We Need Another Book

So it's been about six months since I self-published 3 (haven't bought it yet? For shame) and it has been pretty incredible. It's been so fun having control and getting to see results in real time and hearing everyone's reactions to the book, and ngl I like the money. So...let's do it again?

This book has been a long time in the making--almost two years--and I finally feel like it's the right time to share it. If you follow me on twitter you'll know it as #Deafromance, but it has a real title...and a real cover, and since that's what you're actually here to see, I'll save the rest of my blabbing. Without further ado...

Zack Ramos is training for two things: being a parent to his twelve-year-old sister once his mother's early-onset Alzheimer's (the same kind he and his sister each have a 50% chance of developing--but let's not think about that) progresses too far, and running a one hundred mile race through the mountains of Tennessee. His support system is longtime girlfriend Jordan Jonas, who's sweet, sarcastic, and entirely virtual. They've been talking for years but still have never met in person. Because Jordan, it turns out, was still waiting for the right time to tell him that she's Deaf. 

The revelation brings them closer together, and Zack throws himself into learning sign language and trying to navigate their way through their different cultures. But with the stress of a tumultuous relationship, a new language, a sick mother, and his uncertain future, there's going to be a breaking point...and it might be out there in the Tennessee wild.

It'll be out on Wednesday, April 26th, and I'll add a link here as soon as I have one. In the meantime, let's skip ahead to reasons you should buy it, shall we?

--The Romance. I don't want to spoil, but there's something special about Zack and Jordan and their romantic arc that I haven't seen before. Maybe you've never seen it before either?? idk idk do you really want to risk NEVER SEEING IT

--The Representation. Both Zack and Jordan are bisexual and will not let you forget it just because they're in a boy/girl relationship. Zack is Filipino, Jordan is Guatemalan and Jewish. Jordan is, obviously, Deaf.
       --#ownvoices? Only for bisexuality and Judaism. I'm disabled but not Deaf, and I know ASL but...again, not Deaf.
      --Jordan does not read lips. Learn ASL or gtfo. Zack chooses the former.

--The Price. It's $3.99. You can swing it.

--The Author. uh hi have you met me I'm awesome and last night I spent $75 on lipstick good lord so can I have your money thanks

Hit me up with any questions you have about the book here or on Twitter! I'm beyond excited to bring this out into the world, and I hope you guys love it!

Happy Hannahween!

Well then!

Listen up, we got a big announcement. 

This Halloween, as in FIVE DAYS FROM NOW Halloween, I decided to do something I've never done before! I'm putting out a book all on my very own. It's ebook only and right now only on Amazon.  Here's the cover!

And here's the description!

You just have to be a brave and certain kind of person, and I don't think that I am. I'm sarcastic and loyal and a little shy. I'm quietly and slightly Catholic. I'm a daughter trying to learn how to be a sister. I'm a virgin. I'm a butterflier.

I've never been in love.

Taylor Cipriano had everything figured out, back when she lived with her single mother in Miami. Now, she's moved upstate for her junior year to live with her mom's boyfriend and her soon-to-be-stepsister and is trying to figure out who she is out of the shadow of her best friend. When she meets Theo—quirky, cute, sensitive Theo—he seems like a great match...except he has a girlfriend. Josey, icy and oh-so-intimidating. 

But Theo and Josey aren't like anyone Taylor's met before; Josey grew up in a polyamorous family, and the two of them have a history of letting a third person in to their relationship. It's nothing Taylor's ever considered before...but she really likes Theo.

Her feelings for Josey, though? 

That's where it really gets complicated.

3 unwraps who we love and how we love, in numbers as odd as we are.

why Hannah, is that a queer polyamory book for teenagers??

IT SURE AS FUCK IS

HOORAAAAAY

And you can preorder it RIGHT THE HELL HERE.  It's $3.99 and like come on, even I have $3.99. You can swing it.

So. Why am I doing this now, and why with this project? A couple reasons. 

1. Otherwise, I don't have a book coming out until 2018.

Exactly, Sam. Exactly. 

2. I love traditional publishing, but I really love the idea of getting to do a few (????) things on the side my schedule and on my terms. I've bitched endlessly on twitter about the number of adults things need to go through before teenagers can see them. This way there's only one (me. I'm old now). 

3. This book is really, really personal to me (wiiiiiiink) so it seemed like a good one for me to have total control over. 

4. I'm curious what will happen. 

So! Shake them piggy banks, preorder (once again that link is RIGHT HERE), tell all your friends and families and enemies, and watch my twitter for updates. Ciao, bellas, and happy Hannahween.

Cover Reveal!!

I'll keep it short and sweet, since nobody clicked on this to hear me talk--here's the cover for my next YA book, NOT OTHERWISE SPECIFIED. I am unbelievably in love, and still freaking reeling that we found a girl who's Etta Etta Etta all over (look at her '70s clothes! and her ankles crossed in SUBTLE BALLERINA FASHION! and her eyes SEEING INTO YOUR SOUL).

Sooooo...

right? RIGHT? I could pretend to be modest but I mean I didn't design it so LOOK AT THAT DAMN THING.

Here's the summary of the thing: 

Etta is tired of dealing with all of the labels and categories that seem so important to everyone else in her small Nebraska hometown.

Everywhere she turns, someone feels she's too fringe for the fringe. Not gay enough for the Dykes, her ex-clique, thanks to a recent relationship with a boy; not tiny and white enough for ballet, her first passion; and not sick enough to look anorexic (partially thanks to recovery). Etta doesn’t fit anywhere— until she meets Bianca, the straight, white, Christian, and seriously sick girl in Etta’s therapy group. Both girls are auditioning for Brentwood, a prestigious New York theater academy that is so not Nebraska. Bianca seems like Etta’s salvation, but how can Etta be saved by a girl who needs saving herself? 

