New Stolen Nights Cover! (US!)

Voila! The new Stolen Nights cover! This is the US version which comes out early next year. I know...I know...you hate me for it taking so long. I have attempted a vlog like 900 times and will explain it ALL when I upload it.

I LOVE this cover. And when you read the book you'll see it's relevance.  I'm sorry this book has taken so long. Believe me, no one would like this book to come out sooner than me. Don't give up on me yet! You'll love it. Okay, I hope you'll love it.

One more thing, I thought I would share that is 100% unrelated. London's National Portrait Gallery has a writing contest going on. I highly recommend you check it out if you live in London. But the cool thing is, if you don't live in London you can still enter. It's called the Imagined Lives exhibit. 

http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/display/2011/imagined-lives-portraits-of-unknown-people.php/

Basically, you look at these portraits and you make up a story of 300 words about the life of the sitter of the portrait. Personally, I think it's pretty cool. I always look at paintings and try to imagine who was where and why it was painted in the first place. I thought I would share the one I wrote in the hopes it will inspire you to try to write on too. 

At one time people believed this to be Mary Queen of Scots but apparently as time would reveal, it is not. So here is what I submitted:

Unknown woman, formerly known as Mary, Queen of Scots
by Unknown artist
circa 1570

Leave your heart with the mountains. Leave it tucked away with the ticking clock.

“Too bad, not a boy,” they said with a tisk of their tongues against their lips.

Too bad? Too bad you were in love with her the moment they placed her in your arms.

You will come back? She asked you two years after you faked her death.

Always she asks those four words.

You will come back?

 Not quite a question, not quite a statement but those four words chained you to your story. You would not allow your daughter a life of a bowed head and shut mouth.

So you hid her in those mountains. Hid her from the men who would have destroyed her.  

“A boy!” They demanded. They demand it of you now. As your husband the King plans his wars, they demand that you give birth to a boy. How could they dismiss her so? Did they not see her golden hair? She had her mother’s small mouth. Her mother’s delicate hands.

You will come back?

 You will. Until then, you will count the hours until these men turn their backs. Until they stop watching their queen. Their lady. And when they do, when the King is bored with you and believes you to be a lost cause, nothing but a slave to the death of a baby you only fooled him into believing is dead, you will come back.

Oh yes. You will escape. To stay.

To live. 

NOW YOU DO IT.