New Podcast, and Winners!

Again, with that plural form of the word. Yes, we'll be sending out four copies of THE DEATH CURE to four of you. Sorry, but only four! Thanks for all the amazing comments, compliments, and feedback regarding our new podcast.

Before I announce the winners (heehee), I want to make sure you know that today, as with every Monday, there is a new episode of Wordplay up for your listening pleasure. And this one is especially awesome because we have a guest, and his name is Michael Bourret, and he's my agent. And he knows SO MUCH about the industry. So be sure and tune in!

CLICK HERE to go to the website.

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for...

I'm going to talk about football! Yes, my son had an interception in his game and was named the Defensive Player of the Game by his coaches. Huh? You couldn't care less? Okay.

Here are the winners. Be sure and get me your email address if you already haven't. Maybe you should again just to make sure I have the correct one. Congrats!!!

1. Melina, Reading Vacation

2. Danyelle Ferguson

3. Bethany

4. Gabriela Villegas

THE DEATH CURE comes out 4 weeks from tomorrow! If you missed the official tour schedule, CLICK HERE.

Tour Dates for The Death Cure

It's hard to believe, but tour time is almost here again. I'll be visiting all over the country, so I really hope a lot of you can come out and meet me. It's going to be a lot of fun! And, most of all, I'm so excited for everyone to finally find out how the trilogy ends and why it all happened in the first place.

So, here you go. Because we all know how to use Google and Maps, I'm not going to put addresses. Deal? Deal. Giving someone an address went out with the demise of the flip-phone.

Let us know in the comments if you're planning to make it out to one of these events! Can't wait:

Salt Lake City, UT
• October 11, 7:00 p.m. The King’s English Bookshop

San Francisco, CA
• October 13, 7:00 p.m. Rakestraw Books, Danville
• October 14, 7:00 p.m. Kepler’s Books, Menlo Park

Seattle, WA
• October 15, 4:00 p.m. Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park
• October 16, 2:00 p.m. Barnes & Noble, Lynwood

Phoenix, AZ
• October 18, 6:00 p.m. Barnes & Noble, Desert Ridge Marketplace

Austin, TX
• October 22-23, Texas Book Festival

Chicago, IL
• October 24, 7:00 p.m. Anderson’s Bookshop, Naperville

Milwaukee, WI
• October 25, 6:30 p.m. Greenfield Public Library

Vancouver, BC
• October 26, 7:00 p.m. Vancouver Kidsbooks, at the venue of West Point United Church Sanctuary

Atlanta, GA
• October 30, 2:00 p.m. Barnes & Noble, Alpharetta
• October 30, 7:00 p.m. Little Shop of Stories, Decatur

Las Vegas, NV

• November 3-5, Vegas Valley Book Festival

I'll also be attending conferences in Billings, MT and Lexington, KY, but I don't think they are open to the public.

If I'm missing your area this time around, I'm sorry! Keep bugging Random House and maybe you'll get on the list next tour. But I'll be sure to stay well connected throughout my time on the road.

Note: Did you enter for a chance to win an advanced copy of THE DEATH CURE? No? Then CLICK HERE to do so. The winners will be announced on Monday the 12th. (Notice the plural usage of the word winner...)

Want a copy of THE DEATH CURE?

Today's blog will be short.

Our second episode ever of the Wordplay Podcast is now up and running. Our guest this week is Ally Condie, author of MATCHED, and you can actually win a signed copy of it if you go and listen.

I'm also, as promised, throwing in a chance to win an advanced copy of THE DEATH CURE just for fun. To enter for this chance, all you have to do is post a comment on this here blog and tell us something you liked, learned, hated, ANYTHING, about the podcast from either this week or last week.

Simple right?

To go to the official Wordplay website, CLICK HERE!!!

EDIT: For those of you looking for it on iTunes, CLICK HERE

New Podcast!!!

Hi everyone! It's September 1, the beginning of the best four months of the year. And right on cue, a cool front has come through and the high today will only be 82. Nice.

I know I've promised a contest or giveaway of some sort for an advance copy of THE DEATH CURE. Well, that is coming very, very soon. Like, Monday or Tuesday soon.

But, I wanted to make sure I got on here and announced a pretty exciting thing that I'm involved with. A podcast. A very cool podcast that I think you'll want to listen to every single week for the rest of your lives.

