First up, the results of the lolcat contest will come sometime tomorrow, so stay tuned! Second, I wanted to thank everyone for all of the wedding well wishes. We really appreciate it! As some have guessed, the wedding was indeed in Napa, California. Good eye, you guys. It was really beautiful down there, even if it was chilly (though not nearly as cold as Seattle right now or most of the U.S.). The photography was done by Richard Wood, whom I heartily recommend if you ever need pics down in wine country.

I also wanted to add that I'll be autographing another batch of mail order books at University Bookstore on Monday. So, if you have orders pending with them, the books'll ship that day or Tuesday and should make it out in plenty of time for the holidays (at least domestically). I'll try to stop by the store again before Christmas, but if you want any autographed copies for gifts, placing an order by Monday is probably the safest call. As always, info on ordering is right here. Some people have asked what happens with the boxed VA sets. For those, I sign all three books, and then the store shrink wraps them all nicely together again.

Also on the topic of gifts, Synde has made some more Vampire Academy jewelry and, per people's requests, has branched into some chotki-style bracelets that are pretty sweet. The link to her store is here, though last I saw, stuff was moving pretty fast! Check it out.

Okay, last order of business: new book covers. Things have been pretty business in Europe. First, we have the German cover of Storm Born:





Next up, the German cover of Blood Promise.





And (can't remember if I've shown this one already) the German cover of Succubus Heat:





This last pair is kind of a surprise. Until now, all of the English speaking countries who publish VA have kept the American covers. Well, part way through the series, the UK appears to have (ironically) rebelled:








I wouldn't be surprised if the earlier books in the series are re-released to match, but I have no real evidence to support that theory. I'll definitely keep you posted. Also for the UK: you guys will be synced up with the US and Australia when Spirit Bound comes out, meaning it will hit your shelves the same day it hits ours. No need for importing!

So, here's what we've got today: all sorts of international news. I'm way behind in updating the international section of my website, but since its last overhaul, I've had some sales in other countries.

In Georgina's world, succubus books have recently sold Vietnamese and Thai publishing rights. I didn't see those coming. Also since my last website update, Vampire Academy has sold rights in: Hungary, Israel, Vietnam, Japan, Denmark, and Indonesia. The international link above has info on all the other translations that have sold in the past.

I've mentioned this before, but once foreign rights are sold, the books kind of drop off the radar for me. I'm not always told when they'll come out, so I have no info about their publishing schedules. Some companies do fast translations; others don't. I also don't really have a lot of control over which countries buy publishing rights. My agency and publisher pitch the respective series to international publishers, and then it just depends on who makes an offer.

Anyway, here are covers of recent ones that have hit the shelves (or are about to) around the world. Thanks to Arancha for hunting down many of these.


Bulgarian Vampire Academy:





Swedish Shadow Kiss





Turkish Frostbite





Larger shot of the Russian Frostbite that I posted before:





German Succubus Dreams:





Hungarian Vampire Academy, similar to the German VA, plus it has its own website:




Good times. I don't control these covers any more than I control the US ones, but I love seeing how each culture interprets the story. It's always a fun surprise.

First off, I feel the need to clear up some info about my trip to Blockbuster. Some people were shocked I went into a real video store, and many suggested Netflix or whatnot for True Blood. I'm actually a subscriber to Blockbuster's online service, and I get 99% of my movies through the mail. But, TB is pretty backed up with them, and after my luck last week with finding so much TB in at the store, I wanted to do the mail-order-trade-in they let you do. So, yeah, I'm a big believer in the online services. And iTunes in a pinch.

Second, the Dmitri working at Blockbuster is not a clone of the Dimitri in my books. So, no, I'm not giving up his location if you want to see him. :) Sorry to those of you who have been emailing about it and asking! And many thanks to those of you who weighed in about Russian martial arts and sent pics of Comrade Winnie the Pooh. Good times.

Succubus Blues sold publishing rights in Poland! Go Eastern Europe!

Bitten By Books, who delights in testing my nerves and competitive nature, has nominated Dimitri for their "I'm Too Sexy Poll". I will say no more.

The ex-KGB neighbors are continuing to load stuff into their cars...

And lastly, I now know the cities I'll be visiting for my Blood Promise tour in late August/Early September. Now, before I give you these, I want to state again for those whose cities I won't be in that 1. It's impossible for me to visit every place, and 2. These are set up by my awesome publisher, who has really good connections to some fun bookstores in these cities. It's out of my control, and I'm so sorry if I can't visit you.

***I'll be providing store names and addresses later, but at a glance, here are the dates and cities.*** I've listed the larger metro area first and then the actual signing spot after it, if it's in a suburb or smaller city. Alpharetta folks--take note. Your signing changed from 9/2 to 9/3.

