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Thanks to everyone for participating in the LIFE AND OPINIONS OF AMY FINAWITZ contest! We had a great time reading all the entries. There were some tough decisions, since everyone was so gosh darn clever, but eventually Nancy Mercado, Laura Toffler-Corrie and I narrowed it down.

So without further ado here are the winning tweets...

FIRST PRIZE (signed book and critique):

• @LauraRenegar: Not every dog in the conga line really knows how to dance.

• @Karen2sc: This is not a form letter.
• @susansteward: Query letters should be like underpants--brief, fresh, and your own.
• @MLBrown_writes: You will fall in love with a handsome stranger soon. Unfortunately, he will be a figment of your imagination.

If you're one of the winners, please write me an email with your address! Congrats!

Do you need some summer laughs? Of course you do! Well, good news. Laura Toffler-Corrie's debut middle-grade novel, THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF AMY FINAWITZ, will be released into the wild next week.

It's a hilarious novel, with a brilliant and wacky cast of characters, and I know you'll be that person who guffaws on the subway while reading it. Because I still do. 

So. We're running a contest: a Fortune Cookie Twitter contest!

"Why fortune cookies?" you ask, innocently. "Well," I say, "fortune cookies play an important part in our heroine Amy's story."

One awesome way you can get a feel for Amy's fortune cookie flair is to read the sample chapter here. But here are some examples of fortunes Amy finds in the book:

• When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
• When you make change, come back a dollar.
• 7/5ths of all people do not understand fractions.

Your task: Tweet us your fortunes. What kind of fortunes? Well, fortunes specifically for writers! The fortune cookie you’d want to open if you were a writer working on a revision, or waiting for a review, or trying to get published, etc. The sky's the limit!

Let's start with the prizes to entice you.

• The GRAND PRIZE WINNER of the FORTUNE COOKIE contest will receive:
  • A signed copy of THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF AMY FINAWITZ
  • A critique of 10 pages of your work by Laura's super-editor Nancy Mercado!
• Runners-up prizes: A pack of these hilarious and evil fortune cookies! 

  THE RULES:

1. Follow author Laura Toffler-Corrie on Twitter: @LauraTofflerCor.  
2. Enter your fabulous, fortunes on Twitter. (Fortunes posted as comments to this blog post will be enjoyed, but not judged.)
3. You MUST use this hashtag in your tweet: #amyfortune (If you don't use it, we'll never see it!)
4. You may enter up to 10 (TEN) fortunes.
5. As we know, good fortune should SPREAD. Share the love! Spread the word about the contest! 
6. Laura, Nancy, and I will be the sole judges of the contest.
7. The deadline for this contest is 9AM Eastern Time on Tuesday, August 3rd (release day!). Winners will be announced Friday, August 6th. There are no exceptions to this! If any fortune tweets are sent after that time, they will NOT be read.

Now get thee to Twitter and start predicting!