Kindle Giveaway

If you pre-order a copy of Acquainted With the Night, your name will be entered into a drawing for a Kindle.

But wait, there's more! If you'd like free swag, send proof-of-purchase, and I will mail you a FREE copy of Gone With a Handsomer Man, Crazy Ladies, Mermaids in the Basement, Consuming Passions, or Mad Girls in Love. Pick the book you'd like and email me at pipermaitland@gmail.com, along with your shipping address.

Just leave a comment and tell me you've pre-ordered, and your name will go into the drawing.

                                   The deadline for the giveaway is October 27th.

Acquainted With the Night: Behind the Scenes

When I was a little girl, I'd stay up to watch vampire movies on The Late, Late Show. I'd get

so scared, I'd holler for my daddy to walk me to my bedroom. I even swiped my mother's

garlic pods and put them around my neck. Boy, did I ever get in trouble when my mother needed those pods.

No one in my family was shocked when I wrote a vampire novel. Not happy, mind you, just not surprised. I began writing in the winter of 2008. I didn't have an outline. I just started with a character named Caro Clifford. Her story began in London and quickly moved to Sofia, Bulgaria.

Why Bulgaria? Because Caro's uncle Nigel is an archeologist, and the Perperikon archeological dig site is located in the southern Rhodope Mountains of Bulgaria.

 

I've never had so much fun writing a book (and I've written quite a few). When edits and copyedits arrived, I was thrilled to be back with Caro and Jude, her biochemist-vampire slayer boyfriend.

I had a brilliant editor who made the writing a joy.

The book was scheduled to be published last year, but it was moved to Fall 2011.

In just 6 weeks, it will be published.

I'm so excited! (Can you tell? :-) )

Here's one of my favorite, 58-second book videos:

Photo Credits: Dreamstime, Shutterstock, Fotolia

Mockingbird Attacks! (With a Wobbly-Bad Video)

Day after day, I sit in my room, facing my laptop, trying to call down words. AWTN is coming out next month, and I'm doing copy edits for another southern mystery that's scheduled for April. Sometimes I need Peace and Quiet to pick bone fragments out of a ms. But a mockingbird has started attacking my house. It starts in the bay-bedroom window; then it moves to the side window. It wings around to the family room transoms. Sometimes it pecks my Jeep.

This morning, I stopped working on copyedits to film this weird, little bird. Is it trying to get in? Attack? Sell me something?

My mother says when a bird pecks a window, it means someone in the house will die. Yeesh, I hated that explanation, so I Googled "bird pecks window" until I found a better answer. According to old wives' tales, the pecking means news is on the way. But it also means that the mockingbird has seen its reflection, thinks its another bird, and it wants the bird to hit the road. The cure is to put up a decal. I taped a magazine cover to the bathroom window, but the bird still pecks. If I step near the window, the Mockingbird flies away. So, it's not seeing his reflection, right? Does it think I'm a big-haired bird that wants his worms and bugs? I don't know. This has been going on for two months. I'm so afraid it's going to hurt itself.

Here's today's bird attack:

I closed the draperies. But maybe I need to buy a bird feeder? Or send the wee pecker to MockingMatch.com to find a mate. ;-)

Acquainted With the Night: A New Video

Acquainted With the Night is at Comic-Con in NYC this weekend--galleys, bookmarks, and buttons will be given away. http://www.newyorkcomiccon.com/. I began writing AWTN in the winter of 2008, and now--finally--the pub date is almost here. On November 29, I will be holding the novel in my hands. Exciting!

Here's the latest book trailer (59 seconds):