Amanda Hocking

Amanda's Blog

Zombiepalooza Giveaway – Signed Paperback!
October 4th, 2010 by
This post currently has 12 comments
Today’s Zombieaplooza Giveaway is a signed paperback of Cameo the Assassin by Dawn McCullough-White. 
The Kingdom of Sieunes is rife with taverns, dirty streets, and clay pipe smoking citizens all toiling to feed their families and keep themselves in something little better than rags. With a foiled revolution just ten years prior still burning in the hearts of many, the royals enlist the aid of assassins to keep things in order.

The townsfolk entertain themselves by dreaming of better times to come and regaling in stories of the undead said to walk the graveyards at night… and of Cameo the killer with corpse-like eyes… Scarred and jaded Cameo is one of the most effective assassins in the employ of the Association, moving from one mission to the next as long as the alcohol keeps flowing.

Her acceptance of the murder-for-hire lifestyle is thrown into doubt when she meets a local highwayman with a penchant for fine clothes and women, and then she begins to think about breaking with the company but no one ever breaks with the Association under good term.

M. Wayne Cunningham of ForeWord Clarion Review gave it 5/5 stars and said, “Cameo the Assassin, a historical novel from Dawn McCullough-White, is an engaging, fast-paced romp about highwaymen, assassins, Lockenwood vampires, their victims, and their evaders in an age when ‘who knew there were so many vampires running around.'”
For more information about Dawn or Cameo the Assassin, please visit:
http://dawnmccullough-white.com/
Amazon
Facebook

The giveaway for the paperback of Cameo the Assassin has the same rules as the other Zombiepalooza giveaways –

1. To enter to win, comment on this blog, leaving an email address to contact you in case you win.

2. The giveaway runs from now until October 28th at midnight. On October 29th, winners will be chosen by random.org and contacted. They have 72 hours to reply before the prize defaults to the runner-up.

3. Only one entry per giveaway. (But you can enter as many different Zombiepalooza giveaways as you want.)

4. US only. Sorry to our international friends. 🙁


Zombiepalooza Giveaway & Facing the Beast
October 3rd, 2010 by
This post currently has 19 comments

It’s a Zombiepalooza double feature – a guest post and a giveaway! Zombiepalooza’s very first guest blog comes from  Robert J. Duperre, along with a  signed paperback of his novel The Fall! Giveaway info follows after his article…
_________________________________________________________

Facing the Beast
Why we need monsters in our lives


I was a very frightened child. Every creak in the dark, every bug I saw crawling over the windowsill, every thought of never seeing my parents again, filled me with a paralyzing sense of dread. I was prone to high fevers and nightmares I would wake screaming from. Even certain episodes of Sesame Street would send me into a cacophony of tears and petrified mumbles. At one point I remember walking into the living room when my younger sister – who was no more than four at the time – sat alone watching the old Twilight Zone movie. It was toward the end of the John Lithgow vignette, the one with a gremlin on the wing of an airplane. What did I do? I dropped my head into my arms, rolled into a ball, and started to hyperventilate. She, on the other hand, did nothing but laugh.

My fear came to a head when I found out my grandmother had been diagnosed with cancer. Everything came crashing down on me. I became obsessed with my fear of death, of those things out there that wanted to bring an end to me and my loved ones, be they real or ethereal. My parents sent me to talk to a priest, who went on to explain how God has a plan for all of us, and that all would be well in my life if I simply accepted that. I couldn’t. Though his words somewhat calmed me, there was still so much panic I felt at all times, be it riding the bus, walking in the woods, or simply laying my head on my pillow at night.

Then, one day, came John Carpenter’s The Thing, and everything changed.

I was at a friend’s house, maybe twelve years old. His parents were away, and he popped the VHS tape in. I shuddered in the corner as he told me what the movie was about. I wanted to run away, but being on the cusp of my teenage years and wanting to prove my bravery, I swallowed my fear and sat down with him. I watched the movie with my hands on the side of my face, ready to cover my eyes at a moment’s notice. However, as the film went on, I found them dropping further and further towards my lap. By the end, I was enthralled by the creature on the screen, by the amount of terror it bestowed on those trying to fend it off. Compared to my own problems, it seemed to me, this was much worse.

