Now in paperback: Fantasy Baseball!

Fantasy Baseball is now out in paperback with a new cover, just in time for opening day of the new Major League Baseball season! The new cover is spooky and fun at the same time, just like the story inside. I recommend buying them in batches of nine--one each for every player on your baseball team. That's a totally unbiased recommendation, of course...

Fantasy Baseball is available online or at your favorite local bookstore, and signed copies are in stock at my favorite local bookstore, Malaprop's Bookstore and Cafe! Follow the link to find out how you can get a signed (and personalized!) Fantasy Baseball sent your way.

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Asheville to Nashville with three fab authors!

This August, I'm pleased as punch to be part of the Asheville to Nashville tour with Myra McEntire, Victoria Schwab, and Beth Revis! They'll be stopping in eight cities in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee, and I'll be joining them Sunday, August 7th from 3-5 p.m. for their event in Knoxville, Tennessee at Union Ave Books.

Here's the scoop from the o-fficial announcement!

---

Myra, Victoria, and Beth are thrilled about bringing a tour to their local areas--from Asheville, NC, to Nashville, TN. We'd love it if you came out to see us, and we want to make sure that everyone in the area knows about it!

But we know that not everyone gets to have a tour stop in their backyard. So, we're going to bring the tour to YOU. With signed books, straight from the tour, mailed straight to YOU.

We're going to be adding to the prize pack as we go, but so far we're happy to say that these will be included, all of which will be SIGNED by the author!

SIGNED hardback copy

SIGNED hardback copy

SIGNED hardback copy

SIGNED hardback copy

SIGNED ARC copy

Signed copy PLUS a signed poster!

SIGNED hardback copy

That's right! SEVEN SIGNED BOOKS + a signed poster + more swag + some fun things that we're going to pick up on the way. THIS PRIZE PACK IS HUGE!!!

To enter: help us spread the word & fill out the form below!


There are lots of way to help us spread the word! You can do something as simple as tell a friend, but we want as many people as possible to come to our tour and find out about it. 


So, tell a friend about it!


Or...tweet!

Or...Facebook!

Or...blog! You could either make a post about it or share our widget!

Additional contest information:

• Open to the US & Canada only--sorry, but the authors have to pay shipping themselves.
• Entrants must be 13 years old or older
• To be entered, you must fill out the form below
• Contest closes on August 12, 2011

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Baseball Through the Looking Glass

This week I'm interviewed by Tina LoTufo over at Chapter 16, the Humanities Tennessee blog. (I'm originally from Knoxville, for the two or three of you out there who don't know that already.) Tina and I discuss life, death, and Tom Sawyer in Fantasy Baseball. Here's the link.

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I'm interviewed at From the Mixed-Up Files...of Middle Grade Authors

Head over to the "From the Mixed-Up Files..." blog to read an interview with me about Fantasy Baseball, writing middle-grade fiction, and my former life as a play-by-play basketball announcer...

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Google Alerts Round-up

Time for some last-gasp winter Google Alerts from the interweb!

Southwest Middle School won the Gaston County, NC Battle of the Books competition. They had to answer questions about 27 different books--including The Brooklyn Nine! Congrats, guys!

And The Brooklyn Nine has made another state list! B9 was selected for the 2012 Oklahoma Sequoyah Master List! Thanks, Oklahoma. You're OK with me! (Yes, that's a postal abbreviation joke.)

I recently did a Skype visit with students at Upper Dauphin Area High School in Elizabethville, PA, and the local paper wrote up a great article about it. You can read it here.

And I'm starting to get alerts on Fantasy Baseball!

Mr. H at the SMS Guys Read blog loves the Fantasy Baseball poster I sent him...

Zoe posted a great summary/review of Fantasy Baseball at NextHub.com...

...and Ms. Certo at Hope Middle School recommends Fantasy Baseball as an independent reading selection for classrooms.

Thanks, everyone!

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Fantasy Baseball Launch Tour - Sunday, March 20

Last stop on my whirlwind week of school visits and bookstore signings. Today I'll be dropping by one of our favorite bookstores on the drive home to sign stock and schmooze with the awesome booksellers there. Drop by and say hello if you're in the area!


Joseph-Beth Booksellers
Lexington, KY @ Noon


*Note: This isn't a formal reading/signing, just me signing books the store has in stock. I'd still love to see you if you'd like to stop by! I'll be there for about an hour to an hour and a half.

