THE LAST LINGER CONTEST!

Okay! Time for my last contest before LINGER comes out. And well, and for at least quite awhile after LINGER comes out, since I'll be ravaging the U.S. countryside with tour dates, and then overseas. Anyway, this one's a wee bit different.

Mostly, my evil plot is to get you to spread around the trailer for LINGER as much as possible.

And then the rewards are four-fold. The prizes are, in order of how big of a box I have to pack them in,

a necklace I found that is very like the leaves on the U.S. Shiver cover.

an ARC of LINGER. I did not know until yesterday whether or not I would be able to secure a final ARC or not, but using nefarious means and animal cunning and too much time on the computer, I did. I think I will probably sign this one. And possibly doodle in it. And maybe stick a few paper cut out animals in it. Who knows. It will be interesting.

The LINGER dust-jacket that I used in the making the LINGER trailer. I'm sorry, it's a bit rumpled, as it was, indeed, used and wrapped around a copy of SHIVER. But I hope I made up for it by signing it and making it match my guitar and laptop (which you could also glimpse on my desk in the trailer) (well, not the guitar). (I just briefly wondered at the fact that I am giving away copies of my book with no book inside. This seems slightly wrong).

And, finally, a frame from the SHIVER trailer. I have been holding onto these Shiver trailer pieces for a long time, waiting for some good use for them. The first tree frame I've kept for myself. What can I say, nostalgia. But this frame . . . I think it is time for it to be prize fodder. It is 10 x 10" and flat and will be packaged INSANELY WELL to keep it that way.

So. Those are our prizes. Four different people will win them. I have had problems in the past not laying out rules very clearly and also with things turning wildly insane and making entries difficult to count, so I'm going to try to make this very clear for all our sakes.

1. It is open internationally. Nothing butters my bread on the wrong side like people saying "YOU NEVER MAKE YOUR CONTESTS INTERNATIONAL" after I post yet another contest that is, as always, international. So I am telling you now. It's open internationally. That means inter. nationally. I love people in other countries. You're like family. Family with funny accents, cool music, and probably better food. Yes?

2. Kindly do not adopt thousands of internet personas for purposes of entering this contest. I don't care if your account is newish, etc., and I'm not the Ethics Police, but just . . . be fair and, as Jiminy Cricket says, always let your conscience be your guide.

3. Remember, the idea behind this is to get the LINGER trailer out there into the world. So before you send me an email that says "does this count as an entry?" ask yourself "does it get the LINGER trailer out in the world where actual people can see it?" and the answer is probably yes. If you are posting it on a Strawberry Shortcake listserv that has been defunct for four years, the answer is probably no. Again. Jiminy Cricket.

4. So, that said, this is how you get an entry. I'm going to try to be really specific here. You get an entry for each legitimate place that you post the Linger trailer. Places that count:
- your public blog. Anything that has viewers: so livejournal, blogger, wordpress, etc.
- your facebook.
- your myspace (if it's active -- I haven't used mine for two years)
- your twitter

Places that do not count but that I appreciate:
- forums
- Goodreads blogs
- comments on other people's blogs/ forums

I know there are categories in here that I have missed. When wondering if something is eligible, ask yourself that ol' question: does this fulfill the spirit of the contest? And if your Jiminy Cricket says yes, then post it as an entry. I am trusting you guys to be cool.

5. Ok. Here's where it gets complicated. I would really prefer that you embed the video (I will post the code here) instead of just posting a link, but I understand that on twitter, you can only post a link. I'm going to count Facebook as embedding it if you do it in such a way that the actual video appears on your wall instead of the link. Anyway, if you embed the video, you are eligible for all the prizes. So if your name is pulled, you get whichever prize I am drawing for. If you only link the video, you are eligible only for the necklace and the Linger dust jacket. So if your name is pulled, you get whichever of those two things has not been given away yet. If they have both been given away, your name is chucked and another one is pulled.

6. Now. I hate to make this so specific, but because of the thousands of entries I got on the last contest, I think I have to be. In order to have your entry tallied properly, this is what you need to do.

- post the video in however many places that you are going to post
- return to either this post on either my Livejournal blog or my blogger blog and post a separate comment for each place that you posted it. This is because I will be drawing random numbers based upon the number of comments, and if you post multiple places in one comment, it will only be registered as one entry.
- in your comment, type, in all caps, first, either EMBED or LINK depending on which it was. This is so I am sure which you're eligible for if you name gets pulled! Then post a link back to where you posted it.
- you can repeat this process for as many places as you have available to you for posting. Remember, new comment for every entry if you want multiple entries.
- DO NOT post the same link as multiple comments in an attempt to cheat. Anything which looks vaguely cheaty will make me delete every one of your entries, leave a sad face comment on your blog, and have me calling your mother and hexing you to live a single life populated only by reruns of the O.C. Don't make me do that. It's time-consuming.

Here is the embedding code for the video. You cut and paste it into the html of your blog (googling "how to embed a video" will give you more detailed instructions).

<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/l59sMzeA_vQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/l59sMzeA_vQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>

And here is the plain old link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l59sMzeA_vQ

Okay. I think that's it. The contest is running for a week. So. You may enter until SUNDAY, MAY 16TH, MIDNIGHT, EASTERN STANDARD TIME. Because I always end up staying up forever doing the tallying, I'm going to say that I will then announce the winner on Monday morning at 10 a.m.

I think I'm getting the hang of these things.

Ok. GO!