At long last a LiveJournal by Jeri Smith-Ready

Just a quick reminder that I'll be at Petsage, the wonderful holistic pet supply store in Alexandria, Virginia, tomorrow from 11:30am to 1pm.  We're starting with some refreshments and a social half hour, then I'll do a reading and Q&A about writing and dog rescue, and then the book signing.

Yes, a pet supply store, not a bookstore.  I did an event there a few years ago, after the manager read my Aspect of Crow  series and thought her friends and customers would enjoy the animal magic in those books. 

Now, of course, there's Dexter the vampire dog in Bad to the Bone. Ciara herself is involved in dog rescue as a sponsor (people who pay for shelter dogs to move to private kennels to get them out of the shelter and make room for other pets; and who often teach the dogs manners to make them more adoptable).

I know this is late notice, but I hope you can make it!

(Originally titled "Pimp Your Pet" but I thought that could be misconstrued.)

I'm saving the biggest, baddest BTTB ARC giveaway for next week (there will be several around the blogosphere to celebrate the mass market release of its predecessor, Wicked Game).

But for a quick 'n' dirty, fun Friday contest, once again in honor of Dexter the Vampire Dog, tell us about your pets. Post links to their pictures if you like, tell us how you found them, their favorite foods, whatever. It can be a current pet, one you've lost, or even one you hope to adopt. If you don't currently share your life with an animal, let's hear about a childhood pet. Or just make one up. I promise I won't check!

I'm still working on my opera-long post about Meadow's battle with disc disease, but here's a picture of her in the therapy pool. .

At 11:59pm Eastern this Sunday, I'll draw a name at random from commenters on my jerismithready.com blog, MySpace, and LiveJournal. The winner will get a signed ARC of Bad to the Bone. International entries welcome!

And there's still one more day to enter to win an ARC over at Jaci Burton's blog. Let's see if we can make 100 comments! You, yes, you could win that awesome Harley Davidson bag.

Congrats to the winners of last week's giveaways. Sarah Kuhn from Twitter gave me the best name for my laptop. So introducing...
 

Grr, Fang says. Grr.

Fang is a Hewlett Packard Mini notebook, I guess what some people would call a "netbook." I love him. He's a tiny computer, but unlike most netbooks, the keyboard is 92% full-size, so I don't feel like Goliath typing on the thing. I still plan to use Tardy (my old laptop) for most writing, at least while at home.

The winner of the suggest-a-charity contest (in which I choose a charity to receive 10% of author royalties from Bad to the Bone) is Cory, who came up with what had to be the perfect animal rescue organization for this book: Rescue Ink, a group of tough guys in New York City who stop animal abuse by any means necessary. No, just kidding, their methods are totally legal.

Here's a New York Times article about them, and here are a few of their programs, including puppy mill awareness programs, outreach to elderly and children, animal housing construction, and dog-fighting prevention. You can see a ton of pictures on their MySpace page.

I mean, who would dare mess with these guys? Most people who abuse animals and children are freaking cowards, or they'd be picking on people who could fight back.

I had many wonderful suggestions for charities, which I'll list below, but Rescue Ink seemed particularly perfect for Bad to the Bone, for several reasons:

• Dexter the Vampire Dog might once have been a victim of abuse, possibly being used as bait for a pit-bull ring.
• Some of these guys remind me of Ciara's landlord Dean.
• Tattoos are a recurring motif in the book. One of them even provides a clue as to the bad guy's motive.
• The Rescue Ink guys combine compassion with major badassedness, kinda like most of my vampires.

It broke my heart not to pick some of the other suggestions, but I'll list them here to give them a wee bit of exposure:

• RSPCA Victoria, who is helping the thousands of homeless animals displaced and injured by the Australian bush fires.
• Canine Companions for Independence, an organization that raises animals to assist people with disabilities.
• Petfinder.com, a fantastic online resource helping adopters find new furry friends to share their lives. They also have a foundation that right now is helping animals affected by the floods in the Midwest.
• Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary in my favorite state to visit, New Mexico. They provide a home for wolves and wolf-dogs and also provide much-need public outreach and eduction.
• Rhode Island Veterinary Medical Association Companion Animal Foundation - They provide assistance to low-income families so they can keep their pets healthy, and keep them with them, period. Very important in these times of economic hardship.
• Hill County Paw Pals is trying to build a shelter in a rural part of Texas.
• Support Our Shelters (S.O.S.) - helps support ferret shelters in need around the world.
• United Animal Nations Emergency Animal Rescue Service (EARS) - UAN shelters and cares for animals displaced by natural disasters and other crises, such as criminal seizures and hoarding cases, in the United States and Canada.

OK, I'm getting sniffly just looking at this list. If you have a few extra dollars, please consider giving one of them a hand.

Thanks again to everyone who suggested laptop names and charities, especially Cory and Sarah! Stay tuned for biggest giveaway yet. Next time, it won't be just an ARC. Muahahaha!

(In the meantime, you can still enter the ARC giveaway contest at Jaci Burton's blog.)

----------------
Now playing: The Who - Pictures of Lily
via FoxyTunes

One more chance to win a complete signed Aspect of Crow trilogy!

Since a lot of you have started reading the blog since the release of Wicked Game, I thought I’d tell you about my monthly prize drawing tied in with the ASPECT OF CROW trilogy:


If you were an animal, which would you be? Are you strong as a bear, loyal as a wolf, crafty as a fox?

