Ann Brashares

Exciting News

By Ann Brashares on December 2, 2009 8:39 PM | 46 Comments | 0 TrackBacks

My Name is Memory was optioned for film. If you are interested in more details, you can read about it here. It happened really quickly. In fact the book hadn't yet been copyedited, and I felt bad for those scouts and producers having to soldier through my typos and other dumb errors. But it was thrilling, more than anything, to feel that this book was connecting with readers. Peter Chernin is the buyer, and I've heard only great things about him.

You never know what will happen. Most options never turn into movies. (I'm practiced at keeping my expectations in check). But I am hopeful. I can't help it.

My Name is Memory

By Ann Brashares on October 27, 2009 10:37 AM | 112 Comments | 0 TrackBacks

My name is not memory, in fact. But that is the name of my new book, which I just finished this week. I am excited about it. It will be published by Riverhead Books in early June.

But before I go on, I have to apologize. I think I am the worst multi-tasker in the world. No, that is too grand. I am a bad multi-tasker. I have a lot of trouble focusing on writing a book while also keeping my website up to date (not to mention taking care of my children, making dinner, calling my mom back, keeping the pets alive and so on.) To those of you who have continued to check in, thank you. I am so grateful to you for being interested in my books and for letting me know your thoughts. I'm sorry I haven't been writing in and updating the site more frequently. I hope to do better.

This new book is kind of a departure for me. Not a total departure--it's mainly about love. But it takes place on a broad canvas of time. I'm going to include a part of a scene below to give you an idea of it. This scene is told from the point of view of Daniel, a young man blessed (or cursed, it often seems) with a long history and a very unusual memory.

Thanks for reading. I'll write again soon.

"Well. It's a strange thing," I explained. "With each birth your body starts out fresh and mostly blank, but then you print yourself on it over time. You hold onto old experiences: injuries, injustices, and great love affairs, too." I glanced up at Sophia. "And you hold them in your joints and your organs and wear them on your skin."

"You do." She was giving me that same look of indulgence, but it was less confident.

"We all do."

"Because we live again and again?"

"Most of us."

"Not all of us?" Her indulgence showed more signs of genuinely wanting to know.

"Some live only once. Some a very few times. And some just go on and on and on."

"Why?"

I put my head back on my pillow. "That is hard to explain. I'm not sure I really know."

"And you?"

"I've lived many times."

"And you remember them?"

"Yes. That's where I'm different than most people."

"I'll say. And what about me?" She looked like she wasn't going to believe the answer, but slightly feared it anyway.

"You've also lived many times. But your memory is just average."

"Clearly." She laughed. "Have you known me for all of them?"

"I've tried. But no, not all."

"And why can't I remember?"

"You can more than you think. Those memories are in there somewhere. You act on them in ways you don't realized. They determine how you respond to people, the things you love and the things you fear. A lot of our irrational behavior would look more rational if you could see it in the context of your whole long life."

It was amazing the things I was will to tell her if she was willing to listen, and she was. I touched the hem of her sleeve. "I know enough about you to know you love horses and you probably dream about them. You probably dream of the desert sometimes and maybe taking a bath outdoors. Your nightmares are usually about fire. You have problems with your voice and your throat sometimes--that was always your weak spot . . ."

Her face was rapt. "Why?"

"You were strangled a long time ago."

Her alarm was a mix of real and pretend. "By whom?"

"Your husband."

"Awful. Why did I marry him?"

"You didn't have a choice."

"And you knew this man?"

"He was my brother."

"Long dead, I hope."

"Yes, but bearing a grudge through history, I fear."

I could see by her face, she was trying to figure out where to put all of this. "Are you a psychic?" she asked.

I smiled and shook my head. "Although most psychics, if they are any good, do have some memory of old lives. And so do most of the people we consider insane. An asylum is about the densest concentration of people with partial memory you will ever find. They get flashes and visions, but usually not in the right order."

She looked at me sympathetically, wondering if that's where I belonged. "Is that what you do?"

"No. I remember everything."

My new hobby

By Ann Brashares on April 30, 2009 8:27 PM | 140 Comments | 0 TrackBacks

A little over a year ago I started taking piano lessons. I last took them when I was ten, so it's been awhile. I am terrible at it, and my brain and fingers are maddeningly slow, but I really love it. The piece I've been working on is a Mozart sonata (#16 in C) and it is beautiful. Well, it's not beautiful when I play it, but you know what I mean.

