Blogaversary, Day Four: Seanan McGuire Ghostroads Books!

(50's Diner background image by Mirjam Herman)

This Giveaway Is Closed!

Anyone who follows my blog or knows me personally knows I'm a great fan of Seanan McGuire's (Mira Grant's) writing. She's a writer so prolific that it's hard to keep up with her output, yet she's a writer with a great imagination, producing multiple series simultaneously with totally different worlds and diverse, complex characters I love. Because she's so popular, she's recently been the victim of piracy, in which someone put an ARC of her most recent book (just released Tuesday), The Girl in the Green Silk Gown, up on a piracy site less than two weeks before the book was to be released, potentially impacting her sales. (Sales are what get you contracts for more books because publishers are mighty pragmatic people.)

I've been following Seanan's work since 2009, when my friend Diana pressed a copy of Rosemary and Rue, the first book in the October Daye series, into my hands and said that this was a writer that she knew I'd love. She was so right! And I loved Seanan's journey as a person and writer, too. I was so happy for her when she was able to quit her day job and write full time. I know how much it means to her that she's been able to make a living as a writer. You can sit in her living room and she'll tell you all about how challenging it is. From supporting your family and pets to paying your mortgage to paying for your healthcare to trying to predict what your income tax situation will be, based on income that can vary wildly from year to year. Piracy threatens all that. It threatens financial security for all writers. (If you have any doubts about that, read about Maggie Stiefvater's little experiment here in an article in The Guardian, or if you're on Tumblr you can read her post about piracy here.)

Even though I usually buy copies of her work on pixel or in audio (some of the rarer stuff I've bought on paper), after hearing about the piracy I was determined to buy paper copies of her Ghostroads books about Rose Marshall, the new edition of Sparrow Hill Road and her new book The Girl in the Green Silk Gown, as well. Like many of her fans trying to counter piracy losses, I figure that adds to her sales figures for the new book. And I'm offering them to the lucky winner of this giveaway!

Sparrow Hill Road and The Girl in the Green Silk Gown are about a hitchhiking ghost, Rose Marshall, whose story borders on the edges of McGuire's Hugo Award finalist InCryptid series. Rose appears occasionally in the InCryptid series, as does a kinda-sorta friend of Rose's, Mary Dunlavy. Rose is a great character who has been to, um, hell and back. /snickers/ This is a great set of books and I hope her publisher knows that we want more. You can find my reviews of the books here and here.

To enter this giveaway, comment below. This giveaway is open to those in the USA and Canada. If you reside outside those two countries but you would still like to enter, please let me know in your comment that you are willing to pay all postage above US$6.50 to receive these books. You should be following Marzie's Reads on Facebook because that's where I'll be announcing the winner and how you will send me your address information.

For extra entries, follow Marzie's Reads on Twitter and comment on the Tweet about this blog post. For an extra entry still, retweet that Tweet.

This giveaway is open until Friday, July 20th at 11:59 pm EDT.