My website features an interactive personality quiz to determine which of twelve Animals from the series you would be. Here are two sample questions:

( You know you're dying to click. What else is there to do on a Monday? )

PLUS...everyone who tells me their Spirit Animal here in the comments or e-mails me between now and December 15 will be put into a drawing for a complete autographed trilogy.

PLUS PLUS...spread the word about this contest and get an extra five chances to win. Five chances per mention (so if you talk about it on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and Blogger, you get, uh, five times four equals...twenty! extra chances). Simply send me the links to your posts to qualify or put them in the comments.

PLUS PLUS PLUS...subscribe to my newsletter and get ten extra chances to win. The subscription box is on the right-hand side of pretty much every page of my website. Or you can check the newsletter subscription box on the contact form when you send me your quiz results.

The drawing will take place at 11:59 EST on December 15. Enjoy!

A new study shows that crows are the smartest non-human animal, including chimpanzees. Take that, you damned dirty apes!

As some of you know, I'm not fond of non-human primates. They freak me out. Maybe I'm particularly susceptible to the Uncanny Valley, an innate revulsion to things that are almost human but not quite. Like mannequins or clowns or [insert easy celebrity joke here].

But I was able to get past my pithikosophobia recently to read the Y: The Last Man graphic novel series. I loved it despite the monkey.

(I should add that I didn't like the ending, partly because my favorite character was killed, and between that and Harry Potter and The Dark Tower and The Sopranos and Deadwood and Twin Peaks and Six Feet Under, I am forever swearing off series. My favorite characters always always always bite it in the last few episodes or final book. Not that I have room to talk, but hey.)

Where was I? Oh yeah--I hate monkeys, but I'll still read about them if the rest of the story is good.

How is this relevant to The Reawakened? Well, when I wrote this book, I figured it was the last in the series, so I would go for broke, write it exactly the way I thought it should be written and not worry about what people thought. Some of you will love it, and some of you will hate it. I respect that.

One of the risks I took was making two of the lead characters have the Aspect of Snake. Many people don't like snakes. But I always try to subvert stereotypes in my work, turn traditional symbols of evil (like crows or snakes) into something redemptive, and turn traditional symbols of good (like the sun or the color white) into something oppressive (i.e., the Ilion nation).

The Snake Spirit's domains are fire and sex (and, to a lesser extent, memory). So when our two Snakes, Sura and Dravek, meet for the first time, things get figuratively and literally H-O-T. This is bad for a lot of reasons I won't go into in this post.  But Snake is one bad-ass Spirit who will not be denied.*

So....for a chance to win an Advance Reader's Copy of The Reawakened, all you have to do is answer the following poll in the comments (or e-mail me at jeri@jerismithready.com if you feel shy):

Snakes are:

a) cool
b) gross
c) scary
d) sexy
e) more than one of the above (please specify)

That's it!  I'll take entries through 11:59pm Eastern time Sunday night, then draw a random name to win an autographed ARC of The Reawakened.  These suckers are pretty scarce, so it's a nice prize if you can get it. 

If you comment as anonymous, make sure you check back to see if you won, or leave a way for me to get in touch with you.

Also, there's one more day to enter the drawing for autographed copies of Eyes of Crow and Voice of Crow.  That's two free books for one lucky person.  Read them now and get ready for The Reawakened's November 1 release.

Good luck!

----------------
Now playing: Our Lips Are Sealed - The Go-Go's
via FoxyTunes   

*Ask Indiana Jones and Neville Flynn if you don't believe me.

EDITED TO ADD: THE REAWAKENED just got a Top Pick review from Romantic Times--that makes it 3 for 3 for the trilogy!  Hat trick, bay-bee!

EDITED TO ADD MORE: The winner of the REAWAKENED ARC is...flip!  Flip, please send your mailing address to jeri AT jerismithready.com.  Congrats, and thanks to everyone who entered!

Miscellaneous confirmed/discovered:
- prisoners in minimum security federal prison camps (FPC's) do have to wear uniforms (thanks, Martha Stewart!)
- women make 77 cents for every dollar men make
- killing in self-defense is called "justifiable homicide," not third-degree murder (which is something else)
- Janet Jackson released Control in February 1986. It became one of the bestselling albums of all time.
- the comma was added to the official title of the Rolling Stones' song "Paint It, Black" by the record company, not the Stones themselves
- in Ohio they call them 'middle schools,' not "intermediate" or "junior high"
- a Great-Horned Owl sounds like this when it's pissed. Not as creepy-sounding as the Screech Owl, but I need this owl to kick some bad-guy ass, and screech owls are the size of kittens. Whereas the Great-Horned? Wouldn't want to be on the wrong end of those talons and that beak.

While dorking around, I found a cool punk/ska band from the city where my family lives, Winchester, VA. Introducing...Anatomic Bomb. This has nothing to do with research, it was just one of those stumble-upons.

Also discovered this nice live version of Bruce Springsteen doing "Youngstown."

From the Monongahela Valley
To the Mesabi iron range
To the coal mines of Appalachia
The story's always the same.
Seven hundred tons of metal a day
Now sir you tell me the world's changed
Once I made you rich enough,
rich enough to forget my name.