Official Maria V. Snyder Blog

If you're thinking I'm going to write about books, then that's an odd title isn't it?  Actually, I'm writing about me.  I'm very stiff and sore today because I played volleyball ALL DAY yesterday!  Six hours in the hot 90+ sunshine (33C).  My team is part of a summer volleyball league and we've been playing the other teams all summer.  Yesterday was our end of the season tournament.  We had to play each team once - which meant 8 games in a row (except one bye) and the top four teams played in the playoffs (which meant another 3-4 games).  We went into the tournament as the first place team.  So we had a team meeting before play started and my husband, whose also a teammate asked, "What's our game plan?" and Missy, the cheerleader of the team (and the one who tells us to pick it up when we're dogging) said, "To win." Well, after two games in that heat, I thought I was going to pass out or throw up! I did survive the day (just e

According to my bookstore commandos, t he book has been released!  And if you already get my Free email newsletter, this should be old news so feel free to skip this post :)  One of the unique things about this release is SPY GLASS is also going to be available in the United Kingdom and Australia in the same month. Usually, my overseas readers have to wait, but not this time :) The UK edition will be out September 17th. And, according to my Australian Editor, the AU edition is available now at: SPY GLASS   See all the beautiful covers below??  I must admit...the Australian one (purple with diamond) is my favorite of the  three (shhhh....don't tell!).   I'm thrilled to see this book in print. It was a difficult one to write - Opal had tough choices to make and difficult obstacles to navigate. For this story, I toured the State Correctional Institute in Camp Hill, PA for men. This facility also has a SMU (Special Management Unit - a.k.a. max security). A friend of

I'm back from my last trip of the summer.  It's been rather busy with two trips in June, two in July and two in August.  Two of them were for writing - the conference in Orlando, FL and a trip up to Seton Hill Univeristy to teach and meet with my mentees. I'm glad to be home for a few weeks before flying off to LA and San Diego, California in October.  I do enjoy traveling, but that was too much as I really couldn't enjoy my summer with my children. As you can see - I've re-designed my blog.  Not me - my good friend Sarah who designs my bookmarks and did my MySpace page.  I decided I wanted something light and fun with butterflys and she whipped this together for me.  What do you think?  I love the blue butterflys that look like they're made of water. All right - now onto the winners of SPY GLASS!  I can't believe there were 152 comments and I now how 101 followers - that's just amazing and I hope I can keep up with regular posts. THE WINNERS A

Two of them are mine, but still... I wonder if it's the new blog (instead of going through Myspace and Goodreads) or the weekend timing, or the 5 books I've dangled on my little glass hook ;> No worries if you couldn't follow (I didn't know it would be tricky!)  - I'll pick a winner from the commenters as well.  Oh and I forgot to mention the contest includes international as well - I have to celebrate in style. Some news and links - I did a guest blog over at Eve's Fan Garden about strong female characters - titled, Before there was Buffy...   go here, if you'd like to read it:  http://evesfangarden.com/blog/2010/08/12/before-there-was-buffy-by-maria-v-snyder/ And my local paper did a review of SPY GLASS in today's paper.  Here's the link if anyone is interested: http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/4/276506

Hello!  Welcome to my new blog.  I know I'm not the best about blogging, but hopefully this will make things easier for me to let you know what's going on.  Things like Valek is currently fighting Aragorn from LOTR over at the YA Fantasy Showdown and he needs help so go here to help: http://yafantasyshowdown.weebly.com/index.html In order to celebrate this new blog - I'm giving away FIVE signed copies of SPY GLASS!!!  What you need to do to win is to sign up as a follower and leave me a comment that you did and I'll randomly pick five winners next Sunday, August 22nd! SPY GLASS will be release on August 24th - and some stores will have it on the shelves that week and others will wait until September 1st.  Amazon always ships early. Here's an excerpt you can't find anywhere else! By the time I met up with Nic and Eve at the Pig Pen, the evening rush had subsided. “’Bout time,” Nic complained. Eve plucked a horse hair from my cloak. “She’s been hangin