Aprilynne Pike's Blog, page 5

Winners!!!

I love announcing winners. I mean really, how fun is a blog entry where you simply get to tell people, "Hey, you get stuff!!!" :D

Okay, many 330 entries. I am blown away!!!! I wish I had 330 ARCs to give away!!! I do have two though!

Here goes!

First place winners will get an ARC of Destined and Valentine's goodies:

Kelsie Kresta and Mary Bess

Second place winners will get a set of custom Wings series soap and lotion plus goodies:

Michelle Madden and Sami Marie

And third place winners who will get Valentine's goodies are:

mama23boys, casper131979, Madelin, Ivy of IvyReads, JennaClow, and Brea Bee

Congratulations to all the winners and THANK YOU for helping to spread the Wings love!!! For those who didn't win, I'm sorry I don't have prizes for everyone, but thank you SO MUCH for supporting this series and the release really is just around the corner!!!

*Winners, if you want to claim your prizes you NEED to email me at aprilynne (nospace) pike at gee mail dot com with the following information:

Name, First and Last
Address

And of course, all info gets deleted as soon as I mail stuff and I won't share it with anyone. *wink*

Thank you again everyone for participating!!!!!!!!!!

Ciao!

Aprilynne

DESTINED ARC Contest!!! Share the LOVE!!!

I'm alive! I really am!! I'm been revising two books and I'm afraid that keeps me super busy. But don't worry! I haven't forgotten you all!!!

Destined is set to launch in just less than THREE MONTHS!!! I can hardly believe it!!! And it is that time of year again.

Valentine's Day!!! Every year since 2009 I have had a contest around Valentine's Day for one of my ARCs and I certainly can't close out the series without continuing the tradition!



(Clickie for biggie)

But this year, I'm upping the prizes.

2 First Prizes= An ARC of DESTINED plus a Valentine's treat bag!

3 Second prizes= A set of Wings custom soaps and lotion plus a Valentine's treat bag (I'll bag them separately so your candy doesn't taste like soap, LOL!)

5 3rd prizes= Valentine's treat bags!:D

Entering is very simple. Just share the Wings series love. Somewhere. Twitter, Facebook, school, at the library, wherever. Tell someone how much you love the Wings series. I don't need a link, or proof, or anything like that, because, ultimately, this contest--especially at the close of the series--isn't about sales, it's about the Wings series. How much I love it and, hopefully, how much you love it too. So leave a comment, tell me you spread the Wings love (you don't even have to tell me how--honor system *wink*) and you're entered.

You must enter by midnight (my time . . .uh . . . MST at the moment--AZ doesn't do DST, so it changes) on Valentine's Day and I will announce winners on February 15.

Easy peasy!!! Go spread the love!!!!!

Ciao!

P.S. If you want to spread the love in pictorial form, you can find jpegs of all the books and covers and etc. at www.aprilynnepike.com

Happy holidays from a crazy bunch of YA authors!!!!!!!!!!...

Happy holidays from a crazy bunch of YA authors!!!!!!!!!!!



:D

Ciao!

Helping Husband

Hey everyone. This is Kenny--for those who don't know, I'm Aprilynne's husband. She's hip-deep in the final round of copyedits for Destined and putting together another series for your reading enjoyment (plus all the usual mundane stuff she accomplishes as a mom every day), but she apologizes for the long blog silence. If you just can't live without a daily dose of Aprilynne--and who can blame you, I know I can't!--you might check out her twitter, which she updates a little more often because she can do it from her phone.

For those of you who have been patiently checking back, though, here's some more cover art (especially of interest to those of you across the pond):



That's right, the UK and US editions will be back to having the same title! So that will hopefully cut back on some of the confusion we've had about Illusions / Wild.

Also, Aprilynne and a bunch of her author friends recently threw a big party for some of the librarians of the Phoenix-metro area. You can read all about it on Lisa McMann's blog. It was a fabulous event and if you happen to have media connections, why, you might want to write about it. Great piece for the Arts page, don't you think?

