Kimberly Pauley

Winners of the Still Sucks to Be Me FANS Only ARC Giveaway!!

Okay, so remember how I said I’d reserve at least 3 copies to give away to fans? Well, my lovely publisher sent me another box of ARCs, so I’m DOUBLING that — I’m giving 6 copies away to people who entered the FANS Only SSTBM Giveaway! Woot! Without further ado…here are the winners…(more entries did help people out in the random picker spreadsheet)

• Taylor
• Alina
• Victoria
• Alessandra
• Autumn
• Jade

Congrats! All you guys gotta do now is email me at kim @ kimberlypauley.com OR use the Contact form and tell me a) full name / address (if you’re under 13, I’ll need a parent’s email so they confirm it’s okay for you to accept the book), b) whether you’d like the ARC signed or not and, if so, do you want it signed to you or just signed with my name.

You guys rock! I can’t wait to hear what you think of the book!!

I got all kinds of cool fan art and poetry. My favorite might have to be this (but it was all really, really cool):

Tags: still sucks to be me
Posted in Just for Fun, Past Giveaways | 14 Comments »

Still Sucks to Be Me Fan ARC Contest! (Ends March 15th!!)

Okay! It’s finally time to post the Still Sucks to Be Me Fan ARC Contest! I’ve reserved at least three advance copies of Still Sucks to Be Me not for reviewers or official-type people but purely for fans of the first book. Because I love you guys. Because you make writing worthwhile. Because you ROCK.

I’ve been trying to come up with a good contest. Some authors have fans do all kinds of crazy things (there was a cool one recently where the author had people post and do what the craziest thing they would do to get the book would be). So I decided to kind of take all those ideas and give you extra chances to win

Here’s what you gotta do…pick as many items as you want from the following list to do. Each one you do gets you an entrie(s) to win. If you do all of ‘em? You get lots of entries to win! Of course, you still have a chance to win if you do only one of them. If you’ve already done any of the items below, just note it when you comment and I’ll still give you the entry point towards that item!

1. Follow me on Twitter. Comment back with your Twitter ID so I can confirm. (1 point)
2. Fan me on Facebook. (1 point)
3. Friend me on MySpace. (1 point)
4. Sign up for my fan newsletter (1 point)
5. Create any kind of fan art based on the books! (3 points) A drawing, a computer collage, a song, a poem, absolutely anything! You can e-mail it to me at kim@kimberlypauley.com and let me know it is part of your contest entry. Shoot, if you want to create more than once piece of art? I’ll give you points for each! And if you do something incredible, I will award extra points!
6. Create a video book review (or some kind of video fan art/performance) and upload it to YouTube with the tags: “Sucks to Be Me, Book, Kimberly Pauley” (3 points)
7. Tell a teacher or librarian how excited you are for the book! (1 point) If they e-mail me to confirm (make sure they tell me your name) OR ask me for a FREE Reading Group Guide, you’ll get an extra point! (1 point)
8. Do anything you can think of to get the word out about the books and tell me what you did (1 to 3 points, depending on the difficulty level)

To enter, do the item(s) and then comment back on this post and/or e-mail me as appropriate with what you did. I’ll tally up all the points at the end of March and the winners will have the book in the first part of April! (Unless you guys would like me to cut the contest shorter…until March 15th? Then you’d have the book by the end of March, but you wouldn’t have as much time to get entries in…so your choice…comment and let me know!) UPDATE: The consensus seems to be March 15th! So I’ll end the contest then!

The contest is open to anyone, anywhere. Entrants under the age of 13 must have a parent or guardian confirm they can accept the prize if they win.

Hope you like the contest and have fun with it! Good luck!

Entry Tracking!

It was getting a little confusing, so I thought I would post here with who/what entries I have noted down. If you don’t see your name/entries on this list or you think you’ve got more than I’ve noted, LET ME KNOW by commenting below! My e-mail was getting really crazy, so I’m worried I might have missed some.

• Ben Woodard – 2
• Taylor – 22
• Alina – 35
• LexieR – 5
• Victoria – 31
• Schuyler – 3
• Alessandra – 4
• Annika – 8
• Kassidy – 4
• Jasmine – 2
• Sonya – 1
• Jessica – 1
• Catie S. – 4
• Sharli – 1
• Savannah – 2
• Jade – 4
• Bethany – 4
• Adriana – 2
• Alannah – 4
• Heather – 3
• Autumn – 8
• Nan – 7

Tags: still sucks to be me arc fan contest
Posted in Just for Fun, Past Giveaways | 56 Comments »

Adventures in Stickers

Okay, so I’m going to be one of the featured authors tomorrow at the Anderson’s Bookshop Children’s Lit Breakfast. Which is a huge affair, as I understand it. And I was thinking this afternoon how I only have book swag for my first book, since I hadn’t ordered any bookmarks or anything for my second one yet. And how, darn it, I probably ought to have something.

