Merry Christmas

Oh, holy night, I've been busy. So sorry to be missing in action, but I'm sure you can understand and forgive me neglecting my blog. Book release, blog tours, trying to prepare to move (ugh) and the holidays makes for a very busy Karen.

I hope you all have a fabulous holiday. Eat, drink, and be merry!

Then meet me back here after Christmas because I'm gonna do some fun after-Christmas giveaways.

I leave you with this final heart-warming classic holiday quote. (I'm sure all of you can relate in some way or another. ;)

"Where do you think you're going? Nobody's leaving. Nobody's walking out on this fun, old-fashioned family Christmas. No, no. We're all in this together. This is a full-blown, four-alarm holiday emergency here. We're gonna press on, and we're gonna have the hap, hap, happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny f*#@ing Kaye. And when Santa squeezes his fat white a## down that chimney tonight, he's gonna find the jolliest bunch of a##holes this side of the nuthouse."
~Clark Griswold

THE SECRET OF SPRUCE KNOLL and Loving on Manatees

A special edition of Heather McCorkle’s The Secret Of Spruce Knoll is releasing from Compass Press this month and she’s doing a special tour to go along with it. A percentage of the proceeds from every special edition sold (in every format) between its release date and 12-12-2012, will go toward Heather’s favorite charity that protects endangered species. Her goal is to make at least $10,000 for the charity.

Of course there are prizes during the tour which goes from December 1^st through the 17^th. Prizes include a symbolic endangered species adoption of the winner’s choice (a $50 donation by Heather to the charity for the endangered species of the winner’s choice, and cute stuffed animal for the winner!), signed copies of her novels and great swag. For full details, and to enter, go here. http://heathermccorkle.blogspot.com

For the tour Heather has asked each blog host to pick their favorite endangered species and she will tell us a fun or interesting fact about that animal.

Being that I'm a total animal lover, I had a hard time choosing just one. But I finally decided on...THE MANATEE!

I have seen manatees in real life a few times here in Florida, and they are so flippin' cute. Like big ol' sea cows who you just wanna hug and snuggle up with.

Heather's Manatee 411: The manatee is a massive marine mammal~up to 1300 pounds~that lives in canals, rivers, estuaries, and bays from Florida to the Caribbean. Fun fact: their teeth grow back and replace themselves throughout their lifetime. How cool would that be? They are endangered mostly due to pollution and collisions with boats, which have become more and more frequent as the human population soars.

If manatees no longer existed I would be one sad, sad, ocean lover. I even mentioned a scarred manatee in Tangled Tides, and I can't help but notice that my beloved bulldog Rooney shares some similarities with manatees. They could be cousins, don't ya think?

So, go buy a fabulous book and help a fabulous cause in the process. You help two birds with one seed. (I couldn't say "kill two birds with one stone" in this situation. It just seemed wrong in so many ways.)

PURCHASE LINKS for the eBooks of

The Secret of Spruce Knoll

(print books will hopefully be linked to them by the time the post goes live):

AMAZON

BARNES & NOBLE

VICTORIOUS

On the release day of TANGLED TIDES, a bunch of blogging friends (old and new) participated in an Underwater Web War. Humans joined forces with my sea creatures and rooted for their favorite team: merfolk, selkies, sirens or gorgons. I'm sorry the results have taken so long, but so much happened between then and now. Finally, I have the results for you. Winners? Wave roll, please.

MERFOLK!

Folks have still been tweeting me with their choices, so the tally changes by at least one vote almost every day, but here's the latest...

The merfolk won with 29 votes, sirens took second place with 23, selkies had 22 votes, and gorgons solidified last place with 10 votes. But don't worry gorgon supporters, they assured me that they are too powerful to care about such meaningless statistics.

One interesting event is that Simon Larter messaged me to say he had originally voted for sirens, but after reading some of the book, he might be switching to the selkies due to their love of icy vodka.

Makes me wonder if any other readers wills switch teams after reading the story.

Also, I participated in the fantabulous YA SCAVENGER HUNT hosted by Colleen Houck, author of the awesome Tiger's Curse series. The hunt was so much fun. I met so many new peeps, and gained a bunch of new supporters.

HELLO, NEW SUPPORTERS! *waves* I hope you stick around even though the contest is over. Every once in awhile I try to say something useful or entertaining.

The lucky winner of my personal contest of the YA Scavenger hunt, including her own personal Grow Your Own Mermaid, was...
Wave roll again, please...

HEATHER! (SupaGirlBooks)

Congratulations to Heather! I wish I could give out a copy to everyone who entered, especially those of you who left me fantastic personal comments, but sadly, I don't have enough money to buy everyone a book. (As soon as I win the lotto though, FREE BOOKS FOR EVERYONE!)

Also, a big thanks to everyone who participated in the Underwater Web War, because really, you're all winners, and you all picked awesome teams. (I can say that because I'm their creator.)

And last, did you check out my post over ay YA CONFIDENTIAL yesterday? Battle of the Books. Yup, go check it out. It. Is. Awesome.

HAPPY TUESDAY!