Lisa writes paranormal and fantasy. THE BINDING STONE, the first novel in her Djinn series is now available on Amazon! She would most definitely have a werewolf for a pet if she weren’t allergic.

Check out Lisa’s blog
Follow Lisa on Twitter

Can Cameron find what he’s looking for?
All 16-year-old Cameron wants is to get through high school—and life in general—with a minimum of effort. It’s not a lot to ask. But that’s before he’s given some bad news: he’s sick and he’s going to die. Which totally sucks. Hope arrives in the winged form of Dulcie, a loopy punk angel/possible hallucination with a bad sugar habit. She tells Cam there is a cure—if he’s willing to go in search of it. With the help of a death-obsessed, video-gaming dwarf and a yard gnome, Cam sets off on the mother of all road trips through a twisted America into the heart of what matters most.

Purchase Going Bovine at Amazon
Purchase Going Bovine at IndieBound
View Going Bovine on Goodreads

Lisa’s Craft Pick

On Writing
by Stephen King
Giveaway
Scribner; 10 Anv edition

“Long live the King” hailed “Entertainment Weekly” upon publication of Stephen King’s “On Writing.” Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer’s craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have. King’s advice is grounded in his vivid memories from childhood through his emergence as a writer, from his struggling early career to his widely reported, near-fatal accident in 1999–and how the inextricable link between writing and living spurred his recovery. Brilliantly structured, friendly and inspiring, “On Writing” will empower and entertain everyone who reads it–fans, writers, and anyone who loves a great story well told.

Purchase On Writing at Amazon
Purchase On Writing at IndieBound
View On Writing on Goodreads

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Prize Pack Seventeen: Susan’s Picks

Susan Sipal is a fiction editor and marketing consultant for an independent publisher, and she’s the author of Harry Potter for Writers, a book I stumbled on a couple of years ago and loved. Her essays analyzing the Harry Potter series have been published both in the US and the UK, and she teaches workshops on writing craft.

Susan and I have become friends and critique partners, and because we both love Joseph Campbell and arcane bits of history and mythology, our minds seem to travel the same twisted paths. She has been an invaluable, incredible support for me, and there is no way that I can possibly repay her for the hours and hours of encouragement, editorial insight, and listening-to-Martina-doubt. (Yes, that’s a THING. Ask Jan.)

Check out Susan’s blog

Check out the Harry Potter For Writers blog

Follow Susan on Twitter

How do you like to celebrate a success, Susan?

Ways to celebrate a success — It depends on how large the success, but I usually like to get a new writing tool, anything from a new notebook to my most recent digital voice recorder. Just anything I can use to help me write more…and have more successes.

What do you think makes Young Adult books special for writers and for readers?

I think YA books are so special because, when well done, they let the reader share in a time in life when young people, for the first time, are truly coming into their selves, into their own skin, discovering who they are and what they hope to do in life, who they want to be with. Futures are shaped as YA heroes and heroines take their first steps into adulthood.

Susan’s Fiction Pick


Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
by J.K. Rowling
Giveaway
Scholastic Paperbacks

Harry Potter is midway through his training as a wizard and his coming of age. Harry wants to get away from the pernicious Dursleys and go to the International Quidditch Cup. He wants to find out about the mysterious event that’s supposed to take place at Hogwarts this year, an event involving two other rival schools of magic, and a competition that hasn’t happened for a hundred years. He wants to be a normal, fourteen-year-old wizard. But unfortunately for Harry Potter, he’s not normal – even by wizarding standards. And in his case, different can be deadly.

Purchase Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire at Amazon
Purchase Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire at IndieBound
View Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on Goodreads

Susan’s Craft Pick

Writing the Breakout Novel
by Donald Maass
Giveaway
Writer’s Digest Books; 1 edition

Take your fiction to the next level! Maybe you’re a first-time novelist looking for practical guidance. Maybe you’ve already been published, but your latest effort is stuck in mid-list limbo. Whatever the case may be, author and literary agent Donald Maass can show you how to take your prose to the next level and write a breakout novel – one that rises out of obscurity and hits the best-seller lists.

Maass details the elements that all breakout novels share – regardless of genre – then shows you writing techniques that can make your own books stand out and succeed in a crowded marketplace.

