meomeoim

It's only four days until Switched hits stores. I am sorta freaking out about it, but in a really awesome way. I had a spectacular if exhausting holiday weekend. I ended up sleeping pretty much all of Monday to catch on the weekend's festivities, and this whole week has felt like a mess of catching up and getting ready for  Switched to come out and for all the traveling I'm going to do. I have an idea for a fun vlog where I pronounce all the words in Switched that people seem to trip over, and I'm going to write a blog letting you know some other fun facts about the book. I don't know for sure when these blogs will post, but I'm going to say one will post over the weekend, and the other will post on Monday. Oh! Also, I want to issue a challenge to all of you. I'm super psyched about the book being in stores, so if you see Switched in stores and take a fun picture of yourself with it in the store (assuming that this doesn't go against store policy), an

I recently acquired a new Lenovo W520 which included a biometric fingerprint scanner and since I generally shun windows in favor of Ubuntu 11.10, I really wanted to be able to use the scanner with Ubuntu. Open Source Sweetness Setting up the fingerprint reader on Ubuntu was a piece of cake. I just installed this fingerprint application and within seconds I was recording my index finger and using it to unlock my screen saver. It even works with sudo commands, kudos to the guys that put this together! I think my only gripe, and this seems to be a popular one, is that the gui could use a little polish. So I decided to pull out my C++ skills of yore and see if I could make a few changes - this is open source after all and anyone brave enough can get the code and compile it. Not So Easy As with most open source bundles, I found a readme file with directions on how to build the package. Unfortunately that didn't work for me, I ran into a compile error: In file included from ../../src/M

Happy Christmas Adam, to those who celebrate this semi-nonexistent holiday. (It's Adam, cause Adam came before Eve.) I'm only posting real quick, because then I have to be off to finish planning for the first of four holiday extravaganzas that I'm celebrating. But I wanted to tell you a couple of awesome things. The first is this fancy new website is up - www.worldofamandahocking.com And it's fabulous. Other people who aren't me even think so. One of my favorite things on the new site is Elora's Gallery . The paintings that Elora make in Switched and Torn are re-created here. There's three up now, but there's even more to come! Other extra rad things include: the Changeling Quiz (see if you're a changeling), the Five Tribes (definitions of the five major troll tribes), and Videos (links to all kinds of videos about me and the books). There's actually way more than that, and there's more content coming in the future, including the Castle Floo

I made a tab at the top of the page for events called Events , because I'm clever like that. I thought that would be a good way for people to check out what I have coming up, like book signings and release dates. Also, I wanted to thank everybody for checking out the Trylle Book Trailer yesterday. It's already had over 130,000 views, so thanks for spreading the word! As some of you may know, the Trylle books are about changelings . But not everybody knows what changelings are. Tor posted this really great write up on changelings and what they are and how that relates to Switched and the rest of the Trylle trilogy. So you should check that out: here . I probably won't be checking the interweb much over the next few days, since I'm hosting not one, not two, not three, but FOUR Christmas gatherings at my home over the next three days. Yeah. I'm like Vince Vaughn and Reece Witherspoon. Only I don't hate Christmas or my family. So I'm deciding to leave you all

Okay, first of all I have some pretty awesome news. On January 5th, I get the pleasure of being on Anderson Cooper's new daytime talk show, Anderson . For those of you who don't know who Anderson Cooper is, you're silly people, because Anderson is awesome. He's perhaps most known for his CNN show Anderson 360 and his hard hitting reporting, including that time he got punched in Libya. But he's perhaps the most fun when he's hosting New Year's Eve with Kathy Griffin or that time he co-hosted Regis & Kelly and he couldn't figure out what the deal was with the reality television program Living Lohan. I've actually decided to post the video of Anderson talking about the Lohans because I think it's the funniest thing ever, even though I've obviously gone off topic now. Okay. So back on topic. I'm going to be on Anderson , and I'm tickled pink about it. (You heard me. Tickled. Pink.) But I'm not telling you this just to share how e

I've got not one but TWO awesome book trailers for Switched to share with you. The first is the US trailer from St. Martin's. Right, it's MTV.com's Hollywood Crush is posting exclusively, and they also had a nice little write up about me and the books, if you want to check that: here . Remember the stills I should you the other day? Yeah, they're from this trailer. So if you want to see them in action, check it out. Get More: Movie Trailers , Movies Blog It's awesome, right? It's actually so bad ass that I feel the need to remind you all once again that this is a trailer for the book . The movie's pretty far off from the trailer stage. Anyway, onto the next awesome trailer. This one is from St. Martin's sister company Pan Macmillon. They're publishing the Trylle Trilogy in places like the UK, South Africa, Asia, India, and Australia. I'm think they made this trailer for the UK, but anybody can watch it anywhere because its awesome. Also, bef

It's only 17 days until the big release of Switched . Eek, indeed! If you haven't pre-ordered it yet and still want to, you can do so: here . There's a lot of fun stuff coming up for Switched , including a mega-awesome amazeballs book trailer that should be premiering at MTV.com sometime next week. (I don't know the exact date yet). I saw the trailer on Wednesday when I was New York meeting with my publishers, and my sidekick/life mate Eric (who is actually a rather snarky, harsh critic) declared it "the greatest book trailer" he's ever seen. So, me and Eric went to New York this week to meet with people I'd mostly only spoken to in email before, and that was fun. Everyone at St. Martin's is super nice. They even got me these awesome cakes! Also, I talked to the people doing the audio versions for Wake (which won't be out until August 2012, although for some reason you can pre-order it already at Amazon ), and it sounds like they have some rea

I have to clarify that this is a BOOK trailer for the series. There's no new word on the movie yet. But the book trailer is really exciting and really awesome. So, they're still finishing up the trailer, but I've got a few still shots from the shoot that I get to share with you all. Check them out and let me know what you think! (I think they're pretty rad). I don't know why this says "after." But it's a picture of Finn ;) There's Wendy! Finn appears to be interrupting something

I made Joy Behar's lasagna (the best lasagna recipe ever, as long as you skip the onions), the Muppet Family Christmas DVD is playing, and the fire is roaring, so I'll make this blog brief (or at least try to). It's only 26 days until Switched comes out, and there's a lot of things going on. I'm doing a lot of interviews (with pieces coming out soon). My publishers are working on a super fancy website as well as book trailers that sound completely awesome. Come January, I'm going to be doing a lot of traveling to the promote the books. That includes a couple of book signings. The only date I know of for sure right now is Tuesday, January 10th at 7 PM at the Barnes & Noble in the old Chateau Theater in downtown Rochester, MN (also known as THE coolest B&N location ever). I'll also be going to England in January. I can't remember for sure what day I'm getting there, but I think it's the third week. I don't know what they have lined up