Posts Tagged ‘freebies’

A deleted scene from Body

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

Hello friends and readers! The second Agency novel, The Body at the Tower, hits stores in North America in just over a month. That really sneaked up on me. To celebrate, I thought I’d offer you a deleted scene from the novel.

Context: When James Easton goes to India, he catches a severe case of malaria. On the voyage home, still just recovering from his illness, he becomes acquainted with Jeremy and Sybil Alleyn, a brother-and-sister duo who were raised in India. Sadly, Body became very long and one of the things I had to cut was the Alleyns’s appearance. I do, however, have high hopes for them. This won’t be the last time you see them.

There’s nothing spoiler-ish here, so you can read with impunity. When you’re done with this scene, read the official excerpts from the finished novel, if you haven’t already!

Click here for the deleted scene from The Body at the Tower

Click here for an excerpt from Body

Download the prologue & first chapter from Candlewick Press

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Posted in The Body at the Tower | 5 Comments »

Happy birthday, QV!

Monday, May 24th, 2010

portrait by Sir George Hayter*

Did you know that Canadians celebrate the anniversary of Queen Victoria’s birth each year? Truly. May 24 (or the closest Monday to it) is a national holiday. It’s a bizarre little colonial hangover** but today’s the day, and I could hardly let it pass unremarked.

The real reason I’m posting today is because I’ve put up an excerpt from The Agency 2: The Body at the Tower. Click here to read! And do come back next week, when I’ll have sent off the ms for book 3, The Traitor and the Tunnel and will feel celebratory as a result. Yes, I think a contest is in order…

Hope you enjoy the snippet!

*This image is from the National Portrait Gallery. There’s some nice context for it here.

**Okay, okay – most Canadians are either doing yardwork or getting drunk and falling out of sailboats. But hey, it’s an extra stat hol.

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Posted in Books, The Body at the Tower | 4 Comments »

More loot! aka the “If I were a spy…” contest

Monday, March 1st, 2010

Come to my book launch party on March 9! Details here.

To celebrate my North American debut, I’m giving away 3 fabulous prize packages. These will include a shiny new hardcover copy of The Agency: A Spy in the House and an Agency t-shirt. These will be randomly drawn.

There will be a fourth mystery prize, not randomly drawn, and this will go to the entry that makes me laugh really, really, hard. Ideally, it will make me spurt coffee out my nose. Yes, I’m that classy, and also willing to suffer for a joke.
Mystery prize rule 1: I reserve the right not to give this out at all.
Mystery prize rule 2: A randomly drawn winner may also win this extra prize.

So, what do you have to do? Simply leave a comment below that completes this sentence: “If I were a spy…” You can enter more than once by spreading the word on Twitter, Facebook or at your blog (1 extra entry for each means of dissemination). Tell me what you did in your comment. This contest closes on March 31.

Good luck, everyone!

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Posted in Uncategorized | 103 Comments »

The first shiny hardcover! plus contest winners

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

(Looking for launch party details? Click here.)

This week, the wonderful Deborah Wayshak of Candlewick Press sent me an advance copy of the Real Deal. Yes, a crisply dust-jacketed, super-extra-luminous copy of A Spy in the House. It’s a hardcover. It makes me a little bit dizzy. And if you’re in my house, seriously – don’t even breathe on it.

A Spy in the House dustjacket

I haven’t been able to take a photograph that truly conveys the depth and lustre of the dust jacket. But! It looks pretty cool on the shelf, non? (The whole photo is extra-warmly lit. This is not a pretentious artistic device on my part, but an attempt to avoid using the flash.)

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And now, the lucky devils who won the First Lines Contest:

The second and third place winners of the Walker Books edition of The Agency: A Spy in the House are Becky Earl and Catherine N!

And the winner of the Grand Prize – an ARC of the Candlewick Press edition of Spy and an exclusive Agency t-shirt is Lexie C!

I like giving things away, you enjoy receiving swag (I assume), so congratulations all around.

And for those of you who entered and are now feeling victimized by the evil machinations of random.org, never fear – there will be a New and Even More Amusing Contest happening… ooh, right around March 9, I’d say.

No idea why.

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Posted in A Spy in the House, Books | 5 Comments »

The First Lines Contest

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

It’s 6 weeks before the official North American release of A Spy in the House and I feel giddy, celebratory, and rather nervous. What to do then, but give away swag? Please join me in celebrating my North American debut – enter the contest, and encourage your friends to do the same!

The first-prize winner will receive a Candlewick Press ARC of A Spy in the House (featuring the cover at left) and one of these custom-made, not-for-sale-anywhere Agency t-shirts.

Don't worry; it doesn't say "Trainee Spy" on the back.

Don't worry; it doesn't say "Trainee Spy" on the back.

Second- and third-prize winners will each get a copy of the UK edition of Spy

That's the Walker Books ed, which looks like this.

It looks like this.

To enter, email me the answer to this question: What’s your favourite first line? Give me the sentence, author’s name, and the book title.

But that’s not all. You may enter a second time by announcing this contest on your blog, Twitter, or Facebook account and emailing me a link to your announcement. Please use some form of the following wording: Win an ARC of Y S Lee’s A SPY IN THE HOUSE, the first novel in the Agency series! Enter at http://yslee.com/2010/01/the-first-lines-contest/.

I’ll announce the randomly selected winners on Thursday 18 February. Good luck, everyone. I can’t wait to read your entries.

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Posted in A Spy in the House, Contests | 31 Comments »

“Where do you work?” & bookplates

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

I used to be one of those coffee shop people, hunched over a black coffee and rattling away at the keyboard. But no longer! For I now have a study, and it’s a delicious shade of blue (Benjamin Moore’s Yarmouth Blue, if you care), and all I have to do now is try to keep it as zen as it appears here.

the new study

Hah.

In other news, I have BOOKPLATES! These are basically large & fancy stickers with a blank space for personalization. If you’d like me to sign or inscribe your copy of The Agency but don’t think you’ll see me in person for a while, feel free to request one. You need to tell me exactly what you want the bookplate to say: just my signature? “For Pinkie, a goddess amongst mortals”? “To the winning eBay bidder”? As you can see from the foregoing examples, I’m rubbish at clever dedications, so it’s up to you. The design looks like this:

bookplate

I’m a sucker for old botanical drawings. And weeds. So this was pretty much a foregone conclusion. I hope you like it, too!

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La Agencia: Una espia en casa

Friday, September 25th, 2009

THE AGENCY: A SPY IN THE HOUSE is on sale now in the UK, with a full North American debut in spring 2010. Canadian availability will be patchy until then, but you can try Amazon or the Book Depository.

It went sale in Australia and New Zealand on June 1! You can link here to my Southern Hemisphere publisher, Walker Books Australia.

La Agencia

La Agencia

The Spanish edition was published on June 2. Isn’t the cover gorgeous? And my publisher, Ediciones Versatil, made a bookmark for you! Click here for the PDF.

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