...lostwind! You have until noon on Sunday to email me your address through my website contact link, at which point I will happily pop an ARC of Feed in the mail for you.

More giveaways to come!

1. My beloved personal superhero, dianafox, is giving away a copy of A Local Habitation. Read her post for details (and don't ask me about them, since it's not my giveaway). Here's your opportunity to make my agent give you stuff! A chance like this doesn't come along every day, not even for me!

2. You still have four hours in which to enter my random drawing to win a copy of Feed. I'll be picking a name at noon California time, and all you have to do is leave a comment. You now how to leave a comment, don't you? Just type some things into your browser and click.

3. The fantastic talkstowolves has gone to the trouble of working up a linked list to all the free fiction on the Locus recommended reading list! These are the stories that professional reviewers selected as the best of 2009, and they're totally free for you to read. So if you get bored, you should do that.

4. There is no number four. Move along, citizens, move along.

In honor of George Romero's birthday, I am giving away an ARC of Feed to one lucky commenter. This is a random draw giveaway. At noon Pacific tomorrow, I will use my magical random number generator and select a winner. They will then have until noon Pacific on Sunday to send me their mailing information (through my website), or I will pick another winner.

So please! Comment! Tell me your favorite thing about zombies, or why you want to read Feed, or what you'll do if you win, or whatever. (I mean, a comment beyond just "comment" is nice, but not strictly required.)

George Romero gave the world zombies. In honor of his birthday, so do I. Because zombies are love.

When will you rise?

The votes are in, and the winner, by a single vote, is...

"Faerie is full of old dangers" by sysrae.

sysrae, please email me your mailing address through my website contact link, and I'll package your ARC!

As a note to anyone and everyone currently waiting for mail from me: we've been having some terrifying storms lately, and as a consequence, I haven't done any mailing in a week. (I have to walk a mile to reach the post office, and I sort of thought you'd like your stuff to reach you in envelopes, not in paper mache shells.) I'll start mailing again as soon as the rain decides to stop for more than twenty minutes.

Whee!

It's time to vote for the winner in our second-ever "write a poem, win an ARC" contest. Please, read, vote, and help somebody win a copy of A Local Habitation!



Voting will be open through the end of the week. I'll do the random number drawing for a signed cover flat later today.

Thanks, all!

Please remember that I am still taking entries in the "write a poem, win an ARC" contest. Please write a poem and win an ARC. Or, y'know, don't win, but write the poem anyway.

Rules are on the original post, and I'd love your participation.

...who wants to win a copy of A Local Habitation? This particular giveaway was incredibly fun the first time, and very rewarding, and that means I'm doing it again. So here's the game:

You all know that I adore structured poetry, from the haiku to the virelai. (Actually, that's a lie; I abhor the virelai. But I respect people who actually enjoy writing them.) You also know that you're a pretty creative lot. So here: the gates are thrown open! Write me a structured poem about A Local Habitation, Rosemary and Rue, or Toby in general. Since you haven't read the new book, it can be about anything from what you think it's going to be about to pre-ordering to how much you want a copy—whatever makes you happy. Any structured form is allowed, as long as you can tell me what it is when asked.

Entries will be taken through the end of the week. Then, next Monday, I'll put up a voting post, and let people vote for their favorites. The winner will receive, naturally, a copy of A Local Habitation. Just in case that's not sufficient incentive, there will also be a prize for participation—just entering a poem will enter you in a random number drawing for a signed cover flat. I don't have very many of these, so this is something pretty spiffy for you to stick on your wall.

Game on!

The results of the FAQ question contest:

g33kboi, you are the winner of an ARC of A Local Habitation! Please email me through my website "contact" link with your mailing address.

tigertoy, you are the winner of a signed copy of Rosemary and Rue! Please email me through my website "contact" link with your mailing address, or with the address you'd like it sent to, if you want to give it to someone else.

If I have not heard from you by the end of the weekend, a new winner will be selected, and your prize will be given to somebody else. If you think you've already emailed me, and I'm not getting it somehow, please comment here.

After going through the truly awesome questions presented for possible inclusion in the FAQ, I've settled on...

g33kboi, you are the winner of an ARC of A Local Habitation! Please email me through my website "contact" link with your mailing address.

tigertoy, you are the winner of a signed copy of Rosemary and Rue! Please email me through my website "contact" link with your mailing address, or with the address you'd like it sent to, if you want to give it to someone else.

Thanks, all!

So as you may have noticed, I love FAQs. I love writing them, I love updating them, and I love pointing people to them. With that in mind, we come to our second giveaway for the day:

Here is the current October Daye FAQ. You may notice that it's pretty sparse. That's why I'm turning to you, my best-beloved people who live free things, to ask for more questions. Be creative, be specific, be general, be pedantic, be whatever makes you happy, but ask questions.

I will be adding the best questions to the FAQ. I will also be selecting two winners from out those questions. One will receive a signed copy of Rosemary and Rue (and if you already have one, I can send a copy to your local high school or library).

One will receive a signed ARC of A Local Habitation.

I'll take entries until tomorrow morning. Now please, please, question me! Get rewarded! Flesh out my website! I'll be your bestest blonde if you will...

Today is my birthday! Yaaaaaaay! And to celebrate my birthday, I'm going to give stuff away. Because I can. (Also because it's quite frankly easier than thinking of something coherent to say. The cats still haven't forgiven me for leaving, and I didn't get all that much sleep as a consequence. What sleep I did get involved dreams that were basically a cross between Cabin Fever and Parasite Rex, so I'm understandably a little loopy this morning.)

