Today is 2014. Which seems vaguely implausible, since yesterday it was decades ago and I was nine and twenty-four and twelve and also eighteen and thirty, because historically, I have a very hard time noting/remembering/reconciling myself with the passage of time.
(I think it might be fake.)
Here are some of the things that happened this year:
It’s official:
Maggie Stiefvater, Tessa Gratton and Brenna Yovanoff’s THE ANATOMY OF CURIOSITY, a companion to their earlier THE CURIOSITIES, and a conversational step-by-step guide to their writing/ critiquing process and relationship, with new original stories by the authors in first and final draft forms, again to Andrew Karre at Carolrhoda Lab, for publication in Fall 2014, by Laura Rennert at the Andrea Brown Literary Agency for Stiefvater and Gratton, and Sarah Davies at the Greenhouse Literary Agency for Yovanoff (world English). Translation: info@rightspeople.com
It’s official! We get to do another book together, and it will be big and pretty and full of more stories about kissing and more pertinent annotations using the magic pens!
You guys, you guys! At five o’clock tomorrow morning, I’m leaving for Kansas, where good times will surely ensue—and not only because I get to see Tess and Maggie, but because the Lawrence Public Library is hosting a party for The Curiosities!
Which I’m allowed to be totally excited about, just as soon as I do some laundry.
The party is on Saturday afternoon, and we’ll be talking, signing, and no doubt acting undignified. So, if you’re in the neighborhood, you should totally come see us.
Entries in, names randomized, winners are a go!
In the US, we have:
Marina G
and
Christina
Our international winner is:
Madeline C
Congratulations, and I’ll get in touch with you guys shortly for mailing addresses.
For anyone who might still be craving your very own copy of The Curiosities, it just so happens that I have a whole big box of finished copies sitting on my floor and it really needs to not be sitting on the floor, so this will certainly not be your last chance to win!
Which means that as the bus bench by my house says, Watch This Space.
So, it’s been a long, LONG time since we’ve had a contest around here. (So long that I don’t even know if I remember how to do this, you guys.)
But right now, I have a nice big box of finished copies of The Curiosities, and I want to give them to you!
I think the way we’ll do this is … three copies up for grabs—two US, one INTERNATIONAL.
Also, while I don’t usually ask you to go out and spam the world, I think I might this time (a little).
I feel like this is kind of a special circumstance, mostly because I am totally biased and I really, really like this book and want desperately to share it with the world, because it was the Most Fun Ever to write—because I got to write it with Tess and Maggie and hang out in Tess’s living room and eat guacamole and it was noisy and joyful and I really want to share that experience with other people!
So, the instructions:
What I want you to do is blog or tweet or Facebook about The Curiosities—just once. It can be as complicated as speculating on what kind of conversations or drawings we put in the margins* or including an image of the cover, or as simple as saying that you’re excited about it and would like to read it.
The only requirement is that you have to include a link back to this post, and also I need you to come back here and tell me what and where so I can go check it out (as usual, if your Twitter is private, or I can’t see your Facebook, I DON’T COUNT IT. I know you guys know this, but … there are always a couple.)
Also, if you’re entering internationally, be sure to mention it in your comment, because you’ll go into the special international drawing!
I’ll pick winners at midnight Eastern on Sunday, August 29th, so make sure to have your entries in before then!
(Also, I will remind you. Probably next week or something.)
(Also-also, as usual, even though I think I’ve thought of everything, it’s likely that I’ve missed something. If so, I apologize in advance, and if I think of it, I’ll be sure to update.)
*Which, there are a lot, which is what makes it fun!
Hey remember that time I wrote a book and then revised it and then revised it again and then did line-edits and D went on a business trip and there was no one around to tell me to sleep so I didn’t which gave me all this extra time to do line-edits, and then I finished them and had three minutes left to throw all my clothes in a suitcase to take to New York for BEA, but I missed some of the clothes and didn’t check the weather report and it was raining there, but it wasn’t raining here, but I just assumed that the weather would be the same and it wasn’t and then it was time to run out of the house with my haphazardly-packed suitcase of inadequate clothes and that’s how I wound up in New York in the rain, with a suitcase full of exclusively sundresses and no socks and that hollow-eyed incandescent look that I get when I don’t sleep.
