Orange ya glad

When I was a lad, my favorite color was orange. It was close. Green was in second and threatened to overcome orange, as did red. But orange won out.

This might have been because orange is the color of fire. Or because the carpet in my room was orange. Or my hair. It's irrelevant.

The point is this: My bike is orange. It's one of my prized possessions. My blog is orange, as you can quickly see by shifting your eyes slightly up. YA MS the Third (soon to be titled; watch this space) has always been orange in my mind. (The Absolute Value of -1 has always been black and red, for what it's worth; it's a happy coincidence, perhaps, that it was black and red for the cover designers, too.)

With all that in mind, I present you with these:I coveteth them.

Furthermore, they represent a burgeoning movement in YA literature borne of Heidi R. Kling's debut novel, the beautifully written and achingly romantic Sea.

So buy a pair of orange chucks--or yellow ones, sure--and don them proudly. And when you see another person out in public, particularly at the Jacob Javits Center May 25 to 27, wearing cool-ass Chucks in orange or yellow, you'll know why.

And the winner is . . .

Time to announce the winner of the signed ARC prize package. To sum up, the winner will receive:

• An ARC of THE ABSOLUTE VALUE OF -1, signed by me, Dia Reeves, Heidi R. Kling, Jennifer Hubbard, Kristin Walker, and Phoebe Kitanidis
• A signed bookmark from Dia, Jenn, and Kristin
• And a signed final copy of Dia Reeves's crazyawesome book Bleeding Violet.

So, without further ado, the winner is . . .


Watch your email, Sherry, for a note from me so I can get your mailing address. Congrats!

And big thanks to everyone who entered, for helping me spread the word and trailer for |-1| around.

Those of you waiting for posters, they should go out tomorrow or the next day.

I started a "like" page for |-1| on facebook. Stop by and like it!

And finally, watch Goodreads. Another ARC giveaway begins on May 1.

No more entries!

The contest is now officially closed to entries! We have a LOT of people entering, so it's going to take me a little time to do the complicated computations to figure out who won.

Meanwhile, I'd love to send out the five posters I promised in the last post, and looking at the first five comments, I see those should go to:

♥ twiinkle :}
Tina Laurel Lee
Jonathan Arnston
Elegant Snobbery
Heather Kelly

I come to that conclusion under the assumption that I can skip Blythe Woolston, fellow Carolrhoda Lab frosh, and Micol "Meatball" Ostow, whom I hope to see at BEA. If either of you two dames wants a poster too, just holler.

Okay, you five. Please email me. My contact info is under "view my complete profile" on the right.

The rest of you, in the next few days I'll figure out the big winner. (And fear not, poster people; you're still in the running for the signed ARC, goodies, and signed copy of Bleeding Violet.) Also stay tuned to this channel for more exciting news in the next ten days or so.

Trailer for |-1|

It's here! It's here!

The trailer for THE ABSOLUTE VALUE OF -1



And with it, the last chance to enter my big signed ARC giveaway. To refresh your memory (yeah, the first chance to enter was like five months ago), the prize includes an ARC of |-1| signed by me, Dia Reeves, Kristin Walker, Jennifer Hubbard, Heidi Kling, and Phoebe Kitanidis. It's a Tenner extravaganza! Also included is a signed copy of Dia Reeves's BLEEDING VIOLET, a |-1| poster, and whatever other swag those lovely Tenners send me to include in the package!

Okay, so, several people already have a bunch of entries from previous opportunities, but folks, this is the big one. You can get crazy entries right now!

• To get one entry, comment on this entry.
• To get another entry, link to this entry in Twitter or on your blog. Link to your tweet in your comment.
• And to get TEN ENTRIES, embed the trailer on your own blog. Link to the blog entry in your comment.

So that's twelve entries you can get right now! No one else has more than four yet! Four is chump change. CHUMP. CHANGE.

Okay, and, just for fun, the first five comments* I see pop up will automatically get a poster in the mail, just for entering and being awesome.

*Please do not enter if you're under 13. Please do not enter if you find fictional accounts of drug use or sexual encounters to be offensive, or if you find swear words to be offensive. If you've already won something on this blog, you are not eligible for one of the extra five posters, but can still enter the bigger giveaway. ETA: The contest will end officially at 9 pm EDT on April 21.

Fly, little novel.

YA MS the Third went on submission yesterday. I hope it is doing okay out there in the cold world. Soon, it will no longer be called YA MS the Third in this space.

Meanwhile, here's its Wordle cloud. I don't quite know why "back" is featured so boldly. Huh.

Sacrifices must be made

First, some news, which you may have already seen in my Twitter stream. The release party and reading for |-1| has been scheduled! It will be at Magers & Quinn in Minneapolis on September 23. This gives you plenty of notice and time to plan, so get those airline tickets bought now if you need them.

The trailer for |-1| will be showing up very soon.

I've let my WoW account expire. This was mainly to make me a more productive writer, just like last time I took a long WoW break, when I finished |-1| and started YA MS the Second. Ironically, though, I plan to use the otherwise wasted time to now finish YA MS the Second, which is about a girl who plays WoW too much! Truly, the mind reels, does it not?*

Also ironically, YA MS the Third is done! Which is to say, it somehow earned agent ENIV's approval last week, and this week he might, ya know, show it to someone else. So that's fun.

Also fun: the last touch it needed required a smidge of research. I went down to the art supply store and rather sheepishly explained I needed some newsprint and vine charcoals. Then I got to do something I haven't done regularly in far too long: draw. I chose a desk lamp, for reasons I won't get into now, and had a great time. This was all so I could better describe the experience of drawing with charcoal on newsprint--the feel of it, the smell, the smudging on the sides of my fingers, et cetera. Anyway, there are like 49 more sheets of newsprint on that pad, and I intend to use them.

*The crying Night Elf above is not my toon, but some random level 13 I chose simply to illustrate a crying Night Elf. If you happen to recognize this toon (called Swan, by the way), perhaps it is yours. If so, I urge you to spend your four talent points. They don't get better if you let them age.