I posted last night about the awesome bloggers who are hosting me on the Nice and Mean Release-Week Blog Tour.  Now learn how you can win a copy of Nice and Mean in the Nice and Mean Grand Prize Drawing which includes everything you’d win in the other contests (pictured below; described here), plus a personally inscribed copy of Nice and Mean!  You can also win swag from the top photo by winning the Battle of Wits.  More on that in a minute.  First, pretty pictures of the prizes.    

Grand Prize winners get their choice of these!

I think you’re going to like Nice and Mean.  I mean, of course I do; I wrote it–but still.  There’s the heartache of a friend thinking you’re not cool enough for her.  The headache of a friend thinking she’s cooler than she is.  The stomach ache of having to work on a cool project (video!  hello!) with someone who just does not get you and the soul ache (okay, that’s kind of cheesy, but bear with me) of screwing everything up and being abandoned —and trying to put things back together.  I hope you’ll sign on to read it and can’t wait to chat with you about it.  

 For now, though, I want to know, from your votes in the poll to the left,  

Who are your favorite nice and mean characters?  

You’ll hear mine on Wednesday at The Page Flipper, but I have a feeling yours will make me go, “Yeah!”  

And that leads us to the contest.  How do you earn points to win?  By commenting, here there and everywhere, about all things Nice and Mean.   

Earn points when you do the following:  

  –Comment on the blog tour (hosts listed here; one point earned for each comment)  

 –Spread the word about the blog tour on Twitter, FB or your own blog (one point for each nugget of word-spreading) 

 -Vote in the polls (over there, to the left!) for your favorite nice and mean characters, then explain your choice in the comments (one point for each comment, and multiple comments are a-okay)  

The Battle of Wits: If you nominate the character who is voted Nicest Character or Meanest Character, you win the swag in the top photo!  How do you do this?   

-Email me (jess@jessicaleader.com) to include a new character in either poll (Some of the ones you see were my suggestions to get you started.)  The earlier you enter, the more likely people will vote for your guy or gal. Get on it!  That doesn’t earn a point, but you’ll earn if you…  

–Comment on this blog to explain why your character(s) should win  

 – Tweet or post on Facebook about the contest and your supreme entry, (#nice&meanwits#).  Go, team You!  You’ll accumulate points as you try to persuade people, so in theory, you could become the Grand Prize winner, too.  I wonder what I would do then?  Maybe…two copies of Nice and Mean–one to keep, one to share?

** -Stop by this blog by Saturday, June 12^th to report your points.   

I can’t wait to hear who you nominate!  And hey–thanks for stopping by.  So Nice of you!   I Mean it!

Nice and Mean to be released this week!

Ooooh, I am so absolutely excited for the launch week of Nice and Mean and for my blog tour!  I feel so lucky to have landed with these hosts.  They asked fun questions and their blogs are quality, I’m telling you—quality.  So here’s where I’ll be on each day of the week, and I hope you’ll stop by to Win Valuable Prizes (more on that below):

Monday at The Story Siren: My Road to Publication and Other Rocky Tales[Edited to add on Monday morning: Blogger issues are delaying this one, but we hope to be up by lunch.]

Tuesday at Green Bean Teen Queen: My Worst Memory of Being Assigned to Work With Someone…Unpleasant

Wednesday at The Page Flipper: My Top Five Nice and Mean Characters

Thursday at Reading in Color: What was it like to write from the point of view of an Indian-American girl?

Friday at Lauren’s Crammed Bookshelf: What’s Unique about Nice and Mean and getting The Call

 Now, what are these prizes I speak of? 

Sweet, sparkly, shmancy--YOURS

Amazing books you can have for free!

And what are those objects in the picture, in case I can’t read the fine print or wonder what’s in the snack bag?

You’ll have to stop by the blog tour hosts.  They have their own super-secret winner-picker methods that even I am not privy to.  But let me tell you, if you find a suspicious number of entries from people named, I don’t know, Shmessica Deader, or Princess Shmoopie Freader, it might be because I am trying to win back some of those coconut candies.  I am serious.  The Dr. Pepper lip gloss may be cool and the pens divine, but those coconut candies can make any situation a thousand times better.

In the next post, you’ll see how you can win the Grand High Poo-Bah Prize: all the things pictured here plus a signed copy of Nice and Mean itself!

Thanks for your interest in Nice and Mean.  Let’s get this party started!

A teacher I have respected for years is including Nice and Mean on her summer reading list (wow!  I’m honored!  And–grad school friends will laugh hysterically at this–the other choice is Tangerine!*)  When I alerted my can-do publicist of this exciting development, she rushed the teacher some classroom copies.  And when they reached the classroom, the teacher in question sent me this:

Don’t the kids look cute?  They’re my exact audience!  And some of them actually look interested in the book! 

As you may know, I have a Nice and Mean fan page on Facebook, less because I think I deserve fans than because I want to let for acquaintancey Friends to opt out of hearing every last development.  The Facebook page has taken on its own personality, and she (I think of it as a she) feels like she looks pretty good in that picture!  The “mean” really pops out of the cover, if she does say so herself! 

Not to mention, of course, that she’s so psyched to be touched and held by readers!  She’d been held when she was an ARC, of course, but it wasn’t the same.  There were embarrassing typos, including a manglification of one of Jess’s advisors names (Tim Wynne-Jones became Wynne Jones).  And since she’s been turned into a book, she’s had to spend several weeks sitting in a cold warehouse.  Now, however, she is finally getting a taste of warmth and love and the smell of contraband bubble-gum, and she is loving it.

Thank you, nice teacher lady, for making my day!

* Why the Tangerine pairing is funny: after teaching this book to my own seventh-graders, then studying the book for craft, I became such a rabid fan that any time a grad school classmate asked for suggestions of a book that did a particular thing–used landscape as character, or showed a great personal transformation–I’d say, “Oh!  Tangerine!”   There was almost nothing that Tangerine couldn’t do.  And it is a great thing to be honored alongside it.