Diana Rowland — Writing, Life, and the Stuff in between

The completely randomly picked winners of a copy of Mark of the Demon to be read and then passed on are:

Pia Veleno
Zombie Joe
Vicki
Elaine G
Jennifer (sorry, there was more than one Jennifer–this is the jenarceneaux one)
Barbara Elness
Jenn
Abigail

Hurray!! I’ll be sending an email out to the winners in just a few minutes, asking you to supply me with a mailing address. To the rest of you, thank you SO much for playing along and posting your terrific testimonials to the power of sharing books! Keep on lending!!

What I want to say to my daughter:

My darling child: I know that there are many times when you don’t like or appreciate the decisions I make, or the rules I set forth, or the limits I place. I’m very sorry for this, but my job as a parent is to protect and nurture you and to prepare you for your future as best as I can. Sometimes I am attempting to protect you from risks and dangers that are tangible and immediate. Sometimes I am attempting to protect you from unpleasantness and peril that might happen in the future if you continue on a certain path of behavior. Sometimes I am attempting to prepare you for the vagaries and uncertainties of adult life. The demands I place on you are not intended to be cruel or unreasonable, but are instead imposed in the hope that you will be challenged and will grow in a positive fashion from the experience, whether it be in the areas of responsibility, education, or morals. The lectures I force you to endure are not meant to bore and nag you into submission, but are lessons from my own life experience that I hope you can learn with far less hardship than I endured. I want the absolute best for you, and pray that you enjoy a long and happy life, full of every possible opportunity and well-prepared for inevitable disappointments. To that end I must sometimes weigh your immediate gratification against your future potential, and make a choice that is based on my own experience and knowledge of a world that you are still largely ignorant of.

I will sometimes make mistakes, and will sometimes make decision and demands that you truly feel are unreasonable and illogical. In this event, I will steel myself to not be swayed by outbursts of emotion, invectives, or inappropriate behavior, and, in fact, the aforementioned behavior will most likely encourage me to enact reprisals as I continue to do my best to shape you into a responsible, and mature adult. That being said, I will be more than willing to listen to a reasonable and calm argument, backed by facts, experience, or compelling anecdote, and I promise you that I will hear your argument with an open mind and a willingness to change my position.

I love you.

Mom

What I actually say to my daughter:

Because I said so! And stop whining!

Another giveaway, but this one’s going to be a little different. I have eight copies of Mark of the Demon to give away, but these are NOT going to be autographed copies. Instead, I’m asking that, after you finish reading it, you pass it along to someone who you think might enjoy it. And then ask them to pass it along when they finish it, etc.

To enter, post a comment and give an example of a series or author you fell in love with after reading a book that was borrowed (from library, friend, relative, whatever.)

Contest will close Wednesday morning (October 28th) as soon as I’ve consumed my coffee.

ETA: You can also give an example of a series/author that you hooked someone else on by loaning them a book!

GRETA! Woohoo!! Congrats!

Email me with your address and I’ll ship your six pack to you!
(email: diana [at] dianarowland [dot] com)

And, if you didn’t win, don’t fret! There are more awesome giveaways coming up soon! Huge thanks to everyone who entered. I had a lot of fun reading everyone’s “six things”.

Contest time again!! But this one’s going to be a little different. One lucky person will win the following six-pack of books:

Displayed are:

Speak of the Devil by Jenna Black
Doubleblind by Ann Aguirre
Darker Angels by MLN Hanover
Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire
The Trouble With Demons by Lisa Shearin
Norse Code by Greg van Eekhout

To enter, simply leave a comment and list six things. It can be ANYTHING. On Sunday, October 11th, I will randomly pick one winner to receive the whole six pack of AWESOME books. (Yes, this is open to international peeps too, though please be aware that I’ll be using the cheapest (i.e. slowest) shipping method available.)

Go wild!

ETA: It can be six ANYTHINGS! Does not have to be random. Can be six flavors, six colors, six organ names, six things seen on the way to the corner… can be anything at all!!

I’ve posted a number of pictures of my writing lair (along with proof of my nerdiness) at my flickr set. Enjoy!

The winners!

Okay, I know I’m a day late, but it was harder than I thought it would be to pick a winner. In fact, it was so hard, that I decided to pick three winners! Not that getting to pick three made it any easier, because there were a lot of really terrific entries and quite a few that made me laugh out loud. Huge thanks to everyone who participated!

So, without any further babbling from me:

Winner #1: Cathy R with “Crouching Author, Hidden Demon”

Winner #2: Debbie_D with: “Hypnosis can be a very powerful tool. As you can see, Ms. Rowland actually believes she’s a dog. We’ll take a 10 minute break now, she needs to be walked”

And Winner #3: (and this one proves that I sometimes have a completely retarded sense of humor, because I laughed out loud when I read it!) Rayna with : (thinking in my head)*Don’t fart, Don’t Fart, Don’t FART!*

I’ll be in touch with the above posters about your prize!

However, I have to give a shout-out to a couple of runner-ups who also made me snicker:

Ashley N with: Epic Annihilation In 3…2…1…

Marilyn with: “the girls” will be a good fit!