The latest powerful, original novel from Hannah Moskowitz is the story about living in and outside communities and stereotypes, and defining your own identity.

And here is where you should add it on goodreads 'cause I'm gonna be watching that like a creeper today. 

Thanks for clicking! Tell me what you think, please!!

xoxoxo miss hannah

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.

Once Upon a Time

Once upon a time there as a girl named hannah who wrote a book about sparkly fairy prostitutes.

I wrote this book about a billion (okay, two, but that's a lot when you're young and impatient) years ago, and it's without a doubt the most taxing project I've ever attempted, let alone completed. First of all it's a high fantasy, which is kind of ridiculous for me, and second of all it's from the point of view of a girl, and it was my first time trying that.

By all rights I really shouldn't have tried to write this book, because at no point while I was working on it did I honestly believe I could do it. This was something for a better writer, or a smarter writer, or really an OLDER writer. It was an ambitious project I didn't really have any business attempting.

But there were these weird little moments and images that stuck in my mind and I couldn't get rid of them. A girl who keeps the pieces of her father in a jar. A fairy learning to read. People who live on tightropes in the sky. A boy with one arm and two dark eyes, two gnomes starving and taking care of a sheep in a cottage somewhere they have never travelled (name that poem), and kisses that scrape glitter off faces.

So I finished this book. And I edited it again, and again, and again. And this beautiful amazing girl made me beautiful amazing pictures whenever it all seemed too hard.

One upon a time there was a little book that was so weird and so strange that it never should have sold.

But it did.

So once upon a time there was the happiest damn hannah in the world.

I am so incredibly amazed too announce that SCRAPBOOK sold in a two-book deal to Tamra Tuller at Chronicle.

Once upon a time my life was just too fucking awesome to deal with.

Why I Read YA

Lately--lately, in this instance, meaning always--there are some opinion pieces making the rounds comparing YA books to
adult
literary
reeeeeal
books.

Sometimes my dad tells me that he likes my books and he thinks I have real talent, and he thinks I really could write a real book. He asks me when I'm going to write the
great
American
nooooovel.

I'm currently a senior year English major. You have no idea how many people I know whose big goal is to write the great American novel. In class, I read great piece of literature after great piece of literature and I really, genuinely like some of them. I do. But when it's time for me to curl up with something I'm actually looking forward to? When stretched out on a towel on the beach or balled up crying on my bed and I need that book, it's Melina Marchetta or Amy Reed or Steve Brezenoff or David Levithan or Jaclyn Moriarty, to name a few. It's YA.

People used to ask me if I would write
reeeeeal
books
when I grew up.

I am twenty-one-and-one-half as of last Friday. I'm not saying I'm ancient (I'll leave that to my infant girlfriend) but I'm unquestionably outside of the YA age group. I know I'm far from the only adult reading YA, and I don't know if it's my on-the-cusp age or my body of work or my major that has people so fucking confused by the fact that I care a lot more about stories about girls by their lockers than about men who want to fuck their sisters (what up, Faulkner, write a different book why don't you).

And see, that there is part of it. When my dad asks me why I haven't written that great American novel, I have totally told him, "Because I'm a Jewish girl."

There are some fucking fantastic literary ('what the fuck is literary anyway?' is a topic for a different post and a better writer) adult books written by women, but, um...where are they? Ohhh that's right, they're being ignored and shoved aside by literary purists just like YA books are! Come sit with us, ladies, our table is ever-expanding.

I've mentioned this before, I think, but I had a teacher in high school who once said to me, after Break sold, "I just feel like there's a level of depth missing in YA books, you know?" in this thoughtful voice like she expected me to agree.

Well, you know what? No, I don't fucking know.

There is a reason adults come back to these high school stories, and it isn't a reason I can figure out how to articulate. But it's the same reason people who very much aren't teenagers love Glee and Friday Night Lights. There is something enduring and universal about these stories.

And there is something twisted and weird and personal and so, so not monolithic. And while we're still working on the diversity-of-characters thing (and trust me I am giving myself a get-out-of-fucking-nothing-free card, I have written waaay too many books about white boys to get off scot-free--I mean, I love my books, but write a fucking Asian girl, hannah) we have a ever-changing, ever-evolving body of authors. 

And I get that literary canon moves a lot slower. I get that.

But maybe it means literary canon needs to shut the fuck up a little bit. Because this isn't 1950 and writers aren't (just?) impotent men with typewriters and dark rooms and alcoholism and complexes. Writers are moms and teenagers and gay boys and black women and Jewish girls trying to tap out a blog post while the aforementioned infant girl watches RuPaul's Drag Race. 

Maybe it doesn't have to be such a fucking art all the time. Maybe I shouldn't be getting a degree in this shit. Maybe I just don't get it.

Maybe I should go back to just reading my little YA books on the beach or balled up in my bed.

God, what a fucking waste that would be!

When I was a sophomore, a creative writing teacher told me that after he finished his

great

American

novel

he wanted to write some really commercial book about zombies. What a fucking joke, right! A real writer deigning to write about zombies!

Last month I ran into a girl from that class who has him again this semester. I asked if he'd finished his great American novel yet.

He has not.

My zombie book came out ten months ago.

(I love the taste of brains in the autumn. Tastes like legitimacy.)

TEETH Teaser, shall we?

how about the first chapter? 

---

At night, the ocean is so loud and so close that I lie awake, sure it's going to beat against the house's supports until we all crumble onto the rocks and break into pieces. Our house is creaky, gray, weather-stained. It's probably held a dozen desperate families who found their cure and left before we'd even heard about this island.

