THE LOST comes out today!

Lost your way?

Your dreams?

Yourself?

Welcome to Lost...

I am so very thrilled to announce the release of my new book, THE LOST!!!  This is my first book for adults, and the first in a new trilogy, published by Harlequin/Mira.

THE LOST is about a woman trapped in a town full of only lost things and lost people.

One morning, Lauren Chase gets into her car to go to her dead-end job, but instead of making a left at the light, she drives straight.  And drives and drives until she runs out of gas in a town called Lost.  Once there, she can't leave.  Lost is surrounded by an impassable wall of dust.  And the only people who aren't trying to kill her are a mysterious wild man called the Finder and a knife-wielding six-year-old girl...

If you're interested, you can read the first two chapters here.

I loved writing this book.  I felt like I was breathing with Lauren, laughing with her, crying with her.  Usually, I swear by outlines, but this one... I followed Lauren to Lost and discovered its quirks, horrors, and beauty with her.  I fell in love with this bizarre town where socks and keys clog the gutters, feral dogs roam the alleys, suitcases litter the parking lots, and a single red balloon always floats overhead.  And I can't wait to share it with you!

So, welcome to Lost!  I hope you find what you're missing.

Playlist for THE LOST

I love listening to music when I write.  It focuses me.  I know that makes zero sense to people who need silence to focus, but for me, music distracts that part of my brain that gets caught up in the minutiae of life.

You know the part of the brain I mean.  The part that likes to babble.  The little voice that prattles on and on: "I should do the laundry.  I wonder if it's bad that I don't separate the light colors from the dark.  I wash it on cold.  It hasn't caused a problem.  Except that time I turned all those socks blue.  Oh, and the pink underwear incident.  But not lately.  Need to remember to check all pockets for tissues.  Really hate when I forget.  Impossible to get that stuff off.  It's like cat hair.  Cat hair clings to everything.  You could weaponize it.  Coat the enemy in fuzz.  And dryer lint.  Isn't there an artist who creates pictures out of dryer lint?  I don't remember her name.  I'm sure Google knows..."  And from there, you're off to Google and somehow you end up on a website about an Icelandic elf school and you're just about to send off your application because it's totally a real thing and you really, really want to go... before you remember you're supposed to be writing.

So to avoid all of that -- and also to avoid doing the laundry -- I listen to music when I write.

For my new book THE LOST, which comes out on May 27th (!!!!!), I created a playlist to keep me in the right frame of mind while I wrote.  THE LOST is about a woman trapped in a town full of only lost things and lost people.  It's a very atmospheric novel, so these are all very atmospheric songs:

"Hotel California" by the Eagles

"Tom's Diner" by Suzanne Vega

"Eleanor Rigby" by The Beatles

"The Dreaming" by Kate Bush

"Henry Darger" by Natalie Merchant

"Dust in the Wind" by Kansas

"Are You Out There" by Dar Williams

"Building a Mystery" by Sarah McLachlan

"There Is No Arizona" by Jamie O'Neal

"Mad World" by Adam Lambert

"Rolling in the Deep" by Adele

"Fireflies" by Owl City

"Top of the World" by Dixie Chicks

"Prayer for an Innocent Man" by Vertical Horizon

"A Mistake" by Fiona Apple

"Galileo" by Indigo Girls

"What I Am" by Edie Brickell

"Blackbird" by Sarah Mclachlan

"The Beauty of the Rain" by Dar Williams

"Suddenly I See" by KT Tunstall

Happy listening, and happy reading!

Excerpt from THE LOST

Two months until THE LOST comes out!!!

Very tempted to make a joke about how I lost track of time and am shocked that it's only two months until pub day, but I'll resist.  I can't wait for people to meet Lauren and Peter and Claire!

If you're a reviewer, librarian, bookseller, or other publishing industry professional, please note that the eGalley (digital advance reader copy) of THE LOST is now available.  Click here to request it on NetGalley!

And no matter who you are, I'm excited to invite you to read the first two chapters of THE LOST, which I just posted on my website.  I hope you enjoy them!  Here's how it starts:


Things I lost:
a stick of Chapstick
a few quarters
one turquoise earring, a gift
my old college roommate's new phone number
my left sandal
Mr. Rabbit, my favorite stuffie from my preschool years
my way

Chapter One

For the first hundred miles, I see only the road and my knuckles, skin tight across the bones, like my mother's hands, as I clutch the steering wheel. For the second hundred miles, I read the highway signs without allowing the letters to compute in my brain. Exit numbers. Names of towns. Places that people call home, or not. After three hundred miles, I start to wonder what the hell I'm doing.

In front of me, the highway lies straight, a thick rope of asphalt that stretches to a pinprick on the horizon. On either side of the highway are barbed wire fences that hem in the few cows that wander through the scrub-brush desert. Cacti are clustered by the fence posts. Above, the sun has bleached the blue until the sky looks like fabric stretched so thin that it's about to tear. There are zero clouds.

I should turn around.

Instead, I switch on the radio. Static. For a moment, I let the empty crackle of noise spray over me, a match to my mood, but then it begins to feel like prickles inside my ears. Also, I begin to feel self-consciously melodramatic. Maybe as a sixteen-year-old, I'd have left the static on, but I'm twenty-seven. I change the station. Again, static. And again. Again.

First option: an apocalypse has wiped out all the radio transmitters.

Second, much more likely, option: my car radio is broken.

Switching the radio off, I drive to the steady thrum of the car engine and the hiss of wind through the cracked-open window. I wanted the radio so I wouldn't have to think. I listen to the wind instead and try to keep my mind empty.

I won't think.

I won't worry.

I won't scream.

Click here to read more.

Countdown Widgets for CONJURED and THE LOST

The other day, it suddenly dawned on me that...  Whoa!  It's now less than three months until Conjured comes out!  And for that matter, less than five months until The Lost comes out!

Yes, I've known the pub dates forever.  But somehow, the reality of how those dates are actually approaching, and how these novels are going to become real books when those dates arrive, just reached my brain last week.

After a brief flash of terror -- SO MUCH WORK TO DO BEFORE PUB DATE!!!! -- my brain accepted reality and got quite giddy!  And since I know I'll now be counting the days until each of these pub dates, I figured I'd formalize the process and post some countdown widgets here.  So, without further ado, here they are.....

For Conjured, my next YA, which comes out September 3rd:

And for The Lost, my first book for adults, which comes out October 29th:

If you'd like to join in my countdown, please feel free to grab either or both of these for your site/blog/etc by clicking the "Get Widget" buttons.

Tick.  Tick.  Tick.  AAAAAAAH!  SO MUCH WORK TO DO!