So, as some of you might know, I’m leaving for my honeymoon in a bit more than two weeks. The catch is that the BF/H took the matter very much to heart, and that the destination itself is going to remain a complete surprise until the day we board the plane.

As some of you might also know, my first novel, the Aztec noir fantasy Servant of the Underworld, will be released in the US and Canada on October 26th, in a little more than a month. I’ve always said I was going to do a competition to celebrate the release, but I had no idea what it could be about.

Well, now I’ve got the perfect idea. Take a stab at where you think I might be headed, and get a chance to win a copy of Servant of the Underworld and awesome Aztec swag.

Servant of the Underworld cover>Asimov's February 2010

Here are the rules:

  1. The contest will be open from now until October 9th. You may enter by leaving a comment either at my main website, or at the LJ mirror.
  2. Prizes are as follow:
    • First Prize: A signed copy of Servant of the Underworld, an Aztec Fifth Sun coaster, and a nifty SoU bookmark.
    • Runner-Up Prize: a SoU bookmark, and a signed copy of the February 2010 Asimov’s issue, which contains my alt-hist short story “The Wind-Blown Man”.
  3. Anyone may enter, worldwide (bar those few people who already know the destination. You know who you are). You may only enter once.
  4. Announcing the winner is a teensy bit tricky, since I might be headed for the biggest Internet black hole ever, but I’ll do my best to post as soon as possible (worst-case scenario, October 24th, when we come back home. I hope it doesn’t come to that…).
  5. Guesses may be a country or a more specific area; I’ll tabulate the distance from the boundaries. Winners will be ranked by distance to our destination (if it becomes too hard to judge–ie lots of people with similar distances to our real destination–, I reserve the right to sort out the closest people at random).
  6. To help you a bit, the following countries are excluded from the guess list (because it’s been explicitly said by the H we wouldn’t go there): Antigua, Bahamas, Belgium, Egypt, England, Germany, Greece, Italy, Morocco, The Netherlands, Seychelles, Spain, USA, Vietnam.
  7. I don’t have much in the way of clues other than the fact that there are historical remains there (broadly taken to mean anything pre-20th Century in sufficient quantities). Also, French isn’t spoken there, and English probably isn’t an official language either (I got echoes from websites with horrific English vocabulary and grammar).

There you go–have fun!

PS: I don’t ask for this often, but if you feel like signal boosting… It’s going to be much funnier for me and everyone else if we have enough entries.
PPS: I’ll post pictures of the coaster once I get home. It’s simili-stone with a Fifth Movement Glyph, very pretty. Picture posted.

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