I think that's all the news for now. Sorry I'm not my lovely and fabulously-talented wife, who probably would have made this whole post much more entertaining. We now return you to your irregularly-scheduled-actual-author-blog... d^_^b

Cheers--

DESTINED!

So, our first Trick or Treaters were actually . . . our kids! Apparently the gate on our gated community really works! Wow!

And, um, we may have a LOT of candy left over. I wonder what I'll do with all that candy . . . :D

But you all didn't come here to listen to me ramble about how my middle name is Hershey. Without further ado, here is my treat to you!!!



(Clickie for biggie. Oh, and this isn't the final final cover--the blurb from Lisa for Illusions is just there as a placeholder!)

Yay! Swoon! Better than chocolate!!!

Well, it's a close second at least.;)

Happy Halloween!!!

Ciao!

Trick or Treat!

Are you all ready for Halloween? I am!!!! Mostly because for trick-or-treating this year I get to post . . .

The cover of Destined!!!!!!

So watch the blog on Halloween night. As soon as I get my first trick-or-treater, I'll post the cover. (AND OMG IT IS GORGEOUS!!!!!!!!!!)

So keep an eye out and eat a lot of candy corn! (My favorite!:D)

Ciao!

Eureka!!!!!

No, literally. As in, that's where I'm going to be this week.

Eureka, CA!

I am attending the Humboldt County Author Festival in Eureka this Saturday. All of the details can be found on their website, HERE!!! There will also be 24 other amazing authors and you can find those names on the website as well.

I don't make it to Northern California very often (almost never) so if you are in the area, please,please,please come see me!!

Particularly special is that Humboldt County is where the Wings series is set! In fact, after my school visits one of the days I'm there I am going out to see Orick, where the gate to Avalon is!!!! Think I'll find it??:D

But seriously, if you are in Humboldt County, consider stopping by. It will be a very open format so this is a great time for you to come chat with me, ask me questions, torture me for spoilers, etc.

Please come!!!!

Ciao!

Book Four!

I am SO excited to finally be able to let you guys know that the fourth and final book in the Wings series will be called:

DESTINED

I am sososo excited for this fourth book and the title is just so fitting! Luckily, Amazon.uk listed Destined a little early so I got to officially tell you the title just a bit sooner than I expected.

Before you ask, I don't have cover art yet, but I expect that next month--early November at the latest.

(Also, in case anyone is worried, yes, I do realized that Destined is also the name of the new House of Night book that is coming out this fall and that is the reason it has taken so long to announce. But the sales and marketing people finally decided that our books are so different--not to mention coming out six months apart--that there would be minimal confusion. I'm really, really excited they let me keep the title because, seriously, it just works so well with the whole book!)

In other exciting news, I finished the first draft of the first book in my new series today!!!! I still have several weeks of editing to do before it's even ready to go to my editor for approval, but it still feels like a big step and make me super happy today!

Ciao!

How To Get Stuff

Okay! As promised, I am through with my travel-filled summer and am ready to post an address so you can get your very own swag!



I made temporary tattoo jewelry for my swag this year and since they are AWESOME (and small) I am letting you guys send in for your own! You can get either one of each of the necklace and bracelet, or you can get two for your guy of choice.



I will also send signed bookplates that can be personalized, etc.



You have to follow directions though.







Step One: Make a SASE (Great instructions in the link with one caveat, you don't have to have different-sized envelopes. Just fold the SASE and put it in the first envelope. Super-simple!)



Step Two: Include a small note that tells me what you want: if you are requesting a bookplate PLEASE tell me who to sign it to, and what book it is for. Here's an example:



Hi Aprilynne! I would like a set of the temporary tattoos (I like them both!) and one book plate for each of the three books. Please sign them to SARA. Thanks! Sara



See? Very, very easy!



I check my mail once a week and will stuff envelopes there at the post office, so there should be a fairly fast turn-around, but give me two weeks in case your letter arrives the day after I check my mail.:D



To avoid the spambots, I have a picture of my address rather than just typing it.:D (Also, it's sideways. Security FTW.)







I don't normally reply to comments here on the blog, but if you have any PLEASE post them and I will update this post if I've missed any vital information.



Ciao!

