Online Goodness: Giveaways and Excerpt

Hi everyone!

Just a quick post to point you to a couple of cool things about CHAINED online.

This one I discovered accidentally, so it may have been up there for a while. You can read the first chapter of CHAINED on Macmillan's website! Also discovered my tweets show up on my page over there. That could be interesting.

Then, hop on over to this Goodreads giveaway where three copies of the novel are up for grabs.

If you're a teacher or reading group coordinator, do you know about the Book Club Kit contest? That's where I'm giving away ten copies of the book, a Skype visit, and some other goodies to one classroom or reading group. Everyone who enters will get signed bookmarks for all of your readers.

And look, I have a few book events now, enough to update my Events page! I'll be signing in two different cities, so I call it a multi-city tour, right?

Hope to see you if you're in the Houston or Austin areas on those dates, and good luck to you if you're entering one of the giveaways!

Introducing agent Kathleen Ortiz: a reenactment by Newt

Saturday at the Houston SCBWI conference, I had the pleasure of introducing agent Kathleen Ortiz of Nancy Coffey Literary and Media Representatives.

But I wanted to give the audience a little more than the official bio. Kathleen's clients Dawn Rae Miller, Sarah Fine, and Jaime Reed helped make it more interesting by telling me some of their favorite anecdotes about her, and my agent Joanna Volpe told me a little more about what Kathleen's co-workers love about her.

So it turned out to be a really fun intro, and I thought the authors who helped me out with it would enjoy seeing it. Of course I didn't think until later, "Hey, maybe I should've asked someone to record that."

Kathleen offered to scan my notes to email to her clients, but a reenactment would be more fun than having everyone decipher my serial-killer-like handwriting. Recording myself re-reading the introduction alone in the kitchen on my laptop seemed awkward, though, so I decided to use a stand-in.

Take it away, Cartoon Newt Gingrich At a Press Conference: