Julie Wright, a dangerous woman

One of the funnest parts of being a writer is getting to hang out with other authors, so I was especially looking forward to having my good friends Julie Wright and Josi Kilpack come down to Arizona to do book signings. Having them stay at my house—total slumber party.

There was only one little problem. Before they came I managed to give myself a head wound and a black eye. I won’t go into the details of how this happened as it is a long boring story except for the part that makes me look really foolish, but the moral of the story is: No, I don’t have night vision.

Really, it is easier to give yourself a black eye than you’d think.

So I warned Julie and Josi that I looked like a homeless person (It’s hard to wash your hair when you’ve smeared antibiotic ointment on your hairline) and planned on skipping out on their signings. But they were also speaking to a book club and invited me to come—in fact, they invited me to speak at it with them. How could I turn it down?

I hoped people would think I was going for the slightly greasy hair look, then caked on the foundation. It did a pretty good job hiding the bruise.

Josi spoke, I spoke, and then Julie spoke. But Julie gave one of those really moving talks about the books that turned her life around when she was young. It wasn’t long before I was crying. Which wouldn’t have been a bad thing at all except that I knew crying would wash away my foundation and suddenly reveal to everybody there that I was hiding a black eye.

How do you explain that to a roomful of strangers? “Oh, and by the way folks, in case you were wondering--my husband doesn’t really doesn’t beat me!”

This is why you shouldn’t go listen to Julie Wright if you need to keep your makeup in place.

Faerie Festival, in which I almost get wings

I promised I'd post pictures of myself from the Faerie Festival. Here is the outfit my amazing friend, Kristy, sewed for me. She is sort of like Martha Stewart but more impressive because she has seven children. One Halloween she sewed herself a Snow White costume and then sewed matching dwarfs outfits for all of her kids. I'd like to see Martha haul seven kids around the neighborhood without losing any. But I digress.

This is why the festival was so fun--cool authors to hang out with! This was one of the few author events I've been to where I was actually friends with all of the authors (and the booksellers) before I got there, so it felt like a party. Here I am with Aprilynne Pike, Janni Simner, James Owens, and Brandi from Changing Hands Bookstore.
And here I am doing a reading from My Fair Godmother. You can tell I'm an autumn fairy because I'm wearing brown and all the grass around me is mysteriously dead. This is why autumn fairies don't get invited to many social events.

Winners!

Mimilee and Bchild, your numbers are up. But in a good way. Send me your real addresses at jrallisonfans at yahoo dot com and I'll send your ARCs out.

All the rest, do not despair. Hopefully I'll pick up some more ARCs before May.

Oh, and no fair letting everybody know how the book ends. (Like any of my books end without the girl getting the hot guy. I mean, what kind of novel would it be if that didn't happen?)

My Double Life ARC give-away

I feel bad for making anybody who is just dying to read my next book (I know that's all of you, right?) wait any longer for the promised ARCs, so I'm doing the giveaway now--but if you didn't read about the Faerie Festival then you have to read that blog too, as I'm once again trying to convince conference people that I have fans. So if you can go to the festival, please do. And when you see me, yell out, "There's Janette Rallison, who is not my neighbor! I'm just a random rabid fan, of which there are many in any given crowd!"

Okay, that said, I thought I'd do a blog about the cover for My Double Life.

My idea for the cover was to show the back of a singer holding a mike, but with her fingers crossed. Thus conveying that she is lying. I admit it was sort of vague, but the Bow-Tied One likes to see my cover ideas so he can ignore them. I sent him my daughter modeling for this:



And this was one of the covers they sent me. I thought it was nice.


But they decided to hire a model and insert her into the cover. I do like the fact that they hired a model for the cover since that means I will not see this same picture pop up in a million adds like the picture for My Fair Godmother has. And she's very pretty. However, does anybody think this model looks at all Latina? Yeah, I didn't think so either. Apparently the photo shoot department doesn't actually read the book.


I'll be giving away two ARCs. If you want a chance to win just leave a comment telling me which of my previous books was your favorite. Followers get double chances. Good luck!

Faerie Festival

Next Saturday I'll be at the Fairy Festival. (Or if you're highbrow it's: Faerie) You, like me, might not have even known that the faeries all got together once a year to have a festival, but they do. I'll be there with other cool fairy/faerie authors: Aprilynne Pike (Wings) Janni Simner (Bones of Faerie) and James Owen (Here There Be Dragons)--all of whom I know and like! I'll be wandering around at 10:00 buying Fairy stuff but I believe the Author stuff starts at 12:00. (If not, someone needs to come find me and pry me away from the Fairy artwork booths.)

One of my friends is even going to sew my fairy clothes. How nice is that? I need to put her in a book dedication or something. (And yes, I will take pictures.) Here's the official info if you want to come:

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Saturday November 14th

Estrella Park in Goodyear

14805 West Vineyard Avenue (in the NAVY area)

10am-9:30pm (IMPORTANT NOTE: No Admittance or Re admittance onto the event grounds after 7pm)

Parking "Estrella Park Fees" $6 per car load

Event Tickets Only $10 ea ages 5 & Under FREE

No pets please

Lawn Chairs and Blankets Welcome

Creative Costumes Encouraged

No outside food or beverage

Come celebrate the folklore and fantasy, mystery and magic of the Faerie Realms with Food and Fun,

The Random Number Generator has spoken

I picture it like that scary green floating head in the Wizard of Oz, but maybe that's just me. Anyway, today the random number generator likes Chelly and Kristi Stevens. Don't get creeped out about that or anything.

So, Chelly and Kristi email me your home address at jrallisonfans at yahoo dot com, and Ben Bella will send you your books.

The rest of you, don't despair. Because I just got a couple of ARCs for My Double Life and I and my good buddy Mr. Floating Head Number Generator will be giving those away next blog.