Tomorrow, November 24th, is my bookday! Happy bookday to me! Very soon, Chimera will be available from bookstores all over North America and the United Kingdom, and from import stores all over the world. It has yet to be spotted in the wild, but I know it's coming. Hooray!

Since it's release week, I figured it was time to once again answer the wonderful people asking how they can help. So here are a few dos and don'ts for making this book launch awesome.

DO buy the book as soon as you can. Sales during the first week are very important—think of it as "opening weekend" for a movie—but they're not the end-all be-all. If you can get the book tomorrow, get the book (and come see me at the Brooklyn WORD if you're in the New York area); if you can get it at my book release party at Borderlands on December 5th, get it at my book release party. Whatever works for you. Brick-and-mortar store purchases are best, as they encourage reordering. If you've already bought the book, consider buying the book again during release week, as a single copy might get lonely. They make great gifts!

DON'T yell at other people who haven't bought the book yet. I know, that's sort of a "why are you saying this?" statement, but I got a very sad email from a teenager who'd been yelled at for not buying A Local Habitation the week that it came out, and I have never forgotten it. So just be chill. Unless you want to buy books for people who don't have them, in which case, don't yell, just buy.

DO ask your local bookstore if they have it on order. If your local store is part of a large chain, such as Barnes and Noble, the odds are good that the answer will be "yes," and that they'll be more than happy to hold one for you. If your local store is small, and does not focus specifically on science fiction/fantasy, they may have been waiting to see signs of interest before placing an order. Get interested! Interest is awesome!

DON'T berate your local bookseller if they say "no." Telling people they're overlooking something awesome doesn't make them go "gosh, I see the error of my ways." It makes them go "well, I guess it can be awesome without me." Suggest. Ask if you can special-order a copy. But don't be nasty to people just because their shelves can't hold every book ever written.

DO post reviews on your blog or on Amazon.com. Reviews are fantastic! Reviews make everything better! Please, write and post a review, even if it's just "I liked it." Honestly, even if it's just "this wasn't really my thing." As long as you're being fair and reasoned in your commentary, I'm thrilled. (I like to believe you won't all race right out to post one-star reviews, but if that's what you really think, I promise that I won't be mad.)

DON'T get nasty at people who post negative reviews. You are all people. You all have a right to the ball. That includes people who don't like my work. Please don't argue with negative reviewers on my behalf. It just makes everybody sad. If you really think someone's being unfair, why don't you post your own review, to present an alternate perspective? (Also, please don't email me my Amazon reviews. I don't read them, I don't want to read them, and I definitely don't want to be surprised with them. Please have mercy.)

DO feel free to get multiple copies. No, you probably don't need eight copies for your permanent collection, but remember that bibliophile friends, school libraries, and shelters are always in need of books. I'm donating a few of my author's copies to a local women's shelter, because they get a lot of women there who really need the escape. There are also people who just can't afford their own copies, and would be delighted. I wouldn't have had half the library I did as a teenager if it weren't for the kindness of the people around me.

DON'T feel obligated to get multiple copies, or pressure other people to do so. Seriously, we're all on budgets, and too much aggressive press can actually turn people off on a good thing. Let people make their own choices. Have faith.

DO check with your local library to be sure they have a copy of on order. If they don't, you can fill out a library request form. Spread the paperback love!

DON'T forget that libraries need books. Many libraries, especially on the high school level, are really strapped for cash right now, and book donations are frequently tax deductible. If you have a few bucks to spare, you can improve the world on multiple levels by donating books to your local public and high school libraries. Ask first if they're taking donations; they may tell you that donated books go straight to the Friends of the Library book sale. Consider doing it anyway. FOTL benefits both the library and local low-income people looking for a way to read new books on a budget.

DO suggest the book to bookstore employees who like biomedical science fiction. Nothing boosts sales like having people in the stores who really like a project. If your Cousin Danny (or Dani) works at a bookstore, say "Hey, why don't you give this a try?" It just might help.

DON'T rearrange bookstore displays. If the staff of my local bookstore is constantly being forced to deal with fixing the shelves after someone "helpfully" rearranged things to give their chosen favorites a better position, they're unlikely to feel well inclined toward that book—or author. It's not a good thing to piss off the bookstores. Let's just not.

So those are some things. I'm sure there are lots of other things to consider; this is, at least, a start. Finally, a few things that don't help the book, but do help the me:

Please don't expect immediate email response from me for anything short of "you promised us this interview, it runs tomorrow, where are your answers?" I normally make an effort to be a semi-competent correspondent, but with a new book on shelves and final edits due on Once Broken Faith, a lot of things are falling by the wayside. Like sleep.

If you're in the New York area, I hope to see you tomorrow night at the Brooklyn WORD, where I will be reading, signing, and answering questions for your enjoyment!

Whee!

So several people have said, basically, "self-promotion is hard." They are not wrong. And one person has said, "you should really give helpful hints." Also not wrong, although given my "90% of all advice is bullshit" stance on anything not self-explanatory, like "don't lick toads" and "don't go spelunking in the whale carcass," possibly just a way to get me to bullshit for a little while. Regardless, here are ten things to keep in mind about self-promotion.

1. There is no "one size fits all" solution; there is no magic bullet. What works for me will not necessarily work for you. What works for you will not necessarily work for Jim. You need to really look at both the logistics and the potential impact of any promotion efforts before you commit to them, because you only get so many shots. Which leads us to...

2. You only get so many shots. You have how many opportunities to make a first impression? Right. One. Assume that the average reader who is interested in your genre and could possibly be convinced to give you a second glance is willing to give you as many as four opportunities to be impressive. This is a very, very generous estimate; most readers will give you one shot, maybe two, because there is a lot of stuff out there to read. So if you run three unsolicited BUY MY BOOK BUY MY BOOK BUY MY BOOK Twitter campaigns, you only have one more chance to reach that reader. That unimpressed reader.

3. Most people don't like junk mail. Don't be junk mail. I can literally count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've received something in the mail that I didn't ask for, looked at it, and gone "oooo, yes, I want this thing." Well, if you send me a bulk email without my having asked for it, you're in that mailbox. Does it work sometimes? Yeah. Send 1,000 emails, sell three books. But you've potentially just associated yourself, however wrongly, with the word "spammer" in 997 readers' heads.

4. Be appropriate to the venue. Let's say Olga wrote a book. And let's say she's been thinking a lot about promotion. She sees this article. She sees people talking about promotion, and books, and hey, that Seanan girl's a writer, right? All her commenters must be readers! So Olga goes around and replies to every single comment with "let me tell you about my book." Olga has now been inappropriate to the venue, and odds are she's gathered very few sales.

5. Building a brand is more vital than flogging a single book. I love the cover to Discount Armageddon, almost as much as I love the book itself. It's exactly what I wanted. Some others were not so impressed, since it was the first portrayal of a sexualized character on one of my books (and so PINK!). Many of them bought the book anyway. Why? Because I have built my brand, and they knew they could trust me. Sometimes the sales of book one will not rock your world. But they'll increase awareness for book two, and that can be vital.

6. Do not put yourself in a box. There are a thousand ways to promote yourself without resorting to junk mail and thread-jacking. Buy ad space on popular web comics. Do guest blogs. Send review copies to book bloggers you trust. Sign up for things like Scalzi's Big Idea. Don't just go "oh, I found the one way, I'm good." That way lies madness.

7. You will never have all the readers. It is not possible, barring your becoming the next Stephen King or Stephanie Meyer, for you to have name-recognition with all the readers, much less be read by all the readers. Even King and Meyer don't have all the readers. Maybe people don't read them. It's just that many more people do. Don't freak out about the ones who won't read you, they were never going to read you anyway.

8. It does not end. Yesterday, I emailed a reviewer that I know isn't on any of my lists and asked if she wanted a copy of Ashes of Honor. Today, I will give away two ARCs. Tomorrow, I will go to a convention. Promo never ends, and if you think it does, you're going to be very sad.

9. Choose sincerity. You can't just do things with the photo op in mind; you have to do them because you want to, because they're the right thing, because they're fun or awesome or somehow make you happy. That's promo, too. The ripple effect works.

10. Once someone says stop, you need to stop. The number of times I've seen an author permanently alienate a reader or group of readers by continuing a) to barrage them with promo, and b) explain their brilliant idea is...bad. It's definitely not good. Now, I am not saying "do not blog about your book." Your blog is YOUR SPACE, and anyone who's going to get pissed at you for talking about something that is a huge chunk of your life in YOUR SPACE is a jerk and you don't need them. But if you follow me around Facebook trying to explain your genius, we're not going to be besties.

There. Those are my helpful hints. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go spelunking in a whale carcass.

This morning, I politely removed myself from six new groups that had been created on Facebook while I was sleeping. All six of them were "buy my book" groups, created by people I don't know personally, telling me about the exciting opportunity I have to purchase their brand new book. Four of them were for ebook-only editions (which is relevant because anyone who knows my reading habits knows that I prefer to read physical books). Three were for books in genres that I do not reliably read. One was for a book whose subject matter was something I find actively offensive, and have discussed as offensive in the past.

This morning, I deleted eight emails from people I don't know personally, telling me about the exciting opportunity I have to purchase their brand new book. Five were ebook-only, four were genres I don't follow, two were in genres I explicitly don't read ever (hint: I am not the target market for your "raping serial killer rape-ily rapes his way through Rapetown adventure).

This morning, I received five targeted tweets from people I don't know personally, telling me about the exciting opportunity I have to purchase their brand new book. I don't know the breakdowns there; I don't click unsolicited links.

Look: I understand the excitement of a new book, or even of a not-so-new book. It's your baby, it's your imaginary friend dressed in the very finest clothes you can buy, and it's all alone in an increasingly large and tangled marketplace. We want to give our stories every advantage that we can, and it's pretty clear that "more readers" is a huge advantage. Sometimes I wish I had my mother's blatant salesmanship. She hands out bookmarks advertising my books everywhere she goes. Grocery stores. Funerals. Wherever. But she's not me. When she does it, it's a mother supporting her daughter, and it's harmless enthusiasm. From me, those same actions take on an air of desperation. I have to find a better way. We all do.

The accessibility of readers (and authors) on the internet has changed the shape of the game, and is still changing it, as we try to sort out who stands where. But, well...

Have you ever parked at a supermarket or a movie theater or another place where parking happens, and come back to your care to find like thirty flyers shoved up under the window wipers, waiting for you? They're all advertising services that may have relevance to your life, like pet sitting and yard work and, I don't know, exorcisms. But the odds are good that you don't know, because the odds are good that you, like the rest of us, threw those flyers away. Maybe one of them gave you a paper cut. Maybe that was enough to make you notice what it was advertising. If it did, do you think that became a service you wanted to buy? Or did the negative impression rule the day?

