What's New on the Website of Clare B. Dunkle


My books -- About Me -- What’s New -- Author Visits -- The Writing Life


	This new item was my cat Lucy during her first few hours of life. If you click on her image, you will find that she's no longer new.
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What’s New on Clare Dunkle’s Website

If you haven’t visited my website in a while, things have probably changed. This page will keep you up to date on what has been added. It is in reverse-chronological order (newest things first). Each time I mention a change, I link to its page so that you can view it quickly.

If my webpages are looking strange on your computer, you may need to refresh your browser or delete your old Internet files. Parts of those old, cached files may be showing through on the new pages, making them display oddly.

For those who are interested: I am my own webmaster, and I design, create, and maintain all of my own pages. I use Dreamweaver MX 6, Dreamweaver’s extension called Coursebuilder, Paint Shop Pro 9, Microsoft Word 2003, and SmartFTP. The ISP Parcom.net hosts my two sites.

MAY
This has been a tough year in the Dunkle household. If you’ve written to me and haven’t heard from me, that’s because I haven’t been spending much time at home. My younger daughter is in intensive treatment for anorexia in St. Louis, and I’m living with her there.

The good news is that my writing projects are going well. Both books currently in production are moving smoothly toward their release dates. And my daughter and I have started a collaborative project, a memoir about our experiences with her disorder. Its working title is Skeleton Girl.

I’ve made changes to the About the Author page to reflect this new project.

FEBRUARY

Bookplates are back. I’m very happy with my new bookplate, which is based on a classic Antioch bookplate design. The old Antioch bookplates have a special place in my childhood memories. You may request signed bookplates by following the directions on this page, and if you too miss the wonderful old Antioch bookplate styles, by all means contact BookplateInk.com, as I did, and order a set of your own. It’s what the well-dressed book is wearing.

I’ve added another couple of author visits to my calendar on the Book Signings and Talks main page. One of these is during the Texas Library Association convention: I will be signing at the Simon & Schuster booth on Wednesday from 1 to 2 pm. ARCs should be available there of The Walls Have Eyes. I will be doing further signing at TLA, with the times to be announced closer to the event.

Those of you who are working on publicity items for author visits may be glad to learn that I’ve added a high-resolution photo of myself to the website. You can reach it by clicking on the oval picture of me on any of the About the Author pages and download it for your documents or banners.

DECEMBER

I’ve temporarily withdrawn the mailing address for bookplates from the Bookplates page. Those of you who have ordered them lately have noticed that you haven’t received anything. That’s because my last batch of bookplates looked sad indeed, and I couldn’t bear to send them out to you. I’m in the process of ordering new bookplates that won’t be quite such an embarrassment, and when they arrive, I’ll fill the requests I have on hand as well as repost the mailing address on the website.

The Hornbook recommends The Sky Inside. I added an excerpt from their review to the Sky Inside main page as well as the Reviews & Editions page. I also found two very nice reviews of the audiobook Sky Inside, so I added those to the Reviews & Editions page. And The Walls Have Eyes now has both cover art and book jacket copy, so I added the cover illustration to the books page as well as to the Walls Have Eyes main page.

I’m trying to find the time to answer some of the reader questions that have come in about The Sky Inside, but that may have to continue to wait. Reka and I are working on the revision to The House of Dead Maids right now, and that work will probably occupy me until the end of January.

NOVEMBER

I’ve completed the website’s facelift. As some of you may know, before this month, my website had not had an overhaul in some time. In dog years, my website is middle-aged. In Internet years, it’s more than senile. It’s dust. It’s clay tablets with cuneiform writing! So an overhaul was definitely due.

Every page now has a menu bar on the lefthand side, with the exception of the Home Page and the Writing Life page. If you’re not seeing that lefthand-side menu bar when you look at my pages, you’re looking at old data that your computer has stored for you. Force a refresh by clicking the button on your browser that has the two arrows chasing each other (Internet Explorer) or an arrow chasing its tail (Firefox). This will give you the latest version of the page.

I’ve updated all the photographs in the two photographic sections of the site: these are the About the Author photographic section and the By These Ten Bones photographic section. Monitor resolutions have changed considerably since I first posted these pages. My photos had shrunk away to almost nothing! Now they’re back, and I added quite a few new photographs to the About the Author section, as well as a new page about life in Europe.

Now, if only I can get to my reader mail...

OCTOBER

Those of you who visit my website occasionally have probably noticed that this was a very quiet year as far as web updates go. That’s because I’ve been thinking of doing a substantial overhaul of the site, and I just haven’t had the time to work on it. That’s changing as of this minute.

My website looked pretty nice when we first built it six years ago, but six years is an eternity on the web. Now the old site looks shabby and simplistic, so it’s getting a facelift. I’ve already redone the homepage. In the next few days, I’ll add texture to all the backgrounds and change the fonts to something crisper and more readable. Last of all, I’ll rework the menus into something a little more pleasing to the eye.

The content of the pages will not be changing. Nor will I be adding new pages. This is all about style.

AUGUST

This month has been consumed by the line edit for The Walls Have Eyes, and the website had to wait until that was done. The Walls Have Eyes is off to copyediting now, so my editor and I are finished with it. Hooray!

To celebrate, I’m adding a couple of excerpts from nice reviews of The Sky Inside to the website. VOYA gave The Sky Inside a solid 4Q 4P, and Texas literary treasure Bryce Milligan reviewed it for The San Antonio Express-News. Among other insights, Mr. Milligan remarks, “Dunkle’s gift here—besides a knack for multivolume plotting, an engaging narrative style, and a delightfully daring sense of character—is the ability to take what some would consider a cliché-ridden subject ... and turn it inside out to produce something truly fresh.”

