Basically, dear readers, I'm still alive and so is the book. :-)

The top one is the big changes; the bottom one is the line-edit that makes sure the big changes make sense.
Looking at it this way makes me wonder why I write such long books.

1.
The revision is in.

It went in Friday afternoon actually, and I crashed the way you crash after finals - sleep-deprived, mentally exhausted, and more pleased at completing the work than at the final product of your labors. This revision was tougher than usual. With that one big change I mentioned earlier, I think I ended up rewriting about 25% of the manuscript. Sometimes, I ripped out the best bits from the old scene and threaded new material around it to make it fit. Sometimes, it was completely new.

It was worth it, though. I really believe the book flows about a thousand times better this way. I'll know for sure after my new editor takes a look.

2.
That's my other big news: I have a new editor!

Courtney Bongiolatti - the enthusiastic and astute editor, who acquired the books and ushered Of Giants and Ice into copy-editing and beyond - is leaving the industry. I was incredibly sad when I found out - Courtney loves the books SO much, and she just gets Rory; we've always been on the same page with revisions - it was hard to see her go. But at the same time, I'm absolutely delighted for her - glad she's starting this new phase of her life, and grateful she got Rory on the right track.

It also helps that my new editor - Julia Maguire - is similarly awesome. She worked with Courtney on Of Giants and Ice, and when I was too brain fried with my line edit to think of anything besides long lists of words, she and my agent Jo came up for a FANTASTIC title for The Ever Afters 2.

I'm actually not sure if I can share that title yet. Hmmmm. I'll need to check.

3.
Julia has promised to get notes to me by Monday, so revising resumes next week!

Which means two things: First, I'm hurrying to get my To-Do list done before then. Yesterday, I cleaned my apartment with the ferocity of a tornado armed with a broom and lysol bathroom spray. Today, I need to race around to printers to get some quotes on Ever Afters swag.

And secondly, I'm devouring books at an insane rate in order to recharge my creative battery.

My current TBR pile

I need the mysteries, because there's a mystery element in The Ever Afters 2 that I'm not sure I totally pulled off. I finished Janet Evanovich's One for the Money last night and enjoyed it like whoa.

I try not to read in my own genre while I'm revising, so I'm SUPER excited about the middle grade. I feel like there's been a hole in my life without it. *hugs library books*

I'm Still Alive, I Promise.

I know, I know. I haven't been as full of digital chatter as I usually am. I have a good reason: a sinus infection. It kicked my butt and gave me fever. :'-(

I got antibiotics and kicked its butt back. (insert evil laugh here.) I am feeling much better.

(For those of you who are now worried about my health, since I was sick twice in one month, I promise you that I'm fine. Sinus infections are routine for me at this point. I've gotten them at least twice a year since college. I think it's the cold climes I choose to live in. Must move to California, place of sunshine and warmth and coastal breezes...sigh...someday, ie. after revisions...)

While I've been MIA, things have been happening in the publishing world:

1. Harper Teen Pays Seven Figures for Debut YA Trilogy:

Rachel Deahl -- Publishers Weekly, 3/5/2010 9:44:42 AM

In a major pre-Bologna acquisition, Laura Arnold at Harper Teen pre-empted North American rights to a debut YA trilogy by Josephine Angelini. Mollie Glick at Foundry sold the series--the first book is called Starcrossed--and said she pitched it as "a Percy Jackson for teenage girls." Foundry's Stephanie Abou and Hannah Brown Gordon will be handling foreign rights at the Bologna Book Fair, and film rights are being handled by Angelini's manager, Rachel Miller at Tom Sawyer Entertainment.

In Starcrossed, which brings Greek tragedy to high school, a shy Nantucket teenager named Helen Hamilton attempts to kill the most attractive boy on the island, Lucas Delos, in front of her entire class. The incident proves more than a bit inconvenient for Helen, who's already concerned that she's going insane--whenever she's sees Lucas (or any of his family members) the image of three crying women appear to her.

The murder attempt does have an upside though, as it ultimately leads to Helen's revelation that she and the local heartthrob are, in fact, playing out some version of a weighty ancient love affair. (Said female apparitions are, in fact, the Three Fates.) So Helen, like her namesake, Helen of Troy isn't going crazy, she's destined to start a Trojan War-like battle by being with Lucas. This then begs the unfortunate question: should she be with the boy she loves even if it means endangering the rest of the world?

The second book in the trilogy, Persephone's Garden, follows Helen's journey to the Underworld, and the third book, Ilium, chronicles the final battle between mortals and the gods. Harper Teen is planning to publish Starcrossed in summer 2011.

