Teaser Tuesday!

Don't forget to vote in that really exciting cover contest, but yesterday I promised a teaser and now, in honor of finishing the 2nd draft of the #sparklyfairyprostitute book (confetti!) I think it's time for an excerpt from said book.

Roughly two-thirds of this book are in the present timeline, and the last third is in the past. This is from that last third.

--

It was amazing how quickly things became normal. Beckan and Josha shared a room, officially, and they tended house while Cricket and Scrap went out and came home with enough food to get them through the day, or fabric for a new shirt for Beckan, or pills for Josha's cold. They got used to chasing the mice around, staying up late singing folk songs their fathers taught them, comparing imperceptible battle scars and finding the bits of them that looked like the other species they all were. Because they were comfortable with that, when it was just the four of them. They could talk about how they were not all fairy. They could talk about anything.

They were just so close and all so crazy about each other, so quickly. Beckan had a space on Cricket's shoulder that she told Josha was only for her, and she would rest her head there when she was tired and kiss it over and over when she wasn't. She had a favorite place on the floor to stretch out with Josha and take a nap. And Scrap. Scrap was giggles through the walls, secret smiles, notes passed back and forth, but they were slow, they were childish about it, they never stepped over any kind of line. For some reason, it felt important to them both that they be careful. Because they would look at Cricket and Josha and see how crazy they were for each other and wake up gasping hard in bed, freezing cold, thinking about how dangerous it was to love someone that much during a war.

Anyway. They had plenty of time.

Gradually, around the time Josha started spending more nights in Cricket's room than Beckan's, they began to live their lives in new pairs. Josha and Beckan were still, in their way, ridiculously in love, but they spent less and less time together as Cricket and Josha threw themselves into shared sweatshirts and last-bite-of-ice cream kisses, and Beckan and Scrap lived like their parents, teasing each other for sleepwalking and flat gnome noses, curling up together with a book after the kids were in bed.

It obviously wasn't long before Beckan knew what Scrap and Cricket did for their living; Cricket had told Josha within days—the kind of indiscretion Cricket grew and died with—and Scrap never made much of an effort to hide it, coming home with half his glitter rubbed off, sometimes drugged and giggly, always in the mood for a kiss on the cheek and a bit of babying before he was sent off to bed. They never talked about it; Beckan washed bloodstains out of his underwear and rubbed his shoulders when he looked tense, and Josha sulked for an hour each of the three days Cricket accompanied Scrap to the mines. “I don't make as much as Scrap does,” Cricket said once to Beckan, explaining his part-time work. “He's the best little whore in Ferrum.”

Scrap scrambled onto Cricket's back and started smacking him on the head with both hands and wouldn't get down, no matter how much Cricket bucked and ran back-first into the wall, and Josha and Beckan laughed and laughed.

There was so much laughing.

A few weeks into the war, the tightropers invaded the mines and took the women captive, and business boomed for Cricket and Scrap. The men had been wanting before, surrounded by women who dreamed about fairy boys and fairy babies instead of another generation in the mines, but now they needed Cricket and Scrap more than ever, and the boys were happy to oblige. During that initial surge, when sex was valuable and food wasn't, quite, they ate and drank like kings.

And somehow, in the war, Scrap came alive. While Josha and Cricket nervously discussed weapons and production, Scrap tried three-ingredient recipes with whatever three ingredients they had left and made Beckan guess what he was trying to make. He invented card games called Treeman and Souffle and lied when he said he would let Beckan win. He once lay half-naked on the kitchen floor and laughed hysterically while the other tree rubbed him as hard as they could to get glitter off him, and he kicked and screamed and alternated between begging them to stop and pulling them on top of him, one by one, and tackling them into a hug.

And one night he and Cricket came home too late and empty-handed for the fourth night in a row and sat in the kitchen and cried, their fingers laced together, and Josha and Beckan sat with them and eventually there was no way to avoid the fact that two prostitutes were no longer enough, in a time when the gnomes were clinging to each bit of meat like it was made of gold, and licking their teeth and smacking their lips whenever Cricket and Scrap came down, to secure food for four mouths.

“Teach me,” Beckan said, and most of her was excited, most of her had been waiting, most of her wanted to feel everything that Scrap had ever felt, because that was where she was then. “I'll go.”

INVINCIBLE SUMMER COVER CONTEST: Round #1!

Yes, we have a new look! We so pretty.

So you remember that ridiculously awesome, ridiculously high-stakes contest I had?

