Hey, everyone!  Thank you so much for taking part in the Nice and Mean blog tour! 

Don’t forget–to win the Grand Prize that includes your very own copy of Nice and Mean, you have to leave a comment on this blog tallying up your points.  I will announce the winner by Wednesday, June 16th.  Get out your calculators, my friends!

It’s been so fun to read your thoughts throughout the week, especially your own favorite Nice or Mean characters (thank you, Page Flipper!) and your thoughts on whether you are nice or mean (GreenBeanTeenQueen.)  

Thanks, too, to my wonderful hosts, who went along for the ride and occasionally had to battle Blogger.  The Story Siren, Green Bean Teen Queen, The Page Flipper, Reading in Color and Laurens Crammed Bookshelf are great!

This whole week, in fact, has been great.  The NYC book launch party brought friends from all walks of life, including two kids I met on a research trip last year who journeyed into the city just for this!  I’m looking forward to uploading pictures etc.

Now, though, I’m off to throw a wedding shower for my best friend.  She has been so wonderfully supportive throughout the whole book-launch process, and I can’t wait to shower her with a very cool game I’ve devised. 

Have a good Sunday, everyone!

ps We have one winner so far from the blog tour stops–Caitlin  Can’t wait to connect with the other winners!

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.

Thanks to Reading in Color for featuring Nice and Mean as a WoW (Waiting on Wednesday) pick!  Reading in Color led the campaign against the whitewashing of covers in the publishing industry.  (Whitewashing: when a character of color is shown on the cover as being white so that white folks won’t get alienated and buy a different novel.  Read more about it here.)  Ari, who runs the blog, astounds me for being so widely read in books new and classic, featuring original and vital memes like Male Monday and Throwback Thursday.  It is truly an honor to be included as a WoW pick.  Thank you, Ari!

I might also add that, frankly, I am waiting, too–not On Wednesday, but On June 8, when Nice and Mean will finally be released.  Into the wild!  For readers to read!  It’s been a 17-month-long wait.  Let the lovin’ begin! 

In the meantime, though, it sure is nice to see others are waiting excitedly along with me.  Now, go to Reading in Color and check out some other books you should be reading!

ps That is not me up there in the photo.  It is some marketer in New York.  I actually had to do two searches to find an image with “WOW,” because all the original results featured World of Warcraft!

I’m giving away the milk for free!  Head on over to GoodReads to win yourself a copy of Nice and Mean before the release date!  Contest open to USA’ians, closing June 5th. 

This message was brought to you by the dairy council, and by girls who have trouble deciding who to be.  Which is many of them.  I hope you win!  Yes, you!

Edited to add: GoodReads needs another 48 hour to approve this, so the giveaway hasn’t started yet.  But soon it will be approved and shiny and you can go say hi!

Boo.  I made this really cute chart in Excel so you could see how everyone answered last month’s poll question, I think Nice People Are, but I can’t paste it into WordPress.  If anyone has any intel on how to do this, do tell.

I, meanwhile, will share the results in verbal format, and you will have to visualize. 

37% of you thought nice people were often play-acting

35% said that nice people work hard to make others feel happy and cared-for, and they’re grateful

9% said nice people often sacrificed what they want, to their own detriment

7% said nice people were not as interesting as people with edge

2% said nice people were born nice, and

12% said the whole question was too complex to answer in a poll

Very interesting, my friends!  More voters thought nice people were play-acting than they were grateful for the niceness.  Since respondents could vote for more than one category, there could have been an overlap, but still: it seems as though there’s suspicion about the sincerity of nice people.

I wonder if you think the insincerity is pernicious, or just trying to make other people happy?  But then–is that pernicious in itself, to always want to keep others afloat?  I guess the question goes back to the 9% who think that nice people sacrifice what they want, often to their own detriment.  Or maybe something else?

