Winners of SHIVERs!

Hi folks! I know this is incredibly late, and I apologize. But I did actually draw winners for signed SHIVERs, so here they are:

1 signed finished copy of SHIVER will go to Natalia.

1 signed finished copy of SHIVER will go to Alison.

And a signed audio book of SHIVER to Jo Castillo.

Yes, I know that's more than one, but I couldn't stop drawing names! :D Shoot me your addresses, guys.

OHMIGOSH

I . . . um . . . it's hard to type. I wasn't going to post on this blog before I picked winners for the book. But I just got off the phone with my editor and it's really hard to type because my right hand won't stop shaking since I heard the news from my editor. But, um . . . SHIVER debuted at #9 at the NYT Bestseller List. Um.

Um.

I am having a very hard time thinking.

I took a picture of myself right after I hung up the phone with David at Scholastic (with my wonderful publicist friends at Scholastic screaming behind him). You can see just how coherent I look.

Um.

This is making my hand shake again.

My husband is taking me out for chimichangas. I think this will help.

Oh my gosh guys. Just thanks for putting me there. It'll be in the 16th's edition of the NYT. OH MAN.

Where Maggie Is Now

Hi folks! I know it's been forever since I posted to this blog, but I figured that it was time to let you know what I've been doing. As you guys know, last year I sold my book, SHIVER (well, it was called STILL WOLF WATCHING back then) to Scholastic. I realized that I never came back and told you what happened.

Well, this week is the release week for SHIVER, so it seems like an appropriate time to tell you about my year. And this year . . . it's been insane.

This is what has happened.












I've been to New York City three times.


I've signed hundreds of advanced review copies of both SHIVER (August 1) and BALLAD (October 1).



I got a new sketchbook and have been filling it with sketches made in airports.




And in airplanes.





I've been to Chicago for the first time.





I've been interviewed for television, for podcasts, for blogs, for newspapers.





I've met hundreds of people who have already read my books.





I've signed hundreds of finished copies of SHIVER (and found out the interior ink is all in blue!)





My dogs and Moose have seen my author's copies arrive.





I have this week seen my book in stacks all over bookstores and folks have been sending me photographs of piles of SHIVERs in stores all over the country.


In my favorite indie, Fountain Bookstore:




In Barnes & Noble:





At Anderson's in Chicago:





And I've still been doing art, just in a slightly different way:




So that's me. I've been blown away by what's happened with this book -- a starred review in Publisher's Weekly, picked as Borders' August Original Voices pick, a Junior Library Guild Selection, and an inbox full of fanmail already.

I have been incredibly lucky to have some of you readers follow me over to my writing blog on Livejournal, but I should mention it is now also mirrored on Blogger.

And I'd like to give away a signed copy of SHIVER to one of my old Greywaren art readers, if you guys are still around -- so let me know in the comments if you want to be eligible for the giveaway!

I hope everyone's doing well and still creating art and still pushing towards their goals!

Happy New Year & Good-bye for Now (At Least on Blogger)

I'm sure regular readers (or, lately, non-readers) of this blog will not be surprised when I say that I've decided that 2009 is the year that I'm saying farewell to Greywaren Art. I've not been good at updating, and I'd be lying if I didn't say that 98% of my time is dedicated to writing right now. I don't think it'll be that way in the future, but right now, that's where we're at.

So thank you all for being a wonderful, supportive bunch of readers and artists, and remember that I am still regularly blogging over at http://m-stiefvater.livejournal.com.

Happy New Year!

(and one last butt-kicking: if you haven't made your 2009 goals yet, get out that Sharpie and make the list! NOW!)

Maggie-Art, the Santa edition

Christmas, you're kind of breathing down my neck.

Seriously, did anyone else notice the overwhelming Santaness descending upon us? I blinked and suddenly it's 10 days away. All this hohohoness and 60 degree weather is making me itchy. Despite my not feeling very Christmasy, I seem to have gone all domestic and I've been making Christmas paraphernalia out of clay. I don't know why. My sister started me on it, and now I'm sort of stuck in a strange Maggie-world that is populated by clay, red paint, and revisions.

