If a dream is a wish your heart makes…

…why did I dream about a family with 14 (or 16) children? Hmm. We won’t worry about that. You know, thinking about it, the worst part was that the mother in the dream was the one who gave me the 14-16 figure for the number of kids. At least COUNT the poor dears.

Lately I’ve had some crazy dreams. A couple of nights ago, I was so aware of being completely bored and disgruntled by my dreams. Usually they’re at least sort of intriguing, so a night full of boredom and dullness really made me mad. I woke up in the middle of the night thinking, “Thank God! I can start a new dream!”

But last night’s was probably the funniest (or weirdest?) dream-awareness I’ve ever had. And I’m pretty sure I can say that it comes directly from my waking life these days.

There was some situation in progress–I can’t for the life of me remember what it was. But as the dream went on, I gained an overarching awareness that there was no logical conclusion to this dream.

“What can the third act be?” I thought. “There’s no possible way for this to wrap up that is satisfying and interesting.”

Yes, my subconscious self was analyzing the narrative drive of my dream.

Is it any wonder I need a nap every day lately? (And no, there is not a “secret” reason for me to need naps. Mom.)

The simple fact is, thinking up stories makes me so tired. All of the dog training books tell you that a great way to “exercise” your dog is to spend a half hour training and working on tricks. This, the books say, tires out their little walnut-brains to the point where they will just collapse into bed.

This is me! Thinking up twists and turns and trying to connect them all is very taxing to my little walnut brain. In wake AND in sleep, apparently.

But it’s still the best job in the world! (And yes, I’m still on the treadmill!)

7 comments July 20th, 2010

Two-for-Tuesday: Writing Pitfalls to Avoid

Okay, so I have been writing for approximately six days without any significant stops. I went out to dinner a few days ago and watched a movie the other night, but other than that, it’s been computer + dried-out eyeballs + butt in chair.

I took a break today to hit a few stores, including Bed Bath & Beyond. This is not a place to shop when you are in “getting revenge on life” mode. I came close to buying a $99 iron, a new shoe rack, six cereal bowls, and a giant serving tray I don’t need. What I did buy is not less frivolous, only smaller: a cutting board, a potato masher, and a pair of tongs.

Anyway, I’m going a little stir-crazy, but that’s all right. It’ll pass.

Today’s Two-for-Tuesday (courtesy Kate) deals with two common writing pitfalls I’m finding as I revise book 2. Avoid them at all costs, unless of course you can make them work for you, in which case please thank me in your acknowledgments.

#1: Floppy or overworked transitions

Ever had your narrator (assuming you write first-person) say, “But I couldn’t think about that right now, I had to XYZ and blah-blah-blah”? Then you are a flopper. Trust me, I know, because I do it a lot. You are trying to dump out of something without bringing it to any kind of satisfying conclusion. Very rarely do we ever decide “Well, I won’t think about that, I have to go fight some evil in the streets.” Even when you’re playing Batman out there, chances are you are still thinking about the mean boy who sent you a questionable text message, even if you meant to put it out of your mind (even if you told the reader that’s what you were going to do!).

A cleaner solution is to find a way to button the thought and move on without trying to tie things together. Maybe this comes from my film education. I remember watching a movie in editing class about a murder and then the police investigation afterward. It would cut from the storyline in the interrogation room back to the storyline leading up to the murder. It was well acted and very tense, except for one thing: every time the investigator would get the bad lady talking about “ooh, Jimmy sure made me mad the day we went to the carnival,” instead of just cutting to the scene at the carnival, the investigator would say, “Why don’t you tell me about that.”

The human brain can take jumps in your action. If you build your action well, in fact, the jumps will be invisible. But everybody notices the author’s voice lumbering in to say, “Why don’t I tell you about that?”

#2: Unbuttoned scenes

My novels are called horror. (Whether you find them horrifying is all on you.) As such, I deal a bit with suspense–good characters who suddenly might be bad, characters arriving at a certain point and making a realization. In these scenes, it usually behooves the book (if I’m not using that word right, I don’t want to know) to end the scene with a beat or a button. Now, I’m not saying we want to go all “Nancy Drew Files” and find bodies hidden in the broom closet at the end of every chapter, but, you know. Something with a bite, or a punch, or a kick.

However, I have a very bad habit of wrapping scenes up thusly:

“Don’t look,” he said. “It’ll only upset you.”

