Nikki Katz

Before I head to SCBWI tomorrow morning (bright and early), I thought I’d leave you with a little contest!

I finished my ARC of Matched (review here at modOration) and want to pass it along to one of my readers!

It should go without saying, but I am very careful with my books - no bending of the spine, no tagged pages, etc. But I do have to get a review up, therefore I have to read it :)

Unfortunately, the ARC copy does NOT have the beautiful cover displayed here … but you can always pick that up in November!

I will also include a booklet of postcards I received (one each for Eclipse, Sisters Red, Guardian of the Gate, Thirteen Days to Midnight, and more!)

To Enter:

• For your first entry - all you have to do leave a comment below. Then include the following if you’d like:
• +3 if you friend/follow this website - you can join in the Google Friend Connect —->
• +1 if you Retweet the contest (you can do this up to 3 times before the contest ends)

The contest will end on midnight August 8th and is only open to United States residents.

Good luck!

I cannot wait to hop in the car bright and early Friday morning and race traffic up to the SCBWI Annual Summer Conference in Los Angeles with Lisa and Andrea.

I posted at YAKnow about what a difference a year makes (from not knowing anyone when I arrived last year and not having an agent - to knowing a ton of people and being an agented author!)

This year I’ll be hitting up a lot of the Editor panels - and I’ve already put together a preliminary schedule (who am I kidding … I put it together weeks ago … but will probably change it up again!) This doesn’t include the keynote speakers and the BALL!

Friday:
11:45 Boy Middle Grade Fiction 101 Courtney Bongiolatti
3:15 Not Sure Yet…

Saturday:
11:15 Can You Help Fill the Gaps in Our List Stephanie Owens Lurie
3:15 An Inside Look at Little Brown Books For Young Readers Jennifer Hunt

Sunday:
10:45 Simon & Schuster: The Not So Distant Past and the Really Fast Approaching Future Justin Chanda

I’m also insanely excited about meeting up with people. There are friends from last year, friends from Twitter and Facebook that I haven’t yet met in person but feel like I know already, a group from YALitChat, and even my agent-mate DM Cunningham!

Can’t wait to see everyone in LA and stay tuned for pictures and shenanigans!

I’m BEYOND excited for the SCBWI Summer Conference in Los Angeles THIS Friday! If you’re going to be there, please let me know.

Since we’re almost there, it’s the last week of my costume contest and I’ve got another clue! (Check out the First, Second clues. I also tweeted that I bought a hoop skirt … make sure to follow me on Twitter for other random clues!)

In case you missed it, my costume fits with my writing group partners (Lisa and Andrea - who cowrite YAKnow) and the official theme “Heart and Soul“. I’m giving you the opportunity to guess my costume and win a prize!

If you have your guess, send me an email. If you are correct this week you will get 2 entries (I’ll probably give one more clue on Thursday for 1 entry.)

Here are other rules:

• Don’t guess in the comments. You can comment in the comments, but don’t ruin it for everyone else by putting together a guess!
• Don’t enter more than once for each clue. I will take your first entry only! But with each new clue, you can guess again :)

Other than that, my last rule is to have fun. Be original, even though my costume really isn’t!

Oh, and what’s the prize? I’m not exactly sure yet, but I’ll pull together some cool stuff from the conference - maybe a signed book or two, maybe an ARC, and if I can’t get anything I’ll use one of my ARCs from Comic Con!

Without further ado … here is the fourth clue …

Yesterday was an eventful, back-breaking day at Comic Con as I collected ARC after ARC and lugged it around in my bag! Just ask Shannon Whitney Messegner, who was gracious enough to let me tag along with her and show me all the great publishing houses on the Expo floor!

I sat in on three panels amongst the author signings and collecting:

• Drive Angry with Nicolas Cage and Robert Knepper. I really just went to this one because it was short and I really wanted to see Hall H! Oh, and Billy Burke was supposed to be there, but never showed.
• Bite Me: Evolving Urban Fantasy Beyond the Vampire Phenomenon
• What’s Up Next With Penguin

And here are the ARCs I got my hands on. I’m so excited and will be sharing some of them in contests with you guys here!

• Signed copy of Beautiful Darkness (Kami and Margie did signings at the Hatchette booth, it was pretty insane!)
• Matched (this one doesn’t have the amazing cover that I fell in love with, but I started reading last night and it’s really good!)
• Sapphique
• Nightshade
• The Eternal Ones
• The Replacement
• The Search for Wondla

I also scored a signed copy of the First 5 Chapters of Vampire Academy (Rachelle Mead), some preview chapters of Monster High (Lisi Harrison), a sneak preview of Reckless (Cornelia Funke), and 4 postcard packs with upcoming books including Eclipse, Sisters Red, Ghostgirl and more!

So … my question to you is … what ARC should I give away first? (Although it will probably be in the order that I read them, since I need to do reviews on some!!)