Happy almost-February! I really like this month. I do. There are fun family birthdays, and treats, and it’s short and spring is coming.

This is one of those newsy-type posts…

First of all, MATCHED was named to YALSA’s list of 2012 Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults. You can see the full list here. I love YALSA!!! Remember when MATCHED made the 2011 Teens’ Top Ten List and my life was made?

Second, I want to thank all of you for your support of both MATCHED and CROSSED. MATCHED has been on the New York Times bestseller list for paperback for 18 weeks running now, ever since its release, I believe. And CROSSED spent 7 weeks on the hardcover list, among many Lego books and also Brian Selznick. This significantly increased my nine-year-old’s opinion of me.

Third, I have updated the Events page. Due to some family circumstances (no, I am not pregnant), I am really limiting events this spring, and so I just have one scheduled–a visit at the Holladay Library, which has been in the works for months. I would love to see you there!

Finally, I have some giveaways and author interviews scheduled for February. It should be a most excellent month. Come back soon! And I think I need to make these cookies.

The first fun thing is this video (and song) above, DESERT SYMPHONY, by Shaye Scott/The Piano Guys. My sister Elaine sent me this and said, “This makes me think of CROSSED” and then I watched the video and boy, does it ever. I cried about ten times while I was watching it. I think we have a new addition to the CROSSED playlist! And please, if you love this song, purchase it to support the artists.

Second, some have been asking if I have any signings scheduled. I’ve just added one on December 17th at the Orem Public Library at 2:00 p.m. (for more info, click the Events page). This will definitely be my last signing of 2011 and I’m not sure when I’ll have one in 2012, so I’d love to see you! And I will just be one of many authors there (Brandon Mull, Bree Despain, Robison Wells, more TBA)…so it’s going to be a lot of fun.

Third, I found out that CROSSED was chosen as a pick for the Winter 2011-2012 Kids’ Indie Next List. This list is complied by independent booksellers across the country and it is SUCH an honor to be selected. Many, many thanks!

Fourth, we’ve had some great industry reviews (from Publisher’s Weekly, VOYA, School Library Journal) coming in for CROSSED. I’ve (finally) added CROSSED to the Reviews page and so I’ve added some of the details there.

And, last of all, I have some reallyreally awesome news. MATCHED is now a #1 New York Times Bestseller! We hit #1 on the paperback list for children’s chapter books, and CROSSED is holding strong at #5 over on the hardcover list. This is the kind of thing that does not happen without you the readers (obviously!). I am deeply grateful to you for caring about this story. To all of you who have taken the time to post positive reviews, to share the book with a friend, to e-mail me, etc.–THANK YOU.

Next week I’ll be back with my annual post about all the books I’m giving for Christmas. I can’t wait!

Awesome news! The official trailer for CROSSED is up, exclusively at ew.com. I am dying to know what you guys think. This trailer is beautifully done and I love it–and I think it’s the perfect transition from MATCHED to CROSSED.

I also have some truly unbelievable news. MATCHED was chosen as one of YALSA’s 2011 Teens’ Top Ten Books. This award means the world to me because MATCHED was nominated by teens, voted for by teens, and ultimately selected by teens across the country as one of their Top Ten favorite titles. As a former high school English teacher, I can’t imagine a more awesome honor than this. Thank you, thank you, thank you to all the teens who nominated and voted for MATCHED. I am very grateful and thrilled.

UPDATED 10/28: I have just heard from my publisher that there will NOT be early copies of CROSSED available at the Barnes and Noble event. Still waiting for confirmation on the Book Festival. I am SO sorry/bummed about this. But I will sign any and all copies of MATCHED and also bookplates for you to put inside of CROSSED when it does come out. I also have some fun news for those of you who live in the southern Utah area. I’m presenting at the St. George Book Festival on October 29th and doing a signing afterwards at the Festival, and then again a bit later at Barnes and Noble. But here is the really fun part: I have confirmed with Penguin that they will ship CROSSED a few days early to those two events. So if you come, you can get CROSSED before its release date. This is so exciting for me because I’m from southern Utah and because the Outer Provinces are based on that area, so it’s really fun to talk about the book and see it go out into the world right from where it began, so to speak. More info on these events here and here. (If you click on the second link you’ll have to scroll down in the left sidebar for info on where/when I’ll be presenting.)

