This World We Live In ARC Update

I've been harassing those nice people at Harcourt for information about the status of This World We Live In advance reading copies (aka ARCs), and now I have some (information, not ARCs).

The ARCs will be published circa Oct. 12 and they'll be sending me a box of them that week.

From the sound of it, I'll be getting more ARCs than I'll need, and if that's the case, I'll be sharing the extras with people here. Assuming, of course, that people here will want one. If not, I'm sure Scooter will be more than happy to shred them all over the apartment.

When the ARC box arrives, I'll let you all know. Well, all of you except Scooter!

What I'm Hoping Will Be The Tease For TW In d&g

The editor asked me recently what section of This World We Live In did I want to have as the tease at the end of the paperback version of the dead and the gone (there's a tease for d&g in the paperback of Life As We Knew It). If I had no particular preference, they'd go with the first five pages of TW.

I did have a preference, although it's not five pages long, So I don't know if it's going to end up as the tease or not. I hope so, because there's nothing about the d&g characters in the first five pages of TW, and I would prefer a section that involves at least one of them.

So the following is what I requested to be the tease. I offered as a second choice the scene the editor made me write, with Alex talking about his family to Miranda (it's in this blog, so there's no point reposting it):

I can't say the last house we went to was going to be the last one of the day. Alex hadn't said we should stop looking, and every half roll of toilet paper will make our lives a little bit better. Maybe we would have kept on for another hour or two.

And neither one of us noticed anything particularly different about the final house we went to. I could tell right away it wasn't a summer house, but that didn't mean anything.

We used Alex's trick of throwing a few pebbles against a door and then running for cover in case anybody started shooting. No one did, so we got closer and looked through the windows for signs of life. When we thought it was safe, we tried the doors, which were locked, and threw a stone through the living room window.

The sound of shattering glass has replaced doorbells in my life.

It was Alex's turn to stick his hand through the window and unlock it. I love breaking in, but that's my least favorite part, since there's a part of me that's sure whoever owns the house is waiting to chop off my hand. I've had lots of nightmares about that.

But no one came at us with an ax, so we climbed in.

We both smelled death right away. It was like the mound of bodies only worse, because the house was all closed up and the smell had intensified.

"Please," I said. "Let's go."

"Wait outside if you want," Alex said.

But I knew what I didn't see would frighten me more than what I did. "I'll be okay," I said. I've told bigger lies.

Alex took my hand. I could see his was bleeding. "You cut yourself," I said to hide the fact that I was shaking from fear and excitement at the touch of a boy's hand.

"Just a scratch," he said, but he pulled his hand from mine. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get blood on you."

I nodded. Alex began walking toward the smell and I followed him.

The body was in the kitchen. Once it had been human, sitting in the chair next to where we found it. Or what remained of it, some torn clothing, a belt, some flesh and muscle, hair, bones, an eyeball. By its side was a shotgun, and lying a few feet away was a dead pit bull.

I screamed.

"Don't look," Alex said, but I couldn't avert my eyes. He walked around the corpse, took a red plaid vinyl tablecloth and flung it on top. Then he held me until I stopped shaking.

"I think we're in luck," he said. "The dog died recently, maybe even today. It's been eating its owner for a while now, but it finally starved to death. There's probably dog food if we look."

"I don't know if Horton will eat dog food," I said.

"Not for Horton," Alex said. "For us."

This World We Live In Is Available For Pre-Order

Amazon confirms its April 1, 2010 publication date.

But really I'm posting this so you can admire the new look to this blog.

It was time for a little redecorating around here!

We Have A Cover!

Because I don't know how to attach a PDF (or what a PDF is for that matter) to my blog, I printed the cover on my dandy printer and attached it with needles (I couldn't find any pins) to my green chair and took photographs of it.

I know how to attach photographs, with and without needles.

The odds are when the book is published, the cover may look a little, oh I don't know, slicker, but in the meantime, I'm thrilled and can't wait to show it off.

So here's the cover for This World We Live In (by New York Times Best Selling Author of Life As We Knew It-Moi)!

A Brand New Email Address

I'm a firm believer that one cannot have too many email addresses, so I set one up just for the thirdmoonbook blog.

I've been keeping this a comment free zone, but if there's something you really want to tell me, now you have an address to send it to: susanbpfeffer@aol.com

I also set up a new email account over at my regular blog, because the previous email account was proving increasingly cranky.

The only one around here allowed to be cranky is me!

A Scene That Never Would Have Existed If The Editor Hadn't Asked For Rewrites

June 4

I was in my bedroom, trying to decide what would be the absolutely safest place to hide my diaries, when I heard a knock on my door and Alex softly saying, "Miranda?"

Even though I hadn't touched a thing, and my diaries were as hidden as they ever are, I instantly decided I needed to find an even better place for them. That was after I finished jumping at the sound of a strange boy's voice.

"Yeah," I said, which didn't come off quite as friendly as it should have. "I mean, hi Alex. What do you want?"

He stood in the doorway until I gestured for him to come in.

"I hope I'm not bothering you," he said. "I was wondering if you might have some clothes Julie could borrow. Just for the time we're here."

"Oh, sure," I said. "Julie's smaller than I am, but we can work something out." Syl already has half my wardrobe. Julie could have the other half.

"Thank you," he said. "It'll mean a lot to her."

"Do you want me to ask Matt if you could borrow some of his clothes?" I asked. Why should I be the only naked one in the house.

"That would be great, thank you," Alex said. "It's just for a few days, until Julie's rested up enough."

