Links To Blogs And Comments About This World We Live In

I'm setting up an entry where I'll put links to blog reviews of This World We Live In and where you can write comments about it.

If you wrote your comment on my other blog, I'll move it over here. It'll claim I wrote it, but I'll put your name (which is frequently anonymous) on it.

While, of course, my dream is all comments and reviews will be favorable, this will be an honest spot, so if you read the book and feel like being critical, you have my blessing. Not my eternal gratitude, but my blessing.

I'll start with a couple of links to blogs, and as more come in, I'll add them to this entry.

So here goes:

1 Becky's Book Review

2 linda's reading blog

3 Jen Robinson's Book Page

4 Reading and Breathing

5 Librarina

6 Karin's Book Nook

7 At The Grange

8 Marjoleinbookblog

9 Collecting Children's Books (this one has a lot of spoilers)

10 Genrefluent (a 14 year old really likes it)

11 All My Little Words

12 Aurora

13 Young Adults Book Central

14 Books And Movies

15 YA Librarian Tales

16 Little Albatross (lots and lots and lots of spoilers)

17 Kate's Book Blog (rigorously spoiler free)

18 Reading Rants! Out Of The Ordinary Teen Booklist! (more informative if you will)

19 Teens Know Best

20 The Cazzy Files

21 thebookbind

22 Library Dad (someone who hasn't read either LAWKI or d&g)

23 see michelle read (she doesn'tmuch like it)

24 librarian by day (she doesn't much like it either)

25 Dog-eared and Well-read

26 Shelftalker (publishersweekly.com)

27 KellyVision

28 one hundred books, one year

29 Brooke's Box Of Books

30 Kinnelon Library Teen Blog (very informative with lots of spoilers)

31 Stacked

32 Reading With Tequila (the reviewer doesn't like Alex at all)

33 yabal babble

34 Book Journal

35 Carrie's YA Bookshelf

The ARCs Have Arrived!

There are 180 names in the Bolivian hat. I'll be pulling 30 out at random and emailing those people to ask for mailing addresses. I hope to start making trips to the post office tomorrow.

I'm cautiously optimistic that a few more ARCs will become available for distribution. Harcourt knows how much I want to spread them around. and while I've given some to friends of mine, they may return them when they're finished (in which case it'll be a used ARC).

I'm going to set up a comment zone here, so if you want to share your opinions of the book, you'll have a place to do so. And I do ask that you don't sell the ARC and you don't put it into a library system, in lieu of an actual copy. Beyond that. the ARC is yours to do with as you wish.

Okay. The time has come to pull 30 names out of the Bolivian hat, and to start emailing the people who get selected.

I want to thank all of you for your interest in This World We Live In and your patience. I truly appreciate both.

Last Chance At The Bolivian Hat

I got an email today saying the advance reading copies of This World We Live In got shipped to me on Friday and I should expect them sometime this week.

As soon as they come in, I'll be pulling names out of the Bolivian hat to send ARCs to.

So if you've been thinking about doing so and haven't gotten around to it, email me using the link on the right side of the blog, and into the hat your name will go.

Email Me If You Want A Chance At An ARC

There's been a delay in the printing of the ARCs for This World We Live In, and most likely I won't be getting my copies until next week.

My original plan had been to suggest people email me after the copies had arrived, but I've gotten impatient, so I'm switching the order. I think I'll have a couple of dozen copies to distribute, maybe a few more, and I'll send them out just about as soon as I get them. If I get more, right away or later on, I'll keep on sending.

Here's the deal. Most likely more than two dozen people are going to ask for an ARC. If there are more requests than ARCs, I'll use a lottery, as I have in the past for ARCs of The Dead And The Gone (I didn't know any of you when I got my ARCs for Life As We Knew It).

If you want to be in the drawing, then email me, either using the email address at this blog or at the other (but not both). Leaving a comment won't do it, because what I do is copy everyone's email address and put them in the Bolivian hat (currently residing on the bathroom wall) and pull out names.

If yours is one I pull out, I'll email you back and ask for your name and address. So you don't have to include them in your Bolivian hat email.

Some of you have already emailed your request. I've kept all those emails in a special folder, so you don't have to email me again.

I think when I get an email request I'll email back saying "Thank you," just so you'll know your email arrived.

Oh, I pay for the envelopes and postage and all that. So don't worry about it.

If you have any questions, feel free to comment. But again, if you want a chance at an ARC, a comment won't do it. I'd tell you what would, but I've used the word email so many times in this blog entry, I'm tired of typing it!

ARC Update

The ARC update is there is no update.

Or more to the point, there are no ARCs. At least not yet.

My editor tells me they may come in this week. Which doesn't necessarily mean they'll be on my doorstep (let alone inside my apartment) this week. More like they may come into existence this week.

When I get them, I'll let you know.

A New Poll Is Up

I'm still uncertain how many ARCS I'm going to get and when I'm going to get them, but I thought it might be helpful if I had a sense of how many of you might want one.

So I put up a poll last night with several options (including the traditional Go Away Leave Me Alone choice, albeit more tactfully worded), and this morning I scurried to see the results and no one had voted.

Results so far were zero.

A woman's feelings could get hurt.

But then I figured out if no one knew about the poll, no one would respond. So consider yourself informed.

Oh, and I'm not asking yet for emails or anything like that. I won't until I have the ARCs in hand. This poll is just to give me a sense of whether I'm going to need to save some for you or if I can build a playroom for Scooter with them.

ETA: Sorry if there's any confusion. I put basically the same poll on the susanbethpfeffer blog. Some people read one blog, some people read the other.

Jacket Flap

I got an email yesterday from my editor requesting that I remove the original plot outline of This World We Live In from this blog, for fear that people would feel it wasn't necessary to read the book if they'd already read the outline. An excess of spoilering.

Personally, I love being spoilered, but out of respect for my publishing house, I make the original entry on this blog vanish. It's good to have power.

Within an hour of making the entry go away, I got an email from someone asking me what the plotline to TW was. I informed my editor of this fabulous coincidence, and she suggested emailing back the jacket flap copy. Which I did.

So here, for anyone else who is interested, is what will be on the front jacket flap of This World We Live In. Think of it as socially acceptable spoilering.

The heart-wrenching companion to the bestselling novels Life as We Knew It and The Dead and the Gone.

It's been a year since a meteor collided with the moon, catastrophically altering the earth’s climate. For Miranda Evans life as she knew it no longer exists. Her friends and neighbors are dead, the landscape is frozen, and food is increasingly scarce.

Miranda and her two brothers spend their days scavenging for food and household items, while their mother stays at home and desperately tries to hold on to the ordinary activities of their previous life. But they all know that nothing is truly normal in this surreal new world they live in.

The struggle to survive intensifies when Miranda’s father and stepmother arrive with a baby and three strangers in tow. One of the newcomers is Alex Morales, and as Miranda’s complicated feelings for him turn to love, his plans for his future thwart their relationship.

Then a devastating tornado hits the town of Howell, and Miranda makes a decision that will change their lives forever.