This is certainly the issue  for Sachi in Nice and Mean.  She wants her parents, friends and sister to think she’s the same Sachi she’s always been, but she has ambitions that need more than niceness to be realized.  Especially when it comes to dealing with Marina…

For late April/early May, we turn to the other half of Nice and Mean, Marina herself, and ask you to complete the sentence, “I think mean people are…”

And in June–when N&M comes out–I can’t even think what deliciousness lies in store.

Happy voting!  Vote early, vote often!

Thanks so much to everyone who entered the Nice and Mean ARC giveaway contest!  I loved seeing your enthusiasm and getting to know new potential readers through the internets.  I hope you’ll stay tuned to this blog and my Tweets–I will be giving away actual copies of the book when it is released in June!

And now, as they say in Little Miss Sunshine, the winners are…

Courtney and Snazel, who entered in the Marina and Sachi way, respectively.  They have won an ARC of Nice and Mean, a book from the S&S books photo below (please send me your first choice, and I will hope that they are different), and an array of bookmarks.

Alicia!  who has won second pick of the S&S books below (please tell me your top 3 prefs) and an array of bookmarks

Liyana! who has won third pick of the S&S books below (please tell me your top 4 prefs) and, you guessed it, an array of bookmarks

The following people win bookmarks!

Andrea C, Anja, Janflora, Amanda, Ari, Heather, Angie, Joyce (1st 8 to enter)

Kendra, Katie, Megan Chloe and Angel (last 5 to enter)

To receive your prizes, please email your snail-mail address to jess@jessicaleader.com  I will mail these when I am back from vacation on April 20th, so if you don’t get anything for another two weeks, don’t be alarmed.

Speaking of my vacation–I’ve created a line-up of great guest-bloggers to entertain you all when I’m away.  Their topic?  On the Scene with Nice and Mean–their own reminiscences of niceness and meanness.  More on the identity of those bloggers later.

Thanks again!

~ Jess

To reward all the lovely people who have shown enthusiasm for the Nice and Mean ARC giveaway, and to draw in some new ones, I am offering a new twist:

-Last 5 people to enter the contest before 9pm EST automatically get bookmarks

But!  If you have already entered and are thinking, Hey!  Whycome they get rewards for entering late!, fear not.  If you have already entered, I will double your entry points if you Tweet or FB about the last day of the contest.  Just leave a note in the comments or send me a DM on Twitter so I know and reward accordingly.

I seriously feel like I am channeling shyster relatives past.  I had some in real estate.  Maybe this is how they operated.  It feels kind of dirty–but kind of fun!  And mostly, I get to meet new people who are enthusiastic about kid lit, and that is inarguably rewarding.

Good luck!

It’s been a busy week, what with prepping for the honeymoon and eating all those malt balls (yes, they are all gone), so I’m sorry that it’s taken me until now to properly thank and credit the excellent Tenner authors who donated bookmarks to the Nice and Mean giveaway.  I now present ze following bookmarks, with huge apologizes for the uneven image sizes and blind-monkey format.  WordPress, I opted for you over Blogger, but I fear you will be the death of me…  

Tortilla Sun by Jennifer Cervantes     

            Everlasting by Angie Frazier   

Forget-Her-Nots by Amy Brecount White 

Mistwood by Leah Cypress      The Deathday Letter by Shaun David Hutchinson 

                                                     Whisper by Phoebe Kitanidis    

The Mark by Jen Nadol 

The Rise of Renegade X by Chelsea Campbell   

Every time one of these winged its way into my mailbox, I thrilled.  They are quite attractive, durable, and, most importantly, remind me of books I need to read.  Now, if only someone else would have a giveaway, so I can get my mitts them…

You can enter the Nice and Mean ARC giveaway to win these bookmarks, books from Simon and Schuster (see below), and, of course, the advanced copy of my book, until 9pm on Thurs.  At least, I think it’s 9pm.  Whatever I said on my earlier post, that’s what it is…  

Books donated by Simon and Schuster