ALL THE THINGS...complete with bullet points

People, there is NEWS. Some of it is even GOOD. A lot of it will be in OVEREXCITED CAPITAL LETTERS, but you're used to that, right? RIGHT. Anyway, there is so much news, that I will be breaking out the bullet points. For some reason, bullet points make me happy. Like, you can imagine depressed me going around and sticking bullet points on ALL THE THINGS and then miraculously feeling much better. Bullet points, they're miraculous.

Oh, yeah. The news. Here it is.

• I have advance copies of BAD HAIR DAY! And of course I held them up in front of my face and pretended that I was the cover model. The book won't officially be out until November, but now I'll be able to give a few copies away in the meantime! And giving things away makes me almost as happy as bullet points.
  

• It's Fug Madness time! If you haven't been reading Go Fug Yourself, it's a hilarious fashion website, and they're picking the fuggiest celebs of the year. The writers are snort-stuff-out-of-your-nose funny. Every time I think of the word "polterwang," I get the giggles.
  
• Oh, if you're interested in BAD HAIR DAY, you can now preorder it from the major book retail websites! I'll be adding links to the website for this SOON. Alternately, you can visit the new Carrie Harris Books FB page, where there are all kinds of handy ordering links for the upcoming BTIB paperback and the BHD hardcover, and a deleted Kate and Aaron scene from BAD TASTE IN BOYS. And I'll be giving things away there periodically too.
  
• Bullet points are miraculous. Did I mention that already?
• There's a bunch of awesome stuff up for grabs at the Authors for Henryville site, including signed copies of BTIB and BHD (once it comes out). You should bid on something to help tornado victims, but please don't outbid me. I'll cry. ;)
• ARG Zombies looks like the coolest game ever. I want to play it. But in the meantime, I'm training for THIS. And of course I will be volunteering as a zombie. As if you had to ask. I will need help deciding what kind of zombie I should be, though. HELP ME.

And now I'm hungry. Which has nothing to do with anything above, but I wanted to tell you anyway.

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

First, I have a confession to make. I stole the title of this post from Bettina Restrepo. She is the founder of the Winner Winner Chicken Dinner award, and I have high aspirations to travel to Texas someday so that we can hold the award banquet at a KFC. I plan to stand on a chair and proudly pose with a drumstick. Something tells me Bett will be right there next to me, because she is tres nuts.

It sounds more impressive with the French, don't you think?

Second, I have another confession to make. I picked a winner for the signed Bad Taste in Boys hardcover, and it turned out to be me, because somehow I managed to enter MYSELF into the drawing. This seemed a little lame to me--although I will admit that I briefly entertained the idea of signing a book, "To me, from myself with BRAAAAINS"--so I decided to pick a second winner. And it turned out to be the lovely, Excel-addicted Cari from Cari's Book Blog!

Yay! Sparkles and bad hair all around! Also some chicken. I'm hungry now. I could really use that award.

And thank you again to everyone for helping to spread the word about my lovely cover! You can have some chicken too.

Bad Hair Day Cover Reveal

It's finally time! I first saw this cover back in October, and I've been hyperactively pestering ALL THE PEOPLE to get approval to share it with you! So last week, when I got an email from my editor with approval to plaster, I started thinking. What fun thing could I do to show off this awesome new cover? The answer, of course, was to publicly humiliate myself. And other people. Who are awesome.

So, without further ado, I present to you a variety of YA and MG authors with questionable hair...and the cover of my next book.

I owe a tremendous amount of thanks to everyone who submitted pics--you have fabulous senses of humor. Do YOU have bad hair pics, dear reader? HOLD ON TO THEM. THERE WILL BE CONTESTS.

Speaking of contests, if you share the link to this post on twitter, facebook, your blog, skywriting, etc, and let me know in the comments, I'll enter you into a random drawing for a signed BAD TASTE IN BOYS hardcover! I'll pick a winner on Monday.

AND, for those of you who can't watch videos, here's the cover in all its hairy glory.

OOOoooOOOOooo!

Ever have one of those days where things are totally crazy, and you've got paint all over you, and there is a speck of drywall dust in one eye that just WON'T COME OUT, and you're a little bit behind on your edits, and your house looks like a tornado went through it, and a bunch of people are going to come over to said house that weekend, which is bad, and then you learn that your book was named to the American Library Association 2012 Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers list?