Another thing I love is the movie Groundhog Day. It is a profound movie in many ways. I watched it again recently, because I am writing a new book that is partly inspired by it. And then I watched it another time, really slowly. I was trying to figure out where the turning point of the story occurs--the moment when Phil (Bill Murray) begins his transformation from a selfish, hedonistic, misanthrope into a person capable of loving and being loved. I kept starting and stopping the movie, trying to figure it out. And then I did. Or at least I think I did. I think it's the moment when he's sitting in the diner and is struck by a certain beautiful piece of piano music playing on the radio. And guess what that piece is? Mozart's Sonata #16 in C. The very piece I've been playing over and over for weeks. I thought that was a nice confluence of things I happen to love.

The latest

By Ann Brashares on January 26, 2009 6:23 PM | 65 Comments | 0 TrackBacks

There has been some confusion in switching over from my old website to my new one. I think it's all figured out, finally. Thanks for your patience. We're still trying to bring the comments section over from the old site. They should get here soon.

I set up a new mailbox (ann@annbrashares.com or just click on "write to Ann"), and the thing is, it actually works! I am getting emails from readers and writing back. It didn't work on my old site, so I'm very excited that it works on this one. Thanks to those of you who have written to me.

In other news, I was sick the week before last and I had to cancel my bookstore visits in Connecticut, Atlanta and Miami. If you were planning to come to one of those, I am sorry. I've never been sick enough to cancel an appearance before, and I felt terrible for it (in addition to feeling generally terrible because of being sick). I'm feeling much better now and thankful for modern medicine and antibiotics. I'm rescheduling those visits, and I will post them on this site as soon as they are definite.

And last of all, I found out that 3 Willows is going to be #1 on the New York TImes bestseller list of Children's hardcovers next week. I was pretty surprised and excited about that. The only problem is that I made a deal with my kids that if 3 Willows made it to the top spot on the list, I would take them somewhere warm this winter. I was sort of kidding around when I made the deal. I didn't think it would happen and I promptly forgot about it. But my kids have been very eager to remind me. So I guess we're going somewhere warm this winter. So much for the deal I made with myself that I was going to save money.

Today's the day

By Ann Brashares on January 13, 2009 11:58 AM | 128 Comments

That my new book, 3 Willows, goes on sale. I've got the usual anxiety. I've also got the usual excitement, but I guess excitement never feels usual. It's the beginning of life for new characters and their stories. Now they are in the world and they get to interact with readers and change and evolve as they go.

I start my book tour in Southbury, Connecticut tonight, move on to Atlanta and Miami later in the week, and then go to Chicago and Denver next week. The full tour schedule is posted on this site under "Events," so please do come if you live in one of the cities I'm visiting. I'd love to meet you.

On the subject of this site, I'm sort of reintroducing it today. It's been simplified a bit, it can now be reached by the address annbrashares.com (as well as annbrashares.net), and I will be able to update it much more easily. Also, you can now write to me directly (see the "Write to Ann" link on the homepage). All these changes are for the better, I hope, and I am thrilled to be able to interact with the site and with readers more easily.

Thank you for your interest in my books. Thank you for posting your lovely comments. I'll write again soon.

An Update

By Ann Brashares on September 9, 2008 1:40 PM | 55 Comments

My deep thanks to all of you who have read my posts and left comments. It is so nice to hear from you. I wanted to take a minute to answer some questions several of you have asked.I am gearing up to write another book about the girls (women) of the Sisterhood. I am thinking about them quite a bit later in their lives (mid to late twenties), and I promise the big questions, issues, and love interests (Kostos, among others) will not be left out. I have been missing all of them recently. I have quite a bit of (fun) work to do, so I would guess that book will come out in 2010.In the meantime, I have a new book coming out this January. It is called 3 Willows. The main characters are new, but the book takes place in the same world as the Sisterhood. In fact, there are certain secondary characters you will recognize. (Effie!) So that's the news for now. Please stay in touch.

