Cynthia Hand's Blog, page 12

This Just In

Wow, am I ever overdue for a post! The summer has flown by, and I am shocked that it's already time to start putting my syllabi together for the classes I'm teaching at Pepperdine this fall. Usually I get so excited at this stage, anticipating all the amazing students I'll meet this year and the great stuff I'll read from them and all the good talks and laughs we'll have, but this year I'm like, wait, WAIT, I haven't finished Book 2 yet! I thought by this point I'd have a first draft! I'm not...

Hot summer days with no AC, and very few ARCs

This is turning out to be such an interesting summer, one adventure after another. At the moment I am back at home trying to survive July in southern California with no AC. I have bought all kinds of exotic and wonderful fans in the last couple of weeks, but haven't yet given in and spent the bucks for a bona fide air conditioner. We've been holding out and saving our money to replace on existing 22 year old furnace and have AC installed at the same time. Which is expensive. So we're saving.

I...

My Cover is Showing

Okay, so my cover has started to float around a little, up on Goodreads and the Harper catalog, so I think the time has come to reveal the cover myself. But here's the thing: the cover that's floating around is the cover for the ARC, not the official cover. My people at HarperTeen tell me that they're working on creating a digital copy of the REAL cover, which reflects how the image will appear when it comes out in hardback this January. The cover is being printed on silver foil with a violet...

Big Apple

Just got home from a few days in New York City. It's been such a surreal week, completed by the fact that Drew Barrymore was on the airplane on the way home! And I was reading a real copy of my book (yes folks, the ARCs have arrived!) during the flight.

I'll back up. Here's my week:

Monday: Flew non-stop to JFK. Met my agent for dinner that night at a Korean restaurant. Had roast duck in lime sauce, wow, so good. I adore Katherine, and it was beyond wonderful to finally meet her in person. I fe...

Hot Topic

There's been a lot of buzz lately about angels being "the new vampire," the new wave of books that young adults are reaching for. This past April this article ("Host of books appear as angels become theme of new teenage reading cult") appeared in The Guardian, which discusses the trend and mentions a whole lot of upcoming angel titles. Then yesterday I read this article, ("Hot Wings: Notes On My New Best-Seller") in The New Yorker, which is a hilarious look at a writer attempting to cash in o...

Playing Catch-up

So I've been busy: finals at Pepperdine, moving to a new house, and before the boxes were even unpacked I headed off to Idaho for some decompression time. Right this minute I am sitting in a hotel room in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. My room overlooks the Tetons and a horse corrall; I'm in bliss. But more on that later.
In my time of radio silence a lot has happened: I've sold the audio rights to the book and my agent is working on foreign and film rights, which is crazy. HarperCollins hired a...

The cave, part 2

So there was a part of the cave experience I forgot to mention: copy editing.  This was a hardcore process with many, many hours involved, after which I lapsed into a mini-writerly coma that I am just now waking up from.  So now I am REALLY coming out of the cave.  That and I just turned in the grades for the semester at Pepperdine and I am ALMOST done buying a house.  So I am nearly to the light at the end of the tunnel, which, in my mind, is Book 2 and Idaho.

In May my son and I are off to I...

The crazy days have begun

I have now officially entered production time.  So far this week I've looked over the jacket copy and the galley copy of my book, written my bio for the back of the book, and sent an entirely new author photo to HarperCollins.  It's all becoming more and more real.

Couple this with the fact that my agency is sending the book off now for certain foreign rights and film rights.  So we're back in the time when crazy news could come in any day.  And, in the meantime, more people are reading my boo...

Coming out of the cave

Phew!  What a couple of months it's been!  I've been in what some of my other fellow writers call "the cave," where we all disappear for a while while we revise our novels.  I am so happy to announce that UNEARTHLY went into production yesterday, which means that while there may be a few little changes here and there, I am largely finished writing this book. 

Now comes the really fun stuff, seeing the cover HarperCollins comes up with and writing the acknowledgements and marketing and the par...

Author Photo

This week, in addition to completing this round of revisions with HarperCollins (almost done, crossing fingers!), I also have to fill out my author questionnaire and send in a photo that will be my official "author" photo for this book.  I am really stuck about which photo to send, so I'm asking for your vote.  I've narrowed it down to four:

Choice #1:  This one is ideal, because I am rather desperate to get a picture of the Tetons somewhere on my book (the mountains are an integral part of th...