And Now I Can Finally Announce the Dreaming Anastasia Trilogy

Yup! It's official! Beyond my wildest hopes, dreams, and expectations, there is going to be a third Dreaming Anastasia book. I am elated. Thrilled. Overjoyed. Humbled. And absolutely delighted.

Here's the PM announcement, up today:

Joy Preble's AGAIN AND AGAIN, the final book in the DREAMING ANASTASIA series, in which Anne, having survived Baba Yaga's forest twice, finds herself bound by the witch to undertake a journey into past, present, and future that will determine her destiny - and that of everyone she loves, to Leah Hultenschmidt at Sourcebooks, for publication in Spring 2012, by Jennifer Rofe at the Andrea Brown Literary Agency (World). jennifer@andreabrownlit.com

I'm going to pinch myself now to make sure I'm not dreaming. But the intrepid Agent Jen says it's really really true.

Til next time...

Mickey Waffles and other NCTE highlights

NCTE rocked! I hope to be able to participate in this conference each year for a long time to come. Thank you to all the English teachers and teachers in training who came to my signing at the Sourcebooks booth and who came to our panel. I have huge love for our topic: "The Other Happily Ever After: Empowering Readers Through a Re-tooling of the Female Hero Journey" Our roundtable conversations wandered far and wide: Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights and Macbeth and Beowulf and Wide Sargasso Sea and Scarlet Letter and Twilight and Hunger Games and all the other wonderful YA out there with female heroes. We argued and talked and chewed on the female journey and literary works vs commercial and how marketing often dilutes the journey for the romance (ie - Team Peeta vs. Team Gale) and generally reminded ourselves of how all of us - teachers, writers, readers - need to be conscious of the subtext. It was heavenly to spend 90 plus minutes in this academic setting. (Okay being at Disney World didn't hurt, either) And yay to conference goers who are also bloggers and Twitter followers who introduced themselves to me! Windowpane Memoir, Angela from Dark Faerie Tale, Jennie Smith...

So thank you to NCTE. And thank you to my co-panelists: Janet Fox, Sydney Salter, Rosanne Parry, Danielle Joseph, Jen Dutton, (who asked our waiter Ismael at breakfast, "Do you tell people 'Call me Ishmael" in an impressively literary reference to Moby Dick) Lauren Bjorkman, Cheryl Renee Herbsman, Edie Hemingway. They are fabulous authors and humans. And great company for safaris and dinners and a late show of HP. And to Suzanne Morgan Williams - on another panel but still taking time to come support us - may you live long and prosper, my dear!

And so a little photo show. Check out me and Sarwat Chadda (Devil's Kiss. Dark Goddess) who came to say hi and get a Haunted arc! I am such a fan girl. Luckily my gaping jaw and babbling fangirly words did not deter this delightful bloke.

After dinner at Animal Kingdom Lodge: Suzy Williams, Janet Fox, Sydney Salter, me, Rosanne Parry


Thank you Waiter Ismael at Maya Grill for letting me order my Mickey Waffles off the kid's menu. Plus bacon! And Mickey's head in the butter.

Yes! Me and Sarwat Chadda - who also writes about Baba Yaga and the Romanovs and other wonderful stuff

Signing HAUNTED arcs at the Sourcebooks booth. Thank you Kay and Melissa for all your support

And the rest of the pics are: My sign at the Sourcebooks booth, me and my Mickey icecream bar, and me and Janet Fox with the bug from It's a Bug's Life at Animal Kingdom.

And the Winner of the Haunted arc is

Zoe.Bestel!!!!

Yes, Zoe, it is you. I shook the entries, plunged my hand into the contest hat and magic eight ball says... Zoe!!

Now let me say, the contest hat was a bit flummoxed this time. So many amazing entries. So many wonderful things that all of you are thankful and grateful for. I am not joking when I say that I teared up any number of times.

But go back to the contest post and read Zoe's entry. Then click on her profile and read her blog. Zoe is one fabulously articulate girl. I hope the ARC of HAUNTED finds her in her house in the "middle of nowhere." In Scotland!

Zoe needs to email me her address at joy at joypreble dot com

And if you're in Orlando/NCTE10 this weekend, I'm signing at the Sourcebooks booth at 2PM on Saturday. Perhaps you can snag a copy then.

A good weekend to one and all.

HAUNTED arc giveaway contest

Yes, it's time! A beautiful advanced reading copy of HAUNTED, the sequel to Dreaming Anastasia, waiting for someone to win!!

First, the backstory:

Getting to write HAUNTED is something for which I'm profoundly grateful. Getting to finish HAUNTED and see it turned into a book inspires even more gratitude on my part. Cause as many of you know - in between the publication of DA and now, I got bitten in the ass by Mr. Thyroid Cancer and the fact that I am sitting here typing this and currently cancer free is its own little miracle. Not to go all Oprah on you guys or anything, but if you find yourself as I have, in a two year period in which you go through three different editors, two agents, your son gets engaged, you find out you have cancer, have a huge surgery and come out able to heal and then find out that you get to finish your second book with the most loveable editoral team on the planet (including Kelly Barrales-Saylor who, Lord love her, actually answered my hysterical text one nite at 11 PM when we discovered that 13 pages of text had gone awol during copy edits) and still find yourself able to write some more, plus everything else that goes on in a person's life, you come out on the other end very very grateful.

And yes, I know that things can go the other way in a blink of an eye. Thus the gratitude. You get what you get and you better be sharp eyed or you'll miss the good stuff.

