November, 2005 Edition

Hello everyone!

I know, I know. It's been a long time since I've written... and like all bad correspondents, I have excuses! First, my two fabulous newsletter organizers, Jess and Laurie, have moved onto Real Life and haven't been able to pull together a column for a while. Second, I've been writing! After a massive world tour through America, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and South Africa, I finally returned home last summer...not quite sure if my children would even remember who I was, after that long an absence...and then dug in my heels to finish the book I was working on. The result? Not only is my 2006 book ready for you, my 2007 book is finished too. (Some of you might have seen an excerpt on the website...it was previously called Signal 1000, but I've renamed it Nineteen Minutes.) Now, I've moved onto research for the 2008 book...more on that later.

What's New?

I've got lots of news to report. First - and most exciting - VANISHING ACTS will be published in paperback in the US on November 15! This is the first time one of my novels has been available here for the holiday season... and I do hope Santa will get to see it on Christmas lists everywhere. Like my other paperback versions, it will feature a book club discussion guide, so that you and your reading group can enjoy it to the fullest!

Film news: MY SISTER'S KEEPER continues to inch along in development at New Line Cinema. A script has been written, and got excellent coverage (which is Hollywoodspeak for "everyone really liked it.") Rumor has it they are now attaching a director. Also, KEEPING FAITH has been optioned by Lifetime television - they're looking to replicate the success of PLAIN TRUTH, their most-watched movie of 2004.

THE TENTH CIRCLE

Hard to believe, given that it's only November, but plans are in full swing for the publication of THE TENTH CIRCLE. I've been asked many times about my favorite book...and I have, up till this point, said it's SECOND GLANCE...but I'll tell you, I think THE TENTH CIRCLE is the best thing I've ever written. It's the story of Daniel Stone, who grew up as the only white boy in a native Eskimo village where his mother taught, and was teased mercilessly because he was different. He fought back, the baddest of the bad kids: stealing, drinking, robbing and cheating his way out of the Alaskan bush - where he honed his artistic talent, fell in love with a girl and got her pregnant. To become part of a family, he reinvented himself - jettisoning all that anger to become a docile, devoted husband and father.

Fifteen years later, when we meet Daniel again, he is a comic book artist. His wife teaches Dante's Inferno at a local college; his daughter, Trixie, is the light of his life - and a girl who only knows her father as the even-tempered, mild-mannered man he has been her whole life. Until, that is, she is date raped, and Daniel finds himself struggling, again, with a powerlessness and a rage that may not just swallow him whole, but destroy his family and his future. THE TENTH CIRCLE asks whether a man can reinvent himself in the course of a lifetime; or if his mistakes are carried with him forever. It's heartbreaking and eye-opening - a backstage look at what our teenagers are doing these days - but it's also unlike anything you've ever read before: Because Daniel expresses himself through art, not words, the novel's narrative chapters will be intercut with pen-and-ink pages from Daniel's Stone's graphic novel - the illustrated story of a man whose daughter is stolen by the devil into the world of Dante's Inferno, and how a father might literally go through Hell to get her back.

The publication date is Tuesday, March 7. I have a multimedia presentation to whet your appetite even more:

THE TENTH CIRCLE multimedia presentation

For those of you that like to plan ahead, here are
tentative dates/cities for the 2006 tour:

My 2008 Book

And finally - what's going on right now on my desk? The strangest combinations of materials, actually. I'm thick into the research for my 2008 book, which will involve an inmate on Death Row...who wants to donate his heart, post-execution, to the family of his victim. This creates enough of an uproar within the prison...but then the inmate begins to heal others he comes in contact with; he gets a ragtag group of felons believing everything he says. But when the prison chaplain starts wondering if this man might not be a messiah...everything he knew for sure - his faith, his God, his trust in the American system of justice - is turned upside down. I'm hoping this book will explore the nature of faith and forgiveness, and whether or not it's right to believe what we're told is right...or if we need to figure things out for ourselves. Research has taken me from reading the Bible with a fine-toothed comb to reading the Gnostic gospels -- the gospels that were very intentionally left OUT of the Bible, when it was compiled, and that offer a much different take on what it means to have faith. And next week, I'm headed off to Arizona's Death Row, to tour the facility, speak to the correctional officers, and then to sit down with an inmate to talk about what it's like to carry that sentence on one's shoulders.

Thanks again for choosing my books out of all the others on bookstore and library shelves...and please do keep reading!

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© 2005 Jodi Picoult
Hanover, New Hampshire
www.jodipicoult.com