I’m heading to Eugene Oregon Thursday morning to speak to the Mid-Valley chapter of Willamette Writers about Plotting vs Pantsing at 7 p.m. Get all the details on the Appearances Page or on the WW site.

Cherie Priest and I have been out to the Olympic National Park to do some research into the Lake Crescent area. You can see the album on my FaceBook, until I can get the new gallery organized.

I’ve got my panel info for Left Coast Crime: I’ll be on “The Supernatural Panel” on Saturday, March 13, from 4:45-5:30 p.m. with fellow “woo-woo” writers Sue Ann Jaffarian, Kris Neri, and Juliet Blackwell (M).

I’m talking about the parts that get cut or left out over at the blog.

I’m talking about the difficulty of getting started on a new story at the blog.

We have winners! I’ve notified the first 5 by email. If any of them don’t respond, the next person with a correct set of answers will take their place, so it may be a few days before all the prizes are claimed. Here are the names of the winners:

Sara Will
Dave Feldman
Chris Hall
Lexi Cenni
Jason S. Cope

Congrats to all!

And everyone who didn’t make the top of the list can still get a signed bookmark if they send me their mailing address.

This was a tough one, I know. Some of the answers were a little tricky. Here they all are:

1.What is the real name of the ferret whose photo appears on the site?
Simon
2.What was my original field of study?
Vocal Music
3.Who is the POV character in the Labyrinth excerpt?
Quinton
4.What is the ISBN of the Polish book?
978-83-7574-044-8
5.Who really wrote The Bat?
Mary Roberts Rinehart
6.What was the date of the first News item on the site?
Jan 24, 2010
7.Who gave the quote that used the term “kicks ass”?
Jennifer Jordon pf Crimespree Magazine
8.Where did Harper travel in Vanished?
London, England (just “England” wasn’t specific enough)
9.Who was the editor of the anthology I contributed a non-Harper Blaine story to?
Charlaine Harris and Toni L.P. Kelner
10.Which character did Tom Sniegoski write about?
Remy Chandler
11.When will I be in San Francisco?
Oct 14-17 2010 (for Bouchercon)
12.Aside from my site, where else can you find calendar updates about my professional schedule?
On the Kat Richardson News Google group. (Just “Google Group” wasn’t specific enough.)

People said they had trouble with the ferret question, with my course of study, and with Tom’s character name. A few people had difficulty with the POV question, but most got it–it is tricky.

Thanks for playing with me and if you didn’t win one of the big prizes, you can still get a bookmark by sending me your mailing address and saying you want one. I’ll get them out as soon as the printer gets them to me.

It appears that there are only 2 entries that have bad delivery, so looking at time stamps on the logs I think I can now get on with this. First I have to read all the entries and separate the correct from the incorrect before winners can be announced. It looks like we have enough books in the book pile to have a total of 5 big winners and I’m really pleased by the response–thank you guys for playing.

But, even if you don’t win–or don’t want to enter at all–you can still get a bookmark (once they are printed) by sending me your mailing address info. Yes I will mail them anywhere in the world–they don’t weigh much. And I will even sign them.

The Contact form has been fixed (we believe) to accept long and multi-dot addresses. If you continue to have problems, please contact me directly as given in the post below.

Adjustments will have to be made to the contest to compensate UK and other users whose emails were rejected without cause. I’ll figure out a fix and post when I have that. Thanks for your patience, folks.

Hi folks. The contact form is misbehaving with very long addresses and with .co.uk addresses. Many are getting through to me just fine–in spite of messages that say otherwise–but others may not be. If you’ve been getting an “invalid address” message, please send to me via your own mailer: kat (dot) rchrdsn [at] gmail (dot) com.

To welcome the new site, I have a contest for you guys:

A Site Scavenger Hunt!

I have a list of twelve questions for you at the Greywalker forum. All the answers to all the questions on the list are on this site somewhere, no need to look anywhere else. Send in the list with your answers using the Contact Form.

The first person to get all the answers correct gets to pick one of the following prizes:

1. A character named after you in Greywalker #6 (No guarantees about the character or what happens to them, or what sort of person/thing they are–this is purely at my discretion but you will be in the story. Legal paperwork will be required.)
2. A signed original print by the site artist, Thea Maia. (The specific print will be at Thea’s discretion,m but you can see some of her work at: Polyvore and at MaiaArts.)
3. First pick of 5 items from the Mondo Bookpile (may include signed books, ARCS, swag items, etc. from the list on the forum).

After the first prize winner, the next person with the answers, gets their choice of prizes, and so on. All the prizes will be given away one way or another. Lots of wonderful books have been donated by my fellow loons at the League of Reluctant Adults, others are from my personal stash. Everyone who enters and includes a mailing address with their entry will also get a new site-design bookmark.

Nifty, eh?