One Contest Ends, Another Begins!

The winners of the Harry Potter contest are:
Leigh
Reawarded to Crystal Adkins
Beeb
towerofbooks
Already won, reawarded to Katie
Paradox
Already won, reawarded to Kimberley Derting
teenreadersgather (Princess Ashley)



Blurry cell phone pic of Millenium Bridge, destroyed in the opening of the HP6 movie.



Gloomy photo of people waiting to tour Christ Church, where the Great Hall scenes are filmed.

NEW CONTEST!

Some serious loot is up for grabs, including:



Complete ELITE series thus far-
and the second season of Nip Tuck on DVD-
and Sara Zarr's Story of a Girl-
and Audrey Wait! by Robin Benway-
and Don't You Forget About Me (the final Gossip Girl novel)-
and a Jamba Juice gift card!

No lie, that's some serious winnage.

To win, leave a comment here telling me your beverage of choice. For extra entires, comment on my review of SIMPLY IRRESISTIBLE, Jennifer's TV appearance, link to the contest, and follow mine or her blog. Capice?

Give away ends August 17th.

The Elite Series (and more) Winner!

Book Spot, you are the winner! Please e-mail your address to inbedwithbooks AT yahoo DOT com. Thanks to everyone who entered and shared the link. I hope ya'll enjoyed the trailer and plan to give Jennifer Banash a chance.

THE ELITE and IN TOO DEEP are available now; SIMPLY IRRESISTIBLE releases July 7.

Simply Irresistible: Trailer Premiere and Contest

The book isn't available until July 7th, but the trailer for SIMPLY IRRESISTIBLE, the third book in Jennifer Banash's Elite series, is hot off the presses.



Did you enjoy it? If you did, here's your chance to win a huge prize pack. One winner will receive:



-the complete Elite series, including THE ELITE, IN TOO DEEP, and SIMPLY IRRESISTIBLE
-the eleventh Gossip Girl novel DON'T YOU FORGET ABOUT ME by Cecily von Ziegesar
-the third Luxe novel ENVY by Anna Godbersen
-BONUS! JUST LISTEN by Sarah Dessen (Nice girls represent!)

It's a mean girl bonanza, and all you have to comment with a reason why your life would make a good reality TV show*. Bonus entries will be given to those who repost the trailer (2), make a widget for SI (2), link to the contest (1), subscribe/follow to IBWB (1) or Jennifer's blog (1), and those who say something in reaction to the trailer in their comment (1).



Contest ends in two weeks, on June 28th.

*And it doesn't even have to be something really cool, like your town has been taken over by colorful zombies and you're trying to stay alive by painting yourself to blend in.




For more information about the series, check out my reviews of THE ELITE and IN TOO DEEP, as well as Jennifer's two guest posts and my interview with her.

Jennifer Banash's 20s Were a Hot Mess

If you've ever been to my blog before, you'll recognize this guest. Her visit was a little delayed, but here's the fabulous Jennifer Banash. You can read my reviews of THE ELITE and IN TOO DEEP as well as Banash's Fashion Week guest blog and interview. You can find out more at The Elite site, Jennifer's blog or MySpace.

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If I’m being completely honest with myself, I have to admit that my 20’s were mostly a hot mess. I went through every 20’s cliché you can think of—and then some! But in order not to bore you to sobs in listing all of them, along with the inevitable After School Special moment about “what I learned from my experiences,” instead I will offer up a list of the best/worst moments of that amazing, yet massively confusing decade that is your 20’s. See what you have to look forward to? Aren’t you excited LOL?

1. I got engaged at 22. A massive mistake. I cancelled the wedding twice before I went through with it—which really should’ve told me something, right? I was waaaaaay too young to be seriously contemplating the concept of “forever.” My wedding was gorgeous—hundreds of people, out by a lake in June, fabulous wedding cake that I only ended up having one bite of :( Which was followed nine months later by the inevitable

2. Divorce. It was messy, and I was heartbroken. So heartbroken that I would cry at Fed Ex commercials and every time I walked by a baby in a stroller. It was Not. A. Good. Time. But, like much of life, horrendous events are sometimes tempered by fabulosity, and my early 20’s were really when I became

3. A writer. I had always written, but my 20’s were when I made the decision to start taking writing seriously. It was also when I moved from writing poetry to fiction, which was horrendously difficult for me. I was used to thinking in sentences and sometimes only WORDS, and now I had to have an actual NARRATIVE. Good grief. But I loved loved loved it every challenging minute of it.

4. I worked tons of crappy, menial jobs in order to support myself as a writer while finishing my degree at Arizona State. The phrase “Do you want that to go?” should’ve been tattooed on my forehead. I wrote at night when I got home—sometimes until 2 or 3 AM. I sleptwalked through my days, and those precious evening hours were the only time I really felt alive.

5. After graduating I realized that I was umm . . . qualified to do absolutely nothing, and that all I really wanted to do was to read and write anyway. The thought of a corporate job made me want to climb out of my own skin. So I did what every unemployable 20-something eventually does—I applied to

6. Graduate school. In the middle of Iowa. It will be fantastic, I told myself, there will be nothing to distract me from writing! There’s NOTHING there TO distract me! There are COWS there! I will be one with nature! I will plant a vegetable garden, adopt a dog, and become as serene as Buddha! The only problem was that upon arriving in Iowa I managed to

7. Crash my car and subsequently broke my back in the accident. Welcome to Iowa! It sucked majorly, and I spent the next 9 months in a back brace, healing. I had to put off school for a year, and I was going out of my tiny little mind with boredom—I lived on a farm outside of town with NO phone, and NO TV reception (I know, I know—you are wondering how I survived. I still wonder myself). All that time string at the ceiling, alone with my thoughts led to

8. The writing of my first novel! I was so bored that I pounded it out in nine months. It got me my first agent, and although it's never been published, I hold it close to my heart as the process of writing it taught me how to construct a narrative. I would not be the writer I am today if I had not written it. When I finally entered the Ph.D. program the following year my life was reduced to

9. Teaching, partying, and writing. I managed to do all three simultaneously, and found out that I LOVED teaching literature. While the doctoral program was spirit-crushing and heartless, I lived for those precious moments in the classroom with my students. Now that I teach 9th and 12th grade at a private school in sunny California, I still do. :) Teaching is as much a part of me as writing, and I doubt I’ll ever give it up entirely.

10. I wrote my first published novel, HOLLYWOODLAND, which led to a call from a major publisher who’d read my novel, asking if I’d ever written YA. Might I be interested in ghostwriting a bestselling YA series? Without even thinking twice, I immediately said yes! Two years later, I was holding THE ELITE in my hands, and I couldn’t have been prouder. It was a long, sometimes torturous road, but my 20’s taught me something valuable in that in order to really succeed in my writing, I really had to go off of the beaten path and not worry so much about what was “normal” for my age. Writers need pant loads of time to dream, to be idle and unproductive, and although I wasn’t financially solvent for most of the decade, my 20’s gave me that.

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Jennifer has agreed to giveaway a set of THE ELITE and IN TOO DEEP! Follow the rules and you could get lucky! (And judging by some of these stories, we need some luck.)