Giveaway-DITCHED by Robin Mellom

This is one of my very BFF's Robin Mellom:


Why yes, that is Gordon Korman in between us, but that is another story for another day. Robin is cute and smart and funny...all of the things that would make me hate her if I didn't like her so much. She also wrote a book called DITCHED that is coming out on January 10.

Justina Griffith was never the girl who dreamed of going to prom. Designer dresses and strappy heels? Not her thing. So she never expected her best friend, Ian Clark, to ask her.

Ian, who always passed her the baseball bat handle first.

Ian, who knew exactly when she needed red licorice.

Ian, who promised her the most amazing night at prom.

And then ditched her.

Now, she must piece together stain-by-stain on her thrift store dress—exactly how she ended up dateless…with only the help of some opinionated ladies at the 7-Eleven. But to get to the whole story, Justina will have to face the boy who ditched her. Can losing out at her prom ultimately lead to finding true love?

I'm always afraid to read books written by friends of mine. What if I don't like it? What if I have to avoid the subject every time I see them? Lucky for me, DITCHED is AWESOME, because otherwise it would be hard to just fake my enthusiasm for the next couple of years. And it is. Awesome. Fun and funny, quirky and poignant in all the right places. The premise is new and the writing is great - nobody else could make time spent in a 7-11 so riveting. I was dying to find out what happens to Justina and Ian and the end made me say awwww out loud.

Robin gave me one of her precious ARCs and has authorized me to give it away to one of you lucky blog readers. She also sent me some of the cool custom punk fairy tattoos (you have to read the book for this part to make sense), so in addition to the book, I will give away tattoos and bookmarks to 5 additional readers.

Comment before midnight on December 1st and I'll draw a random winner of the ARC and five more winners for the tattoos and bookmarks. You don't even have to say anything funny - just leave your name for the drawing. This international contest is open to anyone over the age of 13.

Cover Lovin'

I don't think there is any email subject line that can stop a writer's heart faster than "Here's your cover!". Most readers don't realize that authors aren't in charge of their covers and in many cases don't have any say at all. I'm happy that my publisher has kept me in the loop about my cover and often asks for my suggestions. Hopefully, we'll have a final cover to reveal here soon, but in the meantime, here are some of the covers that have been released in the past few weeks that I just love:










The only thing I can safely say about the cover for TRANSCENDENCE is that it won't have a girl in a pretty dress on the cover. Not because I'm against girls in pretty dresses, but Cole is more of a jeans-and-Vans girl. At least until book 2.

And....Done!

Ah, the two sweetest words in the English language - The End! I got to type those this afternoon and I feel like exhaled for the first time since late August.

The stats:

Days it took to complete first draft: 71
Length of first draft: 84,704 words
Average words per day: 1,193
Days skipped: 0
Days that I wanted to skip: 68
Coffee consumed: 177.5 large ones
Head-Desk sighs of frustration: countless
Number of times Naive by The Kooks was listened to: 234.3
Emergency email/texts to my support system (aka Daisy Whitney): 45 (approx)
Number of those occurring after midnight: a lot

At the end of the process, this is what the back of my sad, worn notebook looks like, full of food stains and coffee splotches:



And this is the infamous cork board, all filled up and happy:


So what's next? Well, tonight I'm going to sit down and watch my DVR'd episodes of Modern Family, Big Bang Theory and Hoarders. Tomorrow, I'm going to open the file to page 1 and start all over again, taking out the horrible parts and adding in some (hopeful) brilliance. If past experience is any guide, I'll probably take out several thousand words, but end up with about 10k more than I have now. Chapters will get switched around, threads will be deleted and expanded and characters may or may not survive to the final draft.

Yeah, in other words, the hard work has just begun.