Itty Bitty Contest
Regular blog readers will remember that last Wednesday I posted photos of a couple of my foreign book jackets and dared you to guess the original hiding under the Italian title of STREGHE. And I may have been so ill-advised as to say something like ‘Maybe I should offer as a prize a copy of it (in English) if you can guess which book it is.’
Whereupon there was a lively thread on the forum and a lively feedback section on Facebook, and one or two people on Twitter all rising to this challenge.
Oh. Oops.*
So I had an immediate problem: did I grandly ignore the whole situation, laughing condescendingly and declaring that all of you don’t know how to take a joke, do I give a free copy to the first person who posted correctly, do I put all the names of the people who correctly guessed KNOT in a hat and pick one, or . . .
DO I RUN ANOTHER SILLY CONTEST.
Clearly I run another silly contest.**
Having got that far*** I had to figure out how to make it a contest. Just asking everyone who would like to win a signed copy of A KNOT IN THE GRAIN to wave their hands in the air wouldn’t be any fun, aside from the difficulty in making an accurate count. Besides, I want to be amused. There has to be something in it for me.
So, here’s the deal. To enter the it-isn’t-really-a-contest-it’s-just-the-author-making-a-giveaway-more-diverting-for-her, you have to come up with the title of the book that the Italian jacket for KNOT was clearly destined for. This is not, let me be clear, a book that exists. After all, if it existed, the STREGHE artwork would be on it and KNOT might conceivably have a jacket that makes some sense.† No, the artist obviously had had a fever dream and was just slapping it hectically down on paper when the phone call from the Pasta & Pavarotti Publishers art department came. Fantasy? he said.†† Funny you should want fantasy right now . . . guy with antlers? Check. Green guy? Check. Whacked out trees? Check. Dangerous hair? Totally. Is it okay if there’s a flying car? Pleeeeeease?††† Thanks. ‡
So you’re going to invent the title of the book that should have existed so this artwork could be on it.‡‡ The Red and Blue Girl with the Dangerous Hair, for example. You will then post it to the forum thread belonging to tonight’s blog post. I will post a link to this entry on Facebook, and people can post to that thread as well. I will also post on Twitter and, if I understand the hashtag thing, entries should appear under #rmck. You only get one entry per thread, but if you belong to the blog forum, Twitter and FB you get three entries. ‡‡‡ Also everyone who guessed KNOT in the original Backlist thread will go into the (virtual) hat. So someone who guessed KNOT and belongs to the forum, FB and Twitter will get four entries.
The Itty Bitty Not Really a Contest will run for one week. It will close next Saturday at midnight GMT§, I will discover that tallying entries is a serious ratbag and swear never to do it again§§, and will post the winner next Sunday.
Two further points to ponder: First: A KNOT IN THE GRAIN is out of print. There may still be copies lurking in dusty back corners of bookshops with poor returns policies, but most bookshops can’t afford poor returns policies, so there probably aren’t very many.§§§ The prize for this contest will be a nice shiny new (if old) untouched hardback copy.#
Second: the prize winner will have exactly one week to claim their prize. I’m totally out of patience with people who sign up for contests and then don’t bother to check back. The winner is posted next Sunday, and they have till the following Saturday midnight## to email me at nuraddin@robinmckinley.com . If I don’t hear, I draw again, and that person has a week. If I don’t hear from Person Number Two either . . . I may just keep my frelling copy of KNOT, and sign it to myself.
Okay, have I left anything out? Probably. I’m going to bed now. Post frenziedly about my shortcomings to tonight’s thread and I’ll sort it out tomorrow. If I’ve really glitched it I’ll give you another twenty-four hours at the other end. As hellgoddesses go, I’m an embarrassingly soft touch.
* * *
* Note to self: if offering book as prize, mean it.
** Sorry, Megan Doreen. I think you were first.
*** Nobody really thought I’d try to pretend you hadn’t caught me out, did you? And because I am a nice person^ who admits these things you would tell me if I had tucked my skirt into my panty hose, right?^^
^ if cranky
^^ Reasons to live in jeans. One of the top ten. No, I haven’t, but the idea haunts me. Storyteller = vivid imagination. There are downsides to this.
† Flying cars my Aunt Fanny. Who is never amused.^
^ Yes, she’s Queen Victoria’s great-great-great granddaughter. Don’t get excited. Think how many kids Vicky had. Probably more of us are related to her by now than aren’t.
†† When I see ‘long thin woman too attenuated to live’ I think ‘bloke artist’. Sue me. I also think her hair is dangerous. I think it creeps around in the middle of the night strangling small mammals.
††† Per favoooooore?
‡ Grazie. ^
^ You now know my entire Italian vocabulary. +
+ Prego posso avere i capelli pericolosi.~ Hee hee hee hee hee hee hee.
~ Yahoo’s Babelfish, of course. There are a lot of translators out there, but who can resist one calling itself Babelfish?=
= Oh, glory, please tell me they got permission. . . .
‡‡ I like the idea of inventing book titles. I may use it again. Mwa ha ha ha ha.
‡‡‡ You can use the same title on all three threads, but please glance through the other entries and try to invent one someone else hasn’t got to already. Remember: silly is good. And if you make me laugh out loud I may enter your name an extra time. Which would mean an original KNOT guesser who belongs to all three McKinley-related ways of wasting time on the internet could get five entries.
§ My time. It’s almost worth living in England just to claim Greenwich Mean Time as one’s own, and never mind the cider, the sausages, the public footpath system, and the husband.
§§ This is what mods are for. But previously we’ve, like, sort of, planned contests. People have had time to brace themselves first. This one caught me like a hurtling hellhound bolting between my legs. YAAAAH.
§§§ Bloody hells. I just checked on amazon.com and it’s listed as ‘from $75’. Don’t get me started on the rare-books business. Anyway, I guess amazon considers it OP.
# And, hey. Inundate me with entries and maybe some publisher will say, hmm. Maybe we should buy the rights and put it back into print.
## GMT.
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