We are getting closer and closer–less than two weeks left now! Woo hoo!

The lovely folks at Penguin Teen have declared October to be “Re-Read Matched Month.” And I will say that it is a great idea to re-read MATCHED to be ready for CROSSED because the story picks right up again in Chapter 1 of CROSSED.

To celebrate Re-Read Matched Month, Penguin Teen has made an awesome tumblr of Matched Facts to help refresh your memory. They’ve posted a bunch already and will be adding a new fact each day up until the release of CROSSED. You can find the tumblr here, with the most current fact at the top. Scroll down to see more (the ones that are marked SPOILER are spoilers for those who haven’t yet read MATCHED, but won’t ruin anything for CROSSED). So, if you can’t re-read the book, this is a fast way to remind yourself of some key facts!

There are also Matched-related discussions taking place over in the Re-Read Matched in October forum on Goodreads.

In other MATCHED news, the MATCHED paperback made the New York Times Bestseller List (Children’s Chapter Books) for paperbacks, debuting at #5 its first week out and staying on at #7 this past week! Thank you all so much for your continued support of this book. I got to sign copies of the paperback for the first time last week on the Smart Chicks Tour and it was so much fun. That cover is gorgeous. I love the added green and shininess.

Speaking of the Smart Chicks Tour, it was a really lovely experience. Though I was only gone for about 24 hours and didn’t get to see/talk with the other authors nearly enough, it was so fun to hang out with them even for a bit. And MANY THANKS to all of you who came to the event. I loved meeting each of you. And Portland is GORGEOUS.

While at the Smart Chicks tour event, I got to meet the AWESOME Audra, who runs one of the fansites (the-society.net). She is giving away some great MATCHED swag over on the fansite right now, so head on over to enter! I have links to the fansites in the sidebar and they are amazing. Sometimes they know things before I do! So if you haven’t checked them out yet, be sure to do so.

Also, I’ve chosen the winner of VARIANT (via the random number generator)! It is Jessie Humphries! Congratulations, Jessie!

I hope you are all having a wonderful October so far. This is the best month in a lot of ways–best month for running here in Utah, best month for being outside during the day and then curling up with a book at night, best month for apple cider and pumpkins on porches. Happy fall!

BIG NEWS.

We received our first major professional review for CROSSED and it is from Kirkus. And it’s a starred review!

(!!!)

I am giddy, giddy, giddy about this. Here is a little of what they had to say:

“Cassia and Ky grapple with secrets, wilderness and the tumultuous meanings of love in the second installment of this addictive, layered dystopic trilogy…

“Both rich and easy to digest, this will leave fans hungry for the third book.”

They said more nice things, too, but I didn’t include them JUST IN CASE there are those of you who prefer to avoid all things spoilery.

I am absolutely thrilled. CROSSED is the most personal book I’ve written, for a variety of reasons. I care so much about these characters and their story and the setting–I had to get it all right, and it took a lot of work. My editor, Julie Strauss-Gabel, was patient and wise throughout this collaboration. I’m deeply grateful to her.

November 1 is coming up so quickly…less than a month left before CROSSED is out in the world. I can’t wait!

Today is the release date for the MATCHED paperback. It’s shiny and green and BEAUTIFUL and it includes the first two chapters of CROSSED. The paperback editor for this book, Eileen Kreit, has just done an unbelievable job with this edition and I really want to thank her and her team.

And it’s the release date for ENTHRALLED. So many great stories in this one, including ones by Mary Pearson (hers was one of my faves), Carrie Ryan (ditto), Margaret Stohl (okay, I loved them all), Kami Garcia, etc.

To celebrate the paperback release of MATCHED, there’s a twitter party today at 5 p.m. (MST). I’ll be answering questions about the book, etc. More info in the post below!

If you aren’t on twitter, etc., and would like to leave a question here in the comments, I will do my best to get to those as well if they are questions that haven’t been asked in the FAQ section of the blog or the Q & A posts (click on the q & a category to see those posts).

Happy September 20th!

Many thanks to Anna for creating this icon!