Yeah.

The internet is not a neighborhood in need of door-to-door salesmen. In order to promote books, we need to be engaging and engaged. We need to talk about our lives and our pets and the current season of So You Think You Can Dance (your TV mileage may vary). And then, yes, we can talk about our books. But—and this is the big one—that needs to happen on our space.

If I turn my Twitter feed into the all-my-new-book, all-the-time channel, you can unfollow me. If I @ you constantly, unless you want to block me, you're screwed. If (and when) I turn this blog into the all-my-new-book, all-the-time channel, you can unfriend me. A few people do, every time promo season arrives. Most of them come back when it's over, having safely weathered the storm...but I don't follow them into their own blogs and insist that they listen.

If you want to be seen by more eyes, buy ad space on popular webcomics with a theme similar to yours. See if one of the major book blogs has space for a guest post, or whether you'd qualify for John Scalzi's Big Idea. Or just keep blogging, saying interesting things, and increasing the size of your platform. There are ways. It just takes time.

There is a difference between promotion in our own spaces and promotion in the spaces of others. One is appropriate and necessary. The other is a very fine line, and stepping over it can result in lost readers and hurt sensibilities, and that's never a good thing.

I've spoken before about my love of fanfic, and how it allows you to do things you can't necessarily do "in canon." One of those things, one of my favorite things, is the alternate universe. What would have happened if Toby had never become a fish? If Thomas had convinced Alice to go back to the Covenant with him, instead of leaving it for her?

If someone else had been the first to die?

I have written an alternate ending to Feed, picking up at what was originally chapter twenty-five. It's called Fed, and I'm very pleased with it, in part because it shows that no, the original ending wasn't the worst possible outcome. This was.

Fed is kindly being hosted by Orbit, thus preventing me from becoming a blibbering mess in the week leading up to the release of Blackout, and for right now, you can download and read by liking the Facebook page they've set up specifically for this purpose. (It's getting a one-week Facebook exclusive for marketing purposes, and I surely would appreciate it if you went and hit the "like" button.) This is full of spoilers, so I recommend against reading it if you haven't read Feed.

Rise up while you can.

My planned Newsflesh novella for 2012 is a little piece entitled "San Diego 2014: The Last Stand and Final Fall of the California Browncoats." It's the story of what really happened when the Rising came to the San Diego International Comic Convention. Blood will spill, heads will roll, and a wonderful time will be had by all. The story will be set largely in 2014, with some modern-day narration and stitch-together from Mahir Gowda and Lorelei Tutt.

Where do you come in? Well...

The California Browncoats are auctioning off two Tuckerizations in this story, to benefit Equality Now. You can find details, and a link to the auction, in their original post. The first Tuckerization auction is live now; the second will be going live on November 20th.

What do you get if you win? Well:

1. I will write you into the story.
2. You will die horribly.
3. It will be awesome.

Also, if there is ever a printed edition of "San Diego 2014," I will supply two copies to the California Browncoats, signed, to be delivered to the winners of these auctions. This is one of the biggest tragedies in the history of the Newsflesh universe, and you have a chance to be a part of it. Literally. I mean, you can die.

Questions? Ask 'em here! And consider wanting a little zombie mayhem for your holiday season.

Shamelessly, I have stolen a very clever idea from John Scalzi at the Whatever, who has posted an excellent, and quite thorough, guide to obtaining signed books from him for the holidays. He has some really spiffy books available right now. You should check them out.

Anyway, I, too, have been receiving emails for about the last month, asking where people can get signed copies of my various books. Since I already have a bajillion shirts to mail (still mailing), "from me" isn't a viable answer. So...

Want a signed book? Signed by me, I mean, and not by that guy who always looks at you sort of funny on the bus? Borderlands Books is here to help. They're located in San Francisco, on Valencia Street, and they see me a lot. Like, a lot. Anyway, they'd be totally happy to take your order, and I would be totally happy to sign and/or personalize those orders. Here's what you have to do:

1. Contact Borderlands. You can send an email via their website (link above), or call their toll-free 888 number, at 1-888-893-4008.

2. Tell them what you want, and how you want the book signed. I will do inscriptions, but they need to be short, as those title pages don't leave me a lot of room to work with.

3. While you're at it, you might want to consider picking up a few books other people have written, since you're already paying for postage, and isn't getting a big box of books always better than getting a small box of books? I'll be posting my holiday recommendations soon, none of which have a damn thing to do with the holidays, but in the meanwhile, there are lots of books out there looking for a home.

3b. I won't sign those books. Unless you really, really want me to.

4. Give them your mailing address and billing information. You must be prepared to pay for inscribed books when you place your order. It's a logic thing. Once I write your name in it, they can't sell it to anybody else.

5. Your books will magically appear at your home! It's amazing!

If you want your books in time for Christmas, I seriously suggest ordering by December 12th. The mail will be insane by that point, so sooner is probably better. I'll visit the store for the last time this holiday season on December 19th (Alice's third birthday!), but I'm leaving for Orlando after that, so any orders placed beyond that point definitely won't reach you before 2012.

Borderlands can ship internationally, but postage will be spendy, and you need to work it out with the bookstore.

In case you need a recap on what's currently available:

TOBY BOOKS (in order): Rosemary and Rue, A Local Habitation, An Artificial Night, Late Eclipses, One Salt Sea.

MIRA GRANT TITLES (in order): Feed, Deadline.

ANTHOLOGIES I AM IN: Home Improvement: Undead Edition (hardcover, Toby story), Tales From the Ur-Bar, Zombiesque, The Living Dead 2 (as Mira Grant, Newsflesh story), Grants Pass, Human Tales.

ESSAYS AND NON-FICTION: Chicks Dig Time Lords, Whedonistas.

If you have questions, let me know...and if you do decide to order, thank you so, so much for helping to support both my endless quest to feed the cats and my beloved local independent bookstore. You are awesome.

We are now eleven days from the release of Late Eclipses [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy]. I like to read almost as much as I like to write, and I like to read urban fantasy. So here are eleven urban fantasies you should check out.

11. Dead to Me, Anton Strout. The first of the Simon Canderous adventures, Dead to Me is sort of like a big transcription of the most awesome Bureau 13 book you never got to play in. Simon has actually met Toby in comic strip form, which tells you just how cool I think he is. The fourth (and currently final) book in the series, Dead Waters, comes out real soon now, so this is your chance to catch up!

10. Spellbent, Lucy Snyder. Jessie Shimmer is to most of the lipsticked, high-heeled girls of urban fantasy as Bruce Campbell's Ash is to the movie star leading men of most horror movies. She laughs in their faces, and then she blows the living shit out of something, just to show how awesome she is. I could not love this book (and series) more if it came to my house and baked me cookies.

9. Death Most Definite, Trent Jamieson. I sometimes feel like way too much urban fantasy is set in the United States, when there's this whole huge amazing world out there in need of some shit randomly exploding. Trent Jamieson's Death Works series addresses this gaping hole in my life with style, elan, and yes, massive property damage, which is something I like in a good Australia urban fantasy.

8. Spiral Hunt, Margaret Roland. The Evie Scelan books use aspects of deep Celtic mythology that just blow me away, because they're the sort of thing that shows loving, passionate research. The fact that they are combined with a loving, passionate story about the world's most paranormally gifted bike messenger (who is a total bad-ass) is basically just icing on the cake. The cake of awesome.

7. Staked, J.F. Lewis. Maybe I'm pushing the definition of "urban fantasy" a little by including this hard-rock vampires and demons and extensive property damage oh my delight, but I really don't care. My post, my genre, my rules...and my stars, do I love this book. It's fun, it's frantic, and it's a whole new take on vampires. Including a main character who regularly bursts into flames.

6. Carousel Tides, Sharon Lee. This isn't urban fantasy in the "bright lights, big city" sense. It's urban fantasy in the "magic leaking in around the edges of the world, all the things you never noticed, but somehow always knew had to be there" sense, and it's brilliant. It's a sweet, brilliant book, and the fact that the scope of the setting is small makes the story that much bigger.

5. Night Shift, Lilith Saintcrow. I liked Dante Valentine; I love Jill Kismet. But more, I love where this series goes. Seriously, even if the first two books were shit (which they're not; they're good, and get better with each volume), it would be worth reading just to get to book five, which contains some of the bravest, ballsiest writing I have seen in this genre. Seriously awesome.

4. Summon the Keeper, Tanya Huff. Out of everything Tanya has written, I think I love the Keeper books the very best of all. I went through three copies of this book before I stopped reading them to death, and I only stopped because I developed a large enough "to be read" shelf that I don't have time for that sort of literary abuse anymore. This series remains fascinating and unique.

3. War for the Oaks, Emma Bull. This was one of the foundational works of modern urban fantasy. Without Eddy and the Fae, your bookshelf might look very different. I know mine would. If you haven't read War for the Oaks, and you like urban fantasy, you really should, if only so you can see where some of our modern tropes and traditions came from. Also, the book kicks ass.

2. Bitten, Kelley Armstrong. This is not my favorite volume in Kelley's Women of the Otherworld series, but it's the first, and it's brilliant in its own right. Plus, if you like it, you've just unlocked a multi-volume series that persists in getting better and better with every page she writes. I am in awe of this world.

1. Welcome to Bordertown, edited by Holly Black and Ellen Kushner. You can't read this yet. It's not out yet. But just you wait; it'll blow you away.

The lovely and talented Allison Pang: Unicorn Hunter is welcoming her debut book into the world today! Hooray! Happy bookday, Allison!

A Brush of Darkness [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] is a fun, flirty, fabulously bizarre addition to the urban fantasy world. Forget vampires, werewolves, and zombies. Bring on the succubi, incubi, and teacup unicorns!

I was actually asked to blurb this book, which means I read it months ago, and explains a bit of my enthusiasm. My blurb:

"Weird, wild, and ultimately wonderful, A Brush of Darkness is a joy from start to finish, with a completely unique mythology that's as fun to figure out as it is to read. I can't wait to see what happens next—and I want my own enchanted iPod!"

Both these statements remain true. I can't wait to see what happens next. And I want my own enchanted iPod.

I'm just saying.

I promised you shopping lists, and I intend to deliver! I'm taking a very generous definition of the word "friend," here, using it as a sort of shorthand for "friends and acquaintances and people who've emailed with me a few times and would probably buy me a drink at a convention if it was convenient and they had their wallets with them." Since that takes a long time to type, "friends" is our winner.

