It's almost here! It's almost here!!!!!!

I'm just about ready to jump out of my skin because Beautiful Darkness is almost released (38 days and counting as of this post)!!!

And SO many things are being planned in the lead up to the big night when the book is FINALLY available. As I mentioned earlier, I was lucky enough to get an ARC copy of Beautiful Darkness from the fantabulous Drea over at Traveling ARC Tours. So keep your eyes peeled for my SPOILER-FREE review over at Bewitched Bookworms which may or may not be scheduled to post a month before the release date AND may or may not be launching some additional Beautiful Darkness loveliness of our own.

Speaking of Caster Chronicles pimpage and loveliness in general, The Caster Girls are spreading the word about how Beautiful Creatures (the first book in the Caster Chronicles) is a YALSA Teens' Top 10 Nominee for 2010. This is SO deserved!!!! Never heard of the YALSA Teens' Top 10 before? Allow me to explain....

Teens from all over nominate their favorite books from the previous year. Nominations are posted on Support Teen Literature Day during National Library Week, and teens across the country vote on their three favorite titles. Readers can vote online from Aug. 23rd -September 17th. The winners will be announced in a webcast featuring WWE Superstars and Divas during Teen Read Week, October 17th-23rd.

So please go out RIGHT NOW and vote for Beautiful Creatures because it really should be in the hands of every teen you know (or don't know)! Just click on the link below and you'll be taken to the voting survey. Voting is open NOW and will go until September 17th.

Want even more pimpage and loveliness????

The Caster Girls are hosting a contest to promote Beautiful Creatures YALSA Teen's Top 10 for 2010 nomination!! Want to enter? Here's what the women at The Caster Girls are asking you to do:

1) Add the Beautiful Creatures Teens' Top Ten Button from www.beautifulcreaturesthebook.com to your blog, site, FB page, or all three! The more places you add the button, the more points you earn.

2) Once you place the button on your blog, e-mail us at castergirls@gmail.com. When e-mailing please include your name, blog/website URL, twitter name, and your name. We will verify you have placed the button on your blog.

3) Tweet, Tweet, Tweet and encourage people to vote for Beautiful Creatures or add the button to their blogs. But don’t tweet the same thing multiple times a day. No one enjoys spam. Be creative! When tweeting, we ask that you simply add an @reply to @castergirls so that we see your tweet. The more tweets and @replies we see, the more points you’ll earn.

4) Post a message on your blog, site, Facebook page, or all three! If you post anywhere other than twitter, please e-mail us and let us know.

* We will keep track of your efforts. It's simple - the more you promote, the better your chance of winning.

Contest runs from September 1st – 17th. Winners will be notified by September 18th. If there is anything we can help you with, don't hesitate to e-mail us! If you know someone who wants to join TEAM CASTER, please ask them to e-mail us! We don’t know every blogger & website admin that loves BC.

If you do this, you have the chance to win:

Grand Prize (1 winner)

• A signed copy of BEAUTIFUL CREATURES & BEAUTIFUL DARKNESS
• 2 different BC/BD Posters.

Second Prize (4 Winners)

• A Signed Copy of the new BC paperback
• A BD poster
• 1 set of BC/BD buttons
• 1 set of BD Dog Tags
• 1 BC Key Chain

Good luck, enjoy and keep an eye out for more news on the Beautiful Darkness front in the coming days!

Birthday Mania!!

So as most of you know, yesterday was my birthday. Yup, this old fox turned 35. I am happy to say that I got many things I was expecting, not the least of which was my annual call from my mother telling me the story of the day I was born (which is pretty interesting, in my humble opinion, since she delivered me at home, essentially by herself, at the age of 19). But as is usually the case, it's the many things I was NOT expecting that made the day grand.

For example.....

Some of my favorite tweeple dressed up in foxy finery on twitter:



The Lemoniest Lemon Sister that there ever was wrote me a HBD post on TLS:



My beautiful Bewitched Bookworms wrote me a HBD post on BB,
noting my love of glitter text and complete with a Hendrix ode to, well, ME!



The AWESOMETASTIC Betti pimped a story I wrote for her for Christmas, prompting me to post it on FFn due to all the wonderful work she put into making this AMAZING banner for it!


Seriously I'm not worthy!!

My sweet, good morning, coffee girl, Danny,
sent me a loverly Beautiful Creatures inspired bracelet
from Mary Tippet Designs:

>

The amazing erikasbuddy wrote me a sequel to one of her fics, Broken, that I adore!!

