT to see more of you. And to everyone who came tonight?

Thank you.

The Heidi Klum gorilla incident. Yes, really.

2011-12-01T07:28:00.000-05:00

So, yesterday I posted about my youngest brother's latest in a string of ridiculously age-inappropriate achievements because I'm a proud sister and this is my blog, so I'm allowed. It's a law. At the bottom of that post, I included an email from him to me. Casey asked in the comments whether it was real.

Yes. Yes it is. And because it is so crazy (and so hilarious), I'm including my inquiry about the incident here for your amusement. PS: Lest you not get our weird sibling humor, I'm informing you now that he talks this way to me on purpose ~~so that I may or may not have more fun caricaturing him in fiction.~~

me: Um: "Just got back from the Dream Hotel. Made it into the Penthouse where Heidi Klum was hosting the party. She and Seal were both dressed as gorillas. Wait until you hear the whole story-it's crazy."

SO WHAT IS THE STORY?

4:17 AM Jeremy: I had an earlier meeting and a midterm that day so I was in my suit already. I was sitting with two friends eating sushi in the lounge. I said, "how crazy would it be if we just went down to midtown now to hang out?" One friend agreed and got another friend to come along.

4:18 AM me: Who are you?

Jeremy: I'm me

me: Nevermind. Go on.

4:19 AM Jeremy: After they changed, we got into a black car and we went to the Empire Hotel first because people compare me to Chuck Bass a lot so I said 'why not'. We went and it wasn't great, so we went to another bar on 30th and 3rd and that was alright and we stayed for about 45 minutes.

4:20 AM me: I...don't even know what to say about "people compare me to Chuck Bass a lot so I said 'why not.'" Go on.

Jeremy: We then got into a taxi and I asked the driver what's hot tonight and he said the Dream Hotel. So we go and and there's a HUGE line outside of the lobby. A real mob. We're waiting in the cold and we hear that Heidi Klum is having a party on the 'rooftop'.

4:21 AM me: Two things: "A real mob" sounds like a legit Gbob quote.* Just saying.

And: "what's hot tonight?" Really?????!!!!!!!!

4:22 AM Jeremy: well I get compared a lot to Gbob too so wtvr. And yeah-taxi drivers and I always get along well.

So we decided to wait on line for a while (which we would never do in Sobe) because it was Hedi Klum's party-so of course. The line is moving pretty well but by now it's 1:45 AM and we're getting pissed because the bouncer isn't letting us in. Only models are going to the party, basically.

4:24 AM So they suggest that we go to another entrance for a different lounge within the hotel. We go and it's really really really bad. Like really bad. We're about to call it a night but then A. (one of the two friends) says that he's going to the bathroom and to meet him outside the lounge.

4:25 AM We all meet outside the lounge (but in the lobby) and D. (the other friend) points to an open elevator. "Let's just go in and see what happens. What's the worst that could happen?"- he literally said that.

4:26 AM We go in and there's a room service guy in there with us. We need a key to get to a floor, so we pretend like we lost ours and ask if he can push the 8th floor (thinking that we would then walk 4 flights up to the rooftop).

4:27 AM He does, and we're on the 8th floor and we walk to the roof (and we're hearing the music). We get on the rooftop but there's no party. It's one floor down (the penthouse-not the actual rooftop of the building like it is at the Gansevoort in Miami).

However, when we try and get back in, the door is locked.

4:28 AM First thing we all think of is The Hangover. Next we're trying to figure out how we're going to get back inside. We lean over the railing to the party happening below us and yell to a group of people to ask if they can come let us in

They were all drunk but one guy answered yes as long as we buy him a drink

me: OMG

4:29 AM Jeremy: I immediately agreed. He comes back a second later with a bouncer who shouts up to us asking how we got up there and what's wrong with us. I say we're from Florida and just wanted to see the view

They disappear from view to come get us, and we quickly take off our wristbands showing we got into the bad lounge and not into the Heidi Klum party.

They open the door and we walk down to the party with them. A bouncer tried to stop us because we were

4:30 AM *weren't stamped or wearing a bracelet, but bc we were walking in with another bouncer and a guy from the party, he let us through

Heidi Klum was in a gorilla costume dancing a few feet away from us

4:31 AM me: "We're from Florida and just wanted to see the view." That is the best thing I have EVER EVER heard.

4:32 AM Jeremy: Well it was a really nice view

4:33 AM It was only the next day that we realized how many celebrities were actually at the party

4:34 AM me: That is insane

Jeremy: Welcome to my life

4:35 AM me: Priceless.

Jeremy: I just liked how it started out in the lounge of our dorm saying let's go to Midtown, and we ended up at Heidi Klum's party until 4

4:36 AM you're so lucky to have me as a brother

4:37 AM me: Truer words were never spoken.

4:38 AM Jeremy: so was the story what you expected?

me: It's awesome. So did you recognize anyone there? Besides Heidi?

4:40 AM Jeremy: everyone was way too dressed up. They take halloween really seriously. So I don't really know who they are, but I saw them and found out afterwards

Doutzen Kroes-victorias secret model

me: oh my.

4:41 AM Jeremy: Austin Scarlett

from some fashion show

me: Project Runway you fool.

Jeremy: Idk. And there was one more. Trying to find his name.

4:43 AM amber rose

idk who she is either

4:45 AM me: You are...

something else.

Isn't he just? Look at him.

PS: If you're coming to next Wednesday's Carle Place signing I'm doing with CASSIE CLARE JUST SAYING, he'll be there. You know, in case MEETING THE AUTHOR OF THE INFERNAL DEVICES AND THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS isn't enough. More about those events forthcoming :D

*Gbob is our grandfather. Yes.

Start Spreading the News

2011-11-30T01:26:00.000-05:00

One of the questions I get asked pretty often by people who follow me on Twitter and on this here blog is whether the characters I've written are based on anyone I know in real life.

I usually invoke the fifth.

But today, I'm going to own up to something. Like Mara, I have two brothers. They're both younger than me. One of them is a PhD candidate at Northwestern, and the other is still in college. They're both seriously awesome and seriously hilarious, but aside from quoting them on Twitter (and possibly in my books idk idk) I haven't talked about either of them much.

That changes now.

You guys have seen the trailer, right? This one? It was orchestrated by my youngest brother, Jeremy. He's just 20-years-old and a junior in college, but he was the one who developed the concept, created the shot list and organized all of the details. When he was 16 and in high school, he launched a video production company and earned more money in his first year than I did working two jobs over the course of four years of college. And now, while working as a full-time student, he's about to launch his second (SECOND) company next Monday.

What it is: KIS allows you to reach beyond the confines of Google searches to learn about ordinary topics from extraordinary people. Applying to college? Learn admissions secrets from the authors of In! Cooking steak for dinner? Learn how to make it perfect from the executive chef at Delmonico's Steak House in NYC. There are videos with Carlos Falchi, Van Cleef & Arpels, Le Cirque, the Paramount Bar, and rumor has it, there are many, many more to come.

Why you should click: I don't really need to plug KIS because the little bastard's site already has so many subscribers pre-launch that on Monday, December 5th (launch day), they're locking it. But I'm writing about KIS anyway because a) it's awesome, b) it's free, c) despite being a full-time student with more than two full-time jobs, Jeremy has orchestrated my incredible trailer, shown up to all of my MARA events to heckle me, and supported me at every turn in every possible way. Mara is lucky to have a kickass family, and so am I.

So click. Subscribe. After Monday, the site will still be free but you'll only be able to subscribe to the waiting list, otherwise you'll have to be invited by a current member.

I'm SO PROUD of you, Jeremy. If I didn't love you so much, I'd hate you.

Which one of Mara's brothers do you think he most resembles?

Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T15:09:00.001-05:00

I have so much to be thankful for this year. My family. My friends. My pets. My publisher. My writer friends, old and new. My heroic agent, Barry, and my incomparable editor, Courtney. I have been to new states. I have met so many readers. And every day, I get to talk to you.

Thank you for being part of my journey. I am thankful for you.

Weekend Update!

2011-11-18T06:26:00.000-05:00

Only less amusing...

This weekend I'm heading to Chicago for NCTE/ALAN. I am crazy excited for this, you guys. You've seen the lineup, right? I would use the word "epic." I'm just saying.

In addition to my panel on Tuesday, I'll also be signing MARA DYER! Whee! Come and say hi? Pretty please?

Sunday, November 20th:
9:30 a.m. – 10:30 a.m: Signing with Simon & Schuster, Booth #516-520
10:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m: Signing with Andersons, Booth #1301

Tuesday, November 22nd
1:40 p.m. – 2:25 p.m: “The Future of YA Lit” Featuring Katie Alender, Beth Fantaskey, Thanhha Lai, and moi. Chicago Hilton Hotel | Grand Ballroom | Second Floor

2:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m: ALAN signing immediately thereafter :D

ALSO Chicagoans: I will be on NBC Channel 5 on Sunday morning. Talking about MARA. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH CRAZYCAKES ~~I am likely to swear and say very inappropriate things so~~ you should WATCH ~~for the lulz~~!

And finally...you've heard of YA Sisterhood, right? They run the YA Crush Tournament? Well, they're holding the first Tournament of Heroines and Mara Dyer has been nominated. No, Mara isn't a traditional heroine, but that's all the more reason to support her! Naughty girls need love too.

(Also, there's a too-steamy Mara/Noah outtake OR the uncut too-steamy-for-prime-time version of the trailer in it for you if she places in the top 3. Fall 2012 is pretty far away, and the trailer? Yeah. Just saying.)

NEWS!

2011-11-15T00:23:00.001-05:00

Yes, that is a leaping lamb.

So, this weekend was YALLFest, and it was awesome, and I'm going to show you some pictures related to that and talk about it more but something happened this evening and I must share it NOW because I can BARELY CONTAIN my excitement!

I was on the phone with the lovely marketing director at Simon & Schuster when I heard a knock at the door and the thunk of a package being dropped on the porch. "Whatever could it be?" I thought to myself. I took a moment to go look and when I saw that the package was FROM Simon & Schuster, I exclaimed so excitedly! I opened it. Inside were copies of MARA DYER. This was how the conversation went:

Me: "Oh! More copies of my book! How nice! I wonder what I did to deserve this boon!"
Marketing Director: "Was there anything WITH the copies of the book?"
Me: "I didn't plan that far ahead. I just saw SHINY BOOKS and got excited and put them in a little heart-shaped pile."
Marketing Director: "Well....you should look!"
Me: "Okay <3 <3 <3 <3"
Me: *looks* *finds little note* *reads note* *falls over*

Would you like to know what that note said, dear readers?

In short: CONGRATULATIONS! YOUR BOOK HAS BEEN REPRINTED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (emphasis mine)

What that means, guys, is that just six weeks after the strange little book I wrote went out into the world, MARA DYER has sold out of it's first print run and is now in its second printing. That is AMAZINGNESS. AMAZINGNESS I TELL YOU!

And it's because of you.

Which is why I decided to have a contest to thank you.

A month ago, while I was on tour, I was given an ARC of the highly coveted CLOCKWORK PRINCE by Cassandra Clare. It is so coveted that it was handed to me at an event in a manila envelope so as to prevent my demise by fire and dismemberment at the hands of eager fans. I devoured the book, naturally. It was even better than I imagined it would be.

And in light of my good news and the coming events I am doing WITH Cassie (just three weeks away!) I thought I should share the CLOCKWORK PRINCE love. So today only, if you tweet using the hashtags #maradyer AND #clockworkprince, you'll be entered to win my (lovingly treated) ARC of CLOCKWORK PRINCE and a first edition of MARA DYER. This is cool because:

a) CLOCKWORK PRINCE is AMAZING.
b) Only a limited number of ARCs were printed & there will be no ARCs for CLOCKWORK PRINCESS, CITY OF LOST SOULS, and CITY OF HEAVENLY FIRE--so it's Very Special.
c) The only first editions of MARA DYER left are in stores now, so unless you snapped one of them up already (or snap one up soon!) this is the only way to get one. And it's free!

So, those rules? Here they are:

a) Entries from US and Canada only
b) Tweet why you want to win CLOCKWORK PRINCE AND Mara Dyer and use the #ClockworkPrince AND #maradyer hashtags.

That's it! A randomizer thingy will choose a winner. Right now, I plan on running the contest until 11:59PM EST on 11/15/11...but I may extend it depending on the response :D

In other news, I am now doing the tumblr thing! It's more efficient to answer questions that way, I think, and then I can save answers to refer people back to later--so if you HAVE any questions for me? Ask away!

YALLFest post forthcoming, with pictures of amazing food and a rundown of this awesome event and details of my encounters with Carrie Ryan, Diana Peterfreund, Ellen Hopkins, Melissa de la Cruz, Heather Brewer, Kimberly Derting, Eliot Schrefer, Victoria Schwab, Beth Revis, Saundra Mitchell, Sarah Rees Brennan, Kaleb Nation, Natalie Standiford, David Levithan, the wonderful event-hosts Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl and MANY more! But, in short, I force-fed most of them to near-tears, and then used the food pictures to torture my agent. Hee hee.

Thank you, thank you, thank you again, everyone.

You're never too old for your mommy.

2011-11-04T06:12:00.002-04:00

So, on Tuesday, there was this chat that happened. So many questions were asked between 8 and 9PM that it took three additional hours to get to most of them--I didn't want to stop! Because I love love love that you enjoyed the book enough to WANT to know things. It wins.

Hundreds of people tuned in and I am grateful for every single one. But a surprise guest also showed up.

Yeah, that happened.*

I know it was actually her because no one, NO ONE else could write those comments. OMG. That was 100% pure, unadulterated Mom--and I love her SO MUCH.

Today just happens to be her birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOMMY!

Show her some love in the comments? She reads them all--along with every blog post. And every review. And every tweet. Seriously.

*The screenshots were taken during the chat because I *knew* I would want them for posterity. And possible blackmail. There's no transcript, just like we said :)

The dark and the twisted

2011-10-31T03:28:00.002-04:00

A while back, I promised to write about some of my favorite books. Virtually all of them are dark and twisted. And because today is Halloween, I thought I'd give you a glimpse into some of the darkest and twistiest. Note: These are all adult novels, so consider yourself warned.

Why I love it: When the LA Times said this about MARA DYER, I almost fainted. Because I love Carrie very much--so much there's even a reference to it on p. 194 the book. I love everything by Stephen King, so playing favorites with his novels is nearly impossible, but I can say that there is something particularly appealing--and disturbing--about Carrie to me. I first read the book when I was in high school; maybe that's part of why it resonated so fiercely. In King's introduction to the book, he discusses the two real teenage girls who helped inspire Carrie White, and of them he says: "...[T]here was something else, as well. Something that broadcast STRANGE! NOT LIKE US! KEEP AWAY! on a wavelength only other kids can pick up. It is like a pirate radio station of the heart. I can no longer pick up on that wavelength, but I can remember it very well."

The excerpt:

"News item from the Westover (Me.) weekly Enterprise, August 19, 1966:

RAIN OF STONES REPORTED

It was reliably reported by several persons that a rain of stones fell from a clear blue sky on Carlin Street in the town of Chamberlain on August 17th. The stones fell principally on the home of Mrs. Margaret White, damaging the roof extensively and ruining two gutters and a downspout valued at approximately $25. Mrs. White, a widow, lives with her three-year-old daughter, Carietta.

Mrs. White could not be reached for comment.

(Now that's a first paragraph).

Next up:

Why I love it: The novel begins like a romantic drama, and then gut-punches you with WTFery. To say the book is extremely disturbing is an understatement, but the build-up is so masterfully subtle that you don't realize you've been holding your breath until it's all over.

The excerpt:

"Aoyama's palms were moist with perspiration. He was surreptitiously wiping them on his trousers when something very strange occurred. A young man in a wheelchair had entered the cafe, accompanied by an older woman who was probably his mother. They were laughing about something. Still smiling, the youth turned his head slightly, and his eyes widened as they locked on Yamasaki Asami. The smile froze, the blood drained from his face, and he made as if to rise up from his wheelchair. Seeing his distress, the woman leaned over and asked him, presumably, what was wrong, but he merely shook his head. Averting his gaze and hunching his shoulders as if cowering, he wheeled himself on toward the far end of the room. There was no change whatsoever in Yamasaki Asami's expression as she watched this peculiar little scene play out."
Bonus: Gender role subversion. Saying anything more will spoil it for you.

(Note: this one is very, VERY adult--by YA standards, I would say there's graphic sex and violence. By adult standards, I'd call it...intense).

Why I love it: I've been fascinated by plagues for a long time (I am weird. This should not be news) and in this lyrical and gripping novel, a government experiment gone wrong unleashes a plague of vampirism. The 786 page book is so taut that I finished it within a day. I think THE TWELVE (the sequel) is my most eagerly anticipated novel of 2012.

The excerpt:

“Something was wrong with Subject Zero.

