Book Launch Party - Part V

Welcome to the Friendly Ghost Party, a celebration of the launch of my new book, Stone’s Ghost on July 26, 2013!

  

We can’t have a party without food, right? As I have said before, the great thing about an online party is that you don’t have to worry about what you’re going to wear. The bad part, of course, is that you can’t take up a stance at the buffet table and eat yourself into oblivion. Regardless of that, I've got some ideas for ghostly food items that are both yummy-looking and fun. This buffet is a sort of movable feast; several friendly bloggers have offered to co-host the buffet, so you’ll want to hop over to the other sites for more food items. As you’ll see below, we've got appetizers, main meals, drinks and desserts, and we've provided links to the recipes. (Good ideas for your next Halloween party!)

Blogger	Blog Website	Topic
Melissa Bowersock	http://mjb-wordlovers.blogspot.com	Ghost-Appetizers, overview
Carolyn Schriber	http://www.katzenhausbooks.com/blog	Ghost-Main Meals
Lorraine Reguly	http://lorrainemariereguly.wordpress.com/	Ghost-Drinks
Laurie Boris	http://laurieboris.com/blog/	Ghost-Desserts
Carol Wyler	http://facing50withhumour.com/	Book information
Yvonne Hertzberger	http://newfantasyauthor.com/melissa-bowerstock-invites-us-to-a-friendly-ghost-party-and-blog-tour/	Book info, review

Please share the love by visiting the co-host blogs, browsing through the food items, leaving a comment if you like, sending out a tweet and telling your friends. (If you right-click on a link above, then choose “open in new window/tab,” you won’t lose your place here.) And, just to keep it interesting, anyone who visits all the blogs above and leaves a comment on each will be eligible to win ghost candy! I'll make random awards throughout the day. Take a look:

Now … to get the buffet kicked off right, here are …

APPETIZERS

Stuffed potato ghosts!	Chocolate-covered ghost pretzel rods!	Ghost chips!
Click for recipe.	Click for recipe.	Click for recipe.

Now, this party is about more than food. If you don’t already know, there are a couple of contests you can enter. One is on the Facebook event page (https://www.facebook.com/events/142948992566792/) where you can post pictures of anything ghost-related. Encourage your friends to “like” your post, because the one with the most likes toward the end of the day wins a prize package. The second contest is here on my blog: http://mjb-wordlovers.blogspot.com. Here you can post a ghost story in the comments section, and again, toward the end of the day, I will pick a random winner of a prize package. (If you don’t have any of the profiles in the dropdown box when you comment, just choose Anonymous, but please put your name in your comment so I’ll know who you are!) I’ll be tweeting the winners and other announcements throughout the day using hashtag #FriendlyGhostParty.

Here’s the Stone’s Ghost Prize Package: a mouse pad, autographed book, bookmark and magnet. How fun is that?

And, just to share the love, there’s a giveaway going on at Goodreads. The winner will be chosen at midnight on July 27, so if you haven’t entered, hop on over there and do that.

Finally, to celebrate the new book, I have put the Kindle version of Stone’s Ghost on sale for just 99 cents for today only. And, just for fun, I've discounted the Kindle versions of all my previous books as well. You can find them all from my author page at Amazon.

And just to reiterate, I'm using Mountain Standard Time because I'm in Arizona (and we don't do Daylight Savings Time here--yeah, I know, we're weird), so the party will start at 5am MST (same as PDT) on Friday, July 26, and will go until 5pm. For my friends "across the pond," that means it starts at 1pm London time (if I've done my calculations correctly). For my friends across the slightly larger pond, that means it starts at 8pm on July 27 in Perth, Australia. Is that perfectly clear? I hope so. 

Thanks for stopping by, and enjoy the party!

Book Launch Party - Part IV

I am happy to report that all the plans and preparations for the Friendly Ghost Party are coming together. The food has been ordered, the prizes are on hand, the ghostly pics and ghost stories are being added to daily; we're about ready to rock and roll! 

Reminders:

If you don’t already know, there are a couple of contests you can enter. One is on the Facebook event page (https://www.facebook.com/events/142948992566792/) where you can post pictures of anything ghost-related. We've already got pics of haunted places, ghostly images, weird animals, even cartoons and videos. Encourage your friends to “like” your post, because the one with the most likes at the end of the day (July 26) wins a Stone's Ghost prize package. 

The second contest is here on my blog. Here you can post a ghost story in the comments section on any of these Book Launch Party posts, and again at the end of the day, I will pick a random winner of a prize package. (If you don’t have any of the profiles in the dropdown box when you comment, just choose Anonymous, but please put your name in your comment so I’ll know who you are!) 

I’ll be tweeting the winners and other announcements throughout the day using hashtag #FriendlyGhostParty.

In addition, there is a giveaway going on at Goodreads starting today (wow--already 49 people have entered!). The winner will be chosen in the wee hours of July 27, so hop on over there and enter for the chance to win a free book.

Finally, to celebrate the new book, I will put the Kindle version of Stone’s Ghost on sale for just 99 cents for that day (July 26) only. And, just for fun, I’ll discount the Kindle versions of all my previous books as well. You can find them all from my author page at Amazon.

Check back here on July 26 for a full listing of the co-host blogs and all the friendly ghost food at our virtual buffet feast. We've got fun appetizers, yummy-looking main dishes, spooky drinks and the cutest desserts you've ever seen. And because all this would make a great Halloween party, we're going to have links to all the recipes. How fun is that?

Hope to see you all there!

