#VenomReleaseParty

You're invited!!! 

Join me at the #VenomReleaseParty

October 30^th, 6-8pm Central time

Hi everyone! VENOM is going to have her book birthday soon, and rather than a traditional launch where I stand in front of a firing squad an audience in uncomfortable dressy clothes and completely panic ramble on about Venom for twenty minutes while people tweet about how hilariously awkward I am listen attentively but secretly wish I'd handed out cookies, I figured I would have a party on Twitter!

No technical difficulties. No uncomfortable clothes. No panic. There will probably still be awkwardness because, you know, I’m going to be there, but the best thing about this launch party is that by having it on the interwebz everyone from Alaska to Zimbabwe can come. (Note: The timing of the party might be a tad late if you live in Zimbabwe. Sorry).

So why do you want to come to this party? See the above line about how I’m going to be there J Oh, also, there will be prizes.

Attendance prizes: All you have to do is show up at the party, AKA follow the #VenomReleaseParty hashtag and wait for me to announce giveaways. If you’ve played Where in the World is Venom?? you know that my giveaways tend to be A LOT of fun. Expect a mix of trivia and task-oriented questions spread throughout the two hours.

The attendance prizes, generously provided by Penguin Teen:

1.     ARC of The Madness Within by Maureen Johnson
2.     ARC of Prodigy by Marie Lu
3.     ARC of Orleans by Sherri L. Smith
4.     ARC of Out of the Easy by Ruta Septys
5.     ARC of Rise by Andrea Cremer 
6.  Not pictured: A Breathless Reads 2-pack: ARCs of The Innocents and Black City
7.  Not pictured: A Paper Lantern Lit 2-pack: paperback of Fury and hardcover of Envy, both by Elizabeth Miles. Also includes 2 Butterfly Clues bookmarks and a Paper Lantern Lit totebag. Tres cute!

*I am giving 6 and 7 away as 2-packs because these books are already out (or will be by the time my post office delivers them) so I expect them to be less in demand. But they are all awesome, I assure you :)


But Fiona, what if I can’t make it to your party in real time because I do live in Zimbabwe and I have to go to sleep before 0100? Well, that brings us to the…

Bigger prizes: Anyone can win. [Edited to add: anyone but P0rnbots. No more pictures please, bots *claws out eyes*] All you have to do is tweet a picture of yourself in a mask or Halloween costume to me anytime between October 22^nd and 2359 Central time on October 29^th. Important!! You must tag this picture with the #VenomReleaseParty hashtag. No tag. No entry.

The pic can be you in a mask. It can be you in makeup or costume. It can be you from twenty years ago. It can be you with a mask Photoshopped onto your body. It can be a drawing. The idea is to generate some fun pictures, not to stress anyone out. If you have changed your avatar to the Venom cover when you tweet this picture, I will give you a second entry. Maximum of two entries. One posted pic per twitter handle please.

The bigger prizes:

1.     A Penguin Teen Breathless Reads boxed set including ARCs of Origin, Black City, The Innocents, Falling Kingdoms and Venom, with the Venom ARC autographed if desired
2.     An autographed hardcover of Venom and 5 Venom bookmarks
3.     A $25.00 gift card to barnesandnoble.com

Unrelated, but also cool: contests to win more great prizes including an ARC [note: this means NOT FINAL and yes, there will be several small changes] of Venom's sequel, Belladonna.

#VenomReleaseParty fine print:

*Questions? Put 'em in the comments.

*All prizes are open for everyone. I will ship anything internationally.

*Sorry, but you cannot enter without a twitter account. Now’s a great time to make one J

VENOM blog tour!

So yeah. In the middle of doing a lot of other stuff, I decided to write a short story called Venomous for my Venom blog tour. It's one very important night in the life of a girl named Mariabella. Like Venom, Venomous is filled with glamour, romance, scandal, and mystery.

My blog tour was organized by Beth from Paper Lantern Lit. Beth works as an editor, marketer, researcher, organizer, scheduler, manager, and technical support person, among other things. I'm pretty sure she's a cyborg. She doesn't seem to sleep so she might also be a vampire. (But the sparkly friendly kind, not the kind that drinks your blood). She also runs this fun website, Spandexless. You should check it out.

My blog tour. You should check that out too. Here's the schedule. Here's the first post. Thanks to everyone who offered to be a part of this, especially to Nikki Wang from Fiction Freak who made this lovely blog tour button...and my header, come to think of it. Thanks again. You guys are my <3

My Cluttered Bookshelves

A couple of weeks ago, real actual hilary (formerly known as the Intern) did a fun blog post exposing her bookshelves to the world. Cool idea, but at the time I was too busy obsessing about how busy I was to do the same.

Today I just had to snap my own pics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you're wondering what Assistant Mufasa clawed out in order to make space for his wiry body, it was The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama, The Only EKG Book You'll Ever Need by Malcolm Thaler and The US Army Survival Guide. Very interesting reading, indeed! (That's his copy of Twilight, by the way :D).

 

What are you and your cats reading?



 

Win VENOM!

Question: Dear Fiona, Can I have VENOM for free? Kthxbai.

Answer: Man, I wish I could give everyone VENOM for free. Okay, I guess that would negatively impact my sales, so maybe not everyone. But lots of people. Especially people in Bangladesh and Romania and super faraway exotic places that probably won't be stocking VENOM on their library shelves. But I can't. So I did the next best thing and scoured the interwebz for you in order to compile this awesome list of places you can try to win VENOM.

#1 Fellow Apocalypsie Lauren Morrill is giving away a copy. You have until September 15th to enter here. I am not sure if this giveaway is international, so check with Lauren for more details.

