More Fan Art!!

Gamer Girl fan art!! Maddy and Allora! Sooo cool. ^_^

Guest Blogging Today!

I'm blogging today over at the fabulous Lucienne Diver's blog. (She's the author of the new book VAMPED which you guys should so check out!!) I'm also giving away an autographed copy of BOYS THAT BITE to a commenter!!

So go forth, read and comment and WIN!


MARI

Melissa Marr

You guys like Melissa Marr, right? She's an amazing author of dark, fairy YA books. Love! Anyway, I got to interview her about her new book, Fragile Eternity, for my show on Better. Here's the final clip!





The book's awesome by the way. Actually the whole series is. You should check it out!

hugs!
MARI

Blood Coven Spread the Word Contest!

Okay guys - here's the deal. Barnes and Noble has graciously stocked all the Blood Coven books (Boys that Bite, Stake That, Girls that Growl) in their stores on special vampire themed walls. Which is amazingly awesome cause now brand new people can try out the series and hopefully end up loving it as much as you guys do! :)

I want to make the most of this opportunity, of course. And that's where you come in. I need you guys to be my street team - to spread the word about the Blood Coven Books. And I'm giving away free stuff to those who do!

What does spreading the word mean? Actually just how it sounds - get friends to read the books, write about them in your blog or myspace page, post reviews on review websites, post the book covers on your myspace, tell your local bookstore and library you like the series. Make flyers. Draw pics and upload them to DeviantArt. Make a video and put it on YouTube. The possibilities are endless. You could even throw a Blood Coven party! (Let me know if you decide to do this and I'll send you some party favors!)

Then come back here and report what you did. I'll be giving out prizes to those who do the most and also those who came up with the most creative ways to promote the series. Including a $50 gift certificate to Hot Topic. Yeah! :) I also have glitter makeup to giveaway, autographed books, and even a copy of Stake That or Girls that Growl in Japanese!! (Complete with manga pics of the characters)

AND AS A MAJOR BONUS: Everyone who participates gets an EXCLUSIVE SNEAK PEEK OF BAD BLOOD!!!! The first time anyone will read any of it! (Besides my editor!)

So are you ready to get started? This will be fun!! And remember - every little effort counts!!! After all, if it weren't for your continued support we never would have gotten that fourth book, right? :) And I know you all want a fifth...

hugs!
MARI

More Artwork

You guys rock! Thanks for sending me so many awesome pics! Here are some more for you to check out!! This time from the Blood Coven books! :)

Teen Read Night

Last night I went to the monthly Teen Read Night at the Jefferson Market NYPL in the Village. (Great library, btw. It's like a freaking castle.) These nights, hosted by the amazing David Leviathan of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist fame (as well as Executive Editor (or some similiar such title) at Scholastic). David was the BEST moderator. He was funny and interesting and, most importantly, kept it all on track and on time.

The authors reading were also great. All funny, contemporary stories, which was refreshing, seeing the current overload of dark paranormal. (Author Melissa Walker, who was also there, said these nights are often full of contemp authors and suggested perhaps the dark fantasy authors live somewhere else? An interesting theory, to say the least...) Not that there's anything wrong with dark paranormal, mind you. There's just a lot of it.

My favorite read of the night was for my Dutton sister author, Sarah Cross, and her book DULL BOY(just released today!) I've been hearing a lot of buzz on this book, but had no idea how awesome would actually be. So funny! I totally need to pick up a copy this afternoon.

Also there were Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus - authors of "The Nanny Diaries" who evidently are writing YA now. Their first book, The Real Real, is about a reality show. Or behind the scenes of one, I guess. The authors were fun and down to earth, esp considering their high profile status. And the excerpt was funny.

Other authors included Nick Burd, The Vast Fields of Ordinary - a gay coming of age story. Susane Colasanti, Waiting for You. (I liked that Susane told us (when someone asked how did she know how to speak YA) "My internal age is 16." I'm going to have to use that from now.) Jenny Han, The Summer I Turned Pretty and Kieran Scott, Geek Magnet.

There wasn't one bad book in the bunch!! I recommend you guys check them out if you're looking for something fun to read.

MARIANNE

Blood Coven at Barnes and Noble

Just found out that Barnes and Noble bookstores across the country have restocked the entire Blood Coven series. (With the old covers.) You can get Boys that Bite, Stake That, and Girls that Growl from pretty much all B&N stores right now! This is a great opportunity to pick up a copy if you haven't already before they change the covers this fall. :)

And please, tell your friends! Want sales to be good so I can write that fifth book!!!

hugs!
MARI

Fan Art I've Found

I like to check Deviant Art sometimes to see what people have drawn based on my books. Here are some I've found recently. If YOU have a drawing, you can always send it directly to me!! :) I love to get them!