I have read every book I am recommending to you today, so consider this my Endorsement of Awesome. I've tried to be upfront about things like age ranges and such, but let's face it, I was reading Stephen King at the age of nine. My ideas on what you should and shouldn't give to your seven-year-old are messed. Up. So please try before you buy, and don't come crying to me if your kid starts claiming the clown in the closet is coming for his soul (hint: the clown probably means business).

First up, the inimitable Jim Hines! I mean that. He's hard to imitate. One of the things that makes him so amazing is the way he crosses age and gender barriers like they weren't even there. You think I'm funning with you? Hand Goblin Quest [Amazon] to any teenager who likes things that are awesome, and watch the divide between "boy books" and "girl books" melt away. Now try it again with the adults of your choice. It's fun, well-written comedic fantasy that has something for everyone. It's also the first of a trilogy. Hard to go wrong with that!

Once you've spent some time with the goblins, you could do a lot worse than sticking with Hines and taking a peek at The Stepsister Scheme [Amazon], the first of his modern action-adventure fantasy answers to the Disney Princess craze. It's a very pink book, but it, like the goblin books, works for male and female readers alike, with its engaging plot, awesome characters, and wicked-good dialog. I even helped to copyedit the third and fourth books in the series, which tells you something about my love for this world.

Moving on from Jim—thanks, Jim!—means it's time to take a look at the fantastic Jeri Smith-Ready, whose fantastic Wicked Game [Amazon] will introduce you to some of the most unique, most fascinating vampires currently stalking the shadows. They're the DJs of WVMP, and with the help of a con-artist protagonist and an author who knows how to go for the jugular, they can keep you rocking all night long. I love these books. Check 'em out.

But hey, maybe vampires aren't your thing. You could be more X-Files than Angel. And if that's the case, may I direct your attention to the delightful Gini Koch, and her steaming-hot, sexy, silly, utterly enchanting Touched By An Alien [Amazon]. (Okay, I admit it, I love Gini in part because there is now a DAW heroine whose name is sillier than Toby's. Thank you Katherine "Kitty" Katt, for making my protagonist less likely to kill me.) The sequel comes out next week, and wow, do you not want to miss the opportunity to beam up.

Cat Valente is exploring a different kind of alien landscape in her beautifully-written Habitation of the Blessed [Amazon], a landscape populated with creatures out of myth, legend, and allegory. She conjures up historical myths almost forgotten in the modern world, and weaves them together into something just probable enough to hurt your heart. It's a beautiful book.

Finally (for now), a book I loved so much that I actually blurbed it: Carousel Tides [Amazon], by Sharon Lee. It's an urban fantasy old-school enough that it wouldn't look out-of-place next to War for the Oaks and Tam Lin, and at the same time, it's totally part of the modern urban fantasy explosion. It's gorgeous and rich and deep and unique, and I can't recommend it highly enough.

That's books by my friends for today!

Well, this is it: my plane for Australia leaves tonight, which means I am officially going to be out of the country when An Artificial Night [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] starts landing on store shelves. This is a little scary, since I don't know whether I'll have any Internet access at all during the days of my release, but hey, nothing in this world comes without cost, right? Australia or release day, pick one...and I picked the Kingdom of Poison and Flame. I have no regrets. Still, the book has to come out, so I've made a list of things you can do to help, if you are so inclined.

DO buy the book as soon as you can. Sales during the first week are very important—think of it as "opening weekend" for a movie—but they're not the end-all be-all. If you can get the book tomorrow, get the book; if you can get it at my book release party, get it at my book release party. Whatever works for you. Brick-and-mortar store purchases are best, as they encourage reordering. After that, Amazon or mail order purchases, and after that, e-book purchases (which do not count the same way against my sell-through). If you've already bought the book, consider buying the book again, as a single copy might get lonely. They make great gifts!

DON'T yell at other people who haven't bought the book yet. I know, that's sort of a "why are you saying this?" statement, but I got a very sad email from a teenager who'd been yelled at for not buying A Local Habitation the week that it came out. So just be chill. Unless you want to buy books for people who don't have them, in which case, don't yell, just buy.

DO ask your local bookstore if they have it on order. If your local store is part of a large chain, such as Borders or Barnes and Noble, the odds are very good that the answer will be "yes," and that they'll be more than happy to hold one for you. If your local store is small, and does not focus specifically on science fiction/fantasy, they may have been waiting to see signs of interest before placing an order. Get interested! Interest is awesome!

DON'T berate your local bookseller if they say "no." Telling people they're overlooking something awesome doesn't make them go "gosh, I see the error of my ways." It makes them go "well, I guess it can be awesome without me." Suggest. Ask if you can special-order a copy. But don't be nasty to people just because their shelves can't hold every book ever written.

DO post reviews on your blog or on Amazon.com. Reviews are fantastic! Reviews make everything better! Please, write and post a review, even if it's just "I liked it." Honestly, even if it's just "this wasn't really my thing." As long as you're being fair and reasoned in your commentary, I'm thrilled. (I like to think you won't all race right out to post one-star reviews, but if that's what you really think, I promise that I won't be mad.)

DON'T get nasty at people who post negative reviews. You are all people. You all have a right to the ball. That includes people who don't like my work. Please don't argue with negative reviewers on my behalf. It just makes everybody sad. If you really think someone's being unfair, why don't you post your own review, to present an alternate perspective? (Also, please don't email me my Amazon reviews. I don't read them, I don't want to read them, and I definitely don't want to be surprised with them. Please have mercy.)

DO feel free to get multiple copies. No, you probably don't need eight copies of An Artificial Night for your permanent collection, but remember that libraries, school libraries, and shelters are always in need of books. I'm donating a few of my author's copies to a local women's shelter, because they get a lot of women there who really need the escape. There are also people who just can't afford their own copies, and would be delighted. I wouldn't have had half the library I did as a teenager if it weren't for the kindness of the people around me.

DON'T feel obligated to get multiple copies, or nag other people to do so. Seriously, we're all on budgets, and too much aggressive press can actually turn people off on a good thing. Let people make their own choices. Have faith.

DO check with your local library to be sure they have a copy of on order. If they don't, you can fill out a library request form. Spread the paperback love!

DON'T forget that libraries need books. Many libraries, especially on the high school level, are really strapped for cash right now, and book donations are frequently tax deductible. If you have a few bucks to spare, you can improve the world on multiple levels by donating books to your local public and high school libraries.

DO suggest the book to bookstore employees who like urban fantasy. Nothing boosts sales like having people in the stores who really like a project. If your Cousin Danny (or Dani) works at a bookstore, say "Hey, why don't you give this a try?" It just might help.

DON'T rearrange bookstore displays. If the staff of my local bookstore is constantly being forced to deal with fixing the shelves after someone "helpfully" rearranged things to give their chosen favorites a better position, they're unlikely to feel well inclined toward that book—or author. It's not a good thing to piss off the bookstores. Let's just not.

So those are some do's and don't's. I'm sure there are lots of other things to consider; this is, at least, a start. Finally, a few things that don't help the book, but do help the me:

Please don't expect immediate email response from me for anything short of "you promised us this interview, it runs tomorrow, where are your answers?" I normally make an effort to be a semi-competent correspondent, but with the book dropping in eleven days and my flight leaving tonight, I've hit the stage where I flail around and scream "ICE WORMS!" a lot, which doesn't help me answer email. (Also, remember that I can't guarantee my Internet access while in Australia, so this wouldn't work anyway.)

Please don't ask me when book four is coming out. I may cry. Plus, the answer is March 2011.

Whee!

I'll post a writeup of last night's party...later. When I'm actually awake, and not simply faking it really, really well. (Right now, y'all are lucky I'm writing in English, and not in some sublime language of my own creation, which would involve neither capitalization nor punctuation.) For right now, if you missed the Circus coming to town, there are still a few places where you can catch me. Namely...

I'll be appearing at the San Bruno Barnes and Noble on Friday, March 12th, from 7 to 9 PM. I'll be reading, answering questions, and signing books, which you can even buy right there. Total convenience! I'll also be essentially jetlagged, which could make me really, really entertaining. The bookstore is located at...

1150 El Camino Real
Space 227
San Bruno, Ca 94066

My dear friend Chaz Brenchley will be appearing at Borderlands Books on Saturday, March 13th, at 3:00 PM. I'm planning to attend, to show my support. This means that if you had wanted to order a book inscribed (not just signed), you can contact Borderlands now, and I'll be able to personalize the book for you on Saturday. (Please also remember that, for signed books through the mail, Borderlands remains your absolute best of all possible options. Largely because there aren't any other options.)

Rounding out a weekend during which sleep is not an option, I'll be appearing at the Belmont Library in Belmont, California (near San Francisco) on Sunday, March 14th, at 2:00 PM. There will be a reading and a Q&A session. I will also be signing things, although I won't be selling things myself, so if you want something signed, please bring it with you. I will not sign checks, binding contracts, or children that don't belong to you. This is my first library appearance, and I'd really love to see you there.

And that's my weekend. It's like I'm a professional author or something...

With A Local Habitation [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] now on shelves, I can breathe a little easier and worry a little less about getting my Advance Reader Copies out into the world. Well...for that book, anyway, since I'm still in the midst of pre-release madness for Feed [Amazon], and there are thus still ARCs worth their weight in kittens kicking around my house. (And right about when those ARCs go away, the ARCs for An Artificial Night should be showing up. I would complain, but it's so damn awesome that it's sort of difficult.) I have been awash in ARCs for months. And, because I am me, I have been thinking a lot about them. Here are some of those thoughts.

1. ARCs have a purpose. ARCs exist for one reason, and for one reason only: To drum up advance publicity for books. They're sent to reviewers. They're sent to people who might be able to provide cover blurbs, either for the book in question or for the sequel. They're sent to authors for distribution to bloggers, people who win contests, and their moms. Note that the purpose of ARCs is not "to become collectibles" or "to be sold to people who just can't wait for the next one." This is why people are somewhat protective of them, and why their numbers decrease with each volume in a series. By book eight, odds are good that people are already as excited as they're going to get.

2. Authors are not being bad people when they refuse to give you an ARC. My friend Anton just put out a new book, Dead Matter. He did not give me an ARC, even though I love the series. Why? Because he had a limited number, and he knew that I'd both buy and talk about the book anyway. To put things, briefly, in totally mercinary terms, he had nothing to gain by spending a very limited resource on someone whose goodwill he already had. When I have infinite cake, it's cake for everybody, but when I only have three slices...

3. Yes, authors get upset when people sell ARCs. As stated up in item one, the point of the ARC is to get early reviews, early buzz, and early attention. It is not, sadly, to pay for cat food. Not for my cats, not for my publisher's cats, and not for anybody else's cats. They represent money spent, not money made. Someone who buys an ARC and doesn't buy the real book is taking money away from the publisher, and hence, money away from the author. More, if the ARCs are sold unreviewed, they didn't even accomplish their purpose before they were cast out into the cold, lost forever. Poor ARCs.