I cannot even express how humbled and touched I am that so many of you went out of your way to make me feel special on my birthday but I can say, heartily, "Mission Accomplished!!!"

No, no, really, much better than this!
I just couldn't resist! tee-hee!

Thank you, over and over, from the cockles of my little, vixen heart!!!

Author Appreciation Week:Kami Garci & Margaret Stohl

Banner provided by the lovely ladies at Novel Novice

Photo by Alex Hoerner, obtained at Reading Underground

For my first Author's Appreciation post, I wanted to shine a light on Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl.

They are the authors of a enthralling book, Beautiful Creatures, which I loved so much I have convinced my husband, my two nieces, my best-friend and her daughter to read it. You may have seen a post or two about this book here on the blog. But in addition to that, I appreciate these authors because....

1) They have already written the sequel, Beautiful Darkness, and have promised their readers two more books after BD in what has now come to be known as The Caster Chronicles. This is HUGE for me, since when I turned the last page in Beautiful Creatures I had SO MANY unanswered questions and I wanted more! I can't describe how happy I am that I will get not one, not two but three more novels worth of time in the world that these lovely ladies have created!

2) They are EXTREMELY supportive of their fans online. If you follow them on twitter(@kamigarcia and @mstohl), you know they are always chatting with one fan or another, causing teenagers and grown women alike to devolve into squeeing fangirls left and right. They also are amazing at helping us spread the word about fan driven Beautiful Creature book discussions and contests.

3) They are UNBELIEVABLY lovely, witty and gracious in person. Seriously, if you haven't caught them on one of their book tours you should do so when they go out again! They have a great rapport with each other (which might be expected since they DID WRITE A BOOK TOGETHER) but they also convey a sense of easy camaraderie when interacting with the crowd. And they hugged me when we met, so I will always love them. The end!

So, Kami and Margi, here's to you both! Thank you so much for taking your kids up on their dare to write a novel! I couldn't be happier with the results!

Beautiful Creatures Contest!!

Who doesn't love a contest??? I am a fool for them. Which is good, since I've become a follower of so many great blogs because of them. Well here's your chance to become a follower of THIS great blog. Yup, it's the circle of life.

Ok, where was I? Oh, yes, a contest!!! Well as you read earlier in the week,I had the amazing opportunity to meet up with my fellow bookworm Heather in RL and go to the Beautiful Creatures book signing in Downers Grove, IL.

At that book signing, I was well...pushy enough to ask Kami Garcia and Margi Stohl to sign a couple of extra copies of their book; which they graciously did. What does that have to do with you, dear reader? Well, Bewitched Bookworms is giving one away to ONE LUCKY WINNER!!!

So, how do YOU get to be said winner? Easy! Just enter the contest!

So click on the button above to go to Bewitched Bookworms, become a follower and enter the contest. It's really just that easy!

The Fangirl SqueeHeard Around The World

Image respectfully borrowed from here.

Why the SQUEE? Because I met KAMI GARCIA and MARGI STOHL last night!!!! And believe me when I say that I was in full on fan girl mode. But this is jumping the gun, so let me start at the beginning.

A couple of days ago I noticed that the tour dates on the Beautiful Creatures appearances list had been updated and they were coming to Chicago for TWO NIGHTS. Understandably, I was totally stoked! The question was, should I go alone or should I drag my enabler sister yet again (the post on New Moon shenanigans is STILL NOT UP, I know!)? Then DH, ever helpful, asked, "Doesn't that chick from that blog live in the area?" That chick from that blog....oh, right! Heather from Call of Duty Widow. Well, as a matter of fact she does live nearby, and she even lives quasi-near to the Downers Grove bookstore that was hosting Wednesday's event! A quick tweet off to hmmille and plans were made!

For the rest of the week I was in a tizzy: excited to meet Kami and Margi (oh, yeah, we're TOTALLY on a first name basis now that we tweet each other - lol!), excited to meet Heather, excited to go to my first book signing in 15 years (side note, the last one was for Kenzaburō Ōe, so you're in good company, Ms. Garcia and Ms. Stohl!).

The day arrived and I scurried on down to Downers Grove's own Anderson's Bookshop, a great venue with an even greater hostess, Kathleen. There I picked up my reserved copies of the book for the signing and settled in to wait for CoDW. I wasn't waiting long before Heather arrived.