Gamer Girl by Mari Mancusi by ~BlueFireFoxChibi on deviantART

Gamer girl cover by ~Darkness-Rakiri on deviantART

More Romantic Times Convention

A couple more pics from the Romantic Times Convention in Orlando.

What romance book covers looked like in the eighties. Ew!! Mustache!!




ME - as RAYNIE THE VAMPIRE SLAYER!! w00t!!! (With and without mask...)








Staking author Leanna Hieber as she attempts to do her edits.





Texting fairies

Back from Romantic Times Convention

I'm back from the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention where I spent a week hanging out with readers and writers - giving workshops and going to costume parties. So much fun! Plus it was in Orlando so the weather was amazing! Got to go swimming and on my last day I went to Disney World! w00t!

I'm waiting for my friend Liz to post pics so I'll have more to show you. Here's a couple I found from other people's sites. The first is me and Liz dressed as gothic lolita fairies. (Everyone thought I was a french maid though!)





And here's me - much more conservatively dressed! - at the booksigning.




I moderated the Young Adult Writing Panel and had some terrific panelists. Melissa Marr, Rachel Vincent, Stacey Kade, Jennifer Lynne Barnes, Lucienne Diver, and Caitlin Kittredge. I love when I am on panels where I learn something myself!

There was also a great urban fantasy panel I participated in, moderated by Richelle Mead of Vampire Academy fame. She is so pretty - I love her red hair! It was a fun panel as well.

Speaking of hair, Caitlin Kittredge had amazing pink streaks in hers. Which was completely awesome. She's working on a Steampunk book for teens - can't wait for that!

Melissa Marr told me when she grew up she wanted to dress just like me. Which was funny since a few hours before I said to my friend, "When I grow up I want to write just like Melissa Marr." I think she has a better chance of my wardrobe than I do of equaling her literary prowess, but oh well. She was so nice and interesting and smart. I would have loved to take her class back when she was teaching. I'm reading her third fairy book - Fragile Eternity - now. If you haven't started reading this series, you really should!

More to come soon...including video!!! :) For now, I'm exhausted and glad to be home! Still - I can't wait for next year!

MARIANNE

TWITTER!!!

Are you on Twitter yet? For up to the minute stuffz on me - you can follow:

mariannemancusi

What I'm reading...

I'm currently reading the third book in Rachel Caine's awesome MORGANVILLE VAMPIRES series. This is not your typical vampire romance cause in Morganville, Texas, vampires are the bad guys, not the romantic heroes. Well, some of them anyway. It's not one of those series where everything is as black and white as it first appears.

I read the first book in the series when it first came out and liked it. But then recently I picked up #2 and #3 and wow! It just gets better and better!! The story's becoming more complex and the characters more intriguing. I'm hooked!

There's like six or seven books in the series so far - I need to get reading!!

MARI

Cosplay

Since we're talking about cosplaying, I thought I might show you pics of some other costumes I've done over the last few years. I love dressing up and going to parties or cons. Sometimes my friends and I even host our own theme parties!!

Dressed as Rayne for a New England Romance Writers of America convention:



At the Book Expo of America, wher my friend Liz and I signed our SHOMI novels (mine was called Moongazer) for our publisher. They even made a poster of us, which I wish I had gotten to keep!

In this outfit, I'm especially fond of the legwarmers and my hair in little buns. I recently chopped my hair so I can't do that anymore!



This outfit, worn to the national Romance Writers of America conference, got a lot of both negative and positive attention from attendees. Some older romance writers were REALLY MAD that Liz and I cosplayed at the booksale. Evidently they didn't feel it was a look becoming to an author and that we were bringing down the credibility of the whole romance genre!! Some people wrote that they'd never buy our books again! This is just another example of how there's a chasm between romance writers that target older readers and those who target younger ones - like me! :)

In any case, I don't think this outfit is really very risque...Kind of typical Japanese school girl...



Gothic Lolita is my favorite cosplay look. I did this one at Comic Con in San Diego, a year and a half ago.



And here's the same dres without the jacket/sleeves.



Day two, same Comic Con event.



Here's a modified version of the Book Expo outfit - with this amazing skirt I ordered from Japan. I wish you could see it close-up. It even had strings of beads.



Not really a costume, but I'm thinking to use this picture for my author photo on the new re-packaged Blood Coven Books.



Again, not really a costume, but me in a corset, dancing at a goth club called Necromantic. (Don't you love the name?)



Last year I hosted a "Future Party" where everyone had to dress as if they were from the future. Here's me and my boyfriend Jacob.



I had fiber optic glow things for my hair, too!



Not really a costume - I wear my skeleanimals hoodie almost everywhere.



At a vampire ball...