First up, let's give away a copy of Rosemary and Rue, again, because I can. To enter, comment here. I'll do the drawing in five hours, my time, using random numbers and snazzy math to select a winner, and then I'll post a second giveaway. Many will enter, few will win, please ask your parents before calling those suspicious-looking numbers that appear during the Saturday morning cartoons.

Now I nap.

Voting has closed on the second A Local Habitation ARC giveaway, and it's time to announce our winners. Remember, we expanded the slate to four in response to the many, many awesome entries. Winners get to pick their prizes in order (first place first, etc.). All winners have twenty-four hours to tell me what prize they want and email me—not LJ message—their mailing address. Any winners who do not contact me within this time period will be disqualified, and I'll move down the list.

In first place, batwrangler and the very orange snake! batwrangler has claimed the ARC of A Local Habitation.

In second place, stealthcello and the very blue Maine Coons!

And a tie for third between okayokayigive and exapno!

I will update this post as prizes are claimed. Thank you all for participating, and I'll announce the next contest soon.

1. Remember that voting is still open for the second A Local Habitation ARC giveaway, and while there are a few clear favorites, it's still anybody's game. I'll announce the third giveaway as soon as I figure out exactly what it's going to be.

2. A Local Habitation gets a little closer every day, as this page on the Penguin Group website can attest. It's still weird and wonderful and a little terrifying to look at websites and go "wait, that's my book, I wrote that, oh whoa, that's Toby." I am assured this feeling will eventually pass. I'm...not sure I want it to.

3. If you want to see me compared to an Emma Frost-esque diamond golem, click here and join the giggling. I don't object to being a golem, or being made out of diamond, and I admit it, my productivity is occasionally terrifying even to me. I am also assured that this phase in my life will eventually pass. That idea scares me.

4. Things about this weekend that I'm really excited about: the first holiday party of the season. Getting more time to work on Blackout. The premiere of the Alice miniseries on Syfy. It's by the people who did Tin Man last year, and while it doesn't star Zooey Deschanel (a definite minus if you ask me), it looks absolutely incredible. Plus it has Connor from Primeval, and he is mad hot.

5. Matt Fraction has declared that Emma Frost is the love of Scott Summers's life. Matt Fraction is my new favorite person, at least for right now.

Tonight, I'm going out with my cousins to do something mysterious which required me to buy two rolls of quarters from the bank. I am wary but interested to learn what lies in store on the misty streets of San Francisco. Here's hoping you're planning for a wonderful weekend of your own, and feel free to let me know what you have going on!

Winnowing down the number of amazing entries we got on the second ALH ARC giveaway was borderline impossible. So I selected my five favorites, solicited favorites from a few friends who didn't have entries, and let the random number generator fill out the rest. Please vote for your favorite picture or pictures; winners will be announced on Monday, December 7th.

Since we got such an amazing range and variety of entries, I'm going to expand the number prizes to four. First place gets first pick, second place gets second pick, and so on. The prizes are:

* An ARC of A Local Habitation.
* A copy of Rosemary and Rue (which I am happy to sign to someone else, if the winner wants it to be a gift).
* Two signed cover flats of A Local Habitation.

And now...the voting!

Today is the last day of November, which means we're one month away from running out of 2009 entirely. I'm really not sure how I feel about this. I mean, on the one hand, it's nice to be past some of the more chaotic and horrible parts of the year. On the other hand, it feels a lot like I blinked and the year was over, which is never a particularly pleasant experience.

December is already slated to be a busy, busy month, with two events (one in San Francisco, one in Seattle), one trip out of state (again, Seattle), Alice's birthday, and a fairly hefty word count goal on Blackout. Just to add more hoot to my nanny, I'm also going to have a go at restarting my aerobic workouts, since I really miss Richard Simmons (he's the freaky little glittery monkey man of my heart, yo). On the plus side, endorphins make you happy, and happy authors just don't kill their editors.

I'll put up the voting for the best pics-with-pets entries into the A Local Habitation ARC contest later today. There were some really amazing entries, and I'm crazy-glad not to be choosing the winner by myself. I think my head might actually explode if I tried. (Not a pretty sight.) Voting will remain open through Sunday, December 6th, at which point I'll announce the winners and solicit mailing addresses. The usual "if I don't get an address in twenty-four hours, I will move on to the next possible winner" applies, so if you're an entrant, please be sure to either check back here or have someone check for you on Monday, December 7th.

2010 is starting to fill up fast—because there's a real surprise—and I think I may be approaching the official "no more conventions this year, so sorry" point. I now have three during the month of July (the most wonderful time of the year), and that strikes me as a sign that it may be time to take a nap instead. I'll post my full schedule here and on the website shortly.

Hope you all had a fantastic weekend, and that your cats were less clingy and shedtastic than mine.

1. I'm taking entries for the pet photography ARC giveaway through the end of the weekend. No horses, snakes, or hermit crabs yet, but I'm holding out hope!

2. There's a shiny new interview with me over at Book Love Affair, discussing the next two Toby books, the first of my books as Mira Grant (Feed), how I keep myself from spontaneously combusting, and various other topics of interest. I'm answering questions throughout the day, so please, swing by, and see if anything sparks your curiosity!

3. I'm going to be appearing December 12th in San Francisco as part of the Writers With Drinks series. To quote the website, "Writers With Drinks combines erotica with literature, stand-up comedy with science fiction and poetry with essays." The show is at The Make-Out Room (3225 22nd. St., San Francisco), from 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM. The doors open at 7 PM. I don't know yet just how many drinks this writer will have, but if I have enough, my piece for the evening will probably be the full stand-up version of The Microwave Story. Be there!

