Giving stuff away!

So it's come to my attention that the paperback of CRASHED will be out next week (in anticipation for next month's release of WIRED, the final book in the trilogy!) and it seemed like I should do something to celebrate.

(If you're impatient, scroll down for the CONTEST INFORMATION.)

In other related - in a way which will soon become evident - news, I finally got my first smartphone. And let me tell you, the view from the 21st century is pretty damn good. This phone may never leave my hand again.

The thing is, despite the fact that I have been desperately craving an iPhone since they were first released, this bright and shiny new phone is, in fact, an Android.

(So: Awesome. Just not quite as Apple-y awesome as my inner Apple fangirl tells me the iPhone would be. Shut up, inner Apple fangirl.)

I'm forced to admit that the Android does a couple things that even the iPhone can't do, and one of them is that it makes it absurdly easy for you to design your own apps, even if, like me, you know nothing about computer programming.

Okay, "nothing" may be a very slight overstatement, as, back in the dark ages of late 80s/early 90s computing, when I was a nerdy kid with big glasses and a deep love for Apple 2e's, I did spend a year trying very hard to learn how to program in BASIC - but unfortunately I did so using the only resource I had, a book I'd inexplicably received as a gift called "Aleph Basic," that explained things like how you could program your computer to tell you how many days it was until the Sabbath.  Using this book, I did manage to write an extremely rousing adventure game about Judah Maccabee, but then the book ended, and with it, my programming career.

What is my point? My point is that supposedly, with this application, even people like me who know nothing about anything can create their very own app. Probably it's not as easy as they make it sound.

Don't care. I'm going to try it anyway. Which is where you come in.

(CONTEST INFORMATION STARTS HERE) Want to win signed paperback copies of SKINNED and CRASHED? All you need to do is come up with an idea for an app. The only requirement is that the app has to have something to with:

-me OR
-any of my books OR
-YA lit in general

I'll pick two winners.  One at random, and one just because I think their idea is the coolest.

(Even if it's something I can't actually make.  Which I think we can all agree is a distinct possibility.)

Leave your entry in the comments, or email me. Deadline is August 3, the day CRASHED comes out.

Oh, and if anyone wants to build me an app themselves? You automatically get a copy of the entire trilogy, including a hot-off-the-presses copy of WIRED. (Don't worry, I'm not holding my breath on that one...)