Coffin Hop Winner and Other Small Matters of Concern in November

The Coffin Hop is over! Booooo! The only thing I can say is that I wish it had gone on for a little longer, so I could have visited more sites while the cool giveaways were still happening. The best thing about the hop, though (besides the terrific badges) is that we can still visit the amazing writers who participated and get to know them that much better. Second best thing: there's going to be another one next year.

(Third best thing: I befuddled many people this past week by using the phrase "I've been coffin hopping" out of context.)

I absolutely loved the answers everyone gave to the question of what you'd like to be buried with. You guys made my Halloween with your awesome, Klingon-funeral wanting, bury-me-with-books needing ways. I love you all equally, but (dum dum dum!):

The winner of the One Buck Horror e-zine collection and the tiny copy of The Ancient Mariner is: Deborah Walker, aka Kelda Crich. Congratulations! I'll be in touch.

As a side note, the response that won my foul little heart was Anthony J Rapino's:

I'd like to be buried naked on a bed of red leaf lettuce. I should shimmer with a sweet glaze of honey (raw and unprocessed please). At my side I'd like a quart of barbeque sauce and some celery sticks.

Bon appetit.

You are sick, sir. And I salute you.

In other news, I won a skill-based ("skill-based") Coffin Hop contest over at Macromere Press, publisher of David Ewald's He Who Shall Remain Shameless. The book consists of fictional conversations with real-life dead people. The contest required you to name a deceased real-life person who you would like to see in the book, and give some reason why. I gave the creepiest answer I could muster, and I won some Amazon dollars for my troubles. I picked up a copy of He Who Shall Remain Shameless with it, because it looks smart and concerns some profound themes and I want to read it and you should too.

Finally, it is that time of year when we lose our heads and decide to write a novel. It's okay, though, because everybody's doing it. And yes, I would jump off a bridge if everyone else was. Hey, swimming together is fun! Posting in November will probably concern NaNoWriMo exclusively, so if you're not into it, you might want to duck and cover because it is going to get obnoxious in here.

Buffy Giveaway Winner

Hooray! It's Monday and time to reveal the name of my Buffy Giveaway Winner!

Sorry, Buffy: it's not you.

Through an extremely scientific process, I wrote down the names of all the lovely and charming and talented entrants on green slips of paper. Lacking a hat, I folded them and put them on my lunch plate, which is on my desk on a notebook:

I tossed the slips around with my fingertips until one flew off the plate. Survival of the fittest! or something.  The winner is...

Congratulations, Trisha! Check your email inbox.

Thanks for playing, everyone!

A Buffy Season Eight Give-Away, in Celebration of Reaching a Buck Twenty-Five

Thanks in large part to the fantabulous Rachael Harrie's Writers' Platform-Building Crusade, I have super quickly surpassed 100 followers, and sometime today reached 125. As I'm sure is the case for most crusaders, my daily page views are going through the roof also. Thank you so much for following, everyone! This is great.

So, I am running a giveaway! Free books, y'all!

This is for you Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans. You guys know about Buffy Season Eight, right? That's right! Even though the television gods saw fit to cancel the best show ever made (sorry, BSG fans), the Buffyverse lives on in comic book form, courtesy of Dark Horse. Season Eight has been collected in eight volumes. These are lovely books with some wonderful art. The storyline is all about exploring the implications of that big, world-changing move that Buffy and pals made at the end of Season Seven. You know what I'm talking about. If you don't, then go watch the show, posthaste!

In any case, I happen to have in my possession pristine copies of Volumes Four and Five. They look like this:

Of course I totally recommend getting your hands on Volumes 1-3 before you read these. But if you would like your very own copies of Buffy Season Eight Volumes 4 and 5, just leave a comment along with a means to contact you (email or your @yourtwittername - I'm not gonna phone you) on this post before midnight this Friday, March 4 Sunday, March 6. I'll draw names out of a hat or similarly opaque vessel on Monday, March 7, and send these Buffy books to the winner via postal pony.

ETA: As long as you live on the earth planet, I will send these to you. Please put your name down even if you're not in the vicinity of North America.

Good luck, everybody!