Wit, Words, and Joie de Vivre

I can't believe it's really here, and people have already been seeing it in stores! Not me, though, because we have been sick and unable to go anywhere. =(

But, I do have birthday presents to give away! Bookplates! Actually, they are just Avery labels. But, they are from the "Nimira fashion" series! That's right, I have been drawing Victorian fashion all day and now I have almost 40 different fashion bookplates to give away.

I want them to go to people who buy the hardcover. I thought about asking people to scan the receipt, but that would be totally mean since some people won't have it yet, or will receive as a gift. So, this will just be the honor system, but please don't request one unless you bought, will buy, or will die if you don't receive as a gift. This will have to be US only because I have a lot of stamps but I am kind of poor right now. And, one per person.

Enough rules! Here is an example:


(The signature will be in a blank spot to the side.)

( If you want to see them all, click here! And no requesting a certain one, sorry... )
Anyway, all you need to do is comment here with your address! Comments are screened! Until supplies last! ^_^

Some of you who have been following my LJ for awhile may remember that my partner Dade does occasional animation, like his "History With Dade" shorts. So when he said he wanted to do an animated book trailer for Magic Under Glass, I said SURE! Even though I'm usually not that into book trailers, I knew he'd do something cool.

But I have to say, he really knocked my socks off. I LOOOOVE this trailer. It has animated clockwork and my art (made all pretty and colorized), awesome sound...I'll shut up and let it speak for itself (as I post this, it's freshly uploaded and it may get sharper when it's "fully processed"):



I love it enough to give you free stuff for reposting it! So, here's my latest contest. Repost this trailer on your blog, tweet it, facebook it, whatever, every posting enters you in a drawing for a MAGIC UNDER GLASS PRIZEPACK with the following:

--Magic Under Glass hardcover, signed
--UK cover flat with sketch of the main characters
--mix CD of the music I wrote the book to
--5 Magic Under Glass bookmarks, signed

The contest runs internationally, through Sunday at midnight EST. Comment here to let me know you've posted!

HTML to repost (or feel free to advertise it how you wish):

<A HREF="http://www.jaclyndolamore.com"><IMG SRC="http://www.jaclyndolamore.com/Photos/MUG/MUGcoverS.jpg"></A> <object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/JFvAq2lgrZ4&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/JFvAq2lgrZ4&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object> Want to win a hardcover of MAGIC UNDER GLASS by Jaclyn Dolamore plus more prizes? See <A HREF="http://fabulousfrock.livejournal.com">http://fabulousfrock.livejournal.com</A> for details!

Man, I want to blog more but it's hard to get everything done with this repetitive stress thing. I am getting better, just slowly, probably not helped by the fact that I spend too much time frittering around (translation: googling myself). I think there is something about my chair configuration that is still aggravating the problem, but I can't figure out what it is. And oh my God, I'm not buying another, even pricier, chair right now.

Still, I miss everyone tremendously... I miss commenting on LiveJournal posts and chatting. I still do it sometimes, but less often. On the other hand, I have to admit I'm glad of it in some ways. It's breaking my habit of working too hard. I realized the other day that I wasn't sure I'm even ready to get entirely better, because I'm afraid I haven't learned my lesson yet...

In happy news, I received hardcovers of Magic Under Glass! I was surprised to see them so soon!



If that picture shows up, which I'm not sure it will, I am dressed for an 80s party. That's why I look kind of silly.

Thanks to everyone who expressed get well wishes for Dade. He is doing fine. What happened was, we were at Disney watching the fireworks and I decided I wanted to get back home and get work done (ha!), so he started rushing through the crowd, in the rain, in the dark, and tripped on a curb. He had to lay in dirty water in the curb waiting for the paramedics while a girl from Epcot hugged me and told me it would be okay.

Not the best night of my life! And certainly not Dade's! They had to wire his elbow back together. But the surgery went well and he is healing.

This kind of killed my dream of finishing the mermaid book by Dragoncon, but it will still be done by September 15th when my editor asked to see it. I only have two scenes left, and if it wasn't for my repetitive stress, I could bust out the end and revisions. But I have to take it a wee bit easy. My chiropractor says my compressed nerve is easing up, though. Everything could be a lot worse, and I'm glad I can still go to Dragoncon and Decatur Book Festival and hang out with my writer peeps.

I also got awesome news yesterday! Magic Under Glass has been selected by the Junior Library Guild. This time before reviews and publication is so tense, words can hardly express my relief and joy at being chosen for something like the Junior Library Guild, which has to be selective and has so many quality books. (Confession: I had no idea what the Junior Library Guild really was until yesterday, but now I know and can be very happy about it!)

Now, I will try and get back to work!

(Why did I give "repetitive stress" an entire tag previously? I cursed myself to not recover so I can have more entries with that tag, didn't I?)

Well, my UK cover has been turning up places so I guess I can share it!



The US one has that wonderful atmosphere and dress and lighting... but I do love the poses and expressions of the girl and guy on the UK cover. They are astonishingly perfect. Also, the guy actually does look a little bit like Erris. The ballet dress is a little random, but, I also have a thing for illustration. So, basically I love both of my covers.

Also, you can now pre-order magic under glass at Amazon!
http://www.amazon.com/Magic-Under-Glass-Jaclyn-Dolamore/dp/1599904306/ref=ed_oe_h

(Not that you should...support your local indie!)

And look at the release date there! December 22! I would guess Amazon is fairly accurate at this stage? Well, anyway, that's exciting and slightly scary. I've noticed the book has been trickling out into the world lately, and seeing people who are looking forward to it makes my day. But it also makes me realize that it won't live up to some people's expectations. That is something the newbie author must grapple with, I suppose. I hate it when I hear an awesome premise and the book is just okay. So I hate to imagine disappointing some people that way, but you can't please all the people, I must try and remember that too.

Okay, I finally managed to get this picture to upload successfully to Flickr.

My cover!!!! Yayyy!!! SO pretty!! The dress is Gaultier!!! I would sleep with this picture under my pillow. If I had a color printer. My laser printer just won't capture the full magic of those luscious warm colors...

All through many many drafts of Magic Under Glass, I never felt as connected to the love interest as I wished to be. I tried as hard as I could. I did free-writing, I filled out questionnaires in his voice, I tried thinking of him as I went to sleep, but I never could entirely connect. I thought maybe it was even the Victorian voice or something, creating a little natural detachment, or maybe the weird nature of his creation (he started as two different characters I later merged into one).

I guess not. I had a dream about Erris about 4 days ago. I was very much in his head, receiving a sudden flood of his mental state at the end of Magic Under Glass.

Sometimes I have dreams like that and the feeling quickly fades, but nah, Erris has been hanging out, offering me his opinions, so I've had to scribble some of them down, like,

"You must understand, I don’t just dislike Hollin Parry because of the way he treated me. It also so happens that he behaves like, as we would say back home, dried sap on a tree."

Dried sap on a tree...? That's definitely from him because that isn't anything I would have made him say before.

Now I'm looking forward to getting the edits on MUG just have a good excuse to spend some time with him. I feel like, aww, Erris, I've known you for awhile but never really KNOWN you until now.