It's official! Late Eclipses [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] is now available from fine bookstores everywhere in North America, and from many fine bookstores elsewhere in the world! HOORAY!

Here are a few things to help you celebrate:

Firstly, there are gorgeous Late Eclipses wallpapers and icons available now at my website! Dress your computer in its Toby-related finery, and enjoy Tara's increasingly incredible work every time you make a post or minimize your active windows. Wallpapers and icons from previous books are also available.

I've done a shiny new interview over at the Qwillery, and you can win a copy of Late Eclipses! Dust off your Shakespeare and get ready for a good time, or at least the kind of time that involves hearing about my writing process in faintly silly terms.

Because people ask a lot: every sale counts, and if it's a legit sale (IE, not from a guy in a trenchcoat standing behind the 7-11), I get paid for it. In order of "how helpful is this," it goes brick and mortar stores first, because a sale from them often leads to a re-order; online retailers second, since again, they have to restock when they run out; and ebooks third, as those never need to be replenished. Take two, they're small.

Finally, I am going to be at Borderlands Books this afternoon, doing a swing-through stock-signing. If you want a signed book, and will be unable to make my March 19th Borderlands event, you can call the store and place an order any time after 12:00 PST (when they open). I'm also willing to sign the first three books, Feed, Zombiesque, and Tales From the Ur-Bar (also coming out today).

Happy bookday to me!

Item the first: I have updated my website appearances. Go, view, and learn where I'm going to be. I have confirmed appearances in Australia, New York, California, and Oregon. Which brings me to...

Item the second: I am delighted and honored to announce that I have been selected as the Friends of Filk Guest for OryCon 32. This year's theme is "the Darker Side of Fantasy," which is something I feel I can work with quite well. I'll be appearing with Vixy and Tony, which always makes me happy, and maybe I'll even have a brand new album by then! The convention will be held in Portland, Oregon, from November 12th through the 14th. I hope you can make it, if it's even remotely local to you.

Item the third: If you ever feel the need to quit your job, this is pretty much the way to do it. Style, a sense of humor, and a great way of making your point. (I do wonder what kind of reference she's going to get, but...) Just don't read the comments. The sexism can get a little scary at certain points. But the facial expressions are twenty miles beyond awesome.

Item the fourth: This is what you've all been waiting for, which is a large part of why I've been keeping you in suspense. I'd say that I was sorry, but you'd all know that I was lying through my teeth. So instead, I shall say LOOK! SHINY! Much more effective.

Icons and Wallpapers for An Artificial Night have been posted on my site.

Tara has really outdone herself with this latest batch, and I am absolutely enthralled by her graphic awesome. Some will make more sense after you've read the book, but they're all fantastic now. Go, look, take, have, and join the flailing excitement as you realize...book three is ALMOST HERE.

Gleh.

After consulting with a wide array of judges who didn't have a horse in this race, the winners have been chosen. They are...

* antigoneschase for "If I went any further..." and "I keep breaking my dates." antigoneschase wins a set of my CDs!
* ravenclawed for drunken changelings. ravenclawed wins a signed copy of Rosemary and Rue!
* snowishness for "Angels come to fall." snowishness wins a signed ARC of Feed!
* talkstowolves for her many wicked girls icons. talkstowolves wins a signed copy of A Local Habitation!

Would all winners please email me via my website contact link to provide a mailing address? If I do not receive your address by Friday, April 9th, you will forfeit your prize.

Thanks to everyone who participated; we'll definitely do this again at some point in the future.

I feel like having a contest. A contest wherein people who feel creative get to make things. And snowishness just posted a huge, amazing batch of icons based on my song lyrics, which made me think. So...

Here is my first ever ICON CONTEST. You enter by making ICONS (100x100 images intended for use on sites such as this one). By entering an icon in the contest, you grant other people the right of use, with credit. You can enter icons which you have previously posted, either here or on your own journal. All icons must be based on something I have created, from Toby to song lyrics to Feed to the Velveteen or Sparrow Hill stories.

Post your entries here, as comments on this post. Please make all entries their own thread, so that I can find them for voting purposes. You can enter multiple times. Please indicate what prize you are entering to win. Prizes available:

1) Signed copy of Rosemary and Rue.
2) Signed copy of A Local Habitation.
3) Signed ARC of Feed.
4) Set of my CDs.

Please make your entries by including your entry in the BODY of the comment. Be sure to specify which prize you want. Lack of specification means I decide you're just showing off, and do not want to win.

There will be between one and four winners, depending on the number of entries received (I'll make this determination later). Entries will be taken for one week, starting now. If you are taking one of the contest entries for personal use, please comment to let the creator know. Don't post icons that other people made.

Game on!

Okay, free stuff, part one:

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

Knives.

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

Anthony's Vampire.

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

Free stuff, part two:

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

Happy cat is happy. Free stuff is free.

cassildra got to ride home from DucKon with the gentleman who won the Rosemary and Rue ARC (hi, Trevor!), and posted this lovely and thoughtful review to let us know what she thought of the book. Hint: she liked it.

Meanwhile, the Park Avenue Princess posted her lovely review of the book, including a great deal of pinkness and enthusiasm. I favor pinkness and enthusiasm. Give 'er a look.

Finally, and less strictly Rosemary-related, antigoneschase posted a fantastic batch of "Wicked Girls" icons over on her journal. These are beautiful. Check them out!

...and they'll call us such names, and we really won't care:

talkstowolves has made "Wicked Girls" icons with some of my favorite wicked girls. She's even written a lovely treatise on the source of the phrase "wicked girls saving ourselves," from Mia's original pendant, to her request for a song (during one of my crazy party game phases), to the song itself. It's a glorious evolution, and it makes me ecstatically happy to watch it.

What's especially glorious is that she really gets the song, and the fact that all the girls with actual verses—not the girls in the bridge, of whom she is one, making her sweet word-wine for all of us; the verse girls, the ones who failed—are there as cautionary tales. Dorothy, Alice, Wendy, Jane...they didn't save themselves. To be a girl in a verse is, by definition, to have failed at the goal we're setting ourselves. We remember their names because we have to honor our fallen, but they're the patron saint priestesses of all the lost girls who got found, and they didn't break the chains that bound them.

The rest of us, the Deborahs and the Mias, and the Mandys and the Kaias, and all the other bridge-girls who've taken their turns (and will in the future), we're the ones who still have a chance to be determined. We're going to get out.

Just watch.

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!

One of the wonderful services provided by my graphic designer, taraoshea, is the production of promotional art for my books. The icons in this post were designed to go with Rosemary and Rue (October Daye book one, coming from DAW Books in September 2009). Matching wallpapers will be available soon on my website. But for right now...icons.

All icons are free for use, although I do ask that you credit Tara and link people back to my website, since the point is to start driving up interest. All icons will also be posted to my website. I'll let you know when.

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It gets a little closer to real every day.