It was SO much fun to sit next to Heather and chat and joke around. She's as witty and wonderful in person as she is on her blog!

Then Kami and Margi came in and gave an AMAZING talk. It was so much fun to watch them interact with each other and the audience. They were vibrant and funny and an overall great time. If you have the chance to attend one of the last two events on this leg of the tour (Book Inc - Not Your Mother's Book Club, in Palo Alto, CA or Copperfield's Books, in Santa Rosa, CA), you'll be SO HAPPY you did!

After the talk, they started calling us up in groups to get our books signed. I so caught up chatting with Heather that I missed it when they called my signing group. I actually yelped like a small, injured dog when I thought I had been skipped. Not flattering!

I did eventually make my way up there, though and when I got my chance to get my things signed (which may or may not have included more than one book AND two copies of my and uhyesplease's week 4 book discussion from fragile's blog), I introduced myself saying, "Hi, I'm Heather...also known as 'One Pushy Fox'".

Here is where I cringed, because this is the FIRST time I've introduced myself as my blogger self as well and was expecting blank stares and crickets. Couldn't have been further from what happened. Instead I was treated to big smiles and a hug from Margi! (Insert inner fan girl squeee here)

Can you see the gleam of freakish excitement in my eye?
No? Thank goodness!
The flash must not have caught it!

They graciously signed ALL the things I brought for them, commented on how much they're enjoying the book discussion on fragile's blog (and how much they liked the graphics too!) and took a few pictures with me. I was in a daze! I even walked right past fellow blogger Stacy from Page Turners, another great book site! I was just SO caught up in my good fortune and all the goodies clutched in my tiny little paws!

My bounty from the evening!
And yes, uhyesplease, that manila envelope has your signed copy of our book discussion post.
It will be in the mail tomorrow!!!

Well, that's it. I was too hyped up to blog last night but I'm still basking in my post signing glow (and possibly referring to my signed copy of the book as "Precious" in my best Golumn impersonation).

Precious!

And as a thank you to Kami, I'm presenting you with a jacket for all of the Diet Coke you drank while writing Beautiful Creatures....

You've definitely earned it!

Margi, in hopes of helping out during the next writing phase, I'm giving you this:

I found it here where you can also find tons of chapter fueling goodies for your new Veggie lifestyle!

Beautiful CreaturesBook Discussion

Thank you Betti
of Betti.Music.Twilight
for this AWESOMETASTIC
book discussion button!!!!

I mentioned a while ago that I am participating in a book discussion on Beautiful Creatures over at afragilelittlehuman's blog.

Well this is the week that my lemon sister, uhyesplease, and I had our turn to lead the discussion. Please stop on by and show some comment love, not just for us but for all the other amazing women who are posting each week.

Thanks!!!

Beautiful Creatures:The Love Just Keeps Rolling In

Didn't win the Caster Girls contest? Yeah, me neither. But FRET NOT!! For the lovely Mrs. V over at Let's Ride the Vanquish is hosting a wonderful contest for everyone who has fallen in love with Beautiful Creatures!



Enter for the chance to win an exquisite bracelet from Mary Tippet Designs. There are six different ways to get entries into the contest, or do them all for a possibility of 17 chances in this drawing. So if you haven't already entered, what are you waiting for????

Beautiful CreaturesBook Discussion and Contest

Hello, lovelies!!! I hope the new year is treating everyone well. I am keeping busy, as always. And one of the things I am doing over the next few weeks is participating in Fragile's Beautiful Creatures book discussion.

Haven't read Beautiful Creatures yet????? Click on the pick to get it on Amazon.

It's only $10.52 and it's eligible for free shipping!

Haven't read the kick off or the first two discussion posts??? Click here, here and here to bask in the wonderment that is this discussion. Please join in and help make this discussion a success.

And for a SQUEE thought, the authors are aware of the discussion from fragile's tweets and I wouldn't be surprised if they popped in to see how it goes!

In the same SQUEE vein, there's a contest going on over at Caster Girls, a Beautiful Creatures fansite, where you can win 12 autographed copies of Beautiful Creatures for your very own bookclub!!! To enter, go here:

Well, good luck all and I hope to see you around fragile's site, especially on Valentine's Day, when I'll be hosting that week's discussion with the lovely uhyesplease, my Lemon Sister.