P.J. Hoover's Blog, page 64

CONTEST Winners!

Thanks a million to everyone who entered to win the book giveaways! I hope you all enjoy your books!

The winner of

SAPPHIQUE by Catherine Fisher (Dial/Penguin, December 28, 2010)

is ...

PinkStuff28 at Reading After Dark!

*****

The winner of

REAL LIVE BOYFRIENDS* by E. Lockhart (Delacorte, December 28, 2010)
* yes, boyfriends, plural. If my life weren't complicated—I wouldn't be Ruby Oliver

and

THE TREASURE MAP OF BOYS (Delacorte, July 2009)
Noel, Jackson, Finn, Hutch, Gideon—and me, Ruby Oliver

is ...

Laura H!

*****

Congratulations!

And don't forget I'm also giving away:

A PLAYAWAY of THE HUNGER GAMES.
Click here to enter.

*Library Love*

This is why I love libraries!





Check out those pretty books face out in the center!

Thanks to former-Austinite and now Dallas-gal Alison Dellenbaugh for the picture!

And thank you to the Dallas/Fort Worth libraries for the support!

My Weekly Star Trek Tribute...

...happened to be a tribute to E. Kristin Anderson, also.
I give you my Star Trek fun for the week.

*****

I vow never to wear red...

… to The Place.

And you should do the same. Because none of us are expendable.

Don't be Ensign Ricky.

*Thank you to Star Trek Inspirational Posters for the image.

THE HUNGER GAMES Playaway Giveaway

Probably tons of us have read THE HUNGER GAMES (Scholastic, 2008) by Suzanne Collins, so the good news is I'm not just giving away that.

It's more.
It's better.
It will make the perfect holiday gift for someone you know and love.

It's a PLAYAWAY of THE HUNGER GAMES.


Don't know what a Playaway is?

Bascially it's an All-In-One AudioBook (complete with earphones, a battery, and an MP3 player loaded with the audiobook and pasted with a nice little book cover on the front).
You can read more about Playaways here.

And you can read all about THE HUNGER GAMES Playaway here!


Source of Audiobook: From librarian from company


For your chance to win this PLAYAWAY Audiobook, all you need to do is:

1) Follow this blog
2) Follow The Texas Sweethearts blog
3) Comment on this blog post


For extra entries:

1) Blog about this contest and leave a comment telling me
2) Tweet about this contest and leave a comment telling me


And make sure you leave me a way to get in contact with you when you win!

The contest will run through midnight on Thursday, December 16, 2010!

*****

And don't forget I also have for giveaway

SAPPHIQUE by Catherine Fisher (Dial/Penguin, December 28, 2010)
Click here to enter!


REAL LIVE BOYFRIENDS* by E. Lockhart (Delacorte, December 28, 2010)
* yes, boyfriends, plural. If my life weren't complicated—I wouldn't be Ruby Oliver
Click here to enter.

with

THE TREASURE MAP OF BOYS (Delacorte, July 2009)
Noel, Jackson, Finn, Hutch, Gideon—and me, Ruby Oliver
Click here to enter.

Best Game to Get Your Kids for the Holiday

I'm sending out a huge thank you to Josh Polark for creating this amazing game based on the second book in my trilogy, THE NAVEL OF THE WORLD.


It looks like a blast! I only wonder how well I would do on it :)

Thanks, Josh! You made my day.

FEATURED SWEETHEART and Book Giveaway!

When you get a chance head over to THE TEXAS SWEETHEARTS blog where our Featured Sweetheart is the awesome Kathi Appelt! At the end of her interview is a giveaway for her newest book KEEPER (Atheneum, May 2010).

Writing from the Place: TEN POST-NANO REVISION TIPS

So you did it.
You wrote 50K words in the month of November. Or maybe you only got to 25K. Whatever it is, congratulations! This is a huge accomplishment! Now comes the fun part, because, yes, you need to revise...

Well, we here at the place (being K. A. Holt, Jessica Lee Anderson , E. Kristin Anderson, Madeline Smoot, and sometimes members Mari Mancusi and Jenny Ziegler) have the answers you need.


We give you out Top Ten Post NaNo revision tips:

1) Throw out the whole draft and start again.
It may sound daunting, but at the end of revisions, this very well could be exactly what has happened.


2) Eat cake. Lots of cake. You deserve it, no matter what your mother says.
If you're a perfectionist, you might consider imbibing wine in addition to cake.

Making it a fun cake will make it all that much better.
3) Do not read about anyone else's novel idea.
If it's similar at all to your NaNo project, it'll make discouragement settle in.
Anyway, your story is different. And unique. And totally has a place in the market, even if it is chock-full of faeries and vampires and mean cheerleaders who stole your main character's boyfriend.


4) Cut those cliches that crept their way into your manuscript.
Okay, they didn't creep. You put them there, and sure, you said to yourself, "I'll remove this cliche when I revise."
Guess what? It's time to revise.
Here's a handy list in case you're interested.


5) Sit on it. Put it in a drawer. Hide it under your cat.
Seriously. Best tip ever. Take as much time away from that thing as you can stand. It will love you so much more when you return.