Inside, nestled snugly between the Swiffer and the wet-dry vac, was a body. A very dead body.

–Now, see, that would be all right, if we stopped right there. As I said, I’m not a big fan of bodies in broom closets, but whatever. The problem is that I can’t leave it alone. Always, always, when I’m revising, I find scene endings that look more like this.

I pushed him out of the way and ignored his protests as I pulled the broom closet door open.

“Wow,” I said. “A dead body. This is probably the guy everyone’s been looking for all week.”

Do you spot the difference? Do you see how in one instance, the writer hit the end and then just kept writing, even though she should have stopped?

The good news is, while revising, it is very easy to deal with these situations. You just highlight the last two lines of whatever it is and hit delete.

Okay, now, I really have to get to work. Plus the dog is all up in my grill and driving me bonkers so I have to get him to leave me alone. He’s pretty cute, though. He’s trying super hard to be a pain in the neck but he’s very sleepy, so his eyes are closing, which really impedes his ability to stare at me.

Happy Tuesday!

Is it seriously only Tuesday?

3 comments March 30th, 2010

Verily, I doth sneak this one in.

Listen, I’m going to be honest. I’m posting this brief blog to fulfill my promise to blog every weekday in March. I don’t have anything cool to blog about because my entire brainflow is going toward revisions (with a little left over for some Wordpress customization).

I will say this, though–that being a writer is kind of like having a baby. I say this because people I know who have kids say they can’t remember/imagine life without them. And as a writer, when you work your way through revisions and watch your characters change, you find that you can’t remember/imagine a character as they were in an earlier draft, before you figured out XYZ or decided to have them experience such and such a thing.

I have to go to bed now; I’m going to be writing all day tomorrow.

Last night we locked Winston in the bedroom with us for bedtime while Little Sis was still in the living room eating her dinner. He huffed at the door for a minute before going and chewing up the leather tag on the husb’s jeans. Talk about an “in your face!” gesture. Now I can hear him ambling around and barking at the door again. But I think we got all the leather out of reach.

Happy weekend!

k.

March 26th, 2010

How writing is like Survivor

I watch a lot of reality TV. I tend to stay away from shows that are just sitcom-style reality (sit-real?)–you know, The Hills,Keeping Up With the Kardashians,Jersey Shore, any kind of real housewives anywhere. I like shows where somebody learns something or is inspired–either me (Project Runway, Top Chef) or the participants.

Which brings me to my ultimate guilty pleasure: Wife Swap.

The format is basically this: two women from drastically different households switch places for two weeks. For the first week, they live the life of the other woman. For the second week, each wife makes up a set of rules that force the other family to live by her rules. The drama comes when you have a control-freak personal trainer switching with a laid-back competitive eater. Or a shallow, pampered shopaholic trading place with a farmer. Or a devoutly religious woman switching place with a family of more, ahem, relaxed morals.

At the end of the two weeks, the pairs of husbands and wives meet up across a table and talk about the experience. About half the time, someone gets up and leaves in a huff, but they always come back to finish up. (You can just picture the producers saying, “Now, come on, you’ve made it this far. And the contract clearly states that if you want your $25,000, you have to do every singe thing we tell you to do.”)

Wife Swap is on about forty times a day, so there’s never a shortage of episodes to watch. But my style of watching the show has evolved. Instead of watching beginning, middle, and end, for a total of 42 minutes of program time, about eight of ten times, I watch the first ten minutes and then skip ahead to the last ten, for about fifteen minutes of program time. Why? Because those are the bits of the show when something changes.

In a vast majority of the episodes, the middle chunk is all drama–kids whining, dads whining, moms crying, everybody yelling… it’s all filler. The interesting part is finding out whether the experience changed them, and how they think about it later.

Notice I said that I skip ahead in about 80% of the episodes. The other 20% bring something extra to the table: characters who draw you in. Unexpected connections between the women and their surrogate families. Revelations, growth, moments of self-reflection. Sometimes a woman, faced with having the other family live by her rules, realizes that she doesn’t particularly like her rules. Sometimes a fundamentalist housewife realizes that the biker family she thought were heathens are actually (gasp!) Christians, just like she is!

