Support Richelle's Characters In Vampire Book Club's Alpha Showdown

Have you checked out the Alpha Showdown Vampire Book Club is running at the moment? There are some really awesome Alphas, male and female, battling it out for the title. Among them are some of our favorite Richelle Mead characters, Eugenie, Dorian, Rose and Dimitri!

Today is the last day to vote for Eugenie. It's also the first day to vote for Dimitri. So make sure you support Richelle's characters (especially Dimitri, who I'm championing ;-).

To vote for Eugenie, go here. Dimitri's battle can be found here. And keep your eyes out for Rose's later on.

Also, in today's showdown between Jace and Dimitri (gulp), you have the opportunity to win awesome YA books! So make sure you don't miss that. :D

Cadsawan Jewelry's Smile Contest:: Win Rose And Dimitri Necklaces

A little reminder that Cadsawan Jewelry's New Moon contest for the month ends soon. (I'm not completely sure when. On her blog, Janet wrote May 16, but she tweeted that it ends tomorrow?)

One of the things you can win is the new Dimitri charm! This is one we've been waiting for (patiently?) for quite a while now, and it's finally here. Good things good things come to those who wait, which is apparent when you see the design:


I love the reason behind this particular contest - the power of a smile. You can enter the contest both on Cadsawan's facebook page and on the blog. Click here for the full details on Janet's blog.

Happy Birthday To Vampire Academy Jewelry Artist Psynde!

Today is a special day in the Vampire Academy Universe. It's the birthday of our very own Psynde (real name, Synde) of Cemetery Cat Jewelry, who was the first one to create official Vampire Academy jewelry. Her jewelry is very special, very much like art, and very her.

From VampireAcademy.org we want to wish a:

Happy Birthday Synde!

And what better way to celebrate her birthday, than by showing you her latest Bloodlines creation! This is called Sydney's Necklace:

You can find Sydney's Necklace in Psynde's Etsy shop, here, along with lots of other beautiful pieces of jewelry.

I just love all of Psynde's jewelry, and in this blog post I wrote last year, you can see my pieces. Check our archives for more posts about Cemetery Cat Designs, but I especially recommend the first post I wrote about Psynde's jewelry, and the interview Wicked Little Pixie did with her (also linked in that post).

Make sure you wish Psynde a Happy Birthday! :D (Maybe this is a good day to buy that piece of jewelry you've been eyeing forever? ;-)

You can catch Psynde here:

Twitter: @Psynde
Etsy: Cemetery Cat Jewelry http://www.etsy.com/shop/psynde
Blog: Tombstone Tails http://psynde.blogspot.com/

How Awesome Is Dimitri?

BloodlinesFans alerted us on to the fact that a new, Vampire Academy related, word has been added to the Urban Dictionary. That word is:

Dimkalicious

And the definition of the word is (according to the Urban Dictionary):

Being Dimkalicious or being called it means that you are comparable to Dimitri Belikov, in the way that he is sexy, gorgeous, bad-ass, amazing, "like a god", fierce etc.

He's so Dimkalicious!

Isn't this awesome? I remember the late night Twitter talks that inspired this word, and they were really fun to follow. The credit for inventing the word in the first place goes to Melissa (Minamostaza). Congrats! :-)

VA Rose Hathaway Trailer

This day has been a bountiful one. We got the first chapter of Last Sacrifice, and now Penguin Paranormal has just released the Rose Hathaway trailer for Last Sacrifice!

It was supposed to be instead of the first chapter, because of the technical difficulties, but it looks like we're getting both!

The character trailers always include a spoiler for Spirit Bound. (Then again the entire thing can be seen as a spoiler for Last Sacrifice. ;-) So, as always, watch at your own peril.

As usual: Every image a clue, every word a possibility.

The fifth teaser quote will premiere on December 4.

VA Dimitri Belikov Trailer

Well, it's finally here! The one many of us have been waiting for! ;-)

Penguin Paranormal has posted Dimitri Belikov's character trailer. As always, there is a spoiler for Spirit Bound in the character videos. (Although, the fact that there is a Dimitri Belikov trailer at all is kind of a spoiler for the earlier books as well. ;-)

Here it is:

This one really intrigued me! I wonder what the images are supposed to mean? Because, as you remember, "Every image a clue, every word a possibility". Hmm, I'm wondering about the second image...

The fourth Teaser Quote will premiere on November 29.

VA Adrian Ivashkov Trailer

Woohoo! After some technical difficulties, we finally have our Adrian Ivashkov Trailer!

Penguin Australia just posted it - and here it is:

As with all the character trailers, there is a spoiler from Spirit Bound in there. So if you haven't read the book, and don't want any spoilers - don't watch this trailer.

And as always, along with the trailer come the words "Every image a clue, every word a possibility."

