Nikki Katz

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!!)

My amazing agent, Bree Ogden, put up a tribute to all her clients (you should really go check it out) and included this excerpt from Shoreline!

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‘Say it,’ she whispered, her voice a hum.

She stood still, holding her breath, waiting until he dove in. After she heard the splash, she counted to one hundred. And then two hundred, just to be sure. Finally, she whirled and raced to the car. A thrill of energy surged through her as she drove home.” — excerpt from Shoreline by Nikki Katz

This week’s writing prompt … my three words:

Retail
Frustration
Sneak

Resulting sentence:

“You sneak,” I yell, frustration etching lines across from my forehead, “retail therapy is not an excuse for shopping for stealing my wallet.”

Your turn (with three new words … or you can use mine!):

Distress
Cross
Beam