I think this is an extremely valuable lesson for a writer. A novel chronicles events in a character’s life. It cannot be an interesting beginning, a bunch of filler, and an interesting ending. The middle needs to be about more than just whining, crying, and yelling. You need to have a story. Once you get the formula down, as a consumer of books or TV or movies, you find yourself looking for the next plot point. The next moment when something’s going to change, or somebody’s going to grow. It’s the job of an author to make sure that a book is so full of those characters and moments that the reader doesn’t want to skip the middle.

And on that note, I’d better get to work!

The Daily Plah: Day 4
Currently reading: The Battle for God by Karen Armstrong
Song of the day: Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood, the Nina Simone version
Book 2 progress: Wrote a new opening chapter. Ready to get a move on!
Other notable facts: I’m so excited for the return of The Office tonight!

3 comments March 4th, 2010

Crouching author, hidden manuscript.

Please excuse my scarcity lately. I’m hammering away at BGDD2–turns out that writing a book is a lot of work, who knew?

The weird thing is that it IS a lot of work and it ISN’T. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve never been the world’s fastest writer–not because I can’t write fast, but because I can’t make myself sit still long enough to write fast for any prolonged period of time.

True, you can’t force these things, but on the other hand, sometimes you have to put a little force behind it.

In the style of yoga I practice (because it’s what my friend teaches, mostly–not from any sort of exotic choice-making process), there always seems to be a focus on achieving a balance between discipline and surrender, the “yes” and the “no”… that which comes easily and that which is difficult.

I’m applying that a lot to my writing life right now. In my life, there is that which comes easy: “Yay! I’ve done my writing for the day! I have free time!” and there is that which does not come easy: “Wow, it’s four o’clock and I haven’t come anywhere near my wordcount. Blaaaaaaaaaarrggghh.”

The problem is, as anyone who has ever had a large project set before them knows, you can never really get away from your project. Even if you’ve done your work for the day, there’s still a part of your mind that is anxious, that wants to get back to it. And ESPECIALLY if you haven’t done your work for the day.

And then, for an author (and probably for other professions, but I don’t know because they aren’t my profession), there are the forces that keep you from your work–primarily the abject sense of terror that what you’re doing is a load of useless nonsense and no one will like it and then no one will like YOU and you are a failure and all that.

So the yin and yang are operating strongly on me right now; in all the push and pull I find I am neglecting my blog. Please bear with me for a few more weeks.

k.

3 comments October 10th, 2009

A few words about negative reviews

Last week, Sharon at Sharon Loves Books and Cats featured an interesting post and discussion about book bloggers’ negative reviews. She asked whether people thought publishers had an obligation to send ARCs (paper-bound, pre-final review copies) to reviewers who post the bad as well as the good.

A few commenters pointed out what I believe to be true, which is that a negative review that explains itself well may not be a terrible thing for a book. The example given was if a reviewer disliked a book because she is disinclined to like first-person narratives. Readers who don’t have a problem with first-person will probably not be turned off by such a review. (Someone once pointed out that she didn’t like my book because she didn’t like romantic storylines. That certainly isn’t going to make most readers think, “Well, I’m not buying THIS book, then!”)

I commented–basically–that publicists are trying to make the best use of their, er, “petite” marketing budgets, and because of this, they’ll probably end up preferring the more positive review sites over those that consistently trash books.

In her original post, Sharon mentioned that a good negative review, in her opinion, includes constructive criticism. A few commenters replied that constructive criticism is unnecessary, because the book is done.

And I wanted to speak about that.

I’ve been extremely fortunate in that most of the reviews I’ve come across for Bad Girls Don’t Die are overwhelmingly positive (you can find excerpts and links under the “reviews” link at the top of the page). But there have been a handful that pointed out things they wished were different, or wanted clarification on, or felt didn’t fit. None of them was rude–to the contrary, they were all quite polite. If it seemed appropriate, I would email the reviewer with my clarification, or even a question asking them to clarify.

Because the thing is, you DO learn from negative reviews.

Writing is an art, not a science. When you write a book, you’re looking to reach out to readers and bring them into your little world for a few hours. Ideally, they lose themselves in the book (and love it to pieces).

With Bad Girls, I’m pleased as punch to report, that happened for a lot of people. It didn’t happen for everyone. But I can say, there wasn’t a single negative comment I didn’t grok on some level.

Did I agree with all of them? Nope! Not at all.

But did most of them make me think? You bet.

