Picture Day!

Yes, I recognize y'all are due for a longer post about ARCs, etc., but my family has been asking for photos so it is photos I shall post! Yesterday I went to get my picture taken for the book and while I don't have any of the official photos yet (and won't for a few weeks), I did take a few with my own camera. So here they are!

It was an interesting day -- the air conditioning in the photography studio broke and it was ninety degrees inside when we showed up. Thankfully another photographer owed my photographer a favor and she let us use her studio. She even helped out! So we were our own little posse traipsing down the street taking pictures wherever seemed cool -- railroad tracks, fences, broken down sheds. Even with all the delays I think we timed it right because even I (not a photographer and knowing little about it) recognized how cool the light was at the end of the day. And my photographer seemed pretty excited about it too! he was really fantastic, made me feel like a supah-star! I knew watching ever season of America's Next Top Model would work out in my favor one day!!

For some reason, more than anything else since selling the book, getting the picture taken has been a stresser. I think I finally figured out that it's the permanence of it -- this is the picture that will go on the cover. This is the picture that readers will associate with me, that will say "This is Carrie Ryan, author of The Forest of Hands and Teeth." And while I doubt people really care about the author photo, it's still a matter of figuring out what you want to convey. My book is dark, I'm generally upbeat -- how do you reconcile that in a picture?

So I just took my dust jacket with me, showed the photographer where the picture would be going. He was very excited about the idea of post-apocalypse and zombies and he ran with it. He really got into it which I loved.

Fingers crossed the pictures turn out!