To celebrate the publication of the MATCHED paperback tomorrow, September 20 (woohoo!), we’re going to have a chat on Twitter. I’ll be taking questions about MATCHED and CROSSED and answering other questions you might have (about writing, reading, pretty much anything!). Here’s everything you need to know:

*The chat will take place on Twitter on Tuesday, September 20th at 7 PM Eastern/5 PM Mountain/4 PM Pacific and last an hour (ending at 8 PM Eastern/6 PM Mountain/5 PM Pacific).

*People who want to participate in the chat and follow it should use the tag #allychat .

*Penguin will be randomly choosing people (US only) to win copies of the new MATCHED paperback and some CROSSED galleys!. They will be choosing winners who have participated in the chat using the #allychat hashtag, so don’t forget to use the hashtag!

*It would be awesome if you could spread the word over the next couple of days on your blogs and/or any social networks where you participate.

Hope to see you tomorrow over on twitter!

UPDATE: You can find the first two chapters of CROSSED here.

Well…you can! The first two chapters will be posted on ew.com exclusively tomorrow: Tuesday, September 13th. I’ll make sure to link to the chapters here on the blog when they go up. I hope you enjoy! I can’t wait for this next part of the story to be out in the world. I care about these characters and worked really hard to make sure this part of their story was the best it could be. I hope you enjoy the chapters! (The first two chapters are also included in the MATCHED paperback, out September 20th, but you can read them a whole week early online.)

And, as we get closer and closer to the release of CROSSED, Penguin has put together an awesome tumblr site here where they’re posting one MATCHED fact per day to get everyone all ready for CROSSED. So if you want to make sure everything is fresh in your mind for when you read the second book, this is for you! It’s so much fun. The first fact went up today and there are many more on the way as we countdown the release to CROSSED.

November 1 is coming up!!

it is the release date for the paperback of MATCHED…

….and it is also the release date for ENTHRALLED, the short story collection edited by Melissa Marr and Kelley Armstrong. I contributed the story Leaving.

I have been so excited about these books and have blogged about them both before, but it took me until today to realize that their release dates are the same. Good heavens, I am out to lunch.

And, September also marks the beginning of my traveling again–I’ll have had four months off and it was wonderful–but I’m very thrilled to be going to Portland on the 29th as part of the Smart Chicks tour. For full tour info, click here.

My blogging will be a bit sporadic over the next few weeks because of the perfect storm of a) deadlines b) the beginning of school, which means LOTS of transitions for our family this year and c) a raging case of carpal tunnel, which always happens when a) is taking place. So I’m backing off on the writing that isn’t actual book writing to save myself some pain. But I’ll keep updating with fun news as we get closer and closer to the release date of CROSSED…which is now exactly two months away.

I hope you are all having a wonderful first of September!

I’m so excited that MATCHED is nominated for the YALSA Teens’ Top Ten List! It’s a huge honor to be nominated and there are so many great books up for the honor this year.

You can vote here–but only if you’re a teen!

And since I am linking to things in today’s blog post, I thought I’d send you in the direction of three of my favorite blogs to read.

Brodi Ashton, author of the upcoming EVERNEATH, blogs here. You guys. She writes the funniest blog in the world. I laugh out loud while reading every single one of her posts. Often I laugh more than once. This is big for me. Because I think I am quick to laugh in real life, and there is NOTHING I love more than laughing, but sometimes I feel like it takes a lot to crack me up when I’m reading something. I smile a lot when I’m reading funny things, but guffawing? Doesn’t happen much. Unless I’m reading Brodi’s blog.

Becca Wilhite, author of BRIGHT BLUE MIRACLE and MY RIDICULOUS ROMANTIC OBSESSIONS, has what I think is the best slice of life blog, where she talks about writing, but also things she likes to cook and fun experiences substitute teaching and her cute kids and happiness and all the little good things in life. I love her blog because Becca is a writer–but she is also many other things (mom, teacher, chef) and she is completely unapologetic about it and glories in it (in a fun, non-gloating, you-want-to-be-her-friend-way). You can find Becca here.

Chelsea Parsons is a photographer in Tasmania and our paths crossed when we both lived in Ithaca for several years. Chelsea is one of those people who is incorrigibly creative in every aspect of life and she has the most beautiful blog. I like to go there when I want to see unique, pretty, different things. Click here for Chelsea.

Enjoy! And now I am going to go freak out about the first day of school, which is today, and which I am not entirely sure we are prepared for. Although I did make the traditional baked oatmeal for breakfast, so at least there’s that…