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.
Webpage
text copyright 2008 by Clare B. Dunkle. Homepage photo and the above photos
copyright 2005 by Joseph R. Dunkle.
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