Monday, October 5, 2009

It Takes A Lot Of Scrolling

But if you're patient (and/or obsessive), you can find the Harcourt catalog entry for This World We Live In.

Oddly enough I was patient (and/or obsessive) enough to do so, and I was rewarded by learning there's going to be a bookmark!

My guess is it's a shared bookmark that other Harcourt titles will be on, and not its very own, but hey, a bookmark is a bookmark.

Anyway, TW looks great in the catalog, and seeing it makes it seem more real to me. So I figured I'd let you know.

ETA: For me at least, once it loads up, there's a little thing on the top that says click here to go straight to page 66. I clicked, and there TW was!

If you scroll down to the next page, there's stuff about Life As We Knew It and The Dead & The Gone, and a very nice closeup of the bottom of TW.

Even More ETA: Or you can type This World We Live In into the little search box, and it takes you right to page 66. And there's a zoom feature if you want to be able to actually read what they have to say!

Friday, September 18, 2009

Feel Free To Comment

Since ARCs of This World We Live In should be available by a month from now, I figured I should open this blog up to comments.

Thank yous go to all of you who kept your thoughts to yourselves, or who commented oh so briefly at my other blog.

I will now leave a comment here to see if it actually is possible!

Thursday, September 10, 2009

And Now The Cover As It Really Looks



I asked my editor for a copy of the cover of This World We Live In that I could officially post.

And here it is!

Friday, August 28, 2009

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!

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

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."

Thursday, July 9, 2009

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!

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

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)!