Friday Shout-Outs: and TWO Giveaways!

It's Friday, and it's time for some shout-outs! And there are two pretty frawesome giveaways happening right now too, so make sure you read all the way to the end of this post.

First, a shout-out to fellow Greater-Toronto-Area writer-person Maureen McGowan, whose TWO debut novels were released last Friday! CINDERELLA: NINJA WARRIOR and SLEEPING BEAUTY: VAMPIRE SLAYER are two fractured fairy tales with butt-kicking princesses, which just rocks. AND, they're told in choose-your-own-adventure format! How awesome is THAT? (They're both available at Amazon, but try your local indie bookseller first. Let's support local bookstores while we still have them. Okay? Okay.)

And just because they're so cool to look at:

So, go. Buy books. Read blog. She's great! I know you'll like her, and I know you'll like her books.

Next a shout-out to one of my former PB critique buddies, Yolanda Ridge, who emailed to tell me that she is thrilled to be holding a copy of her MG debut novel, TROUBLE IN THE TREES, which will be released on May 1st! YAAAY! Yolanda is smart, talented, and one of the best crit buddies I've ever had. I'll miss her while she ignores picture books for a while so she can focus on her middle grade work (*shakes fist in air*), but I wish her the very, very best of luck with this and all her future books.

And just because it won't be released until May, that doesn't mean we can't have a look-see, does it?

Looks good, huh?

AND NOW: The giveaways! Get excited.

There's another book debuting soon. You might have heard of it. I'll give you some clues.

It's a dystopian, which is exactly the kind of book I love. It's coming out on June 7th. James Dashner (of MAZE RUNNER fame) gave it a kick-ass blurb. It's by Elana Johnson. It's called POSSESSION. It looks like this:

And Shannon O'Donnell is giving an ARC of it away. HERE. So go enter! (But not too many of you, because I WANT IT IT'S MINE ALL MIIIINNNE!)

ALSO: Elana herself is running the most freaktastic giveaway I have ever seen, and I am completely jealous of her book-writing, contest-creating genius. So go enter. Details are HERE.

*ahem* I might have had coffee today.

Happy Friday!