Free arcs, gift certificates, and swag ... Oh, MY!

THE RACE IS OFFICIALLY OVER!!

THANK YOU FOR PLAYING!

Yay! I'm so glad you're here on the Splintered stop of the YAmazing Race with MGnificent prizes -- a crazy whirlwind blog hop featuring over 50 debut authors and prize packs featuring ARCs, gift certificates, swag, and more!

Want a sneak peek into the prize vault? Here's what I tossed (or gently dropped, rather) into the gift pile:

Lady’s bronze vintage locket/pocket watch inspired by the White Rabbit's watch

If you haven’t yet been to the Apocalypsies website, please click here to start from the beginning and read the complete rules. There are links there to take you to each leg of the race, so you'll find your way back to me all in good time.

Those of you who already followed the yellow brick road of blogs, onward with the race!

Since my book cover is still in the design phases, below is the synopsis which offers the answer to one of the questions you'll be asked in the quiz at the end of this leg of the race. Remember, you must complete ALL FIVE quizzes (one at the end of each leg) to be eligible for a prize pack:

Splintered by A.G. Howard:

For sixteen years, Alyssa Gardner has lived with the stigma of being descended from Alice Liddell -- the real life inspiration for Lewis Carroll's famed novel, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. But cruel jokes about dormice and tea parties can’t compare to the fact that Alyssa hears the whispers of bugs and flowers ... the same quirk which sent her mother to a mental institution years before.

When her mother takes a turn for the worse and the whispers grow too strong for Alyssa to bear, she seeks the origins of their family curse. A set of family heirlooms and a moth tied to an eerie website lead Alyssa and her gorgeous best friend / secret crush, Jeb, down the rabbit hole into the real Wonderland, a place far darker and more twisted than Lewis Carroll ever let on.

There, creepy and violent counterparts of the original fairytale crew reveal the purpose for Alyssa’s journey, and unless she fixes the things her great-great-great grandmother Alice put wrong, Wonderland will have her head.


WAIT! Before you go – there's a **bonus contest** for my readers to win this:

Set of  6 Alice in Wonderland gift tags/bookmarks from MissBohemia.com

If you'll simply be a follower of my blog and leave a comment below letting me know, your name goes into a drawing. To have your name entered a second time, tweet up this post on twitter (be sure to use my handle @aghowardwrites in the tweet so I'll catch it in my mentions feed) OR share it on FB (include the link in the comments below so I can go check it out). I will close comments at 12pm easter on Monday the 23rd and the winner will be announced here on Tuesday the 24th.

UPDATE: The response has been so good to my contest that I'm going to do an extra drawing to give away 10 personalized and signed bookplates that you can place on your own copy of Splintered one day:

Just an example ... I promise to use your name. Oh, and my signature isn't nearly that neat. ;)

This means I’ll be pulling 10 more names from Random.org so you all have ten more chances to win. My way of thanking you for your interest in the book!

Ready to move on? Awesome! Click here to go to the next stop on the race, and good luck!

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Want to know more about Splintered?.

Click here for a sneak peak at Splintered's sexy antagonist and the skateboarding / gothic fashionista heroine.

Still want to see more?.

To check Splintered out on GoodReads,

Click Here...

Thanks for stopping in, and have a great week!

Tune in for YAmazing fun and MGnificent prizes!

If you take part in the upcoming Apocalypsies blog race, you'll get to meet some fabulous 2012 debut young adult and middle grade authors and hear about their upcoming books along the way...

The YAmazing Race with MGnificent Prizes begins tomorrow (January 16) at noon-ish eastern, so get your game face on to win some awesome SWAG.

See you then!!!

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P.S. HUGE props to Gina Damico for organizing this race, and her husband who put together the fun quizzes that will win you lucky guys and gals those prizes. Gina is super generous w/her time. Don't know how she does it, considering her own book CROAK will be coming out in March (SO VERY CLOSE!) so I know she's crazy busy. Be sure to put that book on your to-read list because it looks FAB, FUNNY, and wickedly creepy to boot.

Step Into My Nightmare ... and win a prize.

If you'd like to know what the first half of the title is all about, you'll have to visit my new young adult and middle grade group blog, ADR3NALIN3: Books that are worth losing sleep over. I spilled my guts out over there today, almost literally, sharing some of my weirdest fears and how I developed them. As to the prize part, we'll get to that in just a second...

I've made some changes on my sidebar to reflect efforts at building an online presence for my upcoming book, Splintered, and ADR3NALIN3 is one of those changes. That doesn't mean I won't still be posting here. I'll continue my Monday poetry spots here, keep posting any news I might have, and also have my QueryTracker series every first Friday.

But two Wednesdays a month I'll be posting at the new blog. I'll keep you apprised of where I'll be by the calendar on the sidebar.

Speaking of the calendar, as you can see, I'm taking part in a HUGE blog race next week with 58 other Apocalypsies -- fellow 2012 debut authors of YA and MG books -- and there will be prizes galore to be had! More deets are to come on Monday, but for now, here's a sneak peek at two of the prizes I'm putting up for grabs:

Alice in Wonderland gift tags/bookmarks from MissBohemia.com

Lady’s bronze vintage locket/pocket watch

So if you're interested in free goodies, stay tuned.

Be sure to visit and promote the ADR3NALIN3 blog. There are some great YA and MG authors over there, several already published and with a large fan base, so I'm hoping for good things all around.

Thanks for stopping by! Hope to see you next week for the YAmazing Race and MGnificent Prizes! Until then, have a fabulous and safe weekend.