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EDIT: We have our two winners!\u00a0David Poole<\/strong> wins the signed copy of\u00a0Magic Skeleton<\/strong>, and Tania Del Rio wins the signed\u00a0and annotated<\/em> copy of\u00a0Magic Skeleton<\/strong> –! Congrats!<\/p>\n It is my birthday. My second Quarantimes Nativity, as it were — technically, I’m turning a FORBIDDEN NUMBER, and given that said number is also the number of a rotten piece of shit president, and<\/em> because I kinda feel like a year was taken from me anyway because of this dipshit pandemic, I’m gonna go ahead and claim this birthday as:<\/p>\n AGE 44, PART TWO<\/strong>.<\/p>\n *thunder rumbles*<\/p>\n And then next year I’ll just jump right to 46 and skip that other number.<\/p>\n As such, given that it is the day I was shuttlecocked into the world, I figure we can do a little bit of a gift exchange. Way it works is this:<\/p>\n You pre-order either The Book of Accidents<\/a> (July 20th) or Dust & Grim<\/a> (October 5th) from either an indie bookstore or Bookshop.org. You send me the receipt for that purchase to terribleminds [at] gmail.com, with the subject header: BIRTHDAY EXCHANGE. And then I enter you into a contest where I’m giving away two copies of\u00a0You Can Do Anything, Magic Skeleton<\/strong>. Both of those copies will be signed by myself and the artist, Natalie Metzger. And\u00a0one<\/em> of those two copies will be annotated by yours truly throughout, in handwriting so bad you’ll think you’re summoning some manner of elder god just by reading it. Maybe I’ll even doodle in it to show you why Natalie is the artist for the book and I most decidedly am not! Who knows what heresies it will contain!<\/p>\n You have till Sunday, May 2nd, 11:59PM EST to enter.<\/p>\n It is available to US residents only.<\/p>\n On May 3rd, I’ll do a random draw of two names.<\/p>\n First name will win the signed copy of Magic Skeleton.<\/p>\n Second name will win the signed and\u00a0annotated<\/em> copy of Magic Skeleton.<\/p>\n Questions?<\/p>\n Ah, yes, you over there.<\/p>\n Why only indie bookstores and not, say, Amazon? Well, regardless of your feelings about Amazon, one thing I do know is that our indie bookstores are the lifeblood of the bookish community, so I’m hoping to gently urge purchases in that direction to support small business and to give some love to booksellers in a fraught time. Amazon and B&N are probably doing fine. Small businesses, not so much. So, this isn’t to willfully exclude them, but it is to serve smaller businesses in local communities. Ideally, your local community.<\/p>\n