Jeri Smith-Ready

Blogtoberfest Day 21 - Carrie Jones

The winner of Melissa Walker's Lovestruck Summer is...Marie Carlson!

Apologies for the slight schedule change, but Sunday found us at the vet ER with a sick Misha cat (he is home and doing well, don't worry!), so I didn't have time to post Rachel Vincent's blog at a decent hour. Rachel has graciously agreed to do her guest blog this coming Saturday instead, so she'll be closing out our Blogtoberfest.

I can't believe it's almost over! But there are still six open drawings, plus five more to come, including Jennifer Echols (tomorrow), PC Cast (Thursday), me (Friday) and Rachel on Saturday. And then--AND THEN, the grand prize, featuring over $300 worth of YA novels (i.e., the books the authors are giving away).

But first! Today's Blogtoberguest is Carrie Jones, author of several YA books, including 2008's Need (which I shamelessly gushed over last year when I interviewed Carrie). The sequel, Captivate, will be coming out in January 2010. She'll be giving away an Advance Review Copy of Captivate right here.

Carrie recently announced that her publisher has bought two more books in this series. Hooray for pixies! No, wait, pixies are evil. But hooray for books about pixies!

Carrie starts off her post from the point of view of Zara, the heroine of Need and Captivate:


TOP TEN REASONS TO GO TRICK OR TREATING WITH A WEREWOLF

1. Canines aren’t supposed to eat chocolate, so you get all the treats.

2. If you get lost in the woods you don’t have to worry about the Big Bad Wolf coming because you are already with the sexy, hot wolf.

3. He wags his tail in both human and wolf form.

4. He doesn’t mind if you wag your tail either.

5. He runs around naked.

6. He isn’t afraid to howl.

7. Did I mention the whole dogs/wolves-no-chocolate thing?

8. He’s really good at begging at the door.

9. He doesn’t mind if you drool, because let’s face it: he drools too.

10. Body heat.


And now a bit from Carrie herself...



HORRIBLE HALLOWEEN SOB STORY FROM CARRIE’S PAST

I grew up in Bedford, NH. I was the poor kid. This was really super obvious on Halloween. Actually, it was super obvious all year because people would always be like, “Do you live in that creepy brown house on the hill?”

And I was too stupid to lie so I’d always go, “Um….yes.”

Everyone else had clothes from The Gap. Everyone else had cable. Everyone else had a computer. I had a word processor. I had no cable for a really long time. I had clothes from Kmart and eventually the thrift store, because I could at least be sort of cool if I shopped there because it seemed like a choice, you know?

So, I was the quiet girl with the K-Mart clothes with the creepy brown ranch house in a town of colonial houses in cute subdivisions. OH! And my dad was a truck driver. Everyone else’s dad worked for Digital or designed space shuttle parts for NASA.

Anways, I wanted to LOVE Halloween. I wanted to have one of those awesome frilly costumes. I wanted to be a princess or a fairy or a deck of cards or something cool. But, my mom who is awesome is not very crafty. She doesn’t know how to work a glue gun. And we were poor.

So every year I was the same thing.

This thing was not a fairy princess.

This thing was not a deck of cards.

This thing was not a cat or a pumpkin or a sexy she-devil.

This thing was a private investigator. Year after year I would wear my mom’s trench coat and my dad’s dorky brown hat with the feather in it and be a private investigator. And every year nobody knew what I was. Don’t get me wrong. People would guess….

You’re a person on a rainy day….

You’re a teacher….

You’re someone in a trench coat…

But my favorite guess? Yeah, that one was golden. It was announced by Scott Quinn during our school’s Halloween parade where each class would do a circuit around the perimeter of the gym and the other classes would watch.

What did Scott Quinn yell?

You’re a flasher! Carrie’s a flasher!

Yeah. It scared me. Just a bit.


To enter to win a signed ARC of Captivate, leave a comment below. And remember, each comment automatically enters you in the drawing for the grand prize package: all 25 books!

For complete rules, read the introductory post.

Deadline for entry: Tuesday, November 3, 11:59pm Eastern. NOTE: THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED. The winner is Bella!

Sydney Salter and My Big Nose and Other Natural Disasters
Christine Marciniak and When Mike Kissed Emma
Tricia Mills and Heartbreak River
Simone Elkeles and Perfect Chemistry
Maggie Stiefvater and Ballad
Stephanie Kuehnert and Ballads of Suburbia (believe it or not, I didn't intentionally book these two similarly-titled-but-way-different novels back-to-back--just got lucky)

Thanks so much to Carrie for reminding us why we adore her!

Labels: Blogtoberfest, Contests, guests

• posted by Jeri @ 9:00 AM
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