You’ll learn to: establish a powerful and sweeping sense of time and placeweave subplots into the main action for a complex, engrossing storycreate larger-than-life characters that step right off the pageexplore universal themes that will interest a broad audience of readerssustain a high degree of narrative tension from start to finishdevelop an inspired premise that sets your novel apart from the competition Then, using examples from the recent works of several best-selling authors – including novelist Anne Perry – Maass illustrates methods for upping the ante in every aspect of your novel writing. You’ll capture the eye of an agent, generate publisher interest and lay the foundation for a promising career.

Purchase Writing the Breakout Novel at Amazon
Purchase Writing the Breakout Novel at IndieBound
View Writing the Breakout Novel on Goodreads

Prize Pack Eighteen: Elana’s Picks

I honestly can’t think of anyone who works more tirelessly and  enthusiastically on behalf of other writers as Elana Johnson. From the very beginning, here at the blog, she was always the first person to jump into any contest, post, or crazy-next-thing I cluelessly asked her to do. Her e-book, FROM THE QUERY TO THE CALL, is an invaluable resource. And she’s one of the League of Extraordinary Writers, a founding writer on the Querytracker blog, and she helps to organize WriteOnCon.

As if that’s not enough, she’s also the author of the Possession series, which includes POSSESSION, SURRENDER, and ABANDON, and short stories REGRET and RESIST.

Elana wishes she could experience her first kiss again, tell the mean girl where to shove it, and have cool superpowers like reading minds and controlling fire. To fulfill her desires, she writes young adult science fiction and fantasy.

Check out Elana’s website
Follow Elana on Twitter

What’s your favorite way to celebrate a success, Elana? 

Elana’s Fiction Pick


Birthmarked
by Caragh O’Brian
Giveaway
Roaring Brook Press; 1 edition

IN THE ENCLAVE, YOUR SCARS SET YOU APART, and the newly born will change the future.
In the future, in a world baked dry by the harsh sun, there are those who live inside the walled Enclave and those, like sixteen-year-old Gaia Stone, who live outside. Following in her mother’s footsteps Gaia has become a midwife, delivering babies in the world outside the wall and handing a quota over to be “advanced” into the privileged society of the Enclave. Gaia has always believed this is her duty, until the night her mother and father are arrested by the very people they so loyally serve. Now Gaia is forced to question everything she has been taught, but her choice is simple: enter the world of the Enclave to rescue her parents, or die trying.
A stunning adventure brought to life by a memorable heroine, this dystopian debut will have readers racing all the way to the dramatic finish.

Purchase Birthmarked at Amazon
Purchase Birthmarked at IndieBound
View Birthmarked on Goodreads

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Elana’s Craft Pick

Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You”ll Ever Need

by Blake Snyder

Giveaway

Michael Wiese Productions

This ultimate insider’s guide reveals the secrets that none dare admit, told by a show biz veteran who’s proven that you can sell your script if you can save the cat!

Purchase Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You”ll Ever Need at Amazon

Purchase Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You”ll Ever Need at IndieBound

View Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You”ll Ever Need on Goodreads

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Prize Pack Twenty: Stina’s Picks

Stina Lindenblatt is one of the most seriously analytical writers I know. I doubt there is a craft book she hasn’t read ora piece of great YA fiction she hasn’t taken apart to see how it works. And then she is generous enough to share what she learns with the rest of us.

I invariably read Stina’s craft posts with awe!

In addition to juggling motherhood, photography, and a slew of other things, as well as writing YA and NA novels (usually involving emotional damaged characters, chocolate, and running), she blog on her own site and contributes to the Querytracker.net Blog.

Check out Stina’s website
Follow Stina on Twitter

Stina’s Fiction Pick

Lock and Key
by Sarah Dessen
Giveaway
Viking Juvenile

Ruby can take care of herself.
She’s used to counting on no one and answering to nobody. But all of that changes when her mother vanishes and Ruby is sent to live with her older sister, Cora. Now Ruby’s got her own room in a fabulous new house, she’s going to private school, and—for the first time—feeling as if she has a future. Plus, there’s the adorable and sweet boy next door, Nate. Everything should be perfect. So why is Ruby so wary? And why is Nate keeping her at a distance? Ruby soon comes to realize that sometimes, in order to save yourself, you’ve got to reach out to someone else.