4. In case that's not good for you (and it may not be, as not everyone is local to me), I'm also going to be doing a book reading/concert at the Wayward Coffeehouse in Seattle, on December 26th. Vixy and Tony are going to be there to help me blow the roof off, and there will be lots of other exciting goodies throughout the night. It's gonna be awesome.

5. I'm going to go finish Discount Armageddon now.

First off, remember that I'm still taking entries in the A Local Habitation ARC contest! To answer two questions I've been asked a time or two, no, the pets don't need to be yours, just photographed with owner consent, and yes, this contest is open to everyone, not just US residents. (To answer a third question, yes, you're welcome to cover your book with snails or give it to an octopus, but in those cases, I won't replace it. "Book eaten by tiger" is an accident, "book given to marine resident" is a very odd choice and an excuse to go to the bookstore.)

I'll take entries until the end of the weekend, and open voting Monday or Tuesday. Pet photography is fun!

( Now, what is the power of kittens compelling you to do this time? Click to find out. Alice says hello.Collapse )

1. I am about to head for the dentist, where I will be undergoing full sedation for the sake of massive surgery. After this, you should get a few months free of my discussing teeth, which will be nice for everybody. Because someone asked: I grew up on welfare, I have naturally not-so-good teeth, and for a long time, I didn't have the money to fix what was wrong. This combination leads to massive work, when you can finally manage to get it done. Thankfully, I'm getting.

2. The Rosemary and Rue pendant sale is going like gangbusters over at chimera_fancies, and it's honestly amazing what Mia's been able to do with this batch. I really recommend swinging by and looking for a favorite. All pendants are signed by me, and made from pieces of a recycled ARC.

3. Because of item one on this little list, the Great Pumpkin only knows whether I'm going to be capable of complicated things like "being awake" or "typing" today, so if you don't hear from me until tomorrow, it's not because I've been eaten by a grue. So don't worry.

4. It's pouring buckets. I am the Rain King.

5. Please remember to enter the A Local Habitation ARC giveaway. It doesn't require your own pets. Use the pets of a friend, or neighbor, or take advantage of your brother the zookeeper and throw your book to the tigers. (I will replace your book if you actually bring me photographic evidence of throwing it to the tigers, providing that happens with zookeeper permission.) Have fun!

It's time to get ready for the second A Local Habitation ARC giveaway of the season! Yaaaay! Now that we've all flailed around like Muppets on an electrified floor for a few minutes, here's the way this particular giveaway is going to work:

1. Get a camera.
2. Get a copy of Rosemary and Rue.
3. Get a pet.
4. Combine.

This contest, originally suggested by The Agent, is simple: take pictures of your pets (or the pets of someone else you know) hanging out with a copy of Rosemary and Rue, and submit them here. All pets are eligible. Cats, dogs, pythons, spiny African flower mantises, whatever you have and trust with your book, they're all invited to this party.

Be creative. Be dramatic. Have fun. Do not allow your Burmese python to swallow your book (it would be bad for the snake). Post your pictures here; after Thanksgiving, we'll open to voting, and winners will be selected. Winner #1 will get their choice of an ARC of A Local Habitation or a signed cover flat of A Local Habitation. Winner #2 will get whatever winner #1 didn't select, that being the way we roll around here.

Let me know if you have any questions, and game on!

Point the first: I have drawn the winner for the first A Local Habitation giveaway! I literally do this by feeding the number of comments into a random number generator, and then counting (this is very laborious, but worth it). So our first winner is...

asthecrowfly!

Please email me—DO NOT use the LJ messenger function—with your mailing address. I will be mailing the ARC out after I get home from New York (so next week).

Point the second: I am about to shut down my computer, get into the car, go to the airport, and fly to New York City. I'll be online in the evenings, and may even be online from the plane, since I'm going to need distractions while in the air. I have a lot of writing planned for the actual transit portion of the trip, and a lot of business meetings planned while in New York. I'm going to be Seanan and Mira this time. Fun for the whole family. Plus, The Agent is taking me to Serendipity 3. Mmmmmm, frozen hot chocolate.

Point the third: Coyote has decided that I depend too much on modern technology, and my iPod has died. Hard. Like, I spent half an hour on the phone with Apple technical support, and finally got told "I think it's your hardware." No shit, Sherlock. Anyway, I'm going to go to an Apple Store in Manhattan, where hopefully they'll say something like "gee, this is still under warranty, have a new one." If not, I'm going to sell one of Brooke's kidneys (again) or something, because my mental health really hinges on having portable music, and I no longer have my faithful old Sony Discman (it died quite some time ago). My housemate has loaned me his iPod for the duration of my trip, largely, I think, because he was afraid I might eat him if he didn't.

And that's the news from California. There will be more contests and ARC giveaways in the months to come, including the first contest proposed by The Agent, and I'll let you know when I reach New York alive.

Remember, folks, I'm going to be doing a random drawing on Saturday to win an advance reader's copy (ARC) of A Local Habitation. You could get your hands on the second Toby book months before release day! And all you have to do is...

...click this link and leave a comment.

Seriously, that's all. Just don't leave your comment on this post, since no comments made on this post will be fed into the random number generator. Leave your comment on this post over here. Not this post. This other post.

Good luck!

Well, it's November. Rosemary and Rue has been available for two months, and has been performing pretty well, thus making me feel slightly less like I need to spend all my time flailing. And I have the ARCs for A Local Habitation, which means it's time for...

An ARC giveaway!

To enter to win a copy of A Local Habitation, please comment on this entry. That's all; just comment. I'll be selecting a winner via random drawing on Saturday, so as to give people plenty of time to chime in with their burning desire to have the second Toby book in their hot little hands. (Please remember that I really really really need you to buy the book even if you receive an ARC.) I'll sign it and everything.