Starting with that moment, I became obsessed with horror. From Barker to King to Romero, I devoured as much literature and took in as many films as I could. There was a sense of relief in the reading or watching of these frightening tales, for no matter how hard my heart raced, at the end I understood that these words and images could not hurt me. It filtered into my everyday life, and when I started writing, I came to the conclusion that these horrors, these creatures that allowed me to face my own demons and helped put the world in perspective, would form the basis of my creative endeavors.

That’s right, folks. Monsters gave me direction and healed my soul. And with that healing came a greater understanding of what they represent.

Since the moment humans developed language, there have been monsters. Tales of these unnatural creatures have been whispered into a child’s ear before bedtime, told around campfires, been dictated into the annals of religion, and jotted down on paper to become some of the most enriching works of fiction the world has seen. They have frightened, angered, and enlightened us over the years.

We need monsters. They are intrinsic to the understanding of our own nature.

In their hellishness, these are beasts that reflect aspects of humanity that we would otherwise purposefully ignore. From the werewolf myths brought about by Herodotus in ancient Greece to the Mesopotamian demon-spirits that evolved into modern-day vampires, they acted as tools of terror that accomplished the dual goals of helping the peoples in these antediluvian societies cope with occurrences that were outside their realm of learning and/or understanding. They are all beautiful in their simplicity and meaning. Werewolves were men made beast, suggesting humanity’s fear of losing control, of becoming something less than human. Vampires are the immortals whose feeding, in its inherent sexuality, reflects a communal fear of intimacy. Zombies, pre-Night of the Living Dead, were everyday folks enthralled by a single master, an illustration of how the quest for power can draw on the souls of the living; post-Romero, they are a metaphor for mindless acceptance of the status quo, for following without questioning.

Through the stories, these creatures have come alive. In many ways, in fact, they have mirrored the progress of society. When religion ruled, these monsters were the paramours of Satan or other lords of the underworld. As the governing theocracies faded, they became things that were simply outside our understanding.

To illustrate this, let us consider Frankenstein’s monster.

Mary Shelly’s man-made fiend is, in many ways, a manifestation of the Jewish golem rewritten for the technological age. And yet it is so much more than that. It demonstrates man trying to be God, and shows how, like their deity, they take this innocent creature and warp it. The monster becomes a scapegoat for everything wrong with the world; though built of human flesh and understanding, it is dehumanized, and in the end is left weeping when its creator – both its god and tormentor – dies. And in its suffering, despite its monstrous appearance – or perhaps because of it – we see ourselves. It serves as a metaphorical death of the godhead as the prime reason for living
as I said, a reflection of its time.

Contrast this with the previously mentioned Night of the Living Dead. Like Frankenstein, a large portion of its plot deals with human fear and cruelty. Unlike Frankenstein, it doesn’t deal with the quest for godliness. Yet, like that classic book, it was groundbreaking. It was one of the first movies to feature an African-American lead. It used the meandering undead as a social commentary on both conformity and the state of racism in the late 1960s. It is also the first example of zombies used en masse, as a wandering horde whose only purpose is to consume, consume, consume. I don’t think I have to explain the metaphor that is trying to get across, do I?

In the end, that’s what they are. Metaphor. And through these living, breathing facsimiles of our deepest and darkest fears, we grow and learn. It allows us to look at our everyday problems through a veil of fantasy, much like it did for me as a child, and lets us process the message while wrapped inside a tight, imaginary bubble.

And as we grow and change, so do they. A perfect example of this would be the Twilight vampires. I won’t get into my problems with the series – the message the books give to young girls being first and foremost on the list – because that’s a complaint for another day. However, when you look at the construction of the creatures, it is fascinating. These sparkly, romantic beasts follow a trend that has been building in horror literature over the last twenty or so years, in which the monsters have become the ideal, in many ways more human than the humans that face them. In every way, these creatures stand in direct opposition to the torture porn that has infiltrated the genre over the past decade. In all of them we see humans behaving badly, as if the evil is sprouting from their very souls, and it is the monsters who are disbelieving, aghast at the horrors we as a people are capable of.

