The Countdown Begins! - and another teaser!

It is now officially one month until Dreaming Anastasia release day! Yup - 9/1/09 is now one month away. This journey of many months is winnowed down to one. uno. ::feels heart rate increase to a more rapid pitter patter in chest::

To celebrate, I'll be doing more teaser posts each week, starting with one tomorrow about Baba Yaga, who happens to be the wonderful Russian folklore witch who plays a large role in DA. I may be throwing a contest or two. There is a growing number of wonderful bloggers out there who will be hosting interviews and contests of their own. (And if you would like to be one of them, please let me know here or at joy@joypreble.com because the excitement and support I've been getting from YOU gentle readers has made me giddy and at sentimental moments like today, even tearful with appreciation. Maybe I can even send a bookmark or two your way. The Sourcebooks folks are excellent at the making of the bookmarks)

(Or as the voice in my head tells me about every hour, I hope you are not f-ing disappointed! Because that would certainly not be my intention. And seriously - Ethan is hot. Dreamy, even. Okay, sometimes he's a little clueless. But that is part of his hottie charm.)

But first, this: (warning: sentimental slop a'coming. I am quickly becoming a slighty crazy pile of emotional goo, possibly because last night husband and I went on an actual date, wherein we saw 500 Days of Summer (2 thumbs up) and ate a vat of popcorn and shared a Diet Coke)

If you have a dream, keep dreaming it. You are never too young or too old to achieve your dreams.

I had this one. To be a real live published author. (Okay, I actually already have some small stuff out there for which I've even been paid - in American dollars even -but not a book. A real book!) Some days I have had doubts. This is normal, I know. On my best days, I have thought, okay, patience. Keep working. It will happen. On my worst days, I have thought, crap! This is never going to happen. I am no longer the child prodigy I used to be. (Okay, I was never a prodigy. Even if I did write that Thanksgiving play back in the second grade) I should have begun composing sonnets in the womb or something. I've been a slacker. I should have done this at nineteen instead of futzing around with spectacularly bad choices involving tequila and rebound boyfriends. But I didn't. And maybe my work is better for it. Maybe it isn't. And yes, okay, you will hopefully in another book I hope to some day be able to tell you about see the benefit of me having spent fallow, wasted years doing things like riding on the football player mom's float at Homecoming. In Texas. Wearing a tiara. And a red boa. And the overriding feeling that while tossing candy to strangers is fun, I really need to get back to writing that damn novel.

Only now I did. And it's a grand little thing, filled with adventure and romance and magic and a crazy witch and a girl who thought her life was ordinary until one day she discovers that she's not quite so ordinary at all, and another girl who's a princess and who had everything - until she didn't and until she made some choices that have taken her somewhere frightening and awful, and a guy who has thought he was doing the right thing, but discovers that maybe he wasn't and who falls for a certain girl along the way. It is a story of choices and blood and love and passion and crushes, and the scary things we sometimes have to do to try to make things right. It is the story of hidden things that eventually come to the surface.

And so today, although I initially didn't plan a spoiler/teaser, I'll leave you with one anyway because I'm so full of possibility and crazy expectation, just like Anne is in this scene. A tiny tidbit of what happens when Anne realizes that someone (Ethan it turns out) is watching her at the ballet:

"But the thing is, he's still watching me. Okay make that openly staring. And even from here, I can see that his eyes are this fierce, startling blue.

I stare back. He's not flirting. But he's not dropping his gaze, either. And for a second, it feels a little more dangerous than flirting. More like crazy reckless."

Til next time...