Purchase Lock and Key at Amazon
Purchase Lock and Key at IndieBound
View Lock and Key on Goodreads

Stina’s Craft Pick

Editor-Proof Your Writing: 21 Steps to the Clear Prose Publishers and Agents Crave
by Don McNair
Giveaway
Linden Publishing

Veteran editor Don McNair lays out an easy-to-follow and systematic method for clearing up foggy writing—writing that’s full of extra, misused, and overused words—in this guide to producing sparkling copy that attracts readers, agents, editors, and sales. McNair explains the common mistakes made by most writers and shows how eliminating unnecessary words strengthens action, shorten sentences, and makes writing crackle with life. Containing 21 simple, straightforward principles, Editor-Proof Your Writing teaches how to edit weak verb forms, strip away author intrusions, ban redundancies, eliminate foggy phrases, correct passive-voice sentences, slash misused and overused words, and fix other writing mistakes. A superb addition to any writer’s toolkit, this book will not only make writing clearer and more grammatical, it will also make it more concise, entertaining, and appealing to publishers.

Purchase Editor-Proof Your Writing at Amazon
Purchase Editor-Proof Your Writing at IndieBound
View Editor-Proof Your Writing on Goodreads

Prize Pack Twenty-One and Twenty-Two: The Publishing Crawl Picks

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Publishing Crawl is a group of authors and industry professionals (formerly known as Let the Words Flow) who blog about all things writing, publishing, and books! Separately and collectively, I admire their knowledge of craft, their writing, their willingness to share what they know with others, and oh, did I mention their writing? While some of the members are agents and editors, others have written some of my favorite books. Publishing Crawl is like a one-stop shop for brilliance.

Who are the members, you ask? Drool over this list. Go ahead. No one’s looking:

Leigh Bardugo, Erin Bowman, Alexandra Bracken, Susan Dennard, Vanessa Di Gregorio, Julie Eshbaugh, S. Jae Jones (JJ), Amie Kaufman, Biljana Likic, Jordan Hamessley London, Marie Lu, Sarah J. Maas, Jodi Meadows, Rachel Seigel, Joanna Volpe, Kat Zhang

Because there are so many members, and some of them are out on an incredible book tour for a wonderful cause right now, they had a hard time coming up with two books, let alone answers to the questions. So instead, we’re doing two separate prize packs of books for writers. (You will find several books by PubCrawl members scattered through the four days of giveaways, too!)

Prize Pack Twenty-One:

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
by Anne Lamott
Giveaway
Anchor; 1 edition

“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. [It] was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said. ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.'”

With this basic instruction always in mind, Anne Lamott returns to offer us a new gift: a step-by-step guide on how to write and on how to manage the writer’s life. From “Getting Started,’ with “Short Assignments,” through “Shitty First Drafts,” “Character,” “Plot,” “Dialogue.” all the way from “False Starts” to “How Do You Know When You’re Done?” Lamott encourages, instructs, and inspires. She discusses “Writers Block,” “Writing Groups,” and “Publication.” Bracingly honest, she is also one of the funniest people alive.
If you have ever wondered what it takes to be a writer, what it means to be a writer, what the contents of your school lunches said about what your parents were really like, this book is for you. From faith, love, and grace to pain, jealousy, and fear, Lamott insists that you keep your eyes open, and then shows you how to survive. And always, from the life of the artist she turns to the art of life.

Purchase Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life at Amazon
Purchase Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life at IndieBound
View Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life on Goodreads

Eats, Shoots, and Leaves
by Lynne Truss
Giveaway
Gotham

Now in a handsome, hilariously illustrated new edition: The stickler-tickling punctuation polemic that has sold more than 1.6 million copies in North America is even more fun with the whimsical art of acclaimed New Yorker cartoonist Pat Byrnes.

The runaway bestseller that has everyone minding their p’s and q’s (and their commas and semicolons), Eats, Shoots & Leaves has delighted audiences around the world and elevated Lynne Truss to superstickler status among those in the know. Language lovers everywhere will cheer the arrival of this new edition, beautifully packaged in a larger format with a red cloth-over-board cover and containing more than fifty vivid, full-color drawings. Created by renowned cartoonist Pat Byrnes, each illustration brings to life a different punctuation pitfall in a wickedly playful style that matches Truss’s trademark wit. Eats, Shoots & Leave Illustrated Edition is also accompanied by a colorful foreword by wordsmith extraordinaire Frank McCourt.

