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How have I not heard of this book before! I love ferrets!!! Thanks so much for this chance. =)

I have never heard of this book before, but it sounds funny and interesting. I'm going to have to check it out. Thanks for the chance to win!

Thanks for hosting this giveaway and for participating in the MidSummer's Ever Giveaway Hop!! ^_^
SpadesHigh @ http://SpadesHighReads.com
TValeros18 AT gmail DOT com

GFC Follower: SpadesHighReads
Im a new follower =) If you wouldnt mind, could you follow me as well? -_^

Thank you for participating in this wonderful blog hop. I have not read this and would love to.

Oh my gosh, if you laughed that hard, then I want this book. I need to laugh. Life is much too serious.

Thanks,
Linda
[email protected]

Thanks for the giveaway!
It sounds like a real cute story.

=)

Huge smiles here. Good luck everyone, and go ferrets!

Thanks for the giveaway!

Thank you for this chance! :D

I'm intrigued and would love to read this. I don't think I've won anything from you, so please enter me

GFC follower

june111(at)att(dot)net

This looks fun and the illustrations look beautiful.
I love Jane Yolen's stories!

Me too. I've read her Merlin books, but this was the first PB that I read. Beautiful!

What a pretty cover. My youngest loves unicorns. I'll have to see if my library has it.

I'm going to have to look for this one at my library.

Hi Donna and Bish thanks for stopping by! :0)

My daughter would have loved this when she was little! I'll have to keep an eye out for it.

Thanks Karen for the kick off. I am super excited for this tour. One change to the tour is that i will be doing Cynthia's Attic on April 2nd, instead of March 26th. On the 26th visit my site at http://www.adventuresnwriting.blogspot , please visit my blog daily to find out about a very huge contest. Hint: anyone need a vacation?

Happy Reading.

MK Scott
http://www.mkscott.com

Looking forward to hosting you, Michele. Zamora's Challenge isn't just for young readers, I can't wait to read it!!

Mary

http://www.cynthiasattic.blogspot.com
http://www.marycunninghambooks.com

Zamora's Ultimate Challenge definitely sounds like it's going to be a great book! I'll definitely be following you on the tour, MK!

Alyssa
www.alyssamontgomery.com

Already read, already started selling it. Very good book for young readers.

This is absolutely great! I'm looking forward to hitting all the stops on the tour and picking up a copy of the book!

Iris
http://irisblack-author.blogspot.com

Gorgeous cover! That's what people notice first.

Morgan Mandel
http://morganmandel.blogspot.com

Best of luck, Michele! I'm hearing lots of good things about the book!

Diana

http://wendelwordsworth.blogspot.com
http://woofersclub.blogspot.com

."...acid-poop-bombing pterodactyls"

Why didn't I think of this?

Norm

http://fangplace.blogspot.com

Hi! Thanks for kicking off Michele's blog tour! I would appreciate a favor from you - my tour stop is actually at drey's library, instead of drey's house. I must've not communicated it correctly to Michele...

THANKS!

Thanks Karen! I see the link now refers to drey's library. =)

I love that picture of Michele at her desk. What a grin. =D

A frequently debated question is who was the best dancer? Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly.

The answer is: the Nicholas Brothers!

Feast your eyes:

Fayard and Harold Nicholas have never been surpassed. Just astonishing. Even Fred Astaire admitted the fabulousness you have just watched was the best dance sequence he’d ever seen. He was correct.

On the research front: Yes, that sequence is from Stormy Weather and yes it was released in 1943. But they were the top act at the Cotton Club from 1932. As you all know the Cotton Club was the top entertainment venue in New York City in the 1930s, which co-incidentally is when and where my next book is set. So rewatching the fabulous Stormy Weather totally counts as research cause it recreates many 1930s era Cotton Club numbers.

Next stop Emperor Jones from 1933, which I don’t even have to justify. Yay!

