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At Just $39.95, this Smart Scale is Slim on Price, Heavy on Features - Pivotal Living Smart Scale

Introducing the new Pivotal Living Smart Scale, which tracks five key metrics including Weight, Lean Body Mass, Body Fat Percentage, Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) and Body Mass Index (BMI).




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VolitionRx Demonstrates NuQ® Blood Test Detects 95% of Pancreatic Cancers in Second Preliminary Study - Introduction to VolitionRx Nucleosomics� technology: Revolutionizing cancer diagnosis

VolitionRx�s Nucleosomics� diagnostic platform detects epigenetic changes to fragments of chromosomes, called nucleosomes, that circulate in the blood of cancer patients. Credit: VolitionRx.





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Grammy Award-Winning Singer Patti LaBelle Teams Up With American Lung Association's LUNG FORCE To Educate The Public About Lung Cancer - 2nd Annual Women�s Lung Health Barometer Animated Video

2nd Annual Women�s Lung Health Barometer Animated Video






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YouTube Beauty Stylist Andrea Brooks Reveals Holiday Party Beauty Tips in Latest Colgate� Optic White� Smile Show� Episode �� - Video Sneak-Peek

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St. Jude Children's Research Hospital� opens first proton therapy center for children - Proton Therapy at St. Jude

Proton therapy will be used to treat brain tumors, Hodgkin lymphoma and other solid tumors and is the most advanced form of radiation technology available to patients.






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Gout & Uric Acid Education Society Hosts Roundtable Exploring Strategies for Elevating the Severity of Gout and Improving Access to Public Education and Treatment - Gout as a Serious Health Issue

Gout as a Serious Health Issue




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One of the Top Infectious Diseases Among Children in the U.S. is Preventable - Help Kids Defeat the Mouth Monsters

Help Kids Defeat the Mouth Monsters




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New Survey Shows UK Public Willing to Pay �10 for Missed GP Appointments to Support the NHS Amid Widespread Concerns About Government Spending on Healthcare - Healthcare leaders and the public say how they would balance the NHSï¿

Healthcare leaders and the public say how they would balance the NHS� books




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Michael Strahan Teams Up With Meta To Launch "Heart 2 Heart" Campaign During National Heart Month To Promote Living A Heart-Healthy Lifestyle - Meta Heart 2 Heart Featuring Michael and Gene Strahan

Meta Heart 2 Heart Featuring Michael and Gene Strahan




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EPILEPSY FOUNDATION LAUNCHES �TALK ABOUT IT!� PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT FEATURING ACTOR GREG GRUNBERG, ENCOURAGING AN OPEN DIALOGUE ABOUT EPILEPSY - Talk About It! PSA with Greg Grunberg

Talk About It! PSA with Greg Grunberg










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2016 MORE/SHAPE Women's Half-Marathon Honors 13 Female Leaders, Including Sara Bareilles, Danielle Brooks And Padma Lakshmi, For The First-Annual Women Run The Worldâ„¢ Relay & Mentorship Program - 2016 MORE/SHAPE Half-Marathon BTS

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International Survey Released for World Meningitis Day Shows Parents Feel They Don't Know Enough About the Disease and its Consequences - Lenine Cunha, Portuguese Paralympian and Win for Meningitis campaign ambassador

Lenine Cunha, Portuguese Paralympian and Win for Meningitis campaign ambassador





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St. Jude Children's Research Hospital® to honor legendary Hispanic TV personality Cristina Saralegui at upcoming FedEx/St. Jude Angels and Stars Gala - Celeb Gala B-roll

Miami Gala celebrity B-roll for download




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CBIC Announces Amendments to Sea Cargo Manifest Transshipment Regulations

Government of IndiaMinistry of FinanceDepartment of RevenueCentral Board of Indirect Taxes and CustomsNotification No. 74/2024-Customs(N.T.)New Delhi, dated 30th October, 2024G.S.R (E) -In exercise of t




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Intimation under section 286(1) in Form No. 3CEAC

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Key actions - businesses can take to adjust their tax liabilities before the final deadline

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Mock Test Papers Series I and II for CA Final Students Appearing in Nov 2024 Exams

Mock Test Papers Series I & II for CA Final Students Appearing in Nov 2024 Exams




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Hardware Reviews! HyperX Mouse, Keyboards, Headphones, and Mousepad

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Learning ancient, forbidden sex majik

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Is This Version Of SimCity 2000 Real Or Is My Life A Lie?