For six days straight he hadn’t come out of the corner, not even to feed. He just kind of hung there, like some kind of giant insect. Grey could see him on the infrared, a glowing blob in the shadows. From time to time, he’d change positions, a few feet to the left or right, but that was it, and Grey had never seen him actually do this. Grey would just lift his face from the monitor, or leave the containment to get a cup of coffee or sneak a smoke in the break room, and by the time he looked again, he’d find Zero hanging someplace else.”

Why I love it: See e.g the previous fascination with plagues? It all started with a 1995 Newsweek article about Ebola. Then ~~I ran out and bought this book~~ made my mom drive me to B&N so I could buy this book, and an obsession was born.

The excerpt:

"The seats are narrow and jammed together on these commuter airplanes, and you notice everything that is happening inside the cabin. The cabin is tightly closed, and the air recirculates. If there are any smells in the air, you perceive them. You would not have been able to ignore the man who was getting sick. He hunches over in his seat. There is something wrong with him, but you can't tell exactly what is happening.

He is holding an airsickness bag over his mouth. He coughs a deep cough and regurgitates something into the bag. The bag swells up. Perhaps he glances around, and then you see that his lips are smeared with something slippery and red, mixed with black specks, as if he has been chewing coffee grounds. His eyes are the color of rubies, and his face is an expressionless mass of bruises. The red spots, which a few days before had started out as starlike speckles, have expanded and merged into huge, spontaneous purple shadows: his whole head is turning black-and-blue. The muscles of his face droop. The connective tissue in his face is dissolving, and his face appears to hang from the underlying bone, as if the face is detaching itself from the skull. He opens his mouth and gasps into the bag, and the vomiting goes on endlessly. It will not stop, and he keeps bringing up liquid, long after his stomach should have been empty. The airsickness bag fills up to the brim with a substance known as the vomito negro, or the black vomit. The black vomit is not really black; it is a speckled liquid of two colors, black and red, a stew of tarry granules mixed with fresh red arterial blood. It is hemorrhage, and it smells like a slaughterhouse. The black vomit is loaded with virus. It is highly infective, lethally hot, a liquid that would scare the daylights out of a military biohazard specialist. The smell of the vomito negro fills the passenger cabin. The airsickness bag is brimming with black vomit, so Monet closes the bag and rolls up the top. The bag is bulging and softening, threatening to leak, and he hands it to a flight attendant."

(Note: That is from page fourteen. This book has the most intense first chapter ever.)

Bonus: This is non-fiction, and that makes it the most terrifying thing I've ever read.

So there you have it--some of my most favorite frightening reads. In the YA realm, I recommend:

ASHES by Ilsa Bick (which I discuss here)
CRYER'S CROSS by Lisa McMann
I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER by Dan Wells

What are some of your favorites? Are you going trick or treating tonight? Are you bringing Timmy?

You have questions?

2011-10-27T14:19:00.003-04:00

So. By now, you might have heard the news: MARA DYER is out there. And PEOPLE I DON'T KNOW are reading it!

Those are fainting goats and that is Darth Vader, yes.

What you may or may not have heard is that many people have questions. Like: ~~was Chapter 50 real? Is Jamie right about Noah, or is Mara? Did the thing that happened at the end really happen?! And most critically, WHAT IS UP WITH THE ALLIGATORS????~~ What is the most dangerous spider in the world? Whatever happened to that kid from Jerry Maguire? And what is the answer to life, the universe and everything?

NEVER FEAR! Because next Tuesday night, on 11/1/11, I'll be answering your questions in a VERY special, I'm-only-doing-this-once-and-there-will-be-no-transcript livechat, with the extraordinary Lori from Pure Imagination and Casey from The Bookish Type! Also! I won't be spoiling the sequel, but this chat WILL be filled with spoilers from the first book, so, be forewarned. And stuff.

There you have it. Next Tuesday. 8PM EST. Bring your unanswered questions and your theories and BE THERE or BE a rhombus but not slanty.

The black widow; he is still acting in indie films; 42

I'm just happy to be here

2011-10-25T00:47:00.001-04:00

It's been four weeks since THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER appeared in bookstores everywhere. And in those weeks, I've traveled to seven cities, celebrated five Jewish holidays, saw the names of characters I made up for a book I wrote appear in the LA Times, learned that MARA DYER was nominated as for YALSA's Best Fiction for Young Adults list, met hundreds of new friends and one very handsome pug.

It has been a whirlwind, clearly. And much of that amazing, awesome whirlwind has been happening behind the scenes--for all of the above and for things I can't talk about yet. All told, since August 25th, I've spent a total of 8 days at home, and though I've missed it (and my beasts) like crazy (CRAZY), I have loved every second I've spent traveling for #maradyer. I wanted to soak up every minute of the tour. I wanted to see everything and eat everything and spend hours talking to each person I met and write something wholly original and perfectly clever in each book each wonderful, lovely person bought. I've also wanted to share every second of it with you, in person, on Twitter, on the blog, via email--everywhere. I've wanted to shout about every good thing that happens from the top of my lungs because it hit me at one point, I think while I was on a very, very long car ride after a very long plane ride to get to one of the events wearing wrinkled clothes and having no time to eat anything but airport food I'd bought that morning that I am so f*cking lucky.

Did this stuff land in my lap? No. Did I work hard? Yes. Very. But hard work does not guarantee an agent and an agent does not guarantee a book deal and a book deal does not guarantee such wonderful reviews and such wonderful reviews do not guarantee a book tour and--you see where this is going. My life is utterly unrecognizable from what it was on October 25, 2008. If anyone told me then that less than seven months later, I would begin writing a book I would have laughed and bet high against it. If anyone told me then that a year later, agents I met at a writer's conference would ask for it even though it wasn't finished, I would have asked: "What is a writer's conference?" If anyone told me that two years later, my book would sell to Simon & Schuster at auction to an editor who loved it so much she fought tooth and nail to get it and would be given a cover that would take the internet by storm, I would have asked whether a) you were high or b) you were insane. As of three years ago, not only had I never thought of the characters Mara Dyer and Noah Shaw but I'd never entertained the idea of writing a novel. And here I am now, writing this after returning from a book tour. A book tour.

I know better now than to ever say never again.

We only get one life, and every single one of you have changed mine for the better.

Maggie

2011-10-24T19:12:00.000-04:00

I met Maggie in June of 2001, when I was 19 years old, on summer break before my junior year of college. I was visiting volunteering at a local kill shelter in Ann Arbor, MI, and one day, we got a call to prepare 5-6 kennels for a cruelty case- the wife called in, said her husband beat her dog bloody, and they had "five or six" dogs. The alarm bells went off, but when the police and cruelty investigators went to seize the animals, they did not expect what they found.

There were 42 animals in the home. Every surface was covered in feces and urine, including the beds of his three children. Two of his dogs were locked inside one of the cars in the garage and living there. Still others were locked up in closets, and living there too. Every nook and cranny revealed more animals; dogs, cats, birds, and even two guinea pigs and a rabbit. Maggie was found in a tiny crate she couldn't even turn around in, covered in her own filth, on top of his television, with scars on her feet from trying to escape. She was ten pounds underweight (and therefore in better shape than virtually all of his other dogs, some of which were so starved they were drinking their own blood and urine).

Her report said she was incredibly fearful, and timid, and she was likely a fear biter (proven to be not true!). All dogs had to be held by the humane society for six months, because no one could track the defendant down, so technically, the animals were still his pending a judgment.

Maggie did not do well in the shelter. She pressed her head against the wall, in a corner, and wouldn't even respond if you clapped near her ear. She was so, so sad that I took her home to foster her, just for the summer because I was returning to NYC in the fall and would be living in the dorm. Before school began, bringing her back to the shelter was the saddest day of my life.

After the trial, the shelter won custody but they didn't adopt out pit bulls at the time--many shelters still don't. But luckily, a pit bull rescue got word that there were a number of sweethearts that survived extreme cruelty and neglect and took as many as they could from the case. Maggie was put up for adoption. But no one wanted her.

She had epilepsy. She was neurotic. She couldn't be crated, wouldn't go to the bathroom on a lead and couldn't be on a tie-out or she would scream. I was dealing with school and exams and life and I didn't know any of this, but I was desperate for a dog--I missed my childhood dog and started planning to move to an apartment for my senior year so that I could adopt a dog of my own.

I finished my junior year. I signed the lease on an apartment, a 400 sq. ft. studio on the 2nd floor of a walk-up on the Upper East Side across the street from one park and about three quarters of a mile from a dog park. I started browsing Petfinder and realized the dogs I was looking for were all smallish pit bulls. I remembered Maggie, and wondered how she was doing, and if by some miracle, she might still be available. So I called the rescue and asked, but she wasn't. She'd been adopted out just two weeks ago. I was happy for her but sad for me. I resumed my search, but halfheartedly.

And then I got the call. The call that said Maggie had been returned because her epilepsy was just too much for the family to handle, and was I still interested?

Hell yes I was.

She moved in with me in August 2002. Maggie and I had an amazing year. I didn't realize that she wouldn't go to the bathroom on a leash but thanks to the parks, we made it work. I also didn't realize that Maggie was petrified of NYC buses and wouldn't walk on the streets of NYC so I'd have to bribe cab drivers with $40 (for just 10 blocks) to get her to the vet as often as she needed to go. But we made it work. I also didn't realize before I adopted her that it would be $65 just to walk in to the vet, before they drew blood, prescribed meds, and did any diagnostic exams on her, so I found myself having to work two jobs (in addition to my full course load) just to pay her vet bills. But we made it work.

Since then, there have been more vet bills. In the last ten years, she developed food allergies, and went on a special diet. Her seizures weren't fully controlled on just one epilepsy medication, so I consulted neurologists and added another. She developed hypothyroidism and then added another medication to manage it. She tore one of her ACLs (a ligament in her knee), so she had surgery and physical therapy to fix it, then tore the other one in the next six months and had surgery and physical therapy to fix that one, too. She came down with pancreatitis, so she got two days of inpatient supportive care to heal. She developed a mass on her eyelid and I was terrified it was cancer, but she had surgery to remove it and it was benign. This August, she developed a mass on her hock and I was terrified that was cancer, too, but a week before I left on tour, she had surgery to remove it and it was benign, too. Five weeks ago, her bloodwork was great and overall, she was in awesome, amazing shape.

But two hours after my flight landed last week, after being away for about four weeks, I took one look at her and knew she wasn't right. The sitter said she hadn't wanted to eat all day, and she was having trouble staying on her feet. So at 2AM, I admitted her to the hospital with a distended abdomen, labored breathing, a severely enlarged liver, anemia, and a fever. I thought she had pancreatitis again. So when I got the call the following morning from the internal medicine specialist telling me that the oncologist was 100% certain she had lymphoma, that she was dying, and I needed to decide whether I wanted to proceed with chemotherapy or euthanize her, to say I was in shock doesn't even cover it.

Maggie has a different life than most dogs. She was never interested in toys or playing or walks but loves food. She would rather snuggle and sleep next to you than jump up on you. But those things? She loves those things. And when I saw her Tuesday night, I didn't think she was done yet. Sobbing, I told the oncologist "I want to do the chemo, but don't let me be cruel." She said that she wouldn't and that I wasn't, because for dogs, chemotherapy isn't administered in doses toxic enough to kill cancer--it's given to manage their cancer and extend their quality of life, so they have none of the miserable symptoms that humans experience with it. Maggie has stage 5B lymphoma; the worst possible kind, but the oncologist said that IF she responded to the chemotherapy, she'd have the same chances as a dog with a less severe stage would.

And so Maggie started treatment. First, her fever broke. Then, her liver values decreased by half, and her liver went back to it's normal size and stopped pushing on her diaphragm and her kidneys (which caused her to leak urine for 24 hours). She received a blood transfusion to help her recover even faster, and then things really progressed; her values decreased by half again and her red blood count skyrocketed, then held. She got her second dose of chemotherapy and her platelets went up, too. She was responding. And she went from this:

To this:

And this:

She is eating everything in sight, cruising around the yard, licking marrow bones and snuggling close to me on the couch and in bed. In a word, she is happy.

And because it looks like I am going to be able to get another good year with her, so am I.

Thank you so, so much for your good thoughts, your prayers, your support, and your understanding while I've been away. We aren't out of the woods by any means, and her medication schedule is, in a word, intense:

9AM: Sucralfate
10AM: Denamarin/Pepcid/Clavamox/Phenobarbital/Levothyroxine/Keppra
11AM: Breakfast, prednisone, cerenia
5PM: Sucralfate
6PM: Denamarin/Pepcid/Clavamox/Phenobarbital/Levothyroxine/Keppra
7PM: Dinner
1AM: Sucralfate
2AM: Keppra

So things are going to be hectic and hard for me for a while as I take her to chemotherapy, cook her food, give her meds, and try to work, shower, and sleep every now and again. But every day I have with her is a blessing, and it means the world to me to know you all understand.

Utah, In Pictures

2011-10-17T01:03:00.001-04:00

HEY! Did you have a GREAT week, friends? I did. I'm still recovering from the GREATNESS of it, in fact, and therefore I shall be brief. So brief that I'm just going to post the awesome pictures of the awesomeness that was Utah, and deconstruct the events with Becca Fitzpatrick, Moira Young, Elana Johnson & Simone Elkeles another day. Contest results from ALL THE CONTESTS shall be forthcoming soon--as in, once I am home and have clean clothes :D Can't waaiiiiiiitttttt!

ETA: I signed lots and lots of stock at the Hastings in Ogden, Utah and at Books, Inc. in San Francisco. Which means that they might still have some on hand IF you would like to order a signed copy. Here are the deets:

Hastings: 83 North Harrisville Road, Ogden, UT - (801) 399-2090
Books, Inc: 601 Van Ness Avenue San Francisco, CA - (415) 776-1111

REALLY QUICK NOTE!

2011-10-12T18:31:00.000-04:00

MOAR Jewish holidays, so I am offline until next week. Will try to get to your tweets/emails/messages and suchly then.

HEARTS for all of you. Also chocolate.

San Francisco, In Pictures

2011-10-11T03:48:00.000-04:00

Because I am too exhausted to write about the awesome, awesome events at the ever amazing Keplers with Becca Fitzpatrick and Books, Inc, with Becca and Moira Young, this will have to do for now:

Provo, Utah, here we come!

QUICK NOTE!

2011-10-09T04:18:00.001-04:00

I AM LEAVING FOR TOUR PART DEUX IN...FOUR HOURS! I SHOULD BE SLEEPING BUT I AM NOT I AM WAY TOO EXCITED!

Also I wanted to tell you somefing. I got an email recently from a lovely, lovely lady who wanted to buy a signed copy of #maradyer for her daughter in law school (w00t) but couldn't make it to the launch party @ Books & Books. I did some stock signings while I was in NYC this past week and so I told her to call the stores I signed at and she was able to get one! Which was happy making for us both!

It made me want to tell you, though, that IF you have not yet bought #maradyer and IF you would like to and IF you would like to buy a signed copy, I am going to be here:

SUNDAY, October 9th (aka, today)

Keplers Books with Becca Fitzpatrick

1010 El Camino Real
Menlo Park, CA 94025
650-324-4321

(ETA: Keplers sold out)

MONDAY, October 10, 7:00pm (aka tomorrow)
Books, Inc with Becca Fitzpatrick and Moira Young
601 Van Ness
San Francisco, CA 94102

TUESDAY, October 11th, 3:30PM (aka Tuesday)

Hastings Bookstore with Becca Fitzpatrick, Moira Young, and Elana Johnson

340 EAST 525 NORTH
Ogden, UT 84404

Phone: (801) 399-2090

Phone2: (801) 399-2091

In case you want to call the stores and see if you can snag a signed book and have them ship it. When I get home next week, I'm going to collapse a heap of pets/laundry/pillows and I do not know when I shall resurface. So! Bottom line! For a signed #maradyer, you now know where to go.

Will update more sooooooon :D

The MLF

2011-10-04T12:39:00.001-04:00

It's been a whole week since MARA's been out there in the big, wide world. I...have been completely overwhelmed by all of the joy and joyness that coincided with the launch. In part, I have celebrated it by eating my way through each tour stop:

Malta & mariquitas in Miami

Mara enjoying a foodgasmic Italian pastry thingy in Soho

Also! Outside of my amazing NYC hotel room:

There is a giant metal chicken on someone's balcony. I tried to take a picture, but it's too far away to capture. But it makes me happy every morning.

New York is already amazing, and I am super excited for the public event I have tomorrow night at the Jefferson Market branch of the New York Public Library with Jocelyn Davies, Anna Godbersen, Anne Heltzel, Kody Keplinger, Micol Ostow, Leila Sales, and Cecily von Ziegesar. I hope you are coming. You are coming, yes? YES?

Anyhoodle! I shall update with food pictures once I'm in CA, but for now, I wanted to just post, say hi, and say THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.