The turnout was seriously beyond my wildest dreams. I was worried I wouldn't get ANY entries. Instead I got twenty-seven incredible submissions, and I love them to tiny pieces.

But

THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE.

Because of the ridiculous prize I'm giving away to the winner, it is of the utmost importance that I choose the very, very best. Which means I can't rely on my taste alone! I need you to help me.

I've chosen my top 10 favorite covers. You will see them momentarily (or now if you are impatient and scroll down, but don't because I'm about to give you IMPORTANT INFORMATION). You can vote for one of those. The top 3 with the most votes will go onto the next round, one week from today, where the ULTIMATE WINNER will be chosen!

BUT WAIT. What if you look at them and say "hannah wtf you didn't choose THE BEST ONE"??

Well. After the poll (where you vote for ONE of the top ten covers) you will see a link to a slideshow of ALL of the covers. They're all labeled with "Contest Entry #14" or whatever. Each of those that was not chosen for the top 10 will have a spot on the second poll! That is the FAN FAVORITE poll. And whichever one of THOSE gets the most votes will also move on to the next round, to make a top 4! See? You can fix my mistakes!

You may only vote once, but PLEASE campaign as hard as you possibly can for your favorite cover whether in the comments here, on twitter, your own blog, facebook, wherever. And thank you so, so much for voting (and for entering, if you did!)

A quick recap:

--Below are my ten favorites of the covers I was sent. They're in random order. Most of them you can click to make them bigger, some were subbed to me kinda small.
--You can vote ONCE on ONE COVER.
--Below THAT poll is a link to a slideshow of ALL THE ENTRIES.
--Below THAT link is a poll with each of the entries that was not chosen.
--You can vote ONCE for ONE OF THOSE COVERS.

And here we go!

THE TOP 10

1)


2) (No, I am not really a NYT Bestselling author, but if the cover fits...) >


3)

4)

5)
Photo by badjonni and used under the Creative Commons: http://www.flickr.com/photos/badjonni/5389624442/

6)

7)


8)

9)


10)



Here is a link to the slideshow of ALL the covers (including the top 10). The poll below is for all the covers that were NOT chosen in the top 10. If it was in the top 10, it will not appear on this poll (notice there's no option for "Cover Contest #1" on this poll, because that one was chosen for the top 10). Please don't get the numbers in the slideshow confused with the numbered entries above! Just look underneath each picture in the slideshow for its number and use that.

THE SLIDESHOW

ZOMBIE TAG ARC TOUR!

At long last...

here we go! I'll be sending out two different arcs at once, one to roughly west coast and one to roughly east coast! Hurray!

This means we have some extra time to to read. You'll notice I didn't put dates! That's because we have 13 people (I think? eh?) for each arc, and we have roughly 20 weeks until Zombie Tag comes out. So...try to send it out a week to a week and a half after you receive it. If you have to keep it longer, IT IS NOT A BIG DEAL. If the arc doesn't get to me until like a month after Zombie Tag comes out, eh, who cares? Just MAKE SURE IT GETS BACK. No losing the thing. You know the drill.

SO! The order is!

ARC #1

1. T.O., Ontario, Canada - Reut C.
2. Brunswick, OH - Lydia Sharp
3. Whitehall, PA - Cara Bes
4. Portland, ME - Lindsay Breen
5. Boston, MA - Grace Ausick
6. Manchester, NJ - MaryBeth
7. Bel Air, MD - Jessica
8. Philadelpiha, PA--Katie
9. Chesapeake, VA - Pam Harris
10. Gastonia, NC - Samantha Rae
11. Anderson, SC - Jeremy West
12. Memphis, TN - Allison Renner
13. Paragould, AR - Tabitha Michelle

ARC #2

1. Port Richey, FL - Sarah
2. Cape Coral, FL - Tracey M. Hansen
3. Dothan, AL - Amanda Baxter
4. Lake Charles, LA - Steph Campbell
5. Edinburg, TX - Jamie
6. Cleburne, TX - Marcy Funderburk
7. Dallas, TX - Jeannette
8. Dallas, TX - Kari
9. Los Angeles, CA - Ashlyn Rae
10. Coeur d'Alene, ID - Taylor
11. Brackendale, BC, Canada - Rebecca Christiansen
12. Thorsby, Alberta, Canada - Ambur
13. Alberta, Canada - Halli


Now. As soon as you've seen this, email me with THE FOLLOWING SUBJECT LINE--your arc number and then your number on the list. So if you are Grace, your subject line is "ARC #1, person 5." If you don't follow this format, I'll be all sweet to you but in my head I will be RAGING WITH FIRE.