Due to my guiltless indulgence of my eccentric desire to buy books for everyone for Christmas (well, everyone I know, not everyone in the world. Let's not get carried away here), I'm practically done with my Christmas shopping. If YOU guys aren't, and want to pick up books, especially books by me, I'll be round:

Fountain Bookstore, Richmond, VA, Dec. 17th (this Wednesday), from 12:30-2:30. I love this bookstore. It looks just like a perfect little hole in the wall indie, cobblestone streets and everything. Those of you who have read LAMENT, this is the street where Dee's first kiss supposedly takes place.

College of William & Mary Bookstore, Williamsburg, VA, Dec 20th (this Saturday), from 10:00-1:00. Yes, again. They like me. And I like them. Because while there I get to play cool tunes with the organizer (also a Celtic music junkie) and they are two seconds away from the candy store from SHIVER, that has amazing candy apples.

I'm noticing, now, that my Santas that I made all look a little mournful. Like they're thinking: "Yes, I'm bringing gifts to children all over the world, brightening their day, and possibly their month or year, by so doing, but at the same time, I'm missing CSI to do it."

And my angel . . . well, she has no eyes yet, so I'll forgive her for a certain amount of disinterest in her expression.

But see, I am doing vaguely artistic things these days, still.

The Great Name Debacle

The more observant of my readers on my Livejournal blog have noticed that the main character from SHIVER has changed names. This is sort of eerie, since I hadn't realized I'd babbled about them enough to realize the names weren't the same, but the fact is, it's true. Sam Roth (which is, for the record, the best name ever) the character from SHIVER who becomes a wolf for the winter, is now Lee Spence.

That sentence, my friends, is the result of 16 hours of baby name book searching, thousands of calories of cookie dough consumption, silent raging, not silent raging, denial, googling, and finally, acceptance.

Because this agony is something that other authors will probably have to go through and because it gives me an excuse to look at a photo of Lee Pace, I'm going to tell my sordid little naming story here.

So. This all started way back when my werewolf story was only a twinkle in my eye. I'd had the dream that sort of laid down the premise, but only two of the characters (neither of them main characters) came with names in the dream. (And one of the two names in the dream was "Robert de Niro" so I had to change it anyway). I can't start writing a novel until I have the Perfect Names for my main characters, so I was in the brainstorming phase. I wanted something sort of timeless, soft-sounding, and inherently sad and emotastic. Which brought me to Sam, partially because of the way that Meg Ryan said, "Oh, Sam," in Addicted to Love, after she's torn his heart into little tiny pieces and feels bad about it, but is stuck in the floor, so she can't do anything but watch from afar and say:

"Oh, Sam."

I just thought . . . whooo, shivers. I imagined the scene where Grace, the other main character, first sees him as a person after years of obsessing over him as a wolf. And when she asks his name, he says, "Sam." And I knew that was it.

Except it wasn't. Because there is this author y'all may have heard of, Stephenie Meyer, who apparently has also written about werewolves. Who knew?

That's sarcasm.

Anyway. So apparently, she also had a wolf character named Sam. Who knew?

That's not sarcasm.

I'd read TWILIGHT, but it's been a few years, so I'd completely forgotten that there was a werewolf named Sam in it. And my editors had too. And my crit partners. And basically all of the folks that had worked on the novel since last fall when I first began writing it. But not someone at the Scholastic sales meeting. And not, my editors reasoned (once they had this brought to their attention), the hoards of passionate TWILIGHT fans who had the demographics of every TWILIGHT character stenciled onto their arms with glittery pink ink. Sorry, sparkly. Sparkly pink ink. So at the very end of the editing process, after I'd lived with my characters as Sam and Grace my editors said that "Sam" had to go.