OH. AND: I've been told that the pictures of #maradyer EVERYWHERE have been streaming in for The Big Contest from just about every state and many places OUT of state and out of the country, in fact. And I heard there are lots of pictures of her with dogs and cats, which makes me feel all warm and fuzzy <3

But. I've also gotten comments and emails from sadfaced readers who ordered the book but haven't received it in time to play with the one week contest deadline. And that made ME have a sad face. Like this:

And then I realized: Maybe I can SOLVE this issue by extending the deadline. By another week, perhaps?

So this is your mission, should you choose to accept it:

1) Free Mara Dyer. Liberate her from bookstore shelves (legally! No nighttime raids on your local B&N, please and thank you) and take her home with you.

2) Have your way with her. Pose her in a jaunty little hat. Next to your angry parrot. In front of the Eiffel Tower. Looking wistfully at Times Square. Like so:

Except replace the gnome with MARA DYER.

3) Then snap a photo.

4) And mail it to maradyer at gmail dot com

Who knows. Mara might even write you back.

ASIDE from the STUFF that you can win, watching you all #freemaradyer warms the cockles of my heart. I don't see the pictures that come in from the contest, so if you DO want me to see them, join the Mara Liberation Front, tweet with the hashtag #freemaradyer and make my day :D

Love love love you.

So this happened while I was away.

2011-10-03T01:10:00.001-04:00

"There are echoes of Stephen King's classic Carrie in this young-adult series kickoff...Written from Mara's perspective, The Unbecoming deftly melds alternate realities. Hodkin's transitions from the mundane to hallucinated horror are unexpected, seamless and creepy, packing the same sort of cinematic punch as scenes from The Blair Witch Project...The Unbecoming is already a fast-moving page turner, but Hodkin ratchets up the suspense with cliffhanger chapter endings that keep pulling readers through the action. Part of this novel's allure is the curiosity it engenders about Mara's condition: Does she have PTSD, or is she criminally insane? Discerning the truth is just part of the pleasure of reading the delightfully bent reality in The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer."

Dear LA Times,

Best start to the new year ever. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Times 100,000,000,000,000 to the power of infinity.

Sincerely,

The Most Happiest Author In The World

(Here's a link to the full review, but be forewarned--it is spoilery. Seriously.)

Also, this is what happened BEFORE I went away:

Me totally almost losing it in front of a packed house. Emotional Michelle is Emotional.

The signing line. YAY!

The launch party was amazing. Absolutely, thoroughly amazing. Debra and Allison and Irving and Noah and Aaron and the entire Books & Books crew were so fantastic and it was completely surreal to be standing in front of a podium, reading from my book, and seeing all of the new friends I've met on this wild ride, like the amazing book bloggers Harmony and Ashley and writers Christina Gonzalez (The Red Umbrella) sitting in chairs next to my brother, grandmother and my 11th grade AP English teacher (and her 14 year old daughter).

My heart, it nearly burst.

Now? Now I am in New York doing ALL THE THINGS and I am VERY excited to be back in one of my favorite cities. And if YOU are in New York this Wednesday, I'll be joining Cecily von Ziegesar (Gossip Girl Psycho Killer), Jocelyn Davies (A Beautiful Dark), Anna Godbersen (Beautiful Days), Anne Heltzel (Circle Nine), Kody Keplinger (Shut Out), Micol Ostow (What Would My Cell Phone Do?), and Leila Sales (Past Perfect) for the Teen Author Reading Night at the Jefferson Market branch of the NYPL. 6:00PM. Be there or...don't be there and make me sad, why don't you?

ALSO! While the event is just a reading (e.g. no books sold AT the reading), if you bring MARA DYER with you, I will sign it :D

So come see me. Pretty please?

Going Dark

2011-09-28T17:34:00.001-04:00

If you have bought the book, thank you.
If you are planning to buy the book, thank you.
If you are thinking about buying the book, thank you.
If you are saying nice things about the book to your family/friends/co-workers/acquaintances/inappropriate yoga guys, thank you.
If you have been saying nice things to me on Twitter or on the blog or on Facebook or in emails or via text messages, thank you.

I want to thank you all individually, because your support over the past year and a half has been extraordinary. Truly. But it's Rosh Hashana in just a couple of hours, which means I'm going dark for a few days. If you have to reach me, you won't be able to. If you have to reach me urgently...you won't be able to. I just won't be here :(

But that doesn't mean the #MaraMadness should stop. So keep following the blog tour at Books Complete Me with the remaining stops at:

Wednesday, 9/28: @ The Book Muncher

Thursday, 9/29: @ I Eat Words

Friday, 9/30: @ Supernatural Snark

And then you'll have all the letters you need for the scavenger hunt!

More I'm-Going-Away-And-Won't-Be-Able-To-Answer-Your-Questions-And-Tell-You-Things-Reminders:

1) The BIG CONTEST (you know, for the iPad2) is running through 10/4. Details are here, but in a nutshell: email a picture of MARA DYER in the wild (as in, not in bookstores) to maradyer at gmail dot com to enter. Tweeting/Facebooking/Tumbling about the contest not necessary but v. much appreciated, especially since I will be gone.

2) Don't forget that the Spread This Trailer Everywhere Contest is running until 10/10. Below is the trailer you should spread (it's international!) and you can enter in the comments of that post (and read that post for more details).

3) The pre-order contest, which ended last Thursday, had more than 300 entries! YAY! And guess what? EVERYONE who entered is going to get bookmarks. But I need to tally up the entries and with the craziness, won't be able to get to that until next week. Hoping to announce the winners on Monday.

4) If you've won something and haven't received it yet, it will be mailed on or after October 17th since I'm traveling constantly until then.

5) You may want to keep an eye on the Mara Dyer Facebook page. I heard there's going to be another trailer there. A different one.

6) If you have questions about the book that you want/need to ask this week, don't forget that there's a FAQ page on this blog; chances are they'll be answered there. If they aren't, you may find the information you're looking for on the other pages, or on www.michellehodkin.com or on www.maradyer.com. You can also try asking your (non-spoilery) questions on the Mara Dyer Facebook page. And if you just want someone to talk to about the book (the characters, the craziness, the ending) Lori, Casey, and The Dyer Files may be able to help. And if that doesn't help, there's always Google :D

I think that covers it. To everyone celebrating, chativa v'chatimah tova v' shana tova u'metuka. Have a happy, healthy, sweet new year. To everyone else, happy Wednesday.

See you on the other side.

The Truth

2011-09-28T02:18:00.000-04:00

THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER came out yesterday. I want to say some things about that, and about me, that I've never said before and might even delete after the fact. I don't know. I debated whether or not to write this for a long time.

This is the truth: I've never really fit in--not anywhere, not ever. I've always been different. Strange. Controversial, one of my high school guidance counselors told my mom. Rebellious?

Absolutely.

But despite all that, I followed a pretty conventional path. I got good grades in high school and went to a good college. I went to law school and became a lawyer and did good work on cases I believed in. I adopted a few pets and bought a house with a white picket fence and a swing on a grand live oak tree.
And then I did something even I didn't expect.

I wrote a book.

Not because I wanted to. I never had the thought, "I'd like to be a writer someday," or "I'd like to be published." Not once. Not because it isn't an amazing thing to want; it is. But it just never even occurred to me to want it.

I wrote MARA DYER because I had to. Something happened when I was practicing law and something happened a year later that coalesced into this idea for a really bizarre story. And once I realized that it was a story, I had to write it. I quite literally couldn't stop.

I never, ever expected to get published and I did write it to entertain myself (and my friends and family), but once I realized I was in, that I was really doing this, part of me wanted to see if the thing I was making would somehow find its way to people like me. People that felt like a freak in high school and in...well, life. People that like TWILIGHT and Marilyn Manson, or LOLITA and Sarah Dessen. Kid Cudi and Trogdor or HARRY POTTER and SAW XVIIIIVX.

I'm not perfect. Far from it. And maybe that's why I love reading about books with characters who really aren't perfect. The outsiders. The misfits. The freakish.

Because that's how I've always felt, and it took me a long time to be okay with it. I'm glad I've lived the life I've lived and made the choices I've made. I'm glad I studied hard and got good grades and had a "normal" career before this very unusual one.

But I'm also so, so happy to have landed where I have and to have landed here now. To still have Marilyn Manson on my #maradyer playlist next to Josh Radin. To still love Patrick Bateman and to have added Edward Cullen, too.

But best and most of all? My favorite part of all this has been meeting you. In person and at conferences but also on Twitter and other places online. And not just seeing you guys wearing "Who is Mara Dyer?" T-shirts at your brother's graduation and at the zoo. Hearing about other books you love and how much Freshman Comp sucks.

So while I did write this book for me, if you've ever felt like a misfit, an outsider, a freak?

Nobody's perfect. And I wrote THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER for you, too.

In stores everywhere. Like, now.

Release Day Post Part I: The Contest

2011-09-27T04:34:00.000-04:00

"Aberforthf***inggoats...I sentence Michelle Hodkin to a life of tainting children’s classic stories, for my amusement." ~Bookphilia

Want to know what THAT review is about? Well, now you can find out, because MARA DYER is finally, finally, here. Like, right now. Like RIGHT NOW.

And if you get your hands on her, you'll be eligible to enter My Gigantic, Enormous, Very Big, Very Huge MARA DYER Contest. Also known as MGEVBVH MARA DYER Contest. Here's how:

1) Buy THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER.

2) Take it home. Or to the park. Or to school. Or to the shark tank at your local aquarium. Or to Zanzibar.

3) Take a picture of MARA out in the world. As in, not on a bookshelf in a bookstore. MARA lives there now so that would be no fun for her.

4) Email it to maradyer at gmail dot com.

That's it! That's all! And who knows, she might even write back.

Why should you bother?

1) 1 person will win an iPad 2*. Seriously. Here is the iPad, new in it's box. Next to Three-Year-Old Michelle, smiling and waiting for you to win it:

2) 8 people will win 10 signed bookmarks each. They are so much more gorgeous in person, with silver foil on black on one side and the cover art on the other:

3) 2 people will win "Who is Mara Dyer?" T-shirts and archival print posters of the cover art.

3) 1 person will win either: a fifty page manuscript critique or an outtake that will not be posted online. Regarding the MS critique, FYI, I have never offered these before as part of a contest, an auction, or a favor, and the chances that I will again are slim.

4) 3 people will win "Who is Mara Dyer?" T-shirts, and iPhone skins with the cover art graphics.

Fifteen winners. All you need is a copy of THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER, a camera, and an internet connection to enter.

This contest is open September 27th - October 4th. Here are THE RULES:

1. One book purchased = one entry. If you have three MARAs in a circle holding hands in Central Park singing kumbaya, you not only get three entries, but my undying devotion, too. But three different pictures of one copy of MARA DYER still = one entry.

2. If you received a free review copy or ARC from me, Simon & Schuster, or at BEA or ALA or from anywhere else, you can't enter with the ARC. But you can buy a copy and enter with that!

3. This contest IS open internationally.

4. Pictures of you and MARA in bookstores don't count. You and MARA have to be doing something cool, and MARA already lives in bookstores. Take MARA on a ferris wheel. Take her to your grandparents' creepy attic. Take her on a walk with your dog.

5. If you can snag a shot of MARA on your eReader, that counts as an entry!

6. Deadline is October 4th.

And...........

*The iPad was donated by someone really, really wonderful. It was actually supposed to be for me but I wouldn't have any occasion to use it. So I asked permission to give it to one of you, and was told that I could. You win.

Weekend Update

2011-09-26T09:02:00.001-04:00

THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER comes out tomorrow.

Yeah.

I haven't really been able to process this because I feel like everything has been happening so fast. So fast. Which is AMAZING. And I am so fortunate and grateful, even though it's becoming clear that I can't even hope to keep up. There's stuff happening all the time. Like this past weekend, in fact! Here's a recap:

- Early copies of THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER were given out in some cities to people who attended Abduction during the opening weekend) HOW CRAZYPANTS IS THIS?

- I had my first two school visits ever and ZOMG, they were so much fun. I didn't realize how much fun they would be, and I was actually pretty nervous, but the teenagers Elizabeth Scott and I spoke to were seriously cool. And MARA DYER sold out at both schools. #dead

- This weekend, I had the honor of being invited to the YA Lit Conference hosted by Anderson's Bookshop in Naperville. Not only did I stay at a gorgeous LEED certified hotel with a television IN THE BATHROOM MIRROR and a soaking tub that I miss:

But I also got to see authors Elizabeth Miles, Lisa McMann, Torrey Maldonado, Paul Griffin, Patrick Carman, Jeff Hirsch, Ilsa Bick, Elizabeth Scott, Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis and So. Many. More. I also had the pleasure of hanging out with librarians/teachers/bloggers Heidi, Jillian, Lynn and Stacey.

Everyone was hilarious and cool, but I took some things away from the conference that you should know: a) Ilsa Bick is a BAMF and if you have the opportunity to meet her in person, you need to, b) Elizabeth Miles is the epitome of cool but more importantly, she has a SILVER PEN, c) Paul Griffin is a fellow pit bull champion (YES), d) I wish I was Lisa McMann and e) I would like a spare two weeks to do nothing but read every book Patrick Carman has ever written.

It was wonderful. Meeting teenagers and hearing that people are starting to get the book--the REAL book--and then meeting and seeing so many authors and librarians and teachers at the conference made me overwhelmingly happy. And then MARA DYER sold out at the conference, too, and...it was just too much.

And now I am in Miami and waiting until my BFF's flight gets in because she is not only coming in for my launch, but we will be having a sleepover party in the house--nay, in the VERY BEDROOM--I grew up in. I foresee shenanigans. Especially considering the 9:00pm chat hosted by the Mundie Moms tonight. BFF & I might already be "celebrating" by then, so who knows WHAT kinds of answers or things I shall say.

In other words, think of the LULZ. You might not want to miss?

I have a post going up later today with details about how to enter The Biggest Contest Yet and what the RIDICULOUSLY huge prize is, but until then, tell me what YOU did this weekend. Curious minds want to know.

THE BOOK TRAILER IS HERE!

2011-09-23T18:49:00.001-04:00

And then the wonderful, amazing people at MTV (MTV!!!!!!!!!!) went on to say this:

"[H]aving just dropped everything to devour "Mara Dyer" in a matter of hours, I can tell you that the book lives up to the trailer's promise and then some. It's the story of a girl trying to piece together what happened the night she, her best friend, her boyfriend and his sister spent the night in an abandoned asylum and only she survived, unscathed but traumatized. And it's the story of a girl trying to start over again after her family picks up and moves to Miami, all for her sake. And it's the story of a girl falling in love with the super-cool British bad boy with a rep for breaking hearts. Be careful, 'cause you'll fall right along with her. Your only solace: The sequel is due out in the fall of 2012."

I tell you, I died of the amazing. And international friends- the trailer will be up on YouTube TOMORROW. At some point. I do not know when.

But either way, I now introduce to you the Share The Trailer And Win Things Contest! Also known as the Spread This Trailer Everywhere Contest! Where you can win:

- an archival poster
- a "Who is Mara Dyer T-shirt"
- a signed hardcover

So go tell the world about #maradyer. And post your links to the places you've shared it (Twitter, Facebook, etc) in the comments of this post.

In other news, my FIRST EVER school visits went AWESOMELY (Mara Dyer sold out!) and now I am off to have fun at YA Lit Con. See you on the flip side :D

the trailer, & the biggest contest yet

2011-09-23T08:54:00.002-04:00

A still from the trailer

As of right now, it's just three days, twenty hours, and eight minutes until something I made is going to be out there in the big, crazy world.

But today, something else goes out into the big, crazy world, too. That trailer I've been talking incessantly about? For months now? It's finally going live. Today. On MTV's Hollywood Crush blog. HERE:

http://hollywoodcrush.mtv.com/

That is the link. I don't know what time it's scheduled to hit; I've already left for Tour Part I and I am right now typing this from here:

Fancy room with television in the bathroom mirror!

But while I am having fun talking to ACTUAL TEENAGERS in the WILD today, you go watch the trailer. Share it. Spread that trailer everywhere.

I hate asking things of you without offering something in return. Henceforth, I announce the Spread This Trailer Everywhere Contest:

One winner. Chosen at random. Post your links (to the places you spread it like linking to it on Twitter, Facebook, and soonandsoforth) in the comments. Runs until 10/10.

Prizes are:

- Archival poster
- T-shirt
- Signed hardcover

And with that, I’m off to prep for my first school visits EVER and then to the YA Lit Conference hosted by Anderson’s Bookshop in Naperville, IL. I predict a weekend full of AWESOME. #Cantwait

And if you haven't ordered MARA DYER yet, what are you waiting for?

Oh, the big prize? I mean, the BIG PRIZE? Well, check back on Monday to find out what it is and how you can win it. I'll give you just the one hint: you're going to have to own THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER to enter. You might want to click?

Who is Mara Dyer?

2011-09-20T02:35:00.000-04:00

Nope. Can't keep calm about this.