What do you all think? I've actually had a bad feeling about Adrian when it comes to this ever since I read Spirit Bound. Am I the only one?

The third teaser quote will premiere on November 23.

VA Lissa Dragomir Trailer

Oh, I'm feeling a bit behind on all the news at the moment! Today I've been to a very fun birthday party, and I'm also knitting socks for Christmas presents. I really want to knit one of Adriatika's beautiful Vampire Academy scarves, but I haven't quite mastered the double knitting yet! .-)

Penguin Australia, who are the ones releasing all the teasers, are going to alternate between character and quote teasers it seems. So since the last teaser was a quote, this time we get a character trailer. The first one was about Christian, and this one is about Lissa. All the character trailers have the same theme, and contain the same spoiler for Spirit Bound, just FYI if you haven't read that book yet.

So what do you think of this one? I know there are A LOT of different guesses as to what it all means, but I'm really not sure. My only guess is that the eye color is important.

No Teasers, But A VA Christian Ozera Trailer

Yay! One good thing, and one bad thing.

The good thing: Penguin just posted a teaser trailer for Last Sacrifice!

The bad thing: It seems like we have to wait for until November 11 for the first quote to premiere.

The trailer is called VA Christian Ozera trailer. If you haven't read Spirit Bound, be aware of spoilers.

Penguin posted these words along with the trailer:

Every image is a clue, every word a possibility.

What do you think it means? And what do you think of the video? Did it make you reconsider some things?

Official List For Bookcrush-A-Thon And Requests For Fanart

You're probably familiar with Bookcrush-A-Thon, since we've mentioned it a couple of times before. It's a fun contest where voting will determine the ultimate literary crush.

The first round of voting is now completed, and it's time for the Survivor style elimination to commence. ;-) Before that, though, we got a complete list of votes for all the nominees.

These are the results for all of our Vampire Academy guys:

11. Dimitri Belikov VAMPIRE ACADEMY, Richelle Mead (59)
15. Adrian Ivashkov VAMPIRE ACADEMY, Richelle Mead (53)
23. Christian Ozera VAMPIRE ACADEMY, Richelle Mead (36)
44. Mason Ashford VAMPIRE ACADEMY, Richelle Mead (13)
52. Eddie Castile VAMPIRE ACADEMY, Richelle Mead (5)

Eddie and Mason didn't make it into the final 24, and unfortunately, due to ties between some of the characters, Christian ended up just outside the final 24. However, we still have Dimitri and Adrian left to vote for!

Bookcrush-A-Thon are looking for fan art now, to represent the final 24 candidates. So if you have a particular fan art piece that you think represents Adrian or Dimitri (or any of the other nominated characters), visit the site and submit your recommendations.


I just had to mention one of my all time favorite literary characters, who was nominated, but unfortunately didn't make it into the final 24 either - Jamie Fraser OUTLANDER, Diana Gabaldon. I don't know if it was because not enough people have read the books, or maybe the people voting are a bit younger in general than those who've read Outlander, but I have to say if you haven't read the books, you really should. They're absolutely amazing!! Just an FYI: They are adult books.

I also had to say that I loved the fact that Jane Austen's Mr Darcy is in the running too; that one of the classics managed to squeeze in among the newbies :-)

What did you think about the final 24?

Vampire Academy Inking Has Begun + A Dimitri Hair Poll

A week or so ago, Richelle told us that she had gotten to read the script for Vampire Academy the Graphic Novel. I guess this means that drawing of the pictures can begin in earnest?

Emma Vieceli, the artist who has been given the great privilege of drawing Rose, Dimitri, Lissa and the others, tweeted this just the other day:

And a couple of days ago, she reported that she was two pages into inking!

She also posted a really fun VA poll. :-)


My answer was that I really love him with his hair down since it's a sign he's more relaxed, and that he isn't working, like when Rose comes to his room in Vampire Academy. Emma replied that that scene was in the test pages!

From what I could gather by the responses, there was a slight preference for Dimitri with his hair down. My opinion about how I like that Dimitri's hair up or down represents different sides of him, the fighting side and the more relaxed, seems to be the way Emma is looking at it as well. If you want the hair down to make an impact, then you have to have it up most of the time. Or what do you think?

The whole discussion made me so excited about the graphic novel! Even if there is a movie, it will take a lot of time before we get to see it, so the graphic novel is going to be the first time we see the book realized in pictures.

Follow Emma on Twitter, och visit her website to find out more about her.

Vampire Academy Re-Read Podcast Part 1

Hopefully you've all heard about the re-read of the Vampire Academy series that Vampire Book Club is hosting. (If not, you can check out the banner in our sidebar.) I'd already been thinking about re-reading to refresh my memory with all the little details that may have slipped by me in the first read, but their initiative made me even more excited.