August 25---Seattle, WA
August 26---Los Angeles, CA (Upland)
August 27---San Francisco, CA
August 28---Denver/Boulder, CO
August 29---Houston and Austin, TX
August 31---Detroit, MI (Birmingham)
September 1---Chicago, IL (Naperville)
September 2---Lexington, KY
September 3---Alpharetta, GA
September 4-7---Atlanta, GA (DragonCon)
September 8---Baltimore, MD (Ellicott City)
September 9---Washington, DC (Fairfax, VA)
September 10---Boston, MA (Burlington)
September 12-19---Australia (Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney) Schedule TBA

Thank you so, so much to my wonderful team at Razorbill for sending me to these places. I am so grateful and honored for their support with my career and appreciate all these wonderful events they've arranged! I hope if any of you live near these places, you'll come visit. And if I don't see you, hang in there for another time, and remember you can always get me to sign books for you via University Bookstore--who's taking pre-orders for Blood Promise now.

I'm afraid there's little to report with my neighbors. Their house still remains quiet, and the letters are still taped up. Yesterday, while I was gardening, a car drove through the neighborhood like they were lost and eventually pulled into the KGB driveway. A young woman got out, peered around, and then drove off. May have been unrelated.

Oh, and Mr. HOA president put notes on everyone else's door stating that for true enforcement, we need to report times and dates of infractions. I kind of wished I'd been able to chat with him when he stopped by, but I won't answer the door in my robe.

Meanwhile, here's the latest in my world. Just got the cover for the French edition of Succubus Nights. There's always a little confusion over this, but Succubus Nights is what the UK publishers changed Succubus on Top to. So, this is Georgina #2. A lot of people wonder why covers and titles are different in other countries, but there are lots of cultural differences and customs which don't always match American ones and need to be adjusted.

Here ya go. I am tres pleased with Jean-Sebastien Rossbach's art once again:





Lastly, Vampire Academy is continuing its world tour and selling rights in Slovenia, Hungary, and Bulgaria. Woot!

So, I'm not sure if you guys realize this, but a lot of the foreign covers I show you are ones I personally hunted down. Once I sell the rights to a foreign publisher, I often lose my connection to the book. Any format my book can be produced in (English book, French book, ebook, movie) is a right I own, but when I give it away, it's gone.

Naturally, I still have a huge role to play and opinions to give with my American publishers--largely because they've bought books that aren't written yet, and we all have to be involved in the process. But the foreign publishers get the books when they're finished, and often, that's the last contact I have with them. I don't know their release dates, and if they don't need help in translation, I may never hear from the editors.

Anyway, the international publishers usually send copies of the books once they're out. Sometimes not. More often than not, I'm faster at finding them online because I'm just self-centered enough to go hunting them. Finding my books in countries with Amazon (UK, France, Germany) is easy. Other countries? Not so easy. And one of the biggest trials for me has been finding the Russian edition of Succubus Blues.

A huge part of this isn't just because it's translated into a foreign language. Russian uses a different alphabet. So, I can't just Google 'Richelle Mead Russian Succubus Blues.' That's not going to turn up anything on a Cyrillic book website. Even using a website that converts into Cyrillic letters isn't useful because there's always a little fuzziness in transliteration, and 'Richelle' and 'succubus' are hardly standardized words--not to mention the likelihood that the book got a different title that doesn't even use 'succubus.' So, for almost a year, I've been doing every search I can think of in Cyrillic, scouring Russian book websites.

Well, last night, I was hit with inspiration. I figured 'vampire' was a pretty common word and probably had a standardized Russian/Cyrillic form. I thought it might help with the search. I put it into a Russian book website and generated a huge list of vampire books. Now, the authors and titles were still in Cyrillic, which made it hard to identify anything. Finally, I saw a cover that I thought looked like a succubus. It was just a hunch, but I ran parts of its description through a Russian web translator, and some of it seemed like a likely candidate. Finally, I did a web search on the author's Cyrillic name and got lots of hits on other Russian book websites. And guess what? One translated it into English: Richelle Mead. So, here we are, the Russian Succubus Blues:





Who'd have guessed? That certainly doesn't look like my name! And the title translates as Fallen Angel (though Google's translating service actually claims it's Sabrina the Teenage Witch--no joke). Sorry for the long-winded tale here, but finding this has been an epic adventure (as everyone on Twitter found out last night), and I feel like I just won a ginormous scavenger hunt. Best of all, if I can get a copy, I now have something to bring to the ex-KGB neighbors...

