Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Bad News/Good News

The bad news is since I made that resolution not to complain, I won't be able to complain when I have to do rewrites on The Shade Of The Moon.

The good news is I'll have to do rewrites on The Shade Of The Moon because Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has accepted it for publication!!!

I don't have a publication date yet, having only gotten the acceptance email a couple of hours ago, but until I hear otherwise I'm going to assume it will come out in the fall of 2013. Which is really hardly more than a year from now.

However, a year is a long long time to leave all of you in the middle of a sentence, so I'm going to put the rest of Chapter 1 in this entry. It's a long chapter, and will probably take you a year to read, so that should work out just fine.

First though, I'll put the links to entries where I put arbitrary pages of manuscript. After you finish reading Chapter One In Its Entirety, you might want to read the pages, since you'll be more familiar with the characters and situation.

Okay. Here's link one and link two. I'm too lazy to see which order they should be read in.

Now here's the link for the beginning of Chapter One.

Here's the rest of Chapter One. I hope you'll enjoy it. If you don't, well, if I can't complain, neither can you!



30 comments:

Jordan G. said...

I'm doing a joy dance!

Becky said...

That is such great news!!! I'm so excited!!!

Lisa-Marie Jordan said...

Woo! Congrats on the great news! Have fund with the rewrites!

Emily said...

Thanks! I'm so hecka excited to read the rest!

Jen Robinson said...

I think that's great news!

Anonymous said...

Congrats!!!!!!!!!

-another Susan

Abigail said...

Can't wait to read it!!

Margaret said...

For us fans and readers, it’s good news/good news! Well, the only bad part is having to wait over a year. But we know it will be worth it!

Fear Death By Water said...

BEST. NEWS. EVER. Can't wait to read it. WOOOOOOO!

Heather said...

Congratulations!! I'm thrilled to hear there will be a fourth book!

Mr. Cavin said...

Spectacular. Congratulations to us all. Now my remaining favorite characters are in mortal danger of death and sadness again. Woo hoo.

Anonymous said...

I know, here I go again...but what I read has my curiosity machine once more kicking into high gear.

Are the greenhouses limited to the "safe" town? Is it illegal for one to be in the so-called "coolie" town?

Do the "coolie" towns only seek medical help when they absolutely need it, and go to nontraditional "healers" instead? I'm thinking about the possibility that people who've been living "off the grid" decades before the meteor was even an idea, and familiar with nontraditional medicine, might be setting up secret places in the "coolie" towns to try to help them.

Jon has matured into a high-class brat, hasn't he?

Anonymous Santa Fe

Susan Beth Pfeffer said...

Hello and thank you to Jordan G. and Becky and Lisa-Marie Jordan and Emily and Jen Robinson and Another (and far better) Susan and Abigail and Margaret and Fear Death By Water and Heather and Mr. Cavin and Anonymous Santa Fe-

I remain delighted by the news, and committed to not complaining when I have to do rewrites.

Okay, not complaining too much!

Morgaine said...

Congrats! I am super super excited! And thanks for letting us read the rest of the chapter!!

Crystal M Billings said...

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I AM SO HAPPY!!! Although I really should not have read you have posted from the book because now I really really really really want to read the rest of it!

Linda Jacobs said...

YAY! Jumping up and down. Thanks for the rest of chapter 1, too.

Rebecca Gomez said...

Yay! I can't wait to read your book in its entirety!

Bridget Higdon said...

Wow! Such awesome news! Iam so excited! Congratulations Susan!

Susan Beth Pfeffer said...

Hello and thank you and have a good weekend to Morgaine and Crystal M. Billings and Linda Jacobs and Rebecca and tigerlily*!

Paige Y. said...

Congratulations! I'm thrilled for you -- there is absolutely no bad news here (although I suspect I would hate rewrites too).

Anonymous said...

Congrats. I'm so excited.

Susan Beth Pfeffer said...

Thank you Paige Y. and Ashna!

Unknown said...

I'm completely ecstatic over the fourth moon book!! Yay!!

Susan Beth Pfeffer said...

Thanks Sarah mayer!

Pascaline said...

Oh my god, I'm so happy. Can't wait to read it !

Susan said...

Yay, yay, yay, yay! Terrific news. Can't wait to read the 4th book.

Susan Beth Pfeffer said...

Many thanks Pascaline and (fellow) Susan!

Pascaline said...

I hope that the French publisher will not wait too long to publish

Susan Beth Pfeffer said...

Bonjour Pascaline-

I hope the French publisher will publish the book!

Pat P said...

This cheered me up immensely. The other posts that contained little tidbits of the fourth book also cheered me.

I do have two questions though:

I read about Alex leaving in the first part of ch1 but in this part he seems to be with Miranda. Was this because you changed the history between then and now, or because there were come complications that caused him to come back?

Also, I must admit that I originally had very little hope in safe towns. I imagined somewhere relying on the reserves the government could put together; fuel for the generators or perhaps a couple of wind turbines of their own, limited staff and everyone still has to work, except they got protection and 3 meals of canned food a day.

Then I thought about it more, and decided that, with the moon unfixable, life would probably always be gray for the next ten or so years. Volcanic activity would die down because there's not as much pressure in the mantle, but otherwise the ash would take a long time to settle. Before that happens, mushrooms would be humanity's salvation, because it doesn't require much light to grow, and volcanic ash soil is very rich in minerals. Once the ash died down though, rejoice! Because there would be great bountiful harvests once the sun comes back.

It never occurred to me to think that botanists and plant biologists and geneticists could be able to produce plants that could grow in this dark condition. I'd be very interested to see the science behind it if you do include it in your book! My guess is on them being able to produce enough electricity to light the greenhouses in supplement to the weak sunlight.

Also, are there government systems as of now? The president is probably still alive (much to Mom's chagrin, no doubt), but I can't really see him having much influence since each enclave seems (from the snippets so far) to have their own board and government systems, and are all training new generation leaders.