So if the evolution of monsters mirrors the evolution of our society, what does this mean for the state of the world today? At the end of Diary of the Dead, Romero asks, “With all we’ve done, do we deserve to live?” I think this is what they’re trying to tell us. We have to look inside now, to throw pretense to the wind and take responsibility. The planet is in disarray, and it’s becoming a more frightening place every day.

So if we can look at the new progression of these terrors, if we can overcome our fears and even for a moment say, “I know what you’re saying,” we’ll all be better off for it. Then, perhaps, we can look at these monsters and realize, once and for all, that they’ve been us all along.

_________________________________________________________ 

For more information about Robert J. Duperre and his books, please visit: www.theriftonline.com.

Robert is giving away a copy of his book The Fall, signed both by himself and the artist Jesse David Young. 



An ancient evil, trapped in the ruins of a lost Mayan temple for centuries, has been unleashed.  It takes the form of a deadly virus, one that causes violent insanity in the living and the recently departed to rise and walk.  It spreads around the globe, throwing the world into chaos and war.

As it progresses, those in the States who find themselves far away from the epicenter watch it unfold with unbelieving eyes.  From Washington D.C. to Dover, New Hampshire, regular people are hurled into an existence outside their control, left to deal with catastrophic situations that they are unprepared to handle.  Life becomes a nightmare, and that nightmare is spreading.

Robert J. Duperre presents this scenario with The Fall: The Rift Book I, the first of a four-part series.  In this book, he throws his characters into a gambit; when the alternatives are life or death, self-preservation or the protection of others, what path will they choose?  Is there a darkness that resides in everyone, from every walk of life, that is screaming for release?  When society falls apart and we are left to our own devices, will we make the right decisions, or let the tide take us where it may?  There is horror, there is death, there are the walking dead, and all around are choices.

The novel is fully illustrated by Jesse David Young, whose drawings capture the intense feel of the events happening within.  There are twenty illustrations in all, as well as the cover art he provided.  These add to the reading experience and help to throw you, the reader, head-first into the world they have created.



“Opening the pages of The Fall is to delve into a mirror of our own world, that is steadily polluted and warped until a hideous and terrifying new reality bleeds its way beyond the horizon.”
          –Michelle Howarth,
 
For more info about Robert J. Duperre or his books, please visit: www.theriftonline.com

Also, for your viewing pleasure, you really need to check out Jesse David Young’s artwork because it’s so intense. His work is what mine and Guillermo del Toro’s nightmares are made of. (I mean that in a good way). His site is: jruined.carbonmade.com


The giveaway for the signed paperback of The Fall has the same rules as the other Zombieapalooza giveaways –

1. To enter to win, comment on this blog, leaving an email address to contact you in case you win.

2. The giveaway runs from now until October 28th at midnight. On October 29th, winners will be chosen by random.org and contacted. They have 72 hours to reply before the prize defaults to the runner-up.