So I got the bright idea of making buttons. I went out to the Hobby Lobby to try and locate a button maker, since I’d seen one there before. But they, apparently, don’t carry them anymore and I didn’t have time to run out to another store (having little Max kinda crimps the footloose and fancy free days of my past). So I got the next best thing I could think of: a sticker maker.

I will not bore you (or traumatize you) with everything that has gone wrong with the making of these stickers. Let’s just say that I started trying to make them, eh, 4 or 5 hours ago. Right now, I’ve got a tiny little stack of completed ones.

I have had an Epic Craft Fail tonight.

Here’s what the sticker image looks like:

Simple, right?

Here’s a photo of the in-progress mess:

The Mess

And here’s my small stack of completed stickers. Of which I need something like 50. At least.

The Stickers

Seriously.

All I can say is, if anyone so much as impinges the craftiness of my stickers tomorrow? I may have to go medieval on them.

Posted in Just for Fun, pictures | 3 Comments »

T-Shirts for Charity!

If you missed it the first time around, there’s a Sucks to Be Me T-shirt shop now featuring some of the coolest doodles from the books (like a vampire squirrel from book two!). Here’s the notice from the charity OpenBooks that I’m donating all the sales proceeds to. They’re really cool — you should definitely check them out!

So, cool threads for a good cause. How awesome is that?

Posted in Just for Fun | 1 Comment »

The Great Scavenger Hunt!

Have you heard about the awesome Great Scavenger Hunt Contest that author Kay Cassidy started? If you’re a librarian or teacher and you haven’t gotten involved yet…what are you waiting for (and hey, teens? If your librarian isn’t participating…now would be a good time to go give ‘em a whack on the head. Though, okay, maybe only figuratively, not literally. Don’t want a bunch of black and blue librarians out there.)?

I’m officially now a participating author with Sucks to Be Me and soon with Still Sucks to Be Me. I’m also going to be donating books to Kay to give away.

Good luck in the scavenger hunt!

And Happy Reading!

Tags: great scavenger hunt, still sucks to be me, sucks to be me
Posted in Giveaways, Just for Fun | No Comments »

Sucks to Be Me & Still Sucks to Be Me T-shirts for Charity!

Vampire Squirrel from Still Sucks to Be Me

Okay, this is too cool! I got the go ahead from my publisher to do this (yay!) after I’ve been hearing for a while from people how much they’d love a T-shirt with batty on it! Woot! Now introducing the Sucks to Be Me T-Shirt shop (provided by Spreadshirt)!! All proceeds from sales will be donated to Open Books, a local literacy charity.

And even cooler? I’ve designed some of the shirts with BRAND SPANKIN’ NEW stuff from Still Sucks to Be Me! Check out the vampire squirrel, for instance! Or the Official VRA (Vampire Relocation Agency) wear!

And if there’s a particular shirt you’d like with a particular design, just let me know. I’m happy to make anything for you that you want (that I’m able to do).

Please feel free to pass on the shop: http://stbm.spreadshirt.com — ALL proceeds go to charity, so you can even feel good about wearing batty…like you wouldn’t already!

(all graphics designed by the incredible Emi Tanji!)

© Wizards of the Coast, LLC.   Images used with permission.

Tags: bat graphic, bat t-shirts, sucks to be me
Posted in Books, Just for Fun | 6 Comments »

Some last minute holiday shopping?

If you’re like me, you still have some holiday shopping to do. I always have the best intentions every year and every year…always fail to get things done in time. *sigh* Especially now that we’ve got Max, I find it downright impossible to get anything done on time, much less Christmas shopping.

Anyway, if you’d like some book recommendations, here are some I’ve read recently that I think would be great for that teen on your list (or adults too…I know so many now who are reading YA books…they’ve caught on to what a good thing they are!):

Saundra Mitchell’s Shadowed Summer is a great creepy, atmospheric ghost story set in the South. If someone you love likes gothic, ghost-y stories, pick this one up.

And here’s something different — a genre novel (in this case, I suppose you could call it science-fantasy…honestly, it’s rather hard to classify) that features a gay teen: Evil? by Timothy Carter.I really liked this one (a full review will be coming in January on YA Books Central) because it’s different, it’s got a good sense of humor, and it doesn’t go where anyone would expect it too. You don’t have to be a GLBT teen to like this one.

And how about Neal Shusterman’s Everwild? It’s the sequel to Everlost (and if they haven’t read the first book yet, just get ‘em both). I’m in the middle of it now and it is just as good as the first one. In fact, I’d rather be reading it than writing this, but hey…

For those HUGE Neil Gaiman fans out there (and you know who you are), check out Prince of Stories. It’s actually *about* him and all of his fantastical works. A big, thick book–it isn’t for the faint of heart, but if you’re a HUGE Gaiman fan, you’re not lacking in heart, are you?

For writers, there are a number of great books. I personally like Stephen King’s On Writing, Gail Carson Levine’s Writing Magic, and Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. And, of course, a really good pen.

For those teens that you know you just don’t get, try giving them either of Stephanie Kuehnert’s books (Ballads of Suburbia or I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone).Then they’ll think that maybe, just maybe, you do get them.

And for Zombie lovers? How about Carrie Ryan’s The Forest of Hands and Teeth? Now those are some *real* zombies!

Other authors to think about (as in, anything by them is awesome): Laurie Halse Anderson, Brent Hartinger, Cynthia Leitch Smith, Maureen Johnson, Alyson Noel, Sarah Mlynowski, E. Lockhart, Kristin Tubb (middle grade readers), Niki Burnham, Sara Ryan, Tracy Barrett, Tanya Lee Stone (children’s books and a YA in poetry that is AWESOME), Sarah Dessen, Ellen Hopkins (more books in poetry), Heather Brewer (Vlad…for you vampire lovers) Laura Ruby…oh geez, there are too many to name. But you get the idea. Heck, if you have a particularly problematic teen on your hands, fill out the contact form and just tell me what they’re into and I’ll give you a suggestion.

Tags: last minute christmas book gift ideas
Posted in Just for Fun | 6 Comments »

Still Sucks to Be Me now on Amazon! Whoo!

So I was on Amazon for an entirely different reason (I promise) and noticed that they’ve got Still Sucks to Be Me listed now! It’s not out until May 11th and they’ve got the title slightly wrong, but Woot! all the same. And apparently you can pre-order it! I think at least one person already has since the book has a ranking (I’m pretty sure you don’t get a ranking until at least one copy has been ordered). So that is total and utter coolness.

In bookish news, my editor went back and forth with me one more time with some teeny little changes, but I think it is finally all done. Whew. I now honestly have more sympathy about finding typos in books. They’ve always bugged me but it’s amazing to me now that no matter how many times you (or your editor or the copyeditor) go over a book, you always find something. I hope nothing made it through, but if you find a typo when you read it, I’M SORRY! I SUCK! I DID MY BEST!

In other related news, we had a photo shoot this past weekend and I should have a new official author photo coming soon. Which is good considering my last author photo? Um, totally me long-arming the camera all by myself and snapping a picture. This time there were PROFESSIONALS involved (the Souder Photography folks, to be exact).

Am really excited to see the photos of The Max, honestly. He’s way cuter than I am.

Random Still Sucks to Be Me tidbit of the day: the name of a teacher and the principal in the book are the names of one of my favorite teachers of all time (Jennifer McCoy, now McNeal) and the vice-principal (Mr. Fleming) from where I went to high school in 11th and 12th grade.

Tags: still sucks to be me
Posted in Books, Just for Fun | 2 Comments »

My NPR Interview (or, trying not to sound stupid on the air)

So today I was interviewed by the very cool Margot Adler for NPR. I went down to the local NPR station in downtown Chicago at Navy Pier (she’s in NY, so I was just connected via the studio). It was very cool and somewhat daunting to be talking to someone you’ve heard on the radio. Because I could immediately recognize her voice.

I babbled a bit, but hopefully said at least some slightly intelligible things. We’ll find out! I’m not sure when it is going to air yet, but I’ll post as soon as I know.

Here I am with The Max outside the offices:

Outside the Public Radio offices

He loves his fireman’s hat. Can you tell? He got to walk around Navy Pier with Daddy while Mommy was busy and had a blast. We ate lunch there too and let him go on a little train ride (his very first solo ride!).

In other news, I just finished (yesterday) proofing the galley copy for my editor. Mostly just made some minor changes to Still Sucks to Be Me, nothing major. My editor also sent me a file of all of the new chapter header doodles and they are INCREDIBLY cute. You are going to love them!

And I got in the new batty tattoos. Now, whenever you send off for a free signed bookplate, I’ll also include a batty tattoo. I’ll also give them away at school visits and other events. Right now? I’m wearing one on my hand.

Batty Tattoo!

Posted in Interviews, Just for Fun | 2 Comments »

Bookplates for the Holidays!

So, just like last year, I’m offering up free signed bookplates for the holidays. If you’re getting Sucks to Be Me for a friend (or, I suppose, if you wanna plan ahead for May and get a bookplate for Still Sucks to Be Me, that’s fine too), just e-mail me at kim@kimberlypauley.com by December 15th 2009 (to allow time for delivery before the holidays) and tell me:

• How many bookplates do you want?
• How do you want them signed (i.e. just signed or personalized to someone in particular)
• The name and address you wish them sent to

Now, you can *always* get a free signed bookplate from me, just usually you need to send me an SASE (go ahead and click through to see how/what if it’s after the deadline). But the holidays are crazy enough, so I like to make it easier for you when I can. So, Happy Holidays everyone!

P.S. I’ll also be sticking in a free Batty temp. tattoo and a bookmark.

Tags: free bookplate, free for the holidays
Posted in Just for Fun, Past Giveaways | 3 Comments »