(As a footnote, and this is getting a little personal, but there you go: If I send someone an ARC, and then that ARC appears on eBay without a review having appeared first, that person is so never getting another ARC from me. Casting ARCs into the cold makes me sad.)

4. Once the book is out, concern and compassion for the ARC goes way, way down. Mia makes jewelry from my ARCs. Other people do other interesting things with ARCs. Some of them are awesome. Some of them are confusing. One way or the other, I don't care, because again, once the book is out, the ARC loses most of its mystery. I'd still rather not see them flooding the resale market, but there aren't enough of them to make a huge difference...once the book is out.

5. ARCs are delicate. Part of why I get annoyed when I see people selling ARCs for large amounts of money is that ARCs are fragile. I have one ARC of Rosemary and Rue that got turned into a continuity reference after Alice sort of chewed on it a little, and it's basically dissolving after fewer than four reads. So they make great collectables, and great review copies, but as things to keep? Well, only if you like to do your reading in loose-leaf form...

Thinking is hard. Let's have strawberry ice cream.

Around this time in the release cycle, I get lots of people asking me what they can do to help. This is because people are awesome sometimes. So here is a handy list for day eight of our pre-release countdown, telling you what you can do to make the release of A Local Habitation as good as a book release gets.

8 Things You Can Do To Help.

8. Post book reviews. Your blog, Goodreads, Amazon, wherever. (Don't post them in the comments of someone else's blog unless they've asked you for book recommendations. That's rude, and may have the opposite of the desired effect. But other than that...) Book reviews give people an idea of a thing, and can tell them whether it's something they want to read.

7. Check with your local library to be sure they have a copy of A Local Habitation on order and, if they don't, fill out a library request form. Spread the paperback love!

6. While we're on the subject of libraries, remember that many libraries, especially on the high school level, are really strapped for cash right now, and that book donations are frequently tax deductible. If you have a few bucks to spare, you can improve the world on multiple levels by donating books to your local public and high school libraries.

5. Do not expect immediate email response from me for anything short of "you promised us this interview, it runs tomorrow, where are your answers?" I normally make an effort to be a semi-competent correspondent, but with the book dropping in eight days, I've hit the stage where I flail around and scream "ICE WORMS!" a lot, which doesn't help me answer email.

4. Do not email me my Amazon reviews. I don't read them, I don't want to read them, and I really, really don't want them ambushing me in my inbox. Please show mercy, and don't share.

3. Please don't ask me when book three is coming out. I may cry (also, the answer is "September").

2. When you visit a bookstore and discover that they don't have any copies in stock/on order, don't be unpleasant. Just politely suggest that it may be something they'd want to carry. Unless they're, like, a non-fiction bookstore specializing in travel books. In that case, don't.

1. Buy the book. Brick-and-mortar store purchases are best, as they encourage reordering. After that, Amazon or mail order purchases, and after that, e-book purchases (which do not count the same way against my sell-through). If you've already bought the book, consider buying the book again, as a single copy might get lonely. They make great gifts!

I hereby officially declare it time for a DINO DANCE PARTY. And why is it DINO DANCE PARTY time, that rarest and most glorious of all events?

I'm getting a bookstore display. Look!



Going from left to right, we have Rob Thurman's Cal Leandros, Anton Strout's Simon Canderous, and my own beloved October Daye. They're hot. They're here. And they're heavily-armed, so I recommend against ticking them off.

Dude, I'm getting a bookstore display.

This is awesome beyond words.

It's time for another ARC giveaway! Because you were starting to think I didn't love you anymore. I really enjoyed this contest the first time it came around, and so 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. I'll take entries until Sunday, February 21, 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!

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

Congratulations to...

...bookblather! Please email me your shipping information via the contact link on my website (www.seananmcguire.com), and I'll get your ARC in the mail by early next week!

Two more winners will be drawn! To enter, comment on this post with your favorite character in Toby's world. I'll be choosing winners at noon Pacific on Thursday and Friday.

Rock on!

To celebrate Valentine's Day (and the excuse that it provides—I might as well be celebrating Champion Crab Races Day on the 18th), I've decided to do something truly awesome: a three stage ARC giveaway. Yes! Three ARCs of A Local Habitation will be awarded to three lucky entries over the course of the next week!

Here's how it works:

1. Comment on this entry telling me who your favorite character in Toby's world is, and why. Be as detailed as you want. (Yes, technically, this does make the contest open only to those who've read Rosemary and Rue. As this is a sequel, I don't feel bad about that.)
2. ...that's all, actually. Your part in things is now done.

I will select winners via random number draw tomorrow, Thursday, and Friday. All winners will be selected at noon PST. All winners must contact me via my website "contact" link before eight PM PST on Sunday, or another winner will be selected, and I will shake my head in sorrow.

Game on!

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?

I am in the fascinating position right now of having two books in the ARC stage—A Local Habitation (Toby two) and Feed (Newsflesh one)—at the same time. This means there are ARCs all over my house, making people feel that I have an extravagent number of the things. My care and caution with giving them away is hence viewed as channeling my inner Scrooge, rather than conserving limited natural resources. (This makes me think of ARCs as some sort of rare bird. The migratory North American ARC, majestic in flight, aerodynamic like a brick.) The cats view them as natural enemies which Mommy Likes Better, and stalk them with ears flat and whiskers in full threat position. My mother attempts to steal them. And, occasionally, reviewers request them or contest entries win them. Right now, they're worth their weight in kittens, and as the window of their usefulness is narrow, I'm enjoying them while I can. Reviews of A Local Habitation are starting to appear, and various bloggers are starting to announce that they've received their copies of Feed, which means reviews of that should start appearing right about when I get my equilibrium back. Fun!

People periodically ask me* how ARCs get out into the wild. Well, there are three main ways, not counting contests. Namely...

1) You are already on a list, which is in the possession of my publisher, and they will send you one automatically. Most large review outlets are in this category. Feed is being sent to Fangoria Magazine, which is sort of like saying "Seanan, we're going to dip you in chocolate, roll you in selected pages from the script of Night of the Living Dead, and deliver you to James Gunn with a gift tag."

2) You contact my publisher and request an ARC. You probably need to prove that you have a review site or an affiliation with a legitimate review outlet. Your Livejournal is unlikely to count, I'm afraid. I'm sure there are exceptions, but you'll need a readership the size of like, Ohio.

3) You contact me through my website and request an ARC. I go through a lot of the same vetting steps as my publisher—I'll go read your blog, I'll look up the magazine you say you're affiliated with, I'll ask the magical moon ponies whether they've really seen you dancing naked at midnight in the middle of Mare Imbrium—before I decide one way or another.

Be aware that any time you elect for an option that includes the word "ask," you may get told "I'm sorry, no." ARCs are an extremely limited commodity, and just to make things more fun, the number printed tends to decline with each book. It's reasonable math. Your first book, you want to spread it as widely as possible. So you give more copies away, trying to create as much early excitement as possible. Your second book, well, some of that buzz already exists, right? So you don't need quite as many free copies out there, circulating and being read before the actual release date. As the number of people asking for ARCs goes up, the number of ARCs to be had goes down. This isn't the author being mean, or the publisher being dumb. This is using your promotional dollars as sensibly as possible.

What do ARCs have to do with promotional budgets? A lot. Page for page, making an ARC costs more than printing a hardcover. The print runs are small enough that they never tip over into bulk pricing, and since ARCs have no resale value (people selling them on eBay and earning my eternal annoyance aside), there's no way to recover the cost, beyond praying that sending the ARCs out into the world will result in positive reviews and higher sales. So as the "spread the word" value of the individual ARC goes down, the number of overall ARCs printed will also decline, putting those dollars back into the promo budget. I've been very lucky, and have received a decent number of ARCs for all three books to date. The definition of "decent" will continue to shift as days go by.

As a secondary note, if you ask me for an ARC, and I say "yeah, okay," and the ARC then shows up on eBay, I'm afraid I won't be sending you any further books. I can't afford the copies or the postage.

Hope this helps.

(*For values of "me" that mean "the Internet at large, only they use my name, so my Google spiders pick up the post and bring it back to me.")

My dear friend Adam Selzer (adamselzer) is a professional author, smart aleck, and ghost tour guide. If you've ever wanted to see the haunted side of Chicago, he's your man, and he even promises not to let you go with Resurrection Mary unless you really, really want to. He writes YA and middle grade books which are just an amazing amount of fun, and today, yes, today, his latest masterpiece is available to the masses:

I Kissed a Zombie and I Liked It [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy]

It has thrills, chills, comedy, tragedy, and an awesome soundtrack including songs by yours truly, my beloved Vixy, my equally beloved Dr. Mary Crowell, and more. Adam is an awesome dude and an awesome author, and this promises to be an awesome book. No matter what your age is, if you love witty writing, glorious snark, and, of course, zombies, this is the book for you.

Go ye forth, and shamble into glory.

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!

Last night I was the featured author at the Clayton Books monthly book club, in Clayton, California. The bookstore is literally two doors down from my dentist, so it's sort of a miracle I agreed to go anywhere near it without an armed guard; perhaps my phobia is getting better. Or maybe I was just really excited to have been asked. Whatever the reason for my attendance, it was agreed upon several months ago. When I was invited, I asked what was expected of me. The bookstore owner said, jokingly, that I should bring cupcakes.

More fool he.

At three, I convinced a co-worker to drive me to the Cups and Cakes Bakery, which I am rapidly coming to believe is the best cupcake bakery (cupcakery?) in the universe. I had placed an order for three dozen cupcakes, which were waiting for me in their pretty pink boxes, ready to go off and be consumed. In total, there were a dozen grasshopper cupcakes (dark chocolate cake with peppermint frosting—think a cakey, delicious version of the Thin Mint), a dozen pretty pretty princess cupcakes (strawberry cake with strawberry buttercream frosting and edible silver pearls), and a variety pack containing two deep dark chocolate, two vanilla (which are possibly the Ur-Vanilla cupcakes, intended to be honored in song and in story), two red velvet, two cloud nine (angel food cake with seven-minute frosting), two root beer float, and two banana with salted caramel frosting. Because when I bring cupcakes to my own party, I don't screw around.

Getting into the BART system, during a major storm, while carrying three dozen cupcakes: not the easiest thing I have ever done. But funny. Especially as people tried to wheedle me into giving them cupcakes (and then inevitably said "No, no, I was just kidding" and looked alarmed when I shrugged and said "Yeah, sure"). My mother picked me up on the Walnut Creek side, where we placed the cupcakes reverently in her backseat and proceeded to the normal Wednesday errands, including the obligate stop at the comic book store. Flying Colors, how I adore you.

