International Women’s Day and The Chance You Won’t Return Giveaway!

March 8, 20165 Comments

Today is International Women’s Day and considering female pioneer of aviation Amelia Earhart plays into my novel in a big way, it seems like a fantastic day for a giveaway. First, a few cool facts about the famous aviatrix:

Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic and nonstop across the United States, and she was the first person to fly solo over the Pacific between Honolulu and Oakland, California.
She married publisher/promoter/manager George Palmer Putnam, but not before making it clear that she didn’t want their relationship to interfere with her personal or professional goals.
She was the Aviation Editor for Cosmopolitan magazine and wrote several books about her flying experiences.
She was friends with first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, another amazing woman from history.
She had her own clothing line–it’s not just for contemporary celebrities.
Before becoming a pilot, she worked as a nurse’s aide in a Canadian military hospital during WWI, studied pre-med at Columbia, and was a social worker in Boston.

Want more historical trivia about Amelia Earhart (plus some family drama, driver’s ed, mental health, and kissing)? Enter this giveaway to win a signed copy of The Chance You Won’t Return! Entries are open until March 15.

Want bonus points? Share your favorite female historical figure (or figures, there are a lot of great ladies to choose from) in the comments!

Happy Amelia Earhart Day! Plus Giveaway!

July 24, 20152 Comments

Photograph showing Amelia Earhart sitting in the cockpit of an Electra airplane. (via Wikicommons)

Happy birthday, Amelia Earhart! Today would have been the famous pilot’s 118th birthday. Despite having been born over a hundred years ago and having disappeared over the Pacific seventy-eight years ago, she still fascinates and inspires the public. And, obviously, her presence and history are a big part of The Chance You Won’t Return.

What better way to celebrate Amelia Earhart’s birthday than to host a giveaway?

Enter the Rafflecopter below to win a signed copy of The Chance You Won’t Return, plus some book swag and a few extra goodies. For extra entries, follow me on Facebook and Twitter, tweet with the hashtag #TCYWRgiveaway, and comment below about where you’d go if you could travel anywhere.

Thanks to Amelia Earhart for her continued inspiration, and happy Amelia Earhart Day to all my wonderful readers!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Note: Giveaway for US residents only. I love international readers, but postal is expensive.

Amelia Earhart’s Forgotten Footage

June 10, 20151 Comment

Some fun Amelia Earhart news for the week! A film of Amelia Earhart, taken just before her final attempted flight around the world, surfaced recently after sitting on a shelf for fifty years.

In 1937, Earhart was preparing for a flight around the world. Photographer Al Bresnik went to take pictures of Earhart at Burbank Airport, and his brother, John, joined him. Unbeknownst to anyone, John took a short film of Earhart, and his son discovered the contents of the film decades later. Check out some of the footage in the Associated Press clip below:

It’s unclear whether this footage was taken before her first attempt or second attempt, but either way it’s a look at Earhart within a year of her disappearance over the Pacific.

It doesn’t add a lot to Earhart’s history or clear up any details of her disappearance, but for me it’s a reminder that the public is still interested in her life and her story. Learning about her during the research process for The Chance You Won’t Return was awesome, and i loved realizing why Alex’s mom connected to Earhart so deeply. Even these little glimpses of her feel like they give us a clearer picture into who Earhart was and where she went.

Friday Fifteen

April 18, 20142 Comments

Happy Friday, everyone! It’s the Friday before Patriot’s Day/Marathon Monday (aka my favorite MA holiday) and the Friday before The Chance You Won’t Return officially hits selves. Eee! So for today’s Friday Fifteen, I’m featuring a few Amelia Earhart-ish books. Check out the latest in micro-book reviews:

1. Amelia Lost by Candace Fleming
Agent sent me a signed copy after she/Fleming were at a conference. Mid-revision inspiration!

2. The Fun of It by Amelia Earhart
Amelia talks about her own life, flying in general, and women aviators.

3. 20 Hours, 40 Min: Our Flight in the Friendship by Amelia Earhart
Earhart admits she was mostly a passenger on Friendship flight, but obvious she loves flying.

4. Amelia Earhart: Courage in the Sky by Mona Kerby
For 5th grade biography project. Thought, “If I have to read nonfiction, should pick Amelia.”

5. Last Flight by Amelia Earhart
Dispatches from Earhart’s final flight. Similar tonally to her other books, but ending still unsettling.

The Chance You Won’t Return in PW!

April 14, 20147 Comments

About a week away from publication, and more good news on the review front. The Chance You Won’t Return received a starred review from Publishers Weekly! From the review?

“In Cardi’s candid and multilayered debut, high school junior Alex Winchester already has a full plate when her mother begins to believe she is Amelia Earhart…Alex’s voice is caustic, honest, and studded with humor. Cardi weaves elegant metaphors and incisive dialogue throughout her chapters, concluding with a wrenching sentiment about the necessity of sometimes allowing a lost loved one to find her own way home.”

That deserves a happy puppy gif:

Click through for the full review.

Happy 116th Birthday, Amelia Earhart!

July 24, 2013Leave a comment

Happy birthday to my favorite female pilot, Amelia Earhart! She was born on July 24, 1897, making this the 116th anniversary of her birth.

Although Earhart herself doesn’t appear in The Chance You Won’t Return, she’s an important figure in the novel. I’ve mentioned before that I first got the idea for the book when the line “My mother thinks she’s Amelia Earhart” popped into my head. As I started writing, I found that Earhart was really the perfect historical figure to have permeating the novel. She was bold and smart and talented and pushed major boundaries for women. But she was also very much a public figure in that she had a carefully crafted public persona, much like a celebrity today would have. That, along with her disappearance, makes her such an enigmatic figure and one we always want to know better. In the same way, much of The Chance You Won’t Return is about the secrets we carry and how we function in our public and private lives.

More about the book and Amelia to come, but in the meantime, make sure to check out these fun Amelia Earhart links:

(image via Boston Public Library)

Searching for Amelia Earhart

March 20, 2012Leave a comment

Last night my friend Rachel sent me a link to a news article about the revived search for Amelia Earhart. The privately funded search will be begin in the Pacific in July, marking the 75th anniversary of Earhart’s disappearance. A picture from 1937 of Gardner Island suggests that may have been where Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, crashed and possibly lived for a short period. Still, finding wreckage or other evidence isn’t an easy task. From an NPR article about the expedition:

“Renowned oceanographer Robert Ballard, who discovered the wreckage of the Titanic and the Bismarck and is advising the Earhart expedition, said the new analysis of the photograph could be the equivalent of a “smoking gun” as it narrows the search area from tens of thousands of square miles to a manageable size.

Ballard confessed to having been previously intimidated by the challenge of finding clues to Earhart’s whereabouts.

“If you ever want a case of finding a needle in a haystack, this is at the top of the list,” he said.”

Even though my novel’s not historical fiction, Amelia plays a significant part in Queen of the Air and I’m glad to see that she’s still such a iconic figure in American history.

Roger Ebert seems to be a fan as well. Over the summer he shared this post on the anniversary of Earhart’s disappearance, complete with cool videos. (He retweeted it again today.)

Seeing this gets me pumped to revise, revise, revise!

(image: Chicago Sun-Times)

Annie Cardi

Tag: amelia earhart