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Which of the 24 HBO Streaming Services is Right For You?

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Steam Reviews For America

Pay to win garbage. Not even a chance for anyone who got f****d over by RNG. Total scam!




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Every Conceivable Way EA Could Screw Up Star Wars: Squadrons

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DEAR FURRIES: WE WERE WRONG

Dear god this was an embarrassment to not only this site, but to all mankind





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Online Event Tonight and Exclusive Map Giveaway

A couple time-sensitive pieces of book news for those of you not on Twitter, where, among other things, I've been posting my sister's careful scrawled calculations of the vote count in Pennsylvania :o).

One, Flatiron Books invite me to chat with Melissa Albert, author of the gorgeous and chilling Tales from the Hinterland, tonight (Friday) at 8:30pm ET as part of  #yallwrite

 Info at @YALLFest and https://www.yallwrite.org/schedule#specialevents

Come join us! I for one will be exhausted yet (I suspect) calm, and Mimi and I will have plenty of bookish stuff to talk about!


Two, Penguin Teen has organized an exclusive map giveaway for anyone who preorders Winterkeep. Here's the entry form: http://bit.ly/WinterkeepPreOrder

Tag @PenguinTeen with any questions. And enjoy! :o)






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Winterkeep-ish Stuff for Release Week!

Winterkeep is now out in the world, and can be purchased at your favorite book retailer. I am happy for you to buy the book wherever you prefer, but do keep indie retailers bookshop.org, Libro.fm, and Kobo in mind!

This week, I'm on the podcast First Draft with Sarah Enni... Sarah is so skilled at insightful conversation, and so warm, too. We had a lovely chat. Check it out!

I have two more virtual events to round off book release week, and you're invited. The first is Sunday at 5PM ET (2PM PT), with Malinda Lo, moderated by Tui Sutherland, and presented by Mysterious Galaxy Books in San Diego. The nice thing about this event is that Malinda, Tui, and I are all in the same book group. So we're used to getting together to talk about books. Just not usually our own books! Of course, our last eleven meetings have been virtual, but normally, the group meets in one of the homes of our lovely members. If I were hosting book group in January, I would have a fire roaring in the fireplace… So I'm going to light a fire for Sunday's event.

It's free to join us, but you do need to register ahead of time. Also, note that though I'm not personalizing books via my local indie during the pandemic, you can purchase books through this event and get signed or personalized bookplates. But you need to do so pretty soon, so if you're interested, follow the links! Instructions for ordering are here.

My final event, on Monday at 6PM ET, will be a conversation with my agent Faye Bender, moderated by editor Andrew Karre, who is my new editor! So this conversation will certainly involve some publishing talk. This event is hosted by Books & Books and the Miami Book Fair. This event is free, but you do need to register ahead of time.

Finally, for those of you not on Twitter, I'll share some pictures of my Winterkeep-writing process. Here's a drawing I made on November 10, 2013, while I was planning this book while on a writing trip in Akureyri, Iceland. At the time, I'm pretty sure I imagined that this picture encapsulated the entire plot of the book. (Don't worry, there are no spoilers! Especially since most of the stuff didn't make it into the final draft…)

Next up, here's a picture from the first page of my first draft, started on April 21, 2014. I wanted to share this because at the top, I've written, "I am writing a book and today I will write 2 pages." That's something I learned from Linda Sue Park, who gave a speech about writing once years ago in which she talked about the emotional weight of trying to make progress through such a long and gigantic project. You don't sit down thinking to yourself, "I need to write this entire book." You sit down thinking to yourself, "today I will write two pages." When Linda Sue said those words, it changed my writing life. So much pressure disappeared! (By the way, if you enjoy seeing pictures of my notebook, you might like the detailed post I wrote about writing Bitterblue.) (Oh! And if you read that post, then read the writing carefully below, you will notice that ONCE AGAIN, I tried to write an earthquake into a book. Like the earthquake in Bitterblue, this Winterkeep earthquake did not make it through to the final draft. Why am I obsessed with earthquakes?)