After a stop at the house to brush the cat, change my clothes, brush the cat, comb my hair, brush the cat, pack a bag for the evening, and brush the cat, we were off to dinner (at Applebee's) and then the bookstore. We arrived around seven, and walked in, toting cupcakes. They had my picture up in several places. Feeling thus boldly recognizable, I approached the woman at the counter.

"Where should I put these?"

She looked at me blankly. I began to worry that they had some other fluffy blonde urban fantasy author coming, and I was in the wrong place.

"I think I'm tonight's author?"

"Oh!" She beamed. "I didn't expect you to bring snacks!"

People never take me seriously.

Mom and I wandered around the bookstore looking at things while we waited for the event to begin. Eventually, people began to trickle in, including Joel, the owner of the store, and X., my housemate (who belongs to the book club). Only one other member of the actual book club showed up, thanks to the UNENDING RAIN: the rest of the audience consisted of my friend Shawn, his wife, Elsa (who braved the cold with a cold to attend), Andy from the comic book store, and my mother. Still, we sat and talked for two hours, mostly about Toby, and everybody ate cupcakes with great alacrity, so I'm calling it a win. Also, I still have cupcakes.

Yum.

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!

Once again, we can celebrate the awesome-ness of the geekery of the world through a spectacular book release counter! Yes, from now through the release of A Local Habitation, we'll be counting down the days to the ultimate awesome, with this totally bad-ass treat.

( Cut because we care. Also to spare your screen from going wicker-kapow.Collapse )

Are you wondering what to get for the person in your life who has everything? How about for that workplace Secret Santa, the one you barely know but sometimes see in the mail room? Or are you just looking for a treat to reward yourself for getting through 2009 without killing anybody with an axe? Well, then, might I recommend Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy]? Which, to make things even more exciting, made the Locus Magazine Bestsellers List for September 2009? See? It's a bestseller! That means it's the perfect winter holiday gift! (Also, it takes place at Christmas, although hopefully, your winter holiday of choice will be more pleasant than Toby's.)

If you were hoping to get a signed copy, they have them at Borderlands Books in San Francisco, and they do ship. And, of course, all three of my CDs are available through CD Baby (the live album, Pretty Little Dead Girl, is about six inches from going out of print).

By this time next year I'll have four books and four CDs to worry about, so I won't necessarily be fussing quite as much over a single title (although, having met me, like, ever, you know that I will). But anyway, in short, Toby makes the perfect holiday gift. She'll drink all the eggnog and pass out on your living room couch, and she may throw things if you try to wake her, but on the whole, she's a really mellow house guest.

Really.

I swear.

Now please get her out of my house, and into yours.

Hey, y'all, I'm the guest blogger for Penguin USA this week. Wander by the site to learn about my approach to holidays, discover why I think Santa Claus is the son of Persephone and Hades, and convince the nice folks at Penguin that having me blog for them is a worthwhile exercise.

Pretty please?

The urban fantasy/paranormal field is huge, and it's easy to miss things in the hectic whirl of books as they come and go. In an effort to make your holiday shopping a little easier this year, or at least a little less crazy-making, here are some urban fantasy/paranormal suggestions for the book-lover on your list—or for you, if you haven't read them all yet!

Out in hardcover just this fall, we have Frostbitten [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], the latest in Kelley Armstrong's fabulous Women of the Otherworld series. If you're not familiar with this gorgeous patchwork world of werewolves, witches, sassy necromancers, and more, I highly recommend it. I also recommend starting with Bitten [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], the book that started the whole adventure. Fun, fast, and best of all, if you love it, you don't have to wait for the sequels the way the rest of us did!

I stumbled over Wicked Game [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] by Jeri Smith-Ready this last year at DucKon, and was instantly delighted by her sense of humor, snappy writing, sexy heroine, and totally awesome sideways take on vampires. Best of all, the sequel, Bad to the Bone [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], is already available! You can have your cake and eat it to with the staff of WVMP, the radio station with bite.

Tanya Huff is always a masterful mistress of urban fantasy, and she proves it again with her latest release, The Enchantment Emporium [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy]. She introduces the Gale family of witches, a mysterious junk shop in Calgary, and more, in a fast-paced rocket ride of a book that will leave you gasping for more. I really, really enjoyed it. Plus it's hardcover, so it makes an excellent tool for killing spiders.

The first book in Rachel Caine's Weather Warden series, Ill Wind [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] totally rocked my socks off—enough so that I tracked down and devoured the rest of the available volumes (all nine of them) in less than a month. This is the gift that keeps on giving, although it may get you nasty looks from the person whose book budget you've just blown all to hell and back. The Weather Warden books are fast, fun reads, suitable for reading on vacation. Especially during a storm.

Lori Devoti's Amazon Ink [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] was one of those awesome surprises, a book that does something that totally unexpected and yet totally awesome at the same time. Combining Amazons who are more Xena than Wonder Woman with the modern-day Midwest, Traveller culture, and a genuine affection for tattoos makes this book a rock-and-roll romp for urban fantasy fans of all ages. Seriously. I'm loaning my copy to my mother, and then to my youngest sister.

In Dead to Me [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] by Anton Strout (and in the sequel, Deader Still [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy]) we are taken where sane men too-often fear to tread: into the strange and surreal world of humorous fantasy, which is too often overlooked in favor of its serious siblings. These books are purely in the spirit of Bureau 13, Men in Black, and The Middleman, with their snarky, cynical humor and tendency to turn the absurd into the morbid and creepifying. I recommend them for anyone who likes to laugh. And we all like laughing, right?

A Kiss Before the Apocalypse [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] and Dancing On the Head of a Pin [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] by Thomas E. Sniegoski are noir done right, angels done right, end-of-the-world done right...really, they're just right, and they're incredibly enjoyable to boot. An angel and his dog, a love story worth living for, and a whole lot of things worth dying for combine to make one delicious bundle of awesome.

Finally, of course, you can do worse than ordering Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] for any readers in your life, or pre-ordering A Local Habitation [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies]. Surprise them with time-delayed goodies! Better yet, get both, and then astonish them with your foresight when the second book shows up in their mailbox. Or just buy extra copies for yourself, thus giving me a holiday gift. I am neither picky nor proud.

What can you add to the list? Wow us all!

Nominations for the 2009 Nebula Awards have opened. To quote Wikipedia (source of all knowledge, "The Nebula Award is given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), for the best science fiction/fantasy fiction published in the United States during the previous year." Since everybody seems to be putting up lists of their qualifying material, I thought I'd do the same. I'm generous like that.

First, of course, the novel. Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] was published by DAW Books in September 2009, putting it well within this year's window. Urban fantasy, fairy tale noir, and the beginning of my first series. Yay!

Short stories, I have several that appear to qualify quite nicely under the current rules. "Animal Husbandry" is a story of post-apocalypse survival and psychological horror, originally published by Morrigan Books in Grants Pass (August 2009). (Amazon says the book is out of print, and Amazon lies, but if you're a SFWA member and want to see the story, I'll happily send it your way.)

"Lost" is a sad, sentimental fantasy piece, originally published by The Ravens in the Library Project in the anthology Ravens in the Library (February 2009). This book is out of print, but again, if you're a SFWA member and want to see the story, I'll happily send it your way. The story will be reprinted by Wily Writers this coming December. You might also want to look at "A Citizen in Childhood's Country," which is not quite a companion piece, but might be, if you tilt your head and squint. It was published by the Book View Cafe in October 2009.

Finally, although I have other stories that technically qualify, I want to point out "Knives." This is a sort of modern-day revisiting of "The Little Mermaid," and was also originally published through the Book View Cafe, in August of 2009/

I find it almost terrifying that I have this many things that even technically qualify. And next year, I'll have two things to list as potentially qualifying novels.

Sometimes the world is amazing.

So a while ago—not that long ago, but not yesterday—I made a post about the author/agent relationship, and why I think literary agents are so damn important. I like my agent. I know that state isn't universal, but neither is liking your haircut, and I'm pretty cool with that, too. I try to be mellow when I can.

This morning, I was pointed to a post over on GalleyCat explaining why nobody needs an agent. Apparently, the electronic revolution means that the "middleman" between author and editorial is no longer necessary. Who knew? Or at least, that middleman is on the way to becoming fully outdated. Naturally, at least one literary agency feels differently, and has said as much. I suggest reading both links before continuing, because I, too, feel differently, and will now say as much.

These are the things I do: write books. Make changes according to the requests of my editors. Discuss possible changes with my editors. Review page proofs. Blog. Run blog giveaways of ARCs and published books. Attend conventions. Write outlines and proposals for books I want to write. Play Plants vs. Zombies. Watch TV.

These are the things my agent does: get my books to the editors who are most likely to not only appreciate them, but work with them in a way that is beneficial to both the publishing house and my career. Negotiate advances. Negotiate sub-rights. Protect my interests in areas like audio, comic book, and foreign rights. Make sure that I get paid on time. Follow up with my editors when things are unclear, or when I need more time to finish something. Check in with me to see what space I have on my plate. Understand the industry. Explain things like "co-op" and how marketing budget works. Tell me where my energy needs to be spent, rather than where I necessarily want to spend it.

Beyond the fairly standard notation that many major houses no longer consider submissions from unagented authors, the agent serves a thousand functions that, frankly, I don't have time to deal with. It's possible that I would have time for them, if I wasn't writing four books at once; on the flip side of that, I can also say that if I was dealing with all the functions served by my agent, I wouldn't have time to write four books at once. It all feeds back to a question of resource allocation, and I have chosen to externalize certain resource needs in the form of my agent.

Agents don't just negotiate the size of your advance; they negotiate contracts, which are huge, complex, complicated things. Without an agent to go through the contract and understand it, you need to not only speak the crazy language of literary rights, you need to have strong feelings on all those things. What do you think about comic rights, merchandising rights, foreign rights, audio rights, film rights, the right to construct an amusement park based on your work? What do you think of the time the contract says you'll have to review your page proofs, of the concept of seeing your copyedits, of the way the next work clause is worded? Do you understand half of what I just said? 'Cause honestly, without my agent, I wouldn't, and even now, I'm a little vague on some of the specifics, although I'm learning.

Agents deal with your editors, and can mediate when, say, you miss a deadline because your cat got sick and you just can't cope and what do these people want from you?! Well, they want you to hold to the terms of your contract, and they want you to make a lot of money, because everybody would like to have a lot of money, and if you make a lot of money, so does your publisher. But without that buffer between yourself and the publisher, it's very possible that you could flip out and take somebody's face off, thus ruining the working relationship. Instead, flip out on your agent, and they'll take care of making nice while you hyperventilate in a corner.