While there's no fancy language to translate, that doesn't make this sale any less exciting:

THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER sold to Simon & Schuster UK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now. The book isn't out yet so you might not know this. But there's a boy in it. A boy named Noah Shaw. He's from England. And Mara's grandmother used to live there, too, once upon a time.

Again, I don't have pictures of anyone gallivanting around the UK with a "Who is Mara Dyer?" T-shirt, but I'd really like some. So same deal: first person to comment on this post who lives anywhere in the UK will win a T-shirt. I'll send them to you forthwith.

Also? Just 1 week left.

You entered the contest by pre-ordering, didn't you?

Mara Dyer kimdir?*

2011-09-19T01:29:00.002-04:00

Okay, so, even though I travel a lot, something not many people know about me is that I have only spent time in THREE foreign countries. One of them is Germany; and Mara Dyer is going to be spending time there too, soon! Another is Israel; no current plans for MARA to move there unfortunately, but if that DOES ever happen, I will do a vlog of myself saying the first paragraph in Hebrew. You heard it here first.

The last country? The last country I've spent time in was Turkey.

And guess what?

Turkish rights to THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER sold, too.

And I'll make the same offer to someone who lives in Turkey that I did to any Brazilian readers out there: if you live in Turkey, and want a Mara Dyer T-shirt, and promise to wear one and take a cool picture of yourself wearing one out and about on the streets of Turkey, please comment? I'll send one ASAP to the first person (who lives in Turkey) to speak up!

:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

In other news, I also ran an impromptu Twitter contest on Friday for the first signed hardcover of MARA DYER, and a contest for a "Who is Mara Dyer?" T-shirt in the comments of the Brazilian-rights-news-post. Here are the winners!

Signed hardcovers: @mrscupcakeman AND @lovereadingx !
"Who is Mara Dyer?" T-shirt: Linda the Book Ninja

YAY! Send your address to mdhodkin at gmail dot com and I shall email you back with details.

For everyone else? Stay tuned. Because there will be more goodies. Much more.

And the preorder contest for LOTS of them is still open. Just so you know.

*Google translate again. I...really hope I did not butcher this. But I probably did. Meh.

Quem é Mara Dyer?

2011-09-16T00:21:00.000-04:00

So, I know what you're thinking.

Where's the picture of an awesome person wearing a "Who is Mara Dyer?" T-shirt in Brazil?*"

Well, there isn't one. But MARA DYER is going to be published there anyway, by the wonderful team at Record!

Because I don't have a picture of an awesome person wearing a "Who is Mara Dyer?" T-shirt in Brazil, here is a picture that approximates my expression right now:

But also, I really WOULD like a picture of an awesome person wearing a "Who is Mara Dyer?" T-shirt in Brazil. So if you live in Brazil, and want a Mara Dyer T-shirt, and promise to wear one and take a cool picture of yourself wearing one out and about on the streets of Brazil, please comment? I'll send one ASAP to the first person (who lives in Brazil) to comment!

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In other news, 10 minutes ago, I was chatting with some friends from El Salvador and other places on Twitter and they mentioned #maradyer. And I was like: "How did you even find out about #maradyer?" And that got me wondering.

If you made it here, chances are you made it here because of the book. But how did you first hear about it?

If you chime in with your answer in the comments, random.org will choose a number between 1 and however many comments there are, and I'll send a "Who is Mara Dyer?" T-shirt to that person too!

Love you guys. More than you know.

*What you're probably thinking is..."yeesh, when is she going to stop posting these already?" I HOPE NEVER AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

OMG WTF

2011-09-15T02:39:00.003-04:00

So, on Twitter a few days ago, a lovely blogger named Katie tweeted this:

And I retweeted this:

And then I got responses like this:

But I did say that I didn't want to read reviews. It's not that I don't appreciate them; I do. Because I know it's a thankless job that you don't even get paid for and word of mouth? It's EVERYTHING to an author. But it's hard to know when reading something might affect the way I write something in the future, so generally, I try to steer clear.

But then I got an email from Jessica S., who wrote:

"I know you said you would love to see all of the reactions and reviews of MARA DYER but that you don't read reviews. That gave me the idea to create a word cloud so you could see what people are saying without having to really read it. I copied and pasted about 175 reviews that I found of the book on Google and the attached picture is what Wordle generated. The most commonly used words are the largest. I LOLed and hope you like it."

Jessica S.? I love it. I love it so much I want to give it diamonds and two tickets to that thing it loves. I want to build it a house on Candy Mountain and have its WTFabulous babies.

So there you have it, guys. In just eleven days, all that WTFery could be YOURS.

誰是馬拉代爾 ?*

2011-09-14T11:59:00.001-04:00

Pictured: Steph Su at the Yu Gardens in China

I think you know what this means...

Complex Chinese rights to publish THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER have been sold to RyeField/Cite Publishing!

!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I hope I do not die from excitement before I get to see what "My name is not Mara Dyer, but my lawyer told me I had to choose something," looks like in Chinese.

In other news, that Mara Dyer playlist I've been hanging onto forever? I finally posted it. As part of the #MaraMadness blog tour. Check out Naughty Book Kitties to see!

*Google translate again. I hope this doesn't mean something embarrassing.

Wer ist Mara Dyer?*

2011-09-13T01:16:00.002-04:00

Pictured: Lenore Appelhans at the Nuremberg Zoo in Germany

Who is Mara Dyer?

Germany is going to find out! Yep, THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER sold to the LOVELY people at DTV (Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am WILDLY excited about this, for a few reasons. One of them is that I spent some time in Germany (Berlin) when I was in law school, and everyone I met there was overflowing with awesome. I am seriously hoping I get to go back someday soon so I can meet all of the amazing people working to publish MARA DYER there!

Another reason? Mara already has a friend there! That's one fine looking gator.

And Lenore's not so bad either ;)

GUYS HOW CRAZY IS THIS?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

*Google Translate says this is "Who is Mara Dyer?" in German. So if there's an "Ich bin ein Berliner" situation happening, I am blaming them.

Chi è Mara Dyer?*

2011-09-12T14:18:00.001-04:00

I have been sitting on this for a while. A long while. But now it's time to finally tell you:

THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER? It sold to Mondadori in Italy.

Pictured below: Mitali Dave in Florence, Italy

That means sometime next year, people who live in a country I've never even been to (I'm going to have to remedy that) are going to be able to read about Mara, Noah, Daniel, Joseph, Jamie, Ouija boards, Croyden, Zyprexa, botanicas, Lolita, pit bulls, the TSLA, alligators, Laurelton, and other weirdness in my weird book. And I'm going to find out how to say some of my more...colorful words...in Italian.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I. Can't. Wait.

In other amazingness, a bunch of infinitely awesome and wonderful book bloggers took it upon themselves to start something called #maramondays- every Monday (from 9/5 to 9/26), they're posting all kinds of fun MARA DYER-related stuff. Like:

Mara Dyer Fan Art (four words I never, ever thought I'd say)
Mara Dyer giveaways!
Mara Dyer reviews!

I had nothing to do with any of this, but that just makes me even more grateful for the effort they've put in, particularly with the insanity that is my life right now. I LOVE YOU GUYS!

*"Who is Mara Dyer?" in Italian. I think. According to Google Translate, anyway.

September 11th, 2001

2011-09-11T13:15:00.000-04:00

I am not going to write much about September 11th today because I was a junior at NYU, in New York City, on 12th St. and 5th Ave, on my way to my first Tuesday/Thursday class (Dante's Divine Comedy with John Freccero) with a direct line of sight to the WTC at 8:46 AM and 9:03 AM when flights 11 and 175 crashed into the North and South tower.

My dorm was on 25th St. between 1st and 2nd, and to get to the train, I had to pass the 69th regiment armory on Lexington b/t 25th and 26th street. That meant in order to get to and from class or to and from anywhere in the weeks that followed the attacks, I passed dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of MISSING fliers and posters posted by families searching for their mothers, sons, husbands, grandparents, aunts, brothers, children, uncles, and wives.

I breathed the air every day.

Five years later, I worked as a lawyer on the multi-district litigation on behalf of the families of victims on the four flights. I poured over evidence and formulated arguments about the economic value of human life. It was a privilege but it was hard.

Most of what I would like to write about September 11th I can't write, and what I could write doesn't really add much to the conversation. I was there, I did what little I could on that day and in the days, weeks, and years following. I could never forget.

Where were you?

Eight Hundred and Forty-Six

2011-09-08T04:25:00.000-04:00

Is the number of days it took to go from this:

To this:

844 days is the number it took to go from this:

To this:

My entire life has changed in the last two years, three months, and twenty-four days and I can trace it all back to that one moment.

There's so much more to say, but right now, I don't have the words.

kind and generous.

2011-09-06T15:25:00.000-04:00

Being an author is an awesome job, but it isn't easy. I wouldn't say it's harder than anyone else's, but it isn't easy. Authors have deadlines looming over them almost always. They have dozens, if not hundreds, of emails to respond to daily. They have blog posts to write and interviews to respond to and school visits and signings to travel to. They have teams of people depending on them to produce—their agent, their editor, and everyone else at their house whose reputation is at stake with every tweet and every blog post an author tosses into the internet. Authors don't know if their books will sell to expectations. They don't know whether reviewers will love it or hate it (or most likely, both). And all of the things they don't know will determine whether or not they get to be paid to write the next book.

And yet there are authors out there who take the time to engage with their fans and other writers—published or not—to a level that astounds me. I'm looking at Cassie Clare's near constant Q&A responses in multiple forums. I'm looking at Holly Black's conversations with readers in comments and tweets. At Lisa McMann's interaction with fans on formspring, Myspace, any and every social networking forum there is. I'm looking at Kami Garcia and Margie Stohl, who make fans feel like family at signings and events, no matter how strange we are. Melissa Marr, who talks to her fans about music until the wee hours of the morning. At RL Stine, who could move to a cabin in Saskachewan and never speak a word to a human soul again and still be the Master of Badassery as far as kid lit is concerned, but takes the time to say things like this. I'm looking at John Green and David Levithan, at Laurie Halse Anderson and Jay Asher, at Ellen Hopkins and Maggie Stiefvater, at Becca Fitzpatrick and Jo Knowles, at Scott Westerfeld and Libba Bray, at Nova Ren Suma and Gayle Forman. At Maureen Johnson, who makes it all look so deceptively easy. At Saundra Mitchell, who has been kinder than I can say.

These YA authors are cool and helpful, nice and encouraging, funny and genuine. And most of all, generous. They want people to read their books, sure. But so many of them could drop off the face of the earth and their books would still do well. They blog and tweet and talk because they want to. They help us and chat with us and brighten our days because they are kind. I can't think of better role models. Can you?

So today, for each comment in this post until 11:59PM, I'm donating a dollar to the Ali Forney Center for Homeless LGBT Youth. If an author has ever said or done something nice or you, speak up, and let's do something nice in their honor right back.

Mara Madness

2011-09-05T15:58:00.004-04:00

You can see the widget. You know how close MARA DYER is to actually being out.

The printed hardcovers are on their way. The launch festivities are being planned. The tour schedule is being finalized and confirmed. The trailer debut is approaching. Here's another sneak peek of that, by the way:

And the blog tour?

Well, that kicks off today at Pure Imagination!

The next twenty-one days are filled with Mara Madness. Check out the full schedule over at Books Complete Me, and stay tuned for chances to win personalized hardcovers of MARA DYER, the final annotated ARC, "Who Is Mara Dyer" T-shirts (shown here) and more.

What kind of "more," you want to know? Well, if you pre-order THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER between now and 9/22, screenshot (or take a picture of) your receipt and send it to noahshaw1221 at gmail dot com, then:

1 person will win the last ARC of MARA DYER I have, annotated on nearly every page with back story, secrets, and hints about the sequel.
8 people will win signed bookmarks (hot off the presses, and they are gorgeous)
2 people will win signed (or unsigned, depending on your preference) posters of the MARA cover art.
1 person will win a Nook
3 people will win Mara Dyer T-shirts

Did you catch that?

Posters. Bookmarks. T-shirts. The last ARC, with detailed, behind-the-scenes info. A Nook.

The contest is international. And you can pre-order from anywhere (check the sidebar for links), but if you want your book personalized or signed, Books & Books is the place to do it*. And when you email the address above with your receipt, you might also hear back from Noah.

But that's just a rumor.

Thank you for everything you do for me and for MARA every day.

Let the madness begin.

*note: You must indicate what you want written in your personalized copy in the comments of your pre-order: whether it's just my signature that you want or whether you want me to sign your copy to you (To Bridget, To Bridget Adams, To Bridget Adams-Brewer) otherwise the Books & Books staff won't know what instructions to give me!

Things are SPIFFY up in here!

2011-08-31T04:06:00.001-04:00

Well hello there. *snaps suspenders* Check out the blog's new look, thanks to JJ at Uncreated Conscience!

You'll also notice some new stuff up there below my NEWLY FANCY name. I'm going to post it again here because it's so fancy:

(How much do I love my book jacket fonts? SO MUCH SO MUCH).

Anyway. One of the new shiny things up there is a FAQ page! Which you should read! Because a lot of stuff you've asked me about is answered there. But there's a lot of other niftiness around here too, so I encourage you to explore to your heart's content while I continue to deal with the ten billion place cards for that wedding thing and pack before my 8AM flight to LaGuardia, my home away from home.

I miss you!

(Also...TWENTY SIX DAYS ZOMG)

Want a signed, finished, REAL copy of MARA DYER? Look no further.

2011-08-25T14:03:00.001-04:00

SO! It's like...32 days until this whole book-on-shelves thing happens. And between now and then, I have:

1) An 8 hour road trip to Miami!
2) A flight to NYC!
3) A wedding to attend!!!!!!! (MOST EXCITED ABOUT THIS ONE MOST MOST EXCITED)
4) The massive trailer project which has generated 937 emails since August 1st!
5) The sure-to-be-epic MARA MADNESS blog tour, hosted by Cindy from Books Complete Me!
6) The Southern Independent Booksellers Association event in Charleston, SC!
7) The YA Lit Conference hosted by Anderson's Bookshop in Naperville, IL!

And...my mind is more than blown. I'm so so SO excited about all of the events coming up this fall and can't wait to meet many of you at them!

But I've been getting some mail from people who don't live near any of the places I'll be signing that looks like this:

Dear Michelle,

I don't live near any of the places that you will be signing :(

But I really would like a personalized hardcover of THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER. Is there anywhere I can order one?

Well, now I can say yes. Yes there is.

If you pre-order MARA DYER from the ever-awesome Books & Books in Miami, I will sign it! Or personalize it to you! Whatever you like! Just indicate what you'd like me to say in the comments of of your pre-order and IT SHALL BE DONE!

Meanwhile, stay tuned to this channel because there's some internet awesomeness coming your way very, very soon.

The updated cover for THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER

2011-08-23T00:44:00.001-04:00

is here.

(It wouldn't right click and save. Sorry!)

AND THAT'S NOT ALL! Here's what else shall be appearing on the MARA DYER jacket:

"The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer strikes a rare balance of darkly funny, deliciously creepy and genuinely thoughtful. One minute I was laughing out loud, and the next, I was so scared I wanted to turn on all the lights and hide under the covers. Michelle Hodkin's talent and range are obvious, from her chilling descriptions to romantic scenes that almost crackled on the page. I've never read anything quite like it."--Veronica Roth, New York Times bestselling author of Divergent

"A clever, captivating thriller, The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer is perfect for those (like me) who like their heroes dark, their heroines dangerous, and their romances seriously twisted."
--Kirsten Miller, New York Times bestselling author of The Eternal Ones

"WOW. Michelle Hodkin's debut will keep you guessing until the last page--and long after."
--Beth Revis, New York Times bestselling author of Across the Unviverse

"As spooky and twisty as it is lyrical and beautiful, The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer grabbed me and wouldn't let go. Read this one with the lights on." --Rachel Hawkins, New York Times bestselling author of Demonglass

And the full quote from Cassandra Clare is: "Haunting and dreamlike, the intrigue and romance of Mara Dyer will inescapably draw you in." --Cassandra Clare, author of the New York Times bestselling Moral Instruments series

This is my face right now:

Because I want to tell you what this all means.

It means that the authors of books I absolutely, utterly adore read MARA DYER. It means that they liked it. It means that they liked it enough to associate their professional reputations with it. Because essentially, that's what blurbs are: they're public statements saying: "If you liked my book, I think you'll like this book, too."

So could I be more grateful to have such a brilliant, talented, generous group of writers be willing to put their names on my book jacket?

No. No I couldn't.

And if you haven't read the books that Rachel, Veronica, Beth, Kirsten and Cassie wrote? WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!

WINNERS of 2 of the LAST ARCS! And some ARC info.

2011-08-18T15:05:00.000-04:00

FINALLY, is what you're all thinking. I know, I know. I shan't make you wait any further.

Christi the Teen Librarian

and

LovingRob (Carina)....