Finally, years later — almost 3 years ago, in February of 2018 — I was far along in the writing process, but I still hadn't figured out what this place was called, what this book was called, what the undersea beast was called…. At a writing retreat with friends, I kidnapped this gigantic easel notepad thingamajig and started writing down possibilities. Everyone voted. You'll note that "Winterkeep" isn't even on this list (though some pretty silly things are; I wrote down every possibility, no matter how bad), but you'll also see that I was getting pretty close to "Winterkeep!" I don't remember exactly, but I must have come up with "Winterkeep" while we were at dinner one night, and everyone agreed it was the winner. (For a while after that, I was calling the book Winter Keeper, but when it came time to decide for sure, my team at Penguin decided to go with Winterkeep, so that the title would line up nicely with the other single-word Graceling Realm titles.)


And that's my Winterkeep update for today! I hope we'll get to see you at one of my upcoming events!





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I got a book idea... and this time I paid attention to how it happened so I could answer the FAQ, "Where do you get your ideas?"

Hi everybody.

The question I get most is: "Where do you get your ideas?"

Generally, when I'm asked this question, it's at a book event where it's difficult to answer, because… Well, the answer is long, and complicated, and hard to pin down, and most of the time, I don't really remember how it happened. When an idea starts to arrive, I get to work. I'm not paying attention to how it's happening, or how it would look to an outsider. 

But — a few weeks ago, a new book idea started knocking on the door of my mind. And this time, I decided to pay attention!

What follows is probably the most detailed explanation I'll ever give of where my ideas come from. More specifically, where this particular idea came from, because it's not always the same. But my experience of the past few weeks has been fairly typical for me, and I'll add that there are a few activities I need to engage in every single time, if I want an idea to take root. Namely: PATIENCE. LISTENING. And, LABOR. Book ideas require a certain honed receptiveness, and they require a LOT OF WORK. 

I'm yelling because I'm trying to push back against the idea that ideas simply come to writers. Yes, some parts of ideas come to writers. But when I first get a book idea, what "comes to me" probably comprises about 0.1% of what could properly be called a book idea. Often, it's little more than an inchoate feeling. With patience, listening, and labor, I transform the idea into something I can grasp, and work with.

I'll add that yes, we do hear sometimes of writers whose ideas "simply came to them," fully formed. I'm going to take a guess that (1) this doesn't happen very often, if ever, with books that have complicated structures or plots, and (2) writers who are blessed by ideas in this way probably have a long-honed practice of receptiveness.

Anyway. Warning upfront that this may be a little unstructured, because the process is a little unstructured. It's challenging to describe, and I'm still in the middle of it. But here's what my last few weeks have been like.

A few weeks ago, while watching a TV show that had a certain mood/aura that'd really sucked me in, I found myself drawn to the idea of a story involving three characters. I'm not going to tell you what TV show I was watching, and I'm not going to tell you anything about my three characters, because story ideas are intensely, intensely private. The first time I say anything publicly about it will probably be years from now, if and when this book is ever scheduled for release. But let me try to explain a bit about that moment when the first glimmering of the idea appeared. 

Like I said, I'd been watching a TV show when it happened. But my three characters weren't characters in that TV show. Nor did anyone in that TV show relate to each other the way my three characters seemed to want to relate. Nor did my three characters seem to live in a world like the world of the TV show. The TV show helped to launch the idea at me because of the show's mood and its feeling, and how much I cared about the people in it. But my idea? As is often the case, my idea came from something I saw missing in the TV show. Not missing because there was a flaw in the TV writers' story; I loved their story! But missing (for me and possibly only me) because their story was not the story I would have told.

