Listen, Bitches

Here is a handy trick, for when you know your blog post / FB entry / office memo / etc is taking too long to get to the point. Start the first sentence with "Listen, bitches." You can go delete it after you've finished writing. But I guarantee it will get you straight to your point. For example:

Listen, bitches.

I would rather eat a bucket of eyeballs than promote myself. Especially on social media. All that hashtag-spamming algorithm-twisting click-follow-share-like-buy digital donkey-braying feels incredibly gross and fake, and I hate it like I hate stepping in a puddle with socks on. 

Now. With that said, Kristine Hall of Hall Ways and #LSBBT is THE BEST blog-tour-guide there ever was or will be. She is just egregiously kind, and helpful, and patient, and so good that I even have to take back some of those ugly things I said about social promotion in the above paragraph.
You know what she did?

She set me up a special prize drawing, where I can put the first chapter of my next book in with the three copies of One Night in Sixes that we're giving away. (It ends at midnight tonight, so go quick if you want in on that.)

She put together this neat scrapbook, where I can show off the amazing beautiful things that some of you guys have made and done for me, that I could never, EVER have done for myself.


And she has put my book in the hands of SO many fantastic bloggers and readers, like Tabatha Pope and Melyssa Prince and Texan Girl Reads and Bookadelphia who have written reviews that I would have never in a million years known how to ask for myself. Like this one here, that legit made me cry, because she just GETS IT.

 

I don't know how much sense this will make to those of you who haven't done the author-thing, but like... Kristine brought my book back to life, y'all. I thought it was dead. I thought I had failed. Now there's all these brand-new people picking it up, and some of them are enjoying it the way I had never EVER dared to hope that perfect strangers would or could, and my writing-world is a garden of possibilities again.

So, even though I'm probably always going to be rotten at instanipulating the blogarithms, I'm prepared to confess: in the right hands, these book-tour-barn-raisings are really something else. Hashtags and all. And if you don't have someone on speed-dial already...

#listenbitches: Hall Ways is the fearless, friendly media-mancer you need, want, and deserve in your life. Go find her.

Dreams of the Eaten ARC Giveaway

All right, y'all. It's three months to the day until Dreams of the Eaten drops - which makes today the perfect day to give away three advanced copies of the book.

And oh, what a book it is.

After trials by fire and thirst, Appaloosa Elim's quest to bring home the body of the crow prince is finally nearing its end. 

But the coffin is missing, the funeral party is hopelessly scattered, and the fishmen are hell-bent on revenge. Worse yet, the pilgrimage has disturbed an ancient power – and the earth is crumbling in its grip.

As the ground shakes and the crows gather, the final reckoning promises to unite the living and the dead in a battle for the land itself. One way or another, blood debts will come due, Elim will face his judgment, and the World That Is will be forever changed.

I know, right? Prepare your face now, lest it be rocked clean off. Then and only then will you know what to do.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

You have until midnight on Monday to stake your claim. Go, click, win!

One Night in Sixes - The Annotated Edition!

Yes, today is Friday. And that deserves a shout-out. But I'm celebrating extra hard today, because it's ALSO the two-year anniversary of One Night in Sixes' release. I could write a whole post about what I've learned in that time - and maybe I will!

But again: today is Friday. A day for classroom cupcakes, cutting out of work early, and staying up late. So let me pile on to your already-awesome weekend plans with a special goodie. Today, I'm giving away...

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Yep - you read that right. This here is the real deal - a copy of the book hand-annotated by yours truly, with notes and Easter Eggs and translations galore. Here's a few spoiler-free sneak previews:

Are you excited? I'm excited. My good friend Jodi Thompson even helped me set this up so that there's multiple ways to enter - and the biggest fans have the best odds. Go, click, enter - you have one magical week to maximize your fanhood before we pick a winner!



The eyes of the a'Krah lit up at the mention of horses. Vuchak tried to hide it, nodding in reserved contemplation, but Weisei clapped his hands to his knees in thunderstruck enthusiasm.

"Afvik," he said with a tipsy bright smile, "do you like to play games?"

Getting the Medicine Show on the Road

Y'know, it's really remarkable how much you can get done when your brain is not actively sabotaging you. I'll probably blog about that sometime.

For now, count your notches and set your watches, cuz Medicine for the Dead is coming out in less than two months!

(I know, right?  Holy mackerel.)

So here's what's happening.  Are you ready?  Are you stoked?

Well, first the news: the book has gone to print, and launches are booked!  The US launch will be Saturday, March 28th at 3:00PM at the Hurst Barnes & Noble (same one as last time), and the UK launch will be at Dysprosium in London, at some point during Easter weekend - will keep you posted on that one. In both cases, there will be goodies and prizes and books, and a grand time to be had by all!

"Sure," you say, "But what can I do between now and then?"

So glad you asked!

1. Put it on your radar! That can mean pre-ordering the book, requesting it from your local library, and/or adding it to your Goodreads "want to read" list.  Basically, everything you do to tell the world "hey, I want this" makes it that much more of a hot commodity, and makes YOU more of my actual favorite person. (And if you have Netgalley privileges, feel free to skip the queue.)

