The Midnight Post (3)

"Your midnight YA snack. (If you ate authors.)"

HAPPY RELEASE DAY:

• Enclave by Ann Aguirre {my review} -- 4.5 stars. Awesome book! As for the trailer, I like it, but that's really not how I imagined Fade, who I envisioned lankier and with much darker hair. But the Freaks are delightfully freaky-looking, and I don't know if I'm the only one here, but I had a Gollum from LOTR moment at 0:45. :o

• The Gathering by Kelley Armstrong -- it sounds cliche, but I've heard awesome things about it... so I just may have to buy myself a copy. And the trailer is very nicely done.

• In the Shadow of the Lamp by Susanne Dunlap {guest post} • {contest} -- review coming soon

• My Unfair Godmother by Janette Rallison -- I read and reviewed one of her other YA books, Just One Wish, back in 2009, and she has such an affinity for cuteness! Check out the quirky cover.

• What Comes After by Steve Watkins

• Insight by Diana Greenwood


CONTESTS:

• This week is Kimberly Derting's iClue. Bring yourself up-to-speed on her iClue page, and participate for a chance to win an iPod Touch. (Confused or intimidated by iClue? Lisa and Laura post 4 simple steps.)


• To countdown to the May 3rd release of her debut novel Moonglass, Jessi Kirby is holding weekly giveaways on her blog, with unique prizes that correspond to her various sources of inspiration. This week's contest is for a snazzy Lifeguard Prize Pack, complete with a Crystal Cove T-shirt, aviators, and more!


• Jennifer Laurens is giving away a Heaven Ab-so-lute-ly T-shirt, along with one of her books of your choice. Ends this Friday.


• Kody Keplinger is holding a contest for Leah Clifford's A Touch in Mortal. Just head over there, spread the word, and comment with the craziest/coolest thing you've done with/to your hair! Mine is highlighting it purple in ninth grade. ;)

• Lisa DesRochers, author of Personal Demons, is offering a chance to win a signed ARC of Original Sins (the sequel to PD) and a signed copy of Demonglass by Rachel Hawkins. Open internationally, and enter by April 15th, noon PST.


BOOKISH NEWS:

• On April 8th, Kat Zhang posted about her 3-book deal from HarperCollins for Hybrid, which I'm hoping will make for another amazing dystopian read in the future:

HYBRID is YA novel about a girl battling for her right to survive in a world where two souls are born into each body and one is doomed to disappear.

• Not exactly YA, but Simon & Schuster has confirmed that they will be publishing Steve Job's biography iSteve: A Book of Jobs in early 2012, aka -insert witty title-. More info here.


POSTS OF AWESOME:

• To celebrate the 90 days until release, Maggie Stiefvater posted a video of her playing a little teaser to Forever -- in music form! I'll spare you my wild guesses as to what happens, but Maggie plays piano beautifully and makes adorable faces. And, gosh, she has a STEINWAY. *jealousy*

• Karston Knight, author of Wildefire (releases July 26th from S&S), never fails to amuse me, and his recent post Woodpeckers, Mullets, and Woodpeckers with Mullets continues to trend. Can I say Karston Knight would make a great conspiracy theorist?

• Paranormalcy author Kierston White reveals the secret to writing a bestseller. Collective gasp, anyone?

• Carrie Harris, upcoming debut author of Bad Taste in Boys, briefly mentions the importance of having one or two memorable, physical details to a character. Her anecdote brought a quick smile to my face. :)

balloons make me think spring // source unknown

Harlequin's Calling Girls 13-17!

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Whew, I just got back from NYC this morning and read until 4:30AM. So I'm way too tired right now to do anything legit (I'll post pictures and my review of Other by Karen Kincy soon). On the bright side, I finished a number of books including The Hunger Games, which I just bought in paperback. AND IT IS AMAZING. I don't know how I survived so long without reading it. I'm definitely going out and buying Catching Fire now. And if you haven't read it yet, READ IT! :D /end rave

Moving on to real news, I received an email today from Cecilia about the Harlequin Teen Panel. I looked into this over half a year ago but it was full - unfortunately. But now it's open again to new members, so what are you waiting for? Free books, input on book campaigns, and more! I'm a huge fan of The Iron King by Julie Kagawa, and I'm signing up as I type. Harlequin's also published great books such as The Soul Screamer series by Rachel Vincent and Intertwined by Gena Showalter, so if you're: 1) a girl, 2) 13-17 years old, and 3) live in the United States, definitely check this out!

Here's the message from Cecilia:

How to Join: We are looking for girls from age 13 to 17 who live in the USA and who love to read young adult fiction books. We do need your parent’s consent—it’s a legal thing. Visit HarlequinTeenPanel.com to find out more about the Harlequin Teen Panel and how to join.

What do you do as a member? You’ll be contacted at least once a month via email with a survey or discussion about books and other topics. You should also know that we created our panel for market research only, which means I’m not going to sell you anything--ever--I’m only interested in getting your honest opinions.

Here’s what some of the members of the Harlequin Teen Panel have to say:

“I love to read; this is a great way to read books before they come out or even influence them” – Harlequin Teen Panelist

“So far I love being one of your members. The books are great and I have been sharing with my friends. They would also love to join.” – Harlequin Teen Panelist

Are you interested? Visit HarlequinTeenPanel.com/blog to join now!