I think that a lot of my idea seeds come from my adoration of other people's stories, but also from my noticing what's missing in those stories, for me. What story I would've like to have seen told; what characters the story lacked.

Anyway. So this idea of these three characters came to me. But when I say "idea of these three characters," already that sounds more substantial than it was. I knew they were three humans (or humanoids; I didn't know what genre the story was, so they could've been aliens on another planet, for all I knew. In fact, I actively considered whether they might have different biology than ours). I knew they cared about each other, but I didn't know in what way. I knew they were facing a challenge that would strain all of their relationships. I thought they might be grown-ups, but I wasn't sure. I thought I knew at least two of their genders, but I wasn't sure. I knew they lived in a world with magic, but I didn't know what "magic" meant in the context of their world. I didn't know where they lived, or when they lived (past? future? futuristic past? postindustrial future? any of about a hundred other possibilities). I knew a whole lot of things that the characters weren't, and that the world wasn't — which is another way of saying that my sense of what this story was was actually more defined by all the things I knew it wasn't. (Apologies if this is vague. I'm not being intentionally vague! I'll try for some concrete examples: I knew I didn't want to write a story where partway through, someone suddenly discovers they have an inborn power they didn't know they had. I knew I didn't want to write a love triangle. There's a certain kind of high-handed fantasy tone that I knew wasn't right for this story. But I didn't know what I did want yet at this point.)

Really, all I knew was that I seemed to be having an idea.

So, like a writer, I did what I needed to do: 

  • I made space in my mind for receptiveness. (I scheduled uninterruptable alone time. I stopped listening to podcasts while I was out walking, and instead, just walked, so my mind could wander. I put aside non-urgent tasks for a while so that I didn't have the feeling of a to-do list hanging over my head. I gave myself permission to wool-gather, to become vague and absent-minded. I set three timers any time I cooked anything so I could feel free to forget I was cooking, but also not burn the house down. I remembered to thank my husband frequently for being willing to live with a space cadet.)
  • I thought about what fertilizer might help the idea to grow, especially fertilizer in the form of books, TV, and movies. I put all other books, TV, and movies aside. (I kept watching that same TV show, and I also began reading almost exclusively one writer who had a narrative tone — and also subject matter — that helped me sustain a mood that felt concurrent with the mood of my own idea. Why does this kind of intake help? It keeps my mind in a story space, while also giving me something to bounce my own ideas off of. It's a kind of reading, or watching, that involves a state of constant interactivity and reactivity. Everything I'm consuming becomes about something else that I'm looking for. It's difficult to explain, maybe because it gets back to that inexplicable moment when new ideas form.)
  • I made sure that every single time I had any new thoughts relating to my idea, I wrote them down. (This meant making reminders on my phone; sending strings of emails to myself; choosing a notebook where I began to jot things down; sending texts to myself on my husband's phone, if his phone was closer to hand than mine.)
  • I looked at my schedule to give myself a sense of if and when I might have a few days soon to put my current writing project aside and give some true, devoted time to this new idea. (I was, and still am, in the middle of revisions of the next Graceling Realm book when this happened, and that was, and still is, my absolute first priority. As exciting and intense as a new idea can be, it can't unseat me from my current object of devotion.)

By chance, last week, I did in fact have some time away from my revision while it was briefly with my editor. I was able to devote an entire week to the new book idea. So, next, I'll try to describe what a week of intense idea-gathering looks like for me! (Though I should say that this will differ from book to book. It's been pretty clear to me from the beginning that this new idea is going to be slow to grow — planning this book will take way more than a week. In contrast, last fall, I found myself with a new and sudden book idea that coincided with the end of another project, so I had some free time and was able to sit down and hammer out the entire book plan, which took only a few days. I think this is because that book was shorter and less emotionally complicated than this new book will be, and was set in a less complex world. Also, at the time, I was absolutely thrumming with the adrenaline and momentum of having just finished a writing project, so book-planning became a way to channel that energy. Often these processes are subject to whatever else is going on in my life.)