I’m not going to change the way I write because of a review. But when multiple reviewers said, “I loved the characters of Megan and Carter, and I wish I could have known more,” it got my attention. Because as a writer–especially as a thriller writer who didn’t set out to write thrillers–I am profoundly interested in the fragile balance between action and character development. And these reviews made me wonder how I can inch up the character development in books 2 and 3, without losing the momentum of the action (hint: it’s not easy).

That was the point that stayed with me–well, that and the mistake some eagle-eyed reviewer caught that made me LOL because I’d missed it. (But ha ha ha–I know another mistake that no one has caught yet, hardy hardy har.)

I can’t recall for you every point, but I can tell you that, as I read each review, I thought about the things I read. And I considered where the reviewer was coming from. And, considering the reviewer’s credibility (through thoughtful and well-presented reviews, well-expressed opinions. etc.), in many cases I thought to myself, “Well, she’s kind of right about that. Maybe I’ll approach it differently next time.”

There are lots of authors out there who don’t read their reviews–or don’t read the negative ones. I have to say, anything lower than three stars is off my radar. I’m no glutton for punishment.

And I don’t mean to invite a slew of highly-constructive reviews for the BGDD sequels. In fact, I’d prefer that you just write a nice review and email me your questions and thoughts privately. *wink*

But as a writer, I write for my readers. So I’d be a dummy if I passed up the chance to learn from them.

PS – There is one bit of criticism for the book that I have always wanted a chance to defend. So I’m going to do it here. But beware of spoilers!

PPS – My “reviews” page isn’t updated with the past couple months’ reviews… but I’ll get there soon, I promise! I have them all bookmarked and ready to excerpt.

PPPS – If you’ve written a nice review of BGDD, would you consider adding it to one or a couple of the major online bookselling sites? Just thought I’d ask, since we’re on the topic.

6 comments September 16th, 2009

BGDD Book 2 update…

Just having a crazy day trying to get some stuff crossed off my to-do list… More like to-DOOM list! Har har.

Do you ever have those days when you know you could literally be busy from the moment you wake up until bedtime? Today is one of those days for me. I have errands to run, things to pick up, drop off, exchange, buy, mail, and write. Not to mention that the husb and I are sharing a car because mine is in the shop, so I’ve had to drop him off at work and pick him up, too. I wanted to vlog this week, but it wouldn’t be kind to subject you to me in my current disorganized state.

Book 2 is coming along pretty well these days. I hit a hundred pages yesterday, which is a little behind where I wish I were. What happened is that I totally backed myself into a creative corner and got stuck for about a week, a few weeks ago. I had to go in swinging, pulling stuff out pretty mercilessly. But the good news is, doing that “unstuck” me, and I got to use some of it later in a way that didn’t totally derail the story.

I’ve never written to such a detailed outline before. It’s a really different an interesting process for me. I’m typically more of a “fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants”er, but in this case, since we do want to get these books published before the start of the next decade, we decided to really nail down the story in advance of the writing.

The Delightful Editor, for all her delightfulness, is also a bit of a tough cookie, so she really asked all the hard questions until the story stood up on its own. As a result, unless I take wandering digressions like the one I tried a few weeks ago, the story is moving right along in a very clean manner, and I’m having a very good time writing it.

I keep expecting something to jump out and ruin my progress, but it’s starting to dawn on me that maybe that’s not going to happen.

Hallelujah!

Hope you are all well!

k.

6 comments August 27th, 2009

How writing is like jazz

Writing a second book is a funny thing. Typically, the first book is the product of a year’s (or a few years’) worth of experimentation, revision, polishing, agonizing, and nail-biting. When you feel you have something worth looking at, you start submitting to agents, which can take months or years, and then your agent submits it for sale at various publishing houses, which can take months, and then finally, the book comes out.

The second book (for me, at least), is a very different process. Disney-Hyperion bought my second and third book with an eye toward developing a series out of “Bad Girls Don’t Die”. With any series, the ideal situation is to follow up the first release within as tight a time frame as possible. This means that, while I had years to bumble around with Book 1, Book 2 is due out in stores in less than two years.

And I still have to write it!

Luckily, I’ve been blessed with the most razor-instincted (new word) editor in the whole world, the Delightful Editor. The Delightful Editor and I spent weeks working out the outline for Book 2. Every time there was a tough question to be asked, she asked it. And if I didn’t have an answer, it was time to think again. Gradually, we came up with an outline that’s clean and virtually cheat-proof.

