New Cover and New Story!

New Cover Available 5.14.13

 Hi all!  I have two super exciting bits of news to share!  The first is that The Forest of Hands and Teeth is getting a new cover!  I have to admit that one of the really fun (though sometimes terrifying) parts of being an author is seeing a cover for the first time.  It's just always so fascinating to see your book through someone else's eyes.  And I've been really lucky to have had really amazing covers so far!  I love the direction they've taken with this latest one -- it feels a little darker than the other two, a bit more like a zombie story :)

My understanding is that this new cover will be available on May 14, 2013 but unfortunately I don't know what that means in terms of availability (i.e. when stores will start carrying it rather than the older cover).  As I find out more, I'll make sure to post any updates on my twitter feed!

The second exciting bits of news is that to celebrate the new cover, I've written a new original short story set in the Forest of Hands and Teeth world!  Similar to Hare Moon, this short story, What Once We Feared, will only be available in digital formats and you can get it anywhere ebooks are sold: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books a Million | Google [I'll add more links as they become available - some sites don't have a way to pre-order digital works].

eOriginal Story available 5.14.13

What Once We Feared is a story set right at the moment the Return (aka zombie apocalypse) hits and follows a group of teens trying to survive.  Here's the flap copy:

When the zombie apocalypse hits and the dead begin to rise, Jonah and his friends are on a class field trip downtown.  Panicked, they make a split-second decision to seek shelter in the Overlook, an apartment complex built like a fortress on the edge of town.  But as they begin to face the realities of what it will take to survive, they realize that while making the decision of where to run was easy, living out the consequences of that decision may be impossible.  From Carrie Ryan, the New York Times bestselling author of the Forest of Hands and Teeth books, What Once We Feared is an original digital short story about facing a world that is forever changed and in which survival means more than merely escaping the undead.

This is a story several years in the making!  I've mentioned it before, but I spent most of my life avoiding scary movies and it wasn't until I was a second year law student and had just started dating my now-husband, JP, that I saw my first zombie movie (I still have no idea how he talked me into it!).  The movie was the Dawn of the Dead remake and it pretty much sparked my obsession with zombies.

But even then, that obsession was more of a joke between JP and me.  More than anything, it was a really fun thought experiment in world-building: how would you survive? Where would you go? What would happen to the world?  The release of Max Brooks's Zombie Survival Guide only helped to feed my interest, which was also sustained by a diet of any zombie book, movie, or graphic novel I could find.

One of my favorite things to do is to make up stories when I'm on the edge of sleep -- for as long as I can remember, this is how I've put myself to bed at night.  Often, after Dawn of the Dead, the stories I'd make up would be about surviving the zombie apocalypse.  When I lived in Durham, NC, I thought about how I'd fortify the apartment and so naturally, when I moved to Charlotte after law school I had similar thoughts about the new apartment.

And that's the inspiration for What Once We Feared: trying to survive the zombie apocalypse in that apartment.  How to fortify it, how to stock up provisions, how to keep safe, etc.

I loved writing the Forest of Hands and Teeth trilogy because I enjoyed figuring out what our world would look like hundreds of years after the zombie apocalypse.  What happens when the zombies become an every day part of life?  But at the same time, I've always loved reading about survival during and after a disaster itself -- how characters cope when every aspect of their normal lives is shattered.

So I wanted to write a story that took place during that time -- from the first signs of the zombie outbreak.  One of the aspects of the Dawn of the Dead remake I love so much is the immediacy of survival that leads to the relief of safety that then turns into the realization of what it will take to survive long term.  What makes something like a zombie apocalypse so terrifying is that you're forced to make quick decisions and then you have to live with those decisions.  For example, you can live a long time in a mall with a horde of zombies outside, but you can't live there forever.  What looks like a brilliant decision at the time may end up being a terrible decision long term.

