This Year, For My Birthday...

I got this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

And left BEA and New York with these:

After having one of these:

Last year, the week leading up to my birthday went something like this, and my birthday like this. This year, I spent the week leading up to my birthday at the Teen Author Carnival, with authors I have long admired and authors whose work I am just getting to know and love, with some of my oldest, dearest friends in attendance, and with my epic, incomparable, insanely talented and brilliant brothers there to make faces at me from the audience. I spent it at Book Expo America, where I ran around with said brothers and friends and met so many new friends, too. I spent it with my genius editor and the amazing, creative, and supportive Team of Awesome at Simon & Schuster. I spent it having coffee with four ridiculously intelligent, strong, fun women who love books as much as I do, and at Book Blogger Con, where I could have easily spent hours talking about life, the universe, and everything with so many astute and dedicated bloggers I had heretofore only known on the internet. I spent it running around New York City in five-inch wedge heels, eating far too many Pommes Frites and drinking far too much Thai iced tea. I spent it staying up too late and relying too heavily on caffeine. I spent it nervous and excited and thrilled beyond belief.

I will spend today, my birthday, with some of the people I love most, accompanied by sushi and good DVDs. A perfect day to cap off a damn near perfect week, and I will spend it grateful for the aforementioned things, people, and you.

I Want To Say Some Serious Things.

It’s been two years and ten days since I wrote the first words of THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER.

One year to the day that it sold to Simon & Schuster.

I was in New York this same time last year and really didn’t think life could get any better than knowing that an editor I respected and loved so much wanted my book, and that a publisher I respected and loved so much wanted to pay for it. But this day, this week, this year? Has been impossibly better than the last. Why?

Because of you.

Because you came to the Teen Author Carnival on Monday night. Because you came to listen to my editor speak about MARA DYER on Tuesday. Because you came to my talk with  The Story Siren today. Because you wore T-shirts with a name I made up while standing in every line and going to every panel every single day this week. Because you asked so many people, so many times, for copies of my book.

I’m not sure you can know what that means to me or for me, so I’m going to try to explain it.
When I started writing MARA, I had no idea anyone would want to read it besides my family and friends (who had to). It’s a strange book because, let’s be honest, I’m a strange person. And when publishers said they wanted it, I was uncomprehending. They read my book? They wanted my book? I’m nobody.

I’ve felt like nobody for a long time. I didn’t know anyone in the writing world when I began. I didn’t have anyone to talk to who could possibly understand the anguish of realizing you have to throw away 60,000 words and start almost from scratch. The cool kids sat at a table very, very far away. They still do. I still feel like nobody. I am nobody. I did something I never knew I could and enjoyed it more than I ever imagined I would. I am not special.

But you make me feel special. When I saw you in the audience at the Carnival, the Buzz Panel, and at my talk with Kristi, I felt less nervous because I knew I had friends there. When you email and tweet and comment, this lonely writing thing feels a lot less lonely.

And I don’t really know what to do. I’m deeply uncomfortable with how much you have given me and just how little I’ve been able to give you in return. I want every single one of you to have an ARC of MARA DYER—you can’t imagine how badly. So badly that I’m going to give away all of my remaining copies here until the book is published, even though my mother, my brothers and my friends who critiqued it for me haven’t gotten to see the results of their endless, fathomless support. I’ll do their laundry, or something, I guess.

I know that contests aren't enough, not even close. But I don’t know what else to do except that, and to say thank you. For all of the things you have done and continue to do for me and for my strange little book. I hope that if you have gotten your hands on a copy, you enjoy it. I hope that if you haven’t gotten your hands on a copy, you’ll still want one in four months. I hope that if you are in New York right now, we have met, and I hope that if we haven’t, we will tomorrow, or Friday (I’ll be here, doing this). And if we don't meet here, you better believe I hope we meet at ALA or NCTE, two other places I'm definitely going to be this year.

But most of all, I hope you know how much I appreciate you. If I could thank you every second of every minute of every hour of every day, it still wouldn’t be enough.

MARA DYER, The Story Siren, And...ME!

So, yeah, last month was kind of rough. But a lot of really GREAT things have happened too!

• MARA DYER is now on 3123 Goodreads shelves. WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE? I want to buy you all a Coke.
• You guys raised $580 for storm victims by bidding on Mara Dyer. I…can’t even.
• People who are not employed by Simon & Schuster or related to me by blood or marriage have begun to read MARA DYER, and have emailed/posted/tweeted/updated and said really, really nice things about it. These emails/posts/tweets/updates have brightened my otherwise meat-boiling and canine urine-sampling filled days. In other words, I would not be sad if they kept coming. Not at all.

And to save the best for last?

*~*I AM TAKING OVER THE STORY SIREN TODAY. *~*

Because I am doing an epic, epic BEA 2011 event with her, one week from today. That's right. Just us. And you, I hope.  Curious? You can read about on her lovely blog. In other words, clicky clicky.