I sputtered and begged and pleaded and finally googled "sam werewolf," where I was greeted by one gagillion hits to Team Jacob and Sam Uley, The First Werewolf Named Sam. And I hung my sad head in defeat, because my editors were right, as they often are.

Which meant that my favorite bit of dialog in the entire novel had to completely change:

"Grace,” I said, very softly. “Say something.”
“Sam,” she said, and I crushed her to me.

This was when the silent raging began. Because I knew I had to do something, but I didn't want to. I still had a sequel to write, after all, and I was going to have to live with a not-Sam for another 95,000 words. It wasn't just SHIVER that was riding on this name change, it was the fate of the sequel, LINGER (probably LINGER), as well, and probably my entire sanity as well. My critique partner, Tessa Gratton, spent about 8 hours IMing me back and forth, sifting through hundreds of names, looking for the perfect replacement that would ellicit the same emotional response in me as "Sam."

The catalog copy deadline was, I should add, bearing down on us at this moment, giving us about two days to come up with a replacement. At that point, I think my mood was best classified as "angry/ morose drunk."

Examples of angry/morose drunk exchanges? This is sort of a montage of conversations that occured on Day Two of the Great Name Debacle.

DAVID (editor) to me and ABBY (other editor): How about Daniel? I've always been partial to Daniel.
ABBY to me and DAVID: Daniel is nice.
ME to TESSA: Daniel! Daniel!? Why do they keep saying Daniel to me in my hour of need? Have they not heard Elton John?
TESSA: There, there. How about Jonah? It sounds emotastic.
ME to my DAD: I need something other than Sam, even though Sam is the most perfect name invented.
DAD: Why, again? Because there's this other sampire in TWILIGHT?
ME: Werewolf.
DAD: But 'sampire' is funnier. How about Jack?
ME: Why was I ever born?

Eventually, I really buckled down, hit the stacks, and finally came back to the first name that had occured to me at the beginning of the Great Name Debacle: Lee. It was soft, reminded me of blue jeans, inherently emotastic, and moreover, was the name of the actor who I think of when I think of what Sam/ Lee looks like: Lee Pace. (cue audience reaction: awwww). So now I had Lee Roth. Like Kate Winslet's character at the end of Titanic, I was sad, but triumphant. I told my art critique partners about the name change.

One of them, my friend Nicole, said, "um, Maggie, have you, um, googled 'Lee Roth'?"

I did.

Those of you who were born slightly before me will probably already know what I found. Sigh. So, with a nod to irritating rockers who have ruined a generation of fictional "Roths", I changed his last name to Spence.

So there you have it. The story of how Sam Roth became Lee Spence and everyone lived happily ever after. And the other day, I actually said "Lee and Grace" all by myself, without accidentally saying "Sa-Lee" first. So maybe there is hope for me yet.

The Car Paid for by Wolves

So . . . here it is. The car paid for by wolves, and the proof right there on its butt. I can hardly believe it. Isn't it gorgeousness? I have a name for it now too: Loki.

So. Guys, I have to admit -have I admitted this before?-- I'm so freakin' excited for SHIVER to come out next year. I mean, I was excited about LAMENT in a first book coming out this is all so brand new homicidal faeries wheee sort of way. But not the cold-shiver-down-my-spine I'm so excited for the world to read about my characters way I am with SHIVER. I mean, after six months of heavy line editing with my editors, I'm still in love with Lee (used to be Sam) and Grace's story. I'm starting the sequel (tentatively called LINGER) this week and I'm kinda psyched about that too.

I still remember the dream that sparked off the whole SHIVER affair. It was winter, and I still remember the girl's voice narrating: "I lay in the snow, a small spot of warm going cold, and there are wolves all around me. I don't know if they're licking or eating me."

And then, later, "I saw my wolf after that, always on the edge of the woods. It was like making eyes with him."

Do you guys remember? I'd never written a real love story before, I mean one where the love is the most important thing, and I posted a panicked post here: help -- I just started and my characters are already in love!

This is me, bouncing off the wall, by the way. Suddenly SHIVER seems awfully close to being real.