ANTFIGHTER! contest, or I seem to be joining a lot of groups lately…

WE ARE ANTFIGHTER! AND WE WILL ROCK YOU!

…although I guess it depends on your definition of “a lot” – for a jittery introvert like myself, any number of groups greater than ONE pretty much qualifies. So it’s unusual and gratifying to find myself with opportunities to join all these new conglomerations of kidlit people, not the least of which is ANTFIGHTER!, the brand-new imaginary Twitter band that was just founded by Jenn Hubbard, Sarah Stevenson (who created the “all ants must die” logo to the right) and myself. Just so you understand, it isn’t just Antfighter, it’s ANTFIGHTER! with the exclamation point. Or maybe AntFighter! Or perhaps just Antfighter! The point is, punctuation matters, people. We are writers, are we not? ARE WE NOT WRITERS?

The maximumrocknroll glory that is ANTFIGHTER! originated in a very off-hand Twitter conversation about the ants that established, healthy, teeming, revolting colonies in the root systems of my office houseplants while I was out on paternity leave. In fact it’s funny how many of my writing-related group affiliations originally sprang from my silly and borderline-sociopathic online presence – signing with my agent, for example. Joan is the best agent I could hope for, and EMLA is a fantastic group to be part of . Likewise, I’m elated to be a part of the Arthur A. Levine Books family. In both cases it really does feel like I’ve joined a family – I can still hardly believe my good fortune.

There are sub-groups within those groups, of course, including EMU’s Debuts, a blog community that you may have checked out already – it’s a group of my fellow EMLA clients who, like me, have received book deals and are navigating the trip between contract and release date. They were gracious enough to dilute the quality of their collective greatness by inviting me onboard, and as a result some of my “oh dude this is a blog post about being, duh, a writer” activity will migrate over there. Well worth the change, if you ask me – it’s really fun to be collectively sharing publication stories like that, especially for a stage of the process that doesn’t seem to get as much airplay as the periods immediately before (querying agents/editors) and after (shiny new book hitting the shelves). So stay tuned ovah there.

I will give you a teaser about an upcoming EMU Debut post of mine, however – I GOT MY EDITORIAL LETTER TODAY! Yee-haw! Yes, I’m gonna leave you hanging, mwahahahaha, because I am a terrible, terrible tease. Anyway, I feel like running a contest! And in honor of some of these groups I’ve been lucky enough to join, here it is.

YOUR TASK: Name the imaginary debut album from imaginary Twitter band Antfighter! Leave it in a comment here, for which you’ll get 1 entry. For an additional entry, fire off a tweet to me (@mike_jung), Sarah (@aquafortis) and Jenn (@JennRHubbard) with your album title, even if it’s just “Hey @mike_jung, @aquafortis & @JennRHubbard, my album title is ANTFIGHTER! $%&*ING RULES!” Get the idea? Of course you do.

WHO WILL WIN: Whatever entry gets randomly selected. Don’t mistake that to mean I don’t employ favoritism – I’m all about favoritism, fear me, YOU NEED TO FEAR ME – but ehh, random is easier.

THE PRIZE: One shiny new book from any of the following groups (see that? See what I did there with the groups and all that? Eh? Eh?):

• Books by clients of the Erin Murphy Literary Agency;
• Books published by Arthur A. Levine Books;
• Books by Jenn Hubbard that are titled The Secret Year; and
• Books by Sarah Stevenson that are titled The Latte Rebellion.

ETA The Deadline: Oh I don’t know – let’s say a week from now. Midnight Pacific time next Friday, January 21.

Ready? Go! ANTFIGHTER! $%&*ING RULES!
m.