First I'd thought of doing some kind of review here on the blog for each book I read. But just starting to read the first book, made me think of so many things, and I realized it would be too much to write everything down in one single review. So I decided to to a podcast instead!

I don't know if you know, but Stephanie and I have already done one episode of a podcast that we planned along with the site. We call the podcast Frostbite, and that is the reason for our twitter name being @VAfrostbite. Unfortunately we haven't had time to do any more together, which is really a pity, because it was really very fun! Hopefully, fingers crossed, we'll be able to do a podcast at least before Last Sacrifice is released.

So anyway, this podcast is something I've done on my own, which makes it even more nerve-wracking than a normal podcast. :-) I'm not very used to talking for long stretches by myself. Also, since English isn't my first language there are a lot more "uhms" in there than I'd like. Please take those facts into account when listening to the podcast, but hopefully it's not so horrible that you can't listen to it. :-)

If you want to listen to the podcast, you can either subscribe to our channel here, where you'll also find our first podcast.
Or you can download the mp3 here.

To those of you who listen to the podcast: What are your thoughts of my thoughts? :D

Vampire Academy Focus Of Weekly Book Chat At Bitten By Books

Over at Bitten by Books, they have a weekly book chat, and this week they're talking about Vampire Academy!

Their discussion questions for the books are:

1.) If you were Rose, what are some of the decisions she made that you would have chosen differently?

2.) Aside from Rose, who are your favorite characters from the series?

3.) Book Six, Last Sacrifice, will be the last in the series. What are some things you would like to see happen to end the series?

All great questions! However, there are a lot of great comments about Vampire Academy as a whole as well.

So swing over to Bitten by Books and give your opinion about things. Just be on the lookout for spoilers if you haven't read all the books.

Book-Crush-A-Thon Lightning Round

A few days ago we wrote about Book-Crush-A-Thon, where you vote for your favorite book crush, and the characters then go head to head until we finally have a winner crowned as the ultimate literary crush. :-)

Voting in the first round has closed, but there are a few ties, which means that before the duels can happen, there will be some polls to determine the order of the top 24. If I've understood it correctly, I don't think this voting is determining whether they will go through to the second round.

For example, Dimitri tied with Patch from Hush Hush in the first round. I'm guessing that the voting will be seeded in some way, which is why it's important what order the book crushes are in, in the first round.

So if you want to give Christian and Dimitri an advantage, visit Book-Crush-A-Thon and vote! From what I can gather, Adrian has already been voted through.

Voting will last through Monday October 11.

Book-Crush-A-Thon: Vote For The Vampire Academy Boys

I was planning to write another blog post today, but I'm really tired so I think it'll have to wait until tomorrow. Instead I'm going to write about something really fun!

I don't know how many of you that have heard about the Bookcrush-A-Thon. It started out as a pretty small thing, but with attention from readers and authors, it has grown, and I'm hearing a lot about it on Twitter.

This is the creator of Bookcrush-A-Thon explaining why she started it:

Bookcrush-A-Thon is a fangirly celebration for the best part of every YA book... the totally dreamy fictional guy who could never exist in real life!

There's been a lot of hoopla lately about Team Edward and Team Jacob, Team Peeta and Team Gale, Team Shadowhunter, Team Vampire, Team Werewolf, Team Mortals, Team Immortals, Team Team Team Team Team team team team...

...and I thought, "I wonder whose Team really has the most might."

So now Bookcrush-A-Thon is borne! It's a friendly competition ONLY. NO BASHING IS ALLOWED!

Each round of bookcrushathon will last approximately six months. Twenty-four dreamy bookcrushes. One ultimately dreamy winner per Round! Each week, one more bookcrush will be eliminated until only one is left! It's like Survivor, only not stupid.

So what we're looking at right now are the primaries to decide which characters are going to be the twenty-four crushes who will go head to head. :-) The primaries will end on October 8th.

Dimitri, Adrian and Christian are all doing well. Eddie and Mason on the hand, I think are lagging a bit behind. If you want to support our Vampire Academy boys, visit Bookcrush-A-Thon and vote for your favorites! Make sure you read their rules for voting.

I think you may have to be a LiveJournal user to be able to vote in the polls.

Speculation

Although the hardcover of Spirit Bound is available in Sweden right now, I won't be buying it yet.

I'm a huge fan of audiobooks and find nothing more rewarding when you can spend hours upon hours of reading, and doing other things at the same time! I'm nothing if not a multitasker!
I also love book collections, so I'm saving my book-buying cravings for december when the Last Sacrifice is released, and hopefully a ton of collections to!

So...  right now I'm waiting for the e-book version, and can't wait!!!!

So many speculations in my head, and so many things can happen...

I don't want to spoil anyone, so after the break is a total book 3-4 spoiler