We are a groan away from a watery death, and we'll all drown without even waking up, because we're so used to sleeping through unrelenting noise.

Sometimes I draw. Usually I keep as still as I can. I worry any movement from me will push us over the edge. I don't even want to blink.

I feel the crashing building. I always do. I lie in bed with my eyes open and focus on a peak in my uneven ceiling and pretend I know how to meditate. You are not moving. You are not drowning. It's just rain. It's your imagination. Go to sleep.

That pounding noise is pavement under your feet, is sex, is your mother's hands on your brother's chest, is something that is not water.

It's not working, not tonight. I sit up and grab my pad and pen to sketch myself, standing. Dry.

Sometimes the waves hit the shore so hard that I can't even hear the screaming.

But usually I can. Tonight I can, and it hits me too hard for me to draw. I need to learn how to draw a scream.

I close my eyes and listen. I always do this; I listen like I am trying to desensitize myself, like if I just let the screams fill my ears long enough, I will get bored and I will forget and I will go to sleep.

It doesn't work. I need to calm down.

It's just the wind.

Not water. Not anyone. Go to sleep.

Some nights the screams are louder than others. Some nights they're impossible to explain away, like my mom tries, as really just the wind passing through the cliffs. “Like in an old novel,” she says. “It's romantic.” Her room doesn't face the ocean.

Fiona, down on the south end of the island, says it's the ghost, but Fiona's bag-of-bats crazy and just because we're figuring out some magic is real doesn't mean I'm allowed to skip straight to ghost in an effort to make my life either more simple or more exciting, God, what the fuck do I even want?

I should figure it out and then wish for it and see what happens. Who the hell knows? Magic island, after all.

Magic fish, anyway. They heal.

That's the real story, that's the story everyone believes, but it's hardly the only one that darts around.

There are creatures in the water no one's ever seen except out of the corner of his eyes.

The big house is haunted.

Maybe we're all haunted.

I only take the legends seriously at night. The house is rocking, and the stories are the only thing to keep me company.

Stories, me, and ocean, and however the hell many magic fish while my family sleeps downstairs and my real life sleeps a thousand miles away.

At home, I never would have believed this shit. I used to be a reasonable person. But now we're living on this island that is so small and isolated that it really feels like it's another world, with rules like none I learned growing up. We came here from middle America. We stepped into a fairy tale.

And my brother is better but isn't well, so color me increasingly despondent, magic fish.

Out in the ocean, the shrieks continue, as high and hollow as whistles. I get up and press my face against the window. My room is the highest part of our kneeling house.

The panes on my windows are thick and uneven. Probably the window was made by hand. Even if it weren't so dark, I'd still hardly be able to see. Everything's distorted like I'm looking through glasses that don't belong to me.

But I can just make out the waves, grabbing onto the shore with foamy fingers and sliding back into the surf. I squint long enough and make out white peaks in the dark water.

“Go to sleep,” I say.

I close my eyes and listen to the screams. I pretend it's my brother, my little brother, who has cystic fibrosis and this fucked-up chest and can't scream at all. Pretend this island has done the magic it was supposed to do, and he's okay. And we can go home.

Cover Cover Cover Cover

My FAVORITE kind of post.

 So once upon a time I wrote a book about a magic gay fish...

 I don't have any official cover copy for this yet and fuck if I actually know how to describe it, but the basic idea is that this kid Rudy moves to an island with magic fish that are supposed to cure his sick little brother (HI I AM HANNAH MOSKOWITZ AND I WROTE THIS BOOK). And then he meets this half-fish half-boy who is ugly as all fuck and is this angry, fantastic vigilante and they have this kind of hesitant unspoken romance and there is DRAMA AND INTRIGUE. INTRIGUE, I TELL YOU. Basically it's very strange, very magically-realistic, and altogether very ME so if you like what I do and you're not squeamish about fish sex, you will like this, that's what I think. AND NOW IT HAS A COVER. My goofy blog layout won't let me post it too big, so CLICK CLICK CLICK!

I am really, really crazy about this cover. Do you think it might be kind of shiny in real life? I think it might be kind of shiny in real life.

You can add that shit on Goodreads right here if you want to! As you can tell by its 3 review average of FIVE STARS, it is an important piece of literature already. GET ON THAT SHIT.

Six Days From Now and Ten Years Ago

Six days from now, my 4th book, Gone, Gone, Gone, comes out.

It's been getting really good reviews, which is pretty fucking cool. Look at these nice quotes!


"Moskowitz captures the teenage mentality and voice in this tender yet emotionally complex romance."
- Publisher's Weekly

“Moskowitz, as usual, imbues her prose with a dreamy quality that makes every off moment feel monumental….Despite featuring the very real sniper attacks of 2002, this is as amorphous as the author’s Invincible Summer—not necessarily a bad thing for those inclined to float along with the lullaby rhythm. The theme of the randomness of tragedy (literalized here by 9/11, the sniper, cancer, and Craig’s 14 lost pets) is particularly well-handled.”
- Booklist


So there's that, and that's awesome, but let's lay it on the line: this is my fourth book, and after four books it takes a lot to get my feathers ruffled (gross?) in either a good (yeah, it's gross) or a bad way. ANY review means that someone's picked up the book, and that's what's important to me at this point, and maybe that means I'm soulless, Supernatural or Zombie Tag-style.

Except the thing is...it's different with this one. Even though I'm pretty fond of that magic gay fish thing, GGG gets a special section of my brain all to itself. GGG is just very, very me. Both 'me' as a writer--pretty much every hannah-trope you know and hopefully grudgingly accept is in this book, seriously, make a drinking game--and as a actual, real human.

And it's kind of the end of an era. As of right now, this is my last male-POV fully contemporary YA book. This was me doing everything I love so much, wringing into one book, and letting it rest.

