Welcome to YA Scavenger Hunt! This bi-annual event was first organized by author Colleen Houck as a way to give readers a chance to gain access to exclusive bonus material from their favorite authors…and a chance to win some awesome prizes! At this hunt, you not only get access to exclusive content from each author, you also get a clue for the hunt. Add up the clues, and you can enter for our prize–one lucky winner will receive one book from each author on the hunt in my team! But play fast: this contest (and all the exclusive bonus material) will only be online for 120 hours!
Go to the YA Scavenger Hunt page to find out all about the hunt. There are seven contests going on simultaneously, and 
you can enter one or all! I am a part of the RED TEAM–but there is also a blue team, an orange team, a gold team, a green team, a purple team, and a pink team for a chance to win a whole different set of books!
If you’d like to find out more about the hunt, see links to all the authors participating, and see the full list of prizes up for grabs, go to the YA Scavenger Hunt page. You can also enter my personal giveaway below.
SCAVENGER HUNT PUZZLE
Directions: Below, you’ll notice that I’ve hidden my favorite number. Collect the favorite numbers of all the authors on the red team, and then add them up (don’t worry, you can use a calculator!).
Entry Form: Once you’ve added up all the numbers, make sure you fill out the form here to officially qualify for the grand prize. Only entries that have the correct number will qualify.
Rules: Open internationally, anyone below the age of 18 should have a parent or guardian’s permission to enter. To be eligible for the grand prize, you must submit the completed entry form by October 8, at noon Pacific Time. Entries sent without the correct number or without contact information will not be considered.
SCAVENGER HUNT POST
Today, I am hosting A.G. Howard on my website for the YA Scavenger Hunt!
EXCLUSIVE CONTENT
The Splintered Series is getting a collector’s box set! It will be available in October 2017 from my publisher, Amulet books. For those who don’t know about this trilogy, it’s a spinoff of Alice in Wonderland in which Alice Liddell’s great-great-great-granddaughter faces the dark, seductive (and at times violent and gruesome) side of Wonderland’s whimsy, and ends up discovering herself in the process. For my exclusive content today, I wanted to share some insight into my publishing journey with a behind-the-scenes look at a deleted scene from SPLINTERED.
Selling my Alice in Wonderland adaptation wasn’t exactly smooth sailing in the early phases. I left my first agent after finishing the manuscript, because she suggested I keep the story in the human realm, and replace the Wonderland characters with humans named Dormouse or Hatter, etc. … She thought a contemporary parallel to Alice in Wonderland, without an actual fantasy world, would sell better. In my heart, I knew there was something special about this warped Wonderland setting and creatures, and I couldn’t bear not to give them a chance. So I found another agent who believed in Splintered‘s fantasy world without reservation, the wonderful Jenny Bent. Jenny sent it out on submission, but then it seemed we might never find our right fit. We received almost two dozen passes from publishers before finally getting our first yes, which led to a burst of interest from other publishers and going to auction.
Want to know what turned the tables? Several editors commented that the story took too long to get going. So, my agent suggested cutting down the beginning. I dove in, determined to make my story shine, and deleted three chapters from the first 1/3 of the book, which is the equivalent of about 1,200 words. Something so simple resulted in my story finally being bought and becoming part of a NYT and INTL bestselling series. To date, it’s been translated in 12 countries, which is something I never would’ve anticipated or predicted with the rough start we had. ?
Now, I’d like to share one of the chapters I had to cut from the original manuscript. To set it up for you, the scene when Alyssa first steps through the looking-glass originally took place at a London museum while she was on a trip with her classmates. There’s even an extra character named Eli who never made it past the cutting phase. I was able to file down a significant amount of wordage by merely keeping Alyssa in her Texas hometown for that pivotal moment.
For those who have read my series, you might have fun watching for similarities from when Alyssa steps through the mirror in her bedroom, because I was able to repurpose some of the same prose and descriptions into that setting, although I hadn’t utilized the full use of her key necklace in this earlier rendition. And some of you will recognize Jabberwocky’s Mousetrap which was later moved to another chapter. I also found places for some of the other descriptions throughout the rest of the series (the storage room in UNHINGED borrowed heavily from the London museum’s basement, for example). This proves no word is ever wasted, and for all you writers out there, don’t delete them. Make a “cut excerpts” file. I do that for every book I write now.
For anyone who hasn’t read my SPLINTERED books, this content isn’t too spoilery, but it could be confusing. If you’re still game, all you need to do is follow this link to read the original chapter 7.
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And don’t forget to enter the contest for a chance to win a ton of books by me, A.G. Howard, and more! To enter, you need to know that (one of) my favorite number is 9. Add up all the favorite numbers of the authors on the red team and you’ll have all the secret code to enter for the grand prize!
CONTINUE THE HUNT
To keep going on your quest for the hunt, you need to check out E. Katherine Kottaras!
LOST CROW CONSPIRACY giveaway
As a thank you for stopping by, you can enter my giveaway for a signed ARC of Lost Crow Conspiracy