Then.
Well, then everything slowed way, way down.
(Which yes, in retrospect, that’s kind of a strange thing to say about Manhattan.)
(Also, it’s a strange thing to say about a week in which six people are staying in 800 square feet filled with luggage and books and laptops and one bathroom.)
But everything DID slow down. I stopped having to juggle all-the-everything. Which was really nice. Usually, I only had one thing to do each day, and sometimes after I was done, I took a nap. I had coffee with my agent, and met Editor Jocelyn for lunch and we talked about what I should write next, which is always the most exciting thing! I rode in taxis and went to The Strand, and one night we all went and saw a play, which was Newsies. I had Chinese food, which is always better in New York than any other place I’ve ever been.
Lerner did some amazing stuff for The Curiosities, starting with the blogger breakfast, and afterward I got to sign ARCs with Tess and Maggie and the line at the booth was really long, which was exciting, and everyone was so nice and Editor-Andrew put a picture on Twitter and I stole it from him and posted it here:
And as she does, on the last night, Jackson coerced us into making a video. Also, we were pretty delirious by this point in the trip, and she didn’t have to coerce very hard.
It’s worth mentioning that this is about as comfortable as I ever look on film, and it’s taken me literally years to get to a point where I don’t simply go silent and hold very still when someone points a video camera at me. I’m counting it as a success!
Also, that’s the Psyduck dance I’m doing. In case you were wondering.
This is not a book report. But. It is about a book.
So. Wow. Okay.
I feel like I’ve already been talking about this for a long time. No, seriously. For like a really long time .
But now, we’ve officially moved beyond the Realm of Vague Talk. We’ve entered the Land of Imminent Book, and I can finally (finally) give you a look at what’s been going on behind the scenes for months (years!).
As you may or may not be aware, Tess, Maggie , and I have been critique partners for a very long time. So long that when I post about something we’re doing, I often forget to give you any sort of context. So long that it’s hard to conceive of a time when we were not critique partners. My writing career has literally not existed in any significant form separate from the three of us knowing each other.*
Okay, let’s back up. Right away, from the beginning, before everything—before books on shelves—we started doing this thing.
At first, it was just a little thing.
It was a fiction blog shared between the three of us, and we’d write short stories really fast and post them the same day and egg each other on and get tons of practice at narrative structure and economic character development and not procrastinating.
And then, so slowly it was kind of hard to pinpoint, it stopped being a little thing and started being a big, awesome thing, and that wasn’t us—that was you guys, and the way you showed up every week and got involved and talked to us and talked to each other and made it less like three writers shouting stories into the internet, and more like a community.
And now, after four pretty incredible years, the Merry Sisters of Fate has grown into this:
For real.
The simple version is, here is a book that’s an anthology of our stories. And the complicated version is that it’s also way more than an anthology. It’s a retrospective and a conversation and a scrapbook and a diary, and it’s coming this fall from Carolrhoda Lab and we are so, so happy with how it turned out! And to celebrate our happiness, we’re giving away three shiny brand-new ARCs and the contest is very, very easy, so go enter!
Now, because it’s kind of hard to describe exactly how The Curiosities happened, here’s a video about our motivations, where we look neat and brushed and are wearing makeup.
Also, because it’s kind of hard to describe exactly how The Curiosities happened, here is a video about the behind-the-scenes. In this one, we’re wearing pajamas and making a huge mess and very little sense.
It probably goes without saying, but the finished product is kind of a synthesis for these two videos.
(But the manically-productive pajama part more.)
*Except for a few times when I sold some short fiction to horror markets, but I was totally flailing back then and really, really didn’t know if I was even pointed in the right direction.
Brenna Yovanoff 