Thank you to everyone who entered the “What Scares You?” book giveaway and read and commented on all the guest blogs! I didn’t realize how complicated it would be to pick the winners with all the extra entries added… wow.
But I am happy to say that the winners have been chosen. I added up extra entries and listed names as many times as they were entered. In total 203 people entered, but with all the extra entries, it turned out to be a lot of names!
The winners of the FOUR PRIZE PACKS were randomly selected. The winners got their first-choice prize in order, so if someone already chose the same first choice, they were then given their second-choice prize.
Here are the prizes:
And here are the winners:
WINNER OF PRIZE PACK #1: Moirae book reviews
WINNER OF PRIZE PACK #2: Lizzie
WINNER OF PRIZE PACK #3:Kimberly c
WINNER OF PRIZE PACK #4: Gabi
Congratulations if you won—I’ll email you for your mailing address. And thank you to everyone who entered!
Happy Halloween, and thank you for reading all the “What Scares You?” guest blogs these past two weeks! Now it’s time for the big giveaway—made up of books and ARCs donated by my publisher Penguin Teen and by some of the guest authors. I’m giving away FOUR PRIZE PACKS.
Here is what you could win:
Prize Pack #1—donated by Penguin Teen:The Replacement and The Space Between by Brenna Yovanoff, Virals and Seizure by Kathy Reichs, Born Wicked (ARC) by Jessica Spotswood, and Imaginary Girls by, um, me (signed!)
Prize Pack #2—donated by Penguin Teen:Nightshade and Wolfsbane by Andrea Creamer, Ripper (ARC) by Stefan Petrucha, The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson, Harbinger (ARC) by Sara Wilson Etienne, and Imaginary Girls by, yep, me (signed!)
Prize Pack #3—donated by guest authors:Other and Bloodborn by Karen Kincy (both signed!), family by Micol Ostow (signed!), Gentlemen by Michael Northrop (signed!), The Only Ones by Aaron Starmer (signed!), The Rise of Renegade X by Chelsea Campbell (signed!), and Goosebumps: Night of the Living Dummy by R.L. Stine
Prize Pack #4—donated by guest authors:Imaginary Girls by me! (signed!), The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, Julet Immortal by Stacey Jay (signed!), Petty Magic by Camille DeAngelis (signed!), The Revenant by Sonia Gensler, Misfit by Jon Skovron (signed!), and Frost by Marianna Baer (signed!).
Here are the rules:
You must use the form to enter. Comments on this post won’t count as giveaway entries.
You must have a US address where we can send your prize pack. Due to shipping costs, I’m sorry to say that this giveaway is not international.
You can gain extra entries in the giveaway by commenting on the guest blogs. Every guest blog you’ve commented on will give you an extra chance to win.
I will close this giveaway to entries on Monday, November 7 at 5pm EST.
The FOUR WINNERS will be chosen by random draw (or by some newfangled randomizing code-script thingie I will force E to make for me).
My thanks go to all the wonderful guest bloggers who contributed to this “What Scares You?” blog series, to Penguin Teen for donating prizes for the giveaway, to Robert Roxby for generously designing and illustrating the “What Scares You?” images, and to everyone who read these posts, tweeted about them, and commented.
I will probably never again give away this many books in my lifetime, so go enter!
What’s next for this blog? INSPIRATION in time for NaNoWriMo, including new guest blogs by inspiring authors I know! Check back here tomorrow and you’ll see what I mean!
There are few things I love more than a good scare.
Wait, before you sneak up behind me and grab my neck, let me clarify: I don’t mean scared in the sense of, “Wait, did I forget to file my taxes?” or “What’s that spot on my leg?” I mean a proper scare courtesy of masterful horror—the sort of gray, October sky, leaves-skittering-across-a-sidewalk, impending doom feeling that has you pushing up your collar and hurrying your steps for no reason you can really name and wait, was that someone standing at the upstairs window in that old house on the corner, the one no one’s lived in for thirty years…not since…the murder?
Oh, yeah. I’m there.
Horror has always been my genre of choice. The creepy, the spooky, the phantasmagorical—all catnip to me. Summers when I visited my superstitious, Pennsylvania Dutch great-grandmother, she would regale me with ghost stories about my great-great-great-grandmother, an undertaker’s wife and psychic who could, allegedly, see and speak to the dead. Then she’d send me to sleep in the attic. This is why I have issues.
I watched Dark Shadows every afternoon and Hammer Horror films whenever I could, thrilling to the gothic, Pinewood Studios sets and anachronistic beehive hairdos. Dario Argento’s Suspiria gave me gorgeous Technicolor nightmares and a healthy fear of stained-glass ceilings. I read horror comics that I hid under my bed and, when I was older, I gobbled up stories by Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, Shirley Jackson, Richard Matheson, and Stephen King. Salem’s Lot is the book I have reread above all others.
But the thing that always made me look over my shoulder, more than the prospect of vampires, clowns, zombies, strangers in scarecrow hoods, or Olan Mills family photography, is anything having to do with the occult. Satan in particular. Beelzebub, baby. You know, He Who Pwns All.