For those suggesting 1930s films. I much appreciate it. Just keep in mind I’ve been doing this research for well over a year and have been obsessed by Hollywood films of the 1930s since I was knee high to a grasshopper. Thus if it’s readily available on DVD odds are I’ve already seen it. But if it’s an obscure, or only just released on DVD, then suggest away!

I am going to go out on a limb and predict that these three titles will be the big debuts of 2009:

Diana Peterfreund’s Rampant
Killer uni***ns and the tough gals what fight them. It’s funny and exciting and romantic and has amazing action scenes. What more do you need to know?

Carrie Ryan’s Forest of Hands and Teeth
Zombie apocalypse, scary nuns, and a girl who’s never seen the ocean. You know you want this.

Sarah Rees Brennan’s The Demon’s Lexicon
I have not yet read this one but Scott has and he keeps bugging me to read it. He loved it. I’m a huge fan of Sarah’s extremely witty and wonderful blog so I have high hopes.

They’ll all be out next (northern hemisphere) spring. I guarantee that you will love them.

What books are you all looking forward to next year?

Yes, there will be a zombie-un***rn story. I hope you’re happy. Because personally I think that’s a bit gross.

No, I can’t tell you the names of any of the contributors. But trust me, they are all fabulously excellent writers.

Yes, it is a YA anthology. It will be edited by the marvellous Karen Wojtyla. That’s right, me and Holly, who are editing the Zombie versus Uni***ns anthology, will in turn be edited. It’s, like, a whole editing chain.

Sorry, the anthology is closed.

Yes, there will be lots of different kinds of zombies. Not just your regular Romero types.

I have no idea about the uni***n side of things. I doubt there’s more than one kind. And if there is, who cares? Hmmm, maybe you should direct your uni***n questions to Holly Black or to Diana Peterfreund both of whom know ridiculous amounts about that very lame topic.

Send your zombie questions my way. If I don’t know the answer I will turn to Robert Hood, who is Professor Zombie, and knows everything there is to know about zombies.

Thanks for all the excited emails and comments about the anthology. Us two editors are both thrilled that you’re thrilled.

GO TEAM ZOMBIE!!!!!

I am currently not answering my phone or text messages, responding to emails or IM invites, or answering the door. All forms of communication are turned off. I am incommunicado until next Friday¹ when the rewrites of the Liar book are due.

Rewriting the Liar book is all I am doing right now. It is the beginning and the middle and the end of each day. It doesn’t matter how much I want to play in my brand-new, shiny, shiny 1930s novel, or how much I want to gallivant about town, I’m not allowed.

I will probably still blog. If I don’t blog my head explodes. But I am unlikely to respond to your gorgeous comments. Though I will read and cherish them as I always do. Of course once I’m finished with the rewrites I head to Texas.

Right then, back to the grindstone goes me.

1. Or, um, possibly next Monday.

I think people are voting for Quokkas because it’s the coolest-sounding word in that lot.

They are all cool sounding! Because they are all cool.

Quokkas are all round wonderful not just cause of the name. Why, they even recycle!

Mainstream realism? BAH!! I can’t imagine. Who are those three nutjobs?

I’ve been meaning to mention that I recently saw a quokka somewhere other than on this blog: in an animal alphabet book. Given the ubiquity of animal alphabet books and the difficulty of coming up with “q” animals (second only to the difficulty of coming up with any word that begins with “x,” which is the only reason anybody other than percussionists knows the word “xylophone”), I was surprised I’d never seen one in an alphabet book beforel.

yes! this leaves me free to write MY snowboarding werewolves novel.
no, really, i have one. even before i heard about yours.
although, to be fair, as i have not tried snowboarding, it just sort of takes place in a town next to a ski resort and no one actually snowboards.
truly, it is a novel about lacrosse, another sport i have not tried and which is luckily not played in the text either.
so it’s a novel about running away from annoying popular kids? or being obnoxious? or being so hardcore you quote Martin Luther King Jr on the spot during a fight?
i don’t know. one of those. or maybe witches.

also, MAINSTREAM REALISM? ha.
i have no need for your lack of werewolves, non-genre.

