Hello everyone!!  First and foremost---drum roll please---here's the new book!  It will be available on April 23, 2013!!!  I know you've been waiting a long time and I appreciate your patience.  Here's the link if you'd like to preorder it.  http://on.fb.me/SwMUnSI'm   What do you think of the cover?  And maybe you'd like a little scoop of what it's about...

There's a conversation going on about it on facebook.  Join in!  I'd love to hear your thoughts.  http://www.facebook.com/#!/AuthorKristinHannah?fref=ts

I'm sorry it's been so long since I was here---so long in fact that I had to scramble to find my password!  It has been a wild and crazy year for many.  In some ways crazy-good and in some ways not so good. 

I'll start with the easy stuff.  After twenty years in the same house, my husband and I decided to move.  We didn't plan this.  Honestly, we fell in love with a house we weren't even looking for, and suddenly it was a go.  I spent most of the spring packing and throwing away (note to self: don't collect stuff you don't need).  My library was the hardest part.  I simply didn't have room for all of the glorious books I have read and collected over the years, so I had to find them good homes.  :)

And then there was the book.  This book.  FLY AWAY. 

It was a strange journey with this novel from the very start.  For the first time in my career, I made the choice to revisit characters I'd created before.  In this case, characters you may have met in Firefly Lane, five years ago.  The simple truth is that these characters, more than most, stayed with me.  I often found myself wondering what had become of them, and so I decided--at last--to find out.  Turns out Thomas Wolfe was right.  It's not so easy to go home again, or to turn back the clock, or to revisit the people and places of one's past.  And so it was the the book that I thought would be easy, turned out to be the most difficult and trickiest of my career.

Why?  Because of the characters.  I loved them, quite simply, and I know that many of you do, also, and this became a pressure I didn't anticipate.  I felt an incredible burden to accomplish what began to seem impossible--a great story that felt fresh and original with characters that made you laugh and cry and think.    And it had to stand alone.  It had to resonate and make sense and sweep you away even if you've never read Firefly Lane.  Yikes.  No wonder it was susch a tough year.

But the good news is this--after a long and creatively exhausting journey through words and lands and people, I am really happy with FLY AWAY and I can't wait to share it with you all.  I can't wait to hear what you think about what has happened to Tully and Marah and Johnny and Cloud in the past few years. 

Again, thanks so much for waiting for me--and for this book.  I have gotten thousands of emails and letters asking for it, and I really hope you love it as much as I do.  :)

With aloha,

Kristin