No News, But Thanks Anyway!

Hello everyone!

With the whirlwind of edits, the release of Illusions , touring, and having kids out of school for the summer, it's been a while! It's also been a while since I talked about the business of writing, so I'd like to do a bit of that today.

Because I finally got my contract!

Or rather, I finally got a contract I've been looking forward to for a while. :) I actually have to sign contracts about once a month. The Wings series has now sold in about 30 languages--I say "about" because I know it's at least that many, but some languages sold in more than one territory (e.g. Portugese in Brazil and Portugal, French in Canada and France) and some territories sold in more than one language (e.g. Catalan and Basque in Spain). Some territories bought the whole series, some bought a book or two and then sent new contracts for later books. And many territories just get the books from other territories (I do not have a publisher in South Africa, but I know you can get Wings there). I just get paperwork in the mail from the awesome foreign rights department at Writers House, I sign it, and I send it back! As a result, I'm embarrassed to report that I've lost track of exactly how many countries and languages the series is actually available in.

But the contract I'm talking about today came from the Walt Disney Company.

Some of you probably remember this announcement from two years ago. I even blogged about it! If you don't remember: Disney optioned the rights to make a movie of Wings.

The detailed negotiations on the contract took two years.

If you are an aspiring author, or an author who has yet to ink a screen deal, or even if you're just curious, I want to emphasize that this is not typical. Most of my author friends who have deals with Hollywood took 3 to 6 months to get their contracts signed. Why did mine take so long? I would like to believe it's because everyone involved was just so excited about the project that they wanted to get every detail of the agreement perfect! :) But realistically, it probably took two years for a million tiny reasons, none of them particularly important. It took two years because that's how long it took, and that's how these things go: it takes however long it takes.

There's still no guarantee that the movie will ever be made. The deal I just signed was the same deal I agreed to accept in 2009. So, sorry, I still don't have any movie news to share. I'm excited about the project and I hope Disney decides to move forward with it.

But signing that contract got me thinking about all that has happened in the last two years, and that got me thinking about all that has happened in the years since I started seriously working toward publication. When I started this blog, I knew almost nothing about publishing. Fortunately for me, there were (and are!) a ton of great resources out there for aspiring authors. And once I graduated from "aspiring" to "contracted," I was able to find other authors in the same boat who were willing to share their experiences and increase my knowledge of the publishing industry.

Now, as I begin work on my second series (!!!) for HarperTeen, it's amazing how different everything looks. Some of that has nothing to do with me; when Wings came out in 2009, for example, e-books accounted for a tiny fraction of my sales and I had very little interest in owning an e-reader. This year HarperTeen did an awesome e-book promotion, including free electronic copies of Wings and exclusive content for different retailers, and I spent a lot of the summer reading e-books by my pool. When I went on a pre-publication tour to meet booksellers across the country, one of my stops was Ann Arbor, Michigan--home of Borders, a company that could make or break an author by promoting (or not promoting) a book. This year, Borders is closing its doors. The industry is changing.

But I've also changed. You may have noticed that I don't blog as often as I used to. There are several reasons for this; one is simply that I'm busier. I am trying to find a good way to put out more than one book per year, and that means developing more than one project at a time. I wrote a piece for Harper's Dear Bully project and I've got a short story to write for an anthology. My husband is going back to school (again). I have four children instead of three. :)

I'm still learning! I hope to write many more books. I feel like each one has improved my abilities and I'd like that to continue. I've made tons of awesome friends and met tons of awesome fans and I'd like that to continue, too. Because ultimately it's you, my readers, who I have to thank for the amazing, transforming experiences I've been privileged to have in the last 27 months or so. Your support and feedback never cease to amaze me, and looking back, I probably don't thank you for it enough.

So, thanks for reading! It's been an amazing couple of years and I look happily forward to more of the same. I'd say I will try to be a better blogger, but I'm not gonna lie--I will probably continue to blog irregularly at best. :P But I hope you will keep in mind that if I am not blogging, it's probably because I am writing something fun for you to read later, and I hope that when you remember that, you will forgive me. :)

Ciao!