I don’t play lacrosse, but I watch it from time to time. It’s insane. Mostly in a good way.

Please, please — no unicorns! I know I’ve been remiss about keeping up with my RSS feeds, so no doubt I’ve missed some poll-driven developments, but still — how did we fall so far so fast from the beautiful vision of the daikaju / ghouls / vampire epic? That story *needs* to be told!

the kind of way in which MURDEROUS WEREWOLVES ARE INSANE! woo! GO MERCY MILLS WOLVES!

i was seriously torn between cricket and vionette because i someone sent me a few lovely pictures of vionette frocks. i am not much into couture, but wow! they were loverly.

You may not care, but now that you’ve said you were feeling random, it can’t be random anymore, because random is something spontaneous, and when you say something is random/ spontaneous, it comepletely negates the spontaneity because it’s not spontaneous if you’re expecting it to be spontaneous!!! anyways… sorry about that. au revoir. Emily xox

Emily: “Random” and “spontaneous” are not synonyms.

there can never be too many books about unicorns and zombies. that’s my personal motto!

what about a book that features unicorn zombies? or is that zombie unicorns?

Unicorns versus zombies would be a fun book, it would have to be handled right but it could work. Snowboarding werewolves? I keep thinking of teen wolf, not sure if that would work. On the new poll, no idea what most of the work but anything involving elvis that promotes the king and doesn’t denigrate his memory will be a big seller, its got a built-in readership..

Perhaps Elvis went into another dimension to help the unicorns against the zombie infestation. Wasn’t there a fantasy series that used songs as magic spells? I can picture “hunks of burning love” flying into the attacking zombie army

Mark: Is not quiz about which novel to write next. That was the last quiz. This is just a random quiz. You can make the question be whatever you want it to be. Like, “Which is the fuzziest?” “Which is the sexiest?” Is you choice.

i picked heyer,
cause us women writers
gost to stick together.
yes?
yes!

I liked the plot suggestion that had Elvis now in an alternate universe fighting with the unicorns against the zombies using songs as magic spells. NOW that seems quite interesting. (Nice laughter.)I wish you well on your next novel and eagerly await what your plot will be. (I would definitely check the Elvis story out to see how it all ended up.) Good luck. cat

I forgot to mention I like the snowboarding werewolves….that also made me laugh or should I say “howl” (bad joke) or “scream” (another bad joke)…sorry it is Saturday night and I am still tired from work. So…bad jokes. But I still thought the werewolves idea was funny and interesting.

thanks you!

hehe

why was that under the catigory uni*****?

I thoroughly enjoyed that! Thanks!

wow, did you see that? the times posted for the last three comments are 1:11, 2:22, and 3:33! I must have the weird posting fairy.

Freeeaky. I must have the randomness fairy. Justine’s previous post was at 12:12. And I’m 3 minutes off of 4:44. Darn.

So funny! It makes me smile.

Kadie-wa: Unicorns get mentioned once. I am a completist.

Kenina-Chan & Jelly-Wa: You’re welcome!

Kenina-Chan: That was cool. I’ll try to post at good number times from now on.

Shloopy: A randomness fairy, eh? Excellently random!

ohhh. Thanks Justine

Haha, kenina-chan, i didn’t even notice that. cool!

Justine, I love how your brain works! You should do podcasts more often.

~Mary

Oh wow, you name dropped the killer unicorns! THNX

that is truly horrible … who drives that bus?

that has got to be the creepiest thing i’ve seen since dragon*con.

I’ll never be able to sleep again. Cruel, cruel world!

that is weird as all hell. it’s like acorna gone wrong.

urk!

It doesn’t even look like something from a nightmare it’s so creepy! EEK!