Maybe it’s because I grew up in the church (I’m a PK), or the fact that the mid-1970s of my childhood were rife with Satanic movies, books, cults, and fears, but anything remotely demonic scared the…well, BeJesus out of me. And yet, I craved those stories. I mean, dude! Let other people go head-to-head with Jason, Freddie, and Michael Myers. Battling The Big D? Go big or go home. That’s my motto.
The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, The Sentinel, Satan’s School for Girls—this is my terror turf, the sort of thing that makes me want to put on my Bruce Campbell outfit, fire up the chainsaw, and say, “Groovy.” When I was twelve, I went to see The Omen with a friend, and she and I stayed up half the night hiding in her closet, surrounded by anything that looked vaguely religious—a Bible, Popsicle sticks which could be made into a cross in a snap (It is a well-known fact that the Dark Lord does not like frozen ice treats), “holy” water in a Snoopy glass that we had blessed ourselves. A collection of scarves. (Even at twelve, I understood the importance of accessorizing.) We were terrified. We were also thrilled. It never dawned on us that Old Scratch probably had better places to visit than a closet in Denton, Texas. I mean, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders were just thirty miles away.
Our twelve-year-old logic was this: You can outrun, outwit, or out-wait some crazy psychopath in a hockey mask. But Lucifer’s got game. The Dude’s not going anywhere until your soul is his or you’ve made a grand gesture of offing yourself in the name of can’t-be-turned holiness—or you’ve figured out his weak spot. The stakes are high. Too high for a horror gambler to leave the table. And along the way, Satan will possess your cat, make the walls bleed, kill people in hideously mysterious ways, play Carmina Burana out of nowhere when you are walking in the woods even when you say, “Quit it, Satan! That’s, like, super creepy!”, order ominous nannies to your house, record Led Zeppelin albums, do the freaky backwards voices on conveniently running tape recorders that when played will make you soil yourself, send his demons to eat the last Little Debbie snack cake, and just generally mess with you in ways that have you and everyone else doubting your sanity. And he’ll probably look good doing it, too. I mean, Robert DeNiro in Angel Heart? Hot.
So what’s a girl to do? Meet Satan for dinner to talk it out? Here’s how I imagine that conversation going:
(Satan and I are in a restaurant. Satan has ordered the filet mignon, naturally. It’s perfectly medium rare and paired with a nice Cabernet. I am having pizza that keeps hissing, “Your soul is stained! STAINED!” It’s difficult to eat pizza that’s talking to you. I’m just saying.)
ME: Dude, this is not a fair fight.
SATAN: Why not?
ME: You’re Satan.
SATAN: Ah. So I am. (Dabs lips with a damask napkin) You could always forfeit and give me your soul.
ME: Yeah, gotta say, that seems to lack dramatic tension.
SATAN: Agreed. Could you pass the steak sauce?
ME:(Passing sauce. Note that Satan needs a manicure.) Besides, if I give in to you, my head will swivel on my neck, I’ll have the eyes of a rabid dog, and my sinuses will produce vomity-hair gel snot.
SATAN: Not always. Rupert Murdoch looks good. Very nice suits. Here, try the beef. It’s outstanding.
ME: I’m not falling for that.
SATAN: Falling for what? It’s just steak. And it’s perfectly seasoned. (shrugs) Suit yourself. Look, there’s always a chance you’ll defeat me.
ME: For realz?
SATAN:(laughs) No. False hope. I manufactured that. See: Boston Red Sox, 1918–2004. (pats cheek) Face it—you will be a vessel for evil. Which is much better than being a vessel for, say, olive oil. Celebrate the little things. That’s what we say in hell. We say it between screams, but you know. It’s the thought.
When I was younger, I thought that movies about demonic possession were terrifying object lessons in “You better not pout, you better not cry, you better not shout or SATAN CLAUS WILL DRAG YOU TO HELL!” (Please also see: Fear of Christmas.) But as I got older, I began to see these movies as representations of our fears about a loss of identity and individualism. I mean, you can be POSSESSED! Through no fault of your own! “Honest, Father O’Brien, I was just sitting here playing with this here Ouija Board while listening to Black Sabbath and burning my flesh with the hot wax of midnight mass candles and the Devil done invaded my soul without even an Evite from me. Gettin’ to be that a body don’t even feel safe drinking from her I Heart Goats mug, anymore.” It’s the fear that your humanity can be stripped from you bit by horrible-convulsions-on-the-bed-head-turning-completely-around-doing-icky-things-with-a-crucifix bit by some amorphous, invisible, malevolent force with whom there is no reasoning. You know, kind of like the current political climate.
So when October rolls around and the sky darkens, when the wind howls like the last cry of a doomed man and children in Halloween costumes run past laughing those little-kid laughs that sometimes make you wonder if said children were made in a test tube by an escaped Nazi bent on overthrowing the world order, you’ll find me nestled on my couch watching Rosemary’s Baby, and hoping against hope that she’ll win the ultimate fight. But I’ll have my Popsicle sticks with me. Because, you know, I’m not taking any chances.
Libba Bray is hard at work on The Diviners, the first book in a four-book series that is full of the creepy. She’s listening to “Tubular Bells” while she writes.