So. My week of intense idea-gathering looked a lot like what I've already described — reading, watching TV, but now also with long hours of sitting staring at a blank page and/or lying on my back staring at the ceiling — but with a more specific goal. Namely, I was trying to figure out what my main questions were. For me, every book starts (and continues, as I write) with an extremely long list of questions that I'm trying to find the answers to, but it takes work to figure out what the questions are. The questions can be very different from book to book. And it's essential, at the beginning, to identify what the main questions are.

When I'm first idea-gathering, I use very short notebooks in which I scribble down all my random thoughts as they come (I like using these twenty-page notebooks from Laughing Elephant, because they're short enough not to feel intimidatingly important). Then I have one longer, thicker notebook which is for my more coherent thoughts — my more serious book planning. During my week of active idea-gathering, I came up with the following list of major questions, worthy of being written down in my thick, "serious" planning notebook:


MAJOR QUESTIONS.
  • What is magic?
  • How does bad human behavior manifest in this world? (for real *)
  • Where/what culture does each of them come from? What family?
  • How is society governed?
  • Who is each of them — as a person and as a power manifestation?
  • How is the narrative positioned?
  • What is the plot?
  • How do humans relate to the rest of the natural world?
  • What is gender? (for real *)
* and by societal definition
So. I'm not sure how closely you looked at those questions — but they are pretty gigantic questions! It took me a week to identify all of them. It's going to take me much, much longer to answer them. Which goes back to my point that ideas don't just "come to me." The merest seed of an idea might come to me, and after that, I make the space, and do the work.

As I began to hammer out my questions, I continued to read, watch things, and wool-gather, but with more intense focus. Because now I was also trying to answer these questions as they came. It was interesting to observe the order in which I began to find the answers. Not surprisingly, probably since my novels tend to be character-based, it was the character-based questions that drew me in first. “What is gender" in particular, because I have a sense that in this story, my characters' relationships to gender are absolutely integral to who they are, and I can’t get very far with a book plan if I don’t know who my characters are. I also started to gather some clues about their personalities and their strengths. Enough that after a couple of days, I got to the point where I suddenly knew I needed their names. Names ground everything, and they can also change some things; at a certain point, I can't make any further progress without names. I spent one entire day last week mostly just trying to figure out three people's names. Once I had the names, I was able to return to my questions.

Then, not too long after that, a moment arose where I knew, again quite suddenly, that what I needed next was at least the broad strokes of a plot. If I’m a little scornful about the concept of inspiration — because it’s a concept that dismisses how hard I work! — I do believe in intuition, and also in experience. Intuition and experience told me that I'd reached the point in my planning where the needs of my plot would hold the answer to a lot of my other questions. Like, how this place is governed; what constitutes bad behavior; and even some character things, like what culture each of my characters is from. Sometimes, once you know what needs to happen in a story, it becomes easier to picture the structure of your world. Because a plot comes with needs; once a plot exists, it limits some of your other options. For example, let's say your plot involves a particular kind of government-based corruption. Well, thinking about that corruption will probably start to show you some of your options for the structure of the government. Once you know the structure of the government, you might begin to understand who holds governmental power — which can lead to answers about how families are structured. Which can lead to answers about culture, which can lead to answers about the societal definition of bad behavior, etc.

So. I reached the point where I needed at least a sense of my plot. But: plotting is a HUGE job. I knew it wasn't something I could do in just a few days, and at this point I also knew that I was going to need to return to my revision soon. So, intuition told me that it was time to stop. Not stop being receptive; not necessarily stop reading or watching the helpful things; not stop sending myself emails, texts, and reminders; but stop trying to make any real, meaty, major progress on this book idea. I needed to save the job of plotting for when I next had a stretch of uninterrupted worktime. Maybe another free week or two somewhere, between other projects.

