Posts Tagged ‘harpercollins’

Here it is…the long-awaited announcement of Heroine Love prizes and schedule!

Join me for a guest blog and daily drawings weekdays from February 1-17 and win…

• A signed copy of The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown
• A feminist superpack containing The Vagina Monologues and The Purity Myth
• A limited-edition Jane Eyre print and audiobook copies of Jane Slayre and Wuthering Heights
• A gorgeous Anne of Green Gable tote containing strong-woman audio titles When Janey Comes Marching Home, The Patience Stone, and The Middle Place
• Copies of The Homesteader (Laura Ingalls Wilder newsletter) and a pack of three HarperCollins classics (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Their Eyes Were Watching God)
• An audiobook of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
• An autographed audiobook of Chandra Hoffman’s Chosen
• An autographed copy of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind by Ellen F. Brown and John Wiley, Jr.
• Two prairie prize packs featuring On The Way Home and the Little House Cookbook
• The first three books in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander trilogy
• A Sense and Sensibility celebration containing S&S note cards and an audiobook of the S&S-based Three Weissmans of Westport
• A copy of Husband and Wife by Leah Stewart
• A hardcover White’s Press edition of Pride and Prejudice

One winner will be chosen per day, and every entry will be pooled for a grand prize drawing on February 18 for a Grand Prize Pack including:

• An autographed print and audio edition of The Heroine’s Bookshelf…
• a copy of Blackstone Audio’s brand-new Pride and Prejudice narration…
• a spankin’-new silver 2g iPod Shuffle (for your audio pleasure), and
• …a $50 gift certificate to your local indie bookstore!*

Guest bloggers include:

Six days until Heroine Love and the prizes have started rolling in!

This is a mere sample of the wonderful prizes donated by me, my amazing guest bloggers, my venerable publisher HarperCollins and the very generous and fabulous Blackstone Audio.

And physical and audio books aren’t the only literary treats to come…not by a long shot.

What can you do to spread the heroine love?

Share with your friends on Facebook (just go to the event, click “I’m attending,” and then click “Share”)

Tell your friends on Twitter with this shortened link: http://ow.ly/3LlqA

Download pretty gifs, logos and more to share with friends on your blog or website.

Invite friends to Heroine Love on Goodreads!

Okay, back to writing, scheming, and planning to make this the best event ever.

I think every author suffers from Fraud Syndrome at some point.  Symptoms include pinching self, wondering if anyone will find out that on the inside you’re a disastrous, precarious and insecure wreck even though you have it semi-together professionally.  Well, at least I hope every author does, because otherwise I just outed myself.

Still, sometimes news arrives to sweeten the pot.  Yesterday I found out that Italian rights to The Heroine’s Bookshelf have been sold to Orme!

As I plot the Italian adventures of a book that used to be just me and a blinking cursor, I’ve been keeping (very) busy.  I guest blogged for Jesaka Long on roller derby and work/writing balance, and I even contributed a Little Women-themed page to GalleyCat’s World’s Longest Literary Remix.

What’s keeping your mind in the good life these days?

So…I got my cover yesterday.  *runs around in circles like a crazy woman*  It is PERFECT.  And it is all the more perfect because of its evolution.

Let’s go back to some time last year…my editor asked me if I had any ideas for covers and I faltered.  I told her I LOVE the Penguin Classics series even though the silhouettes aren’t quite representative of the stories within.  She agreed that they’re great and instructed the designer to do girly, with a hint of nostalgia.  The first draft is to your left (click for larger version):

As you can see, the color and aging are TO DIE FOR.  But after talking to my agent, I wondered if it wasn’t a bit too nostalgic.  Part of the point of The Heroine’s Bookshelf is that these books are relevant today, and we worried that it might be skewing a bit to the über-reflective side without meaning to.

Luckily, my editor is a peach.  She not only listened to our reservations, but actively solicited our feedback.

Cue more waiting.  Much more waiting.  I began to dread the worst (though no news apparently is good news…)  And then, yesterday, this arrived in my inbox (lower right; click for swoonworthy detail):

Is it not just to die for?  I love the fact that it’s girly without a trace of pink…that the linen texture evokes nostalgia while somehow seeming fresh in its contemporary silhouette frame.  I love the colors and how they’ll pop off the shelf.  I LOVE IT.  My agent immediately wrote and asked if I liked it…I wrote back “I am sitting here clapping my hands and crying.  So…yes.”

It’s so interesting to see the ways in which the second cover retained some of the feel of the original one, including the blue and nostalgic detail, while coming completely into the now.

I’ve imagined how my name would look on the cover of my first book since I was old enough to read…now thanks to my extremely able and efficient team at Harper and to the extremely talented Christine Van Bree, my wildest dreams have been satisfied and surpassed.  After hearing so many horror stories of writers whose covers have felt like a violation or a messy afterthought, I feel doubly blessed…and I hope my readers will like it as much as I do.

Just got word that I can announce something that’s put an extra spring in my step for about a week now.  The Heroine’s Bookshelf has sold in South Korea!

It will be translated and published by Minumin at some point (I’m thinking in 2010) and I’ll have the pleasure of seeing my book in an alphabet and language I have no hope of ever understanding!  Naturally, I am over the moon…and very grateful to the fabulous and hard-working people at HarperCollins who made the sale.

There’s still time to enter the Lorelei King Audiobook Giveaway…in fact, I’d like to beg you to do so!  Details below:

Lorelei King Tallgrass Contest

To celebrate my recent interview with audiobook superstar Lorelei King and to give readers access to a great heroine book, I’m giving away one copy of Lorelei’s Audy and Audiophile Award-winning reading of Sandra Dallas’s Tallgrass, a poignant story of the Japanese-American internment of the 1940s as told through the eyes of a young girl.  Here’s how to enter:  click here and leave a comment on this blog post telling who you’d have voice your favorite heroine (voice actress, actress, friend, mom…just make sure to identify her!) and why.  Comment with a link to your tweet, blog post, or Facebook “share with friends” about the contest and I’ll enter you twice! I’ll choose the winner at random at close of business this Friday, April 2.  Contest is open to United States, Canadian, and U.K. residents only.  Good luck!