3. Only one entry per giveaway. (But you can enter as many different Zombiepalooza giveaways as you want.)

4. US only. Sorry to our international friends 🙁

Zombie Mom
October 2nd, 2010 by
This post currently has 9 comments
Zombiepalooza’s first short story comes from John Hartness. It’s a fun, frightful tale of what happens when your mom turns in a zombie.
  _____________________________________________________
I never gave a whole lot of thought to what it must be like for the zombies. You know, I was just like everybody else: I saw a zombie, I hit it in the head with a baseball bat, or an axe, or on a really good day a chainsaw. But when my mom got infected, I really had to change my opinions on a lot of things. It’s one thing when it’s your fifth-grade PE teacher you’re shooting in the face, but it’s something entirely different when the woman who makes your pancakes every Sunday is the one trying to eat your brains.
It all started on a Sunday morning. Like I said, we had pancakes. We had pancakes every Sunday morning, even after the Plague started. I mean, you can’t let a little thing like the friggin’ zombie Apocalypse change your whole routine, can you? Well, after we finished breakfast, all of us (me, Mom, Dad, my bratty kid brother Eugene and our dog Dilbert) went into the living room to watch some TV. It was too early for the early game, so we were watching ZSN (Zombie Sports Network) just for kicks. They were showing Zombie Skeet, where they launch zombies in these huge catapult things and shoot the crap out of them with anti-aircraft guns. That used to be our favorite. Eugene was being a little snot about zombie rights, so we changed the channel to Zombie-Animal Planet, which was showing Zombie Manor, where these zombies in Africa were running from a lion. That was pretty cool, too, but needed more explosions.
Anyway, we were all chillin’ out waiting for football to start when Mom decided to go get the newspaper. Dad barely looked up from the TV, just said, “don’t forget your body armor, dear,” and went back to his show.
Mom suited up, grabbed her pink aluminum Lady Slugger, and headed down the driveway. It took us a while to notice that she’d been gone too long because just then a new episode started and there were all these cool scenes with zombies trying to run from rhinos and getting gored, and still climbing the rhinos and trying to bite through the rhino’s hide and all, until finally the rhino would run into a tree or a bus or something and put this huge hole in the side of the bus and leave zombie smeared all down the side, but because the rhino didn’t know to crush the brain, the zombie smear would just twitch and twitch until finally the camera guy went over and shot it in the head.
So we were a little distracted, and it was the second commercial break before we noticed that Mom hadn’t come back with the paper yet. So Dad suited up, and I grabbed the shotgun to go with him when he was all like “Where do you think you’re going, young man?”
And I was all like “I’m going with you to find Mom.”
And he was all like “You’ve got to stay here and protect your little brother.”
And then I was all like “He’s big enough to protect himself! And besides, I don’t care if he gets eaten, but I like Mom!”
And he was all like “I don’t care, you’re staying here.” And he had used the grown-up voice so I knew he wasn’t messing around this time. So I sat on the couch with the shotgun and watched as he went out looking for Mom. I might have slugged Eugene in his arm just for being a Eugene and generally ruining my life by his very existence, but I wouldn’t swear as to exactly how he got that bruise.
They were gone a long time, and I was actually starting to get worried about them, not to mention hungry, when Dad finally came back carrying Mom over one shoulder and swinging like a madman with her Lady Slugger. He looked pretty stupid fighting off zoms with a girly bat, but I guess he’d lost his somewhere along the way. As soon as he was in the door, he yelled “Billy, shoot!” Then he dove for the floor and I opened up on the zoms at the door. I was behind the couch using it to brace the shotgun, so my aim was pretty good. I blasted zombie brain all over the foyer until my shells ran out, and then I ran out and slammed the door. Once I got the door barred again, I looked at Dad to see if he needed my help.
He was out of breath and covered in zom-goo, but he didn’t look hurt. “Help me get your mother tied to the couch,” he panted, and I thought about how some guys had dads that used to be firemen and jocks, but my dad the accountant had somehow managed to survive getting his brains eaten all this time. I really don’t get the world sometimes.
We put Mom on the sofa, and I took her shoes off while Dad tackled her body armor. I don’t know what good it does to take your shoes off, but Mom always says after a rough day she can’t wait to get her shoes off. To me it just makes the room all stinky, but maybe Mom feet don’t stink like kid feet do.
So we got mom out of her body armor and her shoes, and then Dad ran into their bedroom. He came back with two of his ugly neckties and a pair of handcuffs covered in pink fuzzy feathers. I looked at him like “what?” and he looked back at me like “don’t ever mention this again,” so I didn’t ask. He tied Mom’s feet together and handcuffed her wrists, and then sat back down in his recliner.
“Dad, what happened?” I asked.
“Well, son, it looks like your mother got bitten by a zombie on her way to get the newspaper.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Well, we have two choices. We can either bash in her head like every other zombie out there, or we can try to keep some little shred of your mother alive in her.”
“I don’t even know what that means, dude.”
“It means we either kill her and learn to cook, or we chain her to the stove and try to stay out of biting range.”
“Oh.” I thought about that for a long time, and looked over at Mom sitting there on the couch, moaning and trying to eat the sofa. Then I had an idea. I jumped up off the living room floor and ran to my bedroom. It took a little digging, but finally, in the very back of my closet, I found what I was looking for. I ran back downstairs with my prize held high above my head, and presented it to Dad like Indiana Jones finding some cool Indiana Jones-type thing.
“What is this, son?” Dad asked.
“It’s my old catcher’s mask.”
“I know that, but why do I have it?”
“Because I gave it to you.”
“Don’t be a smartass. What am I supposed to do with it?”
“Oh. Sorry. Put it on Mom, then she can’t bite us. She’s not smart enough anymore to take it off, so then we can tie her to something in the kitchen and she can cook for us.”
So we did. And after a few days of trying to eat us and bouncing off the bars on the catcher’s mask, she finally gave up. I also gave her Eugene’s old pacifier, which he had kept all this time, even though he was like nine. He’s a weird kid, and this is coming from a guy who keeps a zombie chained to the stove. But anyway.
So Zom-Mom stays chained to the stove, and even though she’s now a brainless shambling flesh-eating fiend, she still makes killer pancakes. And if every once in a while she drops a finger into the batter, what’s the big deal? Eugene’s gotta eat something. 
 _____________________________________________________

