And the Lucky Winner is...





So. The Halloween draw for a free copy of Return of the Dead Men (and Women) Walking anthology full of stories about undead folk of all shapes and sizes. The road to this draw was not an easy one, I can tell you, and there were dramas a' plenty. Extravagant plans for a glittering gala event at my neighbourhood centre for struggling scribes with some local literary luminary desperate for exposure drawing the winning number fell apart when our usual last Wednesday of the month meeting was replaced by a non-Halloween, Friday night trivia contest. Since I seem to have misplaced my tiara, perhaps this was for the best.

Fortunately, a busy friend who is not me kindly agreed to pop around this evening and do the honours for a quick cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit or two.

Unfortunately, with that settled, I realised I'd forgotten to buy a witch's hat or pumpkin. No worries, I thought, I'll get one at the cheapo place next to the supermarket when I go shopping. So, after putting in a few hours of flat out writing here at home (yay!) I sauntered into town, but alas, I was so diverted by winning $13.90 on my lottery ticket and procuring a whopping great pineapple for the low price of $3.95 that I forgot my original mission. My mind at the moment, as I may have mentioned a few times previously, is not exactly a steel trap. The superhuman ability to improvise under great duress, however, is still mine to wield, so a woven hat covered in giant seashells became an official Sea Witch's Hat. My friend turned up, tutted at the lack of a suitably black and conical piece of head attire or pumpkin for the draw, took her cup of tea and chocolate biscuits up front, politely declined to be photographed, then adequately performed her task. Five slips went into that Sea Witch's Hat on this balmy Halloween evening, but only one came out again.

I won't even go into how my computer then stuffed me around and it looked as if I might not be able to post this notice.

And so without further ado, but lots of trumpet blowing to celebrate the event (a freebie!!!!), the lucky winner is:

Congratulations, Mary!!! If you send me your mailing address, I'll forward the information on to the people at Bards and Sages Publishing, and they'll make sure you get your prize. Enjoy.

And a big thank you to everyone who participated. My blog stats show that oodles of people clicked the pumpkin picture and checked out the competition, but it seems that only the few, the fabulous five, were brave enough to commit. I wish I had more copies to give away so you could each get one. Thank you again.

Now I'm off to put on my pyjamas and watch a suitably scary Halloween movie.

Gitte's Halloween Giveaway

With only three weeks to go until restless spirits unsettled by All Hallow's Eve walk amongst us for a while, it's time to get my very first giveaway competition up and shuffling. As posted last week, the good folk at Bards and Sages Publishing have offered to send a print copy of Return of the Dead Men (and Women) Walking anthology to the winners of any competitions that we contributors might get going, so I thought I'd give it a shot. A freebie is a freebie, not to be sneezed at but a thing to be seized with joy! I've made it as easy to participate as possible, and the drawing of the winner as random as possible. I may live to regret this, but what the heck. I'll muster up some Halloween bravado and forge on. So, with a long, teenage scream-queen squeal, here we go.

Step One:  Just leave a comment naming your favourite or most unfavourite, real or made up, living or undead, horror creature. One word will do it, although feel free to wax lyrical on why you like, or despise, your chosen subject. Please, keep it nice though, or you will be deleted. You don't have to come up with a little known subspecies of Mesopotamian werewolf or an obscure Aztec revenant who haunts the world for all eternity. A bog standard comment like 'I rooly trooly heart zombz' will do, even if many others have already written this. You can even be specific and name names if you prefer e.g Dracula. Don't sweat it, just participate, then cross your fingers.

Example of Stage One: My favourite undead creatures are politicians pink zombie ponies.

Step Two : Like a marine out on manoeuvres with his mates, "shout out" your number. To do this, you'll have to check the number of the person who left a comment before you. Like the marines, keep it sequential so the sarge-in-charge, a.k.a me, doesn't get confused. The first to leave a comment is one, the next person is number two and so on.

Example: My favourite undead creatures are politicians pink zombie ponies. Fourteen!

Step Two Point Five: if you're an anonymous commenter, you'll have to distinguish yourself from the other anonymous commenters by leaving a name of some sort, real or made up, or use a call sign like 'Rubber Ducky'or 'Sparkly Vampire'. Again, keep it nice or be forever vanished into cyberspace.

