SPIRIT DANCES, Book Six of the Walker Papers, is out in just a couple of weeks! In celebration, I’m giving away three copies here on the blog. Just leave a comment and I’ll draw names from a hat on Monday, March 7th, and do my best to get the winners’ copies in the mail the very next day!
Good luck to you!
Drive Thru RPG has gotten together with approximately one zillion game designers and they’re offering an unbeatable package: Donate $20 to Doctors Without Borders through them, and get $1400 worth of RPG downloads in exchange.
Furthermore, DTRPG are matching $5 and $10 donations, if you can’t afford the $20 download donation. The fundraising drive has brought in a mind-boggling $93,500 so far (I don’t know if that includes the matching funds or not, but I’m not sure it matters: it’s a hell of a lot of money), and I’m sort of expecting it’ll break $100K before morning.
If you’re at all inclined to donate through them, let me sweeten the pot just a little: I will send advanced copies of DEMON HUNTS, book 5 of the Walker Papers, to the first dozen people who donate and email me their receipt (to cemurphyauthor@gmail.com).
For a time frame, I expect to get copies of DEMON HUNTS around mid-April, so if that’s correct you’d be getting the book about a month, perhaps slightly more, before it comes out in the bookstores.
Edited to add: A dozen people have now emailed me their receipts for their donations to Doctors Without Borders via Drive Thru RPG. In fact, a few more than a dozen have emailed me, so I will throw in a baker’s dozenth book.
The 13th book will be a name drawn from a hat after DTRPG shut down their fundraising efforts, so if you decide to donate through them, go ahead and email me the receipt and I’ll put your name into the hat.
You guys are all extremely, extremely cool. Thank you for participating in this. *beams*
There’s one last chance to win an early copy of WALKING DEAD over at Book Love Affair! Go forth, participate!
I’m curious as to how many readers here picked up the Walker Papers only recently, when the first three were re-released in mass market paperback. Let me know, please!
I didn’t expect 65 of you to respond to the WALKING DEAD give-away opportunity. Heck, I didn’t know 65 of you stopped by this site in a week!
Since I was expecting about, oh, fifteen responses when I said I’d give away one copy of WALKING DEAD, I have decided instead that for your enthusiasm and loyalty and commenty goodness, I will give away three copies instead. I have drawn random numbers from a hat, and the winners are:
NIKKI, April Rose, and Elena!
If you three will please email me your snail mail addresses, I’ll get those into the post for you ASAP. My email address is cemurphyauthor@gmail.com.
I’ve gotten copies of WALKING DEAD, book 4 of the Walker Papers, in the mail. Throw your name in the hat (ie, leave a comment) and next Tuesday I’ll draw a random number and send the corresponding commenter a copy of the book. :)
My first book came out 4 years, 6 weeks ago. Including the comics as one unit, what you see there are 15 books with my name on ‘em.
Today, I am officially impressed with myself.
I have to say this was a great deal of fun for me. Some of the story suggestions were perfectly wonderful, things I wouldn’t have thought of myself but which were terribly obvious as soon as they were suggested. Obviously not everybody can win the anthology, but *many* of these ideas will, I think, end up as the root idea for stories. Thank you all!
The winner is
For some reason this idea really caught me. Possibly because I like the priest in the Negotiator trilogy so much, but somehow there’s just a real romanticism to that idea for me. I actually feel like I could build a book around the idea of a priest dealing with the Old Races, though I’m already terribly torn on *when* I would set that story. Or whether it would have to be a longer story, a series of its own, just trying to deal with the religious and spiritual connotations of the Old Races’ existence, from a Western theology’s point of view. I’m just utterly enamored of this idea!
Other ideas, including exceedingly moderate spoilers, are behind the cut.
The final tally for my two auction items was $375, not enough for me to write a new Walker Papers or Old Races short story, but *more* than enough to prompt a FANTASY MEDLEY give-away. I’ve got one last ARC (advanced reader’s copy, as opposed to the finished version) I can send to someone, so this is your chance.
THE CONTEST: tell me (in no more than 50 words) what Old Races story you would like to see told. It doesn’t have to be something that comes organically from the books; you can just randomly want “a story about the djinn” or something.
THE CAVEAT: I may make off with one or more idea and turn it into a story at some point. :)
THE OTHER CAVEAT: This contest is also running at my main blog at mizkit.com/mizkit.livejournal.com, so it’s possible the winning entry won’t actually show up in *this* comment thread. I will, however, post the winner’s entry at both locations, so everybody’ll know who won and for what story idea.
THE WARNING: I expect there will be spoilers for the Negotiator trilogy in this thread. If you don’t want to be spoiled, stay out of the comments.
THE WINNER: will be the person whose story idea I like best!