And kiaras with: “The author, after she finds her work on yet another torrent site.”

But seriously, I loved them all, and if you didn’t win, don’t fret! I’ll be having more contests in the coming months! Thanks again, everybody!

During a recent search for loose change, I found a usb drive that contained a picture that was taken at a martial arts seminar I attended about seven years ago.

I look waaaaay too serious here, and this picture is in serious need of captioning. Best one wins an autographed copy of Mark of the Demon! (And yes, this is open to readers outside the U.S. as well )

ETA: Contest will close next Monday, September 14th, at noon (Louisiana time), at which time entries will be judged by a motley group of people with suspect opinions.

ETA #2: Captions can be serious, funny, lolcatty… anything goes! (Unless it’s something that’s just plain skeevy/gross/creepy, at which time I reserve the right to delete said skeeviness without prejudice.)

ETA #3 (sheesh!): If you already have Mark of the Demon, I’ll put you down for an autographed copy of Blood of the Demon as soon as I get copies!

My Comic-Con report, finally!

Yes, I’ve been back from San Diego for a few weeks now. [insert lame apology for not posting sooner.]

I had a total blast. I walked a lot. Holy crapoly. The convention center is eight blocks long. There were 126,000 people crammed into eight blocks. (Think of half the population of New Orleans crammed into eight blocks. Yeah, there were time when I wanted to curl into the fetal position!)

I sought refuge hung out at the Random House booth quite a bit. I was also featured on the Suvudu website a few times, which was a helluva lot of fun. (Four different links in that last sentence–don’t miss any of them!) Met and re-met all sorts of incredibly awesome people, (see the flickr set!) but I think the absolute coolest experience of the convention was meeting Felicia Day. Not only because Felicia Day is an incredibly cool person, but because of the way I finally managed to meet her.

So, I’ve been a bit of a fangirl about Felicia Day for a while, and it’s a poorly kept secret that in my little delusional world where Mark of the Demon gets made into a movie or TV series (hey, I said it was a delusion, okay?) I think Felicia Day would make an awesome Kara. Plus, she’s a big fan of urban fantasy and paranormal romance, so I wanted to be a pushy bitch find a way to meet her and give her a copy of my book. I quickly discovered that there’d be no way for me to just randomly run into her (yeah, there were a lot of people there. Holy Kamoly.) And, by Saturday, I realized that I needed to be a lot more proactive about stalking finding her. I finally tweeted something to the effect of, “Okay, first person who can hook me up with @feliciaday wins an autographed copy of Mark of the Demon!”

Not two minutes later I had a direct message from @feliciaday, telling me where to find her. SCORE!!

Unfortunately, being that I was new to ComicCon, I got very confused about where I was supposed to go. I ended up walking (jogging?) to the very ass-end of the convention center (five or so blocks away), only to discover that I had been in the right place to begin with. So, another five block walk/jog back and I made it to the Browncoat booth, where Felicia was signing autographs.

She seemed excited that I made it, shook my hand and said she was happy to meet me, at which time I proceeded to act like a spazzing fangirl. (At least it felt that way.) At one point she asked me for my card, and even though I had about a hundred stuffed into my bag I couldn’t find a single one.

Y’know, I used to be a street cop. I’ve chased down crackheads. Been in a shooting and numerous fights. Worked with the most alpha of alpha male cops. And I still managed to turn into a complete blibbering idiot. *facepalm*

But I did manage to give her a copy of Mark of the Demon, and she was incredibly nice and gracious and didn’t call security on me, for which I’m quite grateful.

As far as the rest of Comic-Con goes, I hung out with lots of cool and awesome people (again, see the flickr set!), but mostly Jackie Kessler and Shawn Speakman. Ate breakfast at Richard Walker’s Pancake House almost every morning; it usually had a line to get in, but it was a fast-moving line and always worth the wait. I got to see my friend, Gigi Gridley–who looks AMAZING and has inspired me to stop being a weenie about my diet and exercise. My bandaid giveaways were a huge hit, and I was even complimented on the cleverness of the idea by a Random House VP. (The bandaids were my one utterly brilliant idea for my life, I fear.) I was invited to a lovely little dinner party hosted by Samantha Sommersby–and since Charlaine Harris was also in attendance I was finally able to thank her personally for the wonderful blurb she gave for MotD and give her a signed copy of the book.

Even though Comic-Con wore me out far more than I expected, it was still the most fun I’ve ever had at a convention–possibly because it was absolutely impossible to be bored. I love Worldcon, but there are only so many times you can wander through the dealer’s room before you’ve seen everything, and eventually you end up just sitting in the bar to hang out with your peeps. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!) But at Comic-Con there’s no way to see everything, so whenever I got restless I could just make my way to a different zip code in the convention center and see more cool and exciting stuff!

Of course, that’s probably why I was so exhausted by the end of it. [g] Anyway, I definitely want to go again next year!

Okay, San Diego Comic-Con is the coolest convention I’ve ever been to. Many more details and pictures to come once my brain is not mush, but for now I have some cool news to share. I received word this morning that german language rights for Mark of the Demon and Blood of the Demon have been sold! (I’ll supply more info once I have it.)