Ally Condie's Blog, page 6

website updates, and taking questions

The official website for the MATCHED SERIES has been updated with all three of the new covers side-by-side. Gorgeous! The site also confirms the release date for REACHED as November 13, 2012, so I think we’re a go with that date. So excited!

I’ve mentioned before that we’re getting ready for a website redo here as well. As part of that, I’d like to do a series of blog posts on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The Tuesday series will be based on answering questions about writing, the writing process, etc. The Thursday series will be questions from readers about the books, the worlds of MATCHED and CROSSED, etc.

So, I’d love your questions in the comments section of this post! Then I can answer you in future posts over the next couple of months. Be sure to check the FAQ section of the site and also the q & a category of the blog, since I’ve answered some of the questions before (for example, I’ve answered “Where did you get your inspiration from MATCHED?” several times, and also “Can I be in the movie?” a few times as well). If you have a really specific question that’s kind of spoiler-y about the books, it’s probably best to hold off on that or email it to me instead.

I’m so excited! This will probably be the last time I do this for a while, so please feel free to ask. Hope you are having a lovely Tuesday!

texas, upcoming events, and quagga mussels

I just got back from Texas (my first work-related travel in almost six months)! It was hard to leave my family, especially the baby, but this trip had been planned since last August and I’ve really been looking forward to it. The school district that invited me to visit did such great things. One of the high schools there, Haltom High, had read MATCHED as their all-school read–which means all the 9th, 10th, and 11th grade students had read the book. How awesome is that? What’s more, they also had put together projects on the book:

I also got to meet the most lovely middle school students at a special banquet celebrating their going above and beyond and reading extra books from the state reading list. It was such an amazing event as well. All the students from the middle schools and the high schools, the teachers, the librarians, the administrators…everyone was so kind. It made me miss working in public education very much.

And now that I’ve started traveling, I’m just going to keep on going! I’m very excited to be attending BEA and ALA this year in June, and to be presenting at the BYU Symposium on Books for Young Readers in July. More info as I get it on the Events page. It’s shaping up to be a busy summer/fall as we prepare to launch REACHED. I can’t wait!

Finally, if you’ve read CROSSED (or even this blog), you probably know how awesome I find Southern Utah (and all of Utah, actually). This article accompanying the photo below talks about the quagga mussels which are causing all kinds of problems for our water and for our native fish. Please keep your boat clean!

Photo Courtesy of the Daily Herald. My brother is the super tall guy in the back. He works for the Division of Wildlife Resources. Keep up the good work protecting our wildlife, Nic!

Sorry that last item was kind of random…but I think a public service announcement every now and then on behalf of this gorgeous country we live in and enjoy is acceptable, right? And also I want to embarrass my brother (who, as you know, was one half of the inspiration for the character Vick in CROSSED).

love right now: links

This week I’m sending you to some fun places on the web…

I could look at this Matched-themed Etsy treasury all day. Curated by dragonflycurls, it’s full of lovely things (cassia seeds, green ball gowns, compass necklaces, letter-pressed stationery) that relate in some way to MATCHED and CROSSED. Love!

And, if you are in Cedar City or will be in Southern Utah anytime before August 25th, you should check out the Braithwaite Fine Arts Gallery. My mom has a show there right now that is absolutely gorgeous. It’s called INTO THE WOODS and it’s full of beautiful paintings of Dixie National Forest. I know I’m biased, but her pastels are just gorgeous. Also, in the sidebar of their website, you’ll see that they are now selling giclee prints of paintings by Jim Jones. He is my favorite painter (besides my mom, of course!) and I’m sure many of you have heard of him. His work is beautiful.

In honor of Neil Diamond’s wedding last week (almost as exciting as the royal wedding last year!), check out this slideshow dedicated to Neil. There weren’t any pictures of Neil’s wedding available online, but when I tried to find some, I found this. Which I loved and just had to post.

And that is all for now…next week, will I actually write a post about writing? Only time (and how far I get on this revision) will tell. Stay tuned.

love right now

It often happens that when I’m blogging less, I’m writing more. That’s certainly the case at this moment in time–I’m spending every minute that I can writing like crazy. So for the foreseeable future, you may see quite a lot of “love right now” posts because that’s all my brain seems to be capable of compiling once I’m done with my (writing) work for the day.