John Hartness is a redneck from Charlotte, NC. His first novel, The Chosen, is available for the Kindle, iPad or in analog edition. You can find out more about John at his website, www.johnhartness.com. Once upon a time, he wrote about poker under the pseudonym Falstaff. If you already knew that, you should get out more. But don’t forget your bat.

ZOMBIEPALOOZA!
October 1st, 2010 by
This post currently has 22 comments
After days, weeks, nearly a fortnight, of planning, Zombiepalooza is finally upon us, and I can’t tell you how excited I am.

As you may or may not know, Zombiepalooza is an event running from October 1st until October 31st here at my blog. It’s going to be filled with guest blogs, short stories and flash fiction from thoughts of amazing authors, and tons of giveaways. Okay, the weight of the prizes won’t literally equal a ton, but there are a lot of giveaways. (I’m even kicking off this post with a signed paperback giveaway, but I’ll talk more about that in a minute.)

For the full calender of events, please check out the Zombiepalooza tab at the top, or click: here. (It’s too much to post. Because it’s a LOT of things.)

Here’s is one treat you’ll find under the Zombiepalooza tab from Bards and Sages Publishing:  Everything from angels to zombies since 2002

Take 50% off both the print and digital version of one of our bestsellers, Dead Men and Women Walking.  Zombies, vampires, undead things that should not be.  Dozens of short stories featuring the walking dead.  Visit our website at www.bardsandsages.com to find other books, and learn how to enter our annual charity writing contest and see your work in print.

Zombies. Vampires. Undead things that should not be. Now the dead share their tales, with over two dozen tales of brain-feasting, blood-drinking, revenge-seeking horror. Follow the walking dead through playgrounds, shopping centers, deserted towns, and corporate complexes as they continue their relentless quests.

To get 50% off an ebook of Dead Men and Women Walking, go: here and enter this discount code VB43U. To get 50% off a paperback, go: here and enter this discount code WLJKS8U8 

Zombiepalooza is celebration of all things zombie and Halloween (but mostly zombie.) To start of the month, I tried to come up with a recommended reading/viewing list of all things zombie for those that may not be familiar with zombies, or even with those that are but forgot about certain awesome zombie things.

If you’re wondering how I contabulated the lists, it was by a highly scientific system called “my own personal preference” and “Google.” So it’s very accurate that these are THE best.

Recommended Viewing
  1.  Dawn of the Dead (2004)
      2. Probably one of the greatest remakes of all time. I laughed, I cried, I got seriously grossed out. Plus the guy who plays Phil on Modern Family is a total trip. 
  2. Shaun of the Dead
      3. Somehow this movies manages to be both hilarious and downright tense and frightening. It’s a hard combo, but Simon Pegg is a genius. 
  3. 28 Days Later
      4. Right before, as in like 20 minutes, I saw this movie in theaters, I got my rook pierced and a tattoo, and this became my most intense movie viewing experience of all time. But even when I’m not in crazy pain, I still love this movie.
  4. Army of Darkness
      5. Too, too much fun.
  5. Dawn of the Dead (1979)
      6. Some people think this is better than the remake. Those people are wrong. But this is a good movie.
  6. Night of the Living Dead (1968)
      7. The one that started it all. Kinda. Okay, so George Romero didn’t invent the zombie, but he did make a classic film that really invented the genre as we know it today.
  7. Dead Alive
      8. The cover alone creeps me out.
  8. Plan 9 From Outer Space
      9. Maybe not so much a “zombie” movie or even a “movie” as a hilarious travesty of film by the “brilliant” Ed Wood.
  9. Planet Terror
      10. Robert Rodriquez knows how to make an awesome zombie flick.
  10. Zombieland* 
      11. *I haven’t actually seen Zombieland because of my current issues with Jesse Eisenberg (he knows what he did), but I want to see it, and generally consesus via the internet is that if you like zombies, you should see Zombieland