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Join me today at the LitWorks: Teen READ Workshop

Join me today at the Ridgewood High School LitWorks: Teen READ Workshop! I'll be talking about my process as an author, then signing copies of my books. And I'm just one of the great lineup of authors you'll meet there! Check out who else is coming:

Art Baltazar (we love his comics!!), Brent Crawford, Candace Fleming, John C. Ford, Kristin Walker, Janette Rallison, and Todd Strasser.

The event is open to the public. Teens get in free, adults pay $5. The event starts at 10 a.m. at the Eisenhower Public Library, then shifts over to Ridgewood High School at noon for the breakout sessions with the authors. The autograph party is from 3:30 - 4:00 p.m.


Click here for more information. Hope to see you there!

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Fantasy Baseball Launch Tour - Friday, March 18

Today I'm at just one school, all day long:


Ridgewood High School
Norridge, IL



Tomorrow I'll be a part of Ridgewood High School's LitWorks: Teen Read Conference. The event is open to the public, and features a slew of great YA authors! Click here for more info. Hope to see you there!

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A book is born: Fantasy Baseball!

Now batting: Fantasy Baseball! My new novel goes on sale TODAY!

You've never played fantasy baseball like this before. 

A flying monkey in the outfield. A toad at short. Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz on the mound. Alex Metcalf thinks he’s dreaming, but the Oz Cyclones exist here in Ever After, where storybook characters live on as long as kids in the real world believe in them.

But Alex isn't a storybook. To get home, he and the Cyclones will have to win the Ever After Baseball Tournament and earn wishes from the Wizard of Oz. Trouble is, the Big Bad Wolf wants a wish too.

To win the tournament, Alex and the Cyclones will have to defeat the wolf, play the best baseball of their lives, and find the courage to believe in themselves. But what good is believing in yourself if the real world stops believing in you?

To help me celebrate, I'll be visiting with the students at Ridgewood High School in Norridge, Illinois in the Chicagoland area. I'll also be giving a talk and doing a reading at the Ridgewood High School LitWorks book festival on Saturday, which is open to the public. Come out and say hey! Click here for more info. 

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Fantasy Baseball Launch Tour - Wednesday, March 16

Two school visits and a book signing on tap today in Chicagoland:

Heritage Grove Middle School
Plainfield, IL @ 9:00 p.m.

The Lane School
Hinsdale, IL @ 1:40 p.m.

57th Street Books
Chicago, IL @ 4:00 p.m.

*This isn't a formal reading/signing, just me dropping by to sign stock and say hello. Come by and say hello yourself if you're in the area!

And special thanks to Anderson’s Bookshop for helping arrange the school visits!

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Fantasy Baseball Launch Tour - Tuesday, March 15

 

Two school visits on tap today in Chicagoland:


Roosevelt Middle School
River Forest, IL @ 8:30 a.m.

Percy Julian Middle School
Oak Park, IL @ 2:00 p.m.


Special thanks to The Magic Tree Bookstore for helping arrange these visits!

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Fantasy Baseball Launch Tour - Monday, March 14

Two school visits on tap today in Chicagoland:


St. Francis Xavier School
Wilmette, IL @ 10:00 a.m. 

Sacred Heart School
Winnetka, IL @ 1:00 p.m.



Special thanks to The Book Stall at Chestnut Court for helping arrange these visits!

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Fantasy Baseball Launch Tour - Saturday, March 12

Today I'll be dropping by three Cincinnati-area bookstores to sign stock and schmooze with the awesome booksellers there. Drop by and say hello if you're in the area!

Blue Marble Bookstore
Ft. Thomas, KY @ 2:00 p.m.

Blue Manatee Bookstore
Cincinnati, OH @ 4:00 p.m.

Joseph-Beth Booksellers
Cincinnati, OH @ 6:00 p.m.


*Note: These aren't formal readings/signings, just me signing books the stores have in stock. I'd still love to see you if you'd like to stop by!

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The Official Fantasy Baseball Launch Tour Schedule!

The publication day for Fantasy Baseball is upon us! The official on-sale date is Thursday, March 17 (St. Patrick's Day, apropos of nothing). To celebrate, I'm doing a slew of school and bookstore visits all week, beginning Saturday! Wendi and Jo will be with me on the trip too. If one of these stops is near you, come on out and say hello!

