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.

Dear Magic Gay Fish

You've had that name for a long time.

A bunch of you probably don't know why the followers of my blog and my followers on Twitter are called magic gay fish.

The truth is, that before there was you, there was a manuscript.

The magic gay fish manuscript.

It was always called Fishboy, but I wanted to be funny, and, well...the thing is about a magic gay fish, after all. Well, a magic gay half-fish, half-boy. Named Teeth. Who, I've got to say, is a character unlike any I've ever written and one that I adored writing in a way I've never really loved anything.

So it's this manuscript. I wrote it last July. If you hit the tag "Fishboy" at the end of this post, you can see some of the excerpts I've posted. It's just this manuscript, except that it's this manuscript that's special to me in a way I can't really explain. It's this way that makes me feel like one of those floaty sensitive writers that I never really thought I was. I don't know. I just know that this manuscript was my weird, crazy long shot book about a magic gay fish and a dusty, dreamy boy named Rudy who loves him, and a girl named Diana who teaches Rudy about Roald Dahl, and Rudy's parents who love the shit out of him. And his sick little brother, because, let's be honest, it's a hannah book.

It's really as hannah as any of my books have ever been, really.

It's the only manuscript I would have ever considered naming my fans after. It's THE book.

So here's the deal, my beautiful, beautiful, amazingly magic and amazingly gay fish.

You are immortalized.

The deal closed yesterday, and I am honestly the luckiest girl in the planet.

Sometime in 2013. Consider it my love letter to you.

An Important Interruption

We're nearly an hour early, but...



Happy Invincible Summer day, everyone.

:)

A Very Musical Countdown to INVINCIBLE SUMMER

So.

A lot of people make playlists for their books. I am one of them!

I've been trying to figure out the best way to show you guys my INVINCIBLE SUMMER playlist, because I'm pretty damn proud of it, and because it was hugely, hugely important to the creation of the book, even more so than most of the playlists I make

So here's what's up. Tomorrow, I'm going to run a post on the first song on INVINCIBLE SUMMER's playlist, and I'll keep on doing that until I run out of songs.

Here's the thing.

Tomorrow, when I start these posts, there will be 23 days left until INVINCIBLE SUMMER comes out.

I am not sure how many songs are on this playlist, but I *think* it is either 20 or 21.

Which means! I am going to run out of songs to post before time runs out! What to do what to do OH I THINK I KNOW WHAT TO DO.

I THINK ON EACH OF THOSE DAYS, I WILL HAVE A CONTEST.

!!!!!

And who even KNOWS what the prizes will be.

Will they be petite lap giraffes?

Will they be copies of INVINCIBLE SUMMER?

Will they be bushels of fresh fruit?

Will they be FIRE??

Will they be CDs of INVINCIBLE SUMMER's playlist?

Will they be some combination of two of the above suggestions??

REALLY IT'S ANYONE'S GUESS.

----------------

So here are my rules for making playlists. I'm not enforcing them on anyone else! I'm just listing them because this is my blog and I can say whatever I want la la la la la la la.

---MAKE IT BEFORE YOU START. You make the playlist during the plotting stage. You can alter it later, but this happens before you get started. This is how you get the story in the head. This is how you let it roll around and chew on you and all that good stuff stories do.

---DO IT IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER. I don't write outlines. I make playlists.

And it works. If I don't know what happens next, I check the playlist. If I'm listening to the middle of the playlist and I realize I have four songs in a row expressing the same thing...uh, maybe something needs to fucking happen at that point in the story. Time to check iTunes for possible plot points!

---NO FAVORITES. If you know me at all, you'll know I love Motion City Soundtrack more than any healthy person loves anything. Which means I've listened to all of their songs a zillion times. I know them backwards and forwards.

You can't use songs you know that well. You need songs that you still have to listen to. When I'm first making a playlist, I put in tons of songs I've downloaded but never listened to if they have titles that sound like they might possibly work. If they don't, it's pretty damn easy to delete it. But The Music Gods make it work surprisingly often.

On that note:

---USE THOSE SONGS THAT SOMEHOW ENDED UP IN YOUR LIBRARY AND YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW. Those songs are there for a reason! It's fate!

---LISTEN TO IT WHENEVER. Sometimes I like to listen to music while I write. Sometimes I don't. Most of the playlist listening I do happens outside of actual writing time. It's the only music I'm allowed to listen to while I'm writing the first draft of the book.

You will get sick of it. You will hum the songs in your sleep. You will discover favorite bits of songs you don't even like all that much. You will discover that you actually hate songs that you thought you kind of liked.

WELCOME TO WRITING.

Just in song form.

I'll kick off with song #1 tomorrow.