Wait until Daylight Savings Time ends and you have to change your clock.


6) Ask your favorite Barista at THE PLACE for tips.
Like, advice, not the stuff in his jar by the register.

7) Read the author who most inspires you and ask yourself:
"What would Francesca Lia Block do with this scene?"
Feel free to substitute the author of your choice here.


8) Don't be afraid to slice & dice Ginsu style.
Come on. You know you added some of that crap just to up the word count.
Epilogue? Yeah, I can smell that.

Thanks, Gary, for the image!


9) Go back to whatever you were revising before that NaNoWriMo nonsense interrupted.
And the extra benefit of this one, it won't look nearly as bad as you thought. (See number (5).)


10) Just edit out every other word. It'll make sense. Probably.

Austin is filled with Unstoppable Goodness!

In case you missed it, Austin had some amazing book goodness it put out in 2010. And the very cool Greg Leitich Smith has taken the time to round up all the awesome books that came out of our Austin Kidlit community this year.
2010 rocked here in the Lone Star State!

You can check out the entire post here!

Thanks, Greg! And if you didn't know it, Greg's next book, THE CHRONAL ENGINE: AHEAD OF TIME (Clarion) is forthcoming. So look for it!

Stealing the covers from his blog...

Happy Decorating c/o the The Final Frontier

There's nothing that makes me quite so happy as decorating my Christmas tree. We went simple this year on ornaments:
Star Trek (because it's the Final Frontier)
Star Wars (because Jedi are OSUM)
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (because that polka-dot elephant is just so darned cute)

I've even starting writing down there during the day so I can enjoy it more.

Hope all your holiday celebrating is going great!

REAL LIVE BOYFRIENDS ARC Giveaway!

If you're looking for the perfect, funny novel to snuggle down with and read over the upcoming holidays, then this is your contest. I love reading novels with great humor, and so today for giveaway I have the soon-to-be-released

REAL LIVE BOYFRIENDS* by E. Lockhart (Delacorte, December 28, 2010)
* yes, boyfriends, plural. If my life weren't complicated—I wouldn't be Ruby Oliver


Wait, because I have it, and because 'tis the season to be jolly, I'm going to throw in my ARC of

THE TREASURE MAP OF BOYS (Delacorte, July 2009)
Noel, Jackson, Finn, Hutch, Gideon—and me, Ruby Oliver


Even if you've missed the first two Ruby Oliver books, you'll still adore these!


From Amazon for REAL LIVE BOYFRIENDS:

Ruby Oliver, the neurotic, hyperverbal heroine of the The Boyfriend List, The Boy Book, and The Treasure Map of Boys, is back!


Ruby Oliver is in love. Or it would be love, if Noel, her real live boyfriend, would call her back. But Noel seems to have turned into a pod-robot lobotomy patient, and Ruby can't figure out why.

Not only is her romantic life a shambles:
Her dad is eating nothing but Cheetos,
Her mother's got a piglet head in the refrigerator,
Hutch has gone to Paris to play baguette air guitar,
Gideon shows up shirtless,
And the pygmy goat Robespierre is no help whatsoever.

Will Ruby ever control her panic attacks?
Will she ever understand boys?
Will she ever stop making lists?
(No to that last one.)

Roo has lost most of her friends. She's lost her true love, more than once. She's lost her grandmother, her job, her reputation, and possibly her mind. But she's never lost her sense of humor. The Ruby Oliver books are the record of her survival.

Source of Book: From publisher at BEA

From Amazon for THE TREASURE MAP OF BOYS:

E. Lockhart offers a hilarious and realistic look at the trials and tribulations of being a teenager in her third Ruby Oliver novel. Find out what the real treasure is in Ruby's life as she creates a treasure map of people she cares for and who return her feelings.


Ruby is back at Tate Prep, and it's her thirty-seventh week in the state of Noboyfriend. Her panic attacks are bad, her love life is even worse, and what's more:

· Noel is writing her notes,
· Jackson is giving her frogs,
· Gideon is helping her cook,
· and Finn is making her brownies.
· Rumors are flying, and Ruby's already sucky reputation is heading downhill.

Not only that, she's also:

· running a bake sale,
· learning the secrets of heavy metal therapy,
· encountering some seriously smelly feet,
· defending the rights of pygmy goats,
· and bodyguarding Noel from unwanted advances.

Ruby struggles to secure some sort of mental health, to understand what constitutes a real friendship, and—if such a thing exists—to find true love.

Source of Book: Passed on from friend


For your chance to win these ARCs, all you need to do is:

1) Follow this blog
2) Follow The Texas Sweethearts blog
3) Comment on this blog post


For extra entries:

1) Blog about this contest and leave a comment telling me
2) Tweet about this contest and leave a comment telling me


And make sure you leave me a way to get in contact with you when you win!

The contest will run through midnight on Friday, December 10, 2010!

*****

And don't forget I also have for giveaway

SAPPHIQUE by Catherine Fisher (Dial/Penguin, December 28, 2010)
Click here to enter!