Well, then: GAME ON!

Here's this week's Book View Cafe short story, "A Citizen in Childhood's Country," which is available for free reading and enjoyment and all that jazz:

"A Citizen in Childhood's Country."

For all the Lost, and all the Found. I love you.

As of today, Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] has been out in the wild for an entire month. It's been spotted in chain stores and independent booksellers, in airports and at train stations, in basically every state in the United States and in countries around the world. We are officially well and truly past the point where my publisher can go "ha ha, tricked you" and order up a bonfire. (Not that I ever really thought that they would, but if you've ever met me, you know that I can be twitchy on an Olympic level.)

I have not yet seen a stranger reading one of my books in a public place, which is probably for the best, as I'd either start to hyperventilate or give myself brain-freeze trying to decide whether I should go over and offer to sign it for them. This doesn't stop me from watching the reading material of the people around me.

Most of the people I know have either purchased Rosemary or swear that they're going to do so Real Soon Now, Honest. (Since I don't intend to check their bookshelves for proof, these assurances are sort of pointless, but they're also really funny, so I'm willing to roll with it.) My mother has probably purchased five or more, but she's my mom, so it's okay.

The page proofs for A Local Habitation have been reviewed and returned to my publisher, which means we're on-track for book two. I'm super-excited. I'm also plinking away at book five (The Brightest Fell), which is rapidly becoming my favorite in the series to date.

Because it's an anniversary, I feel like I should do something to celebrate. So, because it makes sense, I've decided to give away a copy of Rosemary and Rue. Here's the plan:

1) Comment here, telling me why I should give you a copy of Rosemary and Rue. Do you want it for you? Do you want it for your school bake sale? Have you just been dying to test the aerodynamics of a paperback book fed through a wood-chipper? (Actually, I probably won't give you a book for that last one, but I'd love to come over and watch the experiment. With someone else's book.)

2) That's all.

I'll pick a winner tomorrow. Be detailed. Be creative. Detail and creativity count. So does bribery, but that's a distant third.

So—as you know, Bob—I belong to the Book View cafe, a truly rocking collective of writers offering free fiction and freelance fancies to the world. It's a really fun group of people, all professionals in their own right, and they do some really strange, really exciting stuff. Really!

Today, the results for my first Twitterfic contest were posted. Our theme was "fairy tale noir," and the entries were so stellar that I really wished we could have ten winners instead of two. Check out the results for a grin. They're really awesome.

As part of what we do over at the Book View Cafe, we all offer short fiction for free reading and enjoyment. My story for this week just went up. It's a fun short piece called "Indexing," and it introduces Henrietta Marchen and the Marchen Containment and Control Agency (MCCA). I really enjoyed this story, and this world. I think I'll probably wind up going back there a time or ten, just for fun.

As an interesting bit of trivia about "Indexing": this was my original concept for Ravens In the Library. I decided it was too frothy at the last minute, scrapped it, and wrote "Lost" instead. So it's a fairy tale flash from the files, and I hope that you enjoy it.

(I promise to post about the fact that holy cow, it's my bookday birthday, in a little bit. Right now, I'm just trying to get through the review roundup without my fingers falling off! Holy cow!)

spectralbovine is a good friend of mine, but he's also incredibly media-savvy, and very picky about the things that he likes. So I admit, I was a little nervous when he said he was going to review Rosemary and Rue. At the same time, I knew he'd be fair. Well, his review of the book is up, and he was definitely fair. Quoth Sunil, "Oh yes, I'm going there: this book is like Veronica Mars, Faerie Detective."

I love my friends.

Over at the League of Reluctant Adults, the winner of the "win an ARC and write a review" contest has posted this awesome and erudite review of Rosemary and Rue. Quoth JD, "Rosemary and Rue is a good, solid novel and a fantastic debut. I look forward to reading more about Toby and her world. It really did almost make me believe again in Faeries."

Works for me!

mneme has also posted his review of Rosemary and Rue, calling it "a fun, beautifully written, rewarding urban fantasy that I intend to reread and recommend," while judifilksign's review of the book says "McGuire does a fantastic job of creating an alternate reality that is consistent, believable and not a copy of other writers in the genre." Yay!

Our first Dreamwidth review! It comes from Four-and-Twenty (watch those blackbirds), whose review is posted here. Since I sort of want to quote the whole review, I'll just tell you to go and read it. Don't worry. I can wait.

If you've been around here for more than a few days, you probably already know that vixyish is one of my favorite people in the whole world, part of my Seattle family, and a member of the mighty machete squad, without which there would be a hell of a lot more typographical and logical errors in my books. Well, she is now also one of the reviewers to tackle Rosemary and Rue, which she did with sufficient disclaimers to keep people from looking at her funny. Vixy says "I genuinely and highly recommend Rosemary and Rue to fans of urban fantasy, or murder mysteries, or P.I. novels, or worldbuilding, or complex characters, or folklore, or fairy tales, or Shakespeare, or British folk ballads, or just plain exciting and engrossing stories that are likely to keep you up half the night reading just one more page." I say, again, that I love my friends.

We've had a lot of reviews in the past few weeks, so you might think there's nothing left that can really get me excited. Well, you'd be wrong, because waking up to discover that I'd been reviewed in the MIAMI HERALD OH MY GOD YOU GUYS got me really, really excited. Given how sick I still am, I sounded like a bat being fed into a wood-chipper. Pity poor Amy's eardrums. The MIAMI HERALD OH MY GOD YOU GUYS says "skipping Rosemary and Rue would be a sad mistake" and "first-time novelist McGuire reminds us that even in an overused setting, a well-told story with memorable characters casts magic all on its own." Also, it's the MIAMI HERALD OH MY GOD YOU GUYS.