This was me closing a door, for now.

That's not really why it's special.

**

John Allen Muhammad, the mastermind of the D.C. metro sniper shootings, was executed on November 10th, 2009.

I was at Brown then, and a friend of mine had a blog where he wrote about political events and such, and he asked me to take a look at a post he wrote criticizing the death penalty with regards to Muhammad's execution. Because I was from Maryland, and also because I'm a bleeding heart liberal who was attending a bleeding heart liberal school and I assume he was expecting me to have a certain reaction to the news that someone had been executed.

In any other circumstance, he would have been wrong, but the thing was...

I'd been waiting for John Allen Muhammad to be executed for seven years.

Except, if you'd have asked me, I would have said eight. Because I would have sworn up and down that the sniper shootings and 9/11 were the same year.

I was young--ten for 9/11, eleven for the sniper shootings, so it makes sense that my memories get muddled. But I don't think that's the reason I was so sure that the sniper shootings were a month after 9/11, rather than thirteen.

I think it's a Maryland thing. A suburbs-of-D.C. thing.

They're linked for us. They always will be. We sat right next to a city that lost 125 people in 9/11, and we very obviously were NOT in New York. We weren't even in D.C. We were Maryland, uncomfortably close and uncomfortably detached, and thirteen months (feels like one month) later we, we fucking suburbanites, were the playground for two snipers and two weeks and ten casualties.

We have issues.

It's a Maryland thing.

So I was at Brown in 2009, and my friend showed me the blog post, and the way he talked about Muhammad's execution was...

normal.

He talked about it like it was any other situation, any other murderer. He used it as a support in a larger argument.

It just made so much sense.

And there I was, seven years out of it. Seven years of reading the Wiki page obsessively, of reading about John Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo and timing the shootings and figuring out how far I was from each when it happened (not far, never far, and how the fuck could I use that as a reason something was important? People die all the time. Why the hell does it matter if I'm five miles away?)

Seven years out of running in zig-zags on my way to voice lessons and reading about a boy my age getting shot on his way to school. Seven years out of our chief of police crying on TV and our faculty members wearing orange vests and patrolling our grounds.

There was nothing else on the news.

People ducked while they pumped gas.

People talked, all the time, about 9/11.

Seven years out of it, and still shocked that anyone could think it made sense.

So I wrote a book.

(I did what I have to do to make anything make sense. I made a love story.)

So I wrote GGG over a few days a month after Muhammad was executed, during final exams, because I take my studies very seriously, obviously. And because I can't be objective about it. I can't. I can't let it go.

I can't shut this door.

So I wrote a book.

I hope you read it.

An Open Letter to Those Who Review on Goodreads

Dear Reviewers,

I love Goodreads too. I love it as a reader and as a drama-loving red-blooded twenty-year-old extroverted Aries, but I also love it as a writer.

I'm sorry that we've fucked up Goodreads.

I'm having a hard time writing this because I'm so fucking frustrated, and because I'm goddamn ashamed of how I've seen people behaving lately. I feel like this is Boy Meets World and we have to keep learning the same lessons every week and then we go back and make the same fucking mistakes.

I want to tell you that I get why there is vitriol towards YA writers.

We keep doing this shit to you, and I'm so sorry.

I'm not giving any links because this isn't an isolated incident, but in case you've missed what's been going on lately, the gist is that we invade reviewer space, whether on reviews of our own work or a friend's, and act like assholes.

While I don't support anyone's decision to act like an asshole, it's really stupid for us. I get that sometimes you want to take that writer hat off and be a real person, or be a reader. Hell, I still have internet spaces for real hannah, and they're not invisible; you can go friend me on Facebook and watch me exchange videos with my girlfriend and discuss Motion City Soundtrack with my mom and post half-naked pictures from Rocky Horror, you know? (Just drop me a note saying you're a blog reader so I know you're not a random creeper looking at my half-naked pictures from Rocky Horror, cool?)

But I don't really get to be a reader anymore, not fully, and that's just fucking reality. And maybe it's not altogether awesome, and maybe I miss it, but it's a pretty small price to pay for being a motherfucking author.

That doesn't mean I can't write reviews, even negative ones; I do sometimes, and there are some amazing combination writer/reviewers out there--Phoebe North, anyone?--but it does mean that if I go out there and comment on bad reviews with sarcasm and bitchiness and general asshole-dom, I make writer-hannah look like a fucking idiot.

What's more, I embarrass my fans, I disrespect people who support me, and I give YA writers a bad name, and that just isn't how this shit is going to go down.

I don't know why this is such a hard concept for some of us, and I'm so, so sorry that we're just not fucking getting it.

If we can't stand Goodreads, we shouldn't go there. But if we choose to anyway, it is fucking ridiculous of us to think that just because we get those sexy author profile pages Goodreads is suddenly our space to be assholes to people who are doing what Goodreads was made for: reviewing books and interacting with people who love (and hate) books as much as they do.

Don't get me wrong, I love that we have a space where we can obsessively refresh to see how many people have added our books and see what page people are on and read what quotes they've added (THIS IS MY FAVORITE THING IN THE WORLD) and cry over bad reviews and cry over good reviews and cry because this shit is stressful, damn it.

But we are guests here, and Goodreads is your space, and I'm sorry we keep being idiots about it.

Love,
hannah

P.S. to authors: I know that bad reviews can hurt. I know that sometimes bad reviews are objectively WRONG. Shut up anyway. If you're a decent person with a good book, your readers will defend the thing. And that's the dream. That's what Goodreads is for.

2011 Round-Up

I do these every year.

Mostly real-life hannah, but writer hannah makes her appearances too.

