Official Maria V. Snyder Blog

Now that I have your attention :)  I'm doing a special OUTSIDE IN promotion and dangling an ARC of TOUCH OF POWER as the prize.  As many of you know, I have contests on my website for all my books.  If you answer 20 questions about the book correctly, I'll send you a signed book label for your book and you're entered into a quarterly drawing to win a copy of the book.  However, poor OUTSIDE IN only has 3 entries since March and I'm determined to change that! So, here's the deal - email me ( maria@mariavsnyder.com ) the answers to the 20 questions below (please put: special OI promo in the subject line), and include your mailing address by OCTOBER 22, 2011 and you will be entered to win an ARC of TOUCH OF POWER with the UK cover!  You'll also get a book label and some cool bookmarks :)  This is open to everyone and no shipping costs either. QUESTIONS: •1 – What is the name of Trella's new cleaning troll? •2 – Who is Bubba Boom? •3 – What are the

I'm trying to catch up on all my emails from when I was down under.  For some reason my new Acer Tablet wouldn't let me hook up to my author email server.  I bought the tablet to video chat with my family and it worked nicely - I also played games on it and read books so I didn't have to pack as much. Anywho as I'm going through my inbox, I'm finding links that might be of interest to you.  Also if you emailed me and have a Hotmail addy - I'm being bounced by your spam filter - I'm working on getting that sorted out. First some news!  OUTSIDE IN is a finalist for the Golden Leaf Award!  I'll find out in October if it won.  Storm Glass won in 2009 so I'm hoping for a repeat.  Other finalist are here: ttp://njromancewriters.org/index.php?/njrw_contest/golden_leaf_finalists/ And - I never announced the winner of the Heart of Iron giveaway - I've already sent the book out so I did pick a winner.  Congrats go to Jessica W! I did a guest

Today I'm interviewing debut author, Melanie Card.  Her book, Ward Against Death was released in August in both print and e-book format.  I really enjoyed this book - it's unique and action packed with characters that I cared about.   Now a confession.  I met Melanie while attending Seton Hill University as a student.  It was my very first residency, I didn't know a soul, and I wasn't sure what to expect.  The very first class I attended was a book discussion.  We all read the same novel and then discuss it that first morning.  Melanie was in my class - she was doing her last residency and graduating.  When the instructor asked our opinion of the novel, Melanie was the first to speak.  She proclaimed that the book was awful and proceeded to explain why with concise, logical reasons.  I was struck by her confidence, her ability to spot weak writing, and her no nonsense approach.  Curious, I attended her thesis reading and really enjoyed her thesis novel.  So it's

It's been two weeks since I've been home and getting re-adjusted to...well, everything...has taken more time than I'd expected.  I'm working on a short story I thought I could knock out in a few days.  I don't know why I thought that since nothing I write is ever "quick" even blog posts take me longer than I'm sure they do for others.  I'm also supposed to be working on book 2 of the Healer Series - I've two pages written - yikes. And I've gotten off the topic, which is my tour down under.  If you receive my newsletter some of this may be a repeat, but I've added a few things and pictures for my blog :) The three weeks on tour just flew by and it was unbelievable to meet so many of my readers.  So here's a summary of my trip by the numbers: 15 hours - The flight from San Fransisco to Sydney - The steward on my flight called it,"purgatory," perfect description as it's dark outside almost the entire trip. Landing a

Yes - I'm home from Australia/New Zealand - had a fantastic time and will write a whole blog on my adventures :)  But I just sent out a newsletter with the cover art for TOUCH OF POWER - the US and UK covers to 7700 people, and before they go viral, I wanted to post them here as well :)  I'm NOT going to post the first chapter of TOP as that's special for my newsletter subscribers ;>  It will go on my website around Sept 15th. Without further ado....here they are: USA Cover UK Cover So what do you think??? And for those who haven't heard about my upcoming book (coming out December 20th according to Amazon and Amazon UK) - here's the cover copy: Laying hands upon the injured and dying, Avry of Kazan assumes their wounds and diseases into herself. But rather than being honored for her skills, she is hunted. Healers like Avry are accused of spreading the plague that has decimated the Fifteen Realms, leaving the survivors in a state of chaos. Stresse