So, I did some final organizing of my notebook. I transferred things into it from other notebooks and I designating a huge number of empty pages in it for future plot thoughts and future character thoughts. I did this even though in this book, as in most of my books, I sense that character and plot will ultimately end up being the same thing, so it's not going to matter much which thoughts I file where. (In other words, most of my plot is going to spring from who my characters are, and many of my characters will spring from the needs of the plot.) But at this messy stage in planning, it's important to me to feel organized. The illusion of organization stops me from feeling as overwhelmed as I probably should be feeling. So I label things, and delude myself that I can contain this messy process inside a nice neat notebook ????. 

I organized my notebook, and then I put it aside. Today I'm still open to thoughts about my new book idea, but it's not my entire worklife anymore... it's more of a promise for the future. It'll probably be good to have it simmering on the back burner for a while. I'll be able to approach it with a new freshness when I sit down with it again one day.

So. I'm not sure how satisfyingly I've answered the question "Where do you get your ideas?" After all, this idea is still very much in progress. I figured out a lot of stuff last week, but mostly what I figured out is a long list of all the things I don't know yet. There will be many, many more workweeks to go before I'll be able to claim that I truly have an idea for a book. 

But this is my best shot at an answer to the question of where my ideas come from! I guess the point I want to convey is this: I don’t necessarily believe in inspiration. But I believe that sometimes a writer will start to get the merest sense of a story that's missing from the world, and find herself wanting to write that story. At that point, if circumstance allows her the time and space to enter a state that is extremely internally-focused and possibly involves a lot of intake (reading, watching other stories), or if not that, at least an extreme level of sensitivity and receptiveness, of seeing, of listening... And if she puts in the work… her idea-seed will start to take root, and grow into a real, workable idea that might one day be the beginnings of a book! 

And of course, every writer does this differently. Many writers don't plan or plot ahead of time. They figure out the idea as they write. So there's no right or wrong way to do it. 

But this is my best explanation of how I do it.

Godspeed to all writers.



  • craft of writing

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New Year's Reflections

Just after the New Year, I spent some time in Vermont.



I go to Vermont to write, but ever since the start of the pandemic, I also go there for some clarity of thought. Sometimes it's easier to figure out how you're doing if you can get some distance from everything. Where I go, I have no cell service, internet, or email. I keep my fingers crossed that when I arrive, I won't discover frozen pipes. I haul a lot of wood (so much wood! Wood is heavy!). I start a fire in the stove and hole up for a while, blessed with the great good fortune to be allowed to turn briefly into a hermit.

Occasionally I'm able to talk to Kevin on the phone, and our conversations go something like this: Hi! How have you been? Could you please tell me the names of Henry VIII's wives in order and also which ones were executed? 

Because, again, I have no internet. So I keep a running list of all the things I've been wondering. And when you're listening to the audiobook of Wolf Hall while staring out the window,



sometimes you realize you want some spoilers. (The answer, if you're interested: (1) Catherine of Aragon. (2) Anne Boleyn, beheaded. (3) Jane Seymour. (4) Anne of Cleves. (5) Catherine Howard, beheaded. (6) Catherine Parr.) 

So anyway, I went to Vermont at the New Year. In previous years, I've loved the New Year. It's been a time of reflection and planning for me, a time to find balance and reconsider my intentions. Since the start of the pandemic, I've lost that New Year ritual to a certain extent, because time and its passage have gotten quite confusing. It doesn't seem possible, for example, that Winterkeep was released in 2021. Wasn't that eons ago? But also, I finalized a new book in 2021 (more on that, as soon as I'm allowed to say more) and am more than halfway through writing a new one, plus I have three other ideas begging to be written. How is that possible? Hasn't it been only a year? Didn't time used to be less springy than this? How old am I anyway? Did winter always used to make me this emotional? Why did I used to dislike my gray hair and now I love it? Why did I ever, EVER, put up with itchy tags in my clothes before now? Have my hands always been this cold? When will I see my friends' faces again?

It's really hard to sum up my last year and make plans for the next. I'm thinking in mushy blobs of time, rather than weeks, months, or years. But I am still hoping and planning. 