1. What did you do in 2011 that you'd never done before?

Had two books come out in one year. Started dating a girl. Went abroad with my family. Starred--twice--in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Wrote one, solitary book.

2. Did you keep your New Years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I kept almost all of them. I'll probably make some more.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Yes.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

No.

5. What countries did you visit?

Just Spain.

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?

Serenity.

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

April 19th, 2011--Invincible Summer!

December 20th, 2011--Zombie Tag. And that other thing. She's going to come up a lot.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Selling magicgayfish was really, really amazing, as was Teen Author Carnival and doing a panel next to David Levithan, oh my God.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Not writing.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

There was the exciting head-over-heels-down-some-stairs adventure that left me with a sprained ankle and a shitton of scrapes, and I had the flu in the spring. And then I tested positive for Lyme, despite having been tested and treated and cured four years ago, so I had to do a round of antibiotics which made me sick, and hell if I even know what's up anymore. I'm finally on meds for the arthritis and they're helping a ton. THIS IS BORING, I'M SORRY, I DON'T MAKE THE QUESTIONS.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

No contest.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

My magic gay fish, of course.

14. Where did most of your money go?

Clothes, as always.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Turning 20. Invincible Summer. Each semester to be over. Holidays, always. Rocky shows. The deal for Fishboy.

16. What song will always remind you of 2011?

"Carry on Wayward Son" by Kansas, because...yeah.

17. Compared to this time last year, you are:

Happier?

God, yeah.

Richer?

Yep.

Thinner?

noooo

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?

Reading, like always. Sleeping. Being calm.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?

Same as last year: "Freaking the fuck out."

20. How will you be spending Christmas?

At home with my family, and I can't fucking wait.

22. Did you fall in love in 2011?

Ask me in a few months.

24. What was your favorite TV program?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA come on. You know me.

(Supernatural.)

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?

No.

26. What was the best book you read?

SO GLAD YOU ASKED. There are six I read for the first time that I absolutely HAVE to mention.

BROOKLYN, BURNING by Steve Brezenoff
CLEAN by Amy Reed
JELLICOE ROAD by Melina Marchetta
THE PIPER'S SON by Melina Marchetta
STOLEN by Lucy Christopher
THE GHOSTS OF ASHBURY HIGH by Jaclyn Moriarity

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?

Frightened Rabbit.

30. What was your favorite film of this year?

I saw Easy A for the first time on New Year's Eve last year and loved it, so let's count that.

31. What did you do on your birthday. And how old were you?

Twenty. We went out for fondue like we have for my last five birthdays. It was fantastic.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Not being in school.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?

Cozy.

34. What kept you sane?

Twitter, Rocky Horror, Supernatural, the Musers, my mom.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

He's surprised by the question.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?

Same as last year, DADT.

37. Whom did you miss?

Everything and all the things all the time. But it's going to be okay.

Eating My Brain

So my third book, Zombie Tag, is officially released in 4 hours and 37 minutes. I have my last exam of the semester in about eighteen hours, and Hanukkah begins about four hours after that, let's say.

I'm thrilled and impatient and excited, but really I'm just sitting here crying a little and wishing I could disappear, and I figured I should blog about that a little, even if it's not the post I'm supposed to write. I should be writing a big BUY MY BOOK thing right now, but you guys know I want you to buy my book. You know how this works.

What I think you might not know is how hard this all gets.

The reason I don't like writing these posts isn't because I'm afraid of being honest with you guys; you guys know I'm pretty much the most open of books, and until someone is like WHOA HANNAH STOP I'm probably going to keep doing that forever and ever. But I don't write these sad damn posts because I'm worried about how they make me see, so, upfront, okay? I know how lucky I am. I really, truly do. I thank the universe every single damn day that I have this job.

And then stupid things swallow me whole.

You guys are so fucking NICE to me. That's what kills me. Do you ever look at people you love and just want to cry because you love them so much, and they love you, and you feel like there's this pocket of the universe that exists JUST to take care of you?

That's how I feel.

And it scares the shit out of me.

Because I don't want to let you guys down.

I don't want to fuck up and not sell and have to stop writing books.

I don't want the criticism to wear me down to the point that I can't write anymore.

I don't want to get eaten alive by my own brain and have to stop and work some office job.

I don't want to flame out before I'm thirty.

I just feel like I'm phoning it in lately, not with writing (because I haven't BEEN writing, and let's not talk about that tonight) but with publicity, talking to you guys, the sheer act of getting my shit together. And it's just this agonizing fear of failure weighing me down, and that's NOT me. I'm a lot of damn things, but, compared to a lot of writers and compared to a lot of the other things that are fucked in my head, I'm not much of a worrier. I don't overanalyze. I don't panic.

And yet here I am, crying on my bed because someone said something nice to me and my damn heart couldn't take it.

I keep writing things and deleting them because I don't know how to say it. I'm just scared. I'm scared no one will read the book and you guys will forget about me.

That's what it is. You guys loving me is scary because I'm afraid that one day you won't.

You don't have to reassure me and flatter me in the comments or something. I mean, I wouldn't HATE that, but that's not what I'm going for. Really I just want you to understand the crazy places a writer's head goes to, because I think release turns a lot of people into robots publicly, when really it tosses our brains like salads, and you know me and my problem with compulsive honesty so here I am.

So, uh, buy my book. I just hope you like it, if you do.

Really, I just hope that even if you don't like it, you don't give up on me.

ZOMBIE TAG Book Trailer!

How cool is that?

It's Teaser Tuesday!

Apparently I've never shared this excerpt, which surprised me!

From the magic gay fish book! Happy Tuesday, everyone.

--


“So I know where you came from, by the way,” I say.

“Humans and a house and all that. Yeah, I know.” Fishboy isn't even looking at me. His eyes are busy tracking something under the water.