Anyway. I hope that is all right with you, blog readers!

Here’s what I love right now, the red edition:

*Birds of Prey by Christina Aguilera. Someone on twitter clued me in to this song, which I had not heard until now (admittedly, I have not heard most of Christina’s songs). It is EERILY perfect for the series. Many thanks to the reader who let me know about it!

*Red Mango frozen yogurt, plain with strawberries.

*EVERNEATH, by Brodi Ashton. I loved this book before now, but somehow I hadn’t mentioned it yet! What is wrong with me? Brodi’s blog is one of the funniest and best out there. Which I love. And her book is not funny. Which I love. It does have moments of humor, but what I loved most about this book is that it is the story of a girl trying to do the right thing, even when it is very, very hard, even when people don’t understand her at all. It’s also well-plotted, very romantic, and based on the Persephone myth.

Anything else out there I should be reading, hearing, eating? Do tell.

Okay. Back to work for me!

rhode island teen book award! and some other notes

I love you, Rhode Island! I just found out that MATCHED received the Rhode Island Teen Book Award. This article here in the School Library Journal explains how the award is chosen. What an honor! Nothing means more to me than when students and educators tell me that they enjoyed the book. This is such a thrill.

I've had some lovely events lately at the Holladay Library, the CITES teaching conference, and the SLTA book group. Many thanks to all of you who took the time to organize and to come. It was greatly appreciated on all counts!

We're hoping to revamp the website in the next few weeks, so if it suddenly goes down and isn't up for a bit, I apologize, and thanks in advance for your patience. We'd like to get things really beautiful and fresh for the summer and in preparation for launching REACHED.

Which reminds me…books don't write themselves! Back to work.

love right now

It's time again for a few things I love right now…

*Author and acclaimed singer/songwriter Mimi Cross sent me a link to her song called The Canyon. She's been reading CROSSED, and thought I might enjoy the song. And oh, I did. It is beautiful! Take a listen.

Also, the novel EDENBROOKE was just released by Shadow Mountain (who also published the FABLEHAVEN series and–shameless self-promotion!–my novel FRESHMAN FOR PRESIDENT).

EDENBROOKE received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. Congrats to Julie!

I read this book in draft form and can't wait to read it again in print. If you like clever, well-written Regency romance with humor and heart, it is absolutely for you. In fact, I think this book is the kind of novel that is a slam-dunk for everyone–and it would be a lovely pick for a book group, too.

The author, Julianne Donaldson, was a fellow student in my class (taught by Janette Rallison) at the Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers Conference back in 2009. Which brings me to the next thing I love right now…

This year's conference is open for registration! Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers is one of the best conferences around. This year the instructors will be Cynthia Leitich Smith, Tim Wynne Jones, Matt Kirby, and many, many more! Agents and editors will also be on hand. They're also having a contest and a fellowship award of $1,000 to further the winning author's work. Click here for more information.

I also love spring. And the fact that when I go running I get to see snow-capped mountains and trees in bloom at the same time. SO. GORGEOUS.

What do you love right now?

the power of books

authors Jon and Pamela Volkel in what may be the best author photo ever

This Wednesday, March 28th, authors Jon and Pamela Voelkel will be speaking and signing at The King's English in Salt Lake City at 7 p.m. More info here about the event.

I met Jon and Pamela last year at the Oxford Conference for the Book, where they were presenting to an auditorium of 5th graders and I was presenting to the 9th graders. My presentation came after theirs, and so I got to sit in on it and watch. All of my interactions with them had been so lovely, and they were clearly fantastic authors and truly wonderful people, so I had high expectations for the presentation.

I have NEVER seen anything like what the Voelkels do for a school assembly.

The kids were screaming, laughing, interested, playing air guitar, every face lit up with joy. Jon and Pamela had hundreds of fifth graders eating out of their hands, hanging on every word, believing in the power of literature to take you places.