Comment on this guest blog and you’ll gain an extra entry for the big Halloween giveaway that opens TODAY, October 31, containing prize packs of signed books plus books and ARCs donated by my publisher Penguin Teen!
You can keep track of all the “What Scares You?” guest blogs with this tag.
Halloween is today, which means the big parade hits the neighborhood tonight and we’d better make sure we get off the subway on the east side of Sixth Avenue or we’ll be stuck behind the barricade and forced to walk, costumeless, fifteen blocks to make it across to the other side. (We know this from experience.)
The Halloween I knew, living outside the city, did not include parades. It was all about trick-or-treating in the dark, wooded towns where I lived. You’d go with a few friends, a pillowcase for all the candy, and glow-sticks hung around your neck so you could be found if your mom drove around looking for you. I remember dressing up as a pirate with a stuffed parrot on my shoulder, as a gypsy, as an alien from Venus… what else?
One thing I have no memory of dressing up as is a witch. Which is strange, because I love witches. I wanted to be one. I decided this around age thirteen—I would be a ballerina, a witch, a novelist, and a single mother when I grew up. I took ballet classes, I read books, the boy I liked didn’t like me, and so what was left? Witch research. But big problem: becoming a witch involved having to be friends with other witches so you could form a coven. Um… Where was I to find a group of other girls who also all wanted to be witches in the middle of nowhere Upstate where barely anyone even wanted to come over to play the Ouija board with me? Also, being a witch involved a lot of recipes, and doing things by rules, and memorizing stuff, and… let’s just say I talked myself out of it and did not succeed in becoming a witch then, and I am not a witch now.
My witch fascination is probably due to my most favorite series of children’s books EVER. Who else devoured the picture books about Dorrie the Little Witch by Patricia Coombs? They’re out-of-print now, except maybe for one, and I do wish they would be republished. I can’t even express how much I loved these books. Dorrie was a little witch who lived with her mom, Big Witch. I don’t remember a dad—which seemed ideal to me. She had a black cat named Gink. Dorrie was clumsy and had the messiest room and she always wore two different colored socks, just like I did then and still do. In each book she got into trouble, but her mom always forgave her at the end. Dorrie was a witch I could relate to. She was my most favorite witch ever. So who’s yours?
Just a side note: My family is not allowed to make fun of me anymore for reading the “Blood Witch” book on the train! Seriously! Not funny.
Now I am all grown up. I am not a single mother—falling in love foiled my plans to be single, and my biological clock must’ve dropped out somewhere back around West 3rd Street because it sure isn’t ticking. I am not a ballerina—I got as far as going en pointe and then quit so I’d have more time to go out partying when I was seventeen. I am almost a novelist, or I’m trying to be. So I guess one of my dreams is on the way to coming true.
Happy Halloween. I’ll be dressing up as someone who is not dressing up today. What will you be?
(Design & illustration by Robert Roxby)
(Design & illustration by 
I watched Dark Shadows every afternoon and Hammer Horror films whenever I could, thrilling to the gothic, Pinewood Studios sets and anachronistic beehive hairdos. Dario Argento’s Suspiria gave me gorgeous Technicolor nightmares and a healthy fear of stained-glass ceilings. I read horror comics that I hid under my bed and, when I was older, I gobbled up stories by Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, Shirley Jackson, Richard Matheson, and Stephen King. Salem’s Lot is the book I have reread above all others.
The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, The Sentinel, Satan’s School for Girls—this is my terror turf, the sort of thing that makes me want to put on my Bruce Campbell outfit, fire up the chainsaw, and say, “Groovy.” When I was twelve, I went to see The Omen with a friend, and she and I stayed up half the night hiding in her closet, surrounded by anything that looked vaguely religious—a Bible, Popsicle sticks which could be made into a cross in a snap (It is a well-known fact that the Dark Lord does not like frozen ice treats), “holy” water in a Snoopy glass that we had blessed ourselves. A collection of scarves. (Even at twelve, I understood the importance of accessorizing.) We were terrified. We were also thrilled. It never dawned on us that Old Scratch probably had better places to visit than a closet in Denton, Texas. I mean, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders were just thirty miles away.
So when October rolls around and the sky darkens, when the wind howls like the last cry of a doomed man and children in Halloween costumes run past laughing those little-kid laughs that sometimes make you wonder if said children were made in a test tube by an escaped Nazi bent on overthrowing the world order, you’ll find me nestled on my couch watching Rosemary’s Baby, and hoping against hope that she’ll win the ultimate fight. But I’ll have my Popsicle sticks with me. Because, you know, I’m not taking any chances.
Libba Bray is hard at work on The Diviners, the first book in a four-book series that is full of the creepy. She’s listening to “Tubular Bells” while she writes.
Halloween is today, which means the big parade hits the neighborhood tonight and we’d better make sure we get off the subway on the east side of Sixth Avenue or we’ll be stuck behind the barricade and forced to walk, costumeless, fifteen blocks to make it across to the other side. (We know this from experience.)
My witch fascination is probably due to my most favorite series of children’s books EVER. Who else devoured the picture books about 
distraction no.99 