Writing Young

By Ann Brashares on September 8, 2008 1:38 PM | 34 Comments

I tend to write about characters who are younger than me. In the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants books, the characters started out being sixteen and by the end were nearly twenty. In the Last Summer (of You and Me) the three main characters are in their early and mid-twenties. At readings and in interviews people often ask me why this is so. I'm not sure exactly why. But it's a pretty fascinating stretch of life. Many if not most of the great novels of the last couple centuries are about teenagers or characters in their early twenties: Jane Austen's novels, the Bronte novels, much of Dickens, Thackeray and so on. It's the time in our lives when we are making critical decisions (and mistakes) about who we are going to be and whom to love. We get to take longer to figure it out this century, but it's still a pretty dramatic period of life. Besides being asked why I write about young characters, I am often asked how I write about young characters. How do I throw myself across the chasm of full adulthood to relive that period? I guess I don't, really. Age is not so much a feature of your character, as the spot where you stand for a pretty fleeting time on the arc of your life. When I write about a character who is eighteen or twenty, I try to include her as she was when she was four and eleven and also as she'll be when she's thirty-five and seventy. When I think of my own self twenty years ago, I don't feel like I was a different person. The circumstances in my life have changed a lot, but I don't feel like there is any chasm to cross between me now and me then. My interior life feels very much the same. The other explanation is that I have a deep emotional attachment to that juncture of life and haven't quite moved on from it. I guess that's possible too.

It's Been a While

By Ann Brashares on April 26, 2008 1:32 PM | 20 Comments

I'm sorry to have been away so long. After having had a very busy year last year with two new books out, Forever in Blue and The Last Summer (of You & Me), I took a long break from all professional enterprises other than simply writing. I think it's hard to promote your writing while actually trying to write. It's hard for me, anyway. Some people are capable of looking outward and inward in a kind of seamless way, but I've never been good at that. So I have been doing some writing (I'll have more on that soon) as well as hanging around with my kids and my husband, learning the piano (badly, but with enormous effort), running, traveling, seeing friends, and reading. More recently I've been following politics somewhat obsessively. (I'm from Washington, D.C., that's partly my excuse.) And, more relevantly, I'm gearing up for the paperback publication of The Last Summer on May 6 and the sequel to the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants movie on August 8. There's a lovely new paperback cover for Last Summer which I'll post on this site as soon as I figure out how. And there's a new movie poster to show you too. In other news, the paperback of Forever in Blue just came out this month. Now you can get the whole four-book set in a box. (I do love boxed sets-ever since I got my Little House on the Prairie collection.) So that's the quick update. I'll have more for you soon. Thanks for visiting this site.

Publication Day

By Ann Brashares on June 5, 2007 1:28 PM | 16 Comments

This is the day my new book comes out. Always a slightly (or profoundly) nervewracking experience. I got up at 6 am to start doing radio interviews. I talked to Whoopi Goldberg. That was fun. I tend to get involved in the conversation and forget to mention the title of the book and website info at the beginning and end, which is what you are supposed to do. I'm not much of a salesperson, I'm afraid.

It's tricky to do live phone interviews from home-at least from my particular home. I try to be smooth and professional and put on a radio voice while my kids are banging on the door because they can't find their shoes and another phone is ringing and a siren is blaring out the window and the fire alarm is beeping because I forgot to replace the battery.

I always worry on such a day. I worry that no one will buy the book. I worry that many people will buy the book, but no one will like it. I worry that my mind will wander on live TV: I will stare blankly at the camera while my hair is sticking up in some funny way. I worry that no one will come to my bookstore signings. I worry that lots of people will come and that I will be boring and disappointing. "You do this every time," my husband points out.

But this day also brings a certain joy. I am launching these made-up people into the world and giving them a kind of life. I am turning a private, meditative writing experience into a reading experience I hope to share. I am trying to connect my inner life and my stories to the inner lives of others. As E.M. Forster famously wrote in Howards End, "Only connect."

It's always nervewracking to put yourself out there. But it's the root of joy.

The Wedding Dress

By Ann Brashares on May 25, 2007 1:27 PM | 18 Comments

If any of you have come to one of my bookstore events, you've probably heard the story of my wedding dress. I won't give the whole thing right now, but the general idea is that it is a magical dress that not only conforms to the wearer-whatever her shape-but also transforms her and connects her to the women, before and after, who have worn it. Does this sound familiar at all?I wore it when I got married 14 years ago. Then my sister-in-law Kirsten wore it when she married my older brother. Then my sister-in-law Katrina wore it when she married my younger brother. Then by my life-long friend Beth wore it at her wedding. Now my youngest brother Ben is getting married and there was some suspense as to whether his fiance, Kate, would wear it. Well, guess what? She's wearing it. (I didn't pressure her, I swear).

Kate emailed me a couple of days ago to say that a woman (I think a co-worker) asked her what she was wearing to her wedding. Kate explained the great history of The Wedding Dress and all of its wearers. The co-worker said, "That's just like the Traveling Pants." And Kate explained that, in fact, I, her sister-in-law to be was not only the originator of the dress, but also wrote the Traveling Pants. According to Kate, the woman was "gobsmacked." I love that expression, but do not feel entitled to use it in regular speech, because I am not British. Kate is British, so it sounds just right from her.