Zombies on Sale! (free gift with purchase for Halloween!)

Unsurprisingly, Halloween is one of my favorite holidays and this year I have a special treat!  Earlier this month I released The Dead and Empty World, [Amazon | Barnes & Noble | kobo] a collection of reprinted short stories set in the Forest of Hands and Teeth world. To celebrate the release (and because who doesn’t want to read about zombies on Halloween?), I’ve put the collection on sale! 

For the next few days, you can get the entire collection for $0.99 — the same price as just one short story. That’s five stories for the price of one! If discount zombies aren't enough of an incentive, I’m also offering a free gift with purchase :)

For the first 100 people to email me with proof of purchase (details below), I’ll drop a gift in the mail to you. Everyone will receive a signed bookplate with a note plus one of the following:

• 50 people will receive either a miniature glow in the dark zombie or zombie dog; 
• 10 people will receive a Forest of Hands and Teeth button; 
• 10 people will receive a line of magnetic poetry; 
• The rest will receive bookmarks until they run out.  

The collection is available at Amazon (here), Barnes & Noble (here), and Kobo (here), and this sale is for a limited time!  So Happy Halloween, and a HUGE thanks to all of my readers for letting me write what I love: zombies :)

**Important Details**

• Email carrie@carrieryan.com to redeem the gift;
• Please put “Happy Halloween!” in the subject line; 
• Proof of purchase can include forwarding an order confirmation or receipt (making sure to delete any personal information); a screen shot of the purchase confirmation; or anything else you can think of to show you’ve bought it;
• If you would like me to personalize the signed bookplate, please be sure to let me know who I should make it out to;
• Make sure to put your mailing address in the email and if you have a preference for the extra gifts (first come first served!);
• If you’re under 18, please make sure you have your parent or guardian’s permission to email me;
• I’ll delete all emails once the gifts have been mailed next week so that I don’t retain the addresses; 
• Open to international readers;
• Any questions related to the rules, please ask on my Facebook page here here where I’ll try to answer them.

The Dead and Empty World

So I've been keeping this under wraps because it's a project I've been working on for a while and I wasn't sure when it would be finished... but now it's done and I'm absolutely thrilled to announce the release of my new short story collection, The Dead and Empty World! [to buy: Amazon | B&N | Kobo]

Amazon | B&N | Kobo

Here's the official description:

“Queen of the Undead, Carrie Ryan, takes readers once again to the world of The Forest of Hands and Teeth." -- SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL on "Bougainvillea." 

From a life raft cast adrift in the middle of the ocean to the attic of a suburban garage; from the heart-pounding moments just after the dead begin to rise, to the ravaged world generations later, the five stories in The Dead and Empty World present a chilling portrait of what it takes to survive – or not – the zombie apocalypse. 

This 39,000 word collection contains five previously published stories and never before published bonus materials, including background information on each story, easter eggs, and an essay detailing the inspiration for the Forest of Hands and Teeth.

So why this collection and why now? First of all, it's almost Halloween, so what better time to debut a collection of zombie stories?  But also, I've been planning on putting this collection together for quite a while, and finally, with the help of Jeremy West and everyone else at Red Creative Design, I've been able to make it happen (thanks Jeremy!!).

Even though I’d always dreamed about becoming an author when I grew up, if you’d told me that I’d end up writing about zombies I’d have laughed. Not just because I was the kind of kid who refused to watch scary movies, but also because I’d always assumed I’d write romance novels. But when my husband took me to go see the Dawn of the Dead remake, I became obsessed with zombies (and trust me, no one was more surprised than I was!).

I wrote The Forest of Hands and Teethbecause I was fascinated with the idea of a world generations after the zombie apocalypse – where zombies were a part of every day life to such an extent that you couldn’t imagine a world without them. But more than that, I’m fascinated with how people survive when everything around them changes – when the world they’ve known becomes unrecognizable.

To that end, I began writing short stories set in the same world as The Forest of Hands and Teeth. Some of them I used to explore characters from the books (Sister Tabitha in the story “Hare Moon”) and some of them I used to play out my worst nightmares (being stuck in a life raft with someone who’d been bitten as in “Flotsam & Jetsam”). In many I tested out escape plans to determine whether they’d be successful (“A Game of Firsts” and “Bougainvillea”) and in some I just wanted to know how to build a life in a terrible world (“Scenic Route”). The Dead and Empty World represents my own struggle to determine what it means to do more that simply survive – but to actually live life despite the obstacles – dead or alive – that stand in the way.

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Author T.A. Barron coming to Charlotte on October 14th!

I love when authors come through Charlotte, especially when those authors write Middle Grade novels.  And next week, T.A. Barron, author of the Merlin Saga and the forthcoming Atlantis Rising, will be speaking at Park Road Books on October 14th at 5pm.  You can find out more by visiting his website here, or the Park Road website here. I hope to see you there!!!

Fall 2013 YA Scavenger Hunt!! (now closed)

The Fall 2013 YA Scavenger Hunt is now over, but stay tuned to the YASH website for updates on future hunts! But even though this hunt may be over, I'm going to leave up the post about Beth because I'm such a huge fan of hers :) Enjoy!!

PRESENTING BETH REVIS!

I'm quite the lucky author because today I get to host Beth Revis on my website for the YA Scavenger Hunt! I'm a huge fan of Beth as a person, friend, and author. I can still remember reading Across the Universe,her debut novel. I was fortunate to receive an early copy of the book, but I'd made a deal with myself that I was only allowed to read it if I was working out at the gym. Of course, I couldn't put it down which meant I spent *a lot* of time at the gym! 

And she just keeps getting better and better -- trust me, I've read what's next :) It's amazing!

HERE'S A BIT MORE ABOUT BETH:

Beth Revis is the New York Times and IndieBound bestselling author of the Across the Universe trilogy, as well as several in-world short stories published in various anthologies. She lives in rural North Carolina with her husband and dogs. 

Currently, she is working on a new science fiction trilogy forthcoming from Razorbill/Penguin. 

And you can find out more about her (and BUY HER BOOKS!) by clicking here!

CHECK OUT BETH'S EXCLUSIVE CONTENT:

Thanks for hosting me, Carrie! Today I wanted to talk about inspiration, and how you never really know where it comes from. Or at least, I don't. When I started writing SHADES OF EARTH(available in paperback next month!), I went into it with a basic philosophy. In my favorite television show, Joss Whedon's FIREFLY, there's a scene where a character says, basically, the only way to really know someone is to see him at his worst.
 
The Teachings of Shan Yu (Firefly/Serenity... by mnemosyne23 Let's ignore the fact that the character that most embraces that philosophy is one of the worst villains of the entire show. But that's the basic philosophy that inspired SHADES OF EARTH.I had these characters who I loved--Amy and Elder--and, well, I had to put them to the volcano's edge. So everything I did to them was touched, at least in part, from that philosophy. But, of course, there were other things that influenced my book. Can you spot them all? Each thing in the picture below had a direct influence on something in SHADES OF EARTH.

To test your knowledge and learn more about how each thing influenced the writing of SHADES OF EARTH, just click here!

And to buy SHADES OF EARTH, click here!