I’ve been trying to think of a fun or artful or eloquent way of putting it, but mostly I just keeping doing this to anyone who stands still long enough:

Here’s the blurb from the Publisher’s Weekly Rights Report:

Kate Sullivan at Delacorte Press has acquired Becky Allen’s debut Bound by Blood and Sand and a sequel, in a new YA fantasy series in the vein of Tamora Pierce, which explores class and power. The novel follows a slave girl in a desert world where the magical Well is running dry; when she discovers a source of magic, she may have the power to save the water and her world, but returning the water means saving her slavers. Publication is planned for fall 2016; Hannah Bowman of Liza Dawson Associates brokered the deal for world rights.

SO THAT’S WHAT MY BOOK IS ABOUT.

I seriously, genuinely could not be happier. BOUND BY BLOOD AND SAND will be out in fall 2016. And on the one hand, that feels like a very long time from now. But on the other hand, fun fact, I started the very first draft of the book in January, 2010. What’s another two years after five?

(Wow, five years. It was a very, very, very different book in that first draft, by the way. And not a single word of that version remains: I rewrote it from the ground up in 2011. And I did that again in 2012. All BOUND BY BLOOD AND SAND has in common with that 2010 draft is the protagonists’ names and being set in a desert.)

ANYWAY. I wish I had something deep or profound to say here, but I guess one advantage to waiting a few days after posting on Facebook and Twitter is that I can also say OMG THANK YOU.

No, wait, not that. Patrick Bateman thanks are probably not sincere. How about …

Except there are SO MANY people I want to thank: Hannah, my super rad agent, and Kate, who bought my book (ZOMG), plus my writing group (Jess, Maddy, Jen – YOU GUYS ARE THE BEST) and the other handful of people I harangued into reading various drafts of this thing (ahhhh Rachel, Margot, Nicole, Karen, Olivia, Carolyn, I HOPE I DIDN’T MISS ANYONE, you are all ALSO SUPER GREAT). Also HUGE THANKS to everyone who sent me well wishes when I initially posted last week, you are all lovely and wonderful and every single Facebook like made my day.

And not to be a person who spends to much time on tumblr, but like they say, I can’t even.

Final thought.

Wait for it …

Wait for it …