So here (my fingers are crossed that I don’t mess this up again!) for your viewing pleasure is a collection of unusual shoes, and my favorites are still the ones that look like doggy faces. How about you?

A couple of weeks ago book blogger extraordinaire Cari of Cari’s Book Blog fame posted a pic of some awesome shoes on Facebook. There were a lot of “I want these” type comments including from me. What do shoes have to do with books and writing? Nothing and everything of course.

Anyway, it’s been months since I last posted anything about shoes, well not counting that picture of my new rain boots a couple of weeks ago. So, I thought I would reward all of you with a post devoted to colorful, loud and crazy shoes.

My mom, who also knows me pretty well, decided to send me an email filled with photos of some really creative and wild shoes. In fact, she sent it to me two separate times she liked it so much. (Okay, she claims it looked like it didn’t go through the first time.) Anyway, I thought I would share this collection of shoes with you. I don’t own any of them, but some of these I would definitely wear.

  

 

 I think the shoes that look like doggy faces are my favorite. How about you?

I’ll skip the balloon and travel by the more conventional car as I make my way down to Collingswood, NJ tomorrow for the Collingswood Book Festival. It looks like there’s a very good chance that the weather will actually cooperate with us. So, for those who are anywhere near Collingswood and are looking for a fun fall outing why not skip the apple and pumpkin picking tomorrow and go book picking instead?

Here’s another smile he brought me recently. Here’s a picture of a ruler that I have on my desk. In case you can’t make it out too clearly, it reads “Great Women Rulers of Literature” and features a list of classic literary authors including luminaries like Sappho, Jane Austen and Edith Wharton:

Here’s the modification that I discovered when I picked up my ruler to use it. It made me laugh out loud:

And in case you couldn’t make it out, my own name and book have been added to this prestigious list.

I meant to get this post up yesterday, but somehow the time got away from me. I guess I needed an extra day to fully recover from my busy weekend. I had a great time Saturday at the book signing at the Borders Express in Exton, PA and another fun day on Sunday at the BooksNJ 2011 festival in Paramus. Here’s a photo from BooksNJ with fellow KidLit Authors Club members Margie Gelbwasser and Alison Formento:

My weekend wasn’t all work. I did get the chance to enjoy a little concert on Saturday evening. I should probably mention that this was a concert in the basement of my boyfriend’s parents’ house and that it was incredibly short. Did anyone see that Les Paul Google Doodle last week? Did you know that the Google Guitar thing is a sort of online guitar that you can actually play?

I sort of missed all that, but my boyfriend was nice enough to fill me on all the details. The Google Guitar only has a limited number of notes, which limits the songs that you can play, but apparently it has just enough to play Lean on Me. So, without further ado I present my boyfriend on Google Guitar, his dad on vocals with Grandma providing critical input:

Specifically I need some pictures of you, your friends, your kids, your pets or even local statues (I’m not that fussy) holding up a sign that reads “I am popular”. Yes, I know most normal people put together their book trailers using readily available stock photos, but I think it’s already been established that I am not exactly normal.

Anyway if you would like your picture included in my book trailer please email it to me at alissagrosso@gmail.com. If you also include your name/website I’ll make sure you are mentioned in the trailer’s credits as well as in a thank you post on this blog. Include your snail mail address and I’ll also send you out some bookmarks, a button and whatever sort of candy I can cram into a No. 10 envelope. Of course, if you would prefer your picture be included anonymously, that’s fine too.

I’m setting a deadline of Friday, February 25 for this. No, that’s much time, but all you have to do is make a sign that says “I am Popular” and get someone to snap a picture of you holding it. So, 2 weeks should be more than enough time. Thank you, in advance, to everyone who takes me up on this challenge.

The bad news is I don’t get to keep it. The good news is you just might be able to get your hands on a copy. It’s all part of the promotions going on when you join the street team over at the Class of 2K11. Among the prizes up for grabs are one-of-a-kind advance copies hand-annotated by the books’ authors. How cool is that? And who knows, we could have a future Printz or Newbery winner in our midst and some lucky folks out there are going to have a one-of-a-kind copy of their debut novel.

There are a few different ways to enter our contests, but one fun and super easy way to get in the running is to get your hands on one of our books, take a picture and send it to us. The year is young, and most of us are still anticipating our publication dates, but XVI by Julia Karr is already out in the wild.

Head over to your local bookstore or library and hunt down a copy of XVI to get your paws on this awesome dystopian science fiction novel and snap a picture. Of course as long as you’ve got XVI in your hot little hands or paws as the case may be, you’re probably going to want to read it!

You have until February 4th, to get your entries in for the next drawing, but there will be drawings every month.  For all the rules on our hands on contest, click here.

By the way, if you were lucky enough to score an advanced copy of Popular at the ALA Midwinter conference, feel free to snap your own hands-on picture and send that in as well.

Here’s an old photo of my Grandpa Hersey and his brother sporting fake mustaches, when he was younger than I was. Obviously, my grandfather was a great visionary who foresaw the day when fake mustaches would be all the rage.

Let’s just hope his granddaughter inherited some of his visionary powers.