COVER COVER COVER

You can click on it to make it bigger. Also the tagline is obviously a placeholder. My editor is funny.

And here's some bullshit blurb that I wrote to give you some idea of what it's about:

Craig, for the first time in nearly a year, wakes up in Silver Spring, Maryland on October 2nd, 2002 to a house devoid of chirping, barking, and mewing. Between twilight and daylight, somehow his entire menagerie escaped. All the animals that he'd collected since his old boyfriend was dragged away to the psych ward. Gone.

Lio, the post-cancer kid transfer student from New York City, doesn't like to talk. But he does like Craig. His new therapist says he's "a little fucked up." Craig just says, if he has the time, could he help him put up posters?

At 5:20 PM, when their stack of posters is about halfway out and Lio surprises Craig with a kiss, the sniper shootings begin.

Ten people died in the D.C. sniper shootings. This is the story of two of the boys who didn't.

--

I love this cover. Do you love this cover? Do you hate this cover? TELL ME TELL ME NOW.

ARC CONTEST

Hello hello hello I am an ARC of INVINCIBLE SUMMER.



I WANT TO BE ON YOUR BOOKSHELF.



The problem is that I (now I'm hannah again) only have TWO of these. And I get to keep one, because I wrote this book and that's the kind of shit I get to do.

So there is only ONE available.

Here are some reasons you want this ARC.

1. It is uncorrected, meaning there is an entire page that is all in italics for no discernible reason.

2. Possibly the worst paragraph I've ever written somehow survived for this long and is on page 18 of this ARC. It will not be in the final version. I crossed it off and wrote "what the fuck?" next to it.

3. If you don't get this exact ARC, chances are very good that you will have to wait until April 19th, 2011 which, let's face it, is a long time from now.

4. I will sign it, obviously.

5. According to the back cover copy, this book is pretty awesome. "Across four sun-kissed drama-drenched summers at his family's beach house, Chase tries to come to grips with his family's slow dissolution while also finding himself in a chaotic love triangle, pitted against his own brother in pursuit of the girl next door. Invincible Summer is a gritty, sexy, page-turning read from a talented teenaged author that readers won't want to miss."

6. This exact ARC has been BETWEEN MY LEGS.




So. Here is how to enter.

BY ENTERING, YOU SOLEMNLY SOLEMNLY SWEAR THE FOLLOWING:

1. You are a follower of this blog. Don't make me check up on you, bitches. Here in hannahland we use the honor system. This rule is purely because I want more followers. At least I'm honest.

2. You will review INVINCIBLE SUMMER somewhere. Goodreads, Amazon, B&N, Librarything, Shelfari, your own blog, whatever catches your fancy. And dude, if you hate it, give it a bad review. I just want the name out there. ARCs are for reviews, you know?

HERE'S HOW TO ENTER:

1. Comment telling me your own reasons why you desperately desperately need this ARC. The more ridiculous the better. Make shit up. Be hilarious.

2. None of that +1 for retweeting shit. I don't have time for that. Do it for good karma.

3. And the winner is going to be chosen by a random number generator. Yeah, your stories are worthless. I'm just bored.

The contest starts RIGHT NOW and will close in two weeks, on JULY 17TH, 2010. I'll try to mail it out to you soon after that.

You can enter no matter where you are in the world, 'cause I love you bitches. Oh, and obviously one entry per person. Don't make me come down there.

UPDATE: If this contest has over 100 entries, I'll randomly pick another winner for a signed copy of BREAK!

AND GO.

Because I'm Me

And if I didn't start a new book every week, I wouldn't be me!

So here's a bit from the middle of a brand new book.

--

Mom sits at the table with me and beats eggs. She has the baby monitor pressed against her ear for Dylan's nap, like she's trying to use it to make a phone call.

I tell her, “I saw Fiona today.”

Mom shoves her hair off her forehead. “What are you paying attention to her for?”

Fiona is a ragged woman who lives at the end of the island. She tells fortunes.

“She was telling me this story about the ghosts who haunts this island. Not even just Mrs. Delaney. It's the whole island.”

Mom says, “Really, Rudy,” in this voice like she hasn't slept for days. Maybe she hasn't.

All the more reason she needs a good story. “It's a ghost of this boy they threw into the ocean, and he drowned.”

She looks up. “Why would you say something like that?”

“It's not my story, Mom, God.” Never mind.

Her eggs are all the same color now, but she doesn't stop beating them. Her whisk keeps tapping against the bottom of the bowl. I have this thought that she's going to keep going forever, like a wind-up toy that never winds down. Like her whole purpose in life is to beat these eggs.

