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I’m collecting all the Mamba Point release-related stuff over at my main author site, http://www.kurtisscaletta.com/latest-news. This my “everything else” blog, so I won’t be double posting news and reviews and so forth here. But there’s exciting stuff going on, so click on over.

Meanwhile, to get back off topic, here’s a video I made today after a shocking discovery:

If you can help me figure out exactly what that non-otter animal is, I’d appreciate it! It is not an echidna or a playpus or an aardvark, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. The best I can do is “Q-Bert.”

1. This is my final call for paikus. If you want a rare collectible (probably not that rare) pika beanie baby, just write a paiku. What’s a paiku? Follow the link.

2. I haven’t been double-posting things that I put as announcements over on the dot com site by also posting them here. If you have missed out on the writing-related updates, please go over there now for updates and reminders such as:

• Great reviews from Kirkus and Booklist on my second novel, Mamba Point.
• Two ways you can win a copy of Mamba Point right now, and a teaser for a third.
• An author’s visit next week in northern Minnesota.

Most links out there in the blogosphere to entries on my old blog will now redirect to their proper pages here. It’s funny how a guy can waste hours trying to do something in htaccess, finally relying on a smarter guy for help, and then a guy does something trickier in .php and does it on the first ok, second try.

:blows on fingers:

In order to serve my blog readers better, I’ve revised the categories; adding some which were sorely needed to direct people to the best content (like Bonus Stories and How to Draw Stuff), renaming some (Guys Read became the less proprietary Books and Boys) and folding some together. It’s hardly worth mentioning except that there might be some folks with links to category pages that don’t work any more. I’ll be sweeping through all 377 posts (!) and making sure they are properly categorized. In the meantime, if you have a nomination for “all time favorite posts,” let me know. I want to direct newcomers to this site to the best KurtisScaletta.com has to offer, and have listed a few of the entries that got a good response.

Last summer I got excited about the idea of showcasing snake drawings to go along with Mamba Point, which is all about a boy who draws snakes, so I set up a gallery and invited people to send in their snake drawings. In fact, I still am excited about it, but even with the temptation of prizes I haven’t gotten many drawings that I didn’t bully my friends and family into drawing. So I’ve decided to bring more attention to the gallery by bringing those snakes home. While before they were off in their own corner of KurtisScaletta.com (they made the other blog posts nervous), they are now right here in the main HQ. You can find them under “Mamba Point Extras” on the right sidebar, under “Extras” at the top, or uh, click here. You can still also go to http://kurtisscaletta.com/snakes, but you’ll get sent to the new gallery.

I promised prizes, and they still stand, but I’m moving the deadline way back to October 1, so people who read the book and are overcome with the desire to sketch a serpent can participate. I’ll do two a month (or so) and pace it out. One prize per month will be random, for all the folks who’ve participated so far, and one prize per month will be for a really outstanding snake drawing that I’ve received. All previous entrants will also be eligible for that, too. The prizes will be books, toy snakes, Liberian flags, and other things I might find and throw in.

So: please send me a snake drawing if you haven’t yet.

I will also regularly be featuring a new or previous snake to remind people of the gallery. Here’s one my cat Pippi. (I think my wife helped.)

If you’ve been reading this blog through your aggregator, you (might) see a flurry of posts from me today, after a 3-week seeming absence. It seems like my rebuilt (and hopefully more spam-free) blog was blocking Google Reader and other aggregators like Feedburner, probably due to overzealous security installs on my part. This has been fixed, at least for now. My holiday present to my blog followers was finally figuring this out; I knew it wasn’t working but didn’t have a chance to plumb the depths of Wordpress configuration to figure out why. (I’m partly posting this update to verify that new posts will appear promptly… wish me luck!) (Edit: it worked. To paraphrase Tiny Tim, Google bless us, every one.)

Check out my awesome new banner, courtesy of author/illustrator/teacher/crit group pal Jonathan Roth. If you’re aggregating this site, you need to click on over to my actual website. There are more in the works. Stay tuned.