And The Winners Are…

Today was a special day for two reasons:

1.    Summer solstice

2.    Giveaway day for advance copies of The Elusive Mr. McCoy.

The drawing of the winners was done at lunchtime by Wen, my long-suffering life-long friend. We normally go to the Asian buffet, but due to record-breaking heat and humidity, we opted for Ricky’s Diner, a venue famous for its Antarctic air conditioning—which happened to be broken today.

Long ago, Wen had heatstroke and the experience left an indelible impression on her psyche. Because of this, I would not have objected had she balked at the restaurant door and suggested we have our drawing lunch on another, hopefully cooler day. But knowing you were anxiously awaiting the results of the drawing, Wen, with selfless stoicism, followed the hostess to a booth and ordered a glass of water with extra ice cubes which she fished from the glass and ran across the back of her neck as we read the menu.

In order to ensure absolute impartiality in selecting the winners, I used numbers instead of names on the little slips of paper I prepared for Wen to draw.  I scrunched the little slips of paper into little balls of paper, and placed the little balls of paper into a black velvet bag that once held a bottle of perfume  purchased at the duty free shop in Stockholm airport.

After Wen ordered the Philly steak and I ordered the Cajun cream shrimp, I pulled the black velvet bag from my purse and handed it to her. With solemnity appropriate to the momentous nature of the occasion, Wen grinned at me as she reached into the bag. One by one, she extracted five paper balls. She unfolded the last one, said, “Seven,” and looked at me inquiringly.

This was the exact moment when I realized Wen's selection was even more impartial than I'd originally intended. “I don’t know who that is,” I confessed. and went on to explain that I had made up the little paper balls based on the number of people who had entered, but hadn't actually assigned the numbers to any names yet. 

Wen said nothing, just gave me the you-idiot look she patented at age 16 when she tried to teach me how to drive and I crashed her mother’s car into a telephone pole.

After Wen drove me home, I created a spreadsheet of all the entrants, reverse sorted it by date and time of entry, and sequentially assigned numbers to the resulting list. At which point I discovered that one of the winners lives close enough for hand delivery. This savings on postage allowed me to pull an additional number from the black velvet bag, which is why I am delighted to announce the names of the SIX people who will soon be receiving advance copies of The Elusive Mr. McCoy:

Polly

Steve

Vanessa

Veronika

Charlene

Helen

Congratulations to the winners. I’ll be sending you all an email as soon as I finish this post.

And many thanks to everyone for playing along.

Another First on the Writer’s Road

No one likes change. It’s unnerving, embarrassing, sometimes downright painful. But the truth is, if we want to achieve our dreams, every once in a while we must at least dip our toes into the waters of the unknown. Just such an opportunity has presented itself, and I have decided to seize it, ever so gingerly, with the tips of the fingernails on my right thumb and forefinger.

As part of my publishing contract, I am entitled to receive a few free copies of my books. The freebies for my second book arrived yesterday in a box that was only slightly ripped (which probably happened in customs) and minimally water damaged (which probably happened during the torrential rains we had earlier this week). Now I wrote this book, so I already know how it ends and don’t need to read it. Even if I did need to read it, one copy would be more than sufficient for this purpose. Which raises the question of what to do with the rest of them.

Some will go to my beta readers and critique buddies with the usual eternal-gratitude scribblings defacing the title page. Others are committed to a silent auction being held in support of the Gather the Women convention taking place at a nearby university this summer. A few of them are destined for local reviewers.

But this still leaves me with several copies of a book I’m not going to read. I considered binding them with duct tape to make door stops for some of the folks on this year’s Christmas list. I thought about using one as a paperweight, and perhaps putting a couple more in the outhouse as emergency supplies. However, I’m fairly certain the publisher will strongly object to these usages and may never send me another freebie again.  

So instead, I’ve decided to plunk my miniscule marketing budget into snail-mail, and am delighted to announce my first ever contest* in which I will be giving away copies of… (drum roll  please)...

to five lucky people whose names will be randomly drawn on June 20^th by the hand of my oldest friend and treasured beta-reader, Wen, who will be completely impartial because she got her free copy today. Wen and I have lunch together every Wednesday and the drawing will give us something to do while gnawing on sweet-and-sour spare ribs at the all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet.

The winners will be announced on this blog, and perhaps on Facebook, since I’m always scrounging around for content that is more interesting than, “6PM and still sober. Yay me!”  I will contact the winners for snail mail addresses. If they reply promptly, and the postal gods smile upon them, they may receive their loot before July 3^rd, which is when the book appears on bookstore shelves.

If you’d like to enter the contest:

a)   Leave your email address in the comments

OR

b)   Send an email to author@brendalbaker.com

OR

c)    Send a message, or post a comment on my Facebook page.

For a guaranteed win:

a)   deposit a whack of cash in a numbered Swiss bank account and send me the password

OR

b)   get George Clooney to do any of the above.  

*The Inevitable Disclaimers

I wasn’t kidding when I said the marketing budget is miniscule, which is why I can only ship to Canada or the USA and why only five books are on offer.

I swear, cross my heart and hope to die, that I will use any contact information provided for the sole purpose of contacting the winners. Your email and snail-mail addresses are safe with me. (Unless, of course, you are George Clooney, in which case I will be making a personal delivery.) However, I feel compelled to point out that this is a public blog and who knows what kind of depraved spammers are out there trolling for the email addresses of unwary commenters.

Beta-readers and critiquers are not eligible since they don’t need two copies of the book. Actually, they don’t even need one. They know how it ends as well.