*At all the bookstores, I'll be doing stock signings, not formal readings. We'd still love to see you! It'll just be informal--I'll be signing the books the stores have on hand and chatting with anyone who shows up.

Saturday, March 12

*Blue Marble Bookstore, Ft. Thomas, KY @ 2:00 p.m.

*Blue Manatee Bookstore, Cincinnati, OH @ 4:00 p.m.

*Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Cincinnati, OH @ 6:00 p.m.

Sunday, March 13

Travel day

Monday, March 14

St. Francis Xavier School, Wilmette, IL @ 10:00 a.m. 

Sacred Heart School, Winnetka, IL @ 1:00 p.m.

Tuesday, March 15

Roosevelt Middle School, River Forest, IL @ 8:30 a.m.

Percy Julian Middle School, Oak Park, IL @ 2:00 p.m.

Wednesday, March 16

Heritage Grove Middle School, Plainfield, IL @ 9:00 p.m.

The Lane School, Hinsdale, IL @ 1:40 p.m.

*57th Street Books, Chicago, IL @ 4:00 p.m.

Thursday, March 17

*Fantasy Baseball debuts!*

Ridgewood High School, Norridge, IL @ 8 a.m.

Friday, March 18

Ridgewood High School, Norridge, IL @ 8 a.m.

Saturday, March 19

Lit Works: A Teen READ Conference from 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Eisenhower Public Library and Ridgewood High School, Norridge, IL

This event is open to the public, and features a great collection of YA authors:

Art Baltazar (we love his comics!!), Brent Crawford, Candace Fleming, John C. Ford, Kristin Walker, Janette Rallison, Todd Strasser, and yours truly!

Click here for more info!

Sunday, March 20

*Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Lexington, KY @ noon

Then home again, home again, jiggity-jig!


Hope to see you on the road this week!

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Early Fantasy Baseball reviews

Tis the season for me to start biting my fingernails: the first reviews for Fantasy Baseball are appearing!

First, Dave at the Just One More Page blog (and bookseller at The Blue Marble Bookstore in Ft. Thomas, Kentucky) reviewed an advance reader copy, and says Fantasy Baseball is "one not to miss."

Then I found out that Publishers Weekly reviewed Fantasy Baseball! Here's their review:

Continuing to use baseball as backdrop, Gratz (The Brooklyn Nine) moves from historical fiction to fantasy with a story that playfully mixes storybook characters with stadium action. When Alex finds himself in Ever After he's sure he's dreaming--case in point, he's recruited to play in a high-stakes tournament for a team captained by Dorothy Gale, she of the ruby red cleats. Dorothy's teammates include lesser-known Oz characters like Tik-Tok, Scraps, and Button Bright, who's in danger of fading away because nobody reads the sequel he appears in. They insist Alex is a "Lark," somebody's daydream, and not a book character at all, but they keep him because the kid can flat-out play. Eventually, Alex figures out whose daydream he is in a thread that adds poignancy and tension to a slightly unwieldy narrative, as the Oz team encounters Mother Goose, the critters from Redwall, L'Engle's Charles Wallace and Mrs. Which and Whatsit, among numerous literary cameos. The predictable ending is the only one possible, but Gratz frames it with an interesting question about what effect dreams can hope to have on the dreamer. Ages 8–12. (Mar.)

Thanks Dave, and thanks PW!

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Fantasy Baseball Poster Giveaway

This past summer I took a two-week letterpress class at Penland School of Crafts, and what did I create and print? Fantasy Baseball posters, of course! A set of four, in fact, and I'll be giving copies of each away in the months leading up to Fantasy Baseball's release in March 2011.

 

First up is the game day poster for the big finale: the championship game between Dorothy's Oz Cyclones and the Big Bad Wolf's Grimm Reapers, done in the style of classic sports adverts. The date of the game is the book's on sale date. The poster is 9"x19", type-set in wood and lead, hand-printed by me, and, as they say, suitable for framing.

 

Readers of my eNewsletter already have a leg up on this, but even if you don't subscribe* there's still a chance for you to get in on the action. Just click on this link to enter. The drawing is free, the postage is free, and all street addresses will be pitched once I've mailed out the prizes. But hurry--I'm going to pick the winners tomorrow, on Christmas Eve.
 

Click here to win a hand-printed Fantasy Baseball game day poster! 

