Contest Winners!

Thank you to everyone who participated by tweeting, tumbling, and blogging. I think the first line of The Blood Keeper looks mighty fine plastered across the internet.

Alright. No more ado.

The winner of the ARC of The Blood Keeper and the paperback of Blood Magic is:

Katherine Leah

The winner of the finished copy of The Curiosities signed by all three Merry Fates is: 

Krystalyn Drown

And you were all so wonderful that I'm blowing the lid off the bundle prizes. If you want a small bundle of swag (including bookmarks and a signed bookplate), just email your mailing address by Friday the 20th to nataliecparker AT gmail (take note of the c in there!) and I'll happily oblige. 

Again, thank you all for participating! 

Contest: The Blood Keeper

The companion novel to Tessa Gratton's Blood Magic releases in just a few short weeks. August 28th, to be exact. That means it's high time I gave away this precious, precious advanced reader copy I've been coveting. Though totally connected to Blood Magic, The Blood Keeper is a stand-alone and I'm just going to post a snippet from the Kirkus review below because they do a better job than I would with the description.
 

Will Sanger, high school soccer star, only wanted to free himself from his recurrent nightmares. Mab Prowd, neophyte guardian of the blood magic, only wanted to understand the curse buried beneath her rose garden. But when their choices bind their fates together, an old love story and a long-concealed crime begin to creep into the present. (Full review here.)

But! I'm going to give away more than just an ARC.

One winner will receive an ARC of The Blood Keeper AND a paperback copy of Blood Magic which sports a new cover. Don't they look smashing together?



But wait, there's more! One winner will win a finished copy of The Curiosities which releases on August 1st. And if you are willing to be patient, then I will kindly ask all three of the Merry Fates to personalize it to you when they come to visit at the end of August.

Oh, but wait, there's even more to be had! I will give away up to 50 bundles of swag including signed bookplates from Tessa and bookmarks of The Curiosities and perhaps more if I decide to get creative.

I know you're wondering how you enter. Well! I'm trying something new. I'm going to use one of those fancy contesty gadgets which should do all the tedious work for me.

I'm going on the record as someone who doesn't like contests that force you to follow a person in order to enter. BUT I would love it if you stuck around for a while. At least long enough to decide if you like me. I think I'm pretty likable (and maybe even funny). I post about music and movies and sometimes I give away massive amounts of crit. In the future, I'll post about my debut novel. In general, you can trust me to be on the slightly ridiculous side of things, with the occasional dash of Something Meaningful. So that's my endorsement of myself.

MOVING ON.

There are two ways to enter:

1.  - There are three tweets in the widget you may tweet once per day for multiple entries: two that are specific (do not change!) and one that gives you license to be creative (do change!). Do this, by selecting "Do it!" on the widget, then press the "Tweet" button. It will take you directly to twitter. Tweet and you're done!
2.  - You can make a blog post about the contest and share the cover with your friends (found here).  

So please join me in making a little noise for an author I'm quite fond of.

a Rafflecopter giveaway
If you don't want to enter the contest, but would just like to share it with others, that's totally cool, too.  

Good luck!

Contest Winner!

I'm several days tardy posting this....but the winner of the Curiouser and Curiouser contest is Rachel Bellavia (from Blogger)! Rachel, please email me at nataliecparker AT gmail DOT com with your mailing address to claim your very own ARC of THE CURIOSITIES.

Her entry was both silly and delightful, so I'm posting it here for you all to see.

Thank you to everyone who entered! I enjoyed all of your entries and if I could give all of you an ARC, I would!

Curiouser and curiouser contest

I'm in an exceedingly good mood. My week was a pitch perfect mix of challenging, exciting, and engaging. It involved high stress day job meetings, celebrations, chalk drawings, and fire. Really, it was incredible. I suppose you could even call it a curious sort of week.

*and then it happened that Natalie failed to segue seamlessly*

So, I'm going to give away an ARC of a book I've had the privilege to watch evolve, THE CURIOSITIES by the Merry Sisters of Fate (do I really need a parenthetical here? don't you know them already? Brenna, Tessa, and Maggie).

What's it about? I'm glad you asked:
A vampire locked in a cage in the basement, for good luck. 


 Bad guys, clever girls, and the various reasons why the guys have to stop breathing. 


 A world where fires never go out (with references to vanilla ice cream). 


 These are but a few of the curiosities collected in this volume of short stories by three acclaimed practitioners of paranormal fiction. 


 But The Curiosities is more than the stories. Since 2008, Maggie Stiefvater, Tessa Gratton, and Brenna Yovanoff have posted more than 250 works of short fiction to their website merryfates.com. Their goal was simple: create a space for experimentation and improvisation in their writing—all in public and without a backspace key. In that spirit, The Curiosities includes the stories and each author’s comments, critiques, and kudos in the margins. Think of it as a guided tour of the creative processes of three acclaimed authors. 


 So, are you curious now?

I'm sure you ARE curious and you're dying to figure out how to win this beautiful ARC.

The rules are simple, really: I want you to show me how curious you are about THE CURIOSITIES.

This is a points for creativity sort of contest, but the kind of creativity is entirely up to you. The only requirement is that your blog entry/tweet/facebook update/vlog/tumblr post/whatever include the words "I'm curious as a ___ about THE CURIOSITIES."

For example, you might tweet: I'm curious as a cucumber about #THECURIOSITIES!

Or you might blog an original piece of artwork: (This was also the week I learned cucumbers are strangely difficult to draw and they look better without arms.)

Whatever you do, include the phrase "I'm curious as a _____ about THE CURIOSITIES." Add links to this post if it suits your fancy. Enter as many times as you like, just make sure you drop links to your entries in the comments below.

I'm afraid this is a US address only contest. I also need to be able to see your tweets/FB updates/etc - I can't count locked entries. Sorry!

I'll pick my favorite entry next Friday the 11th, so you've got time to be creative. Aaaaaaand go!