Oh yeah I should give you my email address. until.hannah@gmail.com

In that email, put your address! Even if I already have your address from the Gone, Gone, Gone tour. Even if you've given me your address so many times for so many different things that I should have it memorized at this point. Give it to me again! I love your address! And I'll pass that along to the person who needs to send it to you, and hit you up with the address of the person you need to send yours to. Easy peasy, thanks to you guys organizing yourselves with the above subject lines! Yay!

One other thing that makes me rage with fire: having to chase people down. So please do not do that. I have to do it for the GGG tour already and it is so exhausting.

Don't forget to mark the thing up when you get it! As soon as I get addresses from our first two people, I'll scribble over two arcs and send them out! Thank you so much!!

The Biggest Contest That Has Ever Been Known to Humankind

SO.

If you recall, yesterday I had some pretty huge news.

To celebrate, I am having a hideously amazing contest. The prizes, which will be revealed MOMENTARILY, are, I think you would agree, completely over-the-top in number and shipping charge. Which is why, in order to win, you have to do something fairly intense and VITAL TO THE SURVIVAL OF HUMANKIND.

You have to design a new cover for Invincible Summer.



As many of you know, there has been considerable drama over the Invincible Summer cover! While I think it's a beautiful cover, the opinion has been raised that it doesn't fit what the book is about. So let's make a game out of it!

Design a new cover. Use stock photos, use MS paint, take photos, scan a drawing, use all text, however you want to do this. Please do not use copyrighted images or otherwise do anything to hurt someone in any way (no real blood, etc). Make a cover that you believe represents what the book is really about.

This is obviously going to be an easier task if you've read IS, but if you haven't, PLEASE don't let that keep you from entering! I recommend reading a bunch of goodreads reviews, here, both positive and negative, and checking out the Invincible Summer tag (at the end of this post) for excerpts from the book and my own commentary on said excerpts. You can find a LOT in the soundtrack posts especially about what I think the important parts of the book are. And you can always ask around! You can always ask me! I'd be happy to answer questions.

Since this is a fairly intense thing I'm asking you to do, I am giving you ONE MONTH FROM TODAY. That means that, on August 13th, I will post a to-be-determined number of my favorites on the blog and we will vote on the winner!

Here's the big thing. I am really terrified that no one will enter. So in order to entice you...the prize.

THE WINNER WILL RECEIVE:

--a signed copy of my first book, BREAK.
--a signed copy of my second book, INVINCIBLE SUMMER.
--a signed arc of my first MG book, ZOMBIE TAG.
--a signed arc of my third YA book, GONE, GONE, GONE.
--their cover, printed up on pretty photo paper, signed by me (if you want me to? It's your art, you might not be into that. Let me know.)
--however many bookmarks I have lying around (three?) signed by me.

AND. MOST IMPORTANTLY:

--the first chapter of my just-sold novel, FISHBOY, printed out and signed. This is pre-edits! Who knows if this chapter will even EXIST in the final draft?? This is a first look that ONLY YOU WILL RECEIVE.

In the words of my hero, worth playing for?

This contest IS OPEN INTERNATIONALLY, but if you are not in the U.S. and Canada, the prize is a little less exciting: You will get Invincible Summer and Break via Book Depo and preorders of Zombie Tag and Gone, Gone, Gone. But still good, right? Three books? Eh?

You have until AUGUST 13TH to submit your covers. Please EMAIL THEM TO ME: until.hannah@gmail.com. And please please spread the word.

Have fun.

Dear Magic Gay Fish

You've had that name for a long time.

A bunch of you probably don't know why the followers of my blog and my followers on Twitter are called magic gay fish.

The truth is, that before there was you, there was a manuscript.

The magic gay fish manuscript.

It was always called Fishboy, but I wanted to be funny, and, well...the thing is about a magic gay fish, after all. Well, a magic gay half-fish, half-boy. Named Teeth. Who, I've got to say, is a character unlike any I've ever written and one that I adored writing in a way I've never really loved anything.

So it's this manuscript. I wrote it last July. If you hit the tag "Fishboy" at the end of this post, you can see some of the excerpts I've posted. It's just this manuscript, except that it's this manuscript that's special to me in a way I can't really explain. It's this way that makes me feel like one of those floaty sensitive writers that I never really thought I was. I don't know. I just know that this manuscript was my weird, crazy long shot book about a magic gay fish and a dusty, dreamy boy named Rudy who loves him, and a girl named Diana who teaches Rudy about Roald Dahl, and Rudy's parents who love the shit out of him. And his sick little brother, because, let's be honest, it's a hannah book.