2. Catch up on the story! If you haven't read One Night in Sixes, you're gonna want to do that first - and here to help you is a handy-dandy Goodreads giveaway.  Go! Click! Win!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

One Night in Sixes

by Arianne "Tex" Thompson

Giveaway ends February 15, 2015.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

But it's not all about what you can do for me, natch.  Let me tell you what I can do for you.

See, I've learned a thing or two from last year.  This time, I'm not just out to drop a book on the world.  THIS time, I'm opening up a whole toy-store of cool stuff: sneak previews, deleted scenes, easter eggs, giveaways, hopefully some neat-o merch, and more that I can't even tell you about yet!  Some of it will go live here on the blog, but as everyone knows: if you wanna get into the club, you gotta be on the list.  

So do yourself a favor and sign up for the mailing list! I'll aim to send it out about once a month - a little more often here during launch season.  Here's a free sample to entice you:

What is that, and what does it have to do with anything?  Sign up and find out!

(To be clear: that link will sign you up for the readers edition - all things fun and fictional about Sixes, Medicine for the Dead, and future works.  For the writers newsletter - everything about writing classes, resources, and events - click the black "For Writers!" button on the sidebar above.)

Oh!  And in the meantime, come find me this weekend at ConDFW!  Full schedule is below the cut.  It's been a long, cold winter about six weeks of below-70 temperatures, and I'm jazzed to get back out into the world and see some fresh, fun faces!

And the Winner Is...

Okay, random.org has been down for 14 hours now, and I can't stand the suspense anymore.  So, courtesy of randomnumbergenerator.com, we have...

Febe Moss, come on down!  (Email me and let me know where Amazon can find you - soon, all the sentence-structuring secrets of the cosmos will be yours!)

HUGE thanks to all you guys who participated in this humble little project.  This has been hugely helpful and heartening, and I can't wait to start rolling out your awesome ideas. (I was surprised at how many people slipped me wonderful suggestions behind the scenes - maybe next time I should skip the prize and just ask y'all to wring your brains out on command!) 

Also, while we're conjugating "yay" and "huzzah", give a huge one to David Cambron - you know, the guy with all those naked bunnies?  Yeah, he's just signed papers with Inklings Literary Agency, but if you hurry and go right now, you MAY be able to say that you knew him before he was cool.  (This probably means I'll have to quit bullying him in the parking lot at our writers workshop, though.  Dang.)

Lastly, keep your eye on www.dfwcon.org.  Yes, it's the blog for the DFW Writers' Conference, but you don't need to be a local conference-goer to get good mileage out of it: we're going to be running weekly features on broader writing topics, and would really love to have input from writers of all types and stripes.  It's a quality operation.  And I'm not just saying that because they made me the editor.

--Hey, who wants to play Drink the Beer? 
--Right here.
--You win!
--All right, what do I win?
--Another beer!

GrammatiCats: Suggest a Topic, Win a Book!

You know, I really didn't intend to go a whole month without a GrammatiCats post.  It just took this long for me and the cats to rest, regroup, and/or make bail.

BUT!  It's almost June, you guys, and high time to get back in the proverbial saddle! Here's the game.

GrammatiCats needs new topics!  And I want to know what YOU want to know.  Do you lie awake at night, agonizing over when to use "that" versus "which"?  Are you wracked with guilt every time you end a sentence with a preposition?  Would your life be utterly complete if only you knew when to use a comma before "if"?

Well, suffer no longer!  Comment on this entry with a grammar/style issue you would like to see covered here, and you could win a copy of June Casagrande's hilarious how-to: It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences: A Writer's Guide to Crafting Killer Sentences.

Here are the rules:

1.  One entry per person. (You can suggest as many topics as you like, but your name will only go in the hat once.)

2.  Contest ends at midnight (Central Standard Time) on Tuesday, June 4th.

3.  The winner will be drawn on Wednesday, June 5th, via random.org, and announced here.

4.  The winner will have 72 hours from announcement to e-mail tex at thetexfiles.com with a valid mailing address.  If the winner doesn't claim the prize, I'll draw and announce a new winner, as in #3 above.

5.  International entries are welcome - if Amazon ships to you, you can enter!

6.  By entering, you certify that you're at least 18 years old, and that sweepstakes are legal in your jurisdiction.

But that is not all, said the Cat in the Hat - no, that is not all!  Even if you don't win the book, you can still get a bona-fide shout-out.  Please include the URL of your blog or social media account in your comment if you'd like me to link back to you.  If I use your suggestion for a future GrammatiCats post, I'll make sure you get the credit!

And as always, cat pics are always welcome: see the GrammatiCats FAQ to find out how your favorite furry friend can be shamed immortalized forever as a champion of literacy!

(Speaking of which: many thanks to today's quasi-GrammatiCat, Éowyn, and her pet human, Dani F.!)

This sentence rocks.