Thursday, February 11, 2010

One More State!

Thirteen Reasons Why recently won New Jersey's Garden State Book Award in the teen (grades 9-12) category. These state awards are my favorite because they're voted on by actual teens.

So let's tally this up. New Jersey holds 15 electoral college votes. Thirteen Reasons Why previously won teen book awards in Florida, Kansas, and Kentucky (27, 6, and 8 votes). In 2012, I'll be old enough to run for President...finally! If I can keep the teens in that state on my side just a couple more years, and since many of them will be able to cast their first votes by then, I could potentially have a chance at 56 electoral votes. Then I'd only need 214 more to win.

Thank you, New Jersey!!!

Okay, time to start preparing my campaign slogan.

10 comments:

Jonathon Arntson said...

Excellent plan.

Shain Brown said...

Congratulations, it's well deserved.

Jodi Kendall said...

Yay, that's MY state! :) Good job, Jersey!

setari said...

Nice on that Asher! That book deserves every award, and a movie made from it. ^-^

mira ann dowe said...

first of all, i live in nj, so your welcome! second, I just read your book. it was wonderful, thank you for writing it. im also hoping to write a book one day, any tips you could give me? and thirdly and lastly, the picture of you on your blog is nice, but the one on your book jacket is spooky and dark. any reasons why?

Jay Asher said...

Thank you, everyone!

And MESY, I always encourage future authors to join a critique group. There's nothing like getting feedback from other honest writers to help you improve your craft tremendously.

Regarding the photo, I thought it would be weird to have people read a suspenseful book about suicide and other serious issues and then have my face grinning back at them. But if you check out my January 14th post, you'll see my new author photos which aren't quite so dark...but still no toothy smiles!

Megan Bostic said...

This is awesome. Congrats!

mira ann dowe said...

youre right that it would be wierd to have a cheerful picture, but i had to read the book thinking of you as some depressed suicidal guy. glad youre not.

Stephanie Roth Sisson said...

Fantastic News! Big congratulations!

Martin Bartloff said...

Amazing, being a YA fiction author myself, I was invited to speak at Booker-T high school in Norfolk. The Librarian asked if I could read *Thirteen Reasons Why*

They are currently reading my very own YA, suicide fiction novel *Torn From Normal* and they have a class where both yours and my novel are being compared.

I started *Thirteen Reasons Why* last night and I will report back soon. :-)

--Martin Bartloff, author of Torn From Normal
http://www.amazon.com/Torn-Normal-Martin-Bartloff/dp/0615310729/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top