Here are three plans I have for the nearish future:

1. I will finish a draft of a new, contemporary book that I'm currently loving writing. (I actually think this will happen this spring!)

2. I will unveil a website. Finally, after more than a decade, I've hired someone to build me a website! I'm having so, so much fun making my own art for it. I think this will get sorted this summer.

3. I will make some strides in a project currently occupying me and some other family members: dual USA-Italian citizenship.

These are my plans. Of course, every new piece of news and frankly the world in general can gum up the works pretty easily these days. So, we'll see how everything goes. I'm trying to learn flexibility.

I hope you're able to find some flexibility too, and also some clarity of thought, as we move through the New Year.






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Announcing SEASPARROW, Graceling Realm Book #5, out November 1, 2022!

I'm so very happy to announce that my next Graceling Realm book, Seasparrow, will release on November 1, 2022. Scroll down for my beautiful covers in the US and the UK! I'll also include links for pre-ordering at the bottom of this post.

Seasparrow is told from the point of view of Hava, Queen Bitterblue's secret sister and spy, who has the Grace of changing what you think you see when you look at her. In other words, the Grace of hiding in plain sight. In Seasparrow, Hava sails across the sea toward Monsea with her sister, the royal entourage, and the world's only copies of the formulas for the zilfium weapon Hava saved at the end of Winterkeep. As in all of my books, adventure ensues — the kind of adventure that will cause Hava to do some soul-searching. While Bitterblue grapples with how to carry the responsibility of a weapon that will change the world, Hava has a few mysteries to solve — and a decision to make about who she wants to be in the new world Bitterblue will build. Seasparrow was edited by Andrew Karre. Thank you, Andrew, for helping me help Hava find her wings!

Prior to today, I've only been talking about this book on Twitter, where I don't have a lot of space to say meaningful things. I have space on this blog, so here are a few non-spoilery bits of info about Seasparrow.

* Unlike my other Graceling Realm books, this one is told from the first-person point of view. Why? Because it was right for this book. Hava is a character who's so internal that often other people don't even know she's there. I suppose I can't entirely explain why, when I started writing, I knew I needed to write in first person, but maybe it's because in order to write about Hava, I needed to get deep inside, where she was. I don't think I've ever written a book from the perspective of someone so hidden before. And yet, from the start, Hava let me in. It felt like she was the one making the decision about what point of view we needed.

* Though the page count is higher (624!), the word count is not higher than any of my other Graceling Realm books. That's because Hava's story is told in a lot of pretty short chapters. That felt right for Hava and the way she processes things; again, it felt like she was the one making this decision. Short chapters have a way of creating a sense of empty space inside a printed book, which is an effect I've always liked, so I went with it.

* The interior art that Ian Schoenherr created for Seasparrow is spectacular. Maybe more than any of my books prior to this, I'm excited for the day when I'll have the finished product in my hands.

* Four years ago, I spent some time in the Arctic on a tall ship. I planned this book while I was on that trip. I started writing it the moment I got back. I could not have written this book were it not for my experience doing an artist residency with the organization The Arctic Circle. Here's a link to the blog posts I wrote about my Arctic experience, which are mostly compilations of pictures. Click on "More Posts" at the bottom to see them all.

 

And now for the covers! Here's the US/Canada cover for Seasparrow, which will be published by Dutton/Penguin Random House. Kuri Huang is the cover artist. Jessica Jenkins is the cover designer. And as I've already said, the interior will include beautiful art by Ian Schoenherr.

 

And here is the UK/Australia/New Zealand cover for Seasparrow. My editor at Gollancz is Gillian Redfearn. Micaela Alcaino is the cover artist and Tomás Almeida is the in-house designer.



Finally, here are some direct pre-ordering links! Seasparrow can be ordered in the US at:

Bookshop.org

barnesandnoble.com

Target

Amazon

 

And in the UK at:

UK.Bookshop.org

Waterstones

Blackwells

 

...and wherever books are sold.

 

Happy holiday weekend for those celebrating. And happy reading!




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