THE DEADLINE: the contest will end on June 9th. :)
THE OTHER CONTEST: My agent, the incomparable Jennifer Jackson (who apparently started agenting at the tender age of nine), is celebrating her 16th year of being an agent by running a contest for ARCs and books written by her clients. Go read her instructions carefully and participate! :)
You guys came up with some fantastic casting choices for the Negotiator trilogy. I wish I had about fifteen copies of the anthology to send out, because you did *not* make this an easy choice! I’m going to have to do something cool for the people who participated but didn’t win, because you did such a good job. Maybe I’ll write an Old Races short story just for you guys and not try to publish it anywhere for six months or something.
Overall the best cast, I think, came from Liz McClafferty, who suggested the following:
Margrit Knight – Jasika Nicole
Alban Korund – Josh Holloway
Tony Pulcella- Kirk Acevedo
Eliseo Daisani – Robert Downey Jr.
Vanessa Gray – Winona Ryder
Janx – Johnny Depp
Chelsea Huo – Michelle Yeoh
Grace O’Malley – Katie Sackoff
Malik – Skeet Ulrich
Tariq – Gary Dourdan
Kaimana – Pomaika’i Brown
Cara – Dakota Fanning
Biali – Micky Rourke
Hajnal – Faune Chambers
Ausra – Rashida Jones
Russel Lomax – Gary Sinise
Cameron – Jennifer Garner
Cole – Matt Damon
Sarah – Charlize Theron
Ursula – Kristen Stewart
Kate – Emma Watson
Whew. That was *hard*! I gotta make the next contest easier on *me*!
Only three people entered the TPC give-away contest, but they did a bloody fantastic job. In the end, I’ve chosen the one with my favorite suggestion for Belinda, although some of the other casting ideas were inspired. The winner is Thao Nguyen from Facebook, who gave the following cast for THE QUEEN’S BASTARD:
Belinda – Michelle Trachtenberg
Javier – Kyle Schmid
Lorraine Walter – Tilda Swinton
Eliza Beaulieu – Natalie Portman
Lord Drake – Eric Braeden
Marius Poulin – Henry Cavill
Sacha Asselin – Paul Walker
Sandalia – Orla Brady
Irina – Cate Blanchett
Akilina – Shirley Henderson
Rodrigo – Javier Bardem
Dmitri – Clive Owen
Gondola Boy – Jim Sturgess
The most interesting thing about this contest, for me, is that not one of the actors is somebody I’d thought of when I ‘cast’ this book in my mind–and TQB is about the only book I’ve ever cast anybody for. I *love* the choices people made, but it’s fascinating to see the different ideas!
Also:
I have received in the mail a small box of A FANTASY MEDLEY.
Many people said “Gosh, I could cast the Old Races or the Walker Papers”, and so, because there will be no more Negotiator books, I will give you the opportunity to win a copy of A FANTASY MEDLEY, which has a Janx & Daisani story in it, by casting the Negotiator trilogy. My favorite cast list gets a copy of the anthology. Major characters: Margrit Knight, Alban Korund, Grace O’Malley, Janx, Daisani, Kaimana, Cole, Cameron, Tony. Bonus points for casting any of the following: Margrit’s parents, Chelsea, Russell, Cara, Tariq, Biali, Malik, Ausra, Kate, Ursula, Sarah, Hajnal.
It isn’t necessary to cast all of them. It’s not even necessary to cast most of them. Just have fun with it. :) I’ll close the contest a week from now, at about noon Eastern time on Tuesday April 14th.
I have just received two early copies of THE PRETENDER’S CROWN. It is, in my ever-so-humble opinion, absolutely beautiful. In fact, it’s so pretty it makes me want to re-read it, which isn’t all that usual. :)
So! I have two copies. One must go on my Shelf Of Books I Wrote, but the other, I think, cries out to be sent into the world. So there will be a contest!
I will be the director. You will be the Casting Agents. The book will go to the person who builds what is to my mind the best complete cast for THE QUEEN’S BASTARD. The integral characters, therefore, are Belinda Primrose, Robert Drake, Lorraine Walter, Sandalia de Costa, Javier de Castille, Eliza Beaulieu, Marius Poulin, and Sacha Asselin. Bonus points for also casting Dmitri Leontyev, Rodrigo de Costa, Irina Durova, and Akilina Pankejeff. And I’ll be really impressed if you also cast Viktor, Ilyana and the gondola boy. :)
The parts don’t have to be cast with current actors, I wouldn’t say, or people at their current ages. That makes it more fun, I think. :)
Here’s the catch: I only have the one copy to send out, and this post goes out at mizkit.com, cemurphy.net, mizkit.livejournal.com, Facebook, and Myspace. I expect answers will come in from most of those places, so you might not see the winning entry wherever you actually do your own answering. I will, of course, post the winning entry here.
Let’s see. I’ll choose a winner (EDITED: deadline extended!) at noon EST on Tuesday, April 7.
Have at!