My Giveaway + Announcements

*My first foray into an Author Interview with Andrew Xia Fukuda is up! (Should I do more?)
*My first manga review for Natsume Yuujinchou V.1 - please let me know what you think

Friday, February 26, 2010

Five Things - In Point Form

1. Did you see the new Magic Under Glass cover going around?! It's kind of ridiculously gorgeous. I'd talk more about it, but there's already other posts showing this cover and Steph Su basically said anything I would have wanted to say about this cover and more, and I already previously gave my two cents on POC faces in fantasy covers, so I'll shut up and just show everyone this cover so that y'all can bask in its beauty. This is totally a cover in which I support further reposts. I would not mind a new flurry of posts a la mockingspam if this was the featured cover. (Don't hurt me, Hunger Games Fans! I love the trilogy and am very excited for sequel, honest! I mock with love! 8D)

2. I just finished reading The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and OMFG SO GOOD. How can a book be so amazingly epic? I'm trying to refrain from saying too much (YEINE + NAHADOTH FOREVAAAAAAAAAAAR) because I want to have a long fleshed-out review to give the book the love it deserves, but right now I'm gonna show off the cover, which also has a POC face! (So much better than the german cover of fail) Also, I'd sell my soul for the next two books in the trilogy. For all those who haven't put this on their reading list/haven't bought it yet/whatever WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR LIFE?! Go to the bookstore and get it now. I say this to right what is so wrongly missing from your reading experience. 8D Very thoughtful of my reading audience, I am.

3. SO MANY AWESOME POSTS BY AWESOME PEOPLE. Today, Book Smugglers has a lovely comprehensive post on Whitewashing Covers and Zetta Elliot has a Guest Post on Huffington Post about the UK Publishing Equalities Charter and it sounds promising and I am crossing my fingers that the publishing industry takes note and considers drawing up a similar charter. 8D Also, it's about a week old but N. K. Jemisin did another very interesting Describe Characters of Colour writeup, which I encourage everyone to check out.

4. Should I brave the snow to get my copies of Michelle West's Sun Sword series signed tomorrow? ... *looks at 10 cm of accumulated snow today and cries*

5. Anyone wanna give me some tips on how to further promote my giveaway contest? I already linked it to various sites such as Goodreads, Book Reader Times, The Black Cell, and Bookworming Through the 21st Century, and spam my twitter about it ever so often, but I was wondering if there are venues out there that I can link to that I'm currently unaware of.

12 comments:

ninefly said...

I'm going to have to say I don't really like the new magic under glass cover aesthetically, she looks kinda sly lol...the original cover had such a nice pose...of course the representation is more important

hmm, do the authors have twitter accounts? maybe ask them to help you promote?
otherwise, I've already listed all the ones I can think of =X good luck!

yuan said...

@ninefly,

lawl, I like the 'sly' look though. It looks like she has a secret that she has the key to. I did like the post from the first one too, but I think the colours and everything just work better for me in this new one. The blues and the red is so lovely. ♥

J. A. Yang has a twitter account and he RT'd it, but Ting-xing Ye doesn't. ^^;; lawl, but yeah, thanks for all the help you gave me on promoting this contest. You're AWESOME. *hugs*

Steph Su said...

Haha I like how you wrote up Point One. And I'm glad you agree with basically everything I wrote! I hope there will be LOTS more covers like it in the future...

Okay, I am running--RUNNING--to get The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms right now. OMG! It looks so good!

There are some bloggers who do like weekly link-ups to giveaways around the blogosphere. Donna at Lit Bites (http://litbites.blogspot.com) does an extremely comprehensive weekly giveaway roundup; you should email her. And I think The Neverending Shelf (or someone similar?) has a weekly linkup post.

Jan von Harz said...

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms looks amazing, and I am really anxious to read your review. I also am going to check out all the links you have noted to worth while post reads, thanks for sharing these.

Melissa (i swim for oceans) said...

I can't wait to read Magic Under Glass...as for your question of promoting your giveaway, I think word of mouth is best! Give your entrants a way to earn points by referring others, and that helps...it did with mine! :)

j said...

I love the new Magic Under Glass cover. It's so beautiful. I haven't read it yet, but I want too!

Just found your blog on the Saturday Network over at Books At Midnight. Following now. :)

MissA said...

This week was an awesome week of posts, of course the week I was mostly MIA, now I have to go catch up. *sigh*

I thought the UK Publishing Equalities Charter is a good idea although I'm doubtful that the U.S. would do anything like that but I would be most pleased to be proven wrong. I'm so glad Zetta is blogging at the HuffPost and informing us about these new projects.

Steph's post says it all and I always appreciate your two cents so do share them more often! I think the girl on the cover of MUG does look sly but more of a 'I know a secret' kind of way (like you said) and that's intriguing.

I know nothing about Sun of the Swords series but if they are amazing then brave the snow! (says this while buried under the covers hiding from the snow here)

LitBites, Shady Glade and I think the Story Siren does YA Connection where you can link to giveaways. try those. And it's cool that the author retweeted about it!

Oh and I've decided to a Chromatic Casting next week for Secret Keeper (must-read!), mainly so I can use Dev Patel, lol :D

yuan said...

@StephSu,

Yesssss get Hundred Thousand Kingdoms!! 8D

Thanks for the links and tips! =D *hugs you*

@Jan von Harz,

I hope you enjoy the links! =D

@Melissa,

I like the sounds of that, but I don't want to change my points suddenly, and also, er, I have no idea how to edit my form... Google Docs confuses me very much... *is technology challenged*

@MissAttitude,

lol, no way! You're totally on top of things, esp w/ the MUG cover. (That, or I'm just very NOT on top of things. *dies*)

Yes! That's the look I like from the cover model: it's intriguing. 8D

Haha, I just braved the weather. Hence why I was mostly absent from comments on blogs and whatnot.

Shady Glade, eh? I'll keep them in mind. Thanks for the help! *hugs*

omg Dev Patel is so very fine. I'm looking forward to your Secret Keeper casting! =D

April (BooksandWine) said...

I love the new cover, it's so fierce and she has a face. -GLOMP cover-

Also did you promote your contest on bookblogs.ning.com?

Lauren said...

Thanks for linking to the Book Smugglers' post, I hadn't seen that yet and it is *so* comphrensive. Great stuff.

Tuning Into YA Books said...

I really like the cover
Just wanted to let you know you won an award at my place
http://tuningintoyabooks.blogspot.com/2010/02/award-time.html

Aarti said...

I'm so excited about reading (hopefully soon) the 100,000 Kingdoms! It seems to get rave reviews everywhere, which is exciting :-)