Fallen off the face of the Blogosphere

Sorry for the lack of posting. It’s been really busy around here. (I will post on exactly what I’ve been busy with soon, but some of it includes dealings with: Several pounds of beef, Brazilian monkeys, and four yards of tulle.)

The first thing on my blogging To Do list today is give away the prize from last week’s giveaway. The winner of the paperback of Secret Society Girl is:

CRYSTAL G

Please email me with your address to receive your prize.

By the way, the contest continues this week, with another copy of the paperback to give away. Leave a comment on this post to enter. (I promise I’ll try to do the drawing on Friday this time!)

Next up: gossip magazines. Anyone seen the new issue of Life & Style magazine? (May 14th, the one with Angie and brad on the cover.) There’s a gorgeous ad for Secret Society Girl and Under the Rose on page 19, right next to J.Lo. I’ll take a picture of it as soon as I locate my camera.I know I had it recently, since I do have pictures of what I did with the aforementioned yards of tulle:

Moving on…

Reviews are pouring in for Under the Rose. First, we heard from Publisher’s Weekly:

Deep within the Rose and Grave Secret Society at Eli University, the secrets even members aren’t privy to make Peterfreund’s second novel impossible to put down. Picking up where last year’s Secret Society Girl left off, the novel follows the misadventures of Amy Haskel, who, having endured the initiation only to unravel a misogynistic plot set on destroying the first class of “Diggers” to include women, is looking forward to putting her troubles behind her. But things begin to sour when all the “Diggirls” receive a mysterious letter warning them of the society’s impending implosion. To make matters worse, Amy’s ex-boyfriend has a hot new girlfriend; her roommate starts dating a society member with commitment problems; another society member is dying to get under Amy’s ceremonial robe; and Amy’s senior thesis looms. When the Diggers realize they have a mole, Amy is intent on finding the culprit. Peterfreund offers an intimate view of the modus operandi of a college society, and even when the story’s revelations feel anticlimactic, readers will be absorbed by the juicy romantic plot.

And now, from Booklist:

Peterfreund picks up where she left off in Secret Society Girl (2006). Now that elite secret society Rose & Grave has accepted its first female initiates, they have a new obstacle to face—a traitor in their midst. Amy Haskel thinks she knows who’s leaking the society’s secrets, but she has to convince the others that it’s not just a conspiracy theory. It doesn’t help that she’s a little distracted by her hot-and-heavy relationship with the resident Rose & Grave lothario, George Prescott. Peterfreund pairs romance and suspense in a picaresque university setting with a few surprises thrown in for good measure. Readers who picked up the series debut will be excited to continue the adventures of Amy and her cohorts. The author doesn’t spend too much time rehashing the first book, but new readers will get swept up in the sexy story in no time.

And, I’ve been hearing from the non-reviewers who have ARCs as well, such as OC Annie, who is really pulling for a more frequent use of footnotes, and Erica (and Carrie) who are speculating heavily on Amy’s future (Erica uses white text for spoiler’s sake).

In passing, I’ve realized that Google and Ice Rocket and their ilk are not going to be particularly helpful in tracking down web whispers about my new book, due to the fact that I share the title with, among other things, some song from a Finnish rock band’s latest album. All in all, I’ve decided that this is a good thing.

As for me, I’m still hard at work on the latest SSG novel. It’s an interesting time to be writing, because I keep hearing from people who are just discovering the book, via the paperback, and reading the first reviews for the sequel, but in my head, they are all living a year in the future, they’re all on Spring Break of their senior year, and I have to keep that in mind when I’m responding to questions or taking part in conversations or interviews. I have seen what happens to these characters, where they go, what changes in their relationships, etc., and I’ll sound like a loon or a big spoiler machine if I talk from that mindset. So I have to keep in mind who Amy is at the beginning of SSG and who she is at the end, which is very different than who she is at the beginning of UTR, let alone the end, or in the third book. For example (white text), think about how significantly her feelings about Clarissa change over the course of the first book. Stuff happens. This isn’t a big problem, but it’s a professional hazard of being a series writer that I hadn’t really given any thought to. (Speaking of series, Carrie has an excellent post on the subject right now.)

So, that’s all the news that’s fit to print right now. I’m leaving town on Wednesday, but I’ll still be blogging from sunny Florida.