Born Wicked Book Contest

CONGRATULATIONS! THE WINNER IS PETRA@SAFARIPOET!!!

As a local DC author, I get to have lunch with Jessica Spotswood whenever we can find time to do so. In fact, there are quite a few authors in the DC area and meeting up with them is always a pleasure. So it was awesome to be at last week's Breathless tour where Jessica was one of 4 amazing YA authors on tour! And there were a lot of local writers who made it out for the event.

After years of internet chatting, I got to meet Beth Revis and Marie Lu in person! And they are as lovely and as smart and as marvelous online as they are in person. I saw and listened in awe to Andrea Cremer but missed actually talking to her because everytime I thought to do so, another fan was there. And Jessica was great, as usual!

So whenever I'm at the events, I always purchase books in order to support the independent bookstore that is partnered with the event. In this case, it is the fabulous Politics & Prose who were at the wonderful Bethesda library. I really applaud both of them for the great job they do hosting these events. The turnout was great and the panel of authors were smart and funny and so very likeable. It was a great event!

The only thing is, I was less prepared getting to the event and I ran out without my own copies of the books I wanted signed. So while I bought a bunch of books, I only got one additional copy to give away. Sorry about that as I'm unwilling to give up my personally signed copies. So today's book contest is for one signed copy of Jessica's Born Wicked.

All you gotta do is leave me a comment or tweet me with the #BornWicked hashtag. And you'll have a chance to win. This contest is open internationally until Friday, February 24th, 2012.

The Batman Cliffhangers...

When I was little, I would love to watch reruns of the old Batman and Robin show. It was on every day at 4:30 pm.  One of the hallmarks of the show was the cliffhanger. If you ever watched the show you could probably recite along with the narrator "Same bat time, same bat channel." And as a kid, it would drive me wild that I had to wait one whole day to find out what happened to Batman! I actually never cared about Robin as I found him terribly annoying. I kept hoping one day Batman would forget to rescue Robin and he would go into a wood chipper or something. 

Ok so why am I bringing this up? Well, lately I've been reading quite a lot of books that seem to love to pull the Batman cliffhanger out at the end of the book. And I don't like it. Why? Cause I am no more patient now than I was at 6. But instead of waiting a whole day, I have to wait a whole year for the next book. This makes me so furious at times that I actually veer between two responses. One response is to obsessively internet search the author and book 2 for any hint of what is to come. The second response is to absolutely not care at all. And that's not such a good thing.

Now there are different levels of cliffhangers. I tend to like ones that provides some semblance of a conclusion while leaving it open ended for a sequel. But that's not the type of cliffhanger I'm talking about. I mean the type that leaves the MCs hanging over an active volcano with cannibals shooting darts from the sidelines. I mean the Batman cliffhanger.

So I wanted to ask the greater blogging community what are your thoughts on the Batman cliffhanger. Do you:

1. Love it

2. Hate it

3. Indifferent

Let me know what you think.

To tell the truth

I'm over at the Friday the Thirteeners today, telling the truth. let me know what you think! Thanks.