Pssst! Hey. Hey you. Yes, you!
What are you doing tomorrow night? Washing your hair? Seeing if you can teach your cat French? Bedazzling your medical mask so you can avoid the swine flu in style?
Well, forget all that. Because tomorrow night, do you know where I’ll be? On the Internets at There.com doing a live chat thingy-thing. And I want you–YES, YOU!–to join me.
Lock up your grandmothers! Secure your domain names! And set your phasers to stun, because tomorrow night, April 28th, from 7:00 to 8:30 pm EST, I will be chatting LIVE, LIVE, 100% LIVE at There.com to celebrate the paperback release of THE SWEET FAR THING. Bow-chick-a-wow-wow! It is so exciting that I have made the font bolder and larger to connote my excitement. My typing cannot be contained by regular 12-point font, so don’t ask me to try.
Do not accept imitation Libba when you can have the genuine reproduction article at a fraction of the cost (like FREE) on There.com for nearly two hours of rollicking, no-holds-barred Libba-ration! This item not sold in stores, people, and it’s all coming at you LIVE on your computer tomorrow night in the tantalizingly named CosmoGirl Village of There.com. (Shuffleboard on the Lido Deck! Disco fever in the Lizard Lounge! It’s avatar-rrific! Someone should stop me. Really.)
There.com is billed as "The online virtual world that is your everyday hangout." People–they have a slogan! And you could make yourself an avatar with two heads if you want! Okay, I’m making that up. I have no idea what kind of avatar you can make. They have given me a fabulous avatar complete with corset and the kind of hair that would make My Little Pony pea-green with envy. Actually, I think you can give yourself a pretty kick-butt Victorian avatar. Oooh, I wonder if they’ll let you come as Jack the Ripper with a Tiny Tim ventriloquist’s doll that says, "God bless us everyone…except for you, because you are going to die!"? (This is why no one lets me make a virtual world. It would be full of very disturbing things. And sequins. Lots and lots of sequins.)
For those of you who know how completely technologically inept I am, it might be fun to tune in and watch me continually run my avatar into a wall and listen as I say, "I can’t get away from the wall…now I’m running in place…my arm is stuck…how much health do I have? Nope. Still stuck on the wall…yeah, tried that–still stuck…" And then I’ll probably sound like Darren McGavin in "A Christmas Story" during that part when he’s downstairs trying to fix the furnace.
I actually have no freaking idea how this works. I am giddy with the possibility of epic virtual world fail. Or-or-or…it could be the single greatest experience of my life.*
So show up. Tune in. Turn on. Geek out. Fun will be had. Or I will die trying.
*Author has just downed two handfuls of malted milk balls followed by chocolate milk chaser. She is more juiced up than a roomful of toddlers after an Elmo marathon. Please disregard strange fonts and even stranger behavior.
Libba Bray 