Thanks a lot Justine! Now I’m going to have nightmares! (literally)

sadly, this horrific image immediately inspired a story. More nightmares!

*shake fist*

Ewww….

Oooh! That’s hot! Where can I find me a good unicorn book now?

uhhhg why would someone do that

ew…its horrible!

One word: Gross…

This whole thing has really taken on a life of its own, huh J?

[…] Magical :: Unicorns […]

ahhhhhhh that is just wrong. and creepy. that could give me nightmares. so scary. *shudder*

That…wha– why didn’t you tell us to avert our eyes before the picture? i…ugh…its head. gah! that image is gonna be drilled into my head as i try to go bed shortly. must read Sandman to scrub image from mind.

Ugh! That’s horrible! I think I can kind of understand your hatred of u******s now.

haha why did you watch that?
what gave the urge to whatch that horribal movie did you know that all the songs sound the same the sound the same in the second one too not that i watched the second one i herd it in the background from another room

i also saw those things in a funny store befor haha

and i watch the first one and i regret it

Hey…I didn’t think high school musical was THAT bad. The second one is cheesier than the first…but they’re still not that bad.

Libba is so cool on so many levels.

It’s REALLY REALLY REALLY unfair that you’ve gotten to read TSFT!! I wanna read it so bad.

Your unicorns fill me with ENVY! So does all the fun I just know you guys had.

ah, the good vs. evil uni***ns. brought to you by the same wonderful people who created the avenging uni***n and the avenging narwhal. and possibly the jesus and librarian action figures. hehehehehehehe.

i have not watched high school musical 1 or 2. no plans to do so, either. the soundtrack snippets on itunes kinda turned me off, to be honest. those kids sound way too happy.

can we have a “the sweet far thing” club???

Meanwhile, i am so jealous of your unicorns…!

oh, and i forgot–go phoenix!! so glad they won game 4. it was kinda hard to cheer for them since they swept the stars, but i still like ‘em better than detroit. can’t say that there’s any actual basis for this decision, but eh, they’re in the western conference at least.

High school musical is the worst movie-turned-marketing-scheme ever!!! and that’s all it is anymore. we had to watch it at school last year. it was supposed to be a reward, but i found it to be punishment. it *must* be a really rich school. Why did you watch it though? Why would anyone subject themselves to such torture?
As for the u*******, those are fabulous! where did you find them?

[…] <via Justine Larbalestier> […]

I love those unicorns - what an awesome present! They’re like my little pony, but *even more evil*. Well played, Libba Bray.

I bought High School Musical on a whim - it was super-cheap in JB hi-fi one day plus a lot of my friends love it - and I wish I hadn’t, because it now just sits on my shelf mocking me. Although the basketball number is quite good. I dunno. You’re right about the lack of conflict, and even the music doesn’t do much for me. It’s treble-y and empty, like fairy floss. I’m not averse to fluffy entertainment, but I was raised on cole porter and sondheim and giant slabs of the broadway canon, so hsm doesn’t sound right to me. Just my two cents.

I saw the first High School Musical and nearly vomited. (This is coming from someone who is a huge fan of musicals and loves them all, no matter how bad.) I only watched it because a bunch of my friends were talking about how amazing it was, so I wanted to see what the hype was all about. WOW, was that ever a waste of my time!

I was stunned when I heard they made a sequel. I haven’t seen it yet, and I never plan to.

BUT I AM SO JEALOUS OF YOUR UNICORNS!!! AHHH!!! (For your information, the latter was all in caps.)

Oh, hsm! It’s so silly. The second one has a little more conflict than the first, but it’s worse. If you can imagine. I liked the first one. Kinda. I’m a huge disney fan (and I’m from orlando, florida! represent!), so it’s almost as if it’s required of me to love their stuff unconditionally. but i don’t love it unconditionally.

some of it’s sweet. i like a few of the characters. i like the message. unlike grease where the woman is expected to sacrifice for the man, high school musical suggests that both people in a relationship should step out of their comfort zone for each other. gabriella was trying to change her image to begin with (for herself) and troy was trying to find his way into independence from his father. which i like.

i also like the message about status quo (the song which discusses it is completely debunked by the end of the movie, except perhaps for sharpay and her brother). Okay, I’ve spent too long analyzing.