Book Launch Party - Part III

The Friendly Ghost Party is ramping up. We’re getting more ghostly pics added to the Facebook event page (https://www.facebook.com/events/142948992566792/) and more ghost stories added here on the blog in the comment section. Remember to scroll through the pics on the FB page and like your favorites, because the one with the most likes at the end of the day July 26 will win a Stone’s Ghost Prize Package. Likewise, one of the ghost stories posted in the comments section of my blog (any of the Book Launch blogs this month) will also be randomly chosen to receive a Stone’s Ghost Prize Package. (BTW, if you don’t have any of the profiles listed in the dropdown box when you go to post a comment, just select Anonymous, but please put your name in the comment so I know who you are!) Now, you may be asking yourself, what the heck is a Stone’s Ghost Prize Package? Well, glad you asked. Here it is:

 

The Prize Package will consist of a mouse pad, an autographed copy of the book, a bookmark and a magnet. Pretty cool, huh?

And speaking of the book, it went live on Amazon today. Here’s the link.

Exciting stuff! I’m still getting the Kindle version up to snuff, but I will have that up in a few days. Of course, if you want to wait for party day to get the e-book for only 99 cents, please do. Or if you want to register for the paperback giveaway on Goodreads July 19-26, that’s cool, too.

I’m still developing the virtual ghost-buffet that’s going to happen on party day. Several bloggers have offered to co-host the party, and some will have ghost-food and ghost-drinks (with recipes included). We’ll have some good ideas to keep in mind for your next Halloween party. I hope you’ll visit the co-host blogs, enjoy the fun food and drink and leave a comment. It would also be wonderful if you want to invite or inform your friends of the party. Everyone’s invited!

And throughout the day on July 26, I’ll be tweeting the winners and other announcements throughout the day using hashtag #FriendlyGhostParty.

More to come. Only 15 more days to go!

Book Launch Party - Part II

It’s July, and the Friendly Ghost Party is getting closer! Just so you know, this online party is a celebration of the launch of my new book, Stone’s Ghost, not a Tupperware party. What I mean by that is that I hope you’ll all come and have fun, enter the contests, share your stories and mingle with the other party-goers, but I am not expecting everyone to buy the book. If you do, super-duper, but the main thing is to have fun. Just want to get that out of the way.

As promised earlier, I am ready to reveal the cover of the book. I want to thank Brenda Remlinger of www.coversbydesign.net for her artful expertise in turning my cover design into perfection. I typically snag pics off a Google search and cobble them together to match the idea in my head, then send the whole mess to Brenda to do the full-up legal, hi-res version. As always, she did a fabulous job. I heartily recommend her to any of you who are searching for a cover designer.

So without further ado …

To add to the excitement, I have ordered the first proof and am waiting anxiously for it to arrive. LOVE holding a new book in my hands!

Now, back to the party. It’s already getting started, and will go on all month until July 26.

There’s a lot to it, so I want to plot this out for you.

If you have a blog and would like to co-host the party with me on that one day, please go here and sign up. I can provide content and graphics and/or am open to suggestions, author interviews, whatever. While my blog and the Facebook page will be the primary locations, I will be encouraging party-goers to visit the co-hosts and share the love.

Contests

The first contest is on the Friendly Ghost Party Facebook page. I’m encouraging everyone to post ghost-related pics here, and we’ve already got quite an assortment. We’ve got pics of haunted places, pics of possible ghosts and some not-so-ghostly but still fun, and we’ve even got some video. Don’t have a pic of a ghost? No problem. Post pics of your kids in their Halloween ghost costume, your dog or cat doing sneaky, ghostly things, anything remotely ghost-related. Then go through the pics and vote for your favorites by liking the posts. The post with the most likes at the end of July 26 will win a Stone’s Ghost Prize Package.

The second contest is here on my blog (but could spill over to my co-hosts’ blogs, as well). In the comment section below, type in or paste in your short ghost story. This could be something that really happened to you, something that happened to a friend or relative, something you heard about or something you just made up, but share your stories in the comment section here and on subsequent blog posts. (Please keep your story to ~250 words or less.) At the end of the day July 26, I will pick a random winner and they, also, will win a Stone’s Ghost Prize Package. I am going to kick off this contest with my own story below. Please feel free to comment and/or add your own.

The final contest will be a giveaway on Goodreads. I will post the giveaway about a week ahead (and will post a link here) with a giveaway date of July 26, and the winner will get an autographed copy of Stone’s Ghost.

Discounts

To commemorate the launch, on July 26 the Kindle version of Stone’s Ghost will be available for .99 cents for that one day only. I’ll post a link when the sale price is viable. In addition, to further the celebration, all the books in my back list will also be available for .99 cents that one day only. If you’ve seen one of my books that you thought looked interesting but weren’t quite ready to buy, this will be the time.

Timeline

Having an online party is complicated. The good news is that you don’t have to worry about what you’re going to wear, you don’t have to drive anywhere and you don’t have to keep track of how many drinks you’ve had (but you do have to stock your own fridge). The bad news is that a party like this can extend all around the world and we’re not all in the same time zone. I’m using Mountain Standard Time because I’m in Arizona (and we don’t do Daylight Savings Time here—yeah, I know, we’re weird), so the party will start at 5am MST (same as PDT) on Friday, July 26, and will go until 5pm. For my friends “across the pond,” that means it starts at 1pm London time (if I’ve done my calculations correctly). For my friends across the slightly larger pond, that means it starts at 8pm on July 27 in Perth, Australia. Is that perfectly clear? I hope so.

What else?

What else is going on? I don’t know; I’m making this up as I go along. I’ll reveal the prizes later on, maybe announce some spot prizes during the day just to keep things interesting. The most important thing is YOU—I’d love to have you come to the party. I think it’ll be a lot of fun, and the more the merrier. If this sounds like fun to you, please mark your calendar.

See you there!