Wowzers.

In case you're tired of straight reviews, I was lucky enough to get interviewed by Alex for the Book Banter podcast. Here's your chance to hear me, live and (mostly) unedited. (I accidentally swore at one point, and Alex kindly snipped that out, because we appreciate not getting yelled at for profanity.) The interview was recorded in the dining room of Au Couqulet, so you can also hear silverware and dishes, if you listen real close. It was a fun time, and I really recommend giving it a go.

If you enjoy interviews, I also have a fun interview up over at Lurv ala Mode, where Kendra has been just awesome during the whole book release process. Check it out!

If you don't have your copy yet, there's a random giveaway going on over at Fantasy/Sci Fi Lovin'—enter to win, or direct your friends to head on over.

Because a picture is worth a thousand words (and I want breakfast), I leave you with Amy very studiously engaging in literature on a train, and Toby Daye VS. THE VELOCIRAPTORS! Pictures and crazy courtesy of Brooke. Because we didn't have enough crazy on our own.

It's a book!

In two weeks, Rosemary and Rue will be on bookstore shelves. That means that I have thirteen days left in my "days before Rosemary" countdown. Thirteen days. That's just...it's so bizarre. I mean, I've been working with this world, this character, this vast, sprawling story, in one form or another for more than a decade. And now, in thirteen days, anybody will be able to just walk into a store, slap down their money, and walk out with Toby in their hands. Anybody.

That's incredible.

So many good things in my life have been associated with the number thirteen. It's my favorite number. It's also Vixy's favorite number, and meeting her was one of the things that's made the last five years of my life so fantastic. I sold the first three Toby books to DAW on May 13th. Thirteen is the sixth prime number (here's the math geeking you've been waiting for); it's lucky and unlucky at the same time, which is basically the story of my street pennies-and-swamp pratfalls existence, in a nutshell. And now I'm in the middle of one of the most amazing thirteens of my life. Thirteen days before my first book comes out.

That's still incredible.

To celebrate, I'm running an ARC giveaway through Goodreads; it's completely random, and I have no influence over the results, so please don't try to bribe me with candy corn. Not for that, anyway. I'm always open to being bribed with candy corn for other reasons, like, say, you want the sky not to fall on your head. Give me candy corn, and I will continue to do my best to keep that sky right up there where it belongs.

I'm also putting together a list of Things You, Too, Can Do To Help, because it seems like a good way to calm myself down. I like making lists. Making lists is soothing. Oh, and I'm twitching. I'm twitching a lot.

Thirteen days. This is becoming so damn real.

I have a few more ARCs to give away, and I'm stumped. So how should I give them away? (Hint: saying "give them to me" will actually not endear you, unless you finish that sentence with "I do all the buying for a major bookstore" or something similar, and can present credentials.) Have you got a favorite review site? Have I missed a contest? Should I abandon them on BART cars? What?

Propose anything. I am open to the crazy.

EDIT: So it's said, the "abandon on BART cars" option was a joke. I won't do anything that involves releasing ARCs into the wild, outside the bounds of the standard social contract, with no idea where they went. Not okay.

Okay, free stuff, part one:

I belong to the Book View Cafe, a group of over twenty professional authors exploring the wonderful options available to us through the Internet. What does this mean to you? It means, among other things, "free online fiction." Yeah, I thought you might like that one. I'm a Friday girl in the rotation, which means my short stories go online (when they're available) on Fridays—and this week is no different. So take a look at this week's dark fairy tale offering...

Knives.

If you missed last week's story, a little moral fable with vampires in, it's also available to read:

Anthony's Vampire.

Go, read, enjoy, and explore the many wonderful things that the Book View Cafe has to offer.

Free stuff, part two:

There are some truly incredible new icons and wallpapers available on my website icons and wallpapers page. Seriously, these just took my breath away when Tara sent them to me. (Remember, my graphic designer, taraoshea, is available for freelance work! You just can't keep her.) I absolutely could not be happier with these gorgeous giveaways, and they're totally available for you to use on your computer, journal, or whatever.

Happy cat is happy. Free stuff is free.

We didn't get many entries, but the ones we did get were uniformly stellar. After debating, bickering, and poking the various entries with a stick, the following entries have been chosen as our winners. Yes, winners. I couldn't narrow it down to just one (hence the bickering, which swelled to include half my proofing circle), and so...

Winner, Static Media: phoenixechoes.
Winner, Moving Media: galieth.

Congratulations to both our winners! Please email me at my LJ email address, or through my website contact link, to provide an address where your ARC can be sent. Please do not use the LJ "direct message" function, as this will lead to a (potentially substantial) delay in my getting your ARC into the mail.

Thanks to everyone for participating. We're almost there!

If you like things which are free, you should consider dropping by this urban fantasy book giveaway and tossing your name into the ring. There are two prize packages, one of which contains an autographed ARC of Rosemary and Rue. (Since I couldn't personalize the book without knowing who it was going to go to, I drew a pumpkin instead. All hail the orange Sharpie, which makes such things possible.) The contest is open through August 13th, at which point the winners will be chosen.

(When you sign up, you have to indicate which prize package you'd like to win. I promise that I won't make sad faces at you if you choose Prize Pack A. The number of people already choosing Prize Pack B continues to delight me.)

If you like things which are not free, I just want to remind you that today is the last day to order Red Roses and Dead Things through my website. I'll be setting it up with CDBaby tomorrow, and the order form will be coming down. There will be a six to ten day delay before the album becomes available again. I doubt this is breaking anybody's heart, but I believe that a vague disclaimer is nobody's friend.