*And seriously, why aren't you signed up for my newsletter already? The sign up is just an easy scroll to the bottom of the page...

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Giveaway winners!

Congratulations to Cindy Rittenhouse of Atlanta, GA and Sherri Ashburner of Westbrook, CT--they're the winners of my first round of Very Fancy eNewsletter giveaways! Cindy wins an advance reader copy of Fantasy Baseball, and Sherri wins an advance reader copy of Sapphique, the sequel to the New York Times Bestselling fantasy novel Incarceron by Catherine Fisher.

More giveaways to come! If you haven't already, follow the link at the bottom of this blog to sign up for my e-newsletter. And if you submitted your name before, you're automatically entered to win the next time I have a contest!

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Last day to enter to win a Fantasy Baseball galley

A week or so ago I announced my first Fantasy Baseball Advance Reader Copy giveaway, but I neglected to, um, pick a cut off date. (I don't do this often! Cut me some slack!)

So today is the last day to get signed up! (Like how I just made that executive decision?) Click here to register if you haven't already. Tomorrow--Friday, October 8th--I'll randomly select a winner from all the people who've entered and announce the winner here on the blog. Oh, and getting signed up now will automatically include you in all the other giveaways I've got lined up between now and pub day!

(Tomorrow I'll also be choosing the winner of the Sapphique galley, a contest available only to folks who subscribe to my Very Fancy eNewsletter...)

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Fantasy Baseball Advance Reader Copy Giveaway!

The word is out: I'm giving away a free Advance Reader Copy of Fantasy Baseball, my new middle grade novel due out next March! 

You've never played fantasy baseball like this before. A flying monkey in the outfield. A toad at short. Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz on the mound. Alex Metcalf thinks he’s dreaming, but the Oz Cyclones exist here in Ever After, where storybook characters live on as long as kids in the real world believe in them.

But Alex isn't a storybook. To get home, he and the Cyclones will have to win the Ever After Baseball Tournament and earn wishes from the Wizard of Oz. Trouble is, the Big Bad Wolf wants a wish too.

To win the tournament, Alex and the Cyclones will have to defeat the wolf, play the best baseball of their lives, and find the courage to believe in themselves. But what good is believing in yourself if the real world stops believing in you?

To win an Advance Reader Copy of Fantasy Baseball, click here! The winner will be announced soon, and I'll be doing more great giveaways in the months leading up to Fantasy Baseball's Spring 2011 release! 

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Letterpress Fantasy Baseball Posters

Not much time to blog as we're in high gear last-minute costume preparations for Dragon*Con this weekend, but I didn't want to get too far away from my Letterpress class experience before posting some pics! I used my time to create some meta-posters from Fantasy Baseball, my new middle grade novel coming out next spring. Each of these posters is either directly referenced in the book, or references something specific in the book.

A Keep Calm and Carry On poster, in the fashion of the British propaganda posters prepared in advance of an anticipated German invasion. The posters were never used, but were rediscovered decades later and have become popular in the UK. In mine, I've replaced the crown at the top with an image of the Big Bad Wolf, the villain from Fantasy Baseball.

Toad from Wind in the Willows is the shortstop on my team--and is also running for Prime Minister of Ever After, the world in Fantasy Baseball. "Vote Toad" is a constant refrain. I meant to print up some Vote Toad business cards, but I ran out of time. Perhaps if I rent the studio over the winter...

A game day poster for the big game at the end. Click on the image to see it larger. Pretty thrilled with the way this one turned out, and I printed like 200 of them, so I should have plenty to use as giveaways in advance of the book coming out. The big date of the game is the pub date of the book.

Maybe my least successful poster, even though it was the most complicated. I carved three different linoleum blocks and had to print over three different days to do this. Probably an idea best left to screen printing, and I wasn't thrilled with how the colors came together. Still, it was a minor victory: it taught me a lot about image registration. Worse, this poster was the one nobody understood, as you really need the book to help you out with it. Alex, my hero, wants to get out of Ever After, so he goes to a travel agency. In a punny, Phantom Tollbooth kind of way, the agency offers, among other vacations, "Day Trips" to days of the week. Hence the "Visit Sunny Wednesday."

Me hard at work on one of the Vandercook presses! Poster giveaways coming soon. If you haven't registered to receive my e-newsletter before, now is the time to do it! Check out the clunky link all the way at the bottom of this page.

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