(I love to cheat when I write. I think nothing of setting Future Katie up for a mess of trouble down the line, if it means I get to create a darling on the current page. …Of course, we all know what happens to those darlings!)

But working together, we came up with a storyline that’s strong, spooky, and gives the characters room to grow and change. And now we’re on to the writing.

To revisit the title of the post, writing is like jazz because it’s at its most brilliant when it’s a little loose–when there’s freedom. Imagine a jazz quartet playing with sheet music in front of them, sticking to the notes as closely as an orchestra. You’ll get a song, yes, but you won’t get the magic. And the magic is what counts–in jazz and in writing.

So I try to give myself a little freedom. But there’s also a flipside. Even as they improvise, musicians are always thinking of the central creation. It’s all about the song. “Loose” is one thing–”loosey goosey” is a totally different thing. You can fool around, but only if you fool around within the parameters of the song. Otherwise, you’re not playing the song–you’re just playing.

I’m finding myself in the same situation. My instincts tell me to just write and see where it takes me. As I was working this past week, I (narratively) “bumped into” a character, who suddenly took on a life of her own. Is she in the outline? No. Does she bode poorly for Future Katie? You bet. Was she a darling? Absolutely.

I’m self aware enough to know when I’m writing myself into a corner, and let me tell you, I saw the intersection of walls coming from a mile away. I wasn’t writing the book–I was just writing.

So I did what they tell you you’re going to have to learn to do–I murdered my darling. I took that character and her rogue storyline and I politely showed them to the door.

But what they don’t tell you is that murdering your darlings isn’t like taking players off the board in chess–it’s more like checkers. You can pilfer that store of cast-aside darlings as much as you want as you continue within the parameters of your story. And that’s just what I plan to do. I’m going to take this character I created and then discarded and use what I love about her for another character–one who actually belongs in the story.

You must be playful when you write. But every game has rules. Just like every song has, at its core, a melody.

PS – One of my favorite musical performances EVER was Dave Brubeck, Paul Desmond, et al, at the Hollywood Bowl about two years ago. They played a number of incredible songs, including a version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” that had me weeping. But of course you can’t talk about Dave Brubeck without talking about this (one of my favorite things about Dave Brubeck is how restrained he is–what he’s NOT doing is almost as important as what he is doing.. the ultimate editor):

PPS – For another completely transcendent performance, check out Brubeck’s Alice in Wonderland.

1 comment August 1st, 2009

And the winner is… (dubious honors revealed!)

(Pre-script: come on over to the Debutante Ball today and tell us what decorates your walls!)

New business:

Congratulations to the contest winner, #19, Tashiana Hudson! Tashiana will get a signed copy of , plus a custom-made tote bag and eye pillow. Woohoo!

Thanks for all the entries, everyone. I must say, your worst last lines alternately cracked me up and left me totally shuddering (often both).

First of all, the “It was just a dream” entries made me wonder if there has ever been a good use of that phrase to end a story. That seems like a challenge for somebody. Maybe we’ll have a flash fiction contest or something!

But Jason really took it to another level, one that hurt his brain to write and all of our brains to read:

“But, alas, it was merely a vividly experienced dream, where the allusion that was surprisingly witnessed seemed so incredibly real to him, so happily not true, that, irregardless of what may have secretly transpired between Olivia and the creepily mysterious Mr. Alfonso, the affect of the dream was so obviously fake, that it seemed so surprisingly real, but luckily, was not real at all. Or was it??”

Jo?lle Anthony’s last line almost doesn’t qualify, because it sounds suspiciously to me like a very GOOD last line:

“And then he ate the very last piece of chocolate in the entire world without even giving me a bite.”

TheCompulsiveReader’s is another suspiciously good bad line:

“And so after slaying the magnificently evil dragon, the prince and his princess lived happily ever after (except for that one time two months later when the dragon?s cousin?s nephew came to seek revenge, thus distracting the prince so that evil gnomes could kidnap the princess, and for a whole year everything was in turmoil and there was that weird thing that happened with this one fairy, but other than that, it was pretty much happily ever after).”

Laina’s cracked me up:

“They all died, the end.”

