In exactly three days—on Tuesday, April 28—the long-awaited paperback of Extras will appear on the shelves of your local bookstore.
At last those of you with the first three Uglies books in paperback can possess the unified edition. Consistency freaks, rejoice!
As you can see above, the cover is the same as the hardback except for that little “burst” on Aya’s left cheek. As it says, this edition includes an excerpt from Leviathan (And no, it’s NOT the same excerpt that was in Bogus to Bubbly, because that would be lame.)
Plus, there’s an actual piece of art from Leviathan in this edition, the first to be unleashed upon the world. I’m extremely happy with the art, and can’t wait for you guys to see more of it.
Anyway, I will be bugging you all with newsletters and Facebook blasts when this date arrives. Be warned.
You can pre-order Extras in paperback now, from Amazon, Powell’s, B&N, or Indie Bound.
Update:
Westerblog has changed servers over the weekend, so comments in the last 24 hours have apparently been lost. Sorry! Maybe they’ll come back. Maybe not.
Those of you who enjoy delicious zombies might want to check out this debut by Carrie Ryan, called The Forest of Hands and Teeth.
I would tell you more about it, but I already wrote a signature review for Amazon, which starts like this:
Teenagers love a good apocalypse. Who doesn’t? All those annoying rules suspended. Society’s pretenses made irrelevant. Malls to be looted. School out forever.
But in The Forest and Hands and Teeth, Carrie Ryan’s marvelous debut novel, the post-apocalypse is defined more by constraints than freedoms. The book begins seven generations after the Return, an undead plague that has ended civilization as we know it. Of course, a zombie outbreak usually means shotguns and mall looting–the very essence of freedom. But more than a century on from the Return, the malls have already been looted, and shotguns are a distant memory. The novel’s heroine, Mary, lives in a village surrounded by one last vestige of industrial technology: a chain-link fence, beyond which is a vast forest full of shambling, eternally ravenous undead–the forest of hands and teeth. No villager ever goes outside this fence, unless they want to die. (And given this bleak scenario, some do.)
Mary’s world is bounded not only by the fence but by the archaic traditions of her people, which are enforced by a religious order called the Sisterhood. Marriages, childbirth, death, every stage of life must be controlled to sustain the village’s precarious existence. Even the houses are circumscribed–literally–with passages of scripture carved into every entrance to remind the inhabitants of the rules that sustain human life amid the horrors of the forest.
After so long an isolation, the village is beginning to forget . . .
Click here to read the rest of my review.
That’s it, except . . . it’s only 13 more days until Extras comes out in paperback. W00t!
Okay, I’m twelve days late, but I didn’t want to miss commemorating the 60th anniversary of the first publication of Uglies!
Here’s the novel in all its original glory, back in 1959.
In other news, I suck at Photoshop!
Happy belated April 1st.
That is all.
This is going to be a big year for me. Leviathan is my first new series to come out since Uglies appeared way back in . . . 2005!
For you ancient history buffs, the first books of both Midnighters and my so-called “New York Trilogy” (So Yesterday, Peeps, and TLD) appeared in 2004. So it has been a long time . . .
Anyway, here’s what happens this year:
April 28 (a mere 3 weeks away!)
The paperback edition of Extras is released! Now, at long last, you can line up all four books in matching editions. You can pre-order now, from Amazon, Powell’s, B&N, or Indie Bound.
The cool thing about the Extras paperback is that it contains previously unseen chapters from Leviathan, complete with delicious artwork!
May 1
Starting in May, the first of every month will be Leviathan Art Day. That’s right, I’ll be blogging one piece of art every month until the book comes out.
But don’t worry. You won’t be utterly spoiled by this, because there are FIFTY (50) pieces of art in the first book of Leviathan. So much art.
Be prepared for the artiness!
May 30
Advanced readers’ copies for Leviathan are given out at Book Expo America! And I’ll be there to sign them. (To those of you not in the book trade, this is merely frustraing, I know. But it’s cool for me.)
June 2 (minor update)
Mind-Rain, an anthology of essays about the Uglies series, appears in stores! Here’s the cover:
August 1
The Geektastic anthology goes on sale! Edited by Holly Black and Cecil Castellucci, this collection includes stories by M.T. Anderson, Libba Bray, Cassandra Clare, Tracy Lynn, Cynthia and Greg Leitich Smith, David Levithan, Kelly Link, Barry Lyga, Wendy Mass, Garth Nix, Lisa Yee, Sara Zarr, and me. We’re all writing about the geeky proclivities that made us who we are, from role-playing games to Quizbowl.
It’s going to rock, geekily.
August 21-25-ish (minor update)
Justine and I will be at the Melbourne Writers Festival!
October 6
The publication of Leviathan!
This is, of course, the big day for me. I’ve been working on this book for four years (I started it before I started Extras) so it will be mind-bendingly exciting.
Along with the book will come a world-spanning tour. (Well, spanning from the US to the UK, Canada, and Australia.) For three weeks or so, I’ll be traveling around and meeting you guys in person. I don’t know yet where I’m headed exactly, but watch this space in August and September for details.
More about Leviathan in later posts, of course.
Astonishingly, you can already pre-order it from Amazon and Indie Bound, but B&N and Powell’s don’t have it yet.
October 28
The release of the Grand Unified Edition of the Uglies Series, also known as The Collector’s Set. It looks like this:
Pretty, is it not?
December
Sleep. Constant sleep.
Snorgtees.com has a hoverboard safety T-shirt for sale featuring this logo:
Of course, this warning doesn’t fit in with the canonical Uglies universe rules of hoverboarding, so I felt a quick remix was in order:
Ah. Now doesn’t that feel better?
Still in Texas and having a blast.
Update:
If you’re at TLA, I’m signing Thursday for two different publishers: Penguin (So Yesterday, Peeps, Last Days) at 2PM and S&S (Uglies, etc.) at 3PM. Both at Aisle 6.
If you’re in Houston but not at TLA, there are signed copies of my books waiting at Murder By the Book, 2352 Bissonnet Street, Houston, TX 77005.
As you can see, my website has had its first makeover in many years. This is to celebrate the fact that my first new series in years, Leviathan, comes out this autumn. (October 6, to be exact.)
Things may be wonky for a while as we play around under the hood. But I hope you enjoy the new look. Let me know what you think!
Click here to contact Scott Westerfeld.
Jill Grinberg
Jill Grinberg Literary Management
info@grinbergliterary.com
