So here's a funny story. A week and a half ago I was Googling my book (you know, to check for new reviews and stuff) and I came across a listing for an ARC copy on ebay. Wait…what? Let me get this straight. Someone, who receives Advance Reader Editions of books for review, FOR FREE, read my book then put it up on ebay. To make a profit. Off of my book. That they got for free. I was appalled for all of about 5.3 seconds until I realized that a copy of my book was available on ebay. Finally, a chance to own my own book, even if it is just the unedited advance copy! There was no "buy it now" so I had to wait 4 long, excruciating days to bid on my book and hope that I won it. Well, 4 days finally passed and I sat down to bid on my book. I tried to wait until about 5 minutes left in the auction to bid but at about 7 minutes left I panicked that I was going to miss out on it and bid the asking price of $2 something. I was told I was immediately outbid. So I went up 2 dollars. Same thing. I went up two more. Finally the bid was mine! Now all I had to do was sit back and watch the clock tick down. But at about 4 minutes left I started to see the amount jump higher. Then higher. Then higher. It jumped past my bid but still said I had the winning bid! I was completely mystified until I got a text from my husband who was at a friend of a friend's house watching the Super Bowl. It said: Are you bidding on your book?! Well of course I am!! I wrote back: Yes. Are you?! Sure enough, he was, and we had been out-bidding each other for the last three minutes. Come to find out he'd gone up to $30 just to be safe, which I thought was just about the sweetest thing I'd ever heard. Luckily, once we realized our comedy of errors, we didn't have to pay $30 dollars for a book I wrote. Just over $12, which was fine with me. The story that came with that $12 dollars (and the item I won with it) was absolutely priceless.

I've since found out that selling ARC's on ebay isn't technically illegal, just unethical and really, really lame. I'm not sure if the seller put together that he/she'd just sold the author her own book, but since my last name is in my username and on my husband's Paypal account that I used to pay for it, I'm hoping he/she suspects. Either way, getting my mail today was just about the most exciting thing that's happened to me in a long time. I grabbed it on the way to my mom's house and opened it in front of my sister, who snapped away with her iTouch camera. The picture is grainy and I'm looking less than stellar in my 20 year old sweatshirt and second-day hair, but I love this picture because that ear to ear grin on my face is not posed. This is me, looking at and holding my book for the very first time (not the giant book in my lap, that's my laptop case):

On a side note, the reviews from these ARC copies are flooding in (I don't know, can you call 7 a flood? It feels like it) on Goodreads and I am absolutely thrilled at the reviews I've been getting. If you don't care about spoilers, check them out here. (Most of them you have to scroll down for, under community reviews.) With only one exception, they. are. awesome!!