Before Dylan was born, I never would have thought my Mom was the kind of person who could handle a sick kid. She'd cry that she was a horrible mother if I ever got a scrape. I always felt like I needed to keep her safe. Even when I was a kid. Dad would give me these talks about how we needed to protect her, and I would feel like a knight.

Now she's made entirely of steel, and Dad's the one who cries every time any little thing is wrong. He thinks every cough from Dylan or bad grade from me is going to be the breaking point, that we're just going to crumble in on ourselves at any minute.

The house creaks in the wind.

“Your father wants to take you fishing,” Mom says.

I wonder how hard dad would cry if he dipped his fishing line in the ocean and pulled out a boy.

Or a ghost.

Maybe he was a ghost.

I should have touched him. I missed my chance to find out what he was.

I can't believe I've turned into the kind of guy who wonders if people are ghosts. I guess that's what this place does to you.

A ghost is as good a guess as any for what he is, I suppose.

And now my father is trying to schedule time to be with me, acting like Mom is his secretary, and that feels even more unbelievable than a ghost.

We used to play ping pong in the backyard.

The ancient clock on the wall clicks with every second, but the hands are so springy that every click has two tones.

I'm trying to drink water, but all I taste is salt.

Mom gets up and goes to the stove. I say, “Mermaids can breathe underwater, right?”

She doesn't look at me. “Rudy, can't you do your homework?” She presses the monitor harder against her head.

“Can you look at me for a second?”

She turns around and does, of course. She has this soft expression in her eyes like I'm her baby. I'd forgotten that she still looks at me like that.

The fisherman was touching him, I realize. He couldn't have been a ghost. The fisherman had his hands all over him, kissing him, trying to...

“How do you have sex with a mermaid?” I say.

“Rudy, honestly.”

“Okay, sorry, God,” but I don't know if she even hears me, because she's holding that monitor like she wants it to be a part of her skull.

Look! Invincible Summer!

On Goodreads!

You should add it. It makes me happy, as a Goodreads whore.

Also, I have no idea if it's really going to be out in April. I just put that in because I like April. As soon as I have a release date, you guys will be the first to know. Although for BREAK, I just found out because it was up on Amazon. So anyone who saw it first me knew before I did. So if you stalk me hard enough, you might ACTUALLY be the first to know. In which case please let me know.

I shouldn't blog at 2 AM.

Oh also I'm judging this contest and today (Friday) is the last day to enter and you should enter it and here is the link. Riiiight here.

Guest Post!

I did a guess post at the FABULOUS Kathleen Ortiz's blog about what to do when you get an offer from an agent. Check it out here.

I'm ooooooold

so very oooooooold

how a book becomes a book--copyedits

Hello everyone, happy April. I'm going to be nineteen in ten days, which is ridiculous.

So as you should know, last week I was working on my edits for INVINCIBLE SUMMER. Basically, my editor sent back my manuscript (this time it was electronic and hard copy--for BREAK it was just hard copy. It's fun to watch things change) with a letter summing up the basic things I needed to do--add about 40-60 pages, draw out a minor character and strengthen her relationship with the main character, slow down the ending (you're going to like this ending, goddamn it), etc. In the manuscript, she'd marked specific lines she didn't like or places where she wanted me to add more.

Somehow all these edits translated into me being like "MOAR SEX" and stuffing the book full of the dirty bits, so if you're scandalized by the nakedness when you're reading INVINCIBLE SUMMER, please remember MY EDITOR MADE ME DO IT.

heehee.

So, she emailed me yesterday and essentially said "Good work, hannah." (Actually she said I'm a genius and a rock star and I made her sob through the last fifth of the book, but even I'M not egotistical enough to post that kind of praise on my blog, hello.) We don't have to do another round of edits, which is exciting, because I hit all the points she wanted me to hit (and I'm a rock star) so now we're going straight to copyedits, the next part of the process.

Copyedits are cool. For BREAK, they were hardcopy, and I have a feeling they will be for IS too. Basically, you get a passage, and inside is your manuscript, all crazy marked up. It's already been through the hands of at least two people--your copyeditor and your editor. These edits are all small. In BREAK, there was a lot of changing "Seven-Eleven" to "7-Eleven" and making sure the therapist's name was spelled consistently (I had like twelve different versions of her name) throughout her scene. The copyeditor will also make sure that a character who you said was sitting down isn't suddenly standing up. Copyeditors freakin' have your back, basically. I love it.

Some of the changes might have "STET" next to them already--that means your editor saw them and disliked them and vetoes them. My editor didn't like capitalizing "popsicle," even though it's technically supposed to be, I think, so that stayed lowercase in BREAK.

