It's beautiful!!!
Like the first printing of Life As We Knew It, the cover is embossed, so the moon and the title and my name are raised, both on the front and on the spine.
The book is 308 pages long, and then when it's finished, there's a section from LAWKI- the part where the meteor hits the moon (the very section I read to those wonderful independent bookstore owners and managers who attended Kid Splash just a week ago).
I scanned like a maniac (and with the skill of a gorilla). Here's how the book looks (only much better in real life):
Notice the wonderful chapter headings and the way the book looks like LAWKI.
And just in case Janet Carlson, to whom the book is dedicated, should happen this way, I scanned the dedication page also.
I know I only wrote d&g less than eighteen months ago, and recently I found the manuscript with all my editor's notes, and her cover letter was dated sometime April, 2007. But I feel like I've been waiting forever for the dead & the gone to be real.
Now that I have my first copy, forever seems a lot more tangible. And I am very very happy.
8 comments:
How exciting!
Oh, what a feeling! COngratulations and I can't wait to see it in the book stores and put them on top of all the other books.
GLen
Thank you Becky and Glen-
Things keep getting better and better. My editor just e-mailed me a starred review from Booklist.
I'm starting to think the merry month of May may be very merry indeed!
Wow! I can not wait to get my hardback copy. My ARC has been passed around to almost everyone in my department and to some of my teen advisory group.
I also can't wait to get my hardback signed in June! Yay!
Dawn
PS- You photo is beautiful!
How great to see that you are doing so well! I'm definitely going to buy these two books! Years ago I took a course on how to write for children and you were my mentor. (I remember you had gotten stuck on the GW Bridge!)
Anyway, you had to drop out because you were so busy and I got a full-time high school teaching position about the same time so I never finished the course. I also realized that I just love writing poetry more than anything else, so, at least that course was good for something!
Congratulations on your new book!
Hi Dawn and welcome Linda Jacobs-
I'm eager for d&g to show up someplace besides my front door (not that I wasn't thrilled to find it there). It looks so spectacular, themactically the same as LAWKI, yet with such a different, and equally striking, look.
When I showed it to my mother yesterday, she was particularly impressed with the embossing. Nothing like a tactile book jacket.
I wish I could write poetry. Over the past couple of years, I've developed a taste for reading it. I've been buying the poetry page a day calendar, and on days when it doesn't have a poem, I substitute a poem a day book I keep by its side.
But I have no ability to write poetry. I think you need a good vocabulary, a strong visual sense, and an innate sense of rhythm to be a good poet, and oddly enough, I have none of those things.
Good thing I have a cuddly disposition and money for a calendar!
Over here in Ireland, in the UK edition, the sample from LAWKI runs from when Miranda wakes up to find her family sick, to when she sits down and thinks 'We're a family. We've been scared together and happy together. If this is the end, so be it...only please don't let me be the last to die.' Paraphrased. I really love d and g, but I was afraid to get into elevators for a few days after reading it...
Hi Wild-force71-
It's fun that the American and UK versions are somewhat different. Well, fun for me at any rate.
One interesting thing about the US version of d&g is that on the copyright page, it lists the UK version as the first edition, and the Harcourt one as first American edition. I think that's really very honest and honorable of Harcourt.
I spent the past few days rereading d&g in bits and pieces, and every time a character got on the elevator, I worried. And I knew how it turned out in the end!
Post a Comment