Published just in time for holiday gift-giving, Eats Shoots & Leaves Illustrated Edition is sure to be at the top of wish lists coast to coast.

Purchase Eats, Shoots, and Leaves at Amazon
Purchase Eats, Shoots, and Leaves at IndieBound
View Eats, Shoots, and Leaves on Goodreads

Prize Pack Twenty-Two: 

Reading Like a Writer
by Francine Prose
Giveaway
Harper; 1ST edition

Long before there were creative-writing workshops and degrees, how did aspiring writers learn to write? By reading the work of their predecessors and contemporaries, says Francine Prose.

In Reading Like a Writer, Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters. She reads the work of the very best writers—Dostoyevsky, Flaubert, Kafka, Austen, Dickens, Woolf, Chekhov—and discovers why their work has endured. She takes pleasure in the long and magnificent sentences of Philip Roth and the breathtaking paragraphs of Isaac Babel; she is deeply moved by the brilliant characterization in George Eliot’s Middlemarch. She looks to John Le Carré for a lesson in how to advance plot through dialogue, to Flannery O’Connor for the cunning use of the telling detail, and to James Joyce and Katherine Mansfield for clever examples of how to employ gesture to create character. She cautions readers to slow down and pay attention to words, the raw material out of which literature is crafted.

Written with passion, humor, and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire readers to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart.

Purchase Reading Like a Writer at Amazon
Purchase Reading Like a Writer at IndieBound
View Reading Like a Writer on Goodreads

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On Writing

by Stephen King

Giveaway

Scribner; 10 Anv edition

“Long live the King” hailed “Entertainment Weekly” upon publication of Stephen King’s “On Writing.” Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer’s craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have. King’s advice is grounded in his vivid memories from childhood through his emergence as a writer, from his struggling early career to his widely reported, near-fatal accident in 1999–and how the inextricable link between writing and living spurred his recovery. Brilliantly structured, friendly and inspiring, “On Writing” will empower and entertain everyone who reads it–fans, writers, and anyone who loves a great story well told.

Purchase On Writing at Amazon

Purchase On Writing at IndieBound

View On Writing on Goodreads

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Prize Pack Twenty-Three: Bonus for Readers

Prep School Confidential

by Kara Taylor

ARC Giveaway

St. Martin’s Griffin

Released 7/30/2013

In this breathtaking debut that reads like Gossip Girl crossed with Twin Peaks, a Queen Bee at a blue-blooded New England prep school stumbles into a murder mystery.

Anne Dowling practically runs her exclusive academy on New York’s Upper East Side—that is, until she accidentally burns part of it down and gets sent to a prestigious boarding school outside of Boston. Determined to make it back to New York, Anne could care less about making friends at the preppy Wheatley School. That is, until her roommate Isabella’s body is found in the woods behind the school.

When everyone else is oddly silent, Anne becomes determined to uncover the truth no matter how many rules she has to break to do it. With the help of Isabella’s twin brother Anthony, and a cute classmate named Brent, Anne discovers that Isabella wasn’t quite the innocent nerdy girl she pretended to be. But someone will do anything to stop Anne’s snooping in this fast-paced, unputdownable read—even if it means framing her for Isabella’s murder.

Purchase Prep School Confidential at Amazon

Purchase Prep School Confidential at IndieBound

View Prep School Confidential on Goodreads

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Love and Other Perishable Items

by Laura Buzo

ARC Giveaway

Knopf Books for Young Readers

Released 12/11/2012

Love is awkward, Amelia should know.

From the moment she sets eyes on Chris, she is a goner. Lost. Sunk. Head over heels infatuated with him. It’s problematic, since Chris, 21, is a sophisticated university student, while Amelia, 15, is 15.

Amelia isn’t stupid. She knows it’s not gonna happen. So she plays it cool around Chris–at least, as cool as she can. Working checkout together at the local supermarket, they strike up a friendship: swapping life stories, bantering about everything from classic books to B movies, and cataloging the many injustices of growing up. As time goes on, Amelia’s crush doesn’t seem so one-sided anymore. But if Chris likes her back, what then? Can two people in such different places in life really be together?