Whee!

I staggered into my house at about half-past eight last night, where I was promptly accosted by angry blue cats who wished me to understand that I Had Sinned, and Must Be Punished. (My punishment consisted primarily of petting the cats, petting the cats some more, and giving Alice a good brushing. Mom had been brushing her in my absence, but Alice wasn't entirely willing to let Mom near her nethers, and as a consequence, there was need for some serious Maine Coon repair before she could really be said to be at her best.) I even managed to partially empty both my suitcases before toppling into the bed like a felled dragon toppling on a poorly-placed knight errant.

The trip home from the convention was reasonably painless. Amanda and Michael delivered Jeanne and I to the airport with plenty of time to spare, and we meandered our way through security and onto the airplane (after a considerable delay, since we were two hours early). I spent most of the flight either dozing fitfully or watching Hannah Montana on the in-flight entertainment system. I should probably have been working on my copy-edits for Feed, but let's face it: there is an event horizon past which all work becomes crap, and I had passed that horizon quite some time previously. Shaun and Georgia should never have a crossover with the cast of Babylon Archer and the Caverns of Ice. I'm just saying.

My mother met me at the airport, and despite horrific traffic on the roads between San Francisco and home, we did not die in a horrible fiery crash. We had dinner at the Wendy's, because we were frankly both too far gone to deal with anything else. (Proof that I was tired: for about half the drive, I was convinced I'd managed to lose my phone. After finding my phone, I lost my credit card. I still can't find my keys.)

Tonight's plan involves taking Toby promo bookmarks to Borderlands Books, along with a stack of the DAW summer samplers, and then going home and getting to work on the heaps and heaps and heaps of stuff that's managed to pile up over the last week. Oh, and another twenty pages of copy-edits for Feed.

My next scheduled nap is in November.

Hey, folks! Lots of you suggested fanart contests of one type or another, but we've had very few entries in the latest ARC giveaway! Please join in the fun, and make something surreal for the rest of us to stare at.

Remember, original art, photography, icons, and just about anything else are being gleefully accepted.

Oh, and I got home alive from San Diego.

First off, giveaway #6 was won by stormsdotter, for her fantastic (and first) suggestion of fan-art. stormsdotter, email me your mailing address, and I'll pop an ARC into the mail for you when I get home.

Now, it's difficult to do fan-art for a book you haven't read yet, so...

I am taking entries in three categories. Photography (take a picture you think represents what you've heard about the book; post with as much or as little doctoring as you like, make a poster, whatever suits your fancy); icons (text, graphic, whatever makes you happy); and all other (actual art, collages, photo manipulation to turn people into elves...).

Post your entries here. I'll leave this open for two weeks, and then announce the winner or winners, depending on quality and quantity of entries. Please feel free to comment on and assess the entries as they go up.

Game on!

It's July, it's a week to the San Diego International Comic Convention, and it's been a while since I posted a Rosemary and Rue ARC giveaway. These things aren't intrinsically connected, but my need for distraction makes them acquire a natural bond. At the same time, I feel the need to be more creative than my exhaustion is presently allowing. So here's the deal:

1) To participate, comment on this post with a suggestion for what the next ARC giveaway should be. Get creative! We've had a poetry contest and a LOLtest so far—is it time for round two? Is it time for a break-dance competition? "Conquer a nation, win an ARC"? Well, maybe not that last one. Try to make it something that people can actually accomplish.

2) Weigh in on other suggestions, if you feel the urge to do so.

3) Just before I leave for Comicon, I will select one of the suggestions to be ARC giveaway #7. The person who makes the winning suggestion will be the winner of this giveaway.

Game on!

I'm a guest blogger over at The League of Reluctant Adults! A loose confederacy of urban fantasy, paranormal romance, and gonzo magical realism authors, the League is sort of one of the super-teams of the genre. Not like the Justice League. More like that one team that had Squirrel Girl on it.

Anyway, if you head over to the League, comment on my guest post, and get lucky, you could win both a) an ARC of Rosemary and Rue, and b) the privilege of having your review posted on the League's site for everyone to see! It's a gamble! A gamble with awesome!

Here in the land of reviews I've already received...

antigoneschase posted a lovely and heartfelt review over in her blog, and you should totally admire her awesome.

paradisacorbasi managed to post the first totally stealth review I've received—she managed to keep the fact that she'd gotten hold of an ARC secret until her review was ready! World of wow!

It's an awesome, and frantic, week around these parts, I swear.

...and we have our winner. Will poelaramont please pick up the white courtesy telephone, and tell me where to mail an ARC of Rosemary and Rue? If I don't hear from you in seventy-two hours, I will draw another number.

Thanks to everyone who commented. It's good to know that the lure of free stuff remains strong!

Item the first: remember that tomorrow is going to be the drawing for the final ARC giveaway for the month of June. All you have to do to enter is go to the entry and leave a comment. That's it. Nothing more complex than that. Tomorrow, I'll be flicking on the random number generator and letting it tell me who our lucky winner will be. So take a chance! All it'll cost you is thirty seconds and a couple of clicks!

Item the second: the Book Zombie—and isn't that just about the best name ever? It makes me want to adopt her and cover her in puffy blue cats—is working on her review of Rosemary and Rue. You can see a little sneak peek of what's coming over at her blog. I'm all excited and jumpy and stuff. I love seeing new reviews come out. (This probably won't last, once we get into wider reviews and I become totally overwhelmed and start hiding under my desk. But right now, I love them like I love pumpkin pie. Sweet, sweet pumpkin pie.)