Author Contests & News

In lieu of The Weekly Debate, I decided to do a post about awesome author contests and news in the past week because, I admit it, I hardly ever talk about book news. I hope this post is of some use! :)

CONTESTS

To celebrate her new book trailer for The Dark Divine, Bree Despain is hosting a book-bag contest (international) with tons of awesome ARCs and the possible giveaway of an ARC of the sequel The Lost Saints and a 16GB iPad. The more views her trailer gets, the larger the prize. Here's the trailer, which is a pretty epic 31 seconds:

Courtney Allison Moulton is offering one of the first ARCs of Angelfire (international) - signed! There will also be second and third place winners who will win a free book or two.

Elizabeth Scott is giving away FIVE sets of ah-mazing Simon & Schuster books. Including Fallout by Ellen Hopkins and a signed copy of The Unwritten Rule. S&S is also throwing in an extra ARC and a tote bag, so what are you waiting for?

Lisa Desrochers just started her July contest. Enter for a chance to win a signed ARC of Personal Demons or some other great July debut book (ie. Other, The Ghost and the Goth).

Shari Maurer is giving away a copy of her newly released book Change of Heart and a Class of 2k10 BEA shirt.

Ally Condie is offering US readers a chance to win a signed ARC of her debut book, Matched (US only).

Rebecca Maizel is giving away a signed ARC of Infinite Days. There have been glowing reviews of this one, so don't miss out!

Andrea Cremer is asking readers to ask HER questions. She'll choose five questions to answer in next Tuesday's post and those FIVE askers will receive an ARC of Nightshade each.

NEWS

Tera Lynn Childs, author of Forgive My Fins, announced that bloggers' comments during the Fin Fest led to her donation of $174.75 to Oceana. Yay to saving the planet!

Kimberly Derting revealed the GORGEOUS cover of Desires of the Dead, the sequel to The Body Finder, on Tuesday.

Michelle Zink is offering a free bookplate to anyone who owns or buys a copy of Prophecy of the Sisters in paperback. She also posted the Guardian of The Gate trailer.

Rachel Vincent revealed the UK covers for her Soul Screamer series. Personally, I think they're stunning and wish we had them in the US. Though I don't really like that they all have "Twilight fans will love it" printed in big font... She also hinted that the US cover for My Soul to Steal will be revealed soon.

NOTEWORTHY POSTS

Anastasia Hopcus, author of Shadow Hills, posted "An Ode to the Awesomeness of Bloggers!" <3333

Cynthia Hand, author of Unearthly, talks about why she doesn't like angels being seen as the "new vampire." View her post "Hot Topic".

Maggie Stiefvater posted "Death by Ham: Playing the Odds of Getting Published," on why the chances of getting published isn't the problem - the quality of the book is. (Pss: She also has her Shiver website up, where you can download the theme songs for Shiver and Linger for free!)

Tessa Gratton posted "Guts of a Writer". Feeling depressed with your WIP/queries/etc.? This will be the post to cheer you on.

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If Santa Ever Existed, He's Dead Now

Ahh, I have so many reviews I need to do! But in the meatime, I found this article today at Expand Your Mind, and wanted to share since the holidays are coming up. Definitely cute, though it's a pretty sad conclusion, if I do say so myself. :( (And I'll try to put up some of my own thoughts some time soon!)

"DOES SANTA CLAUS EXIST?:
by Joel Potischman and Bruce Handy

1. No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.

2. There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total -- 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each.

3. Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding, etc.

This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second -- a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

4. The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload -- not even counting the weight of the sleigh -- to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison, this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.

5. 353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance -- this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft's re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

In conclusion, it seems highly unlikely that Santa Claus does, or ever, existed. Although, if Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now.

Sorry Santa lovers, but according to science, Santa should be ashes now."

Delayed B&N Nook - An e-reader for Christmas?

Well, I now know I am definitely not pre-ordering one of these. In case you haven't heard, Barnes and Noble recently announced their Nook, an e-reader with 3G network and a huge competitor against Amazon's Kindle. These new e-readers were supposed to be released today, but now Barnes and Noble is pushing back the release date to December 7 due to demand. And if you pre-order a Nook from now onwards, you won't be getting on until January 11... what?! A major step down for the Nook because it won't be coming out in time for the holidays, and a major boost for the Kindle.

I'm personally still waiting to jump onto this bandwagon. I'm having a hard time giving up the feeling (and smell! my family calls me weird) of a tanglible, paper book. A huge jump forward with the Nook's new borrowing to other friends service, but I'm not quite convinced. Maybe a hundred dollars down would convince me, in the "cheap" category, and many other ordinary, not so book-enthusaistic people, but for now I'm holding out until I see something as gorgeous as the Nook, but for a lower price. And 2010 is definitely looking to be the year for the e-reader!

Companies to look out for in 2010:

-- > confirmed e-readers from: Asus, PaperLogic, Netronix, Entourage, Samsung
-- > suspected e-readers from: Apple, Fujitsu, Dell, MSI, Amazon (Kindle 3 and DX 2??)

Anyways, anyone already pre-ordered a Nook (lucky!) or planning to order one despite the delay? Any thoughts on getting a e-reader for Christmas or next year?

Check It Out: Fallen Princesses

I saw these photos of Disney princesses in modern times over at Tales Of Whimsy, and they were so cute I had to share! Juju always manages to post engaging topics, so check her blog out! :)

Anyways, here they are. I would think, hopefully, you guys know all of the princesses, but I'll put captions just in case. If you like these photos, you can find more of the like over at JPG: Stories: Fallen Princesses as well as interesting subtitles that explain the stories behind the pictures. These were taken by Dina Goldstein, and, well, what can I say? She's pure awesome.

Ariel

Cinderella

Sleeping Beauty

I absolutely love the Ariel and Cinderella one, and I hope you like the photos too!