I’m honored, Mr. Milligan! You can read his closing remarks on the Sky Inside front page.

JULY

A person who knows the local library/school budget situations well has advised me that my author visit fee, considered reasonable where I came from, is more than many Texas libraries or schools can afford. My thanks go to him for pointing that out, and I’ve reduced my fee. Also, since my editor and I are finally on the downhill stretch with the book we’re working on, I can now schedule two events per month. If you would like to invite me to an event, I have the new school year dates available here.

I’ve neglected the poor website as I’ve finished revisions on The Walls Have Eyes, which is now at line edit stage. Nevertheless, I wanted to take a minute to add an excerpt from The Bookbag’s review of The Sky Inside. It’s my first authentic British review, and I’m very happy they liked the book so much. You can read that excerpt here, on The Sky Inside front page.

Noted book blog, Mrs. Magoo Reads, published a very nice review of The Sky Inside last month and has just posted an interview with Yours Truly. If you haven’t gotten to know this book blog yet, you should. It’s picking up attention fast.

MAY

Librarian Rebecca Laney has done an interview with me about The Sky Inside, so I’ve added links about it to the Interviews page and the Sky Inside front page.

I am very proud that Booklist, the review journal of the American Library Association, has chosen The Sky Inside jacket illustration to be their May 15 2008 cover:

This honor comes as a direct result of the beautiful artwork that Sammy Yuen, Jr., created for this book jacket. Still, the writing came in for its fair share of praise, too: The Sky Inside earned a starred review in the Spotlights section. I’ve put an excerpt from that review on the Sky Inside front page.

Librarian Becky Laney has given The Sky Inside an enthusiastic review on her book review blog, and I’ve included an excerpt from her review on the front page as well. Ms. Laney has also contacted me about an interview, which may run on her blog next week. She represents a growing number of dystopian-novel or science fiction fans who have praised The Sky Inside. It’s gratifying to hear nice things about my book from the readers who really know this genre.

APRIL

A very nice review of The Sky Inside is out in the April Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books. I’ve posted it on the Sky Inside main page.

I haven’t been able to answer much mail since the beginning of March, so I’m just getting to a lot of emails from February. As I answered one of them, from a Danish reader, it occurred to me that my Treasure Hunt is very unfair to you Danes. It only works with the English books. So I’ve added directions to the two pages of the Treasure Hunt to tell you what to do to get to the hidden stories.

The Sky Inside is shipping now, and the audiobook is also available. I’ve noted this on the Sky Inside main page and also added a note about the Australian paperback, which will be out in October.

MARCH

I’m one of a number of young adult authors who will be participating in Simon & Schuster’s Pulse Blogfest event online during the weeks of March 14-March 27. Among other things, we authors are responding to questions submitted by teen readers and writers. For more information about this event, visit this website.

This morning, I updated my Author Appearances page to include an event in April in Dallas: on the evening of April 16th, I’ll be joining fellow authors Dan Gutman and Coleen Paratore for a panel discussion at a Borders Bookstore. I’ve also added to that page the phone number for the nice person who arranges author appearances at Simon & Schuster, so those of you who would like to receive a publicity kit or arrange a visit directly with my publisher can do so.

I changed the kitten image on this page from my cat Tor when he was “new” to my cat Lucy when she was “new.” (Because Lucy’s mother abandoned her at birth, we took her in when she was very new.) Even though it’s been less than a day, an alert reader has already written to ask me who the adorable kitten is. I pointed out to Tor that he was on the site for four years, and no one wrote to say that he was adorable. But then I fed him, so I don’t think he cares.

Since Becca wrote to ask about Lucy, I thought others might want to know about her as well, so I’ve put her name in the caption. I also added a picture of her as a cat that you can reach by clicking on her kitten picture.

Lately, quite a few of my replies to reader emails have been returned to me as undeliverable mail. This makes me feel very unhappy because I know you readers think I haven’t answered you. But I have! Your mailbox just won’t accept my answer. So, if you want to be sure you can receive a reply from me, be sure to go into your email system and list my email address in your address book or “white list.” (That’s the list of people allowed to send you mail.) Otherwise—Jeannette and Chad, if you’re out there, please just know that I tried. And Katie, the answer is 152.

BookPage has released a nice review of The Sky Inside, and I’ve placed an excerpt from it on the Sky Inside front page. I’ve also begun to change out all the buttons on the website for buttons that look just like them, but a little better. Needless to say, I won’t be announcing the arrival of these buttons with a fanfare on this page, but if you refresh the pages from time to time, you might notice that the buttons look a little crisper and easier to read.

Incidentally, the new photo at the top of the page is one of my cat Lucy when she was just a couple of hours old. She already knew how to get her own way, and she already knew how to purr.

JANUARY

Simon & Schuster has invited me to join them at the Texas Library Association convention this April in Dallas, Texas. I will be doing a book signing on April 17 (Thursday afternoon) at the Simon & Schuster booth.

I will be at the Grand Prairie Memorial Library in Grand Prairie, Texas, on June 14 (Saturday) to give a talk about writing and publishing and also about my own troubled teen years. I posted news of both of these events on the Signings & Talks front page.

I’ve received a number of requests for author visits, but I haven’t been able to accept any until we could get settled here. Now that things appear to be under control, I’ve updated the Signings & Talks front page accordingly. Also, the first review of The Sky Inside is out, so I’ve added an excerpt to that front page. I’m pleased to note that they find the book compelling.