Recommended Reading
  1. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks
      2. Hands down, the best zombie book ever.
  2. The Zombie Survival Guide  by Max Brooks
  3. Monster Island by David Wellington
  4. Marvel Zombies: Graphic Novel by Robert Kirkman and Sean Phillips
      5. I’m not a huge fan of Marvel Comics, but any series that has Peter Parker eating Mary Jane is pretty awesome. Plus, it has an Army of Darkness  cross over.
  5. Pride & Prejudice & Zombies by Jane Austen… and some other guy
    1. I don’t know if  I approve of mash ups in general, but this one, I kinda dug.
  6. Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament by S. G. Browne
  7. Unicorns vs. Zombies by Holly Black*
      8. *I haven’t read this yet. ($9.99 on Kindle? Yeah, right). But I keep imagining how awesome it is. 
  8. Hollowland by Amanda Hocking **
      9. **I wrote this. So my opinion is biased. But I do recommend that you read it 🙂
 You may be asking yourself, “What if I’m not a zombie fan? What are recommendations for some good clean, horror fun for the month of October?”

Well, I’m glad you asked. Here are my general recommendations for all things scary.
  1. Pan’s Labyrinth 
      2. No movie has ever freaked me out more as an adult. Because of this: 
       
  2. The Hills Have Eyes (2006)
      3. I saw this movie twice in theaters. I never do that. But I loved this movie. It has Ted Levine! And really, really horrible creatures! But the sequel might be the worst movie ever made.
  3. The Lost Boys 
      4. Not scary at all. But awesome.
  4. Texas Chainsaw Massacre
      5. The original or the remake. Doesn’t matter. I love them both.
  5. Nightmare on Elmstreet (1984)
      6. I didn’t appreciate Freddy’s genius until a few years ago. Now I imagine that if Michael Ian Black were a pedophile that got burned alive, this is what he’d be like. He’s very funny. 
  6. Friday the 13th (1980)
      7. Yeah, it’s horrible. That’s why its awesome.
  7. An American Werewolf in London
      8. This movie really grossed me out as a kid. The werewolf transformation… is disturbing. But I love this movie anyway. And fun fact: I don’t even like werewolves. And it has the Dr. Pepper guy.
  8. Ernest Scared Stupid
      9. No movie has ever given me more nightmares this one. It’s supposedly a film for “children” but I saw this when I was 10 and it still terrified me. It could be because of massive fear of trolls (truth), but that troll was really scary. Really.
  9. The Exorcist
      10. Classic terror.
  10. Anything by David Lynch. Eraserhead and Blue Velvet are my top picks. His movies make my skin crawl and I get nauseous. That man is the true master of horror.

I tried to think of books that scared me.  I’ve read all of Stephen King, and while I recommend it, none of it ever scared me. I could only come with one book that actually freaked me out and gave me nightmares.



Grubs by David McAfee. I’ll admit that it didn’t help that I’m predispositioned to hating maggots more than anything (except trolls), but the book is still subversively creepy. It’s got a lot of camp, but it’s still good. It’s sorta like Slither, only better because it doesn’t have Elizabeth Banks.

But my lists of scary aren’t definitive, of course and I’d love to hear what everybody’s favorite scary movies are. That’s what the comments section is for. 😉

On that note, David McAfee is generously giving away a signed copy of his hit book 33 A. D. For more information about David or his books, please visit: mcafeeland.wordpress.com




Jerusalem, 33 A.D. The vampires of the era have long sought to gain a foothold into Israel, but the faith of the local Jewish population has held them in check for centuries.


When one of their own betrays them to follow a strange young rabbi from Galilee, the elders of the vampire race dispatch Theron, a nine hundred year old assassin, to kill them both.