That's what I wanted to write about in What Once We Feared: the decisions we make -- that we're forced to make -- under extreme pressure and the fallout of those decisions.  But also, I just really love zombies and I wanted to write about running away from them, fighting them off, and getting to safety.  Those are always some of my favorite parts of any zombie story :)

So yeah -- What Once We Feared: the zombie apocalypse, a group of friends, and an apartment complex.  Who will survive?  The story is 7500 words and will be available May 14, 2013!

New Middle Grade Deal Announcement!

I have super exciting news!! My husband and I sold a four book Middle Grade series to Kate Sullivan at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. HUGE SQUEE!!! Though it may change, right now the series is called THE PIRATE STREAM and the first book, which should come out fall 2014, is titled THE MAP TO EVERYWHERE. 

Insert many many more SQUEEs!!

Here's the official announcement from Publishers Weekly:

LBYR Wins Ryan & Davis’s ‘Map’
Winning a four-way auction, Kate Sullivan at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers bought North American rights to the new series by Carrie Ryan and JP Davis, the Pirate Stream. Ryan is an established author (who’s written, among other things, the series the Forest of Hands and Teeth), and Davis, her husband, is a published short story writer who works as a public defender. The series is a quartet, and LBYR acquired all four titles. It follows two children who wind up on a boat, as stowaways, traveling between two worlds. The pair is hunting for a map that can lead them away from their predicament. Merrilee Heifetz at Writers House represented the authors; the first book in the series, The Map to Everywhere, is planned for fall 2014.

And here's the official announcement from Publishers Marketplace:

Carrie Ryan and husband John Parke Davis's middle grade series, about a girl from our world who must join forces with a boy from a magical seaside world to save their families by navigating among pirates, sorcerers and children who can fly, to Kate Sullivan at Little, Brown Children's, at auction, by Merrilee Heifetz at Writers House.  

Rights also to Orion in the UK, in a pre-empt; Fischer in Germany, at auction; Mondadori in Italy, in a pre-empt; Modan at Israel, in a pre-empt; Bayard in France, at auction; AST at Russia; 21st Century in China; and Mondadori at Spain.

And here's a link to the press release our UK publisher, Orion Children's Books, put out about the deal saying,

ORION CHILDREN'S BOOKS ACQUIRES THE PIRATE STREAM: THE MAP TO EVERYWHERE From Acclaimed Author, Carrie Ryan, and John Parke Davis:  In a deal for UK and Commonwealth rights, Amber Caravéo, Editorial Director, Orion Children’s Books has acquired THE PIRATE STREAM, an exciting new adventure series for readers aged 9-12 years from the acclaimed author Carrie Ryan (THE FOREST OF HANDS AND TEETH) and John Parke Davis, from Angharad Kowal at Writers House UK on behalf of Merrilee Heifetz at Writers House US.

The authors brainstorming

JP and I are *beyond* thrilled with all of this!  It's been a complete dream come true and we both owe our agent, Merrilee Heifetz at Writers House, a massively huge thanks.  She's been amazing to work with, as has Angharad Kowal (who handled the UK subrights) and Cecilia de la Campa (who has been handling the our translation subrights).  They're such a fantastic team!

Whenever anyone hears that my husband and I are co-writing a book, they usually give us that "are you sure that's a good idea?" look.  Which I totally understand - lol!  I've always been a huge admirer of JP's writing and he's always been involved in my books from brainstorming to reading draft after draft.    

But even so, when we made the transition from "this middle grade is a fun idea to talk about on long walks" to "hey, maybe we should actually try to write this" I think we both still felt a bit of trepidation.  Would we be able to work together?

The answer has been a resounding yes.  I've *loved* working with JP!  It's always so much fun to read his pages to see where he's taken an idea or a character or a voice.  We've spent hours playing in this world, asking each other "what if?" and feeding off each other's ideas.  The whole process has just been *fun* and I can't wait until the book is out in the world!  MORE SQUEEE!!!!

Unfortunately, that will still be a while - lol.  Until then, I'll leave you with the first line from our synopsis:

This is what the old books say about the Pirate Stream: Nothing.