Item the third: I'm currently updating and finalizing my appearances for the next several months. As a reminder, you can always see which conventions I'm planning to attend by hitting my website, and I try to update the information with panel times and details on readings just as soon as I possibly can. I'll be in Seattle on August 22nd for the Grants Pass release party (and yes, some discussion of a house concert has occurred, but there's nothing concrete). There are currently three official Rosemary and Rue release parties scheduled for early September, all of them in the San Francisco Bay Area; I'll keep you posted if we wind up scheduling appearances anywhere else.

(There will be a release party at OVFF, in Columbus, Ohio, in late October. You'll need to be a member of the convention to attend. But there will be cake.)

More to come later, but those are the memos for the morning. In other news, I have sufficient Diet Dr Pepper. You may all live.

Whee.

How better to conclude the month of June—and start the real countdown to publication—than with one last ARC giveaway? (Note: this doesn't mean "last ever," it means "last in June," because my paperwork would get out of control if I tried to run more than one between now and July.) Now, you've all been expending a lot of effort in your attempts to win a copy of Rosemary and Rue, which I appreciate greatly. I appreciate it so much, in fact, that this time, you get to be lazy. How do you enter this particular drawing?

Simple: comment here.

No, really. This giveaway is going to be a RANDOM DRAW, just like the first one. Comment on this post going "oooh, me, me," and I'll put you into a spreadsheet. At the end of the month (so Tuesday, June 30th), I will roll the random number generator, and we'll have a winner. (Although, as a footnote, the winner will have seventy-two hours to claim their prize. So if I post going "Yay, Kermit, you win!" and Kermit doesn't say "Yay, send it here!" within three days, I'll be rolling the random number generator again. That's how we roll.) Please only comment once. Please do not comment if you already have an ARC, as that isn't nice.

There will almost certainly be other giveaways after this, through this LJ, and maybe even through my website and/or Twitter. Because I like giving stuff away. It's fun.

Game on!

1st place, and an ARC of Rosemary and Rue, goes to mpoetess. mpoetess, please get me your mailing address as soon as you can.

2nd place, and choice of either a cover flat or a set of my albums, goes to jjloa. Same request applies.

3rd place, and whichever prize remains, goes to ink_books_punk. Same request.

Everyone, thank you for playing!

Welcome to the first Toby LOLtest voting post! I've selected ten entries, through a magical mixture of "oh, I really liked that one" and "random selection." (The order in which they are presented is not the order in which they were chosen. It's mostly the order in which they appeared, for ease of browsing.) I've included links to the entries themselves below the voting poll, so that you can make an informed decision.

Game on!



1. "I'm not working..."
2. Solvin' ur murders.
3. No harm.
4. "Hard werk raisin hooman..."
5. "Tybalt? R u there?"
6. "Iz faerie now."
7. Normal life.
8. "Whatchu mean, 'no'?"
9. Cursin' u.
10. Not all Tinker Belle.

Voting will close Friday morning.

I'm off for DucKon bright and early tomorrow (Thursday, June 11th), so please consider this your last reminder that the first-ever Toby Daye LOLtest is still open for entries. To recap...

1. Entries must be graphic. There are no restrictions on type of graphic, providing they follow the LOL___ format popularized by the LOLcats movement. LOLcats, LOLold fairy tale illustrations, LOLmy cover art, LOLhome photography, whatever. Dress yourself, a friend, or a really tolerant squirrel up as Toby and knock yourself out. Whatever makes you happy.

2. Entries must be related to Rosemary and Rue in some way.

3. Entries must be posted on the original contest announcement.

We're getting some great submissions. In the interest of preserving my sanity (and recognizing the fact that hey, I'm about to go away to a weekend-long convention), we'll keep taking entries until I open the floor for voting on Tuesday, June 16th. Since we're getting such awesome submissions, I'm going to do first, second, and third prizes, namely:

FIRST: an ARC of Rosemary and Rue.
SECOND: a set of my CDs or a cover flat, if you already have the CDs.
THIRD: whichever prize second didn't take.

Good luck!

If you didn't enter or didn't win yesterday's trivia contest, all is not lost! Remember, the first-ever Toby Daye LOLtest is still going! To recap...

1. Entries must be graphic. There are no restrictions on type of graphic, providing they follow the LOL___ format popularized by the LOLcats movement. LOLcats, LOLold fairy tale illustrations, LOLmy cover art, LOLhome photography, whatever. Dress yourself, a friend, or a really tolerant squirrel up as Toby and knock yourself out. Whatever makes you happy.

2. Entries must be related to Rosemary and Rue in some way.

3. Entries must be posted on the original contest announcement.

Again, I'll be taking entries until Friday, June 12th, and then opening the floor for voting. There's definitely an ARC in it for the winner, and depending on number and variety of entries, I may also be supplying a few runner-up prizes.

Good luck!

I have had a battered and beaten ARC returned to me by my housemate (he read it, he enjoyed it, but these poor babies aren't meant to last forever). Since I can't exactly send it out to a review site, I've decided that it's POP QUIZ TIME! The first person to answer all twenty questions correctly will win the ARC. (If you already have one, you can still win, and tell me where it should be sent.) If no one has answered all twenty questions correctly by tonight, I will pick the person with the highest number of right answers. In case of a tie, it still goes to first.

People who have known me for more than ten years are respectfully asked not to play, as that just wouldn't be fair to the rest of the planet.

Game on!

( We're a town full of losers, baby, but somebody's going to win! Trivia contest this way!Collapse )

It's time for another ARC giveaway! Because you were starting to think I didn't love you anymore. Now, you may remember that I hinted at this giveaway being a little more "graphic" in nature. I give you...

