Lots of Clever Little Things

There are currently two new competitions open on the Skulduggery Pleasant official site!

The first one is open to schools in the UK and Ireland: the prizes include 100 free Skulduggery books for your school library and a visit from Derek Landy. The competition ends on 30 November 2012.

The second competition, also open only to fans in the UK and Ireland, requires you to sign up to the Skulduggery Pleasant newsletter - and the prize is an iPod Touch with all the SP books preloaded on it! The closing date for this is also 30 November 2012.

ETA: Those of you who wish to participate in the second competition may want to enter a bit before the official closing date, as the terms and conditions offer this somewhat confusing information:

4. Closing date for entries is 12 midnight on 30th November 2012. No entries received after this date will be accepted.
9. The winner of the competition will be drawn at random from all valid entries by an independent adjudicator and notified by email no later than the 12th November 2012.
10. The prize will be delivered to the winner by 26th November 2012.

Just a reminder to anyone who may have forgotten - Skulduggery Pleasant: Kingdom of the Wicked is officially released in the UK & Ireland tomorrow.

In connection with tomorrow's launch, there was a nice little TV interview with Derek Landy yesterday on Ireland AM; in addition to some talk about the writing process and the series in general, the interview also touches upon the possibilities for a Skulduggery Pleasant movie, and "a movie deal" should very likely be signed in the "next few weeks or months, but certainly before Christmas".

As a reminder that Kingdom of the Wicked is soon out also in the UK and Ireland - it has been out in Australia and New Zealand since late July - here's a roundup of some more recent interviews and live chats Derek Landy has done during his current New Zealand and Australia tour so far:

• A shortish but nice video interview.


• A nice, although not very long text interview.


• A live chat on Booktopia's Facebook page, with quite a few rather interesting questions and answers. I've also put a transcript of it up here, with everything potentially spoilery about either KOTW or future books in their own nested spoiler tags inside the transcript, so it should be safe to read even for those who don't wish to know anything about the future.
  

Also, for anyone needing a fic fix, wanting a specific scene or fic written for them, etc, the SP kink meme has been doing pretty well so far! There are now separate prompt posts for everything pre-KOTW, which include no spoilers for KOTW (and the prompt fills shouldn't either), and for KOTW, including spoilers.

There is now a Skulduggery Pleasant Kink Meme community in existence on Dreamwidth!

The FAQ / explanation of what a kink meme is, for those new to kink memes, can be found here (most importantly, in spite of the name, the prompts don't have to focus on what is generally considered a "kink" at all - anything goes, from gen to properly kinky stuff, any rating). The rules are here.

The post for the prompts & fills is here. You don't need a Dreamwidth account, as prompts and fills are anonymous.

So if you've ever had a particular desire to read something set in the SP universe, a particular setting or pairing or moment or what not, do visit the community, leave a prompt and feel free to browse the prompts left by others, in case something catches your eye and stirs your muse.

Various recent updates to do with competition winners, release dates, tour news etc. Bullet point list time!

• The winners of the recent short story competition on the official website have been announced and can be read here. Congratulations to all winners!


• The exact tour dates, times and locations for the New Zealand and Australian tour can be found here on Derek Landy's blog.


• The approximate tour dates and locations for the UK & Ireland tour can be found here.


• Release dates for Kingdom of the Wicked are now up on the various HarperCollins regional websites. It appears that the release date is 27 July 2012 for New Zealand, 1 August 2012 for Australia (those two countries are getting the book much earlier due to it needing to be available there in time for the tour), and 30 August 2012 for Ireland & UK.

There appears to be a new competition on the official website.

Derek has written a 50-word intro to a very short Skulduggery story and he needs YOU to make it 10 times more awesome by writing the next 450 words.

You have until the Sunday June 10th to enter. 10 winners will be chosen by Derek, and their stories will be displayed RIGHT HERE on the official Skulduggery Pleasant website. Winners will also receive a signed Death Bringer paperback.

I looked at the terms and conditions, and "There is no country restriction on entries."

One entry per person.

Kingdom of the Wicked, the seventh book, is close to being all completed, and from Derek Landy's blog post, it appears it may be both noticeably longer and more violent than the previous books in the series:

( Cut for the quotes and comments. )

Opinions?

For anyone in the UK, HarperCollins is holding a new competition, this time for personalised Death Bringer posters, to celebrate the release of Death Bringer in paperback.

You can read all about it here on the official site, but in short, anyone considering entering needs to send in their favourite line in Death Bringer together with the reason why it's their favourite. There are 30 winners.

Good luck to everyone who decides to participate!

Book Seven has a title. And that title is... drum roll, please...

Skulduggery Pleasant: Kingdom of the Wicked

I like it. I like it a lot, really. I have no idea whatsoever what it might be referring to, but I really do like it.