Send me your addresses at mdhodkin at gmail dot com and I will get your ARCs to you this week before I head out on travels again. YAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you didn't win, you still have a chance to win one of FIVE ARCs on Goodreads. And there may be one final ARC contest, for one final ARC, before the finished copies are printed and out.

Speaking of finished copies, I've got some stuff to say about them, so pull up a chair and come listen, dear friends!

I made a comment at one point about how the ARCs of THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER are different from the finished copies, because they were printed from a draft I sent that didn't include some changes I'd always intended to include early on (but missed during the pass for the ARCs), and that sparked a whole bunch of internet discussions among people (not me!) about how the ending would be different in the finished version and how Mara and Noah are actually both mermaids and how the book is really set on another planet and and and and and so I wanted to give you the real, actual scoop:

ARCs stand for "Advance Uncorrected Proofs." They are not final versions of books. Sometimes, the differences are minor and typo-y. Sometimes, the differences are more substantial- the TWILIGHT ARCs were different from the final version of the book, as were the FOREST OF HANDS AND TEETH, THE MAGICIAN KING by Lev Grossman, and a whole host of other examples. This is a really awesome explanation of what ARCs are and how they're helpful for industry folks.

In the case of MARA DYER, there are changes that you may or may not catch if you read the ARC and then the final version. I say "may or may not catch" because, as the author, things that seem REALLY obvious to me (knowing how the whole series ends--knowing the last sentence, even!) may not seem so obvious or even clear to anyone else. Because no one else lives in my head. Which is good. Because it's a weird place.

One thing I tried very hard NOT to do in MARA DYER was to treat readers as if they aren't smart enough to figure things out when they're presented with all of the pieces of the puzzle. Are all of those pieces in MARA DYER? No. MARA is the beginning of something. Some questions are presented, and some of them are answered- but not all. Not even close. I was careful, though, to make sure that the bread crumbs leading to every reveal that's going to happen over the course of the series is laid out in this first book.

To that end, in one part, there's about half a page of text that is missing from the ARC that is included in the final version, and there are some sentence changes, and there are some word changes--one of which is very subtle, but actually may change your reading of the series (if you catch it) and then read the next book.

And nope, I can't tell you what it is :(

Why is the ARC different? Well, I had about ten thousand drafts of the book (my first ever book, which I had no idea would ever be published), and with that many drafts floating around, I lost track of which ones had all of the absolute, final, complete content that I intended the finished book to have. It happens! Nobody's perfect, least of all me.

So if you haven't gotten your hands on an ARC of MARA DYER yet, don't be sad! A preorder will get you the absolute, final, FINAL version, the one that will have everything you need to know for that very dark, very sexy sequel I'm writing. Assuming you want to read that. And if you get the hardcover? It will come with a soft, muted, exquisite jacket that is, quite literally, a work of art. Nothing I can say or show you online will do it justice. Also? If you preorder, it will arrive the VERY SAME DAY it launches. Which, as of right now, is THIRTY NINE DAYS AWAY.

But if you have read the ARC, rest assured that the story is not dramatically different. Noah is not a merman. Mara does not have a tail. The book takes place on Earth. If you enjoyed the ARC, I didn't mess with any of the parts you enjoyed. Nothing was deleted-just added, or very, very subtly changed.

So hopefully that clears up some stuff. Hopefully, if you didn't win, you're not too bummed. And if you are, there's that Goodreads giveaway, and one final ARC contest, and then THE BOOK WILL BE HERE BEFORE YOU KNOW IT!

And if that STILL doesn't help, then, here are some baby animals. Enjoy :D

MARA DYER Launch

2011-08-17T16:20:00.001-04:00

So, on September 27th, there's this book coming out. This book I wrote. And it takes place in south Florida, where I was born, raised, and grew up. And where many of my friends and family still live.

And so it is SUPER, SUPER exciting to be able to say, all official-like, that the first event for MARA DYER, MY first event for the book's release, is going to be held at Books & Books in Coral Gables.

There will be shenanigans. Prizes. Food. Maybe even some secret stuff. You never know.

So if you're in, near, or around Miami on 9/27? You should come. I'd love to meet you.

And so would my grandpa.

Help me thank you!

2011-08-05T19:11:00.000-04:00

It is a ginormous pet peeve of mine when people say how busy they are. Because we are all busy. We all have kids and pets and families and work and shenanigans we like to get up to on a fairly regular basis. Which is why being busy isn't really a good excuse for various and sundry lapses in etiquette or appropriate behavior.

So when someone emails me and says "I know how busy you are, but" I just want to hug them and say, "You know, I'm not actually that busy! I spend most of my time in my pajamas deciding when my fictional characters are going to kiss or die. What can I do for you?"

But lately? Lately that is not so much true.

Lately I've had Maggie's medical crises (plural) which have had me shuttling to the vet multiple times per week, and also that sequel thing I'm obsessed (and obsessively in love) with. Then I was holed up in a hunting lodge for a few days with 30 genius writers, many dead animals, six vegetarians, one vegan, and lots of bacon. This week, I had wonderful events with Beth Revis, Myra McEntire, and Victoria Schwab in Morganton and Forest City, NC, which I drove to from my new "base" on the side of a mountain, which is very pretty. The driving was a 2-3 hour round trip affair, each day, but I got back and now I'm on the mountain again but because of LOTS of exciting stuff happening in the MARA DYER universe, I haven't gotten to explore the mountain or see anything, really, except the inside of my room. And Sunday morning I am leaving said room at about 3AM to drive to TN to catch a red-eye flight to another state for a friend's wedding. I will spend the night in said state and return to NC just in time for the Jewish fast of Tisha B'Av, which means I won't be eating or drinking from about 6pm on Monday until 9pm-ish on Tuesday. And either Tuesday or Wednesday, I'll be road tripping it back home, where I will stay and work on that sequel I mentioned, until I head to NYC for some more MARA DYER shenanigans two days later.

Just typing that all out makes me want to

So I find myself not answering your emails and tweets and interview requests and stuff according to my usual timeline, and that makes me want to flagellate myself. MARA DYER is only 8 weeks away. EIGHT WEEKS. And you have been adding and preordering and reviewing the HECK out of it and saying SUCH NICE THINGS about it all over the internet and DOING such nice things FOR it all over the internet that I really want to do something for you BACK. But I've already given away two of my last ARCs (winners shall be announced imminently!) Is there anything else I can do for you? Anything else you WANT me to do that I a) have never done before b) don't do enough? Certain types of contests you like? Certain types of prizes?

If so, lets hear it. I want to make you as happy as you make me (though I'm rather certain that is going to be impossible, given the extraordinary level of HAPPY you make me), and even though the crazy doesn't seem like it's going to let up for a bit, still, I'd like to know.

And now, I am off to go chew on a bag full of hard candy my grandmother unwisely left out on the table. In the meantime, here is a picture of a baby bunny in a teacup. Because that is where baby bunnies belong.

Maggie update!

2011-08-01T12:23:00.000-04:00

Why the happy face?

You might remember that Maggie had to have surgery last Monday to remove an aggressively growing lump on her foot. With Maggie's advanced age, the size, the shape, and the color, the vets were pretty sure that she had a mast cell tumor, because the benign tumor it could have been "is most commonly observed in young dogs and tumor incidence drops precipitously after three years of age." And Maggie is anywhere from ten to twelve, but not younger.

Apparently Maggie didn't get the memo. It was, in fact, a histiocytoma and my Fighting Potato shall fight on!

Thank you ALL for thinking about us. I couldn't be happier.

TWO MONTHS

2011-07-27T22:42:00.000-04:00

Until THIS:

Hits shelves, in all of its hardcover, finished, pearlized soft touch and silver-fonted glory.

Where has this year GONE?

In any case. It's a special occasion for sure. So I thought you deserved something. ARCs, definitely. But also a teaser, perhaps? More than one, maybe?

Well, I'll be damned. Seems like some (awesome) people beat me to it!

Maybe there will be more where that came from in the near future? BUT FOR NOW, here’s how you enter to win one of TWO ARCs of MARA DYER:

You tell me you want one in the comments. I enter you to get one.

That’s it! That’s all you have to do to enter!

But if you want EXTRA entries, then here are some ways you can get them:

1) By posting the MARA DYER cover and description on your blog or Facebook (must include link back to the blog and to pre-order to count). This get's you TWO entries for each place that you post it. Like so:

- If you post it on Facebook, that's TWO entries.
- If you post it on Blogger, that's TWO entries.
- If you post it on Blogger and Facebook, that's FOUR entries.
- If you post it on your group Blogger and Facebook and your personal LiveJournal (for example), that's SIX entries.

You can cut and paste the html at the bottom of this post into Blogger for easyness. We like it easy on this here blog. That said, don't just go invent 10,000 blog personas for the purpose of this contest. That's sneaky.

2) Another way to enter: changing your Facebook or Twitter or Livejournal default profile picture to the MARA DYER cover for the contest's duration. One entry for each of those changed, like so:

- Twitter avatar: one entry
- Facebook profile picture: one entry
- Livejournal profile picture: one entry
- Twitter avatar AND Facebook AND Livejournal: three entries!

I am quite partial to this manner of entry, because I love my cover so much. And it would be happy-making to see it elsewhere on the internets from now until my birthday (keep reading). You've gotta keep the picture up until tallying time, though. That means if you're going to link me to Facebook, I must be able to see it. Some peeps have their Facebooks default pictures set to private, which makes it hard to check, and if I can't check, I can't enter you. And that would be sad. But one surefire way to make sure I can see it is to "Like" Mara Dyer on Facebook and post on the wall. That way, I'll be SURE to see it. What should you post? Anything you damn well please.

3) Another way to enter? By posting a link to the contest on your Twitter/Facebook/Whatever account. Then link back here in the comments so that I can see the Tweet. Here's how to do it for Twitter: click on the time of your status message on Twitter, and it will shoot directly to that one and only status message. Presto! One entry per social networking link thing, as above.

But it will all be for naught if you don't comment HERE with LINKS for your various and sundry entries. So be sure to do that, okay? Because I want you to win like whoa.

If there's another social networking platform you want to use (Tumblr! Digg! Whateverelseyoucrazykidsareusingthesedays!), ask yourself whether or not it's going to get the MARA DYER cover and description out into the world. If you have lots of Tumblr people and are active? It counts. If you just made a Tumblr for this contest? Then not so much.

Contest is international, as always!

Deadline: August 4, 2011. Winners will be chosen via the handy dandy random number generator thingie!

And now, for the code. This is what will appear (I hope) when you copy and paste the text from the box into a blog post:

Mara Dyer doesn't think life can get any stranger than waking up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there.

It can.

She believes there must be more to the accident she can't remember that killed her friends and left her mysteriously unharmed.

There is.

She doesn't believe that after everything she's been through, she can fall in love.

She's wrong.

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer hits stores everywhere 9.27.11. Pre-order your copy here. Download the widget here. Enter to win an Advanced Reader’s Copy here.

<img style="visibility:hidden;width:0px;height:0px;" border=0 width=0 height=0 src="http://c.gigcount.com/wildfire/IMP/CXNID=2000002.0NXC/bT*xJmx*PTEzMDU1MTgyMzYxODMmcHQ9MTMwNTUxODI*NTE3NyZwPTE2MzAzMTImZD1NYXJhJTIwRHllciZnPTImbz*2ODZkMDJj/YmNmZjg*YjcyYThkODUwNjEyZTYzYzUyYSZvZj*w.gif" /><object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,28,0" width="300" height="450"><param name="movie" value="http://go.thesyn.com/maradyer/maradyer.swf" /> <param name="quality" value="high" /> <embed src="http://go.thesyn.com/maradyer/maradyer.swf" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="300" height="450" align="right" FlashVars="gig_lt=1305518236183&gig_pt=1305518245177&gig_g=2"></embed> <param name="FlashVars" value="gig_lt=1305518236183&gig_pt=1305518245177&gig_g=2" /> </object> Mara Dyer doesn't think life can get any stranger than waking up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there. It can. She believes there must be more to the accident she can't remember that killed her friends and left her mysteriously unharmed. There is. She doesn't believe that after everything she's been through, she can fall in love. She's wrong. The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer hits stores everywhere 9.27.11. Pre-order your copy <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Unbecoming-Mara-Dyer-Michelle-Hodkin/dp/1442421762%3FSubscriptionId%3DAKIAJBDF5XQBATGDX4VQ%26tag%3Dspea06-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D1442421762">here</a>. Download the widget <a href="http://www.maradyer.com/">here</a>. Enter to win an Advanced Reader’s Copy <a href="http://michellehodkin.blogspot.com/">here</a>.

(FYI, depending on your blogger template, you may have to tweak it afterwards in the “Compose” section. IDK. This was hard to figure out, and MAJOR THANKS to the ever-awesome Beth Revis and Help Desk for making it work as much as it does).

And away we go.

Five Years Ago

2011-07-26T16:04:00.000-04:00

I was taking the bar exam. My first, as I became licensed in two states. I was 24. I had just graduated from law school. I was researching places to live in a brand new state, where I’d be starting my first real, full-time job ever in a few months, litigating anti-terrorism cases. I had Maggie and my two cats.

Right now, I’m not practicing law. I have a career I never studied for. I wrote a book that strangers have started reading, which is being made by the same people who publish some of my favorite authors (Stephen King, Cassandra Clare, Holly Black, Jennifer Weiner, and R.L. Stine, just to name a few). I’m researching places to live in a different state, again. Maggie and the cats are still kicking.

The more things change, the more they stay the same? I’m still a nomad. I still adore my pets. I still have a career I am wildly passionate about, even though it has changed.

Where were you five years ago? Where are you now?

Where I've been.

2011-07-25T09:42:00.000-04:00

This is Maggie:

These are Maggie's pills:

Maggie has always had to take a lot of pills. When we met in 2001, she already had epilepsy: from head trauma, the neurologist hypothesized, which wasn't terribly surprising considering she came from a house with 41 other animals in it, including Stephanie Feldstein's Olive. I was only in Michigan for the summer--in the fall I'd be starting my junior year at NYU, but I was bored and so I volunteered and then worked for the humane society, where Maggie was brought in with her emaciated, parasite-infested, urine-soaked housemates. Some of the dogs were so thin they couldn't stand. Others were so thirsty they were drinking their own urine. Maggie was in relatively good shape, though, physically: it was suspected that she was the man's most recent acquisition. After all, she was only 34 pounds at the time of seizure, compared to Olive's 19 (Maggie's healthy weight is 44. Olives would have been the same, or just slightly less). She had many scars on her feet--she had been kept in a crate on top of the man's television, and after I adopted her and tried to crate train her, the scars made sense. She would try to break out so fiercely that one time, I came home to find that she had opened an old wound.

But other than that, and some suspect stitches on her vulva from who-knows-who for who-knows-what, she was alright physically. Mentally, though, she was a mess. She would press her head against the wall. She would circle the pen. She wouldn't respond to voices. She wouldn't always respond to treats. The shelter staff (myself included) did the best we could for her--we gave her blankets and spent as much time as we could in her pen. But all shelters are loud and terrifying places. They are filled with unfamiliar smells and unfamiliar sounds. And though all of the dogs were naturally uncomfortable there (as they are in all shelters), Maggie was particularly bad.

So I took her home and fostered her. She did very, very well in a home environment. But I was only there for the summer and because the man had fled the state, the case against him could not proceed. And the dogs were considered evidence. The shelter was required by law to hold the dogs for 6 months--the same shelter that was required by law not to turn any other animals away. Which meant that every owner who brought their pet to that shelter to be adopted out was, in fact, handing their former family over for us to kill because we simply had no space. They were told that. It didn't matter.

Because the animals were considered evidence in the prosecution's case, when I was supposed to leave for school, Maggie had to go back to the shelter. It was one of the saddest days of my life, and to this day I'll never forget her face and the way she looked at me when we pulled up to the noisy building. But the dorms wouldn't allow pets and Maggie wasn't even able to be up for adoption anyway--not only was she evidence, but she was a pit bull, and at the time, the shelter didn't adopt pit bulls out.

There was nothing I could do. So I left her there and drove away and went to college. September 11th happened. School happened. Life happened. But after the summer I met Maggie, I changed. I had planned on becoming an English professor but I was still obsessed with Maggie's case. The prosecution did the best they could, but because animals are merely considered property under the law, and because of the high burden of proof for abuse charges, Maggie's former owner was charged with several misdemeanors for his gross neglect and, in many cases, intentional abuse. He (rightly) lost a lot of money and the custody of his three young children, who lived in his and his wife's feces filled, urine-soaked home. But there was nothing in place to make sure he couldn't go right back out and collect more animals. And that made me want to change things.

It made me want to go to law school. I started working towards that goal but as my senior year approached, I wanted something even more immediate: a dog. I planned to get an apartment so that I could adopt one, even though I was only 19. And even though I just wanted a dog, there was still one dog I couldn't stop thinking about.