#2 Goodreads is giving away three copies here. This contest closes Sept 15th and is apparently for US residents only. I'm not sure who is sponsoring the giveaway because to be honest Goodreads kind of scares me *delicate writer soul* so I don't delve very deeply into GR things anymore.

#3 Nikki at Fiction Freak is giving away an ARC of VENOM or a choice of about a bajillion other books on her blog. Her contest is open until September 30th.

#4 Blogger Monica Lopez, one of my original tweeps, will be giving away my last ARC in combination with an interview I did for her, sometime in September. I know, I know, that's vague, but she's got like school and stuff so just be patient and stalk her blog and/or my twitter feed for more info. This giveaway is sponsored by me so the ARC will be autographed, and hellz yeah it will be international :)

#5 Blogger (and awesome St. Louis Children's Hospital pediatrician) Christina Ahn will be hosting my first signed hardcover giveaway contest which will start on September 25th and run for about a month. Sponsored by me. Autographed. International. Watch her blog for more details.

#6 Author Nova Ren Suma has invited me to participate in this year's What Scares You blog series. I'm totally honored to be invited to Distraction 99 and since I am scared of basically everything, I know writing a guest post for her will be loads of fun. My post will go up sometime in October and will include an autographed hardcover giveaway of VENOM. Sponsored by me. International.

#7 In the days leading up to VENOM's release--October 24th through October 30th--I will be giving away two autographed hardcover books (and possibly more) randomly on twitter to people who have changed their twitter avatar to VENOM's cover in support of the release. Sponsored by me. International. I even made you an avatar. #Helpfulness





 

 

#8 Author Jessica Spotswood is doing a Penguin-sponsored hardcover giveaway to celebrate my book-birthday. She'll be bundling it with some excellent Cahill Witch Chronicles SWAG (for some reason I always want to capitalize the word swag. I don't know why) so you'll want to head over to her blog on October 30th.

#9 MY TWITTER PARTY!! OMG guys. The details are still being worked out, but the plan is for me to have a twitter party from 7pm to 9pm Eastern Standard time on October 30th. I'll be giving away my last Breathless Reads slipcase, a signed hardcopy, multiple book-related gift certificates and a slew of ARCs and other stuff that I am currently accumulating via mad begging and bribing of all of my industry contacts. [Edited to add, my editrix of wonder, Jill Santopolo, just offered a few AMAZING things, but I won't tell you what they are until they arrive because the post office ninjas like to steal my stuff.] I'm hoping to give something away every ten minutes, and even if you can't make the party (cuz you know, some people gotta work or go to basketball practice or whatnot) you can still be a winner! More details to come on my blog by October 1st.

#10 My first hardcover signing with my awesome St Louis YA writer colleagues Antony John and Heather Brewer. Come on, dudes. Halloween is on a Wednesday and you're too old to trick-or-treat. Bring yourself and your friends and your kids and your kids' friends to the Spencer Creek branch of the St. Charles Library system in St. Peters, MO on Halloween. (Time TBA). There will be tricks, treats, mask-making, costume contests, and giveaways galore. This is seriously going to be an epic party, and I'm heading to a local haunted house afterward for more fun. So if you want, you can come with and listen to me scream like a little girl as random dudes with chainsaws chase me around.




Get ready for ORIGIN

The first of Penguin Teen's 2012 Breathless Reads releases Tuesday September 4th!!

Pia has grown up in a secret laboratory hidden deep in the Amazon rain forest. She was raised by a team of scientists who have created her to be the start of a new immortal race. But on the night of her seventeenth birthday, Pia discovers a hole in the electric fence that surrounds her sterile home—and sneaks outside the compound for the first time in her life.

Free in the jungle, Pia meets Eio, a boy from a nearby village. Together, they embark on a race against time to discover the truth about Pia’s origin—a truth with deadly consequences that will change their lives forever.

Origin is a beautifully told, shocking new way to look at an age-old desire: to live forever, no matter the cost. This is a supremely compelling debut novel that blends the awakening romance of Matched with the mystery and jungle conspiracy of Lost (via Goodreads).


My thoughts on ORIGIN: I was lucky enough to go to Costa Rica in March and ORIGIN was like a free trip back to the breathless beauty of the rainforest. The flowers, the foliage, the jaguars! To find out Jessica Khoury wrote the book without ever having seen the jungle for realz was astounding! Her research must have been all-encompassing.

While 'perfect' protagonist Pia made me want to strangle her for the first couple of chapters, I warmed to her character as she begin to question her immortality, her humanity, and what was happening in the hidden scientific compound that had been her entire world for seventeen years. From that point onward, this gripping story moves at a breathless pace and culminates in an ending that is both surprising and satisfying.

5 minutes of fill in the blanks with Jessica Khoury:

FP: The most fun part of writing ORIGIN was _____.
JK: Getting to do research on the Amazon jungle and learning all this cool stuff I got to put into my book--especially about the animals! I loved writing about Alai, Pia's pet jaguar.

FP: The hardest part of writing ORIGIN was _____.
JK: The romantic scenes. I wrote them over and over again, because I'd get halfway through and just bust out laughing. That was usually my clue that the scene wasn't working. So I'd sigh, erase it all, and start over until it was just right.

FP: People who like ______ will probably like ORIGIN.
JK: Tiger's Curse by Colleen Houck or Across the Universe by Beth Revis

FP: Just for fun, because I am (finally!) reading His Dark Materials, what would be your daemon or spirit animal?
JK: Oh! I've thought about that exact thing for a long time, ever since reading HDM. My daemon would be a red fox. (I'd really want an orca, since that's my favorite animal, but that would be kind of difficult for both of us, I think).

Need more Jessica Khoury? Check out her website, twitter, and facebook!

Buy ORIGIN here or here or here.