Four ARCs, Four Days, One Hat and One Cat

I came home last night from doing a school visit in Arizona (where everyone was extremely nice and the landscape looked like New York after an exceptionally dry summer only with mountains instead of hills) to find a package with five Advance Reading Copies of Blood Wounds waiting for me.

Actually, Marci, who came to visit Scooter and bring me lilacs, found the package and brought it in. But I opened it.

So here's the deal. I'm keeping one ARC for myself but I'm not giving one to my mother, because now that I've packed and unpacked all my father's books and my brother's books and my books, I'm not that eager to give her anything more than is absolutely necessary. And Blood Wounds isn't dedicated to anyone I actually know, so the four remaining copies are meant for people who read my blog.

My guess is more than four people read my blog, and four doesn't seem like a lot of copies to me either. I'll do some begging and pleading and maybe my publisher will find a few more copies for me to send out, but in the meantime four is what it is.

So here's how it works (on the assumption more than four of you will want one). Email me using the email address up top and say you want to be in the drawing for an ARC. It'd be super great if you head the email with something like ARC or Blood Wounds or Bolivian Hat, but I'll open all the emails anyway and figure it out.

Then I'll put your email address in the Bolivian Hat (removed from its spot on the bathroom wall just for this occasion) and pull out four addresses. I'll send an email to each of the four pulloutees (there's a word Blog Spot ain't gonna like). So if you don't hear from me, it means your name wasn't pulled out.

Because there are only four copies, I'm going to give this only four days, and will pull out the names Monday morning (this being Thursday morning). This drawing is open to anyone on this planet, so if you don't live in the USA, feel free to email me for the drawing anyway. I'll pay the postage wherever you might live.

But since there are only four copies, I'm going to ask the following of you:

Don't tell anyone else about the drawing. Let's keep this one to readers of my blog (all probably more than four of you).

If there's a chance you could get an ARC at ALA or the suchlike, then please don't email me, because four is such a tiny number (bigger only than one, two, or three). I'm quite confident my publisher will have ARCs for distribution at the major conferences because it says so on the back of the ARC and why would they lie?

If what you like about my books is the sci fic/post apocalyptic aspect, and you really aren't interested in realistic YA fiction, then don't email me. My feelings won't be hurt. If you love me but not the subject matter, then you can always wait until the book is published in September and take it out of the library.

Here's the official publisher's description so you can decide your interest level for yourself:

Blood can both wound and heal . . .

Willa is lucky: She has a loving blended family that gets along. Not all families are so fortunate. But when a bloody crime takes place hundreds of miles away, it has an explosive effect on Willa's peaceful life. The estranged father she hardly remembers has murdered his new wife and children, and is headed east toward Willa and her mother. Under police protection, Willa discovers that her mother has harbored secrets that are threatening to boil over. Has everything Willa believed about herself been a lie? But as Willa sets out to untangle the mysteries of her past, she also keeps her own secret—one that has the potential to tear apart all she holds dear.

To sum it up: If you're interested in a chance at an ARC of Blood Wounds, email me by Sunday night to say so and on Monday morning, I'll draw four email addresses out of the Bolivian Hat and email each of the four to get names and addresses to mail the ARC out to.

You get the ARC. I keep the hat and the cat!