It's really as hannah as any of my books have ever been, really.

It's the only manuscript I would have ever considered naming my fans after. It's THE book.

So here's the deal, my beautiful, beautiful, amazingly magic and amazingly gay fish.

You are immortalized.

The deal closed yesterday, and I am honestly the luckiest girl in the planet.

Sometime in 2013. Consider it my love letter to you.

A Need So Freaking Beautiful

(You can still enter the ZOMBIE TAG arc tour right here!)

So you may have seen a bunch of posts today about the release of this amazing book called A Need So Beautiful by Suzanne Young. I don't usually do promotional stuff on this blog, but I make an exception today for two reasons:

1) Suzanne Young is my best friend. Which would be enough all on its own, but
2) A Need So Beautiful is a really, really, REALLY amazing book.

So we're having this wicked awesome contest, but first I'm going to give you a story about an act of kindness that changed my life, like how Charlotte changes people's lives--and her own--with her acts of kindness in A Need So Beautiful.

So once upon a time, about thirty years ago, this guy and this girl were in college and dating, pretty casually. They'd been together for the better part of a year, but they both knew that the guy was going to move out to California over the summer to meet the girl he'd been with before this one. All cards were on the table, everyone knew how it was going to go down.

And then the new girl sprained her ankle, right when the guy was supposed to move out to California.

And it wasn't as if it was life-threatening. It was a sprained ankle. He could have gone anyway. He wasn't obligated.

But he did. He blew off the girl he was supposed to move with (and never called her...but that's a different story) and stayed in North Carolina with the girl with the sprained ankle.

And that's how a random act of kindness changed my life. Seeing as I wouldn't exist if he'd gone out to California. Thanks, Dad!

:)

So here's the contest.

It's the same one from all the blogs, so you only need/get to enter once. The contest is open until June 28th.

There are SO MANY AWESOME PRIZES, and you'll get to choose which ones you want to try to grab on the entry sheet. Pretty cool, yeah? Some prizes are international and some aren't, so pay attention to what's available for you.

There will be 1 winner per item, and then three people will also be chosen to win a signed copy of A Need So Beautiful. Woohoo!

HERE IS THE ENTRY FORM!

And here's how to earn lots of points. You can only enter once, so make sure you have all your extra points ready to go when you fill out the form.

Earn one extra entry for each of the following:
Take a picture of an author's book in the wild and tweet it to the author and Kari (check the form for her twitter handle).
Post a positive Amazon review for a book you loved
Donate a book to a library or classroom
Tweet a good deed you plan to do this week, using the #ANeedSoBeautiful hashtag

Earn 10 extra entries for each of the following:
Take a picture of A NEED SO BEAUTIFUL in the wild and tweet it to us and Suzanne Young
Post an Amazon review for A NEED SO BEAUTIFUL
Donate a copy of A NEED SO BEAUTIFUL to a library or classroom

And here are some of the amazing prizes you could score:

First 3 chapter critique (Jessica at Confessions of a Bookaholic: http://www.totalbookaholic.com/)

YA Lit Swag Bag (Sara at Novel Novice: www.novelnovice.com)

Hourglass Order from TBD – Int (Corrine at Lost for Words: http://lostforwords-corrine.blogspot.com)

Random Books (Jessi at The Elliott Review: http://elliottreview.blogspot.com)

2 Header/Button Packs (Jessica at Hopelessly Devoted Bibliophile: http://www.hopelessbibliophile.com/)

First 3 chapters Critique (Cindy at Books Complete Me: http://www.bookscompleteme.com/)

First 15 pages Critique (Kari at A Good Addiction: http://agoodaddiction.blogspot.com/)

Signed ARC of Hereafter (Kari at A Good Addiction: http://agoodaddiction.blogspot.com/)

Query Letter Critique (Shannon Messenger: http://ramblingsofawannabescribe.blogspot.com/)

Signed copy of Invincible Summer – US/Can (Hannah Moskowitz: hannahmosk.blogspot.com)

First Chapter Critique and a Skype Chat (Keri Mikulski: http://kerimikulski.com/books/pay-it-forward-the-author-edition/)

Signed copy of Tell Me a Secret with signed TMAS art print - US (Holly Cupala: http://www.hollycupala.com/search/label/blog)

Signed copy of Chasing Brooklyn – US (Lisa Schroeder: www.lisaschroederbooks.com)

The Pledge Swag Pack including ARC (Kimberly Derting: http://kimberlyderting.blogspot.com/)

ZOMBIE TAKEOVER!

