Just a quick post to catch up on a few things and let you know I'm still alive. First up, today is the last day to nominate books for the 2011 Teen Choice Book of the Year. Naturally, I'm advocating for Bloodlines, but you can of course vote for any other book. In fact, you can nominate up to five, so you can pick a bunch of your faves--which is good, since 2011 saw tons of awesome new YA books. The link to nominate is here, and they have a link there that will take you to a list of popular 2011 books. You don't have to pick from that list, though. You can write in any nomination, so long as it was a 2011 YA release.

The other thing I wanted to address was a couple of questions I got. First, regarding my new series (see previous post), a few people had asked if it was only going to be two books long since that's what the deal was for. The answer: hopefully not! I've got lots more planned. Book deals are always done in batches, even if the author intends on having five, twelve, etc. books. Vampire Academy was initially sold in a two-book contract. Then we sold the third in another contract. Four and five had their own contract, and finally, book six was rolled into another deal with the Bloodlines books. So, provided you like Age of X, we should be seeing more of those as time goes on.

The other question I've been asked a lot pertains to The Golden Lily description (see previous previous post). Some readers asked if the guy mentioned there, Brayden, was actually Ian, the Alchemist from Last Sacrifice. At first, I thought that was a weird question. Then I remembered the Tomas/Mikhail mishap, and I realized that when it comes to Richelle Mead, that really isn't an unreasonable question. The answer: no, Brayden and Ian aren't the same character. There was no naming mistake this time! Brayden is a new person you'll meet in TGL, and Ian is off waiting in the wings somewhere.