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.
MARCH
My dear friend Christopher Ransom, whose debut horror novel, The
Birthing House, became an international bestseller, is one
of the first readers of The House of Dead Maids, and he
has graciously allowed me to put an excerpt from his letter about
it on The House of Dead Maids
front page. Not only is Chris a fine author, he is that rarer
thing: a thoughtful, humble, generous, great-hearted human being.
I am blessed to have such friends.
FEBRUARY
ARCs of The House of Dead Maids will be out soon, and Reka
and I just finished the first page proofs. In keeping with the style
of an old Victorian novel—like my old Everyman Library copy
of Wuthering Heights, in fact—a small black-and-white
illustration introduces each chapter of The House of Dead Maids.
I have posted a link to these illustrations on The
House of Dead Maids main page:
click on the image there to see all of the others.
They’ve turned out wonderfully spooky—even a little
gruesome! (I didn’t realize my book had such grim images in
it until I saw Patrick Arrasmith’s work.) But I think they’re
perfect. The artist worked very hard to incorporate all of my feedback
into the illustrations, so they are true to both the letter and
the spirit of the story.
DECEMBER
I was very pleased to learn that the committee for the Grand
Canyon Reader Award has placed The Sky Inside
on its 2011 list. This is particularly welcome news because a number
of my husband’s family members live in Arizona, and he and
I have spent many happy vacations in the state. My late father-in-law,
a longtime Phoenix resident, would have been thrilled to know that
schoolchildren all over Arizona would be reading a book of mine.
(I dedicated Sky’s sequel, The Walls Have Eyes
to my father-in-law.) I’ve added this news to The
Sky Inside pages.
Bryce Milligan wrote a dynamite review for The Walls Have Eyes
in The San Antonio Express-News. This
year’s book has suffered from the downturn in the economy:
everyone I worked with at Simon & Schuster has subsequently been
laid off, and it’s clear that the number of review copies
out this year has been very tight. Sequels don’t tend to get
much review attention as it is, so I was especially pleased to read
Mr. Milligan’s thoughtful review. And librarian Cindy Mitchell
at Kiss the Book
has posted a very nice review as well. (If you haven’t yet
encountered Ms. Mitchell’s wonderful and exhaustive lists
of reviews, you’re missing out on a marvellous resource!)
I’ve added excerpts from these reviews to The
Walls Have Eyes pages.
I recently discovered that Booklist put The
Sky Inside on a Core List: Dystopian Fiction for Youth.
I’ve added this welcome news to The
Sky Inside pages.
NOVEMBER
I’m very happy to report that By These Ten Bones
will be coming out in a paperback edition, probably very early in
2011. We authors aren’t supposed to have favorite books any
more than mothers should have favorite children, but I have to admit,
that book is a favorite of mine. I’ve added the good news
to my By These Ten Bones
pages.
OCTOBER
I’m very pleased to report that I’ve finished the background
pages for The House of Dead Maids. I hope these pages challenge
the way you think of Emily Brontë and her masterpiece, Wuthering
Heights. You may find a complete list of the webpages concerning
my research here.
Since Reka and I have just finished up our work on next year’s
book, The House of Dead Maids (my Wuthering Heights
prequel), I’m beginning to post the
webpages that deal with it. I don’t ordinarily post a
book’s webpages so early, but I’m doing so this time
because I did a tremendous amount of research for this book, and
I want to post the background pages that deal with that research
before I forget everything I learned. Besides, I have to say, I’m
very excited about The House of Dead Maids. We authors aren’t
supposed to have favorite books any more than mothers are supposed
to have favorite children, but this book is very special to me.
It came along at a very dark time in my life, and maybe that’s
why. In any case, you’ll have the opportunity to look at all
the information about it well before you can actually order a copy—the
cover isn’t even designed yet.
In these The House of Dead Maids pages, you can find another
of my husband’s photograph collections.
These were taken in Yorkshire during my research for the book. I’m
afraid the allusions to various characters or locations in the book
won’t make much sense right now, but at least you can enjoy
the scenery.
I had to redesign my homepage to accommodate
the new book title. That’s quite a collection of book titles
on the homepage now! It seems like only yesterday when we were putting
up the pages for The Hollow Kingdom. Tempus fugit indeed!
JULY
The release of The Walls Have Eyes is right around the
corner now, and the first review is already in (from Kirkus,
which cultivates as always the virtue of promptness). In honor of
the review, which was quite nice, I’ve posted a full set of
pages for The Walls Have Eyes. I’ve put up two
sample chapters, some early reader
questions, and edition information,
as well as a page of background notes
describing a bit about how the book came to be written.
I’m aware that The Sky Inside still lacks a reader
questions page, and I apologize to those of you who took the time
to write me with questions. I hope to have those questions posted
soon. This has not been the best year for me to get to reader mail!
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...
Webpage
text copyright 2008 by Clare B. Dunkle. Homepage photo and the above photos
copyright 2005 by Joseph R. Dunkle.
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