I’m sure all the kids watch for zac and vanessa, but i love musicals. i love disney. and i love my sister (who forced me to watch it after much resistance). i ended up liking it for what it was worth. which isn’t too much, but it was enough to assure me that disney can send the right message every once in a while. they just need to tone down the fake and step up the real. that would be my real criticism of kids tv shows… lack of realism. lots of sitcoms and cartoons. lots of fluff. i love that ya lit is deeper than that. it makes me really happy.

okay, i’m done now. thanks for listening!

bex

the thing that really bothered me is that high school musical wasn’t about, well, you know. A high school musical. They should have called it auditions for a high school musical.

also, i’d never seen auditions like that in my life — with all those costumes and microphones and planned choreography that had nothing to do with the actual musical?

I, too, adore musicals. Even bad ones. That’s why the lack of music and dance numbers was so disappointing to me. I did like the basketball number though.

Diana: Exactly. I thought it was going to be like a Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney movie from the thirties and it would wind up with them putting on the show. But there was no show!

There was enough plot for a half hour episode of a TV show—not a whole movie.

Our chorus teacher forced us to watch it and then perform ‘Breaking Free’ in one of our concerts. Let’s just say that during the concert people were laughing uncontrollably, some of the chorus and some of the audience and me.

I didn’t like it because the message was so forced and that it was utterly predictable, but y’know, that’s just me.

Hmmm… I want a Destructicorn.

I thought it was going to be like a Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney movie from the thirties and it would wind up with them putting on the show. But there was no show!

i had this exact same reaction - ‘WTF, it’s over? where’s the other half of the movie?!’

Awww, love you, Justine. xo

But what up with the asterisks in unicorn? does something happen if we type the whole word? is it like The Ring and i’m going to get a creepy phone call and die if i put the cor in the middle of unicorn? Just wondering.

I’m still shell-shocked from Hsm. It was like that scene from a clockwork orange where malcolm mcdowell’s eyes are forcibly propped open and he is made to watch the horror.

Ha! Keep those unicorns in their box. Someday they’ll be worth a *fortune*!

Haha, a year ago a co-worker got me the “Freedom vs. Commie” battling unicorn set as a joke.

OMG! I sooo need to get one for my friend. She loves uni***ns. It’s kinda creepy actually…her room almost looks like that one scene from *Dodgeball*

someone must write this book. :D

A vampire elf, if cursed with the inability to fib, would be no more hindered to ensnaring victims: providing of course its stature is of little concern. Who would believe an elf that had to disclose, in all honesty, it was a vampire?

Oh lord, the memories. A bunch of fanficcers were writing vampire elf stories some years back. They have spock ears and fangs! Glowing eyes and floor-length hair, both boyz and grrrlz! They are ultra gorgeous, live forever! they lure pretty boys and girls, especially boys, to be their glam slaves before they permit them to turn vamp, woo hoo!

They were, in short, even bigger soap operas than the slashworlds, then they discovered vampire-elf-slash.

Adminerate?!?

*sigh* Like there aren’t enough spelling and grammar disasters being published these days. Do we really need professional writers contributing to the problem?

So would vampire elves be literally impossible to kill? Vampires are immortal, elves are immortal…so does that mean they have superimmortality (what good would that do?) or do both cancel each other out?

ps.

I forgot the sequel series (each projected to be twelve volumes): vampire elf angels…

Corey: Point!

Malcolm: Not a spelling mistake a neologism.

Dawn: So many questions. Does anyone have the answers?

Sherwood: vampire elf angels. Ewwww!! They go too far!