THIS BLOG HAS MOVED!!!

Alas, Blogger, you've been wonderful, but I've launched a brand new website with an integrated blog, and I'm afraid I won't be posting here anymore. From now on, all of my updates will be here:

www.GretchenMcNeil.com

*blows a kiss*

YA Scavenger Hunt! Spring 2015 Edition!!!

Welcome to the YA Scavenger Hunt! 

This bi-annual event was first organized by author Colleen Houck as a way to give readers a chance to gain access to exclusive bonus material from their favorite authors...and a chance to win some awesome prizes! At this hunt, you not only get access to exclusive content from each author, you also get a clue for the hunt. Add up the clues, and you can enter for our prize - one lucky winner will receive one signed book from each author on the hunt in my team! But play fast: this contest (and all the exclusive bonus material) will only be online for 72 hours!

Go to the YA Scavenger Hunt page to find out all about the hunt. There are SIX contests going on simultaneously, and you can enter one or all! I am a part of the TEAM TEAL - but there are also teams red, blue, pink, gold, purple, orange, and green.  Follow them all for a chance to win a whole different set of signed books!

If you'd like to find out more about the hunt, see links to all the authors participating, and see the full list of prizes up for grabs, go to the YA Scavenger Hunt page.

SCAVENGER HUNT PUZZLE

The hunt is now over!  For those of you who participated, I hope you had fun!  Look for the next hunt this fall!

1st Annual Halloween Book Trail!

Welcome to the second stop of The Cemetery Trail!

This is the first ever Halloween Book Trail, featuring your favorite YA & MG authors! This trail is based on the YAmazing Race with MGnificent Prizes presented by the Apocalypsies. In THIS trail, you’ll find all kinds of posts, and discover new authors and their work.

How do you play? Every post contains information that will lead to killer prizes! Books, swag, skype sessions, severed heads! At the end of each blog you’ll find a link that will take you to the next stop in the trail. By the end, you’ll find a quiz. Now you’ll be happy you read all the posts! Submit your entry to the quiz for a chance to win a grand prize! Accuracy matters here, so take your time, or go back and refresh your memory! One quiz entry per trail.

ABOUT ME:
You know, in case you've already forgotten who I am, this is what I look like:

And this is what I do:

Gretchen McNeil is an opera singer, writer and clown. Her YA horror POSSESS about a teen exorcist debuted with Balzer + Bray for HarperCollins in 2011. Her follow up TEN – YA horror/suspense about ten teens trapped on a remote island with a serial killer – was a 2013 YALSA Top Ten Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers, a Romantic Times Top Pick, a Booklist Top Ten Horror Fiction for Youth, a finalist for the 2015 Evergreen Young Adult Book Award, and was nominated for "Best Young Adult Contemporary Novel of 2012" by Romantic Times.  Gretchen's 2013 release is 3:59, a sci-fi doppelganger horror about two girls who are the same girl in parallel dimensions who decide to switch places.  Gretchen's novels have been optioned by Hollywood production companies, and have sold internationally in Chinese, Spanish, and Turkish.

 In 2014, Gretchen debuts her first series, Don't Get Mad (pitched as "John Hughes with a body count") about four very different girls who form a secret society where they get revenge on bullies and mean girls at their elite prep school.  The Don't Get Mad series begins September 16, 2014 with GET EVEN, followed by the sequel GET DIRTY in the summer of 2015, also with Balzer + Bray.  In addition, Gretchen has contributed an essay to the Dear Teen Me anthology from Zest Books.

Gretchen is a former coloratura soprano, the voice of Mary on G4's Code Monkeys and she sings with the LA-based circus troupe Cirque Berzerk. Gretchen blogs with The Enchanted Inkpot and was a founding member of the vlog group the YARebels.  She is repped by Ginger Clark of Curtis Brown, Ltd.

And here's my latest book, which I'm promoting today!

Got it? Good! And now for the post! A little Halloween Q&A with yours truly!

QUESTION #1: If your MC went trick or treating, what would they dress up as and why?

Kitty would go as a cave woman, a faux animal skin one shoulder dress - at a tasteful length for her 6ft-tall frame, complete with a bone in her hair and a club in her hand. Olivia would be wearing one of those slutty Little Red Riding Hood costumes from Leg Avenue, because she really loves a hooded capelet but no one's done it well since Oscar de la Renta and that was so 2013. Bree and her best friend John would go as half-eaten victims of the zombie apocalypse, with missing limbs and bloodied flesh. And Margot does not dress up for Halloween - it takes away from her study time.

QUESTION #2: What is your favorite sentence/paragraph from your novel?

Bree eyed the lunch table on the other side of the grassy quad, where Rex and his band of ’Maine Men fucktards pointed in her direction.

“In the pandemic of douchebaggery,” she said thoughtfully, “Rex Cavanaugh is Patient Zero.”

John slowly glanced up from his comic book. “Did you think up that line yourself?”

“As a matter of fact, I did. Like it?”

“A little forced,” John said. “But you get points for originality.”

QUESTION #3: What magical/supernatural creature do you secretly want to be?

I've always been obsessed with shapeshifters, whether from mythology like the Irish selkies or Japanese kitsune, Rowling's Animagi, Mystique from the X-Men, or even the freaking Wonder Twins. Personally, I'd like the ability to be able to transform into any animal, real or imagined. I mean, how cool would that be?

QUESTION #4:  What is your dream subject to write about?

I desperately want to write a haunted house story, but with a new twist. I'd tell you what the twist is, but then I'd have to kill you.

QUESTION #5:   Please share a photo of your favorite Halloween costume you’ve worn.

This is my husband and I as Little Zombie Annie and Daddy Zombucks. It really disturbed people when we started making out later in the evening.

AND THAT'S A WRAP!  Thank you for participating! Don't forget to follow on to the next stop on the trail: Tracy Bilen.

Do I Look Like a Killer?

I mean, seriously. So what if Hillary Monahan and I happened to both be at the Vegas Valley Book Festival this weekend? Yeah, us and like a bazillion other YA authors.

And so what if we were both spotted at The Nug (aka the Golden Nugget) having drinks poolside in the wee hours of the morning, the shark pool just inches from our table? Do you think I pay attention to every author that crosses my path?

Did I buy her a tequila shot? Abso-friggin-lutely. Her and like fifteen other authors. Am I responsible for every partially eaten body found floating in the shark tank at 6am?

Clearly this is a case of wrong place, wrong time. Am I right?

I mean, would this face lie to you? :D

Exactly.

Do you want to know who the real killer is? You should ask Rin Chupeco. Check out her blog. NOW.

YA Scavenger Hunt Fall 2014!

The Fall 2014 Scavenger hunt is over!  Join us in the spring for the next one!

YASH 2014 is coming!

Hello Everyone!

It's that time again. We have less than two weeks until the YA Scavenger Hunt begins. I hope you reserved plenty of time for this one because there isn't just one team or two or even three. This time we have 6, that's right, I said 6 YASH teams which means more prizes, news, and fun for all you readers out there! So let's get started!

TEAM RED INCLUDES:

TEAM GOLD INCLUDES:

TEAM GREEN INCLUDES:

TEAM ORANGE INCLUDES:

TEAM INDIE INCLUDES:

TEAM BLUE INCLUDES:

There are so many books here I don't even know where I would begin. I hope you all are as excited as I am! The YA Scavenger Hunt begins at noon pacific time on Thursday, October 2nd and runs through Sunday, October 5th. That means to get through the entire hunt you'll need to go through 1.5 teams per day!

Leave a comment below to tell me which team you are the most interested in checking out!