“That house. The big one, right there.”

“You must think I'm an idiot.”

“What are you looking at?”

“I'm--” Then he dives and emerges with a tiny fish in his mouth. He spits it onto the deck. “Look at that! Check that out! Oh, man, Teeth is the king. Teeth is the king. I am the king of the seas. Look at that.”

I squirm away from it. It's flopping around like my brother during a bad night. “What is it?”

“Minnow. Oh, God, look at this minnow. Mmm. It's beautiful.” He kisses it and cuddles it against his cheek, then he neatly slits its head off with his teeth.

“Oh, Jesus, Fishboy.”

He looks up, a laugh, halfway through, frozen on his face. “What did you call me?”

“Fishboy.” But I didn't mean to. Shit. “It's, uh, what I called you in my head before I knew your name.”

He shrugs and nods a little. “Fishboy. Yeah, that's cool.”

Thank God. This would have been such a stupid fucking thing to fight about.

He's really grossing me out with this fish, licking the blood off its neck, so I shake my head quickly and say, “You know how I found out where you're from?”

“I don't care.”

“I made out with your sister.”

“What's made out?” He's looking at me with these huge innocent eyes.

“Kissed.”

“Ew,” he says. “You kissed a fish?” Then he buries his face in the minnow and rips it to pieces.

“This is so gross.”

He comes up with a mouth full of flesh. “Oh my God. Rudy, this is the best minnow in the world. You have to try this.”

“I'll pass.”

“I'll save you the liiiiver.”

At least now I know he's screwing with me. “Do fish even have livers?”

“You're a liver.”

“How do you know that word?”

“I'm very very smart.” He licks the skin clean. “Oh my God. Minnow. You are a beautiful minnow.”

“It's dead.”

“It doesn't speak English anyway. Oh, lovely, lovely minnow.”

“You're disgusting.”

“You're the one kissing a fish. Sicko.”

“Your human sister.”

“I knew what you meant. Seriously. You think I'm an idiot, don't you?”

I lie down on my back, as far as I can get from the remains of the fishboy's lunch. He's chewing on all the little bones.

Eventually he finishes eating, and I don't say anything, and he doesn't say anything. He reaches up to the dock and walks the fish bones back and forth like they're people. I half-watch his hands and half-watch the sky. It's the first time we've been absolutely silent together when it doesn't feel like we're fighting. It almost feels like we're tucked in to go to sleep. The silence must last nearly five minutes before he looks up at and smiles at me.

It doesn't matter what side I'm on and what side I'm on, for a minute. For a minute, it's just me and that smile. It's this kid.

“If you're done telling me my family history,” he says, “I have a mission for us.”

Remember That Time I Had News? HOW ABOUT AGAIN.

In lieu of a post with actual thought-provoking content, how about some NEWS!

FIRST OF ALL, congratulations ONE ZILLION TIMES to Erin Bowman, the winner of the cover contest, with her use of a beaaaautiful photograph by John Goodridge!!

NOW. Okay! So!

S&S (and at least one other publisher, if I understand correctly) is trying out this badass new thing where they release a hardcover and a paperback simultaneously.

The logic behind this is that big bookstores like B&N and...oh wait, just B&N (guh my heart my soul) are more likely to stock a paperback than a hardcover because it is thinner and takes up less space. It's also less expensive to ship and generally lower-risk for the store to carry.

This is the main reason BREAK and INVINCIBLE SUMMER were in paperback rather than hardcover. Contemporary YA is a kind of scary place and putting it out in paperback increases the chances that the stores will be willing to stock it. (And I am SUPER lucky that B&N stocked both BREAK and INVINCIBLE SUMMER. Sidenote: they will be carrying ZOMBIE TAG as well. Which is a hardcover. So that news does not really belong in this post. HENCE THE PARENTHESIS.)

But there are people and places that like hardcovers more: some independents, libraries, my parents, etc.

WHICH IS WHY it is really, REALLY exciting that S&S has decided to EXPERIMENT ON ME

no no no not like that

and release GONE, GONE, GONE simultaneously in paperback and hardcover!







I KNOW, Jared and Jensen, cast of Fantastic Mr. Fox, and guy with chair!!

I'M EXCITED TOO!

I will have MORE INFORMATION closer to pub date, when I trust you to remember it (you dear little fish with your horrible memories) but I think you guys can figure out how to best support your chica on this if you are so inclined. You know as well as I do that the best way to show some love for a writer is with that wallet, so. If you shell out the extra money for the hardcover, eternal gratitude (AND POSSIBLY SOMETHING ELSE I'M WORKING ON IT). It shows the people over at my publisher that you like me enough to support me in hardcover, and they like when people like me because then they can wear their I LOVE HANNAH shirts without fear of embarrassment or egg-throwers.

BUT the paperback and the ebook will be available at exactly the same time (I should say when that time is, right? APRIL 17TH, 2012) so buy it in one of those if you'd rather. This is why we give you options. Because we love you.

Pretty, pretty fish.

At Long Last: Cover Contest FINALS!

Okay. Let's do this.

Here are our Top Four in the INVINCIBLE SUMMER COVER REDESIGN CONTEST! These are the 3 from my Top Ten that received the most votes, and the fan favorite you all picked from the remaining entries! I've scrambled their order just for kicks.

You may vote ONCE for ONE cover. Each cover's number is above it. Remember you can click each to make it bigger.

And so you remember what a big deal this is, the winner will receive...

--a signed copy of my first book, BREAK.
--a signed copy of my second book, INVINCIBLE SUMMER.
--a signed arc of my first MG book, ZOMBIE TAG.
--a signed arc of my third YA book, GONE, GONE, GONE.
--their cover, printed up on pretty photo paper, signed by me (if you want me to? It's your art, you might not be into that. Let me know.)
--however many bookmarks I have lying around (three?) signed by me.