Oh, I almost forgot! My ARCs arrived while I was away for Passover.  Which means—CONTEST!

Here’s how you enter:

You tell me you want one in the comments. I enter you to get one.

That’s it! That’s all you have to do to enter!

But if you want EXTRA entries, then here are some ways you can get them:

1) By posting the MARA DYER cover and description on your blog or Facebook (must include link back to the blog and to pre-order to count). This get's you TWO entries for each place that you post it. Like so:

- If you post it on Facebook, that's TWO entries.
- If you post it on Blogger, that's TWO entries.
- If you post it on Blogger and Facebook, that's FOUR entries.
- If you post it on your group Blogger and Facebook and your personal LiveJournal (for example), that's SIX entries.

You can cut and paste the html at the bottom of this post into Blogger for easyness. We like it easy on this here blog. That said, don't just go invent 10,000 blog personas for the purpose of this contest. That's sneaky.

2) Another way to enter: changing your Facebook or Twitter or Livejournal default profile picture to the MARA DYER cover for the  contest's duration. One entry for each of those changed, like so:

- Twitter avatar: one entry
- Facebook profile picture: one entry
- Livejournal profile picture: one entry
- Twitter avatar AND Facebook AND Livejournal: three entries!

I am quite partial to this manner of entry, because I love my cover so much. And it would be happy-making to see it elsewhere on the internets from now until my birthday (keep reading). You've gotta keep the picture up until tallying time, though. That means if you're going to link me to Facebook, I must be able to see it. Some peeps have their Facebooks default pictures set to private, which makes it hard to check, and if I can't check, I can't enter you. And that would be sad. But one surefire way to make sure I can see it is to "Like" Mara Dyer on Facebook and post on the wall. That way, I'll be SURE to see it. What should you post? Anything you damn well please.

3) Another way to enter? By posting a link to the contest on your Twitter/Facebook/Whatever account. Then link back here in the comments so that I can see the Tweet. Here's how to do it for Twitter: click on the time of your status message on Twitter, and it will shoot directly to that one and only status message. Presto! One entry per social networking link thing, as above. 

But it will all be for naught if you don't comment HERE with LINKS for your various and sundry entries. So be sure to do that, okay? Because I want you to win like whoa.

If there's another social networking platform you want to use (Tumblr! Digg! Whateverelseyoucrazykidsareusingthesedays!), ask yourself whether or not it's going to get the MARA DYER cover and description out into the world. If you have lots of Tumblr people and are active? It counts. If you just made a Tumblr for this contest? Then not so much.

Contest is international, as always!

Deadline: May 31st, 2011, which just also happens to be my birthday. Winners WILL be announced on June 2nd. Winners will be chosen via the handy dandy random number generator thingie, and ARCs will be mailed on Friday, June 3rd.

And now, for the code. This is what will appear (I hope) when you copy and paste the text from the box into a blog post:

Mara Dyer doesn't think life can get any stranger than waking up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there.

It can.

She believes there must be more to the accident she can't remember that killed her friends and left her mysteriously unharmed.

There is.

She doesn't believe that after everything she's been through, she can fall in love.

She's wrong.  

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer hits stores everywhere 9.27.11. Pre-order your copy here. Download the widget here. Enter to win an Advanced Reader’s Copy here.


<br /><img style="visibility:hidden;width:0px;height:0px;" border=0 width=0 height=0 src="http://c.gigcount.com/wildfire/IMP/CXNID=2000002.0NXC/bT*xJmx*PTEzMDU1MTgyMzYxODMmcHQ9MTMwNTUxODI*NTE3NyZwPTE2MzAzMTImZD1NYXJhJTIwRHllciZnPTImbz*2ODZkMDJj/YmNmZjg*YjcyYThkODUwNjEyZTYzYzUyYSZvZj*w.gif" /><object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,28,0" width="300" height="450"><param name="movie" value="http://go.thesyn.com/maradyer/maradyer.swf" /><br /><param name="quality" value="high" /><br /><embed src="http://go.thesyn.com/maradyer/maradyer.swf" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="300" height="450" align="right" FlashVars="gig_lt=1305518236183&gig_pt=1305518245177&gig_g=2"></embed> <param name="FlashVars" value="gig_lt=1305518236183&gig_pt=1305518245177&gig_g=2" /><br /></object><br /><br />Mara Dyer doesn't think life can get any stranger than waking up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there.<br /><br />It can.<br /><br />She believes there must be more to the accident she can't remember that killed her friends and left her mysteriously unharmed.<br /><br />There is.<br /><br />She doesn't believe that after everything she's been through, she can fall in love.<br /><br />She's wrong.<br /><br /><strong><i>The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer</strong></i> hits stores everywhere 9.27.11. <strong>Pre-order</strong> your copy <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Unbecoming-Mara-Dyer-Michelle-Hodkin/dp/1442421762%3FSubscriptionId%3DAKIAJBDF5XQBATGDX4VQ%26tag%3Dspea06-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D1442421762">here</a>. <strong>Download</strong> the widget <a href="http://www.maradyer.com/">here</a>. <strong>Enter</strong> to win an Advanced Reader’s Copy <a href="http://michellehodkin.blogspot.com/">here</a>.<br /><br />

(FYI, depending on your blogger template, you may have to tweak it afterwards in the “Compose” section. IDK. This was hard to figure out, and MAJOR THANKS to the ever-awesome Beth Revis and Help Desk for making it work as much as it does). 