Step Three: There isn't a step three. You don't really have to worry about this stage of the operation. You've done your bit. Thank you, and good on you. Good luck too. No, stage three is for me. Depending on how many people sign up, I'll either buy a fancy raffle book full of tickets with printed numbers down at the super-cheap nic-nac shop next to the supermarket, or I'll just grab a nearby pen and scribble numbers on a couple of scraps of paper. Either way, the numbers will go into some sort of Halloweeny receptacle like a stylish plastic pumpkin or a witch's hat, and a ticket or scrap of paper will be pulled forth on that creepiest of nights, October 31, 2012, the one evening when you can't be entirely sure whether or not the raggedy people you see dragging their feet on the opposite side of the street are wearing costumes.

Anyway, the fanfare that goes with this special draw may be big, it may be small. Again, depending on how many people are eager to win a freebie copy of this fine tome which is so imminently suited to being a Halloween prize, I'll find someone who isn't me to draw the winning number - possibly a random stranger dressed up as a ghost that I happen to meet in the street on that spooky evening, or, less creepily, and less likely to end with me in goal, if the turnout is respectable, I'll see if I can find a volunteer at my local writers' centre to do the honours. I might even take a picture. And wear a tiara for the event.

I'll announce the winner on this blog on All Hallow's Eve. The winner can then use my contact email on this blog to send me their postal address, which I will forward to the people at Bards and Sages Publishing. They'll make sure you then get your free copy of  Return of the Dead Men (and Women) Walking anthology ASAP.

There, I think that about covers it. Easy and random. Give it go. You know you want to. Good luck.

Dead Deals Coming Your Way

And so my personal publishing Day of the Dead has finally arrived - the anthology of undead creatures large and small Return of the Dead Men (and Women) Walking  featuring my 1920s Aussie vampire droving yarn The Snowy River Feral is finally out!

Purchasing links are HERE, although it looks like the print version isn't quite ready yet (but I know they're sending our contributor copies out at the end of the week, so it shouldn't be long).


The TOC looks like this:

Bring Me the Head of Pepe Cortez!
by J. Tanner
Putting the Romance Back into Necromancy
by Sarina Dorie
The Snowy River Feral
by Gitte Christensen
When the Rain Stops
by Mark Charke
Duppy
by Kurt Bachard
Tainted
by E.M. MacCullum
Deadest in Show
by Karissa B. Sluss
The Body in the Water
by Marilag Angway
For All Your Carpeting Needs
by Matthew D. Johnson
The Baby
by Brian Rosenberger
Fixing Nancy
by Jonathan Templar
Sacrifices
by Dawn Lyons
The Heart of the Storm
by Matthew Smallwood
Three Strikes
by Aurelio Rico Lopez III

The Horror in the Attic
by Julie Ann Dawson
 
And there are a couple of great opportunities to win free copies of the anthology. The one is an invite by Bards & Sages Publishing for me to get a competition going on my blog for promotional purposes, and they'll provide a print copy as a prize for the winner. I have an idea for easy participation and a random choosing of the winner, more a lottery than a sweat-it struggle - I'll just have to run it by the B&S people first. Cross fingers it's okay.

Until then, if you'd like a shot at winning a free e-copy of Dead Men, there's this offer from B&S Publishing to join them at the eFestival of Words Virtual Bookfair site to play Horror Bingo. All you have to do is sign up to get your free bingo card,  follow @festivalofword or @bardsandsages on Twitter, and then watch your Twitter feed daily to catch the Horror Bingo word of the day. Complete your bingo card and who knows, you might win a free digital copy of the anthology in your choice of Kindle, epub or PDF format. Easy as!

Good luck.

***The links are all fixed now. Go forth and win!  

Me? Why, thank you!

Good news on a Friday night is always welcome, so I was very pleased to get the following email instead of the traditional end-of-the-week rejection:

Dear Gitte,
Congratulations, your story - The Nameless Seamstress - was a semi-finalist in the 4th quarter of the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest!

I'm pretty happy with that! I entered this competition once many, many, many moons ago (Hmm, maybe I should dig out that old, typewritten* story and have a look at it. Dilmun was the title, I think) so that makes The Nameless Seamstress my second submission to WOTF.

I think it's safe to say that I'm now officially hooked. I'm already scanning my stock of stories for something to send off for the next quarter.

*Meaning written on a typewriter, clack, clack, clack, after which it was put into an envelope and posted off the US. Ah, how I love email submissions.