Maggie had been transferred to a local pit bull rescue so that she could be adopted once she was no longer considered evidence. And when I called them, it turned out that she hadn't done too well there. There was no fenced in yard for the rescue dogs and so they all had to be exercised on tie-outs, which made Maggie scream. It didn't matter to me, I told the rescuer. Could I adopt her?

But Maggie had been adopted two weeks earlier, to a nice family with kids.

I was sad, but not too sad, because Maggie found the home she deserved. So when the rescuer called back a few days later to tell me she'd been returned because of her epilepsy--the family couldn't deal with the pills, the expense, the inconvenience--I jumped at the chance. I signed the papers. Maggie moved from Michigan to New York City with me in the summer of 2002, which was a challenge for both of us. She would not go to the bathroom on leash, so we had to walk a mile to and from the Carl Shurtz Dog Run just so she could relieve herself. And she still wasn't well--she never would be--but in NYC that meant just walking in the door of the vet's office was $65. And I was 19 and a poor college student but I worked two jobs to pay her vet bills.

Since then, those vet bills have easily topped fifty thousand. We had the usual lumps, bumps, scrapes, and bills to cover, but also epilepsy (neurology consults at $120-$500/visit, compounded potassium bromide for $60/month, phenobarbital for $20/month), food allergies (we switched from food to food and finally ended up feeding raw), hypothyroidism (vet visits, thyroid hormones), and bilateral ACL tears ($1700 a pop for each surgery, $250/night for weeks of post-op physical therapy). I ate a lot pasta.

In 2011, Maggie has been to the vet for a) a suspicious lump b) jumping off the bed and subsequently limping c) pancreatitis (which could have killed her) and now, today, d) a scary lump on one of her feet--the worst place to have a scary lump, because there isn't so much fat/flesh to remove and therefore the margins for excision aren't ideal. Scarier still is that the pancreatitis meant having to come off of her steady, dependable epilepsy medication (due to increased risk of relapse) and having to switch to one with a much shorter shelf life, which has caused 4 breakthrough seizures in one month. Which under any circumstances would make her an anesthesia risk, but especially now; Maggie was diagnosed two weeks ago with advanced osteoarthritis but because of the pressure her liver is under, we wanted to avoid NSAIDs for as long as we could, so we put her on Tramadol. She reacted badly. Very badly. Twitching, nightmares, startling at nothing, pacing, jumpiness, edginess--she acted like she was tweaking. So off she went, but every experiment leaves her that much more at-risk.

Which is why I haven't slept all night and why I'm staring at my phone waiting for the veterinarian to call me back and tell me she's made it through okay. Maggie isn't just a dog--I don't honestly even know what that phrase means, but whatever it means, Maggie isn't it. Maggie has never played with toys or played fetch or even played with me, the way most dogs do. She didn't start barking until two years ago and even then, only did it when I didn't get her food to her fast enough. She never jumped up on people, she could be left alone in a room with guinea pigs and the biggest concern would be that the pigs would bite her. She prefers to wake up after noon and can hold her bladder for as long as you need her to--and longer than you'd prefer, if it's raining or snowing. One time during that New York year we spent together, I got food poisoning. I was living alone and more than 70+ blocks from most of my college friends. I didn't know anyone in my neighborhood and didn't have a pet sitter and I felt like I was absolutely dying. Maggie didn't leave my side for over 24 hours--she didn't go to the bathroom in the apartment (which would have been totally OK and understandable). She just stayed near me in bed, next to my wastebasket full of puke, while my fever raged.

All Maggie has ever wanted was to eat, sleep, and cuddle. And all I've wanted for her was to give her as many years of eating, sleeping, and cuddling as possible, no matter how much it costs. Because she is priceless.

Who's your canine or feline best friend?

Harry and Me.

2011-07-15T01:21:00.001-04:00

I remember when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was published. It was July 21st, 2007. I was in Israel, and I had just defended 40 depositions of terror victims over the course of six days that week.

But I had to read Harry Potter the second it came out.

So when I found out that there was a release party that night in Tel Aviv at 2AM? And that my friend, who was press, could get me in? I walked from here to here:

Each way to get it. Two and a half miles there at one in the morning, two and a half miles back at four in the morning, along the promenade by the Mediterranean Sea. I was given two free copies of The Deathly Hallows for my trouble. Also, I got to see a number of delightful fellows dressed in very elaborate, non-Harry Potter related drag. I’m not sure what was up with that. But when I got back to my hotel room, I started reading it immediately, and didn’t stop until I finished. The following day. At about 11:30am, after having been awake since 5AM the day before.

I have a strange relationship with Harry. The books were the first modern YA (or MG, whatever) books I’d read as an adult. I’d considered myself a snob in college and wouldn’t go near them, but then my brother wouldn’t talk about anything else, so I had to. And so I bought #1. I read it. And then immediately ran out and bought #2 and #3 once I’d finished. I rushed to buy #4-6 as eagerly as I could and, well, you just heard about my adventure with #7.

Since Harry Potter, there’s been Twilight, and I loved that phenomenon too. Breaking Dawn is going to be something else. And soon, The Hunger Games will be out, and City of Bones, too!

It’s so exciting, getting swept up in these great literary and cinematic cultural tides. Will any of my fellow writer friends have authored the next one? I can’t wait to find out.

How did you discover Harry?

Edward Cullen, Harry Potter, and Fong See

2011-07-07T06:52:00.001-04:00

I've been thinking a lot about Lisa See recently. Which sounds creepy, and maybe it is, I don't know. For those YA fans who tend to stick to the YA world, Lisa See is the author of many fantastic novels that depict Chinese and American (and Chinese American) culture. But she is also the author of a work of non-fiction called ON GOLD MOUNTAIN: The 100-Year-Odyssey of My Chinese American Family.

Most recently, a.k.a last night, I thought about her because of a Facebook update by my 10th grade honors English teacher, which made me remember THE WOMAN WARRIOR: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston, which she taught in our class and which I promptly fell head over-heels-swoon-and-die IN LOVE with. And when I finished that book I needed MORE. So my 15-year-old self headed over to the neighborhood Barnes & Noble and asked to be pointed towards the Asian American memoir section. I was, and I browsed, and went home with about 10 books (I couldn't choose). They were all fantastic. But the one that stood out the most was ON GOLD MOUNTAIN.

It's an unassuming cover, as you can see. And it's a seemingly unassuming topic for a book, right? And yet, I've read this book thirteen times. More than GEEK LOVE and LOLITA and JURASSIC PARK (3 all-time favorites) combined. The writing is impressive but unassuming and invisible; the plot is velociraptor, carnival "freak" and pedophile free. And let me blow your mind, if I may, just for a second:

It is non-fiction. Non. Fiction.

As you guys know, I was at BEA this past year. Well, Lisa See was there too. And when I realized that, I brought my copy of ON GOLD MOUNTAIN, the copy I'd dogeared and underlined and TABBED, guys, TABBED, with me, thinking that maybe I'd get a chance to meet her, and maybe I wouldn't be too shy to ask her to sign that book.

Well, I did meet her. And I wasn't too shy. And she did sign it.

And I told her how much I loved it, and how many times I'd read it. It wasn't until college that I realized Ms. See had been writing fiction, too, and when I did, I promptly bought each book she had published--and now that includes several NYT bestselling novels, like SNOW FLOWER AND THE SECRET FAN (which I JUST FOUND OUT TWO SECONDS AGO IS A MOVIE THAT COMES OUT ON JULY 15TH AND IS PROBABLY GOING TO BE ONE OF MY FAVORITE MOVIES OMG THE PREVIEW MADE ME CRY). But considering all of the extremely popular novels she's written, especially considering that she was at BEA to promote DREAMS OF JOY, her newest, I think she was pretty surprised to see me hold out my tabbed, worn, abused copy of ON GOLD MOUNTAIN, her first book, in front of her.

Let me just say this now: Ms. See has written many beautiful, heartbreaking novels. It is no wonder she is a NYT bestseller many times over and the success of her fiction is richly, richly deserved. But of all her books I've read and loved, indeed, of all of THE books I've read and loved, ON GOLD MOUNTAIN is the one I've read most. The one I was thinking about, again, when I answered a blog interview question last night that asked: "What book have you read more times than any other? What keeps bringing you back?"

If I told you about the sweeping scope of the time periods and the setting (from China to Los Angeles, 1870-1957-1995) in ON GOLD MOUNTAIN, the 13-rereads thing wouldn't make sense to you. Hell, if I told you "what the book is about," it still wouldn't make sense to you.

All I can tell you is this: I keep coming back to it because without opening the cover, I can still envision the Kansas-born Ticie See (the author's great-grandmother) learning to differentiate between poor and high quality china on an antique-scouting excursion with her new, Chinese husband Fong. I can remember the firm, smart, way she told him that they needed to get out of the crotchless underwear business. I can practically see the pride in Fong See's face when he opened his first curio store in LA's Chinatown.

How did these tidbits from an "ordinary" couple's life become so memorable? I think because Ticie and Fong See were not ordinary. Because they were memorable themselves, memorable enough to generate sleepless hours of page-turning, memorable enough to recall decades later, memorable enough to propel me through years of rereads since I first discovered the book at fifteen.

And so, after a lot of time spent thinking about Lisa See and her family (that sounds unforgivably creepy I'm so sorry) I've realized that what brings me back to a book, over and over again, is the characters. Plot is critical, and no one loves a twistier, turnier plot more than me. But if I can't remember the characters--who they are, not just what they do, I'm unlikely to read it again.

A compelling plot will be exciting once, but compelling characters are exciting forever. And this, I believe, is the real reason why so many people have fallen for TWILIGHT and for HARRY POTTER. They have characters you cannot forget.

I dare you to read this book and forget Fong and Ticie See, either.

Eternity, Strega Nona, and ALA

2011-06-30T04:45:00.001-04:00

I just got back last night from New Orleans, and holy shnikes, I had an amazing time. I was there for the American Library Association's annual conference, and had the honor of talking to librarians, who are nothing short of book ninjas, about MARA DYER and other books I've read lately and am totally crushing on. Also:

I saw this:

And I ate this:

With my agent and Maureen Johnson, who is as cool and funny and passionate as she seems online. It became readily apparent after the first few minutes that she's also easily one of the most intelligent people I have ever met.

I walked through here:

Noted the random kaledeiscope in my hotel room:

And on my last night in the city, after hanging out with David Levithan (yeah) and Lucy Christopher (author of STOLEN), Jessi Kirby (author of MOONGLASS) and John Corey Whaley (author of WHERE THINGS COME BACK) and I were too hyper to go to sleep, so we went in search of vegetarian food at 1AM in the morning in New Orleans (laugh it up) and ended up eating french fries in this massive casino:

Which had Lord of the Rings gambling games that did not come out in the picture :( And then I found myself back in the airport, where I saw this dress:

Which is interesting because you could never actually get INTO the airport wearing a rusty nail dress (that's what the sign calls it, no lie), and yet there it was, right by the gate.

And in the airport, before I got home, I also the books of people I know, which is still mind-blowing, and I don't think it ever won't be:

But even with all of this amazingness, even after meeting and talking to librarians and readers and my fellow writers and amazing book bloggers, even after hearing Paolo Bacigalupi, A.S. King, Lucy Christopher and other wildly talented and intelligent authors speak at the Printz reception, I think my favorite part of my trip was the Newbery/Caldecott banquet, unfortunate lasagna aside. Erin Stead, illustrator of A SICK DAY FOR AMOS MCGEE, Clare Vanderpool, author of MOON OVER MANIFEST, and author and illustrator Tomie dePaola all spoke and moved me to tears, though I totally pretended there was something in my eye. They talked about the enduring beauty of paper books and the human need to tell stories, but of everything I heard, there was one thing in particular that I'm still thinking about.

Tomie dePaola, the author and illustrator of dozens (hundreds, possibly) of children's books, who won the Caldecott Honor in 1979 for Strega Nona, won the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award on Sunday and gave a hilarious and heartwarming speech, the final one for the night. He ended it with,

"You gave me eternity."

And I haven't been able to stop thinking about that since.

When I was little, my mother used to read me books. Often the same ones, over and over again, not because we didn't have hundreds but because I was so in love with some stories that I never wanted to let them go. One of those books that I loved so, so much was Strega Nona. It was a story about a magical old lady with an enchanted pasta pot so that she could always have pasta when it was needed; but one day, a character named Big Anthony discovered it, said the wrong magic words, and the town overflowed with pasta. Strega Nona fixed it in the end, of course, Big Anthony learned his lesson, and all was well.

Two decades and some change ago, I would listen to that story and grin, exposing all of my baby teeth, when all of the villagers lined up in front of Big Anthony for their pasta, and laugh when when Strega Nona made him eat it. Back then, Duck Hunt didn't exist yet, neither did cell phones, every car was fitted with a tape deck for cassettes, and I would watch Disney videos on VHS. Now I listen to MP3s, my cell phone (an iPhone) is practically a mini computer, and the original Mario game has been re-released for the Wii.

But even with everything that's changed, even after living through Regan and the first Bush and Bill Clinton and the second Bush and now Obama, even after living in four states and eight cities, even after kindergarten, and elementary school and high school and college and law school, when asked about one of my favorite children's book characters? I still think of Strega Nona and her magical pasta pot. I think of her unforgettable silhouette and I grin.

And so I sat at that banquet table Sunday night, listening to the man who created a character that became a part of me, and I listened to him thank the librarians for giving him eternity. And he is right. He does have eternity. Because the best characters are the ones we can't forget. The ones we don't want to let go of, even when we know how the story ends. The ones we want to be friends with and the ones we wish were real and the ones we love to hate. Madeline, Matilda, and Viola Swamp, Harry Potter, Holden Caulfield and Dexter Morgan, Humbert Humbert and Hannibal Lecter and yes, Edward Cullen.

Are we what we read? We can be. If the right story hits us at the right time, if it speaks to us, if the characters are people we just can't forget, it doesn't matter whether that story is TWILIGHT or THE CATCHER IN THE RYE. The best books are the ones I keep thinking about long after I've turned the last page, the ones I want to reread because I don't want to let the characters go. Not every book will get there. In fact, relatively few will.

But Strega Nona did, and so, more than three decades after Tomie dePaola published that story, I rode in an elevator with him and said "goodnight" as he departed for his hotel room, too shy to tell him that I still have that same edition of Strega Nona and that I will make sure my child has it someday, too. But I will never forget Sunday night, being an author in that banquet hall with the launch of my debut novel three months away, listening to other authors who will have eternity because of the characters that they have created. And hoping against hope that with this chance I've been given, maybe someday, someone, somewhere, will love one of my characters enough to give it to me, too.

What characters live on in you?

In Pictures

2011-06-17T04:37:00.000-04:00

MARA. ARC. WINNERS.

2011-06-13T04:12:00.000-04:00

Yep, I said winnerS!

It has been MUCH longer than I promised it would be before I announced this. I fail a lot. Not news. But BEHOLD, you need not wait any longer, because Random.org chose TWO winners of the MARA DYER ARC contest, and they are:

So Vy! Ashelynn! Send me an email at mdhodkin at gmail dot com and I will get your ARCs in the mail this week!

Everyone else: fret not! Two reasons:

1) I hear tell of MARA DYER ARCs showing up at ALA. Mayhaps accompanied by ME.
2) I'm giving away another ARC this month! So there will be another chance to win!

What else is happening in my neck of the woods? Well, I've been working my larger-than-I'd-prefer-behind off on MARA 2, annotating three ARCs of MARA DYER for the Help Write Now MARA auction winners, and traveling! Good times. I've also been reading some abso-freaking-lutely incredible books. One of which I will tell you about tomorrow. Because I can't keep my mouth shut about it and even though I read it a few months ago, I am STILL thinking about it. In fact, I emailed the author asking her questions about the book (that she won't answer! Curse her!) because the story just won't let me go.

Aren't those the best kinds?

What stories haven't let YOU go lately? What books have you read that you can't stop thinking about?

I Love My Editor.

2011-06-01T04:49:00.000-04:00

For many reasons, but today, it's because when I opened up Publishers Marketplace, I saw this:

And it reminded me just how eloquent and funny she is. I trip over my words whenever I talk about my book, and I wish I could just point people to this video and say "Here! This is what it's about!" So today I'm going to do that. If you've been curious and my shabby explanations haven't been doing it for you, take a peek--my editor, Courtney Bongiolatti, starts speaking at 26:20. Or even if you weren't at BEA and are just curious about what the YA Buzz Panel was like, take a peek. The four books discussed with MARA sound like absolutely incredible reads and I feel SO lucky to have scored some of those ARCs before the melee!

This Year, For My Birthday...

