Natalie Whipple Eats Too Many Cupcakes

1. It's possible to have too much of a good thing.

2. Never underestimate a dare.

3. When you make your husband video tape you, assume it's going to turn out weird in some way. Like constantly going fuzzy or not. Sorry the camera looks drunk sometimes. (The non-fuzzy shots are mine. Go figure.)

TRANSPARENT DAY!!!!!!

Today is Transparent Day! I couldn't be more excited because this is a seriously awesome book! I have so much love for it that the day I read it, I turned around and read it once again that very night. That's how much I loved it. I mean how often do you get to read about an invisible girl? Well my answer was NEVER before Transparent and I would please like to rectify this by having MORE books about Fiona, because this is one sweet, awesome invisible girl! And I've been crazy about this cover ever since I saw it!

 

To celebrate TRANSPARENT being out, I've collected some of Natalie's truly talented art that she's been doing for her book, right here in one spot!

 

Is this amazing art or what?! Drawing Fiona, an invisible girl is pretty difficult and yet Natalie was able to nail it!

 And this piece is from Fiona's view, looking at Seth, the male protagonist, during the Taco Bell scene. This is the first time she notices that there might be more to him than the grouchy exterior.

Ok Fiona is just an awesome MC. Very likeable, completely sympathetic, smart, witty, and a strong character who has had to keep her identity even while being manipulated by her own father. I love Fiona and I love Transparent! 

And I totally think Fiona would be mischievousness enough to steal a lollipop right out of a kid's hands! 

CONGRATULATIONS NATALIE!! We are all so happy and proud of you!!!

So everyone should go run out and buy as many copies of TRANSPARENT as you can and give it out to everyone! Tell everyone about it! It's a wonderful book and I NEED the sequel!!!

Mindy McGinnis Tells the Truth About Survival

Before we get on to the awesome video, we need to announce the winner of our INSOMNIA Dare Giveaway! Gillian Berry! You Win! Jenn will be in contact with you soon and congrats.

Recently someone asked our group of authors how much we were like our main characters. That's kind of a tricky one to answer for me, but I did my best for you in a rambunctious vlog.

I'm also blogging on the Lucky 13s today about self-sufficiency, and how it does not relate to writing... at all. We need our critique parters. Cherish them, love them. Feed them organic food.

TWO Giveaways & InsomniaDare Report!

Elsie, Ellen and I did a super fun Insomnia-Dare promotion last week. We were joined by a few other awesome writers/readers/bloggers (Bridget, Gillian, Octavia, Kierra, etc - thank you!) We talked trash until our sentences were barely coherent... and we had so much fun!

We stayed up until at least 4am and reported in hourly on some basic details:

* number of yawns 

     steadily increased hourly across the board *gasp*

* words written (or other things accomplished)

     steadily decreased hourly across the board. The last hour was truly pathetic

* number of caffeinated beverages consumed

     another increase...although it was less effective than you might expect

* $ amount donated to The Swear Jar

     Also increased the more tired we got. Shocking, no? We ended up with a nice donation for the JDRF which is great. Some of the participants also donated (Thank you, Gillian!) so not sure how much the total raised was, but every cent helps. 

In case you missed it in my Friday post, you can click here to see the result of my sleep-deprived vlogging with no microphone.

Silent movies are totally coming back into style...you just wait. 

We planned to do a giveaway during the InsomniaDare, but we decided to wait and do it here instead.

Leave a comment below on anything Dare - Silent Movie - Insomnia related, and you'll be entered to:

Win a signed ARC of Insomnia and a signed copy of Dualed!

For those listed above that participated in the InsomniaDare with us, you each get a bonus 5 entries for your participation and general awesomeness. We'll select a random winner and announce it in our post on Friday!

And for the SECOND Giveaway: don't forget to pre-order Insomnia and enter my NookHD giveaway!

Pre-order from any of these sites:

B&N ~ Amazon ~ IndieBound ~ BAM ~ The Book Depository

**It is absolutely acceptable to enter one giveaway and not the other, we don't care, we just like to give our stuff to other people. It's a sickness...really. **

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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J.R. Johansson loves reading, playing board games and sitting in her hot tub. Her dream is that someday she can do all three at the same time. She is a YA thriller author published with Flux and FSG/Macmillan. She's represented by Kathleen Rushall of Marsal Lyon Literary Agency. Her debut novel, INSOMNIA, is due to be released in June 10, 2013. You can find her on twitter, goodreads, her website, or her personal blog.

J.R. Johansson Takes A Dare!

Some of you may have heard about my InsomniaDare I did with Elsie and Ellen last week. We'll be posting about that on Tuesday, but as part of it, I recorded all these little video clips to put into fun vlogs later...then realized that my microphone was broken.

Yeah...

So, I did the only logical thing and made it into a Silent Movie. Because that's what any normal person would do...or not.

But hey, I'm okay with not being normal.

Anyway, here it is...




So yeah...I had fun. You can probably tell... ;-)

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J.R. Johansson loves reading, playing board games and sitting in her hot tub. Her dream is that someday she can do all three at the same time. She is a YA thriller author published with Flux and FSG/Macmillan. She's represented by Kathleen Rushall of Marsal Lyon Literary Agency. Her debut novel, INSOMNIA, is due to be released in June 10, 2013. You can find her on twitter, goodreads, her website, or her personal blog.