Well hey!

I realized that I have all the Zombie Tag arcs and nothing to do with them.

And Zombie Tag is a pretty cool book, I think. Check out this description!

Ever since twelve-year-old Wil Lowenstein's older brother Graham died a few months ago, Wil's spent most of his time fighting off imaginary zombies with spatulas in Zombie Tag, the Mafia/Capture the Flag hybrid he invented with his friends. What Wil doesn't tell anybody is that if he could bring his dead brother back as a zombie for real, he would. In a heartbeat.

So when Wil finds a way to bring back all the dead within five miles, he seizes the chance. But the Graham who comes back isn't the same. None of the returned are. At first they're just emotionless, apathetic - lifeless. But then some of the zombies slowly start to get one emotion back - anger. And Wil is going to have to find a way to fix zombie-Graham and turn him back into the angsty teenager he's supposed to be before it's too late.

Because some of the zombies are banding together and plotting something. And Wil isn't sure his mom's spatulas are really going to do the trick if the zombies really do want to eat his brains.


Here! A visual!

So remember how I did an arc tour for Gone, Gone, Gone? Remember how that's going on right now and it's super fun? LET'S DO IT AGAIN!

Wait, what's an arc tour? It's a way for a lot of you to read one arc! It's the chain letter of giveaways! I send out a copy, put you guys in order, and you guys send to each other. And before I send it out, I'll write lots of notes in it and tell you guys to write in it too, so by the time it gets back to me it'll be like a scrapbook from all of you, and that makes me really happy.

Mostly the same rules as before, but first, a few things:

This is an upper MG book. This is not a young adult book. If you don't read/review MG, you're going to open the thing up and go "where's the sex?" and that's no good for anyone.

I have a few arcs this time! Either two or three will be going out, and we're going to do REGIONAL TOURS! So everyone around the west coast will get one arc, etc. This means it will get to you faster, and you will have more time with it it! Which is good because Zombie Tag comes out DECEMBER 20TH, and I would very much like the arcs to come home around that time. So we must get this show on the road.

We'll scribble in them just like we're scribbling on the Gone, Gone, Gone, one! It's really fun.

HERE ARE THE RULES.

YOU ARE ELIGIBLE TO ENTER IF: You are in the U.S. or Canada, you are a book blogger, and you promise to review this book. (NOTE: My definition of "book blogger" is pretty lenient. If you have a blog where you will review my book, you're in. Hell, you're probably in if all you'll do is review the thing on Goodreads and tweet about it. I'm easygoing.) You're also totally eligible whether or not you're in the Gone, Gone, Gone tour.

To get into the tour, you need to comment on this post telling me that you've done both of two things:

1. Added Zombie Tag on Goodreads. Right here.

2. Bought either Break or Invincible Summer. (Brownie points for both, obviously)

Same apology as I gave you for Gone, Gone, Gone, It's totally gross, I know, but chick's gotta eat. Just comment and be like "yeah, I bought that shit" or "yeah, I'm buying it now 'cause you're making me."

(But hannah, can't we just lie and tell you we bought it if we haven't? Yeah, you can, but then Santa doesn't bring presents and your kids hate you.)

I have no idea how long I'm giving each person with the book because I have no idea how many copies I'm sending out or how many of you will sign up, so yeah, just hit me and we'll see what happens. I'll close this at some point in the future, I don't even know.

Once you get the book, you'll have a predetermined amount of time to get it, read it, and send it to the next person. I'll send to the first person, the last person will send it back to me. If you drop the ball and lose my arc, I WILL HARVEST YOUR ORGANS AND MAKE THEM INTO SPATULAS. If you're late sending it out, no one cares, it's fine.

NOW FOR THE POINT OF THE ARC TOUR: YOU MUST REVIEW THIS BOOK, whether or not you like it. But! Please DO NOT post this review on your blog until a month or two before release date. But PLEASE PLEASE rate it, and even review it! on Goodreads or Librarything or wherever the fuck (but Goodreads, please, I'm a Goodreads ho) as soon as possible after you finish it.

IN SUMMARY

Tell me your name

Tell me your email address

Tell me which of my books you've bought

Tell me you added Zombie Tag on Goodreads

Tell me your city and state

and the thing is as good as yours.