Thursday, March 08, 2007

Back to Normal (and catching up)

First, if you are so inclined, the folks at the GalleyCat publishing blog are doing a survey about how readers hear about books. Because mostly publishing industry people read that blog, they asked us to send regular readers over there to participate. You don't have to give them any info beyond clicking on the button that best answers the question. Here's the link to the poll. Who knows, the results could end up teaching the publishing industry a thing or two.

I am now done whining about my car. Just a few final thoughts: Good things to come out of the adventure include finding a neighborhood repair shop a few blocks from my house where the people seemed to be pretty nice and honest, as well as finding a friendly cab driver who lives in my neighborhood whom I can now contact directly if I'm ever in dire need of transportation. I've also learned how to get to a few crucial places using public transportation with no car at all (I'm very good with the rail system, but have always driven to the park-and-ride rather than starting with the bus in my neighborhood, since the bus in my neighborhood runs only once an hour and only on weekdays).

I completely forgot to mention that in the middle of all that chaos, guess who had to perform in the music class on Tuesday? Yeah, I needed a wee bit more stress in my life. But after a shaky beginning, I actually did okay and was even enjoying myself by the end. I wouldn't say that I'm cured of my stage fright, but I think I am on the mend. I've upgraded from phobia to plain old fear. Maybe next I'll hit nervousness. Who knows, eventually I could work my way up to diva. Next week is spring break, so I'm hoping to get myself back on track, work-wise.

Speaking of back on track ... that blog campaign I mentioned last week. If you want to participate and want to interview me, have me write a guest blog, interview a character, have a character do a guest blog, or otherwise come up with an entry that requires my input, please e-mail your requests to me at shanna@shannaswendson.com. Put something specific in your subject line so I can recognize it right away. My spam filter sometimes goes hypervigilant, and when I skim through the spam folder I look for subject lines that look real. If I don't recognize your name and the subject is blank or something generic like "hello," the message may get deleted. I will work on these throughout the next couple of months and send them all back just before it's time to start posting. Deadline to send me questions or other requests is April 23, but I will be dealing with these in the order I receive them, so if you wait until the last minute and I get crazy, there's always a chance that I'll spend less time and effort on yours. If there's a question I don't want to answer or don't feel comfortable dealing with, I'll let you know and give you a chance to come up with something else.

Remember that you don't have to use me. To be eligible for prizes, you just have to mention the book name and my name (and it would be nice to mention the first two books, for new readers to find). These should all be posted the week of April 30-May 7. Our goal is to get enough awareness and sell enough books that first couple of weeks that my publisher gets excited (going into a second printing really fast would be cool, too).

The prize categories I'm planning to do for sure will include most creative idea (for entries that are your idea but that I write), best entry written by the blogger, best interview (you're judged on the questions rather than my answers -- though good questions tend to lead to good answers), best review (either of this book or the first two books/the series itself leading to the new book), and biggest impact (like something viral that gets passed around -- a quiz or meme -- or if you can demonstrate a certain size blog readership, generating a lot of comments, recruiting a lot of additional bloggers, etc.). There may be additional categories depending on how many books I get to give away. And then the remaining books will be awarded in a drawing among those who participated who didn't win another prize. The panel of celebrity judges will include me for sure, possibly Mom (though I haven't asked her yet), and then I'll see if any of my "people" want to play. I may pick finalists and then let Mom and any other judges vote on the winner, so I don't make them plow through the (I hope!) hundreds of blog entries.

And speaking of advance copies, those who won copies of book 3 in Writing Month, I'll be getting them in the mail tomorrow, I promise. The car issues got me off-track in my scheduling this week, and instead of getting to the post office, I was running around dealing with repairs and the rental car. I'll start working on ideas for some other way to give away the remaining copies next week.

Finally, we've got another Out of the Blogosphere book this week, Visions of Heat by Nalini Singh.

Used to cold silence, Faith NightStar is suddenly being tormented by dark visions of blood and murder. A bad sign for anyone, but worse for Faith, an F-Psy with the highly sought after ability to predict the future. Then the visions show her something even more dangerous-aching need...exquisite pleasure. But so powerful is her sight, so fragile the state of her mind, that the very emotions she yearns to embrace could be the end of her.

Changeling Vaughn D'Angelo can take either man or jaguar form, but it is his animal side that is overwhelmingly drawn to Faith. The jaguar's instinct is to claim this woman it finds so utterly fascinating and the man has no argument. But while Vaughn craves sensation and hungers to pleasure Faith in every way, desire is a danger that could snap the last threads of her sanity. And there are Psy who need Faith's sight for their own purposes. They must keep her silenced-and keep her from Vaughn...

For more info, an excerpt and behind-the-scenes scoop on the series, visit Nalini's web site

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