october silence

It's only silence because I'm not doing a Cabinet of Curiosities story this month--we're lightening up our schedule a bit so that we take two-at-a-time alternate months off. Look for some appropriate spookiness from Emma and Claire though.

It's not even really October here, because it's in the 90s all week (miserable pout, why do I live here, etc). Autumn's my favorite season and we get horribly little of it here, and mostly in December which feels all wrong.

Anyway! But this post is to put here something I've already posted on Tumblr:  The artist and photographer Anne Arden McDonald, whom I've never met but whose work I greatly admire,  likes Summer and Bird, which is already fairly thrilling.

But also, she also made this gorgeous cover for the book to give to her nieces.

So . . . worth mentioning on every social media outlet? I say YES. Check out her work if you're not familiar.

fan art & podcasts & stuff

My niece Emma recently re-read Summer and Bird and made some art in response to it. Honestly if there is a better writing-related happiness than someone making something as a response to something you made, I don't know what it is.

Her beautiful version of the lovely back cover of the book.

This other one is a drawing of the inside of the red house, which is one of my favorite parts of the book. She even got the vines on the wall. HAPPINESS.

and the gray rag rug! SIgh.

Okay, in other news. We Cabinet curators celebrated publication day with the #sharescary hashtag on Twitter--heard many fears and many creepy stories, and prizes are now flying out all over the world to participants. Two of mine are postcards with a custom scary story. Yeah NOW you wish you'd played.

There is also an ongoing giveaway at Cynthia Letich Smith's Cynsations blog -- get one chance to win a copy of the Cabinet of Curiosities just by commenting, or get four chances by leaving a 100-word scary story written to the prompt "visitors." That post also includes a really first class photo of my cat Adam, looking appalled, and one of Stefan reclined upon candy. Contest ends Sunday June 8!

Finally and perhaps most gloriously: we're doing a Cabinet of Curiosities podcast every week this month. The first episode is Claire Legrand reading her marvelous story "The Tin Man's Price"--you can listen to or download it here. Or subscribe to the podcast in iTunes. Stefan Bachmann composed eerie and splendid music for this thing, so you MUST give it a listen.

That's it I think! Thanks all, and thanks, Emma.

This blog is an excuse to post this image

Notice the changes here in the creaky, windswept streets of my website. Mainly, I have added a whole page for Summer and Bird. And mainly I did that to have an excuse to share two nice bits:

Summer and Bird got a starred review from Kirkus, which called it "A haunting fable inflected with mythological and fairy-tale motifs  . . .  languorously beautiful."

I was named one of IndieBound's New Voices for Fall 2012. They said of Summer and Bird "Lyric in its language and layered in its complexity, this is a book like no other."

Two more bits of news: I wll be reading at the Southern Independent Booksellers Trade Show in Naples, Florida on September 7, which is exciting. I think I will now refer to ths trip as my Book Tour.

Finally, I will be having a book launch for Summer and Bird at the splendid BookPeople in Austin, Texas at 7pm October 9. Please come! Please come even if you live in Maine!

But all of that is just an excuse to post my favorite of all the lovely, lucky things that have come my way recently. My agent David Dunton's daughter, Hannah Dunton, first read Summer and Bird in manuscript when she was 9. She recently turned 11, and is still thinking about the book, as evidenced by this incredibly awesome manga-influenced drawing:

Image by Hannah Dunton.

The blonde is Summer -- she is holding a notebook (EXCELLENT detail) and thinking about a little red bird who is very important both to her and the story. Bird is the smaller one, with the browner hair and slyer smile. The creepy face on the upper left is the Puppeteer, also known as The Bird Mask, because we never see her face. The other images are an owl holding a key (oh that's right you're wondering why; well, get the book!) and the rebus-like "picture letter" that is all their mother left them when she disappeared.

This picture is my new favorite thing. Thank you, Hannah.