The rabbi’s name is Jesus. Killing him should be easy.


“33 A.D. by David McAfee is a wildly original, non-stop pulse pounder that tells the story of a vampire assassin whose mission is to kill Jesus of Nazareth. In a genre mired by clichĂ© stories, this stands out as something bold and new.”

    – Jeremy Robinson, author of Pulse and Instinct


The giveaway for the paperback of 33 A.D. has the same rules as the other Zombiepalooza giveaways –


1. To enter to win, comment on this blog, leaving an email address to contact you in case you win.

2. The giveaway runs from now until October 28th at midnight. On October 29th, winners will be chosen by random.org and contacted. They have 72 hours to reply before the prize defaults to the runner-up.

3. Only one entry per giveaway. (But you can enter as many different Zombiepalooza giveaways as you want.)

4. US only. Sorry to our international friends. 🙁

Banned Books Week
September 29th, 2010 by
This post currently has 3 comments

I’ll be honest: I hadn’t heard of Banned Books Week. That makes me shamefaced because I am so anti-censorship, it’s not even funny. In high school, I did not one, not two, but three separate presentations on censorship, because it was probably the only thing I was really passionate about in high school.

I also want to take the time to mention something kinda cool and surprising – of the top 100 most banned and challenged classics according to the ALA, a total of 8 of them were required reading in my high school. Not optional reading. Definitely not banned. I had to read them to pass.

And beyond that, the first time I read a number of authors – including Kurt Vonnegut, J. D. Salinger, Douglas Adams, Joseph Heller, Jack Kerouac, Ernest Hemingway, and Virginia Wolfe – was when I checked out their books from my high school library.

And, in steps further, when I was in high school, when I wrote short stories for my creative writing and English classes, nobody ever cared if I swore or if the content got violent. As long as I had proper grammar and stayed on topic, they didn’t mind.

I never knew that a small-town in Minnesota would be so progressive. Way to not suck, Austin!

But I digress. The point is that banning books is stupid. I’m not saying you have to like books or read them or even let your children read them, but deciding someone else’s children can’t read them is ridiculous. Especially when so few kids read today (or so the internet tells me).

And that really is who you’re hurting. It’s the kids.

You can ban as many books as you want from schools, libraries, and even burn them at your PTA meetings. But thanks to the good ol’ First Ammendment (which is FIRST for a reason), you can’t really ban it. You can’t stop me from getting it. I have Amazon, and I can order 37 copies of Lolita and Mein Kampf  if I want to (which I don’t –  I’ve read them both and didn’t like either of them, but I don’t think you should ban them).

I write books for young adults. A couple of adults have complained about the content of my books – i.e. the occasional language and non-graphic sexual… themes? (They do not complain of the violence, though, or the amount of blood-drinking, but that’s another topic of another day).

I have tried to keep my books PG-13, but I am aware that some people might find my books inappropriate children. And that’s fine with me. How you want to raise your child is between you and your child. I also believe that parents are that concerned about what their children are reading tend to know what their kids reading – and they would without a school imposing a ban.

At any rate, I encourage everyone to read a Banned or Challenged Book this week. It’s a broad list, from Judy Blume to Stephen King, with most people in between. For a full list of the Top 100 Most Frequently Banned or Challenged Books, go: here.

I’m going to read Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy  by Douglas Adams, because I’ve been wanting to read it lately anyway. Richelle Mead’s Vampire Academy series as the awesome distinction of being one of the few books to be banned… before it was ever written. (Click: here to find out why.)

Also, just check out Richelle’s awesome post about Banned Books: here.

Oh, and you should read Lenny Bruce. Or watch the fantastic film Lenny starring Dustin Hoffman about his life. He’s like a personal hero. Lenny said, “It’ s the suppression of the word that gives it the power.” And he is soo right.

And for reasons I don’t understand My Blood Approves is currently 10% on sale Amazon for the Kindle and Fate is 20% on sale Amazon for Kindle. So, that’s a deal.And Switched is 20% off at Barnes and Noble for the Nook.

Oh, and my 11-year-old brother texted me yesterday. He said he asked his school library to order my books, and they’re going to. So, I’m not banned! Yay!

Older Entries
Newer Entries