It's called Wordplay, and I'm doing it with two extraordinary (not just ordinary - they are EXTRA ordinary) people:

Jeff Scott Savage, author of FARWORLD and my mentor, who just sold a series to Harper Collins, tentatively titled THE GRIMVILLE CASE FILES. This guy knows more about writing than any other person I've ever spoken to or heard speak. And that's saying a lot.

Nathan Bransford, author of JACOB WONDERBAR AND THE COSMIC SPACE KAPOW. He also used to be a literary agent and is extremely respected in the industry for his vast wealth of knowledge. Plus, check out the title of his book. I mean, come on.

The podcast will be about anything and everything to do with books, reading, writing, agents, publishers, you name it. We're even going to have a special podcast once a month aimed for teachers and kids. Each one will be about 20 minutes long, once a week, so you don't have to quit your jobs or anything to listen.

Jeff has really taken this thing by the horns and organized it so well. You can learn everything there is to know about it at the website he set up: CLICK HERE. You might want to bookmark that and check back every Monday for the latest episode.

The first one is already up for your listening pleasure. By the way, it's free. And you can even get it on iTunes because we're cool that way. AND, check this out: We just started and yet look at the two AMAZING guests we're going to have in the next two or three weeks:

Michael Bourret, recently awarded the Best Agent Ever award (by me) and a Vice President with the incredible agency, Dystel & Goderich.

Ally Condie, the NYT Bestselling (mega bestselling) author of MATCHED and the upcoming sequel, CROSSED. We plan to have many, many awesome guests on this podcast, and what a way to start.

So there you have it. Check out the website and listen to the first episode ever. You'll quickly learn that I'm the dumbest and goofiest-sounding of the three, but I think you'll enjoy it and maybe even learn something.

Once again, here is the website: www.wordplaypodcast.com

Also, since I've shocked the world by blogging three times in the last week or two, be sure and read my last couple of posts if you missed them, including the great review we got from Kirkus. Talk to ya next week!

Kirkus Review of The Death Cure

Wow, we are very excited to announce that Kirkus has given THE DEATH CURE an extremely positive review!!! (And yes, I'm aware that I've now blogged twice this week. Booyah.)

I can't tell you how happy this makes me. I've been so scared at how this book would be received since the last in a series is always held up to huge standards with lots of expectations. But this is the strongest validation we could've hoped for at this early stage.

Non-spoiler line: "Dashner again displays his mastery of the action sequence, making readers turn pages even as they become further invested in the well-developed characters.‬ ‪Heart pounding to the very last moment."

The full review is below, but I'm giving you a major warning. This review is FULL of spoilers. Full of them. Big ones. So if you don't like to know that kind of stuff, please don't read it.

SPOILER ALERT

Full Kirkus Review:

An explosive ending to The Maze Runner trilogy.‬

‪Thomas and the rest of the survivors of the Maze and the Scorch Trials are being held at WICKED (World in Catastrophe, Killzone Experiment Department) headquarters. Subjected to even more tests, they’ve learned enough to know that they’re all part of a massive experiment to find a cure for the pandemic Flare disease. But does any cure justify what they’ve been put through? Or the engineered deaths of their friends? It’s hard to believe that “WICKED is good,” even though that’s the message they’re bombarded with.

Discouraged, rebellious and definitely not trusting, Thomas, Newt, Minho, Brenda and Jorge break out and escape to Denver, now a walled city meant to be reserved for the uninfected and the immune. But it’s all too clear that Newt has already been infected and is teetering on the verge of madness. It’s equally clear that WICKED has put a bounty on their heads and won’t rest until they have these survivors back in hand—especially Thomas, who may have been part of all the experiments from the very beginning and is now the Final Candidate. Dashner again displays his mastery of the action sequence, making readers turn pages even as they become further invested in the well-developed characters.‬

‪Heart pounding to the very last moment.

(Science fiction/thriller. 12 and up)‬

Fall Approaches

Hey everybody! I know it's been a long time since I last blogged. I blame it on a tough, crazy summer. But the best time of the year is approaching, and I can already smell autumn in the air...

Over on twitter (follow me! CLICK HERE), I promised I'd blog today, so here I am. Keeping my promise. The only problem is I have no idea what to talk about. Hmmm...

1. First, I've never really officially announced this, but many of you have asked about the fourth (and last) book in my series, The 13th Reality. Right now it's planned to come out next spring or early summer. I would've really had to rush it to come out this year, and I didn't want to do that. Hopefully, the wait will be worth it. The series is going to have quite an ending, I promise.