Following yesterday's highly artistic German covers of Succubus on Top and Shadow Kiss, readers have sent in more foreign editions that have a very different style.

First, I have the Swedish covers of Vampire Academy and Frostbite, sent to me by an unnamed Spanish reader who runs a VA blog. I'd seen these a long time ago and totally forgotten about them. Thanks for reminding me!







Then, sent by Beatriz, is a cover I hadn't yet seen. It's the Portuguese edition of Shadow Kiss, and it's odd that the first two VAs haven't surfaced yet since I sold rights to all three. Equally odd is that I hadn't thought the Portuguese contracts had even been processed yet! Regardless, here it is. Thanks, Beatriz.





For those curious about my books' worldly adventures, here's what I can recall off the top of my head. The succubus series currently has books out in German, French, and Spanish, as well as an English edition in the UK. It's also sold Russian rights.

The Vampire Academy series has books out (or is on the verge of it) in German, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil and Portugal), and Swedish. UK and Australian English copies are out as well. It's also sold Italian, Russian, Polish, Korean, Chinese, Turkish, and Czech rights.

Storm Born has a UK presence and has sold German rights. I swear there's another, but I can't recall. All of these translations go out of my hands once they're sold, so if the book's not out yet, I have no publication date to give you. Some can take quite awhile. And if you can't find one of the foreign books that's already out, I can't help much there either unless it's on a big site like Amazon.de or Amazon.fr.

I'm given to understand that the Russian VA is about to come out, so if anyone sees that cover or any of the others, certainly feel free to pass them on!

Actually, it's a good to be me too. While vanity surfing on Amazon.de, I noticed that I had two new covers up over there. Considering how long it takes translations and foreign editions to come out, finding two at once is quite a treat.

First, Succubus on Top:





And then, Shadow Kiss:





New cover days--domestic or international--are my favorite days. :)

lolcatz called me out tonight and asked if I was now blogging on a weekly basis. Since he's not feeling well, I decided to humor him and put something up:





This is the French cover of Succubus Blues, which I believe comes out over in France either at the end of this month or next month. The artwork is by wonderful artist Jean-Sebastien Rossbach. I'd posted this on Facebook but just realized that I hadn't put it up here yet. Pretty sweet.

And no, I'm not blogging on a weekly basis...I'll pick up the pace here soon, honest!

Thanks for yesterday's feedback on Lili's cover, guys. Covers are a mysterious industry, so it's nice to hear what people think. And speaking of covers, take a look at what my German publishers have come out with:





That's the German cover for Frostbite. The title there translates as "blue blood." I'm not sure if they just retitled it altogether or if that's an expression for the phenomenon of frostbite, just like "the bends" is an expression for that one thing divers get. (German speakers, feel free to weigh in. And divers too).

This book comes out in June over in Germany and its affiliates. The first VA book--whose German title is even more unpronounceable--will be out over there next week. If you missed that cool cover, it's here.

In the ongoing quest to make VA available to everyone, there is now a large print version of Vampire Academy up on Amazon. I'm not entirely sure when it's available. It says it's on pre-order but that it was released a couple of days ago. If it's something you're interested in, keep checking back.

Finally, Amazon also has this program where it generates key words and phrases found in a book. Here's what it found for Vampire Academy:





If anyone had told me years ago that I'd be writing books that generated those as key words, I would have said they were crazy. But I guess this is how I roll now. Achtung!

Hey, remember when I said the German title of Vampire Academy would translate as Blood Sisters? Well, its cover translates as AWESOME:





I was back in my hotel after an utterly amazing day and thought, "Man, today would be beyond awesome if the German cover of VA was on Amazon.de." And, lo! There it is. Very exciting. I love it, but by now, you've figured out that I love all my covers. The bat totally rocks it.

And today truly was awesome. I have tons of pics and lots of write-up, but I've got to be to the airport crazy early. So, I'm off to bed now and will give you the scoop on New York City once I'm safely back home in Seattle.

I've resigned myself to that fact that I'm not going to see any new book covers until at least spring of next year. It's sad, but that's the way it has to be--

--at least in this country.

Friends, I give you the German cover of Succubus Blues:



Pretty sweet, eh? The artist is Agnieszka Szuba, and I think she did an amazing job. I guess the title is going to stay in English, which means my hopes of Die Sukkubus are dashed. It's okay, though. I spoke to my German editor at UBooks, and they're really excited about the book. They sound like a great group of people, and I'm hoping to meet them in L.A. Not sure when release is yet.

As a side note, I give you the most bizarre/wrong product I've seen in quite a while:



With a slogan like "Just point, blast, and cook!", how can you not be sold? Watch the demo video. It's--dare I say it?--a blast.