A good agent will help your career in a hundred ways...and more, they're very often an excellent gatekeeper, because as soon as you're salable, the agents will be happy to let you know. It's not their job to get you to that point, but once you get yourself there, their job begins, and that job is a hard one. Frankly, it's not a job I'd want to do.

Are literary agents outdated? No. Are literary agents like having the cheat codes to the publishing industry? Yes. You still need to understand what you're doing, but they can make things go a lot more smoothly, and they can keep you from dying too many times before you finish level one. That's more than worth the cost of their commission.

Back in May, I posted about the damage that a bad cover can do to a good book. You can view the original post (and ensuing discussion) here. The consensus at the time was that having a bad cover sucks, and that if your book's cover is bad, it will probably impact the sales of the book. Not exactly rocket science, but still, it's a good thing to think about, especially since—as authors—very few of us have control over our own book covers, so it's good to be prepared to do damage control.

Recently, I got a look at the cover for an upcoming book in an urban fantasy/paranormal romance series That Shall Not Be Named, because I try to be polite like that. For purposes of discussion, we're going to call it An Armchair to Remember, book three in the Ikeamancer series. Our main character, Casey Carpenter, has inherited the family gift for communicating with furniture. Naturally, she uses this power to fight crime, since she doesn't really have anything else to do with her time.

On the cover of the first book, Cushioning the Blow, Casey was pictured as described in the text: reasonably pretty but not going to be anybody's new super-model, with dark hair that needs styling, a wardrobe that looks like it could handle her daily duties as a general manager at Ikea, and a few iconic items in the background. On the cover of the second book, From Desk 'Til Dawn, she was drawn slightly differently, but still believably the same character. Same basic styling, attitude, etc.

On the cover of An Armchair to Remember, she looks like a seventeen-year-old Goth hooker. Please join me in saying, um, what the hell?

Now, I understand that characters will look slightly different from cover to cover. Toby looks a little bit different on the covers of Rosemary and Rue, A Local Habitation, and An Artificial Night...but these differences are, at least from my perspective, still allowably within the range of "this character is Toby." It's the variance between a picture of Alice drawn by Mimi and a picture of Alice drawn by Bill—they look different, but she's still clearly Alice Price-Healy, getting ready to kick your ass. You can draw the same character within a range and still have it believably stand for the same individual.

The cover for An Armchair to Remember isn't doing that. In fact, if I didn't know the book (the theoretical book), I'd guess that we were looking at the first in a spin-off series starring Casey's ironically trampy-campy younger sister, Carrie, who communicates with clothing and manages a Hot Topic in the mall. It doesn't look a thing like Casey. Casey wouldn't be caught dead in that outfit. It is, essentially, the equivalent of sticking Toby in a mini-skirt and push-up bra for the cover of Late Eclipses, after giving her a bleach job and some serious makeup.

How jarring is this for you? How likely are you to pick up An Armchair to Remember when it looks so different from the other books in the series—when the main character looks so different? Is this going to make you look elsewhere, or do you not care by the time you get to the third book in a series? What about new readers? If this was the first volume you'd seen, would you buy book one after digging it out of the back catalog? Inquiring minds (namely, me) want to know.

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.

Saturday, I participated in LitCrawl at Borderlands Books in San Francisco. When I mentioned this on Twitter, someone said this made them think of ArtCrawl from The Middleman, and asked if I was going to perform "Hey, Mr. God," supposedly the world's worst spoken-word piece (also from The Middleman, naturally). Being a deeply silly blonde, I replied that if Rosemary and Rue was Borderlands' top-selling paperback again for October 2009, I would not only perform "Hey, Mr. God," I would record it as an MP3 and put it up for free download.

Sadly, I made this reply in public. So here, because I am a shameless creature, is the official challenge:

If enough people buy Rosemary and Rue from Borderlands to make it their top-selling mass-market paperback for October 2009, I will go into Kristoph's studio and record an MP3 of the "Hey, Mr. God" monologue from The Middleman episode "The Boy-Band Superfan Interrogation." I will then post this MP3 for free download. I will have no shame during the recording, which means I will sound like a complete idiot. You can probably use this MP3 to blackmail me in fifteen years, which I am less young and stupid.

(Yes, they take Internet and telephone orders; yes, they ship; yes, they have signed books.)

My plan is sheer elegance in its simplicity.

Let's go back in time, to Friday, September 4th. (Feel free to make Wayne and Garth time-travel hands. They're like jazz hands, only awesome.) Rosemary and Rue has been available for purchase for less than a week. My house has been thoroughly invaded by book preparation, and also by Amy, who arrived while I had Martian Death Flu and didn't run screaming. My sanity is at a record ebb, since there's so much that needs to be done.

What a perfect time to have a party.

My first book release party was scheduled to happen at Illusive Comics, a comic book store in Santa Clara, California, owned and operated by my friend Anna. It was nepotism that got me the gig, I make no bones about that, but I really wanted a South Bay appearance, and she really wanted an excuse for a party, so hey, nothing wrong here. (My book release was Anna's first-ever non-comic book event. To say that we were both a little nervous is like saying that millipedes are a little over-equipped in the "legs" department.

While I spent the day at my day job, slogging away and trying not to chew through my fingers, the invasion began. Members of the Traveling Circus and Snake-Handling Show poured in from all over the place. Vixy, Tony, and Betsy came from the Seattle area; Brooke came from Vancouver, Canada; Sooj and K came via car from their ongoing magical musical road trip; Mia and Ryan came from Portland, Oregon. (Mia and Ryan, in fact, came at 5:27 AM. Because driving from Oregon to California is awesome.) They slowly filled my house to capacity, frightening the cats and waiting to pounce.

Amy spent the day at Kristoph's, doing awesome fiddle things, and when I called to ask her for an ETA, said that Kristoph would be delivering her to the house. Score! Everything's better with Kristoph.

Mom collected me from the train station, and we arrived home to find it occupied by a Mia, a Ryan, a Brooke, and an Amy. Hugs happened, followed by rapid-fire gathering of the things we'd need for the evening, and then we were off to the hotel where Vixy, Tony, Sooj, and K were staying, to collect the four of them (plus Betsy, who'd initially gone to the hotel when she arrived) and all their musical instruments. Mom had wisely borrowed a van from a friend for the weekend, and we filled that thing to capacity. More hugs were exchanged, and we took off in three vehicles, after a short stop at the 7-11 for provisions. (This is where I mention that my little sister, Rachel, and her girlfriend, Chris, were also in the van.)

We were off! We were running! We were on fire! We were...lost in very short order, leading to my mother stopping at a gas station for directions, while I went into the bathroom to throw up from sheer panic. I don't handle being late very well.

Still, wrong turns and panic attacks aside, we got there only fifteen minutes after the official start, and were met at the curb by the first of what would be many, many bags of candy corn. Inside, the joint was jumpin', and Anna was doing a brisk business in copies of Rosemary and Rue, as well as a few precious copies of Ravens in the Library. (We rapidly sold out of Rosemary and Rue.) The musicians gathered at the back of the store to tune and prepare; I went behind the counter to start signing things and eating candy corn. Blonde does not live by candy corn alone, and Ryan II was dispatched to bring me back delicious samosas. Mmmmmmm, samosas.

I signed more books. Anna looked increasingly wide-eyed as we packed more and more (and more and more) people into her little store. The Magic: the Gathering players set up between us and the bathroom looked more and more concerned that we were going to eat them. My food arrived. I ate my food. Time for music!

Much of the Traveling Circus and Snake-Handling Show had never actually shared a stage before that night, although all of us had played with some combination of the others. We opened with "Wicked Girls," and more than half the room was singing along. I nearly cried. From there, the music was a selection of offerings from each of our musicians—Vixy and Tony's "Thirteen," Betsy's "Wildlife," Sooj's version of "Tam Lin," Brooke's "Rosemary and Rue," and Amy doing mad reels like she thought the night might actually catch flame. Paul Kwinn even joined us for one number, and we did "This Is My Town" live for the first time in years. "Dorothy" was added to the set at the last minute—it turns out Anna, who used to publish the comic that inspired the song, wanted to hear it! Who knew? (This is by no means a complete set list.)

We closed the night with "Alligator In the House," with hugs, with laughter, and without an unclaimed copy of Rosemary and Rue in sight. The Circus was officially underway—and what a magical beginning! Could it get any better?

Actually, yes. It could. Next up, Saturday, San Francisco, slinky Sphynx, and serious sirens seriously invading one of the Bay Area's best independent bookstores. It's time for the Circus to hit Borderlands like a meteorite hitting a cornfield in a horror movie! Yay!

First off, here's some mixed-media fun stuff that's come up recently:

Behold, for it is the Penguin podcast! Behold also, for they are all talking with me about Toby and making me sing and I was so totally jet-lagged at the time that I really had very little notion of what I was saying. But I was wearing pretty wool pants and a Kelly green jacket (none of which show up on the podcast), so at least I looked good while I was babbling.

I can't get this video at the Penguin sit to play, because I'm crap with this sort of thing sometimes. But I'm in it, and that's probably good enough reason to point you at it. Maybe you can get it to go. I wish you all the luck in the world.

Over on Dreamwidth, Cynthia's posted a short-and-sweet review. It falls into the "don't quote from it, you'll wind up re-posting the whole thing" category, so I recommend clicking over and checking it out.

fireun has posted a lovely review. She says "This is the faery tale I have been waiting to read for most of my life. From Kelpies hunting in the shadows, an Undine dwelling in a park, and the King of Cats holding court, Rosemary and Rue is full of the Faerie Court as it should be- beautiful and deadly." You'll pardon me while I purr, won't you?

starlady38 has posted a review, which was pointed out to me by a mutual friend (I love it when I get reviews from people I don't know). She says "The book is a cracking good read, a real pageturner, and I don't normally care for stories about the Fair Folk (War for the Oaks being a notable, and at least slightly comparable, exception in this regard), but I have to recommend this book. Toby is a fascinating, painfully real character, as are the people who surround her, and McGuire's evocation of San Francisco, as well as of the power dynamics in the Faerie Courts (in which changelings are only a few steps up from dirt), feels very believable." Glee.

Confessions of a Wandering Heart put up a review that's even titled with awesomeness. She opens with "Seanan McGuire's Rosemary and Rue is one of the best urban fantasy novels I've read all year." She also says "The plot moves quickly—the story taking place in the span of about a week, and blends the perfect amount of fantasy and magic with mystery and crime-solving. The clues and steps Toby takes to solve Evening's murder are believable and easy to follow without being predictable. The page-turning suspense had me dying to get to the end and unwilling to put the book down. Fully developed imagery and the descriptions of the elaborate world-building rival the best urban fantasy writers (such as Kim Harrison). I became so immersed in Seanan McGuire's Faerie world that I think there were times I forgot I wasn't actually a part of it." I really could not be more pleased.

