Scavenger Hunt! With Prizes!
Catherine Ryan Hyde
I could spend all day thanking my great blogger friends, and I still wouldn't be thanking them enough.
Pam of Bookalicious has come up with an amazing idea to get the word out about the new paperback edition of Jumpstart the World, and to get some free books into readers' hands. And better yet, it's fun. It's a treasure hunt. With prizes. Three other great bloggers have been nice enough to join in. They are Danielle of There's a Book, Kristi of The Story Siren, and Shanyn of Chick Loves Lit.
It goes a little something like this: On Wednesday, Danielle hosted a guest post by me, and embedded a couple of words from a sentence I provided from the book. Thursday, Kristi hosted my guest post and embedded another set of words. Then Pam on Friday. And Shanyn on Saturday. And now you're here, and hopefully you have the sentence unscrambled and figured out. Good! The correct sentence is your entry to win the "big prize." All four bloggers are giving away three signed paperbacks of Jumpstart the World, for a total of a dozen free books. And those who submit the correct sentence have their names put in the hat for the "grand" prize, pictured here. It's a set of six signed hardcovers, which is the complete set of all my Young Adult books (I threw in Pay It Forward, which was a YA crossover). *Okay, let me update this. It's a set of SEVEN signed hardcovers. Kristi mentioned Chasing Windmills (another of my YA crossovers) on her blog, so, though it's not pictured here, I'm throwing one of those in, too.*
So you've come from their blogs and you're ready, right?
Unless...maybe you came to this blog because you're one of my readers and you follow my blog. In which case this will be the first you've heard about this. In which case the thing to do is to back up, follow the links to the blogs above, and get in the game.
When you're ready, here's how you enter: Leave a comment below with your name, your email address (enter it in the form--where it says "Author Email (optional)" not in the body of the comment--so it won't show publicly) and the unscrambled sentence. Now, I know what you're thinking. Everybody can just read the comments and get the answer. Actually...not. Because I set up comment moderation for the duration of the scavenger hunt. And I'm not going to approve any comments on this post until the contest is over.
In ten days, on November 16th, I'll close the contest, make all the comments public, and draw a winner at random. Email me with any questions, and good luck! (And have fun! I know I will.)
BIG HINT! Okay, I'm sensing that some of you are finding the sentence unscrambling a bit tricky. Why do I think so? Because over 225 people have entered to win one of the 12 signed paperbacks, but 5 have entered to win 7 signed hardcovers. So perhaps a hint is in order.
When you get the sentence correctly unscrambled, the Google search engine will recognize it as being from the book.
Unless of course, you're having trouble finding which words to unscramble. In that case, start at Kristi's blog. She makes it pretty clear. And then if you can't find them on the other sites, don't be blue.
Now. I can't make it much easier than that.
One more offer (to make the people who already got the correct answer without a hint feel better): if I get up over 20 correct entries, I'll put up a second set of books. So your odds should never be any worse than one in 20.
Fair?
And the winner is...appropriate drumroll and all that...Loraine Hunziker! Congrats, and I'll get an email off to you, and get your mailing address. Thanks to all who took the time to figure this out.
(For those who are curious, I put the names in a hat--literally--on scraps of paper and draw at random. So it's a fair system of chance.)