Through a year of befuddling firsts–first love, first job, first party, and first hangover–debut author Laura Buzo shows how the things that break your heart can still crack you up.

Purchase Love and Other Perishable Items at Amazon

Purchase Love and Other Perishable Items at IndieBound

View Love and Other Perishable Items on Goodreads

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Prize Pack Twenty-Four: Bonus for Readers

The Last Academy
by Anne Applegate
Advance Reader Copy Giveaway
Point
Released 5/1/2013

Curtis Sittenfeld’s PREP meets THE SIXTH SENSE in this spine-tingling, unforgettable debut.

Camden Fisher arrives at boarding school haunted by a falling-out with her best friend back home. But the manicured grounds of Lethe Academy are like nothing Cam has ever known. There are gorgeous, preppy boys wielding tennis rackets, and circles of girls with secrets to spare. Only . . . something is not quite right. One of Cam’s new friends mysteriously disappears, but the teachers don’t seem too concerned. Cam wakes up to strangers in her room, who then melt into the night. She is suddenly plagued by odd memories, and senses there might be something dark and terrible brewing. But what? The answer will leave Cam–and readers–stunned and breathless, in this thrilling debut novel.

Purchase The Last Academy at Amazon
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View The Last Academy on Goodreads

Fat Angie

Prize Pack Twenty-Five: Bonus for Readers

Dead River
by Cyn Balog
Hardcover Giveaway
Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Released 4/9/2013

My friends and I are spending prom weekend at a remote wooded cabin on the Dead. The Dead River.

I thought it was going to be just us.

I was wrong. 
Nothing is what it seems in this creepy paranormal thriller by Cyn Balog.

Author Question: What is your favorite thing about Dead River?

When I was just starting out after college, I had a great job in marketing
and was really living the dream– I was making good money and successful,
but I was feeling unfulfilled. When my husband had the opportunity to move
to a remote part of the country for his job, people thought I was crazy to
let him accept, because it would be impossible for me to work as a marketing
manager out there. But I kept thinking, I’d have all this time to write! And
I could experience different parts of the country and THAT would give me
things to write about! So I tendered my resignation and we moved to the
desert of California, and a year later, up to Maine. It was a roller
coaster ride, which often led me to wonder if it was worth all the work, or
if I might have been happier and more successful had I just stayed the
course in my boring marketing career.

But even though I moved a few times and traveled a lot as well, trying to
accumulate “life experience” to write about, until now, the only place I’d
ever written about has been where I grew up– New Jersey. It’s been my rut,
the place I just normally fall into whenever I start writing. When I started
Dead River, though, I realized it was my first time writing based on an
experience that happened during those travels after I left my job. Although
so many people thought I was crazy and it was a risky move, I feel like Dead
River is a product of those years– something that never could have happened
if we hadn’t taken that risk.

Purchase Dead River at Amazon
Purchase Dead River at IndieBound
View Dead River on Goodreads

manicpixiedreamgirl
by Tom Leveen
Hardcover Giveaway
Random House Books for Young Readers
Released 4/23/2013

Sometimes the most dramatic scenes in a high school theater club are the ones that happen between the actors and crew off stage.

Seventeen-year-old Tyler Darcy’s dream of being a writer is starting to feel very real now that he’s sold his first short story to a literary journal. He should be celebrating its publication with his two best friends who’ve always had his back, but on this night, a steady stream of texts from his girlfriend Sidney keep intruding. So do the memories of his dream girl, Becky, who’s been on his mind a little too much since the first day of high school. Before the night is over, Ty might just find the nerve to stop all the obsessing and finally take action.

Author Question: What is your favorite thing about manicpixiedreamgirl?

There are many things I love about the novel, but I think my favorite is how perfectly ridiculous Tyler is. This novel—compared to my previous novels Party and Zero, anyway—is my most autobiographical, even though it’s only about five percent from my own life. Tyler, the protagonist, definitely has a lot of the same feelings I did when I was in high school, and he handles most of them just about as badly as I did, too. He can’t help it; he’s A) a boy, and B) in love. Mix those two together and mayhem will follow.
So on that note, I’d say my favorite thing is how realistic—both good and bad—the story is, and how much fun—usually—it was to go back revisit those old thrills and mistakes. It really is a great and awesome time to be alive. I hope everyone has as much fun as I did!

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