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.
AUGUST
I’m going on a blog tour to talk about The House
of Dead Maids:
September 20—In
Bed With Books
September 21—The
Compulsive Reader
September 22—Teenreads.com
blog
September 23—The
Book Butterfly
September 24—Carrie’s
YA Bookshelf
September 27—The
Neverending Shelf
September 28—The
Book Faery
September 29—Bookworming
in the 21st Century
September 30—YA
Books Central
October 1—Rebecca’s
Book Blog
October 4—Babbling
Flow
October 7—Mundie
Moms
October 9—Jenn’s
Bookshelves
October 29—Cynsations
So I’ve added this information to The
House of Dead Maids front page.
When I started this website seven years ago, Facebook and its peers didn’t exist, and blogs were not yet one to a household. The
idea of contributing content to the Internet was still a little daunting: you needed to buy a domain, you needed to find a hosting site,
you needed to procure an FTP program, and you had to figure out how to handle HTML. Nowadays, six-year-olds are showing off their latest
photos on Facebook, and every grandpa has his own blog. The Internet has become a two-way street.
Seven years ago, I began posting reader art on my website. My career
was young; only about five people had heard of my work, and only
about three of them took the time to write me. Those were fun days.
Great reader mail came in. I loved reading it, and I loved responding.
Great reader art came in. I loved it all, and I loved posting it,
too.
Then more than five people began reading my books, and my career
became much more complicated. At the same time, my family faced
life-threatening medical issues. I struggled for years to keep up
with it all. Reader mail, which is very important to me, tended
to stack up—sometimes for months. And the reader art lay around
in small piles on my desk. Whenever I got a minute between deadlines
and doctor visits, I tried to catch up on the mail, and I usually
succeeded, more or less. It was the reader art that fell to the
bottom of the priority list every time. I couldn’t seem to
get the artwork posted.
I still can’t. I love receiving it. I marvel at the creativity
and insight of you artists out there. But I think of how disappointed
my artistic readers have been over the years, sending me their work
and waiting to see it appear... and the fact is, it just doesn’t
happen. So I’ve taken down the Reader Art pages. The links
have all gone away. I console myself that you artists now have easy
access to the Internet, and I’ve seen for myself some of the
fan art you’ve posted out there. You certainly don’t
need to wait for me anymore.
Early reviews of The House of Dead Maids are starting to
come in. By and large, I’m very pleased. I’ve added
a couple of nice comments from the Bookends
blog and from Sara McClung’s Babbling
Flow blog to The House of Dead
Maids jacket and edition
pages.
I’ve added a new criticism to my Criticisms of The House
of Dead Maids page. One neither can nor should answer most
criticisms readers put forward about a book—tastes range so
widely that I can generally find exactly opposite statements about
my books if I choose to look for them. A reader’s experience
of a book is intensely personal, and the criticisms arising from
this experience are equally personal. Lord knows that I always find
both good and bad things to say about just about every book I read,
and expressing my literary opinions is one of the nicest things
about being a reader. Not every writer is a good sport about it,
but I used to be a librarian, so I am. I think it’s one of
a reader’s inalienable rights.
But in the case of this book, certain criticisms seem to me to be
“teachable moments.” They concern misunderstandings,
not necessarily of my book, but of Emily Bronte’s work. The
scholar in me can’t resist the opportunity to do a little
lecturing about Emily, so I have added the criticism, “The
language in your book is too old fashioned/not old fashioned enough”
to my Criticisms page in order
to do a little teaching about the writing style of Wuthering
Heights.
Prompt as always, Kirkus is the first of the major
journals to review The House of Dead Maids, and it’s
a very nice review, too. I’ve posted excerpts of it on The
House of Dead Maids front page
and editions page.
JUNE
The House
of Dead Maids
book trailer is here! Mr. Timothy
Hall constructed this astounding book trailer as a favor for my
editor, Reka Simonsen. And it’s perfect. I couldn’t
be prouder! So I’ve added links to it on The
House of Dead Maids front page
and on the reviews & editions page.
For those who have been waiting to see a movie of my work—here
it is!
I just received word that Recorded Books will be
releasing the unabridged audio edition of The House of Dead
Maids. Also, it will be coming out in a Kindle edition. This
is lovely news, and I’ve updated The House of Dead Maids
front page and edition
page with this information as well as the main
books page. Also, Becky’s
Book Reviews is an early-bird reviewer for this title,
and I’ve added a nice quotation from her blog review to my
pages.
The paperback edition of By These Ten Bones will be coming
out in February, 2011. Thank you, Holt! I love this book. We authors
shouldn’t have favorites, but this is a favorite of mine.
I’ve noted the release date on the By
These Ten Bones front and edition
pages as well as added it to the main books
page.
MAY
I have to admit, I pretty much ignored poor little The Walls
Have Eyes when it came out because I had changed publishing
houses and was deep in the middle of getting The House of Dead
Maids ready for publication at the time. But lo and behold,
while I was busy with other things, The Walls Have Eyes
made some good friends among reviewers and librarians. I was very
happy to discover these nice reviews and have posted excerpts on
The Walls Have Eyes
front page and editions page. My
favorite (from LOCUS): “This is an intriguingly
weird world. ...” Amen!
APRIL
The cover art for The House of Dead Maids is here! I’ve
posted it on The House of Dead Maids
front page and also on the books page.
The manuscript for Vanishing Girl (formerly Skeleton
Girl, and likely to change titles again before this is over)
is complete at last. It’s a remarkable story. There are parts
of it that even I have trouble believing—and I lived them!
I’ve updated the About the Author
front page to reflect the newly finished book, which is my eighth,
and I’ve begun talking to my editor about Book Nine.
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!
Webpage text copyright 2010 by Clare
B. Dunkle. Homepage photo and the above photos copyright 2005 by
Joseph R. Dunkle.
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