Rose-Owls and Pumpkin Girls

Georgia Mason is fighting hard in this year's Unbound Cage Match, and she needs your help.

It's a simple scroll to the bottom and click to vote, and I really want to see Georgia make the finals. Can you imagine the Georgia Mason vs. Harry Dresden snark party? Because I can. Oh, yes, I can.

Please vote if you have a second.

Feedback, by Mira Grant (me) is now available from fine bookstores and e-retailers in North America and the United Kingdom! This standalone entry in the Newsflesh world follows a new blogging team through a new adventure...and a very familiar period in time. Feedback begins the day Feed begins; it ends the day Feed ends.

It's everything in the middle that's new.

So come. Meet Ash, our Irwin narrator and Irish immigrant. Meet Ben, her Newsie companion and husband-on-paper, who's seen a less privileged side of the post-Rising world. Meet Audrey, Fictional, artist, and girlfriend, who's getting a little tired of waiting for Ash to get her life together. Meet Mat, makeup and maker blogger. Meet a lot of people, and find out how many of them will walk away.

Because Feedback provides a new angle on the original trilogy, I do not recommend picking it up until you've read Feed at the minimum, and hopefully Deadline and Blackout as well. But I hope you'll come to my party. I have so many stories to tell you.

This will serve as your discussion post; expect spoilers in the comments.

RISE, by Mira Grant (me) is now available from fine bookstores and e-retailers in North America and the United Kingdom! This brilliantly hefty collection includes the following previously published stories:

Countdown
"Everglades"
San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats
How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea
The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell
Please Do Not Taunt the Octopus

It further includes the following brand new stories:

All the Pretty Little Horses
Coming to You Live

Because many of these stories take place after the original trilogy, I do not recommend RISE until you've read Feed, Deadline, and Blackout, but if you have, boy do I have some tales for you! All pieces are accompanied by a new introduction, written by me, because why would you not do that when you have your own single author short fiction collection?

RISE!

This will serve as your discussion post; expect spoilers in the comments.

We are now exactly fifty days from the publication of RISE, my first short fiction collection--and more, the first collection of short fiction from the Newsflesh universe. This stunning hardcover book will include, in order:

Countdown
"Everglades"
San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats
How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea
The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell
Please Do Not Taunt the Octopus
All the Pretty Little Horses
Coming to You Live

If those last two titles are unfamiliar, it's because they are two all new novellas, written specifically for this collection. Also new to this collection, introductions providing more information about every single story.

I am so excited about this collection, y'all. Copies will be available from bookstores all over North America on June 21st, right before CrossingsCon in New York. I'll be appearing at Borderlands Books, in San Francisco, CA on July 9th as part of the Superhero Team-Up book tour with Sarah Kuhn and Amber Benson, for all your signed copy needs.

Thank you so much for your ongoing support, which has made this book, and so much else, possible.

Rise up while you can.

I (as Mira Grant) was asking to put together a list of potential pandemics for Buzzfeed. I like anything that gives me an excuse to wallow in delicious virology, so...

http://www.buzzfeed.com/orbitbooks/10-epidemics-waiting-to-happen-that-you-wonat-e-16hk

Enjoy, and remember, medical science is more interested in keeping you alive than it is in cutting you up and reassembling you as a shambling horror.

Most of the time.

So a press release just went up on the Orbit Books website. Here's the link, if you're curious. Go ahead and read it. I'll wait here.

Done reading yet?

YES OH MY GOD YES NOW I CAN FINALLY ANNOUNCE IT YES!!!!! Mira Grant (IE, "me") is returning to Orbit for three more beautiful books. The third Parasitology book (title to be determined), a standalone book (one of three concepts, to be decided when I actually hit the point of needing to write it), and Rewind, a fourth book set in the world of Newsflesh.

Yes. We're going back to the Rising.

There will also be four new novellas set in the Newsflesh world; the first of them, "The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell," will be out this summer.

Before people start asking, no, Rewind will not be a story about the Masons: they are done. But it will cover the same time period as Feed, and will provide a long-needed view of the Democratic side of the presidential race. What really happened to Susan Kilburn and Frances Blackburn, the two most promising candidates put up by the Democrats? What happened to their teams? All is finally going to be made clear, and man, is it going to be one hell of a ride.