But.

I have saved the best for last.

Because today—yes, today—Rosemary and Rue was reviewed by the Onion AV Club. And they gave it an A-. Which is pretty damn close to the best you can get if the book doesn't cause spontaneous orgasm when the cover is opened, give you a back rub, and then buy you chocolates. Today is the day my geek cred increases to unheard of heights. I AM IN THE ONION.

What does the Onion say? The Onion says "Just when it seems that all the possible changes have been rung on the themes of detectives and the supernatural, along comes newcomer Seanan McGuire with Rosemary And Rue, the first in a new series featuring a changeling private eye who lives half in San Francisco, half in the Kingdom Of Faerie that overlaps it, unseen by mortal eyes," and "October Daye is as gritty and damaged a heroine as Kinsey Millhone or Kay Scarpetta." KAY SCARPETTA, PEOPLE.

The review closes with "Changelings, like all faerie folk, live long; may McGuire and these novels do the same." I share the sentiment. And I am just all a-twitter and amazed by this fabulous review.

Wow.

So—as you all probably know by now—last weekend was the first-ever assembly of the Traveling Circus and Snake-Handling Show, an amazing conglomeration of incredibly talented people who came together, as if by magic, to help make the book release parties for Rosemary and Rue even more awesome than they might otherwise have been. Seriously, it was incredible. It was like I made a wish-list of everything and everyone I could possibly have wanted to be there, and while I didn't get everything I asked for, I got so much of it that it would be insanely greedy to go "but wah, where's my pony?" I felt loved and honored and truly blessed to be surrounded by so much pure hammered awesome.

Actual, physical attendees who traveled more than a hundred miles to run away with the circus included...

* Amy McNally, from the depths of Wisconsin.
* Vixy and Tony, from Seattle, Washington.
* Betsy "Alice's breeder" Tinney, also from Seattle.
* Brooke Lunderville, from Vancouver, Canada.
* Mia and Ryan, from Portland, Oregon.
* SJ Tucker and K, from here, there, and everywhere.

Our parties were confirmed for Borderlands Books, in San Francisco, and Illusive Comics, in Santa Clara. (The third event, at Other Change of Hobbit in Berkeley, was unfortunately cancelled due to staffing conflicts.) Jude and Alan at Borderlands, and Anna at Illusive, were wonderful at helping to set up timing and guidelines before the events, and without their amazing support, our kitchen party wouldn't have been half as good.

But that's not the half of it.

Mia Nutick (copperwise) is the proprietor and creative force behind chimera_fancies, where she recycles old fairy tale books into works of wearable art. Her pendants are incredible, unique, and highly coveted by those of us who know about her—she's like the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab of jewelry, only everything she makes is a Limited Edition, and that edition is limited to one. Her sale days are sort of like watching piranha go for a cow. A pretty, sparkly, amazingly collectable cow.

Because I love Mia, I asked her if she'd be willing to recycle her review ARC (she does book reviews for Green Man) into pendantry for my book release party. Because she loves me, she said yes. And because she loves everyone, she made more than forty pendants from a single ARC, bringing them all with her down the coast to California. Five were selected to be put into the raffle at our Saturday night event. Various others were claimed by members of the Traveling Circus, because we wouldn't have time to peruse the sale table during the event itself. And all of them were signed by me, making them even more amazingly special. Pendants, handmade made from an ARC of Rosemary and Rue, signed by the author? Pardon me while I flail.

Here are a few of the glorious goodies:



Naturally, not many of them went home with Mia. If you're going all wide-eyed and "want," fear not; I sent her home with a slightly battered ARC that had been sent back to me by a reviewer, and she's going to be making a second batch, this one for Internet distribution. You can check the sale rules and price ranges at chimera_fancies; she's going to be shipping me the pendants when they're done, so that they can all be signed prior to the sale, and expects the batch to be available sometime in the next month or so. I'll post sales announcements here. If batch two is anything like batch one, they're going to be gorgeous.

Mia wasn't the only one contributing to making the event incredible. I contacted Dawn, proprietor of Polidori Chocolates, and asked if she might be interested in doing a line of truffles based around the book. Yeah. Toby-themed chocolates. We went there. We went there like it was a gold-star vacation destination with the possible added bonus of a volcano that we could toss people into for fun. And the results were incredible.

Dawn provided four flavors of truffle that were, quite simply, divine. Our truffle-tasting party on Friday night was an exercise in pure decadence. To quote one of the attendees (Book Love Affair) of Saturday's event: "Take careful note of the box of Polidori truffles, because apparently they were made by God himself. Or that's how they tasted anyway. Polidori must mean 'God of Sweet Things' somewhere."

The flavors, themed after characters, were...

Toby. Espresso ganache with cocoa nibs, enrobed in sweet milk chocolate, and tasting of paradise.
Tybalt. Dark chocolate with a mint ganache, topped with a sharp, surprising ripple of lemon.
Lily. White chocolate ganache flavored with green tea, enrobed in chocolate, topped with a whisper of ginger.
Devin. Chocolate enrobed vanilla ganache with a bite of black pepper, warm, spicy, and wicked-tasting.

There are not words for the incredible awesomeness of these chocolates. Polidori's Etsy shop has been closed for the summer, due to the issues inherent in shipping chocolates when you're a small operation, but should be re-opening soon, and will have the Toby truffles available for your decadent enjoyments. Imagine eating a box of these while re-reading your favorite chapter...yum.

Honestly, I won at event prep right out the gate, and I cannot thank the people involved nearly enough.

Next up...Friday, getting lost in Santa Clara, herding cats, and too much candy corn!

With Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies] approaching its official release date, and with my evenings spent neck-deep in The Brightest Fell, aka, "Toby five," aka, "the book I am writing partially as a form of informing the universe that it really needs to give me the sales to sustain a long series," it's only natural that my thoughts should be turning to reviews and promotion. I have Google spiders set to tell me whenever my name or the title of my book get mentioned—they aren't perfect, but they do pretty well—and I try not to let myself obsess too much about my Goodreads ranking or Amazon sales number. (These are not easy things to avoid obsessing over. I admit that. But a girl can still try.) This has led, of course, to contemplation.

Do I like reviews? Well, yeah. What author doesn't like reviews? Especially since I'm a shiny new author, which means reviews will have a genuine impact on my sales—I'll read the new Kelley Armstrong regardless of what the reviewers say, because I know she does what I like, but I didn't pick up Jeri Smith-Ready (who is also made of awesome) until I started hearing people I trusted saying good things about her. I especially appreciate the fact that, now that we have the wonders of the Internet, everybody can be a reviewer. I mean, yes, that means that people like me, whose credentials are questionable at best, are allowed to express our opinions with apparent authority, but it also means that there's a range. I'm a lot more likely to trust a product whose reviews have a range than I am a product only discussed in the most glowing of terms. At a certain point, the "does your book cure cancer?" blinders kick on.

Which brings me to today's actual topic: what constitutes "going too far" where reviews are concerned? I regularly solicit the readers of this blog to post reviews, and while I'm not going to hunt people down and make sad eyes at them if they post something really negative, the odds are pretty good that if you're here, you're well-inclined to like my writing, or at least play nicely. (Not always, mind you. No one is nastier to my favorite authors than I am when I feel like they've lost the thread. At the same time, because they're my favorite authors, even before I adopted my "post no negative reviews" position, I was likely to not say anything at all.) Now, I don't think this is being uncool. It's not like I'm paying people, and it's not like I can actually force anyone. Also, I told my mother she's not allowed to post a review. I have done what I can.

At the same time, there are ways that some people really abuse the review system. Let's take a hypothetical book called Mary Sue Goes to Mordor. It's published through a small press, but it has Amazon distribution, and the author—like all authors—has the understandable desire to see the book succeed. Without a major press, it's very unlikely that there will be many review copies kicking around, and almost certain that there won't be a big press campaign. So it's all word-of-mouth and Amazon reviews. It's natural that the mind might turn to thoughts of upping those numbers, just a little...just to even the playing field, as it were.

So now Mary Sue Goes to Mordor has fifteen reviews, all of them five-star, all of them heaping praise on the book in a glowing manner. Often mentioning not only the author in superlative terms, but also praising the publisher for "doing it again," perhaps in hopes that this will lead curious readers to click through to other titles by the same publisher. Where does the line lie beyond which the reviews are simply impossible to trust? How many "reinventing the world of fantasy" comments can be taken before the book crosses the line into "not with a ten foot pole"?

No, Mary Sue Goes to Mordor isn't the title of a real book, although it sounds like it would be similar in concept to The Wizard, the Witch, and Two Girls from Jersey, which was a disturbing amount of fun. So if I saw Mary Sue Goes to Mordor on the shelf, I'd probably give it a read. This question basically comes from a combination of a) chasing my own reviews around the Internet, watching to see what critical response will actually be, and b) seeing several books take the hypothetical approach above—the one where half the reviews just read like they were written by the same guy changing accounts as quickly as he could.

There are lines. The lines are funky. I'm going to quote David Edelman here, and say: "Don't post glowing reviews of your books on Amazon under assumed names. Don't start up your own fan websites. Don't go through the phone book and call bookstores anonymously asking if they stock this amazing new book you've just heard about. In fact, any time a marketing activity involves the use of pseudonyms, that should raise a red flag."

And now I'm going to link to his fantastic essay, A Guide to Ethical Self-Promotion.

And now that I've thought my thinky thoughts for tonight, I'm going to go to bed.

So people have been asking—because people are awesome—what they can do to help Rosemary and Rue be a success. So I've made a handy little list of do's and don't's, just to get you off on the right foot.

DO ask your local bookstore if they have it on order. If your local store is part of a large chain, such as Borders or Barnes and Noble, the odds are very good that the answer will be "yes," and that they'll be more than happy to hold one for you. If your local store is small, and does not focus specifically on science fiction/fantasy, they may have been waiting to see signs of interest before placing an order. Get interested! Interest is awesome!

DON'T berate your local bookseller if they say "no." Telling people they're overlooking something awesome doesn't make them go "gosh, I see the error of my ways." It makes them go "well, I guess it can be awesome without me." Suggest. Ask if you can special-order a copy. But don't be nasty to people just because their shelves can't hold every book ever written.