Thus this contest:

Here's the 411 on what to do:

1. Post a comment and tell the world something for which you are fabulously grateful/thankful.

2. If you are not already, become a follower of this blog.

3. Extra bonus points for becoming a Twitter follower of @joypreble

Contest closes this coming Thursday 11/18 at midnight CST. On Friday I will pull an entry out of the contest hat and announce the winner!

(yes, contest is international this time!)

HAUNTED: More Anne and Ethan. More Baba Yaga. Secrets unleashed. Lots of peril. A love triangle! A new boyfriend named Ben Logan. More Viktor. And a bunch of creepy, malevolent Russian mermaids called rusalkas. You. are. going. to. love. it!!

Yes, this is the ultimate Thanksgiving giveaway. What better time for it?

Six for Saturday. Possibly Seven. Let's See

Yes, I am getting just that uncreative with the titles. But desperate times call for desperate measures. The WIP is getting revised yet again. I've dug into another super secret project as well. Stuff to grade. Belated outing for husband's b day tonight. Mental packing for NCTE. And a bunch of other really cool stuff I can't tell you about. Plus that upcoming HAUNTED arc giveaway, coming soon too. And the day job. Let's not forget that. Just started Macbeth. "Out out damn spot."

And so...

1. My new editor Leah Hultenschmidt is one cool chick. And she is coming here to Houston SCBWI on April 9th to speak!! Somehow Leah is balancing being senior acquisitions editor for not only the Sourcebooks Fire YA imprint but also the Casablance romance line. I need to ask her if she sleeps. I'm sensing the answer is no.
2. The new back cover copy for HAUNTED looks so spiffy I about peed my pants.
3. The great thing about going to NCTE this year is that a. it's in Disney World and b. I get to be there with all my fellow unrepentent geeks and so when I say things like "Who wants to go to Animal Kingdom" or "Who wants to go to the movies one night and see the new HP?" I get lots of takers. Yay! I am just bummed that I won't have time to get to Universal for HP experience. Another time.
4. Am totally and completely miffed at ABC Family for removing Friday Night Lights reruns from its late afternoon line up. Seriously? You guys showed one season and then poof it's gone? Whywhywhy? This was my 5 PM treat while I was tearing around the house trying to create some semblance of order, dinner, life. Sigh...
5. I love agent Jen this week. I was having one of those mental apocalypses. You know the kind - where you decide that you are just too stupid to do what you have to do and you also had to sit in workshops on Moodles and Prezzis and the new planning software called Forethought (for which you have another not so school appropriate name) and a committee that you weren't on created a late work policy that is so complicated that you wonder what the hell they were thinking - and you imagine yourself running away to a desert island only you can't afford to... And eventually you solve your problem yourself and email her and she emails back and tells you, "I wasn't ignoring you. I just have learned to leave you alone and let you figure it out on your own when you get like this." And then I think - yes! That's exactly what I needed.
6. Ran through HEB just now for a few groceries and it was Thanksgiving on a mini plate giveaway day! Some lovely lady handed me a tiny platter of turkey, brisket, cranberries, pumpkin pie, stuffing, green beans and a mushroom crepe. I could have had cheese too, but I thought that was overkill since I'd sampled the sushi and some guac in earlier aisles. Okay, some of it was rather salty. But wow!
7. Renewing one's passport through the mail is an easy task. Unless one sends a check with the wrong amount.

Til next time...

It's My Favorite Day of the Year

Yup. That extra hour of sleep. Waking up this morning before 7 and still feeling rested. Yahoo, I say. (of course, I spent my entire extra hour grading papers but whatever)

Getting ready for NCTE in Orlando. I am in deep love with my panel's topic: "The Other Happily Ever After: Transforming and Emp[owering Readers Through a Re-Tooling of the Female Hero Journey." Our roundtable topics will be: Boys, Sex and Other Bumps in the Journey; Happily Ever After Endings vs. Stronger After Ending Journeys; Strength via spiritual and emotional journeys in addition to the physical; Recognizing, Trusting and Empowering the Younger Female Hero's Journey.

I guess the NCTE folks thought it all sounded nifty, too; they listed us in the Sunday Highlights of sessions in the Council Chronicle mag that I received. In any case, if you're at the conference, come see us in the ballroom from 1 - 2:45 on Sunday 11/21. (me, Danielle Joseph, Janet Fox, Jen Dutton, Cheryl Herbsman, Lauren Bjorkman, Rosanne Parry, Sydney Salter, Edie Hemingway) And on Saturday 11/20 at 2PM, I'll be signing HAUNTED arcs! Possibly a bunch of them. Possibly giving away bookmarks.

Speaking of HAUNTED - methinks that I need to come up with an ARC giveaway. So be watching for that. I'll probably wait til after Thanksgiving, so that I can come up with a really great contest idea. Some kind of fabulolus holiday swagilicious package. Sounds good, right? So who would be interested in that?

And oh! Reading Lauren Oliver's Before I Fall. I am in love with this book. It is emotionally wrenching. Took me a bit to get into to it; the main character is at first largely unlikeable. Mean, shallow and far too real for comfort. But this doesn't last. Mean Girls meets Groundhog Day. But a lot more than that. And such spot on characterization that I'm in awe. The layers keep peeling back in this one. Brilliant.

Til next time, my dearies.

Me is Sims!!

You know you've hit the big time when a reader makes an episode (actually more than one!) about your book using the Sims. Yes - Dreaming Anastasia, Sims style! Enjoy!