Celebrations and Free Books!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I hope this week you’re eating good food, spending time with people you love, or lending a hand to someone in need. Better yet, I hope you do all three.

Thanksgiving for me is family time. I always look forward to the home-cooked meals, the games, the good conversations, and the laughter. I’m thankful to be part of a family who does all of those things really well.

This year, though, I have a few extra things to be thankful for.

First, I recently won two first place prizes in the Poetry Society of Texas Annual Awards! My mom and I attended their lovely banquet together on November 14th, and I was excited to be called to the microphone twice to read my winning poems. Both pieces—a haiku called “writing with a view” and a humorous series of haiku titled “Get a Cat (or Don’t)”—will be published in PST’s Book of the Year next summer.

Second, last week I hit a pretty big milestone in my writing career. I started sending my middle grade novel to agents! It’s been a long road with a big learning curve, but my book was finally ready to leave the nest. Send a few good thoughts its way at it as it navigates this new part of the writing process.

And, lastly, this little blog, which is almost two years old, reached 10,000 hits this past weekend. Go little blog, go!

It takes courage to send your writing babies out into the world. Whether they’re poem babies, blog babies, or novel babies, each one of them carries a little piece of you with them, and you can’t help but hope that the world will be kind to them. I’m proud of any positive feedback my writing babies get, so I’ve been all smiles this week.

And that’s why I’m in the mood to give away some books! Yea!

As a thank you to those who read my blog and follow me on Facebook and send encouraging emails my way, I’m hosting a book giveaway between now and the end of the year.

Here’s how it works:

Anyone who comments on my blog posts (including this one) OR my public Facebook page posts between now and December 31st will be eligible for a drawing on New Year’s Day. Your name will be counted once per post, so if you comment on this one fifty times, your name will count once. But if I write five posts between now and then end of the year and you comment on all of them, your name will count five times. Get it? On January 1st, I’ll add up all the names, put them in a hat, and draw out three winners, who will get to choose their books in the order they are drawn.

What can you win? Don’t worry, there’s something for everybody. If you’re into horror, you can choose between a copy of Growing Pains, which includes my story, “The Girl in the Attic,” or the latest volume of the Horror Library, which doesn’t include any of my work, but has plenty of cringe-worthy stories within its pages. If poetry is your thing, you have the option of a copy of this year’s di-verse-city, which includes my poem, “Poetry Tumbles,” or the 2016 Texas Poetry Calendar, which is full of beautiful work by talented poets, several of whom I’m lucky to know personally. And if you like children’s lit, you can pick between one of my two favorite books for kids: The Screaming Staircase, the first in the Lockwood & Co. series by Jonathan Stroud, or Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt. So many books to choose from! I hope I made the choice difficult enough. 😉

To receive your book, winners will need to email me their postal address for shipping. I’ll ship anywhere within reason, but if it’s too far away for my budget, I’ll ask you to choose one of the books that has an ebook option. And, of course, you’re welcome to comment on my posts whether you want a book or not. Just let me know if you’d like to be removed from the drawing.

Good luck, and have a wonderful week!