You may have noticed I’ve been a little quiet on the internet front the last few months, and for good reason. On April 2, I gave birth to my first baby!

Introducing Elouise Madrone:

She’s been keeping me very busy, tired and happy. I think we’re close to perfecting a configuration where she sleeps on my lap while I balance my laptop on the arm of my chair and type with one hand. My next book may be written entirely one-handed.

Speaking of books….

My new book OVER YOU comes out June 4th! You can pre-order it HERE. And read a Sneak Peek HERE. And stay tuned for info about the release party.

But even sooner than that, my book CRAZY comes out in paperback May 21! Order your copy HERE. And look at what I just got in the mail:

Maybe I should give away a few copies soon….

And now, last but not least, I am excited to officially announce that I just signed a contract for a two-book YA series with Katherine Tegen Books (Harper Teen/Harper Collins)! Here’s the announcement from Publishers Weekly:

Author of BEAUTIFUL and CRAZY Amy Reed’s new two-book series, INVINCIBLE, pitched as Go Ask Alice meets The Fault in Our Stars, about a teenage girl who survives a terminal cancer diagnosis, only to get trapped in the deadly spiral of addiction, and the boy who would do anything to save her, to Anica Rissi at Katherine Tegen Books, by Amy Tipton at Signature Literary Agency (world).

Woohoo! So excited to be working with Anica and her team!

Now back to the baby and one-handed writing….

Love,

Amy

Excerpt from OVER YOU, by Amy Reed by amyreedfiction

And don’t forget–you can pre-order it HERE to make sure you’re the first to have it!

To celebrate, I’m excited to tell you about the Goodreads GIVEAWAY of an Advance Reader Copy. Contest ends April 15 and is only open to U.S. residents.

But don’t worry–if you don’t win, you can always PRE-ORDER to make sure you get your copy the day it comes out.

(And Bay Area folks, don’t forget about my reading this Saturday, March 9th. Hope to see you there!)

Stay tuned for more news (including an exclusive excerpt from OVER YOU).

Love,

Amy

Hey Bay Area folks,
I hope you can make it to my reading on Saturday, March 9th at Not Your Mother’s Book Club in San Francisco at the Opera Plaza Books, Inc. I’ll be joined by the lovely Corrine Jackson and Kirstin Cronn-Mills, two amazing contemporary YA authors. You do not want to miss this!

This will be my last event until at least June (I’ll be pretty busy having a baby), so I hope to see you there (PS: I’ll be humongous).

I plan to read a little from Crazy, plus a sneak peek of Over You, which releases June 4th. Hopefully there will be time for a Q&A at the end.

Spread the word!

Love,

Amy

If you’re holding out for a physical ARC, you’ll have to wait a bit longer. You can send your request with this form and it will be forwarded along to my publisher.

Readers can also pre-order it here

Hooray!

But that’s before they meet Dylan.

Dylan is dangerous and intoxicating, and he awakens something in Max that she never knew existed. No matter how much she wants to, she can’t back away.

Not to distract you from CRAZY (which was just released in hardcover) or CLEAN (which was just released in paperback), but my editor at Simon Pulse (the lovely Anica Rissi) just sent me the cover of my next book, OVER YOU:

Isn’t it pretty?!

Once again, a gorgeous, striking cover from the creative team at Simon Pulse. I love, love, LOVE it!

I guess now you probably want to know what the book’s about, huh?

Stay tuned…

xoxo

Amy

Psychadelic bookstore!

Sepia bookstore!

Thanks so much to the lovely Diesel bookstore for hosting!

Thanks to Brian for your fancy photography (and lots of other things).

Thanks to everyone who came and showed your support. I love you.

xoxo

Amy

Dear Reader,

Today is CRAZY’s publication birthday, but it was really born over two years ago when I started scribbling notes about a sort of love story told in emails. I had vague notions of unreliable narrators and emotional disintegration. In the back of my mind, I think I also wanted it to be a kind of apology. An explanation. So Izzy was born–a troubled girl who did not know how to be loved. And then there was Connor–the boy who loved her.

Most mental illnesses, including bipolar disorder, start displaying their first symptoms in one’s teen years–around Izzy’s age. I was fourteen when I started taking Prozac for my depression. I came of age in the first wave of medicated kids, when every day there would be a new headline about kids on Prozac, kids on Ritalin. When I was in college, OCD seemed to be the big thing. I have watched this trend grow over the years, more and more kids diagnosed with mood disorders, more kids on medication that alters their fragile brain chemistry. Whether or not these diagnoses and prescriptions are always warranted, one thing is very certain–a lot of kids are in a lot of pain.

I can honestly say that medication saved my life as a teen. At age fourteen, I was planning my suicide. I got very close to following through. But as strained as my relationship with my parents was at the time (as strained as all teens’ relationships are with their parents), I somehow gathered up the courage to tell my mom what was going on. Some glimmer of hope remained, some knowledge that I was loved, some curiosity about what would happen tomorrow. I asked for help and I got it, and that help saved my life.

It is my greatest wish that anyone out there who is feeling this kind of hopelessness and fear finds the brave place inside them and ask for help before the light of hope burns out. If this book can inspire just one reader to do that, my time on this planet will have been worth something.

I recently did an interview with Kari at A Good Addiction blog (you can read the full interview here). She asked me a great question: “Who do you think needed the other the most, Izzy or Connor?” My answer was this: It’s hard to say; they both needed each other so much. Izzy, in the end, may have needed Connor to literally save her. But she also just needed him to see her, and to care enough to do the hard thing and confront her. But Connor needed Izzy to push his buttons the way she did. Ultimately, he learned how to be brave, how to do the difficult thing instead of being passive. He risked losing everything in order to do the right thing. There’s nothing braver than that.

I believe we are all partners in the lives of those we love. We owe it to them to be honest, even when it’s hard.

To celebrate the release of CRAZY, I want to give away THREE COPIES to people who are brave–to enter, comment below with an example of when you’ve been brave and did the right thing even when it was hard. I will pick three people at random (U.S. and Canada only, please). The winners will be announced June 18th. I can’t wait to be inspired by your answers!

Finally, I want to dedicate this book to all the Izzys and Connors of the world, to everyone who has ever felt crazy or in love. I dedicate it to my husband Brian, who has loved me through everything.

Love,

Amy

UPDATE:

Congratulations to the winners of the CRAZY giveaway: Rachel, Lexie, and Alicia Marie! I will be contacting you soon. Thank you everyone for your beautiful answers, and for your courage. I hope we can all continue to be brave and do the right thing.