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?

YA dance books in brief

I've been reading and reading and READING, and I keep thinking that I need to tell you all about these awesome books, but I've found that it's pretty tough to read and write simultaneously. I can't type with my feet no matter how hard I try.

But today, I'd like to talk about a handful of books with dancing in them. Because I danced way back in the day. And because I just got back in touch with an old friend whose daughter is now a competitive dancer. And because I CAN.

AUDITION by Stasia Ward Kehoe

In this verse novel, Sara leaves her home to study ballet in a new city, living with a host family and trying desperately to make up for the fact that she's undoubtedly behind everyone else her age, skill-wise. When an older choreographer starts taking an interest in her, she throws herself into the relationship in a desperate attempt to feel content. It doesn't work.

I think the verse form really works for this book, because it really captures what it's like to dance--both the highs and lows. I think it particularly works in those moments where Sara loses herself in the dance. I felt like Kehoe really captured the movement in words, so much so that I really REALLY wanted to dig out my old dance shoes and lace them up.

This intimate look at the inner struggles of a dancer would absolutely appeal to fans of Ellen Hopkins, even if they're not into dancing themselves. Because at the end of the day, it's the story of a girl who is living her dream...and realizing that maybe the reality doesn't quite measure up to her expectations.

BUNHEADS by Sophie Flack

BUNHEADS is another ballet book, but instead of student dancers, Flack takes us right into the world of professional ballet. Hannah's only 19, but she's living in NYC and dancing in the corps of the Manhattan Ballet. This is a fascinating slice of life tale that doesn't involve a single alien, sparkly vampire, or shirtless werewolf but nonetheless feels like we've been transported into a different world altogether.

Flack's experience really shines through on these pages. We see Hannah go through her days, prepping pointe shoes in the dressing room while chatting with her friends, going to the obligatory fundraising events, and occasionally wondering how the "normal" people live. She realizes that her world is limited to the ballet and to ballet people, and she's not sure how she feels about that. Especially when she meets a cute musician...

If you're into dance books or movies, you know all the stereotypes. I felt like this title took a balanced approach to them, which was nice. Yes, there's a weight subplot, but it's not all-consuming. Hannah's worried about her weight gain and what it will mean for her future as a dancer, but she realizes on her own that maybe there's a healthier way to approach the problem. I liked that the book didn't totally disregard those stereotypes but still made an effort to tell a different story.

STRINGS ATTACHED by Judy Blundell

If you're interested in reading a dance book but have a strange aversion to tutus, STRINGS ATTACHED is the story of an aspiring Broadway dancer in the 1950s. Kit Corrigan has left home in an effort to make it big, but things are a lot harder than she expected. When her maybe-kinda-ex-boyfriend's dad offers a little help, it seems harmless to accept it, right? And if he's curious about his son, that's normal. And if he asks her to do errands every once in a while...

Maybe it's not as normal as she'd like to think. Maybe all those mob rumors are true after all.

I loved the glimpses of backstage 1950s Broadway, and I thought this book was at its best during those sections. There's a lot going on here, with the muddled romance, the mob ties, and Kit's struggles to survive. But die hard Broadway fans and history buffs would probably love this read.