Who's up for an adventure?

For anyone who lives in the Salt Lake area, here's another chance to score yourself a copy of Santa Maybe! But it takes a little effort on your part-- sort of like a treasure hunt. :)

I'll be releasing a copy of Santa Maybe through Bookcrossing, which is a lot of fun if you've never tried it before. Basically, you go to their website, www.bookcrossing.com, and register books before leaving them in places for strangers to find. They call it "releasing books into the wild", a description whose mental picture never fails to make me giggle. Ideally, people will read them and make journal entries at Bookcrossing before continuing the whole cycle again. It's the great circle of life... only with books! I've left copies of each of my own books (and also some others that I liked but knew I would never read again) with varying degrees of success, But it always makes me so giddy, knowing that my books are off on their own adventures. So if you feel like going on a book hunt, go check out the website and find out where I'll be placing the copy tomorrow!

Also, a quick note-- I still haven't heard from candibaby with an address. If I haven't gotten a response by Monday, October 19th, I'll draw another name for the second copy of Santa Maybe.

And the award(s) go to...

Sorry-- not trying to drive you all crazy with suspense! Just having a busy morning; typical Friday.

I'm always in awe of people who do giveaways on their blog and have a website randomly generate their winners. Unfortunately, I'm just not on that technological level, so my winners were chosen the old-fashioned way-- drawn out of a hat by someone who had to walk uphill in the snow both ways just to perform the service. :)

So, without further adieu, the winners are candibaby and Kelly O!

Congratulations to you both! If you'll email me at aubrey.mace@imail.org with your address, I'll get your signed copies of Santa Maybe in the mail soon.

Thanks everyone for all your good news-- it cheered me up! I wish I had enough copies to send one to everybody who entered. (Sarah, I'm dying to know what you wanted your inscription to be!) And welcome to everyone who came over from Melanie's blog! I hope you'll visit again, even though I'm nowhere near as witty and prolific as she is. :)

If you're looking for something good to read this weekend, go pick up Catching Fire. I didn't think I could like it as much as Hunger Games, but surprisingly, I think it was even better. And if you haven't read Hunger Games yet, you're missing out! Get thee to a bookstore immediately!

Happy Friday, and Happy Reading!

Ahem. I stand corrected.

Wow. I didn't know I even had fifteen friends, much less fifteen friends who read this blog! I think that I might have to show my gratitude by giving away TWO copies of Santa Maybe instead!

There's still plenty of time to enter if you haven't yet, and you definitely should because now you have an even better chance of winning. Yay! Just leave a comment telling me something good that happened to you today and I'll throw your name into the pot for the drawing on Thursday night.

Thanks everybody-- you made my day. :)

It's here. We have it now.

Finally got my copies of Santa Maybe on Tuesday, and I had every intention of updating my blog that very night, but life's been a little nonstop crazy for the past few days. It's funny, but I've been thinking the book was coming any day now for so long that when it finally did, it was just the teeniest bit, well, dare I say... anticlimactic.

Maybe I'm just having a hard time trying to get hyped about Christmas in October. Anyway, I was thinking that I needed to do something to crank up the excitement level, and what fosters more good will and hoopla in general than a giveaway, right?

So, I'm giving away one brand new crisp copy, straight out of the box. All you have to do to be entered to win is leave a comment on this post about one good thing that happened to you today. Having had a somewhat miserable day myself, I felt I needed to be reminded that there are still nice things happening in the world. Yes, it's all about me tonight. :)

I will be drawing the name of the winner next Thursday at exactly 8:05 PM and the lucky person will be announced at this very location some time on Friday. (At which point I promise to be a good deal cheerier.) Don't miss this chance to get your free copy. If you are one of the five or so intelligent people who read this blog, you know that small numbers = odds definitely in your favor. It's easier than shooting fish in a barrel!

A quick FYI

If you should find yourself in Logan on Saturday, stop by the Seagull Book and say hello! I'll be signing at their Celebrating Sisterhood event from 10am-12pm. Unless there is a Christmas miracle, I'm guessing I'll be signing copies of My Fairy Grandmother. :)

Hopefully, I'll have some good news about Santa Maybe next week!

Writer's block really makes you question everything.

Okay, that probably sounds a bit overdramatic. I've been afflicted with this particular ailment, to some degree, with each book I've written. It's a stumbling block, and I usually just try to work on something else until the feeling passes.

But this is no stumbling block. I'm looking down into the chasm of six solid months now, gaping like a...... crap, I can't even come up with a good gaping metaphor! I'm 130ish pages into my current novel and I have it all sketched out. I know the beginning, middle, and ending, but I can't even look at it anymore. I'll admit at first it was kind of nice to have an excuse to just watch a movie or read a book, but lately I've been starting to panic. In fact, I'm making my way through the grief cycle backwards-- I started at acceptance and I'm quickly moving into the depression/bargaining/anger phases.

And fear. I think anyone who writes can sympathize with that fear; when you stare at the blank paper/screen and wonder bleakly if you'll EVER WRITE ANYTHING AGAIN. (And if you're the writer who doesn't get it, who fills page after page effortlessly and has never had so much as an off day, my better self is very happy for you. But let's not talk for a while, 'kay?)

So eventually you start to think, if I can't write anymore, what am I? Who am I? Which is just silly. Writing is a huge part of me, but it's still just a part. There's so much more to life than that. Still, when you reach that six month point, you're starting to feel so picked on that everything just seems more dire than it really is.

On the other hand... it could always be worse. Today I looked up writer's block on Wikipedia and found Henry Roth, an author whose first novel was published in 1934.

Enter writer's block.

His second novel made it's debut in, wait for it... 1994.

SIXTY YEARS!

Suddenly six months isn't looking so bad. :)

In which the gun has officially been jumped

After a slight panic attack today, picturing boxes of my books slung unopened in the corner of some stranger's garage, I decided that I'd waited as long as I could. So I emailed someone at my publisher to see if they could track my books and see whose garage they ended up in.

Fortunately, the answer is not as complicated as the garage scenario.

Apparently there was some confusion and I was given the date the books were being shipped from the printer to the publisher, not the publisher to me. So... they're still a couple of weeks out.

Patience, grasshopper. Patience, grasshopper. (It's my new mantra.)

It could be worse. At least I won't be arrested for being caught prowling around my neighbor's garages at night.