You have veto power too, which is fun. I can't remember specific examples for when I wrote STET for BREAK, but I know I did it at least a few times. If there's something you don't like, you just write STET next to it. The other changes you leave as-is. You don't have to go into the document and make the changes the copyeditor gives you; that's the typesetter's job. You just look the edits over and approve them. It's one of the first times you really feel like you're working with your publisher as a member of a larger team, and I really like that feeling. It stops being just you and your editor and becomes you and your editor and your copyeditor and your typesetter and your art designer and your marketing director and your publicist and your everythingelse and that's pretty cool.

So I'm anticipating those! Any questions about the publishing process (or anything) let me know.

Damn Saun

I've had a crazy week. How's yours been?

My INVINCIBLE SUMMER edits are due to arrive TOMORROW! So if you have any questions about what the editing-for-an-editor process is like, this is the week to throw them at me! Get on it!

Teaser Tuesday

just kidding about that big post. It needs a little longer to cook. So let's celebrate post 100 with the first bit of INVINCIBLE SUMMER, shall we?

This is pre-notes from editor, so God knows if this will bear any resemblance to the first page in the real thing. But here's what it looks like now.


---


Gideon keeps falling down.

He and Claudia slipped outside to the beach before anyone else was ready. They’re greasy and gritty with sand and sea water now—no point in dragging them back inside. None of us feel like making the effort. My mother, who’s a little too old and way too pregnant to run around outside and parent them hands-on like she used to, drifts to the deck to watch them, one hand on her stomach, one on the railing.

My dad looks at Noah and me lingering by the windows. We’re moaning every time we see a particularly good wave roll by and looking at each other—maybe we should go out? Maybe we can? No.

Outside, Claudia is laughing. She always says she’s way too old to play with Gideon. But she still does, at least when we’re here. Here no one is too old. Except Mom and Dad. Claudia and Gideon are the two youngest, so they get shoved together and there is no way to avoid it, even though Claudia’s eleven and Gideon’s barely six.

Dad says, “Aren’t you two going out?”

We can’t. Despite the sand clinging to our feet from the walk from the car and the soaked-in sunscreen smell of this carpet, Noah and I know that it isn’t quite summer. Not yet. Summer can’t start at night, first of all, and it definitely can’t start before we see the SUV roll up outside the Hathaway’s beach house. And until it comes, we’ll wait here. That’s tradition, and Noah and I do not kill tradition.

Noah is eighteen, four years my senior, as long as you’re not talking about emotional age. His nose hooks at the end, just covering where his spiky mustache is coming in. His hand taps a beat on my shoulder.

WIN WIN WIN

From Publisher's Marketplace...


18-year-old author of BREAK Hannah Moskowitz's INVINCIBLE SUMMER, the story of a young man who tries to come to grips with his family's slow dissolution while also finding himself in a chaotic love triangle, pitted against his own brother, which plays out across four summers, again to Anica Rissi at Simon Pulse, in a two-book deal, by Brendan Deneen at FinePrint Literary Management.


:D

Quick post...

Check out these two reviews!

http://thedreamereader.blogspot.com/2009/09/break-by-hannah-moskowitz.html

http://tencentnotes.wordpress.com/2009/08/31/debut-review-break/

I'm still waiting for the "WTF THIS BOOK SUCKS" review. Lemme know if you see it before I do and I'll prepare myself emotionally.

(the second site also has an interview with me, check it out, I'm pretty sure I say something funny--and some of the stuff I say every interview, but ya know.)

Oh Dear God Education

So I'm leaving for college on Thursday. This means I'm paaacking and paaaacking and marathoning America's Next Top Model (because I mean obviously this is really important).

So. Expect sporadic (or no) blogging until this weekend. I hope you all are having a lovely lovely week.

HEY LOOK A BOOK REVIEW

http://www.libraryloungelizard.com/2009/08/book-review-break-by-hannah-moskowitz.html

It's heeeeeeeeeere!

Please excuse my mother's horrible photography skills.

Signing copies at B&N. That's my dad grinning in the background.

Rule the World

BREAK is now the 6th bestseller in the category Bestsellers > Books > Children's Books > Science, Nature & How It Works > Health > Diseases > Fiction

we need to beat BEAR FEELS SICK before we can proceed to number 5.

COME ON GUYS. WE CAN BEAT BEAR FEELS SICK.

Though I'm not going to lie to you, it sounds pretty effing sweet. It rhymes. And it has a twist ending. BREAK has neither of these things. Guys, we might be fucked. I'm thinking 6th might be where our reign ends.

But it was fun while it lasted.

(Also, 33,000th bestseller compared to ALL THE BOOKS EVER. That's up from 200some thousandth last night. Seriously, thanks. I can almost taste the monies).

This is why I shouldn't blog at three in the morning.

!!!!

FACE OUT!?!?!