2011-05-31T06:06:00.001-04:00

I got this:

And this:

And left BEA and New York with these:

After having one of these:

Last year, the week leading up to my birthday went something like this, and my birthday like this. This year, I spent the week leading up to my birthday at the Teen Author Carnival, with authors I have long admired and authors whose work I am just getting to know and love, with some of my oldest, dearest friends in attendance, and with my epic, incomparable, insanely talented and brilliant brothers there to make faces at me from the audience. I spent it at Book Expo America, where I ran around with said brothers and friends and met so many new friends, too. I spent it with my genius editor and the amazing, creative, and supportive Team of Awesome at Simon & Schuster. I spent it having coffee with four ridiculously intelligent, strong, fun women who love books as much as I do, and at Book Blogger Con, where I could have easily spent hours talking about life, the universe, and everything with so many astute and dedicated bloggers I had heretofore only known on the internet. I spent it running around New York City in five-inch wedge heels, eating far too many Pommes Frites and drinking far too much Thai iced tea. I spent it staying up too late and relying too heavily on caffeine. I spent it nervous and excited and thrilled beyond belief.

I will spend today, my birthday, with some of the people I love most, accompanied by sushi and good DVDs. A perfect day to cap off a damn near perfect week, and I will spend it grateful for the aforementioned things, people, and you.

I Want To Say Some Serious Things.

2011-05-26T02:09:00.001-04:00

It’s been two years and ten days since I wrote the first words of THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER.

One year to the day that it sold to Simon & Schuster.

I was in New York this same time last year and really didn’t think life could get any better than knowing that an editor I respected and loved so much wanted my book, and that a publisher I respected and loved so much wanted to pay for it. But this day, this week, this year? Has been impossibly better than the last. Why?

Because of you.

Because you came to the Teen Author Carnival on Monday night. Because you came to listen to my editor speak about MARA DYER on Tuesday. Because you came to my talk with The Story Siren today. Because you wore T-shirts with a name I made up while standing in every line and going to every panel every single day this week. Because you asked so many people, so many times, for copies of my book.

I’m not sure you can know what that means to me or for me, so I’m going to try to explain it.
When I started writing MARA, I had no idea anyone would want to read it besides my family and friends (who had to). It’s a strange book because, let’s be honest, I’m a strange person. And when publishers said they wanted it, I was uncomprehending. They read my book? They wanted my book? I’m nobody.

I’ve felt like nobody for a long time. I didn’t know anyone in the writing world when I began. I didn’t have anyone to talk to who could possibly understand the anguish of realizing you have to throw away 60,000 words and start almost from scratch. The cool kids sat at a table very, very far away. They still do. I still feel like nobody. I am nobody. I did something I never knew I could and enjoyed it more than I ever imagined I would. I am not special.

But you make me feel special. When I saw you in the audience at the Carnival, the Buzz Panel, and at my talk with Kristi, I felt less nervous because I knew I had friends there. When you email and tweet and comment, this lonely writing thing feels a lot less lonely.

And I don’t really know what to do. I’m deeply uncomfortable with how much you have given me and just how little I’ve been able to give you in return. I want every single one of you to have an ARC of MARA DYER—you can’t imagine how badly. So badly that I’m going to give away all of my remaining copies here until the book is published, even though my mother, my brothers and my friends who critiqued it for me haven’t gotten to see the results of their endless, fathomless support. I’ll do their laundry, or something, I guess.

I know that contests aren't enough, not even close. But I don’t know what else to do except that, and to say thank you. For all of the things you have done and continue to do for me and for my strange little book. I hope that if you have gotten your hands on a copy, you enjoy it. I hope that if you haven’t gotten your hands on a copy, you’ll still want one in four months. I hope that if you are in New York right now, we have met, and I hope that if we haven’t, we will tomorrow, or Friday (I’ll be here, doing this). And if we don't meet here, you better believe I hope we meet at ALA or NCTE, two other places I'm definitely going to be this year.

But most of all, I hope you know how much I appreciate you. If I could thank you every second of every minute of every hour of every day, it still wouldn’t be enough.

MARA DYER, The Story Siren, And...ME!

2011-05-18T06:37:00.000-04:00

So, yeah, last month was kind of rough. But a lot of really GREAT things have happened too!

MARA DYER is now on 3123 Goodreads shelves. WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE? I want to buy you all a Coke.
You guys raised $580 for storm victims by bidding on Mara Dyer. I…can’t even.
People who are not employed by Simon & Schuster or related to me by blood or marriage have begun to read MARA DYER, and have emailed/posted/tweeted/updated and said really, really nice things about it. These emails/posts/tweets/updates have brightened my otherwise meat-boiling and canine urine-sampling filled days. In other words, I would not be sad if they kept coming. Not at all.

And to save the best for last?

*~*I AM TAKING OVER THE STORY SIREN TODAY. *~*

Because I am doing an epic, epic BEA 2011 event with her, one week from today. That's right. Just us. And you, I hope. Curious? You can read about on her lovely blog. In other words, clicky clicky.

Oh, I almost forgot! My ARCs arrived while I was away for Passover. Which means—CONTEST!

Here’s how you enter:

You tell me you want one in the comments. I enter you to get one.

That’s it! That’s all you have to do to enter!

But if you want EXTRA entries, then here are some ways you can get them:

1) By posting the MARA DYER cover and description on your blog or Facebook (must include link back to the blog and to pre-order to count). This get's you TWO entries for each place that you post it. Like so:

- If you post it on Facebook, that's TWO entries.
- If you post it on Blogger, that's TWO entries.
- If you post it on Blogger and Facebook, that's FOUR entries.
- If you post it on your group Blogger and Facebook and your personal LiveJournal (for example), that's SIX entries.

You can cut and paste the html at the bottom of this post into Blogger for easyness. We like it easy on this here blog. That said, don't just go invent 10,000 blog personas for the purpose of this contest. That's sneaky.

2) Another way to enter: changing your Facebook or Twitter or Livejournal default profile picture to the MARA DYER cover for the contest's duration. One entry for each of those changed, like so:

- Twitter avatar: one entry
- Facebook profile picture: one entry
- Livejournal profile picture: one entry
- Twitter avatar AND Facebook AND Livejournal: three entries!

I am quite partial to this manner of entry, because I love my cover so much. And it would be happy-making to see it elsewhere on the internets from now until my birthday (keep reading). You've gotta keep the picture up until tallying time, though. That means if you're going to link me to Facebook, I must be able to see it. Some peeps have their Facebooks default pictures set to private, which makes it hard to check, and if I can't check, I can't enter you. And that would be sad. But one surefire way to make sure I can see it is to "Like" Mara Dyer on Facebook and post on the wall. That way, I'll be SURE to see it. What should you post? Anything you damn well please.

3) Another way to enter? By posting a link to the contest on your Twitter/Facebook/Whatever account. Then link back here in the comments so that I can see the Tweet. Here's how to do it for Twitter: click on the time of your status message on Twitter, and it will shoot directly to that one and only status message. Presto! One entry per social networking link thing, as above.

But it will all be for naught if you don't comment HERE with LINKS for your various and sundry entries. So be sure to do that, okay? Because I want you to win like whoa.

If there's another social networking platform you want to use (Tumblr! Digg! Whateverelseyoucrazykidsareusingthesedays!), ask yourself whether or not it's going to get the MARA DYER cover and description out into the world. If you have lots of Tumblr people and are active? It counts. If you just made a Tumblr for this contest? Then not so much.

Contest is international, as always!

Deadline: May 31st, 2011, which just also happens to be my birthday. Winners WILL be announced on June 2nd. Winners will be chosen via the handy dandy random number generator thingie, and ARCs will be mailed on Friday, June 3rd.

And now, for the code. This is what will appear (I hope) when you copy and paste the text from the box into a blog post:

I'm still not back, but...

2011-05-08T13:29:00.001-04:00

here's what I've been doing while I've been away from you, in order of occurrence:

- Ate a lot of matzah
- Watched my Macbook Pro crash
- Panicked after said crash
- Braved the Aventura Apple store to fix said crash
- Had a new hard drive installed
- Shared a room with a 12 and 5 year old
- Feigned ignorance while said 12 year old peeked at MARA DYER
- Watched THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT with my brother
- Watched THE STRANGERS
- Rented and did not watch THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS
- Failed to return any of those movies on time, resulting in $12.10 in late fees
- Waited 1.5 hours for post-Pesach kosher sushi
- Acquired two new nicknames (Nedry and Freaky Black Witch, but that’s another post)
- Encountered someone I hadn’t seen since 10th grade.
- Bought and read Bossypants, instead of the other 15 books I already owned and had with me.
- Had a near death experience on the way back home (5mph faster, and that Infiniti would have careened into me, and not the truck)
- Saw my ARCs for the first time (THERE WILL BE A CONTEST!)
- Realized upon arriving home that my own “drag and drop” from my shiny red external hard drive did not restore my Scrivener files, including MARA 2.
- FREAKED THE EFF OUT.
- Took Macbook Pro back to the Apple store and sat there while the geniuses worked their magic (MARA 2 is safe!)
- Realized that I had to pack several hours of continuing legal education credits into the next few weeks before I leave town AGAIN
- Began trying to accumulate said credits.
- Took time off from accumulating said credits to deal with Maggie’s bout of acute pancreatitis, for which I a) got up with her every hour to monitor vomiting, b) collected urine samples (and undigested raw meat vomit samples! Yum!), c) made 3 trips to the vet d) hospitalized her so she could receive an IV and lots of drugs with hard to pronounce names.
- Finally got the pancreatitis under control by a) cooking her white meat b) feeding her 4 small meals of half a cup of boneless skinless organic chicken breasts for 2 days, c) collected another urine sample, only to have Maggie seize from a lowered dosage of her epilepsy medication since one of them can reignite the pancreatitis.
- Used ocular compression to shorten the seizure
- Waited for the vet to call me back after her consult with the neurologist
- Found out that the website for one of the law courses registered me for the wrong one
- Called website to dispute the charge
- Emailed website to dispute the charge
- After not receiving a response, called bank to dispute the charge
- Scheduled more of the classes for next week
- Booked the pet sitter for next week’s dates
- Ate nothing but granola bars and instant soup during all of this
- Was informed that the veterinarian and new neurologist I have never seen want to switch Maggie to a "new" human epilepsy drug that has to be administered orally every 8 hours.
- Freaked out and called the old neurologist we haven’t seen in 7 years for a second opinion (new drugs make me nervous)
- Discovered that my water heater was leaking through the laundry room floor into the crawl space.
- Cried
- Collapsed in a pile of dirty laundry in my leaky house that smells like boiled chicken.

Here is what I did not do:
- Respond to email
- Respond to twitter @s
- Respond to phone calls
- Watch the royal wedding :(

In light of this:
- If you are one of the 783 people to whom I owe an email, I will respond to you before BEA.
- If you are one of the 241 people who have Tweeted at me since April 18th, I will respond to you before BEA.
- If you are one of the 26 people who have left me a voicemail since before Passover, I will call you back before BEA.
- If you have wanted to be my friend on Facebook or Goodreads, I promise we’ll be friends by BEA.

Speaking of BEA:
I will be there with bells on! (Not really)
With Mara (really!)
Where can you find me?

That post is coming soon (before BEA, I swear).

In the meantime! You can snag an ARC of MARA DYER thanks to the wonderful Cindy of Books Complete Me and the incredible writers who organized the Help Write Now auction! I sweetened the pie by offering up an inscription, a quote from the super secret sequel, and something that I am absolutely, unequivocally going to regret. Check the link to find out what. Auction ends Monday at 10PM!

[Note—I’m still not back, because of aforementioned insanity—so if I don’t respond to comments or emails or Twitter @s subsequent to this posting, it isn’t because I don’t love you—it’s because I’ve returned to boiling chicken, collecting canine urine samples, stopping leaks, fighting with banks, stuck in internet-less classrooms, and/or chauffeuring Maggie to and from appointments. Please bear with me-when I'm done with that shiz, I'll shout it from the rooftops! Good thoughts for Maggie would be very much appreciated, btw. And happy Mothers Day!]

Radio Silence

2011-04-18T17:17:00.000-04:00

HELLO, DEAR FRIENDS.

Guess what time it is?

Well, yes, it is 5:00pm. Actually. And, yeah, I guess it's Monday, too. But it will also soon be something else.

PASSOVER!

If you do not know what Passover is, fear not. There is a super fun movie that came out in 1998 that sort of explains stuff.

Also this one called THE TEN COMMANDMENTS that is even older than ME but that I've never watched in its entirety because, hello, THERE IS NO SINGING.

Anyway, in light of this holiday, I will be off eating matzoh (which I really believe should be spelled matzah, FYI, since that's how it's pronounced) and being grateful that I don't have to witness a plague of locusts. Have you seen locusts? THEY ARE TERRIFYING. I thought about including a picture for you but I decided to spare you the nightmares. I grew up in South Florida and so we used to have these giant neon grasshoppers pop up in the backyard (locusts are apparently just what a huge swarm of certain types of grasshoppers are called, did you know?), and my childhood dog would eat them. So gross. But I digress.

So, yeah. I will be gone. So if you tweet at me and/or email me and/or attempt to contact me in any other way, I shall be unable to reply in a timely manner. And just wanted you to know that it isn't because I don't love you--because I do.

For all of my fellow Red Sea pedestrians (to quote Cassie Clare) celebrating along with me, have a chag kasher v'sameach. For everyone else, HAPPY MONDAY!

Cupcakes, Puppies, and Dark, Twisted Shiz

2011-04-14T04:55:00.000-04:00

I was told recently that a Very Awesome Person was reading my blog. And I thought: OMG, I WOULD LOVE TO GIVE HER A CUPCAKE.

But she lives far away. So this is the best I could do.

But I could never, ever leave YOU out, dear friends! Because you are all Very Awesome People yourselves! So I would like to give you PUPPIES.

But puppies poop a lot, and you're all very busy, and also, I don't have any puppies at my disposal, because I really prefer grown-up dogs because of the aforementioned pooping thing. I once fostered four puppies all at the same time, and let me tell you, there was a lot of poop.

So this is the best I could do.

(I did not forget my promise re: my favorites. Coming soon. Swears. Be ready for some dark, twisted shiz)

HOW FUN WAS YESTERDAY?

2011-04-12T04:51:00.000-04:00

THANK YOU for participating in my little rec-fest yesterday! I had a blast, and can't wait to hear if you love, like, or loathe my recommendations. And tomorrow, I'll post my all-time favorites that I didn't get a chance to recommend.

Enjoy your Tuesday! And if you're in SoFla? Try not to melt!

Maybe it's time to change.

2011-04-11T02:07:00.001-04:00

What do you read? YA? Horror? Non-fic? Romance?

I say: change it up.

Yes, I'm a YA author and I adore YA, and if you're reading this, you probably love YA too. I should probably be encouraging that love. And I am! But I think there's so much to be said for leaving your comfort zone. If I'd never left mine, I'd never have discovered Harry Potter. Hell, I'd never have written my first book.

So venture out. Broaden your horizons. Even within YA, if that's where you're most comfortable. Because you never know what will inspire you. You never know what you might discover. Love romance? I dare you to read THE MARBURY LENS. Love historical fiction? I dare you to read THE DUFF. Love paranormal? I dare you to read LIKE MANDARIN. Love dystopian? I dare you to read THE ETERNAL ONES.

And in this vein, I'd like to play a game with you.

Here's how it works: you hit up the comments with the last three books you read. I will respond by recommending a book that I think will blow your mind, in a good way. If you want to read and post or tweet about the book I recommended? Not necessary, but AWESOME- I'd love to know your after-the-fact thoughts! And if this proves to be popular, I will definitely do it again.

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming?

2011-04-08T05:29:00.002-04:00

Well, not entirely. BUT, I do have a LOT to tell you about today.

First, this:

Which made me go like this:

I went to the YA Editor's Buzz Panel last year, and it was amazing to hear about the genesis and acquisition of stories like MATCHED and THE DUFF. And this year, if you'll be at BEA 2011, well, you'll get to hear more about MARA DYER, and the four incredible-sounding buzz selections detailed here. That link also explains what exactly these panels are, and this is an awesome written recap from last year's editor's panel. There's a companion author panel, too, during which an excerpt read from THE DUFF marked the first f-bomb ever dropped on a BEA stage. It was amazing.

And suffice it to say, I am PSYCHED.

I have a bunch of other incredible stuff lined up for BEA week, too. And some of it involves YOU, dear friends! But that post is for another day. Another day soon. But another day.

Because I want to tell you about some other things now. Like the winners of the jacket contest. All of your eerie coincidences were seriously eerie. Also, yes, I said winners. The past few weeks have been crazycakes and I've been an absentee author and that means I felt guilty which means more goodies for YOU! So the winners are:

Kari, who won a jacket proof and FALLOUT.

Penny, who won a secret prize pack of THREE awesome YA books. You'll find out which ones when you open it!

YAY!!! Guys, email me at mdhodkin@gmail.com with your mailing info and I'll make arrangements to send you your jacket proof AND books! On that jacket proof is a quote from the book that does NOT appear in the first chapter, by the way.

And since we're speaking of the first chapter, over four thousand people have now viewed it.

FOUR THOUSAND.

Who are you people? COME SAY HI I WANT TO BUY YOU ALL A COKE.