This totally blew my mind. I mean, I know some of the players involved. I even follow them on Twitter. I saw the excitement even before I knew what the excitement was about.

I have mixed feelings about advances that are high enough to be newsworthy, but I think this one will definitely earn out. I mean, Did you read description of the book? Does it not sound awesome?? I'm already plotting on how to pull strings and snag a galley..... :-P

2. Lauren Oliver's Before I Fall was released in stores everywhere...


...even in Bozeman, Montana.

I know I said this in my last post too, but it's true here too - You have to read it. I admit, I'm not the biggest fan of this genre. I haven't read other teen weepies like If I Stay or Th1rteen R3asons Why (I have this thing against sad endings), but the pre-pub buzz for Ms. Oliver's novel was so good that I begged a galley off a friend.

Before I Fall deserves every nice thing that anyone has said about it. It totally changed my mind about the weepy genre. It is destined to become the favorite book of multitudes of teens. In five years, all the copies in the picture above will be battered and dog-eared, the tell-tale signs of many reads and re-reads.

Do yourself a favor, and read it now - that way, you can say you read it before it became a bestseller/won such-and-such awards/got so famous that everybody knew about it.

3. On the same day she emailed me to make sure that the bears hadn't eaten me, my awesome agent J. invited me to go see The Lightning Thief with her after our lunch on Tuesday. Eeeeeekkk!!! I know - I can't believe I haven't seen it yet either, but I want to. Desperately. It totally made my week.

A few things have happened here in Montana too:

1. Spring has begun to crawl up the mountain. This means that the weather has moved away from sub-zero temps and started to look more like this:

This means that mud season is upon us. At the base, the landscape has turned from white to brown, and on either side of the road, rivulets of melted run-off thread their way to the Gallatin River.

I'm crossing my fingers that the snow lasts long enough for my little brother to get here and snowboard to his heart's content. He's spending his Spring Break here, and if he can't get out to snowboard, he's going to be bored out of his mind.

2. Also, I'm off to NYC tomorrow to see my editor, my agent, and oodles of friends. The excitement abounds like whoa.

Of course, my little brother will arrive at the airport an hour before I return. That means that I must clean the cabin unless I want him to see how I've been living and thus be teased/blackmailed until the end of time. I spent a significant part of yesterday and today cleaning. I even vacuumed and made his bed. It was epic.

3. Revisions are everywhere. I still haven't received my editorial letter from my editor, but I've been plowing ahead with revisions for J., agent extraordinaire. Earlier this week, I went into a mild panic, thinking that a month had been wasted since I hadn't finished my revisions in the three weeks since the arrival of J.'s letter. (Note: when I'm sick, everything tends to look like the end of the world.)

Then I started typing up all the new scenes...and realized I had written 20K. Not all of that 20K will make it into this manuscript, of course (one scene has three different beginnings I need to wade through so that's 6K cut right there), but it did make me realize February was actually productive, not just full of illness.

I have maybe three more new scenes to write, and then I revise my revisions. I'll be cutting and pasting the chronology of these new scenes the way a dealer shuffles cars. Then a line-by-line edit or two.... (starting to feel mildly stressed)

But first...laundry! And packing! :-D

Adventures in Phone Chats and Fire Alarms

I was chatting with a friend from New York, a former co-worker, who is an awesome editor at the beginning of her career. I was also making dinner - a beautiful, tasty, smaller portion of macaroni and cheese, one of my favorite comfort foods. In the middle of the conversation, I had to say, "I'm going to have to let you go. There's smoke coming out my oven."

I opened the oven to remove the mac and cheese (which was not burnt, by the way), and the chemical laden smoke blew into my eyes and made them water.

Then I

1) opened windows
2) opened door
3) turned on vents
4) winced, because Fire Alarm started beeping
5) wandered around the house wondering where my shoes were, envisioning myself outside, shivering in snow, while fire trunk honked and swerved up mountain
6) stopped covering my ears, daring to hope, because Fire Alarm had turned itself off
7) opened doors and windows wider
8) called my parents to make sure I shouldn't go find myself an igloo for the evening
9) closed door and locked it, because Mom reminded me that there are moose (only in the mountains would my mom worry about strange animals before strange people)
10) remembered that there are also coyotes (found tracks this morning) and looked outside suspiciously for scary canines that could claw through window screen
11) listened as Mom instructed me on how to start the self-cleaning on the oven
12) hung up and wrote this.

Very exciting times.

I can't smell the smoke anymore, and it's not very visible. My eyes still sting, so I might need to rinse them out.

First though, I must close the windows, because 20 degree air is blowing in. I have been shivering for several paragraphs...