My Darklyng - Announcement and Contest

Hello book (blog) lover!

Lauren Mechling, author of the Dream Girl books, here. I have hijacked Liviania's blog in order to convey some Very Important Information.

You might not know it by looks alone (no pink hair, no metal bar through my septum), but I've become a total hacker worthy of her own "Dragon Tattoo" installment. And I'm not just talking about how I've cracked the code and broken onto In Bed With Books. My new book MY DARKLYNG, which I co-wrote with Laura Moser (my hilarious co-author on the "10th Grade Social Climber" books), is a YA thriller chockablock with multimedia awesomeness that will be appearing in serialized form on the awesome website Slate.com. The first installment runs today, and there will be more excitement every Friday for the rest of the summer. Also: it's free!

Slate is calling MY DARKLYNG its "juicy summer read for vampire lovers (and haters!)." It's about a normal 10th grade girl named Natalie Pollock whose own fiction addiction gets her into major trouble. She's been reading Fiona St. Claire's yummy "Dark Shadows" book series since middle school and when she sees a post on Fiona's blog about an open casting call for the model for the next book's cover, well, she can't resist. What she had thought was just a random field trip turns into a dark and terrible new-best-friendship, scarier and more thrilling than any of Fiona St. Claire's vampire novels.

MY DARKLYNG is different from anything you've ever read before--it's a first-of-its-kind story told in simultaneous platforms. Huh? you ask. Okay, so here's the deal: While you are perfectly free to follow the MY DARKLYNG chapters on Slate and leave it at that, we have been milking the magic world of the Internet for all its worth. Why limit a story to mere words? What about pictures and videos and weird Tweets and scary Facebook wall posts that bring texture to the story and bring the characters to life? With that in mind, we found real (and really awesome) teenagers to play our characters. Expect to get to know their faces really well over the course of this book.

Without further ado, this is the Slate page that will host the chapters.
Here is Natalie's Facebook page--well worth "liking" so you can follow when weird things start happening on it.
Natalie's Twitter page is here.
Fiona's (the vampire writer) Twitter page is here.
Natalie's best friend Jenna tweets here.
James (the vampire model) tweets here.
And Fiona's loving sister Tilly uses this Twitter page.

Natalie and Jenna post Youtube videos here. Here's a sample video that shows them getting ready for the audition that will change their lives.



Now YOU can help make our great experiment in Internet fiction even more amazing. There is an upcoming scene that has a missing detail. We need to come up with an insult that Natalie uses against her brother when she and he get into a fight. AGAIN: WE ARE DESPERATELY SEEKING A BIG FAT INSULT TO BE APPLIED TO A TEENAGE BROTHER. Please write in your suggestions in the comments section. The winner will be chosen in a week and featured in MY DARKLYNG--if your answer is selected, it'll be like the story is actually winking at you from the screen.

I know this is all a bit much to wrap your head around. Sorry for any confusion--just read the first installment and take it from there. Please please post comments or send us emails telling us how you're finding the series. We can be reached by my website.

And if you find yourself feeling afraid, don't say I didn't warn you!

your humble hacker,
Lauren Mechling



P.S. Read a WSJ article about the project here.