The Forest of Hands and Teeth Paperback - out now!!

I'm so SO excited about today! It's the day that The Forest of Hands and Teeth comes out in paperback! With the pretty cover (which is very pet-worthy if you ask me - seriously, when you see it in the stores pick it up and pet the cover (and if you do that and happen to snap a photo, send it to me and I'll post it and mail you bookmarks & stickers :))

And yes, I totally plan to make the rounds today to check out (and possibly pet but definitely sign) copies in my area. I will also post pictures (prob on twitter).

I wanted to say thanks to everyone who has cheered me on over the past year. I've been incredibly humbled by the overwhelming support from bloggers, readers, family, friends and even strangers. Thank you for buying my book or checking it out from the library or passing a copy on to a friend. Thanks for reading and taking the time to post your thoughts. Just thank you for everything!!

Oddly, I was out of the country last year when the hardcover came out and this morning JP had to leave the country for work. I'll be on tour when The Dead-Tossed Waves releases... I wonder if we'll ever get to be in the same place to celebrate!

Teaser Tuesday: The Dead-Tossed Waves reviews & blurbs

I honestly can't believe that the paperback release of The Forest of Hands and Teeth is a week away. A WEEK! Yesterday my UPS man stopped by with two boxes of them! This is on top of Friday when he dropped off a case of the FHT re-jacketed hardcover and the day earlier in the week when he dropped off a case of FHT with the old cover! I'm swimming in them (and am natch planning a contest)!

In second book news, reviews of The Dead-Tossed Waves have started coming in. This is that point in the process where I tend to open official emails with only one eye open, a little scared of what will be inside. Thankfully so far everything's been great! Here are a few things people have been saying:

"Proving once again why she is one of the most gifted voices in modern YA, Carrie Ryan threads life, love, and subtle beauty throughout a monstrous, post-apocalyptic world."

- Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl, bestselling authors of Beautiful Creatures

"The Dead-Tossed Waves was even more engrossing than The Forest of Hands and Teeth. Beautiful, romantic, horrifying and heart-breaking."

-Jennifer Lynn Barnes, author of Raised by Wolves, Tattoo, Golden, Fate and more!

"The second book in Ryan's zombie series moves the story ahead in some surprising ways as it introduces compelling characters. Readers will be up late with this one, turning pages and biting their nails."

-Romantic Times

"Fast-paced... [The Dead-Tossed Waves] will be gobbled up by fans of the first volume like brains."

-Kirkus Reviews (yes, they came back from the dead to give me that review)

YAY! Now I'm off to finish working on the third book in the series!

Guilt.

Recently I blogged about words.  I talked about how writer's write and said:

Writer's write.  Writers may also blog, tweet, critique, whine (I'm a fan of that), outline, vlog, etc., but they all write.  Or should write (and that's a topic for another blog as well).

And since I promised to write another blog dealing with the "should write" part, I thought I'd go ahead and talk about that today.  Up until a year ago, I was working full time while I was also writing.  I've mentioned before that this often takes some sacrifices: I used to watch TV every night and now I don't, I used to cook dinner (or JP did) and now we don't that often.  I used to have free time and gave up most of that as well.

I also spent a whole lot of time feeling guilty for NOT writing.  My logic was this: if writer's write and I want to be a writer but I'm not writing, that must mean I don't want to be a writer after all.  Writing became a lot like exercise: I know I like it once I start doing it, I know I feel amazing afterward, but it's often really hard to motivate when LIFE gets in the way.

One of the anecdotes I tell when asked about finding time to write is that I wrote a chunk of The Forest of Hands and Teeth when I was also prepping for a trial and working crazy hours.  There were nights I'd come home and set the water to boil and write during the eight minutes that it took to make mac'n'cheese.  What I don't mention are the weeks when I wrote nothing because of work, because of life, because I didn't know what happened next or just because I plain old wasn't writing.

Free time became so valuable to me then (because I had so little of it to myself) that I hated spending my precious little bit stressed out about something I felt I *should* have been doing, like writing (or cleaning, or cooking, or weeding, or reading, or talking with my family).  And I finally realized something: if I'm not going to write, I'm going to own that decision.

I decided I was done with guilt.

I decided something else: not writing doesn't mean you can't or don't want to be a writer, it just means that maybe something else is taking precedence right now.  Life isn't easy and it's certainly not easy to balance and juggle all the various parts of it.  Sometimes you have to put all your energy into your day job or your family or whatever else and sometimes you need to come home after a long day and veg on the couch and let your brain recover.

There's a difference between passively deciding not to write (i.e. just not deciding to make time for it, not analyzing your priorities, just not getting around to it) and actively deciding not to write (realizing that now may not be the best time to fit an additional "should" in your life.)  And if you make an active decision not to write, then own that decision.  Enjoy the time you save and don't feel guilty for it.

