Hi all! To kick off my summer blogging extravaganza*, I decided to have a contest! But what to do and what to give away... I have no book of my own to give away yet. I have no highly-anticipated ARCs lying around at the moment (in fact, I think every ARC I have now has a corresponding 'real book'). So I've been thinking long & hard (as much as possible w/ sinus issues & a head cold) about what to do.
So here's the deal. I want to know about the book(s) that made you a reader or a writer. In return, I'll give away the first two books in the first two published series' by my biggest writerly-influences.
Between the ages of five and eighteen I moved exactly once, and that was to the other side of town. So let's just say that moving four hours away to go to college was... a bit of a shock. I sorta retreated into myself, but, for company, I brought along a friend named Harry.
Back up a few years- I was often scribbling. I had tons of "storylines" in my head all the time- from mysteries to fantasies to time-slips to slasher films- but I'd never considered writing to be the be-all, end-all of what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a number of things, most music-related, but I'd gone to that particular college thinking I wanted to be an English teacher. Er, English 101 sorta changed that. And so did Harry Potter.
It was actually my third time through the HP series (1-4 at that point) and I found myself thinking more and more about writing. I always just wrote to write. Not necessarily to share it with anyone (god forbid!) or for any reason other than if I didn't I'd go crazy. But This was the kind of thing I wanted to write.
Of course, at the time I discovered this I was also 1) seriously depressed and 2) had decided to move back home and 3) desperately wondering where I'd go next.
Flash-forward to the following fall where, once more, I'm four hours away from home and banging my head against those hideous cinder-block walls because why-oh-why was I so stupid as to do this to myself again?
But this time I was a little better, and though I still read to escape (though with my "Medieval English" class, it, uh, wasn't always easy reading!), but also writing. I worked on a few stories I'd started pre-college and the semester before, but wrote new things as well. I wrote a few short-short stories, which a friend of mine said were good, which was encouraging. Anyway... I was still not always in good shape and one day, anxious for the 5th Harry Potter book & tired of waiting for it, I found myself searching fan-fiction sites and happened on one which purported to only link to "the best Harry Potter fan-fiction." Yeah, yeah, don't believe everything you read on the internet, right?
Well, this stuff was good. I enjoyed a story about what shaped Tom Riddle and then went to the link to some novel-length fics about Draco Malfoy. Yup. Cassandra Clare's stuff.
I don't want to get into the kerfuffle about all that, because honestly? I think it's silly. But I will say I adored the Draco trilogy, and found myself drawn into the plot twists and turns as much as I was with the canon.
Around the same time I started to write two stories I knew would be novel-length. The first about a girl named Jora, in a historic-adventure-story. And for the other? A boy named Arion who, originally, drove a black sports car.
Now, technically, there's a lot more to my story. But as far as I'm concerned, Rowling and Clare will always remain two of my biggest writing influences, the ones whose words really caught me and spun me around to face the "writer" direction.
And for that, I'm giving away a hardcover copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and a paperback copy of City of Bones, which is the first book in Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments trilogy**.
1) You get one entry for commenting here and telling me which book or books really made you think you could be a writer, or, if you're not a writer, what book really turned you into a reader. Or, heck, if you've always been a reader, your favorite book. I'm not picky. :)
2) After following Rule #1 you get one additional entry for each of your blogs/facebook pages/MySpace Accounts/Twitter linking back here. Leave a comment (replying to your original if possible) with your link(s), so I can verify. (If you post on Facebook, you'll need to Friend Me) for verification.
Please do not spam other people's blogs, listservs, whatever- I will not count those entries!
3) For this particular contest, I will ship anywhere, since it's my first. But if shipping winds up astronomical, I'll probably restrict in the future (sorry).
4) I'm leaving this contest open for a week, so please respond by midnight (Eastern time) on Monday, June 8 for a chance to win! Winner will be chosen by The Dane.
*I'm horrible at titles. Seriously. So if anyone can come up with something better than "Summer Blogging Extravaganza" or "Summer Blog-a-thon" I'd be eternally grateful.
**I realize a lot of people already have these books. Especially Harry. But I figured the hardback might be enticing and either way, free books!
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