The LOLtest. Yes, if you hate LOLcats, you probably want to shoot me right about now, but that's okay, because I love the freaky little guys, and I'm not asking people to invade your blog with countless graphics of the things. So what do you have to do to enter? Simple. You have to make a LOL___ and post it here. What do I mean by LOL___?

LOLcats. LOLold fairy tale illustrations. LOLmy cover art. LOLhome photography—if you want to take a tip from A Softer World and take your own pictures, be my guest. (Toby is brunette, fairly pale, and tends to wear sensible clothing. You want to slap a leather jacket on your girlfriend/best friend/self and take pictures solely for captioning purposes, I'm down with that.) For examples of the inimitable LOLcat in its natural habitat, see I Can Has Cheezburger, along with countless other sites in the same vein...and then knock yourself out.

Post your contest submissions on this entry. Because this is a project that could require a bit more effort, I'm going to be taking entries until Friday, June 12th, and then opening the floor for voting. I'll definitely be giving away one ARC through this contest; depending on the number and variety of entries received, I may well increase that to two, as well as putting together a few runner-up prizes (who wants a CD?). This contest is open to everyone, including my mother, my agent, God, and people who have already won ARCs. Bring out your LOLcats, and rock the world.

Game on!

EDIT: To be clear, all LOL___ must be Toby-related to be considered actual entries. Although all LOL___ are cute and make me smile.

And the winner is...

canadianevil!

Congratulations! Your ARC will not be mailed until Tuesday, as I'm leaving for BayCon in just a few hours. This means you have until Monday to get me your mailing address, either via email or LJ message. If I don't have a mailing address by Monday at 12noon PST, I will be declaring your forfeit and punting to our second place winner. I'm mean like that. Also, trying to minimize long-term paperwork (ha ha).

A big, big thanks to everyone who participated, because this contest was awesome. I'll be announcing our next ARC contest sometime after the convention. I'll give you a hint: you're going to need to start thinking visually, and then maybe, yes, you can haz Rosemary and Rue.

Whee.

Item the first: at least four—yes, four, which is a number higher than two, so yay—reviewers/bookstores have received their ARCs of Rosemary and Rue, along with the snazzy watercolor cards that Alice so helpfully "helped" me finish. Thank you, Alice. Thank you so very, very much. (As an Alice-related sub-item, my puffy Halloween ball of trouble turned twenty weeks old yesterday, and celebrated her failure to get sucked into the vacuum cleaner by falling off the cat tree. Again. Maine Coons, unlike boa constrictors, have gravity.)

Item the second: Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon will not be attending BayCon this year, due to being really, really sick. Nobody's dying, I don't have all the details, and also, I didn't do it. If I were going to start the pandemic, there are other people I'd target first, and I'd have published my cackling manifesto by now. "Yay, swine flu!" does not count as a cackling manifesto, it counts as a really weird idea of what constitutes entertainment.

Item the third: speaking of entertainment, Kate and I watched the season finales for two of our season-pass shows last night—America's Next Top Model and Fringe. (Never let it be said that I am ashamed of my taste in anything.) One of the girls on this season of ANTM was totally a Toby-universe Daoine Sidhe, I swear. Real people aren't supposed to have ElfQuest eyes, but she somehow managed to pull it off. I will miss you, freaky alien-elf-eyed girl! Although I won't miss the nightmares you gave me about Toby tracking me down with a pair of pliers and a smile!

Item the fourth: So You Think You Can Dance returns to television tomorrow night. In supposedly unrelated news, I'm getting ready to get back to work on Discount Armageddon. Hmmmm...

Item the fifth: Dawn Metcalf to the white courtesy phone, dawn_metcalf to the white courtesy phone. It has now been forty-eight hours, and I still don't have a mailing address for you. If I don't hear from you within the next twenty-four hours, I will be choosing a new winner for the signed cover flat of Rosemary and Rue. In actually related news, the poetry contest to win an ARC of Rosemary and Rue is still going. Please drop by and vote, if you haven't already.

Item the sixth: I am still the Rain King.

We're no longer taking entries for the first-ever poetry contest ARC give-away. Instead, ten poems have been selected (through an arcane mix of "random number generation" and "oh, I like that one"), and are included below for your voting pleasure. The winner will be selected this Friday, and will receive an ARC of Rosemary and Rue for their very own. Vote for your favorite

Game on!



( Click here to read the full text of the entries.Collapse )

And the winner (selected through random number drawing) of a signed cover flat is...

...dawn_metcalf!

Dawn, please drop me an email with your address, and I'll get this in the mail for you. Whee!

Hey, folks, this is your friendly neighborhood Halloweentown princess reminding you that you can still enter a poem to win a copy of Rosemary and Rue. I'll be posting one more reminder, on Sunday; then, Monday morning, I will be making a voting post consisting of my seven favorites and three selected by random draw. (No, I will not identify which is which.) I'll also be performing a random draw of entries to determine who wins a signed cover flat of Rosemary and Rue. (Yes, it is possible to win both. No, I don't consider it to be terribly likely. But hell, the echidna exists, and that's really all the universe needs to prove that logic is not always king.)

As a side note, no, you don't have to be an amazing poet to enter; you just have to make an effort of some sort. So have fun with it! I'm really enjoying the things people have been coming up with before, and this is definitely an awesome contest as far as I'm concerned.

Voting opens Monday, May 18th, and will continue through Friday, May 22nd. The winner will be announced promptly at the close of voting, but the ARC won't be mailed until Tuesday, May 26th, due to my being away at BayCon all weekend.

Game on!