And I think Laura deserves a shout-out because the line leading up to her last line, which was not creative writing but apparnetly the sad truth, sounds like a great worst last line to em:

“First of all I?m not even sure what the date is or even what time it is. My computer is stuck in the twilight zone of travel and someday I?ll remember that jet lag and alcohol don?t mix.”

And lastly, my author buddy Robin Brande (whose new book, Fat Cat sounds really good and comes out this fall), entered the contest without reading the deadline and therefore is out of the running for the tote bag and eye pillow but DEFINITELY deserves a mention for her awesomely dreadful writing skillz (it takes a good writer to write this badly, folks):

“He slapped me then shouted, ?Slap yourself!? which I did because this wasn?t the first nor the last time I?d been other-directed self-slapped and I was beyond my amateur status at it by now even though everything else in my life has stopped short of perfection or even near-adequacy, so I heard myself slap, slap, SLAP! and felt pale if not red-faced satisfaction at the love we were going to continue to explore, each in our way, each alone as we forged a life together, strangers stranger than perhaps we were even willing to admit to ourselves or the media, in love though we were, completely and totally forevermore, just us and the dogs and the simple one-legged cat.

The End. Forevermore.

Or is it???”

And thank you all for sharing the endings that spoke to you! Some of those were books I’ve read, and some I hadn’t heard of. I’ll be sure to check them out!

I don’t know if I shared an ending that stayed with me, so I thought I’d do that now. It’s from one of my favorite books, “Fair and Tender Ladies,” which is by a woman named Lee Smith and is just a fantastic piece of writing. The heroine/narrator, Ivy Fox, is reflecting back over her life, starting with her childhood in a poor Appalachian mining community.

“The hawks fly round and round, the sky is so blue. I think I can hear the old bell ringing like I rang it to call them home oh I was young then, and I walked in my body like a queen.”

4 comments July 14th, 2009

It was a dark and stormy… CONTEST!

Ah, it’s that time of year! Bulwer-Lytton Worst First Line contest results are out (CLICK HERE to read them all)! This is a contest held every year in which entrants try to write the worst possible first line to a novel. A Paperback Writer had the link posted over yonder on her blog. I have to say, maybe I’m not in a laugh out loud mood today, but usually there are at least three or four that make me snort. This year, not so much.

Here are a few of my favorites from this year’s list of winners (…and keep reading for THE CONTEST!):

The serrated butter knife tossed capriciously onto the 38th Street sidewalk amid the detritus of Salem cigarette butts and a Mentos box was devoid of zero trans fat margarine, but glinted invitingly in the sunlight nonetheless, poised for the opportunity to be repurposed to cut up a Snuggie, and Vladimir took it.
Amy E. Gross
Fair Lawn, NJ

After quickly scrutinizing the two dangerously buff men coming toward her in the dark and wondering whether she could take them both out, P.I. Velma Plusch mentally inventoried her arsenal-two pistols, two stiletto-clad feet, two leather-gloved hands, two each eyes, ears, lips, and breasts-and decided that she could.
Donna Kain, Ph.D.
Greenville, NC

She walked into my office on legs as long as one of those long-legged birds that you see in Florida – the pink ones, not the white ones – except that she was standing on both of them, not just one of them, like those birds, the pink ones, and she wasn’t wearing pink, but I knew right away that she was trouble, which those birds usually aren’t.
Eric Rice
Sun Prairie, WI

So… CONTEST TIME!

Let’s talk LAST LINES. Or, to be more general, endings. To enter this contest, do one of the following things:

(1) In the style of the Bulwer-Lytton contest, hit me with your worst LAST line for a book; or

(2) Tell me about a book ending that really resonated with you (bonus points if it’s mine–HA, just kidding)

WHAT YOU WIN: An autographed copy of BAD GIRLS DON’T DIE, an eye pillow and a tote bag, which I will custom make based on your taste in fabrics. If you already have any portion of these items, you can angel them to someone else. Won’t that be fun? Aren’t you such a generous person!

HOW TO WIN: Everyone who comments with one of the two entry styles above will be entered in a drawing. One entry per person. Writing a worst last line gives you a chance to be shouted-out and glorified in front of everyone else, though.

THE DEETS: The contest ends at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Friday, July 10. Unfortunately, only folks in the U.S. and Canada can win the actual prizes… but if you’re international, how about entering anyway and gifting your prize to somebody Stateside?

Please come play! Hurray!

29 comments July 2nd, 2009