One of my favorite outfits of all time - I'm dressed as my character KARMA KITTY in an anthology story I wrote about a manga artist who turns into her character when she dons a pair of magic gold boots in KARMA KITTY GOES TO COMIC CON. (You can find the story in the anthology "These Boots Were Made for Stomping."



Dragoncon! Me and Jacob ready to hit the parties!





And last, but not least, this is the Gothic Lolita dress I got in Japan. Worn to Dragoncon.



So there you have it! Cosplay fun! ^_^ Which outfit is your fave?

xoxo
MARI

Just ordered this Gothic Lolita dress...

For the convention I'm going to. I <3 to Cosplay! =^_^=





Do you like? Will post pics of me in it once it arrives from Japan...

MARI

Orlando Booksigning - April 25th!

Anyone from Orlando, Florida or nearby? You can meet me at a big multi-author booksigning I'm doing in Orlando on April 25th from 11am - 2pm. I'll be signing GAMER GIRL and the Blood Coven novels. And if you already own copies, you can bring them in to the signing so you don't have to buy them twice.

Here's the address:

Wyndham Orlando Resort
8001 International Drive
Orlando, Florida 32819
800 989 8816 x 12

Hope to see some of you there!!!
xoxo
MARI

GAMER GIRL mentioned in AP article!

Gamer Girl got a nice mention today in an Associated Press article on Scholastic Book Fairs. Pretty cool!!! Hopefully lots of newspapers will run the story.

You can read the whole article here. But here's the blurb for my part:

They purchased Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" novels, the latest "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" and Linda Gerber's "Death by Latte," a mystery set in part at a Seattle coffee shop. Ashley Zhang, another seventh grader, bought Mari Mancusi's "Gamer Girl," featuring a lonely high-schooler who becomes a star when playing online games.

"I borrowed it from a friend and thought it was fascinating. I like that it's about a girl who really wants to fit into the world," Zhang says.

Yay for Ashley Zhang!!! Ashley, if you're reading this - email me or leave me a comment and I'll send you something special! I'm so honored that you mentioned GAMER GIRL to the reporter and want to thank you! :)


MARI

Any errors in the Blood Coven series?

Hi all,

As you know, we're re-releasing Boys that Bite, Stake That, and Girls that Growl. I have a limited time to make any changes to the books - correct any typos or change any pop culture references that may now be out of date.

For example, in Stake That, there's a page near the end that says "Magnus" and should read "Maverick"!

So...if you come across any typos or errors or out-of-date references, let me know ASAP and I'll submit them to the publisher.

:)
MARI

New Book Video for BOYS THAT BITE

Hi guys,

Well, I've been experimenting with the video editing software I bought and created this book video for the re-release of BOYS THAT BITE!! Check it out and let me know what you think. :)

I will eventually be doing a individual video for each book in the series.





hugs!
MARI

Molly!

I thought you guys might like to see a photo of my baby - Molly! :)





Isn't she cute!! She's almost thirteen years old now - quite the senior citizen! But she's still frisky, at least when her arthritis isn't acting up. She loves to cuddle, too and is really soft.

I've had her since she was only a year old. The people who had her before me neglected her and treated her badly - and she almost died of heartworm disease! So it was so lucky I was able to find her and give her a good home! Now she's SOOO spoiled - I bet she doesn't even remember the old days of being tied to a tree and abused. Hope not, anyway!!

Tell me about your pets!!
MARI

Done! w00t!

Sorry I've been a slacker on the blog front for the last few days! I've been hard at work on doing my revisions for BAD BLOOD, which, I'm happy to say, I passed into my editor yesterday! w00t! Now she will send the final version on to the copyeditor, where they make sure all my grammar and facts are straight! Once they do a round of editing, I get the manuscript sent back so I can approve (or not approve) all their changes.

I have a love/hate relationsuip with copyeditors. Some are amazing and will save your life pointing out continuity errors like "Aren't her eyes brown, not blue?" Other times they'll change the most ridiculous things. Like, for the instant messages in GAMER GIRL, the copy editor wanted to change everyhing into perfectly correct punctuation and spelling. Like, she was so not into !!!!!111!!!11 as an acceptable exclamation. She didn't understand what <3 was or any of the other abreviations/slang I used and so she tried to change them all into proper English. As if. That's where the power of STET comes in. If an author writes STET next to a change, that means DON'T MESS WITH THE ORIGINAL, MISS COPYEDITOR! :)

Soo we'll see how the Bad Blood copyeditor does. There's actually no IM'ing in this book so she should have an easy time of it. (The twins are in Vegas for almost the entire story, and thus not near a computer.)

In any case - BOOK FINISHED AND TURNED IN!!! One step closer to it being released.

Now I'm going back to the book I was working on before BAD BLOOD got sold. It's called The Camelot Code and is an Arthurian adventure.

MARI