I HAD THAT DAY YESTERDAY!

Quick Picks are books with widespread appeal that are recommended for teens who, for whatever reason, don't like to read.

AND I WROTE ONE.

*thrilled*

*house is still messy, though*

Having a BAD HAIR DAY

I have in my hands a typeset copy of BAD HAIR DAY, the next Kate Grable adventure. This is my final opportunity to make changes (and to argue that YES, bathmats can be made out of human hair) before it gets made into a real book that I can carry obsessively around my house and thrust randomly into people's faces.

I should also note that I just lied. Because if I was holding the pages right now, I couldn't type. But the pages are NEXT TO ME. I AM HOLDING THEM WITH MY NON-PHYSICAL BODY. QUIT BEING SO PICKY ALREADY!!!!

Ahem.

Anyway, it occurs to me that I haven't talked much about BAD HAIR DAY, because it doesn't come out until November and I don't want any of you to kill me. But things will soon be happening! Like, I'll be able to show you the cover! (And holy crapsticks, it gives the first one a run for its money. And not a run for its monkey, which I honestly did type the first time and helps to demonstrate why I need edits.) So...without further ado...here's the cover copy of BAD HAIR DAY to tide you over.

Senior year is positively hair-raising.

Kate Grable is geeked out to shadow the county medical examiner as part of her school’s pre-med program. Except when he’s arrested for murder, she’s left with the bodies. And when Kate’s brother Jonah stumbles upon a dead gamer girl, she realizes that the zombie epidemic she cured last fall was only the beginning of the weirdness taking over her town. Someone’s murdering kids—something really hairy. And strong. Possibly with claws.

Is it werewolf awesomeness like Jonah and his dorktastic friends think? Kate’s supposed to be a butt-kicking zombie killing genius . . . but if she can’t figure out who’s behind the freakish attacks, the victims—or what’s left of them—are going to keep piling up.

It’s scary. It’s twisted. It’s sick. It’s high school.

And man, I can't wait to hear what you think of it.

Still Alive!

I feel a little like a mad scientist's project, and he's desperately attaching electrodes to my head, and Igor is pedaling the lightning bike like Lance Armstrong's about to overtake him at any minute, and the mad scientist is yelling, "It's ALIIIIVE! Still. Er, I think."

I've really missed blogging and talking with everyone, and I do intend to come back and do it on a regular basis. But, you know, the personal life thing tends to get in the way sometimes. On an extended basis, even.

So here's a quick and dirty update on Carrieland:

• I'm going to be at Epic ConFusion in Troy, Michigan this weekend! Come see me talk about why the undead are awesome, and how to survive this whole writing thing, and a bunch of other things that I really need to sit down and think about. You know, during my copious free time.
  
• There's not so much of that free time going around lately, either, because I just got first pass pages for the next Kate Grable book! You know what that means? We'll have ARCs for BAD HAIR DAY coming out in the next couple of months! And I will give some of them to you. Because you are awesome.
  
• These are so freaking cool. I kind of want someone to make a picture of a zombie face out of a copy of BAD TASTE IN BOYS. Sadly, with my artistic skills, the only thing I could manage is a stick figure missing a foot.
  
• I'm a proud member of Team Kraken in Change Write Now! (And I did NOT come up with the name. But isn't it the coolest? Our full name is Lets Get Kraken. And my shoulders are really sore, which isn't particularly krakeny of me, is it?
• You must read this article and learn what the Hoff and Yeti crabs have in common.

What about you? What have YOU been up to?

THIS.

Beware. I'm about to be serious.

THIS.



I write ridiculous books full of zombies and vomit and superfluous hair. I'm okay with that. We need all kinds of books--the vomit-filled superfluous hair kind of books, books that make us cry, and books that make us look at the world differently. We need the kind of books that make us angry and books we reach for when we're sick on the couch and need something comforting. For anyone to restrict our access to any of those books is WRONG. For anyone to restrict our right to think and choose for ourselves is WRONG.

I stand up against censorship. Even if I'm wearing sparkly Richard Simmons shorts when I do it. Which is my right, even if it's oh-so-wrong.

See what I mean?