AND. MOST IMPORTANTLY:

--the first chapter of my just-sold novel, FISHBOY, printed out and signed. This is pre-edits! Who knows if this chapter will even EXIST in the final draft?? This is a first look that ONLY YOU WILL RECEIVE.

You have until MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 19TH, MIDNIGHT EST to cast your vote.

WITHOUT FURTHER ADO:

#1

#2

#3

#4

BIG Middle Grade News!

First of all, I am wicked wicked sorry that I haven't put up the next round of the cover contest yet. It IS happening, I swear.

But first I have TWO very exciting things to tell you!

The first is that I've received the final(ish, oh publishing) cover for ZOMBIE TAG, and I am so psyched to show you guys.

Isn't it AWESOME? I love the excerpt they chose for the back, and I think my favorite part is either the spatula over the barcode or Graham's zombie face on the spine.

The SECOND piece of big news is that I just got the go-ahead for my second MG book! It's right now called MARCO IMPOSSIBLE, and it'll be out early 2013. It's about two best friends, Stephen and Marco, who go on a go-for-broke heist to break into the high school prom and get Marco onstage to steal (hence the heist) the heart of Benji, the British exchange student and bass player of the prom band. (Yes, yes, YES, gay main character, and could I BE any more excited about that? OH I THINK NOT.) If you follow me on twitter, you'll know this as #veryscaryMG; not because it is scary, but because it was scary for me to write. Because I had to plot a freaking heist I mean come on.

The best part of getting good news is when I can tell you guys, so thanks so much for reading and hanging with me. Yay!!

Teaser Tuesday!

Don't forget to vote in that really exciting cover contest, but yesterday I promised a teaser and now, in honor of finishing the 2nd draft of the #sparklyfairyprostitute book (confetti!) I think it's time for an excerpt from said book.

Roughly two-thirds of this book are in the present timeline, and the last third is in the past. This is from that last third.

--

It was amazing how quickly things became normal. Beckan and Josha shared a room, officially, and they tended house while Cricket and Scrap went out and came home with enough food to get them through the day, or fabric for a new shirt for Beckan, or pills for Josha's cold. They got used to chasing the mice around, staying up late singing folk songs their fathers taught them, comparing imperceptible battle scars and finding the bits of them that looked like the other species they all were. Because they were comfortable with that, when it was just the four of them. They could talk about how they were not all fairy. They could talk about anything.

They were just so close and all so crazy about each other, so quickly. Beckan had a space on Cricket's shoulder that she told Josha was only for her, and she would rest her head there when she was tired and kiss it over and over when she wasn't. She had a favorite place on the floor to stretch out with Josha and take a nap. And Scrap. Scrap was giggles through the walls, secret smiles, notes passed back and forth, but they were slow, they were childish about it, they never stepped over any kind of line. For some reason, it felt important to them both that they be careful. Because they would look at Cricket and Josha and see how crazy they were for each other and wake up gasping hard in bed, freezing cold, thinking about how dangerous it was to love someone that much during a war.

Anyway. They had plenty of time.

Gradually, around the time Josha started spending more nights in Cricket's room than Beckan's, they began to live their lives in new pairs. Josha and Beckan were still, in their way, ridiculously in love, but they spent less and less time together as Cricket and Josha threw themselves into shared sweatshirts and last-bite-of-ice cream kisses, and Beckan and Scrap lived like their parents, teasing each other for sleepwalking and flat gnome noses, curling up together with a book after the kids were in bed.

It obviously wasn't long before Beckan knew what Scrap and Cricket did for their living; Cricket had told Josha within days—the kind of indiscretion Cricket grew and died with—and Scrap never made much of an effort to hide it, coming home with half his glitter rubbed off, sometimes drugged and giggly, always in the mood for a kiss on the cheek and a bit of babying before he was sent off to bed. They never talked about it; Beckan washed bloodstains out of his underwear and rubbed his shoulders when he looked tense, and Josha sulked for an hour each of the three days Cricket accompanied Scrap to the mines. “I don't make as much as Scrap does,” Cricket said once to Beckan, explaining his part-time work. “He's the best little whore in Ferrum.”

Scrap scrambled onto Cricket's back and started smacking him on the head with both hands and wouldn't get down, no matter how much Cricket bucked and ran back-first into the wall, and Josha and Beckan laughed and laughed.

There was so much laughing.

A few weeks into the war, the tightropers invaded the mines and took the women captive, and business boomed for Cricket and Scrap. The men had been wanting before, surrounded by women who dreamed about fairy boys and fairy babies instead of another generation in the mines, but now they needed Cricket and Scrap more than ever, and the boys were happy to oblige. During that initial surge, when sex was valuable and food wasn't, quite, they ate and drank like kings.

And somehow, in the war, Scrap came alive. While Josha and Cricket nervously discussed weapons and production, Scrap tried three-ingredient recipes with whatever three ingredients they had left and made Beckan guess what he was trying to make. He invented card games called Treeman and Souffle and lied when he said he would let Beckan win. He once lay half-naked on the kitchen floor and laughed hysterically while the other tree rubbed him as hard as they could to get glitter off him, and he kicked and screamed and alternated between begging them to stop and pulling them on top of him, one by one, and tackling them into a hug.

And one night he and Cricket came home too late and empty-handed for the fourth night in a row and sat in the kitchen and cried, their fingers laced together, and Josha and Beckan sat with them and eventually there was no way to avoid the fact that two prostitutes were no longer enough, in a time when the gnomes were clinging to each bit of meat like it was made of gold, and licking their teeth and smacking their lips whenever Cricket and Scrap came down, to secure food for four mouths.

