Monday, May 6, 2013

Dancing

So last month when I posted about my BIG NEWS, little did you know that that was only part of it. And now I get to announce the whole damn thing.


People who follow me on twitter know that, while I talk and talk and talk and talk about #sparklyfairyprostitute (SCRAPBOOK, Chronicle '15 woooooo) since November when I started it for NaNo I've been talking about this other book, one that I've been calling #bisexualballerina, one that is more professionally currently titled ETTA NOT OTHERWISE SPECIFIED. 

ETTA is about three things I knew very well and one thing I definitely did not--bisexuality, musical theater, eating disorders, and ballet. The four main characters are ones that I've tried to write book after book after book for through the past four years, and I had begun to give up hope that  could ever find a place where they all fit.

But then, these characters I'd had for so long, these characters I'd never even considered putting in the same book...

It just happened. And I owe it all to that weird little Etta. She's the anti-snarky narrator in what my agent called an anti-problem novel; Etta has a hundred and a half problems but it's not about them. It's about her. This tenacious, five feet nothing, curvy as all hell black ballerina who puts herself into therapy and dates boys and girls and will try really, really hard not to let her lesbian friends (the Disco Dykes, because they dress all in 70s clothes and yell 'breeder' at the zillions of straight people in rural Nebraska) make her feel like shit about it, not when there's this tiny little smoke of a girl in her ED group and a boy on a motorcycle from her musical theater auditions pulling her in another direction. Etta Etta Etta. She's made from my years and years of being eating disorded but never being underweight, my even more years and years of musical theater, my issues finding a place to fit in as a bisexual, and my obsession with toe shoes I've never been in. 

Since it's Monday and since I'm currently writing this post I have an excellent chance of failing, let's have some good news, shall we?

ETTA NOT OTHERWISE SPECIFIED will be my fifth book published by the awesome amazing Simon Pulse, this time with the fantastic Liesa Abrams, thanks to my fucking incredible agent John Cusick.


13 comments:

Leah Goodreau said...

YAY ETTA!

Claire Hennessy said...

Yaaaaay! So glad #bixseualballerina will be making it into the bookstores!

Zoraida Cordova said...

Congratulations! *dances*

Kate Larkindale said...

That's amazing news! I'm so excited for you. And I can't wait to read it.

Unknown said...

Congratulations! So incredibly pleased for you!

Anonymous said...

Yay congrats! Awesome news :)

Lydia Sharp said...

Congratulations!

MBee said...

I love that you don't give up on characters and find them good homes they deserve!

Hope writing this was cathartic for you as well. I cannot wait to read it!

Unknown said...

AND we get sparkly fairy prostitutes, too?! It's an embarrassment of riches, you know.

(I, too, have an obsession with ballet and toe shoes, even though I quit ballet at roughly seven. Most of my characters would be dancers if I had my way -- two have been already.)

Unknown said...

congratulations on your new book! I am really proud of you

Brianna Mitchell
tv2know.blogspot.com

Jessica Schley said...

Congratulations, Hannah! I can't wait to read it. And to handsell it. :)

I might've nicknamed myself after a black ballerina from THE BABY SITTERS' CLUB once upon a time...but Etta sounds much more interesting.

Loki Lady said...

Awesome! I can't wait.

Ellen Brickley said...

Delighted to hear this, can't wait to read it :D