To quote myself from the press release, "I am overjoyed to be able to continue to write in the Parasite universe, and more, I am so, so excited to return to the world of Kellis-Amberlee, the Rising, and my unique approach to future journalism. I hope that everyone else will be as excited as I am to go back there, and I promise I have some thrilling surprises in store for you. As for that stand-alone third novel, well...You'll have to wait and see what that's going to be about. I can tell you one thing for sure: it's going to be an adventure."

I love adventures.

The Newsflesh universe is a pretty big place. If I continue writing novellas set there, who would you like to see take the starring role? NOTE: Shaun and Georgia are not eligible. Writing them in will just annoy me, and actually make it less likely that I'll ever write about them again. They're having their vacation. Leave them alone. But there are a lot of other options.

Game on!

[Poll #1936970]

The battle to reclaim my link file rages on! Today, some Feed reviews.

Lady Business has some thoughts on the treatment of female characters in Feed. They assume you have some idea of what happens in the book, but they're really interesting, and they reflect some of the issues that I, personally, had with the narrative when it was done. I don't regret any of the characters I chose to include. I sometimes wish I'd handled the non-central females a little better. This is a great exploration/review.

The Monitor has posted a review of Feed, and says, "Feed was a mesmerizing read." Works for me.

Working for the MANdroid has posted a review of Feed, and says, "Feed is an awesome and unusual zombie book, and it actually has a great conclusion that feels like the story is completely wrapped up." Awesome.

.Xpresso Reads has posted a review of Feed, and says, "The very first thing I noticed going into this book was the exquisiteness of the writing. The narration being notably mature and quick-witted makes it an exceptionally smart novel that is just a breath of fresh air." I like it when people think I'm smart!

Inspired Quill has posted a review of Feed, and says, "Even if you aren't a fan of zombies, this is one zombie book that you shouldn't run from." I won't lie: I kinda want this on a T-shirt.

Charles Tan has posted a review of Feed, and says, " I once read a blog entry stating that Neil Gaiman's Sandman was porn for lit majors while Warren Ellis's Transmetropolitan was porn for journalists. If that's the case, then Feed is porn for bloggers."

...you know what?

That works for me.

Like, seriously. How else do you explain Blackout being the first of my books to make the print New York Times list (in position #15 on the Mass Market Paperbacks sub-list) and now making NPR's list of the best science fiction and fantasy of the summer?

In other news, HOLY CORN MAZES, YOU GUYS, BLACKOUT IS ON THE NPR LIST OF THE BEST SCI-FI OF THE SUMMER!!!!!!!

Ahem.

I am very, very excited, as is only natural when INCREDIBLY AWESOME THINGS of INCREDIBLE AWESOMENESS decide to happen. This is so amazing. I am so amazed. Also, there have been confirmed sightings of the Newsflesh trilogy at WalMart, and no matter what you think of WalMart, that's a lot of eyes potentially falling on (and maybe even buying) my books. Dear world: please buy my books. I have a lot of cats to feed.

NPR! NYT! OMG!

Squee.

I've spoken before about my love of fanfic, and how it allows you to do things you can't necessarily do "in canon." One of those things, one of my favorite things, is the alternate universe. What would have happened if Toby had never become a fish? If Thomas had convinced Alice to go back to the Covenant with him, instead of leaving it for her?

If someone else had been the first to die?

I have written an alternate ending to Feed, picking up at what was originally chapter twenty-five. It's called Fed, and I'm very pleased with it, in part because it shows that no, the original ending wasn't the worst possible outcome. This was.

Fed is kindly being hosted by Orbit, thus preventing me from becoming a blibbering mess in the week leading up to the release of Blackout, and for right now, you can download and read by liking the Facebook page they've set up specifically for this purpose. (It's getting a one-week Facebook exclusive for marketing purposes, and I surely would appreciate it if you went and hit the "like" button.) This is full of spoilers, so I recommend against reading it if you haven't read Feed.

Rise up while you can.