Also in related news: you asked for a smaller version of the widget, and you got it. To download and share, click here. When you click on "share this," there will be text on the bottom that says: "BLOGGERS, too big for your sidebar? Click here for a mini version." So, you know...click there.

And you know how sometimes I like to surprise people? Well, I've been perusing the internets and the sheer amount of MARA DYER countdown widgets amazes me on a regular basis (172 days, btw. AHHHHH). So I have decided that I am going to surprise a widget-bearer with another super secret excerpt of the book.

I'm going to do that in the next two weeks. And I'm going to run that contest on Twitter. I'll tell you more about it then, but meanwhile, if you think that sounds like an awesome prize? Installing the widget now couldn't hurt ;)

And that about wraps it up! But before I go, I just want to say thanks. For being so excited about the BEA buzz business. For saying such nice things about the first chapter. For downloading and sharing the kickass widget. Without you? This stuff wouldn't mean nearly as much.

So here, have a puppy:

(That would be Penny, one of my friend's foster puppies. Her mom, Lily, was abandoned by her owners while heavily pregnant, and my friend and the awesome rescue she works with took her in. Penny has two brothers and one sister, and they'll all be up for adoption when they're old enough! Click here to read more about them, see pictures, and watch the PUPPY CAM!)

Happy Friday <3

So, you want to read THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER?

2011-03-30T14:19:00.000-04:00

Maybe you do, and maybe you don't.

If you do, you can go visit Pure Imagination for an exclusive look at the first chapter, and for an incredibly gorgeous widget that counts down to release.

If you don't, you can watch paint dry instead.

Infinite thanks to Lori and for the Team of Awesome at Simon & Schuster who made this happen.

Also, that is just a picture of the widget. Not the actual widget. You have to visit Pure Imagination or www.maradyer.com to get the Real McCoy.

White Space + GIVEAWAY

2011-03-21T06:17:00.002-04:00

So, remember that white space we talked about a while back?

I'm taking some.

Not for very long! And I'll still be posting and tweeting-just mayhaps not on as regular of a schedule. Like, I'll probably pop into the internet and yell "BOO!" right behind you, and then pop back out again. Don't be scared.

Why? A few reasons.

1) MARA 2 has me very, very obsessed.
2) This.
3) Other excitingness.

But don't go anywhere, because:

1) As further evidence of your awesome taste, you seem to think my jacket proofs are pretty cool too, so I'm going to give one of you one! But I can't just give away an EMPTY jacket, and alas, there are no ARCs yet or finished books to fill it. So I'm going to 1) write a secret MARA passage or quote inside of it and 2) will also give you FALLOUT, by the incomparable Ellen Hopkins, and published by Simon & Schuster as well! Contest rules below.

2) I've been told something really, really cool and MARA related is going to go down really, really soon and I'll be lurking in the interverse when it does. And if you stop visiting me on here or on Twitter, you might miss it. And that would be sad.

So! Without further ado, here's how you enter the Full Metal Jacket contest. For a jacket that is neither full nor metal, but I digress.

Today, I want to hear about your eerie coincidences. Did you ever predict that something would happen, only to find that it came true? Did a horoscope ever prove to be sharply accurate? Or have you ever written about something you thought was fictional that you later discovered to be real? If you have weird/eerie/creepy/spooky coincidence stories, I want to hear them.

Alternately, you can tell me the first song you remembered being "cool" when you were a kid. Not the first song you remembered, but the first song you remembered being popular in your grade. Preschool doesn't count. For those (awesome) folks among you who follow me on Twitter, yes, we had this conversation last night, but I enjoyed it immensely. So I thought I'd continue it here!

That's it! That's all you have to do to enter! But if you'd like to help spread the word and get extra entries? Here's how it works:

+1 New followers of this here blog
+2 If you're already a follower of this here blog
+1 New followers on Twitter
+2 If you're already a follower on Twitter
+1 Linking to my contest on your blog, twitter, etc. Include links. (up to 5)
+3 For posting about my contest on your blog. (Must be an actual post)
+2 Adding me to your blog roll

Me and math get along like mustard and milk. Which is to say not at all. So please add up your entries in your comments. And for clarity’s sake, your initial comment is one entry. Everything else is gravy.

Winners will be selected randomly, and YES, this contest is INTERnational.

Contest ends on 3/28/11 at 11:59PM. Good day, good luck, and thank you 1,000,000,000,000,000,000x for reading.

PS: I don't have any ARCs yet. When I do, I will give one (or more!) away here. Promise. In the meantime, you can fill out this form, which I'll be passing along to Simon & Schuster to let them know you're interested.

PSS: This happened last night, thanks to you:

What do we have here?

2011-03-17T15:32:00.000-04:00

What's that I see?

A jacket? Why yes, yes it is. With my name on it, no less.

And this is MARA, wearing the incredible BEFORE I FALL by Lauren Oliver, since they're close to the same size, I'm told.

I'm not showing you how the copy looks yet. Because I can't give away all the good stuff all at once. But holy amazing, right? The effects are not translating well through my iPhone camera, but suffice it to say they are breathtaking. There's silver and embossing and soft touch involved and it's elegant and beautiful and...and...I'm overcome. The immensely talented and visionary designer, Lucy Ruth Cummins, has outdone herself. Simon & Schuster, I salute you.

But now I have a dilemma. They sent me several jacket proofs. One I'm sending to my grandparents and one to my mother, because lets face it, they're going to appreciate this the most. And one I'll keep to play dress up with Jurassic Park and The Lord of the Rings, if I'm feeling feisty.

But I have more. What should I do with them?

Do I smell a giveaway? What say you?

Eerily accurate.

2011-03-16T17:13:00.000-04:00

_{My fortune from last night. It says: "Chill while you can, big project is coming your way." Hee.}

In the meantime, go check out what Melissa said about THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER. Isn't she lovely? I think she's lovely.

This is how she won it. Sherry from Flipping Pages for All Ages is next. But don't worry. There's a huge, unprecedented surprise in the works for all of you. And more contests of this nature (if you're interested) on the way.

Stay tuned :D

When I was in high school

2011-03-11T03:17:00.000-05:00

(click here and head to Kirsten Hubbard's blog to find out who I was in high school, who I wished I could be, and also, to WIN COOL THINGS. This awesomeness brought to you by LIKE MANDARIN and Kirsten Hubbard. Batteries not included. Brilliance is.)

Answer Time #7! (On outlining vs. pantsing, vampires vs. werewolves, and characters vs. plot)

2011-03-10T03:36:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I answered some of your questions. Well, that ends now.

The wonderful Carissa asked a bunch of awesome questions, starting with:

Do you plot meticulously or just fly by the seat of your pants?

Ah, the pantser vs. outliner question. Mostly, I flew by the seat of my pants for THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER. I began with a very vague idea, which took on a sharper, more distinct shape with every word I wrote. And the more I wrote, the more the story changed, which meant that I had two major rewrites and three or four major revisions before I even thought about an agent. For MARA 2, I have a loose outline, and I already know my characters, my set pieces, and the major plot points, but there's still quite a bit I'm discovering as I draft. That helps keep it fun for me.

Can you manufacture inspiration? Writing under a deadline can't be easy, so can you force the writing process and still have it turn out well?

I can usually manufacture inspiration. MARA 2 is the first fiction project I've ever written under a deadline, but my legal life was filled with deadlines. It's one part butt-in-chair (or more accurately, on couch) and one part getting into a space that allows me to get the best words down that I can. That might involve having a clean house or awesome music or re-reading a favorite book or watching a brilliantly plotted television show. Anything can be inspiring, really, and when I feel it, I try to go with it.

Vampires or Werewolves?

Lawyer answer: it depends! Depends on the vampires— the Cullens or the Infected? Depends on the werewolves—Teen Wolf or Sam from SHIVER? I'd take Edward over Teen Wolf and Sam over Babcock any day.

How important is it to write every day?

I think it's good to write something every day. Even if it's just a sentence or a tiny little scene (I call them scenelets). I think setting goals of a certain number of words is awesome, too. But it doesn't matter how much you write or what type of stuff you write—just staying in the habit of writing is productive, in and of itself.

What is the hardest part about being an author? Writing great characters or writing a great plot?

It's all kind of hard, but for THE UNBECOMING, the characters came first, specifically Mara. I knew who she was and where she would end up very early on in the process. Her love interest developed in response—a sort of reverse Adam and Eve. Once I figured out who she was, I realized who he had to be. And from there, I learned what would happen to them together. I certainly think that plot and characterization are equally important, but for me, for THE UNBECOMING, the characters came first.

Thank you SO SO MUCH, Carissa, for asking such awesome and thought provoking questions.

And now I ask all of you: vampires or werewolves?

Or...

Are We Equals?

2011-03-08T14:29:00.000-05:00

So it begins.

2011-03-07T16:34:00.000-05:00

Oh man. So, it's been an awesome week, and it looks like this is the start of ANOTHER awesome week. I LOVE IT WHEN THAT HAPPENS.

One of the reasons things are so awesome? One of the reasons I can tell you about?

It looks like there are going to be ARCs of THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER. Bound copies. Printed ones.

Soon.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am going to get some, but I don’t know how many. It could be 10. It could be 1. But I DO want you to have them! All of you! So if you’d like one, here is a nifty little form you can fill out (which you can also access from the For Book Reviewers tab on the right!) The nifty little form shall compile itself into a nifty little spreadsheet with all of your info, which I shall then pass along to the amazing team at Simon & Schuster. I don’t have any control over who they decide to send ARCs to, but I can make sure they know you’re interested!

And while we're at it, I should point out that the blog layout has changed a little. Click on the cover to the left and it will take you to MARA's Goodreads page! Click on the links and you can actually PRE-ORDER it on INDIEBOUND and BARNES & NOBLE and AMAZON!

Why are you still here? *NUDGE*

Bookanista Thursday: March Debuts!

2011-03-03T13:43:00.002-05:00

It's March. March. I am weirdly incredulous about this. What happened to February? Does time seem to be rocketing forward at an unprecedented rate for everyone? Just me?

Anyway! Because it is now March (!), there are a BILLION new books out there that you really, seriously want to check out. Namely:

When you can see things others can't, where do you look for the truth?

This paranormal murder mystery will have teens reading on the edge of their seats.

Clarity "Clare" Fern sees things. Things no one else can see. Things like stolen kisses and long-buried secrets. All she has to do is touch a certain object, and the visions come to her. It's a gift.

And a curse.

When a teenage girl is found murdered, Clare's ex-boyfriend wants her to help solve the case--but Clare is still furious at the cheating jerk. Then Clare's brother--who has supernatural gifts of his own--becomes the prime suspect, and Clare can no longer look away. Teaming up with Gabriel, the smoldering son of the new detective, Clare must venture into the depths of fear, revenge, and lust in order to track the killer. But will her sight fail her just when she needs it most?

I have been lusting over the stunning cover for a long, long time now, and I just got the book a few days ago. Can't wait to dive in.

Kate Lowry didn't think dead best friends could send e-mails. But when she gets an e-mail from Grace, she’s not so sure.

To: KateLowry@pemberlybrown.edu

Sent: Sun 9/14 11:59 PM

From: GraceLee@pemberlybrown.edu

Subject: (no subject)

Kate,

I'm here…

sort of.

Find Cameron.

He knows.

I shouldn't be writing.

Don't tell.

They'll hurt you.

Now Kate has no choice but to prove once and for all that Grace’s death was more than just a tragic accident. But secrets haunt the halls of her elite private school. Secrets people will do anything to protect. Even if it means getting rid of the girl trying to solve a murder...

I read this one before you. Go ahead, be jealous. Because it IS as mysterious and compelling as it sounds. It is as fast-paced and fun as you'd expect from the Roecker sisters. But more than that? It's hilarious. I laughed out loud reading this, and that almost never happens. Well played, Lisa and Laura. Well played.

Lina is just like any other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys. Until one night when Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they've known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin's orders, to dig for beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions.

Lina finds solace in her art, meticulously—and at great risk—documenting events by drawing, hoping these messages will make their way to her father's prison camp to let him know they are still alive. It is a long and harrowing journey, spanning years and covering 6,500 miles, but it is through incredible strength, love, and hope that Lina ultimately survives. Between Shades of Gray is a novel that will steal your breath and capture your heart.

A beautiful title? Check. A stunning cover? Check. I haven't read this one yet, but I've been looking forward to it for a long, long while. I make no secret of the fact that I'm Jewish. I am very familiar with the Holocaust, and 1935-1945 as a time period in history. But I was not aware of Stalin's parallel genocide which occurred at the exact same time. Publisher's Weekly wrote an illuminating piece about Ruta Sepetys and about the book she felt she had to write, and I have a strong feeling that I'm going to come out of reading this book changed.

What if you knew exactly when you would die?

Thanks to modern science, every human being has become a ticking genetic time bomb—males only live to age twenty-five, and females only live to age twenty. In this bleak landscape, young girls are kidnapped and forced into polygamous marriages to keep the population from dying out.

When sixteen-year-old Rhine Ellery is taken by the Gatherers to become a bride, she enters a world of wealth and privilege. Despite her husband Linden's genuine love for her, and a tenuous trust among her sister wives, Rhine has one purpose: to escape—to find her twin brother and go home.

But Rhine has more to contend with than losing her freedom. Linden's eccentric father is bent on finding an antidote to the genetic virus that is getting closer to taking his son, even if it means collecting corpses in order to test his experiments. With the help of Gabriel, a servant Rhine is growing dangerously attracted to, Rhine attempts to break free, in the limted time she has left.

Lauren is not only my publisher twin, but my imprint sister--WITHER is brought to you by the amazing, wonderful people at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. Which means I was lucky enough to read this book early on, and let me tell you--the gorgeous cover doesn't disappoint. The story is elegantly told through Rhine's perspective, but provides a detailed, thorough portrait of her two sister wives and how their circumstances affect their actions, and their relationships with each other. Yes, it's a dystopian novel. Yes, it is fast paced. But what I found so original about WITHER was that for me, the portrayal of the relationships between the three girls took center stage. And that portrayal was fascinating, flawlessly written, and heartbreaking all at once.

It's hard finding beauty in the badlands of Washokey, Wyoming, but 14-year-old Grace Carpenter knows it's not her mother's pageant obsessions, or the cowboy dances adored by her small-town classmates. True beauty is wild-girl Mandarin Ramey: 17, shameless and utterly carefree. Grace would give anything to be like Mandarin.

When they're united for a project, they form an unlikely, explosive friendship, packed with nights spent skinny-dipping in the canal, liberating the town's animal-head trophies, and searching for someplace magic. Grace plays along when Mandarin suggests they run away together. Blame it on the crazy-making wildwinds plaguing their badlands town.

Because all too soon, Grace discovers Mandarin's unique beauty hides a girl who's troubled, broken, and even dangerous. And no matter how hard Grace fights to keep the magic, no friendship can withstand betrayal.

I have mentioned LIKE MANDARIN before, and now the release date is almost here (NEXT TUESDAY MARCH 8th AHEM). I have found myself commenting on the Goodreads profiles of people I don't know well who are adding the book (or currently reading it) telling them how much I love it. I have found myself commenting on strangers' blogs doing the same. By the normal rules that govern publishing? LIKE MANDARIN would be called a "small book." Because it isn't a dystopian. It isn't paranormal. It isn't a mystery. It isn't a romance.

But it will blow you away.

This book is beautiful, but more than that? It's real. It's so real that it will make you hurt, in the best possible way. I just...I love everything about it. I want the whole world to know.

And there you have it! To make it easy on you, I linked each cover to IndieBound so that you could buy and/or pre-order those fabulous books right quick. You'll thank me later, I have a feeling.

~*~

And now that I've told YOU what I'm excited about this month, YOU tell ME: what are YOU excited about? Hit the comments!

The Bookanistas are a group of 30 writers in various stages of the publishing process who have banded together to review the special books of our peers. Combined, we reach over 10,000 followers. Check out what the other Bookanistas are reading below!

Elana Johnson shines a light on Clarity

LiLa Roecker raves over The Rendering

Shannon Messenger loves 13 Reasons Why - with a signed book giveaway!

Shelli Johannes Wells joins The Liar Society

Scott Tracey is amazed by The Iron Thorn

Kirsten Hubbard raves over these March releases

Myra McEntire Invites Kim Harrington Into The Fort
Beth Revis is mad for Matched

Carolina Valdez Miller delights in Delirium

Jessica Kirby adores Across the Universe

Megan Miranda peers into Sean Griswold's Head

Bethany Wiggins marvels at Matched

Shana Silver is a super stop on The Liar Society blog tour

Gretchen McNeil celebrates The Liar Society

Carrie Harris buzzes about Blessed

Rosemare Clement-Moore falls for Falling Under

Katie Anderson shows cover love for Possess

Matt Blackstone is ecstatic over Edges

Stasia Ward Kehoe is wild for What Happened to Goodbye