“Teach me,” Beckan said, and most of her was excited, most of her had been waiting, most of her wanted to feel everything that Scrap had ever felt, because that was where she was then. “I'll go.”

INVINCIBLE SUMMER COVER CONTEST: Round #1!

Yes, we have a new look! We so pretty.

So you remember that ridiculously awesome, ridiculously high-stakes contest I had?

The turnout was seriously beyond my wildest dreams. I was worried I wouldn't get ANY entries. Instead I got twenty-seven incredible submissions, and I love them to tiny pieces.

But

THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE.

Because of the ridiculous prize I'm giving away to the winner, it is of the utmost importance that I choose the very, very best. Which means I can't rely on my taste alone! I need you to help me.

I've chosen my top 10 favorite covers. You will see them momentarily (or now if you are impatient and scroll down, but don't because I'm about to give you IMPORTANT INFORMATION). You can vote for one of those. The top 3 with the most votes will go onto the next round, one week from today, where the ULTIMATE WINNER will be chosen!

BUT WAIT. What if you look at them and say "hannah wtf you didn't choose THE BEST ONE"??

Well. After the poll (where you vote for ONE of the top ten covers) you will see a link to a slideshow of ALL of the covers. They're all labeled with "Contest Entry #14" or whatever. Each of those that was not chosen for the top 10 will have a spot on the second poll! That is the FAN FAVORITE poll. And whichever one of THOSE gets the most votes will also move on to the next round, to make a top 4! See? You can fix my mistakes!

You may only vote once, but PLEASE campaign as hard as you possibly can for your favorite cover whether in the comments here, on twitter, your own blog, facebook, wherever. And thank you so, so much for voting (and for entering, if you did!)

A quick recap:

--Below are my ten favorites of the covers I was sent. They're in random order. Most of them you can click to make them bigger, some were subbed to me kinda small.
--You can vote ONCE on ONE COVER.
--Below THAT poll is a link to a slideshow of ALL THE ENTRIES.
--Below THAT link is a poll with each of the entries that was not chosen.
--You can vote ONCE for ONE OF THOSE COVERS.

And here we go!

THE TOP 10

1)


2) (No, I am not really a NYT Bestselling author, but if the cover fits...) >


3)

4)

5)
Photo by badjonni and used under the Creative Commons: http://www.flickr.com/photos/badjonni/5389624442/

6)

7)


8)

9)


10)



Here is a link to the slideshow of ALL the covers (including the top 10). The poll below is for all the covers that were NOT chosen in the top 10. If it was in the top 10, it will not appear on this poll (notice there's no option for "Cover Contest #1" on this poll, because that one was chosen for the top 10). Please don't get the numbers in the slideshow confused with the numbered entries above! Just look underneath each picture in the slideshow for its number and use that.

THE SLIDESHOW

ZOMBIE TAG ARC TOUR!

At long last...

here we go! I'll be sending out two different arcs at once, one to roughly west coast and one to roughly east coast! Hurray!

This means we have some extra time to to read. You'll notice I didn't put dates! That's because we have 13 people (I think? eh?) for each arc, and we have roughly 20 weeks until Zombie Tag comes out. So...try to send it out a week to a week and a half after you receive it. If you have to keep it longer, IT IS NOT A BIG DEAL. If the arc doesn't get to me until like a month after Zombie Tag comes out, eh, who cares? Just MAKE SURE IT GETS BACK. No losing the thing. You know the drill.

SO! The order is!

ARC #1

1. T.O., Ontario, Canada - Reut C.
2. Brunswick, OH - Lydia Sharp
3. Whitehall, PA - Cara Bes
4. Portland, ME - Lindsay Breen
5. Boston, MA - Grace Ausick
6. Manchester, NJ - MaryBeth
7. Bel Air, MD - Jessica
8. Philadelpiha, PA--Katie
9. Chesapeake, VA - Pam Harris
10. Gastonia, NC - Samantha Rae
11. Anderson, SC - Jeremy West
12. Memphis, TN - Allison Renner
13. Paragould, AR - Tabitha Michelle

ARC #2

1. Port Richey, FL - Sarah
2. Cape Coral, FL - Tracey M. Hansen
3. Dothan, AL - Amanda Baxter
4. Lake Charles, LA - Steph Campbell
5. Edinburg, TX - Jamie
6. Cleburne, TX - Marcy Funderburk
7. Dallas, TX - Jeannette
8. Dallas, TX - Kari
9. Los Angeles, CA - Ashlyn Rae
10. Coeur d'Alene, ID - Taylor
11. Brackendale, BC, Canada - Rebecca Christiansen
12. Thorsby, Alberta, Canada - Ambur
13. Alberta, Canada - Halli


Now. As soon as you've seen this, email me with THE FOLLOWING SUBJECT LINE--your arc number and then your number on the list. So if you are Grace, your subject line is "ARC #1, person 5." If you don't follow this format, I'll be all sweet to you but in my head I will be RAGING WITH FIRE.

Oh yeah I should give you my email address. until.hannah@gmail.com

In that email, put your address! Even if I already have your address from the Gone, Gone, Gone tour. Even if you've given me your address so many times for so many different things that I should have it memorized at this point. Give it to me again! I love your address! And I'll pass that along to the person who needs to send it to you, and hit you up with the address of the person you need to send yours to. Easy peasy, thanks to you guys organizing yourselves with the above subject lines! Yay!

One other thing that makes me rage with fire: having to chase people down. So please do not do that. I have to do it for the GGG tour already and it is so exhausting.

Don't forget to mark the thing up when you get it! As soon as I get addresses from our first two people, I'll scribble over two arcs and send them out! Thank you so much!!