(Actually, it says, 8560.)
Which means that the winner is...Karen from Minneapolis!
Congratulations, Karen from Minneapolis, I will send you a copy of Kiss Goodbye as soon as my author copies arrive...probably early September.
Thank you to everyone who sent in guesses...answers were all over the map (which seems appropriate, really). And I loved reading your "Sammy Keyes is..." sentences. I laughed about the ones that were unabashed run-on sentences. So funny! So Sammy!
I also have to say that one of you (okay, it was Sean from North Carolina) had me laughing out loud by signing off with "Holy smokes! Look at the time! Dive for the bushes!"
I just love this group of people. You guys are awesome.
So (switching subjects) to Kiss Goodbye.
I got word from my editor that representatives for the band Queen have denied my use of more than 14 words from the lyrics of Bohemian Rhapsody. I used 17. These lyrics were to appear in Chapter 2.
So I had to figure out what to do, and I did that (grumbling all the while that if Queen knew Sammy, they would be all over being included in Kiss Goodbye. Come on. Freddie Mercury would have loved Sammy's spunk!)
Uncomfortably, their denial wasn't communicated in a manner timely enough to prevent all seventeen words from being included in the ARC, or, it turns out, the first printing of the Killer Cruise paperback.
Yup, the paperback of Killer Cruise (which came out while we were on the road) has a two chapter (plus the prologue) excerpt from Kiss Goodbye.
Queen violation aside, I had no idea there would be a sneak-peek of Kiss Goodbye in the book so when I saw it and said, "Holy smokes! Look at that! Dive for the bushes!"
Well, something similar.
It all of a sudden felt...real.
Like, you know, THE END!
So (dropping any Queenly concerns entirely now) since the beginning of THE END is already out there for anyone to see, I thought...well, I thought...well...you may not want to read on if you don't want to know anything more than you already know about Kiss Goodbye.
Test your self control if you must! Stop here! Go back!
Because below is a (kinda lousy) scan of the first page of the "sneak peek" -- the equivalent of the prologue in all previous Sammys. My intention is not to be cruel (although it's feeling a little that way at this moment).
I'm only posting one page.
144 words (well, 150 if you break up the 6 contractions).
And absolutely no Queen rights violations!
But if you want to wait 100 days (exactly from today) to read it, do not scroll down. The 'prologue' is titled A Warning From Wendelin, which says it all.
But I will still double warn you:
Read at your own risk!
And that's all for tonight. See you (I'm sure) in the comments!
15 comments:
Yay Karen! I am so excited for you!
8000+ miles! Holy cow! That is a lot! But it was 8000+ miles of one in a life times adventures I bet!
I loved the warnings. At each warning I changed my mind about whether or not I wanted to read the prologue, but I read it and I am glad I did! I sounds amazing! I can't wait to read it! 100 days will fly by! I am so excited for this book!
Have a great week everyone!
Kylie
Kylie, you are just consistently awesome :-)
PS Glad you're glad!
Congratulations Karen! Over eight thousand miles! Now that's a lot!
I couldn't resist the temptation to read it. Usually when I read sneek peaks of books, I regret it. Because I'm like freak if out because I have wait months... But I still do it anyways. I'll never learn. :P
Have a great week everybody!
Gabrielle
Congrats to Karen!
I cannot WAIT for this book to come out! I am sad that it's the last book, but it sounds so good, and I can already see my tears dripping on the pages when I am near THE END of the book and I realize that it really is THE END. Thanks for being such an awesome author! :)
I haven't commented in a long time, though I check in often. Sorry about that.
Over 8,000 miles? That's incredible. Congrats Karen!
I'm so excited for the book now! 100 days used to feel like forever, but I guess with high school and all, it'll feel like nothing! Can't wait!
So last night I dreamt a totally ridiculous plot for this book, involving the Nighty Napper and Mr. G. (I can't remember much more than that.) But it's still 100 days before I can find out (or more, probably, unless I order it online... which I just got an Amazon gift card, so... yay!).
I actually dream about books a lot, especially if I fall asleep reading it. (When I saw the LOTR, I was like, that's not what happens at the end! And then someone was like, no, what you're saying isn't what happened either -- my dreamt ending was more satisfying to me, so I'd supplanted the memory of the real ending.) But I usually don't dream about books before I've even started reading them!
I can tell that was only semi-coherent, but it's nearly bedtime and I can't figure out how to improve it, so my apologies.
Ahhhhhh! That's all I can say. Ahhhhhh!
IS THIS THE REAL LIFE? OR IS THIS JUST FANTASY?!
Okay I'm officially TOTALLY FREAKING PUMPED. And nervous. And very extremely thoroughly emotional, oh my gosh I just cannot wait for this and yet I almost dont want it to come out because Sammy must live on forever
Stahp :( Write more
Hi Wendelin!! It's Leah, from Albuquerque! My sister and I absolutely loved the previewed to Kiss Goodbye! We are so excited for September to come around!! Also, I just want to let you know that meeting you was one of the most amazing things to ever happen to me!
Leah :)
So great to hear from some of you who haven't posted in a while!
I'm excited about this week's post--all I'm asking you to do is THINK ABOUT IT!
And then figure out a way to come :-)
IS THIS REAL LIFE...?
[Sorry this is so late, my work schedule is weird and I probably spend too much time composing my thoughts so I never get here early in the week. Or before the next post, in this case ... ahem. Anyway.]
????!?
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
YAY!
Thanks, everybody! :)
Holy cow that's like seven hundred miles of sidetracks. ...Well, why not?
Jessica, that was completely coherent. And also very cool. I wish you could remember it, that would be fun to hear. :)
STEPH Hello, I've missed your musical comments.
Unbelievable that Queen wouldn't want to be in Sammy Keyes. Unbelievable. Clearly that poor representative had instructions to just deny all requests, and no one there has had time to read Sammy Keyes yet, because they would have made an exception.
(How do you take out just three words of lyric?)
I'm so glad it got printed in full at the back of Killer Cruise because now I can read that first, and just mentally insert it into the final published book. (Which is also what I did with that bit in the graveyard [x] in Night of Skulls. Thank you, Wendelin, for letting us in on the Permission Denied sagas!)
I had to read the first page because I glanced at the first line and then I knew whatever I would imagine coming after that would be worse than what actually did. And I'm glad I read it, although now I'm more curious than ever about the narrator situation. Do I want to hunt down a copy of the KC paperback? But then I have to wait until September (93 days!) to read the rest of it... Ugh. Patience.
I've been reading these books for so long, and they've been such a big part of my life, that reading the beginning of the end actually makes my heart feel heavy! Be that as it may, I'm still dying for it to be September!
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