Megan Shepherd Takes the Dare

Today's Dare: Draw a map of your book's world

When I was a kid, I loved books that came with maps in them, like the Chronicles of Narnia and the Hobbit. It makes characters' adventures feel more real when you can chart their progress on a map. A few weeks ago I was doodling around while trying to figure out a plot hole, and I started drawing a map of the fictional Moreau's Island from THE MADMAN'S DAUGHTER. This turned into a bigger project where I illustrated lots of chapter headings and added footnotes, and I plan on giving away this annotated edition of the book at some later date on my blog.

And so I present: the map! I put it in the front of the book, just like my old copy of The Hobbit.

Because it's a little hard to see, I added a number guide.

1 - The dock where Juliet, Edward & Montgomery arrive on the island
2 - Moreau's compound, formerly a Spanish fort
3 - the volcano
4 - Jaguar's cabin
5 - the Islanders' village
6 - the mangroves
7 - the beach

It was so much fun to draw this map that I'm planning on doing the same for my future books. The second book in The Madman's Daughter trilogy is set in London, and I have a great old Victorian map of London from that time, so that will be a fun one to do.

Next up is Mindy McGinnis on May 10! If you have a truth or dare for her, you can leave it here.

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Megan Shepherd is a young adult writer living in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Her debut novel The Madman's Daughter (Balzer+Bray/HarperCollins) is the first in a Gothic thriller trilogy. The second book in the trilogy will be released January 2014. She’d love to hear from you at her blog, Twitter, Facebook, or on Goodreads.

Kasie West Takes a Dare

Hi, everyone! Apparently I love making a fool of myself. See video below for evidence.




And there it is. The proof. :)

Next week on the blog is Megan Shepherd. So don't you think we should allow her to make a fool of herself too?? Leave your dares here for Megan.

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Kasie West writes YA paranormal and contemporary. She graduated from Fresno State University with a BA degree that has nothing to do with writing. She earned her masters in Junior Mint eating (which is awarded after eating your millionth King Size box....and is now working on her PhD). She loves sappy alternative rock ballads and reading way past her bedtime.

Her debut novel PIVOT POINT came out with HarperTeen February 12, 2013. And her contemporary novel THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US will be out July 2, 2013. 

Today Is The Day To Get TAKEN!

by Mindy McGinnis

To misquote Norman Bates, "We all get a little jealous sometimes."

Yeah, we totally do. And before I had my cover for NOT A DROP TO DRINK, I had a serious jealous-freak going on with Erin's cover for TAKEN. You can see why.

It's beautiful, colorful, and foreboding as hell. As a librarian I took one look at it and said, "OK, my kids are going to gravitate right towards this one." And as a reader I knew that pretty packages don't always live up to the promise of the wrapping paper. But this time, there was nothing misleading.

Check out my librarian pitch of TAKEN below, then look back at the cover and tell me you don't want this in a somewhat inappropriate way.

Claysoot is not a place anyone would stay- unless they had to. The Wall keeps them in, the women, the children... but not the men. Because there aren't any.
One their eighteenth birthday the boys disappear in a flash of light. It comes with wind, and the shaking of the ground, and then they are gone. Any boys who try to escape this fate by climbing the Wall are tossed back within hours, curled into an eternal fetal position, burnt to death.

Gray Weathersby watches his older brother disappear, well aware that his time is coming soon. Even though Claysoot has little to offer beyond emotionless Pairings meant to boost birthrates, Gray isn't eager to be taken by a Heist. No one knows what comes after the Heist for the boys that disappear, but he knows if he's taken that he will never see Emma again, the only girl he's ever hoped to be Paired with.

Climbing the wall could be suicide, but the discovery of a strange note from his dead mother leads Gray to believe that there's more at work in Claysoot than he could have guessed. The Council leaders have their secrets, and now Gray has his. Armed with the letter and the breath of a chance of survival, Gray has to decide whether he'll risk climbing the Wall into the unknown, or let the certainty of the Heist take him away from Emma.

Oh, and my little jealousy problem? Yeah, that's all cleared up now. When I got my cover I went ahead and fell in love with it. Part of the reason why is because Erin and I have the same designer. Yep. We both love Erin Fitzsimmons, and you should too - because she's making bookshelves everywhere a little more beautiful, one book at a time.

So go find one of those shelves today in a bookstore, and grab up a little bit of pretty - what's underneath that gorgeous cover won't let you down!
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Mindy McGinnis is a YA author and librarian. Her debut, NOT A DROP TO DRINK, is a post-apocalyptic survival tale set in a world where freshwater is almost non-existent, available from Katherine Tegen / Harper Collins September 24, 2013. She blogs at Writer, Writer Pants on Fire and contributes to the group blogs Book Pregnant, Friday the Thirteeners, From the Write Angle, The Class of 2k13, The Lucky 13s & The League of Extraordinary Writers. You can also find her on Twitter, Tumblr & Facebook.