DO post reviews on your blog or on Amazon.com. Reviews are fantastic! Reviews make everything better! Please, write and post a review, even if it's just "I liked it." Honestly, even if it's just "this wasn't really my thing." As long as you're being fair and reasoned in your commentary, I'm thrilled. (I like to think you won't all race right out to post one-star reviews, but if that's what you really think, I promise that I won't be mad.)

DON'T get nasty at people who post negative reviews. You are all people. You all have a right to the ball. That includes people who don't like my work. Please don't argue with negative reviewers on my behalf. It just makes everybody sad. If you really think someone's being unfair, why don't you post your own review, to present an alternate perspective?

DO feel free to get multiple copies. No, you probably don't need eight copies of Rosemary and Rue for your permanent collection, but remember that libraries, school libraries, and shelters are always in need of books. I'm donating a few of my author's copies to a local women's shelter, because they get a lot of women there who really need the escape. There are also people who just can't afford their own copies, and would be delighted. I wouldn't have had half the library I did as a teenager if it weren't for the kindness of the people around me.

DON'T feel obligated to get multiple copies, or nag other people to do so. Seriously, we're all on budgets, and too much aggressive press can actually turn people off on a good thing. Let people make their own choices. Have faith.

DO suggest the book to bookstore employees who like urban fantasy. Nothing boosts sales like having people in the stores who really like a project. If your Cousin Danny (or Dani) works at a bookstore, say "Hey, why don't you give this a try?" It just might help.

DON'T rearrange bookstore displays. If the staff of my local bookstore is constantly being forced to deal with fixing the shelves after someone "helpfully" rearranged things to give their chosen favorites a better position, they're unlikely to feel well inclined toward that book—or author. It's not a good thing to piss off the bookstores. Let's just not.

So those are some do's and don't's. I'm sure there are lots of other things to consider; this is, at least, a start.

So I was interviewed over at Words to Mouth, by the charming and erudite Carrie Runnals. I enjoy giving interviews, in much the same way I enjoy writing bios for my website. I am also inevitably convinced that I came off sounding like a chirpy sunshine-and-rainbows-and-Marburg moron. It's fun living inside my head. That's where all the weasels are.

Anyway, if you hie on over to the interview and leave a comment before August 31st, you can win a free copy of Rosemary and Rue. "But wait," you cry, "I've already pre-ordered!" Or perhaps, "I don't want to wait that long!" But oh ye of little faith, don't you think you could come up with something awesome to do with an extra copy of Rosemary and Rue? Donate it to a library. Leave it as a tip for your favorite diner waitress. Wedge that shaky bookshelf with something other than your Algebra textbook, thus saving yourself from the curse of the crazy Classics major. Whatever makes you happy! The possibilities are truly endless.

I have at least two more interviews coming up in the next few weeks, and it's beginning to make me a little bit twitchy. Again, I love giving interviews, it's all just...very real these days. My soundtrack for the past few weeks has consisted (when it wasn't endless versions of "Rain King") of "Writing Again" and "Moving Too Fast" from The Last Five Years. Sample:

Did I just hear an alarm start ringing?
Did I see sirens go flying past?
Though I don't know what tomorrow's bringing,
I've got the singular sensation things
Are moving too fast...

It's an excellent song, sung by a character I very much identify with (except for the part where he's a Jewish New Yorker, rather than an Irish California blonde). And wow is that how I spend a lot of timing feeling just now.

So go, comment, maybe win a book, and make Carrie feel like interviewing me is a really awesome idea. Whee!

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!

Naturally, one of the topics discussed at the SDCC was "how are we going to market and position the Mira Grant books?" Toby is, in some ways, a much easier property to position; she's urban fantasy, straight up, with a noir shaker and a twist of lime. (The lime is cursed, but that's beside the point.) Do I think that Toby is new and different and exciting, and deserves a place on your bookshelf? Of course I do. I'm the author. But the urban fantasy community is huge and healthy enough that it's reasonably non-traumatic to find reviewers and readers, say "look, shiny," and actually get their attention.

The Newsflesh trilogy, on the other hand, is weird distopian zombie horror science fiction. I was describing it to people as "what happens when you cross Transmetropolitan, The West Wing, and The Night of the Living Dead." I consider Feed to be one of the best things I've ever written, but that doesn't mean I think it's the world's easiest thing to market effectively, since "please watch seven seasons of a television drama and the works of George Romero, and read this really cool but pretty long comic book series, and then you'll totally want to read my book" doesn't actually work as a strategy. Although it would be awesome.

So we talked marketing and positioning and various other fun things ending with "ing," and I started looking at the various marketing strategies playing out around the convention with a bit more of a critical eye. It helped that this year's con played host to the single most brilliant piece of unusual marketing I've seen in a long time:

Syfy created the Cafe Diem.

The Cafe Diem is a major location on Eureka, showing up in almost every episode. Syfy took over a local diner, completely rebranding it to match their fictional restaurant. The menus, the logos, the waitstaff, everything was transformed into a little slice of Eureka, the smartest small town on Earth. They had monitors throughout the restaurant showing Syfy bumpers and sizzle reels for the various shows, and it was sheer brilliance in marketing. I probably couldn't tell you any real details of the "big media" booths inside the convention...but I'm going to remember the Cafe Diem for years.

The folks responsible for the promo for 9—the new Tim Burton-produced "stitchpunk" movie—also deserve a round of applause: they had clearly-labeled runners scattered through the convention, handing out con-exclusive cards. If you got all eight of the character cards, you could start looking for The Machine. If you found The Machine, and got his card, you could win a prize. The prize had a time limit, and Jeanne and I didn't much care about it anyway; what we wanted was The Machine's card. We seriously spent hours upon hours searching for The Machine, and when we found him, triumph and victory were ours. This, too, made more of an impression on me than all the bored-looking half-naked women in the world.

Being innovative with promotion is hard, especially at a place like the San Diego Comic-Con, where the signal to noise ration is just insane. Thinking about it is interesting, though, and I have some fun ideas. Sadly, none of them involve taking over a diner.

Yet.

So someone commented on my guest blog at the League of Reluctant Adults—where you still have an hour to comment and be entered to win an ARC of Rosemary and Rue—that...

"Charlaine Harris plugged this book to a crowd of 500+ people at her signing in Oak Brook, IL this past Monday. She was asked what she was reading and she said she was enjoying this ARC immensely. Scores of people around me were scrambling to write down the name..."

This sort of made my jaw hit the floor, because, um, well, HOLY CATS. And being me, I went looking for any other information about this particular event.

What I found was Charlaine's blog. Specifically, her current books entry. Specifically...

"One of the DAW editors sent me an ARC of Seanan McGuire’s first book. It's a winner."

...and...

"I think any of my readers will enjoy this book, and surely any of Patricia Briggs' readers will, too."

I think my head is going to explode.

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.

...well, Tanya Huff's new book, anyway. Today is the release of The Enchantment Emporium [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies], the latest awesome adventure in awesome adventuring from Tanya Huff, the woman who basically woke up one day and said "hmmm, I think I'll create a genre." (Seriously, if you like books about vampires, or anything in the urban paranormal class of books, you should buy this book just to say thank you.) Better, she and I share a publisher, which means I had the opportunity to find out early just how awesome The Enchantment Emporium really is.

How awesome?

Damn awesome. I've been reading and loving Tanya's work for years, but I haven't enjoyed one of her books this much since Summon the Keeper (which I read about eight or nine times over the course of a single summer, because I loved it that much). The Gale family is enthralling, their mysteries just mysterious enough to keep me reading, and just clear enough not to become annoying. The language is gorgeous, and the story is a hell of a lot of fun. If I have any complaints, it's that this isn't a series yet, so I can't promise more. Then again, sometimes the best stories are the ones that stand all by themselves.

The Enchantment Emporium: because while we can't be absolutely certain WalMart is ripping holes in the fabric of space and time, who wants to take the chance?

Available now from a bookstore near you, assuming you live somewhere where there are actually bookstores. If not, it's available from Amazon and Mysterious Galaxies (here, have the links again: [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies]), and there's even a Kindle edition if you live in an atmosphere hostile toward paper.

Yay!

I am essentially a magnet for books. It helps that I crawl through used bookstores like it was some sort of an Olympic sport, regularly raid the collections of my friends, get a lot of books mailed to me, haunt science fiction convention dealers rooms, and basically take every opportunity to get my hands on the written word. I try not to consider how many books I have, except on those occasions where I'm forced to try putting them back onto the shelves.

Some of my books are pre-cover ARCs. (There are two kinds of ARC. Some, like the ones for Rosemary and Rue, are essentially mock-ups for the finished book; they have front covers, they have back covers, and they look like books, except for the big "NOT FOR SALE" printed all over them. Others are basically bound manuscripts, with plain heavy-paper covers, and look more like the spec scripts that sometimes show up in specialty bookstores. I don't know if there's a technical term for these, so I just call them "pre-cover ARCs" and have done.) These are always interesting, because it means I'm reading them based on nothing but the back cover blurb.

How much does a cover matter? We're always told not to judge a book by its cover, but how much does the cover really matter?

It matters a lot.

The book I just read (which will not be named, because dude, you do not slag on other people's cover art; it's simply not okay) was in a genre I'm fairly fond of; I have an ARC not because I was asked to do a pre-review, but because the book is already out, and so the ARC got shoved off on me. No objections here, as I always buy books that I enjoyed in ARC—I consider it my part of the social contract. "I liked your book when I saw it in an advance form, so here is some money." Much like buying a book I enjoyed when I got it from the library. Anyway:

I had actually seen this book on store shelves, and totally failed to notice it in any meaningful way, because the cover was so non-appealing. I glanced at it, shook my head, and glanced over it. I didn't even realize I'd seen it—when I finished the ARC, I went to the bookstore, hunted down the book, and was gobsmacked to realize that it was "oh, that one." I would never have given the book the credit it deserved, judging solely from the cover. Which would have sucked.

(I realize that giving a positive, if vague, review, and then failing to name the book, is really annoying. I promise to review the book later, when it no longer auto-associates with my kvetching about its cover art.)

Covers matter. Covers matter a lot. More and more, I'm coming to realize that a good cover can make all the difference in the world between a book getting snatched off a store shelf that same book only getting read when somebody shoves it into your hands.

What covers do you especially love, or hate?

...who wants to win a copy of Rosemary and Rue? This time, we're raising the stakes a little bit, and requiring a bit more effort on your part. 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 Rosemary and Rue. Since you haven't read the 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 Rosemary and Rue. 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 fabulous raelee decided that we needed a few more icons to fling around the place. Check out the shiny!

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

All icons are totally free for use (naturally); remember that credit is a good thing to give to the icon-makers of the world, as it keeps them being awesome and iconic for the rest of us.

In other news, WHEE!