"There's no rush," I said. "I'll see what I can find."

Alex looked around my room. "You have a lot of books," he said.

"Not that many," I said. "And I've read all of them three times by now."

"I miss reading," he said, taking my copy of Pride And Prejudice off the shelf. "I miss learning useless things. Latin. Calculus."

"I miss friends," I said. "Friends. Family. Food. The 3 Fs." I smiled, but Alex didn't smile back.

"I miss home," he said. "And the feeling you got in a library carrel, like nothing in the world mattered except the book you were reading." He put Pride And Prejudice back on the shelf. "I miss pride. The sin of pride."

"I don't think it's a sin to be proud," I said, looking at my skating trophies. "Not if you've worked to achieve your goal."

Alex shook his head. "You don't understand," he said. "It's different for you. You work to keep your house clean, and you take pride in how it looks. That's not what I mean."

It annoyed me that Alex thought my only accomplishment in life was in the war against ash. "I take pride in lots of things," I said. "Like how my family has come together. How we've fought to keep alive. To keep our hopes alive. I take a lot of pride in that. Do you think that's a sin?"

"No, of course not," Alex said. "But that's not the kind of pride I'm talking about."

"Oh," I said. "You mean like vanity. Being proud because you're good looking or rich."

"That's not it exactly either," Alex said.

"Then what is?" I asked.

He gazed out my window, at the perpetually gray landscape. "All right," he said. "Maybe you'll understand better if I tell you about the coin jar. We had to pay for our school uniforms, so my mother kept a coin jar. Every day we emptied our pockets and whatever change we had went into the jar. One day she caught my father taking out a handful of quarters. He was short on beer money. She went crazy. It was the worst fight I ever saw them have. My mother had ambitions for us. Every penny we saved was important to her." He paused for a moment. "My father picked up the coin jar and threw it across the room. The coins flew all over. My mother got down on her hands and knees to pick up the change, but my brother Carlos shoved me onto the floor. It was my fault, he said. I was the one they were fighting over."

"That must have been awful," I said. Mom and Dad at their worst always let us know we weren't to blame for their problems.

"I vowed I would never feel shame again," Alex said. "But the shame wasn't because my parents fought over me. It was the shame of crawling on the floor, sweeping pennies and nickels into a pile to pay for clothes other kids took for granted. The next day I got a job, started working whenever I could, finally got regular work at a pizza parlor. I paid for my own uniforms after that, and my books too. No more coin jar. My mother found some other way to pay for my sister's uniforms. And I felt proud. Proud I was smart. Proud that people noticed me, respected me. Proud that I was ambitious. Proud that I was too good to end up like my parents. And now I beg for clean clothes for my sister. I beg for every bite of food we eat."

"You don't have to beg here," I said. "We're happy to share."

"No one is happy to share," he said.

Alex looked down then, or I looked up. I don't know how it happened, but we made eye contact, and for a moment, I was drawn into his soul. I could see everything, the depth of his sorrow, his anger, his despair.

I feel sorrow and anger and despair. I don't think there's a person alive who doesn't. I sometimes feel like my sorrow and anger and despair burns inside me like the sun used to burn on a hot July day.

But that was nothing compared to what I sensed in Alex. His sorrow, his anger, his despair was like a thousand suns, like a galaxy of suns. It physically hurt me to look into his eyes, but I couldn't break away. He turned his head first, and then he apologized, or maybe he thanked me. For Alex, I think they're the same thing.

He bolted out of the room, leaving me to stare at my bookstore and think about the sin of pride and the sin of prejudice and all the other sins I'd left behind.

ETA: What Alex no doubt said was "my sisters' uniforms," referring to Bri and Julie. But since Miranda only knows about Julie, she hears it as "my sister's uniforms."

Miranda is very much an unreliable narrator in This World We Live In. She knows only what people tell her, and people don't necessarily tell her all the details.

You Can Never Get Too Tired Of Tulsa

Sometime after posting what I announced to be the third and final version of the Tulsa discussion, I decided Alex and Julie went to Tulsa before they went to Texas to find Carlos. Although all of this happens offstage, and Miranda only learns about it from what Alex and Julie tell her separately, the whole trip to Texas became increasingly important, and involved so many revisions that I've lost track (it's pretty much all I spent working on yesterday).

So here's the fourth and I really really hope final version of Alex telling Miranda about Tulsa:

"Who was in Tulsa?" I asked. "Or did you just pass through there?" It was easier to ask Alex questions with us both facing forward and no danger of eye contact.

"We thought we'd find our aunt and uncle," Alex said. "They set out for there last June. We spent a few days looking, but no luck."

"It's hard to picture cities," I said. "Cities with people."

"They're not like before," Alex said. "There are bodies. Mostly skeletons now, piled up. Even the rats have died. And only some buildings have heat, so you share apartments."

"Are there schools?" I asked, remembering my idea about places for politicians and millionaires to live. "Hospitals? Could you and Julie have stayed there?"

Alex held onto the steering wheel a little tighter. "The plan was for me to leave Julie with our aunt and uncle. I was going to get to Texas, find Carlos, let him know where we were, and then go back and work at the oil fields. But I couldn't leave Julie alone, so we went to Texas together."

"But you didn't stay down there," I said. "Couldn't you have worked in the Texas oil fields instead?"

"I could have," Alex said. "But there was no one to look after Julie."

"Julie's a good kid," I said. "She wouldn't have gotten into trouble."

"Trouble would have found her," Alex said. "We couldn't take that risk."