SPELLBOUND Cover! (And some rambling about bad dreams.)

Here it is: the cover of The Books of Elsewhere, Volume Two: Spellbound, due out in July 2011. 



And here it is in ARC form, posing with antique Christmas baubles and a gold glass bowl. 



I spent much of the day yesterday at a local middle school, talking to groups of 7th graders about The Books of Elsewhere and the writing process, and the kids were attentive and fun and everything went smoothly.  This was especially nice because I had spent the previous night immersed in highly detailed nightmares about public speaking.  I seem to be prone to these hyper-realistic work-related nightmares, when all the little anxieties I've managed to overcome (or to hide) bubble up to the surface.  A couple of years ago, while I was teaching high school English, I dreamt that I had to teach my classes in a hotel lobby, which was of course full of hurrying people and ringing phones and giant sleep-inducing armchairs and blaring widescreen TVs, and when I finally caught the attention of one distracted student, he called me a 'bumpkin.'  (Yes, a bumpkin.  My subconscious uses words that I never employ.)  Back in my restaurant work days, I had frequent waitressing nightmares, in which tables of angry customers demanded to know why their food was taking so long, and the cooks had lost all my tickets, and I was always suddenly realizing that I'd forgotten someone's Mountain Dew refill.  I would jolt awake, heart pounding, hands sweating.  Other waitresses have told me I'm not alone in this.  

Anyway, this particular dream started out well.  I was supposed to speak to a small group of teachers and librarians, and we were all seated in a circle in a lavish Victorian hotel lobby (A hotel lobby again!  You’d think some horrible trauma had befallen me in the lounge of a Marriott or something.  Perhaps I’ve repressed it.), with marble-topped tables and lots of shiny green silk and dark polished wood everywhere.  Very promising.  Then the woman who was supposed to introduce me instead launched into a sales spiel for a line of candles, all the while holding a flaming, three-wicked, Jell-O-mold-sized monstrosity above my head and slopping hot wax all over my hair.  The wax had the consistency of turkey gravy, so at least I was able to rinse it out in the little nearby bathroom, although I was left with a dripping wet head.  I returned to the fancy lobby, only to be told that more people were coming, and we should all move down to the basement.  The basement: not so pretty.  Still, I tried to sound enthusiastic and semi-coherent as I began my speech.  I’d only gotten a few words out before a big group of families with children stomped down the basement stairs, all talking loudly.  Soon people were shouting that they couldn’t hear me, so I stood and waited, smiling awkwardly at the spaces just above people’s heads while they stared back at me, looking more and more annoyed.  At last, someone brought me a cordless microphone.  It was the size and weight of a six-cell Maglite and I could barely lift it to my mouth with both hands. 
 

When the sound of the alarm clock is a relief instead of an annoyance, it’s actually a pretty nice change.