You Won't Find This Offer Anyplace Else (I Hope)

But before I get to the offer, let me point out that the list of states where Life As We Knew It is nominated for a young readers award has grown by one. Paige Y. was nice enough to let me know that LAWKI is on the North Carolina Middle School Young Readers list. Since my mother was born and raised in Winston-Salem, she was particularly pleased to hear this, and I, of course, am delighted.

I think that gets LAWKI to 20 states (including Rhode Island, which, alas, was the first of many such awards LAWKI didn't win), plus the ones in the Pacific Northwest list. While I remain cheerfully dubious that it might actually win any of these awards, I still love the fact it's been nominated so often.

Google was kind enough to inform me at 4 this morning (when my brain started working on a scene for The World We Live In, so I got out of bed to read e-mails and convince my body it really wanted to go back to sleep) that the dead and the gone has made its first summer reading list. Given that the book is not officially published, I think that's pretty nifty. Then again, I think most everything is pretty nifty nowadays except my sleep patterns.

One major reason for all this niftyhood is, of course, all of you. So I wanted to do something to say thank you for your support of both LAWKI and d&g.

I realized I couldn't offer to autograph all your copies, because you'd have to send them to me, and I'd have to send them back, and that just wasn't going to work. So instead I had book labels printed specially for both books. I like to think of them as book plates, since that's classier, but either way, they're personally designed, with a space on each label for me to write Susan Beth Pfeffer (which I do in red ink).


I think of the Always Have Hope one for LAWKI and Never Lose Faith for d&g, but I won't be around to watch, so if you have a preference for one rather than the other (some people just love waxing moons, and others are waning moon obsessed), I'll never know where it goes. The background on both of them is silver (that doesn't show too well), and they're round (that white stuff surrounding them is the paper you peel them off of, and the lavender is just what I scotch taped them to). They look kind of three dimensional, but that's an optical illusion. They don't take up any space in a book.

So here's the deal. If you want one, just e-mail me, either using the link on the right or the address below the link, if the link doesn't work for you. Tell me where to send it, and off it will go (after I sign it semi-nicely with red ink- I don't have such great handwriting). If you want more than one, just ask. If you want one or more for books you're planning to give away (because nothing says Christmas more than a book with famine and epidemics and lots of dead bodies), just ask. If you're an independent bookstore owner/manager, and you'd like to put them in your books to make them more likely to sell, just ask. If you're a librarian or a teacher and you're using LAWKI or planning to use d&g either in your classrooms or in a summer reading program or a current book club or any such thing, and you'd like them for your students or whoever is reading the book, just ask. If you want one so you can get some of my DNA, with the intention of cloning me someday, just ask. I had 500 of each one printed because that's the smallest amount I could. And while the LAWKI ones are actually moving (on account of I ask strangers on the street if they'd like one, not to mention a school in Kentucky that's getting over 100 of them), I still have a lot, and on the incredibly small chance I'll need more, the printer will be happy to make them. If need be, I can always buy another red pen as well.

Even with the increase in the cost of postage, this is a very small way for me to express a very big thank you to all of you. But it was the best I could come up with, and I hope you'll accept it as a a token of my appreciation. I've never had so much fun in my career, and I owe a lot of that to you.