⇒Maureen Johnson is guest blogging on the Australian YA litblog Insideadog, and she's come up with a truly wonderful promotion to give away a galley of her new novel, Suite Scarlett: "Take one paragraph of a book that you feel can be improved by zombies... and PUT THAT ZOMBIE IN THERE." She uses Pride and Prejudice as a test case, but think of how much fun you could have with the homunculus passage from the opening chapter of Tristram Shandy! (Oh, sure, I could go ahead and, pardon the pun, flesh that out, but it's enough fun for me to imagine it vaguely.) Semi-finalists will be picked at the end of the day today, then voted on tomorrow and then the contest moves to Johnson's own blog with a bunch of other YA authors chipping in to judge entries.

⇒M. Christian is trying to convince readers that his new novel, Me2, was written by some twisted impostor "trying to capitalize on my name and steal my identity." As he claims:

"The plot of Me2 sure sounds like something I would create. Agreed, the style is very close to my own. And yes, I have done a lot of good work with Alyson Books before. But Me2 is not mine... What's even worse is that this copycat hasn't just managed to trick Alyson Books into publishing this novel, but he's somehow tricked respectable authors and reviews such as Felice Picano and Michael Thomas Ford into providing blurbs for the book!"

Christian calls upon readers to help him catch "the plagiarist and fraud" responsible for the novel, and will even provide copies upon request "so you can see that while is this is a excellent novel full of humor, horror, suspense and all kinds of devish twists and turns it's still not a book that I would actually write." It's clever, I'll admit; I just can't figure out yet if it's too clever.

⇒David Louis Edelman, the author of Infoquake, wants to let fans know what you can do to promote your favorite writer: "Word of mouth is the absolute number one way that most books are sold these days," he reflects. "So aside from buying the book, the most important thing you can do to promote your favorite author is to put your mouth to work for them... Just spread the word, one person at a time." But be polite about it: "I purposefully avoided watching Firefly until long after the show was dead and buried, because I kept hearing how much I should be watching it. You certainly don't want to push people away from your favorite authors like that."