Sunday, September 1, 2013

Got Cover Art!


All of Jessie's world is a stage, and she's determined 
to become a player.

A lot has happened on the "book front" since I last posted. The title has gone from the original, It's Not the End of the World to All the World's A Jumble, and has finally been nailed down as DRAMA QUEENS IN THE HOUSE! It's been edited and copyedited and revised and revised and revised. And now the ARCs (Advanced Reading Copies or bound galleys) are done and making their way out to all the places publishers send them. 

Here's what the book is about:

Sixteen-year-old Jessie Jasper Lewis doesn't remember a time in her life when she wasn't surrounded by method actors, bright spotlights, and feather boas. Her parents started the Jumble Players theater, and theater is the glue that holds her crazy family together. But when she discovers her father is cheating on her mother with a man, Jessie feels like her world is toppling over. And then, on top of everything else, there's the delusional aunt who is predicting the end of the world. Jessie certainly doesn't feel ready to be center stage in the production that is her family. But where does she belong in all of this chaos?

I'm really happy with the new title and the cover art.  The process of writing and selling and rewriting (and rewriting and rewriting) a book is such a long and intensive one, it's almost anticlimactic to have it suddenly done.  But then the ARCs arrive and it's an enormous thrill to hold the bound copy in my hands and know that in a few months the actual hardbound book will be coming out! (March 2014 from Roaring Brook/Macmillan)