And away we go.

I'm still not back, but...

here's what I've been doing while I've been away from you, in order of occurrence:


- Ate a lot of matzah
- Watched my Macbook Pro crash
- Panicked after said crash
- Braved the Aventura Apple store to fix said crash
- Had a new hard drive installed
- Shared a room with a 12 and 5 year old
- Feigned ignorance while said 12 year old peeked at MARA DYER
- Watched THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT with my brother
- Watched THE STRANGERS
- Rented and did not watch THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS
- Failed to return any of those movies on time, resulting in $12.10 in late fees
- Waited 1.5 hours for post-Pesach kosher sushi
- Acquired two new nicknames (Nedry and Freaky Black Witch, but that’s another post)
- Encountered someone I hadn’t seen since 10th grade.
- Bought and read Bossypants, instead of the other 15 books I already owned and had with me.
- Had a near death experience on the way back home (5mph faster, and that Infiniti would have careened into me, and not the truck)
- Saw my ARCs for the first time (THERE WILL BE A CONTEST!)
- Realized upon arriving home that my own “drag and drop” from my shiny red external hard drive did not restore my Scrivener files, including MARA 2.
- FREAKED THE EFF OUT.
- Took Macbook Pro back to the Apple store and sat there while the geniuses worked their magic (MARA 2 is safe!)
- Realized that I had to pack several hours of continuing legal education credits into the next few weeks before I leave town AGAIN
- Began trying to accumulate said credits.
- Took time off from accumulating said credits to deal with Maggie’s bout of acute pancreatitis, for which I a) got up with her every hour to monitor vomiting, b) collected urine samples (and undigested raw meat vomit samples! Yum!), c) made 3 trips to the vet d) hospitalized her so she could receive an IV and lots of drugs with hard to pronounce names.
- Finally got the pancreatitis under control by a) cooking her white meat b) feeding her 4 small meals of half a cup of boneless skinless organic chicken breasts for 2 days, c) collected another urine sample, only to have Maggie seize from a lowered dosage of her epilepsy medication since one of them can reignite the pancreatitis.
- Used ocular compression to shorten the seizure
- Waited for the vet to call me back after her consult with the neurologist
- Found out that the website for one of the law courses registered me for the wrong one
- Called website to dispute the charge
- Emailed website to dispute the charge
- After not receiving a response, called bank to dispute the charge
- Scheduled more of the classes for next week
- Booked the pet sitter for next week’s dates
- Ate nothing but granola bars and instant soup during all of this
- Was informed that the veterinarian and new neurologist I have never seen want to switch Maggie to a "new" human epilepsy drug that has to be administered orally every 8 hours.
- Freaked out and called the old neurologist we haven’t seen in 7 years for a second opinion (new drugs make me nervous)
- Discovered that my water heater was leaking through the laundry room floor into the crawl space.
- Cried
- Collapsed in a pile of dirty laundry in my leaky house that smells like boiled chicken.

Here is what I did not do:
- Respond to email
- Respond to twitter @s
- Respond to phone calls
- Watch the royal wedding :(

In light of this:
- If you are one of the 783 people to whom I owe an email, I will respond to you before BEA.
- If you are one of the 241 people who have Tweeted at me since April 18th, I will respond to you before BEA.
- If you are one of the 26 people who have left me a voicemail since before Passover, I will call you back before BEA.
- If you have wanted to be my friend on Facebook or Goodreads, I promise we’ll be friends by BEA.

Speaking of BEA:
I will be there with bells on! (Not really)
With Mara (really!)
Where can you find me?

That post is coming soon (before BEA, I swear).

In the meantime! You can snag an ARC of MARA DYER thanks to the wonderful Cindy of Books Complete Me and the incredible writers who organized the Help Write Now auction! I sweetened the pie by offering up an inscription, a quote from the super secret sequel, and something that I am absolutely, unequivocally going to regret. Check the link to find out what. Auction ends Monday at 10PM!

[Note—I’m still not back, because of aforementioned insanity—so if I don’t respond to comments or emails or Twitter @s subsequent to this posting, it isn’t because I don’t love you—it’s because I’ve returned to boiling chicken, collecting canine urine samples, stopping leaks, fighting with banks, stuck in internet-less classrooms, and/or chauffeuring Maggie to and from appointments. Please bear with me-when I'm done with that shiz, I'll shout it from the rooftops! Good thoughts for Maggie would be very much appreciated, btw. And happy Mothers Day!]