Teaser Tuesday: The Dead-Tossed Waves tour

Hey Y'all! It's Tuesday and I'm back to share more about the upcoming release of The Dead-Tossed Waves. Yesterday I was THRILLED to get an actual real got-to-hold-it-in-my-hands copy of the book. SQUEE!! Here's a picture of my cat no looking nearly as thrilled as I was:

And yes! That's a picture of both the hardcover of DTW *and* the rejacketed hardcover of The Forest of Hands and Teeth. So if you ever wanted a copy of FHT with the old jacket, now's the time to snag it from the store if you find it. From what I've been told, all the copies left in the warehouse are now bearing this new cover! Yay!

I also got word last week that I'll officially be touring for DTW in March (!!!) and here's where I think I'll be going so far (this could, of course, change as we get closer): Baltimore + DC, NYC (and area), Chicago, Detroit + Lansing, Seattle, San Francisco. I'm also trying to set something up in Atlanta and of course my hometowns Charlotte & Greenville :)

I'll add details as I get them - so excited!!!

Words.

Sometimes coming up with a first line for a blog (after taking way too long of a hiatus) is just as hard as coming up with a first line for a book!  So I'm just going to jump right in :)  A few times this year, someone's asked me what advice I have for writers.  I actually love this question because I love to see how OTHER people answer it.  I'm constantly wanting to change my answer and offer caveats because there are no rules in writing and to ever talk in absolutes in the writing world can often get you in trouble (there is always an exception to every rule but that's for another blog).

But there is one absolute rule that I have: if you want to be a writer, you have to write.  Not every day, not every month but at the end of the day/week/month/year/decade, you should have more words on the paper than you did at the start.

Writer's write.  Writers may also blog, tweet, critique, whine (I'm a fan of that), outline, vlog, etc., but they all write.  Or should write (and that's a topic for another blog as well).

As some of you who've been around my blog for a while might remember, back in 2006 I started on what I called the Ten Year Plan.  It was a pretty basic plan: I would write and seek publication for 10 years without quitting.  If I didn't make it in ten years, then I could re-evaluate.  Really, it was my way of dedicating myself to the task of seeking publication and giving myself enough time to really truly see if I could do it.  Also, I was hoping that if I said I had to do it for 10 years that I wouldn't wuss out when I got rejected or thought it was too hard.

At the end of that first year, I counted up the words I'd written that year: 171,701 (you can see the post here - the project without a name that I mentioned is The Forest of Hands and Teeth).

I could probably go back and tally how many words I've written in the years since then (and might once I'm out from under this deadline) but after re-reading that post I became curious about how many words I'd written in 2009.  Here's my tally (and they're rough cause I failed to keep a proper log this year and can only look at the documents I have):

The Dead-Tossed Waves: (first draft written in 2008 but about 50,000 words added in edits in 2009)

Untitled Book Three in Untitled Series:  85,000
Short Story 1: 10,500
Short Story 2: 5,100
Other Short Story starts: 3,500
Cut Files: 190,000
Other Projects: 4,000

TOTAL WORDS IN 2009:  348,100

And yes, looking at the sheer size of my cut files (which I always name "errata and lost words") makes me a little sick to my stomach (okay, a lot sick to my stomach).  Also, I find it REALLY interesting that my output of words is about double what it was in 2006 - I'm not sure I ever would thought that to be the case.

So what do I have to show for those words?  The Dead-Tossed Waves will be out March 9, 2010 and those two short stories should be out in the fall of 2010.  The Untitled Book Three in Untitled Series will be out in Spring 2011.

I never wrote down my goals for 2009 so I'm not sure what I was expecting to accomplish, but I'm pretty darn happy with what I ended up with!  Speaking of goals, I guess I should start thinking of those for 2010... hmmm....

Countdown to the FHT paperback release!

Yes, this is what I do when I'm avoiding other things :)  It makes me feel productive while also tapping into my laziness.  Anyway, I thought I'd post this here -- I had no idea there were that few days until the paperback of The Forest of Hands and Teeth releases - ack!  I happen to have a copy of the paperback in my hands right now and it's so gorgeous that I've found myself staring at it quite often (another form of procrastination).  I'll post pics this week!

Also... I've heard some people say that these kind of sprout thingies (look at that fine tech lingo there) slows down pages and gets annoying.  If that's the case, just let me know and I'll take this down soas not to slow down my blog loading.

So here you go!

Random things I sometimes wonder...

What if the The Forest of Hands and Teeth weren't woods full of zombies? What if, instead, The Forest of Hands and Teeth were an accessory shop? How creepy would that be?

What would it have? Fake Fangs? Nail extensions?