Release Day!!

In the Arms of Stone Angels officially releases today. This is always exciting for me. I've already turned in book #2, a standalone YA story, but with the launch of my first YA, it brings back good memories of brainstorming this book with my niece who is an avid reader. I flew her to Oklahoma where I was living at the time and we spent a long weekend, eating sushi and chatting about White Bird and Brenna. And she helped me come up with the faces of each character using the modelmayhem site. Plus we went to the small town in OK that I pictured my fictitious Shawano to look like and we took photos.

I'm not a plotter, so getting me to talk about a book before it's written is not easy. But I wanted to show my niece the process of researching and putting a book together, hoping she'd want to do it sometime too. I still hope she does. She's got the smarts and the storytelling ability to make that happen. We'll see.

I'm celebrating release day with her. And yes, we're having sushi. Brain food.

New Book Trailer & Foreign Rights Pending

This week I received the latest book trailer for my first YA novel - In the Arms of Stone Angels (Apr 2011, Harlequin Teen). Trailer to the Stars did the promotional piece and I was so excited, I had to share it. Hope you like it.

I also just heard from my editor that foreign rights are pending for a few countries. Can't wait to share that news with you, too. More later.

The House of Night Vampyre Series

Late last year I was asked to participate in writing an essay for the House of Night series anthology. The House of Night is a vampyre series created by the wonderful mother daughter team of P. C. Cast and her daughter Kristen. Since my first YA book – In the Arms of Stone Angels – has an American Indian teen boy as a central character (and focuses on the Euchee tribe of Oklahoma), I chose to write about the Native American influences in the series—in particular, the Cherokee.

My essay in this book is called “The Magic of Being Cherokee.” This series from the Casts is rich in Cherokee folklore and creatively twists real myths to build on the growing tension as the series progresses with its memorable heroine, Zoey Redbird. And the anthology will have wonderful essays on many other topics to enrich the reading experience, so fans of these novels can uncover the many gems hidden within the pages of this hugely popular vampyre series.

And with permission of the publisher, I am posting the beautiful and mysterious looking cover to Nyx in the House of Night. This cover almost makes it look as if this is a magic book of spells. I can’t wait to have the real deal in my hands.