Big congratulations to Written in Blood crit buddy Janice Hardy, whose middle-grade novel The Shifter has been released today!

Nya is an orphan struggling for survival in a city crippled by war. She is also a Taker—with her touch, she can heal injuries, pulling pain from another person into her own body. But unlike her sister, Tali, and the other Takers who become Healers’ League apprentices, Nya’s skill is flawed: She can’t push that pain into pynvium, the enchanted metal used to store it. All she can do is shift it into another person, a dangerous skill that she must keep hidden from forces occupying her city. If discovered, she’d be used as a human weapon against her own people.

Rumors of another war make Nya’s life harder, forcing her to take desperate risks just to find work and food. She pushes her luck too far and exposes her secret to a pain merchant eager to use her shifting ability for his own sinister purposes. At first Nya refuses, but when Tali and other League Healers mysteriously disappear, she’s faced with some difficult choices. As her father used to say, principles are a bargain at any price; but how many will Nya have to sell to get Tali back alive?

The book is also featured over at John Scalzi’s blog at The Big Idea, where she talks about the genesis of the novel and of how to salvage bad ideas. Go check it out (and buy your copy if you’re lucky enough to be in the US. Me, I’ll have to wait until amazon ships mine…)

You can go over to Janice’s series blog if you want more information; or to her writing blog, where she has regular posts about writing, rewriting, editing and the publishing process.

My friend and critique partner Janice Hardy, whose wonderfully dark YA novel The Shifter is coming out in October, has a contest on her blog to win an ARC:

If you’ve been to my website, you’ve noticed I love chickens. I can’t say why, I just find them hysterically adorable. So for the next ten days, send me your very best chicken jokes. The joke that makes me snarf something out my nose from laughing so hard wins a signed ARC (advance reading copy) of The Shifter.

To enter, put your entry at the bottom of Janice’s post.
(and if you don’t win, I highly recommend pre-ordering the book on amazon. It’s the pulse-racing story of a girl who can shift pain into people, and who is desperately trying to keep her head low–but finds herself faced with a dilemma when her ability turns out to be the only thing that might help her save her sister)

I was planning to put up a worldcon post today, but I’ve clogged the blog enough as it is. Tomorrow it is, then.