I found myself sitting there shaking a little and crying as I watched it all unfold. Lest this make me sound crazy (and it probably does), I have to give a little background. While I was thrilled (and extremely honored) to be in Mississippi at the conference, there was also a LOT going on at home. Sometimes being a parent is hard, you guys. And sometimes it's the hardest when you have to trust others to do for your children what you cannot do yourself (I'm a good mom, and I work hard at it, but I am not a doctor, nor an elementary school teacher, etc., etc.) and it aches sometimes.

As I watched the Voelkels, and what they were doing for those kids, I felt a sense of gratitude and relief that there are people like Jon and Pamela in the world. They are children's book authors in the true sense–people who better the writing community with their books and with their outreach.

I know the Voelkels can't do their entire school presentation at a book signing, but they will be speaking a bit and signing your book with Mayan glyphs, so if you can make it to The King's English, you are in for a treat. And if you can't, you can still read their books and enjoy their amazing website.

Thank you, Jon and Pamela, for writing books my kids LOVE to read, and for spreading the message that reading can take you to some extraordinary places.

events! and more about reached!

Just a reminder that this Friday, March 23, I'll be speaking and signing at the Holladay Library. More info here. This is my only public event this spring, and I would love to see you there. A free ticket is required (more info on the link above).

Also, I am thrilled because I've been invited to participate in the Smart Chicks Tour again this year (many thanks to Melissa Marr and Kelley Armstrong for putting together the tour)! My stops this year will be the Salt Lake City stop on September 10th and the Edmonton, Canada stop on September 13! I have been to Canada before, but never for a signing, and I've also never been to Edmonton. I'm very excited about this. More details on the Smart Chicks schedule here (including details about the SLC and Edmonton stops).

And thank you for all your comments about the cover of REACHED! It's such a pleasure to hear your reactions. Author and friend Robison Wells did a great analysis of the three covers on his blog (mild spoilers if you haven't read the books). To answer a few other questions I've been getting about REACHED:

*There will not, to my knowledge, be any ARCs of REACHED. This is pretty common with the last book in a series. Sometimes they do them, sometimes they don't–it's the publisher's call.

*The model on the cover of REACHED is the same model on the covers of the other two books, and she is also the photographer! All three books have been self-portraits. I've posted about her before, but her name is Samantha Aide and she is extremely lovely and talented (obviously)! One of the fan sites–thesociety.net–has an exclusive interview with Samantha here. If you are a photographer, or a fan, or want to know more about the cover in general, check it out.

I think that's all for now. Everything is wild and wonderful here. Happy Spring to all of you this week!

reached, november 2012

If you missed it last week, the cover and title of Book 3 was revealed over at Entertainment Weekly's website. You can read the full article here.

I LOVE the cover. It is beautiful, and it's perfect for what happens in the final installment of the story. I also love the title–REACHED–which was my choice from the beginning, but we wanted to make certain that it was the right one before we committed. I don't know if you've noticed, but each of the titles (MATCHED, CROSSED, REACHED) have seven letters. And they all end in -ED, obviously. They feel like they fit together very well. The title of REACHED references the Emily Dickinson poem used in CROSSED. And that's all I'm going to say about that…for now.

A couple of other tidbits–

* People have asked if we planned to do the three books the colors of the three tablets. YES. That was the designer's brilliant idea from the very beginning, with the first cover of MATCHED. We've always known this cover would be red. The green tablet was important in MATCHED, the blue tablet was the focus in CROSSED, and the red tablet will be center stage in REACHED.

*You've also likely noticed that the second letter of each title is slightly skewed (the A in MATCHED is missing the line across the middle, the R in CROSSED is backwards). In this title, the E is missing one of its lines–but the three lines in the middle are there, and they are all equal. This has symbolic meaning for the three main characters/voices in the story–Cassia, Ky, and now Xander.

*People have been asking about the November 13 release date showing up on Amazon. While I know that we plan to release in November sometime, my publisher has not told me the date yet. So as far as I know, that's not official. But if I do get confirmation on a release date, I will be sure to keep you posted.

Thank you all for your kind words of support about the book and the cover!

i have some news…

…that you might want to check out over at Entertainment Weekly's site.

Let me know what you think!!