2. Lots of people have also asked about what comes after the Maze Runner trilogy is done. Well, for some reason, no one ever lets me talk about anything. But I'll just say this: we have a couple of big announcements coming soon. Really big. You guys aren't getting rid of me yet. Ever, actually.

3. The Death Cure is coming out on October 11th. In case you're calendarly challenged, that's really soon. I'll be touring for three weeks, and I now know which cities: Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Seattle, Phoenix, Billings, Austin, Chicago, Milwaukee, Vancouver (Yay Canada!), Lexington, Atlanta, and Las Vegas.

4. Until then, I'm just at home, working hard, writing. For my breaks, I've been watching the show called Breaking Bad, now up to Season 2. Holy crap. I love this show. My favorite since Lost.

5. The paperback for The Scorch Trials comes out three weeks from tomorrow, on Sept. 13. Random House has started a new imprint called Ember, and this will be one of the first releases under that imprint. Why? I honestly don't know.

6. How would one or two of you like to read The Death Cure early? Really? Okay, I'll ask my publisher if we can do a contest and send a couple out for the blog. Stay tuned...

7. My eleven year old son is playing quarterback. How cool is that?

8. I thought it was really cool that Elizabeth Banks, who will be playing Effie in the upcoming Hunger Games movie, mentioned my book in her interview for New York Magazine. If you want to read it, CLICK HERE.

9. We also got our first "official" review for Death Cure, by Jason Kennedy from the Boswell Book Company in Milwaukee. It made my day, and they said I could share it with you guys. Slight spoiler warning:

"I was hesitant to start The Death Cure, what more could WICKED put Thomas through? What horrible, what torturous, what painful journey would Thomas have to complete? Would it be enough? In the clutches of WICKED and infected with the Flare, the outlook does not look promising. James Dashner does not disappoint in this bleak and exhilarating finale--I can't wait to see what he comes up with next."

Thanks, Jason!!!

10. Has anyone else out there gotten their hands on an ARC? I'd love to hear what you think.

Okay, more soon. A lot sooner than later. I promise.

BEA Report (with pics!)

Warning: There is a picture of me with Tyra Banks in this blog post...

Hi, Duders! Did you miss me? You did? I missed you, too. But there's no reason for that because you can totally hang with me every day over on Twitter, where you can join the new #dashnerarmy. The awesome @verbvixen is helping sign up soldiers. CLICK HERE to follow me.

Anyway, on to BEA, where I saw cool things like this:

BEA (Book Expo America) was an amazing week. This is the biggest event in publishing where the publishers present and promote what they have coming. I honestly don't even know where to start. But I know you guys love a glimpse into the mad world of my industry, so here you go. It'll be brief...

Monday: I arrived in NYC. It took an hour and a half to get to my hotel, which was stinky. But then I walked over to Random House HQ and had a lovely meeting with my editor, Krista Marino and the Delacorte publisher, Beverly Horowitz. Much strategizing and laughing occurred. Then there was a yummy dinner where more of this kind of thing went on.

Actually, I just realized this was the WEEK BEFORE when I also went to NYC for the Random House Fall preview event. Haha. I'll leave it. I mean, it WAS a Monday.

Tuesday: I met up with my AWESOME publicist, Emily Pourciau, who would so kindly escort me throughout the week's events. First up: ABC Speed Dating, where I took 3 minute turns at about 35 tables with booksellers and librarians. Quite the whirlwind! Then I had lunch and good times with my superhuman agents, Michael Bourret and Lauren Abramo. Much strategizing and laughing ensued.

That evening was the Random House Children's Books party, where I was incredibly honored to be one of 10 authors among hundreds of book people. It was very swanky and was held on an aircraft carrier. Yep, first time for me, too. It was so fun!

Here are two pictures of me, one with Christopher Paolini (ERAGON) and one with Tyra Banks (the upcoming MODEL LAND). You can guess which is which.

Afterward, Michael and I had a very fun, long dinner where much strategizing and laughing occurred. He's seriously one of my favorite people on planet Earth, and I love hanging out with him.

Wednesday: I did a video shoot at the Barnes and Noble headquarters for some things you'll see on BN.com this fall when the book comes out. Then we headed back to the Javits center for my signing (the chapter samplers). I met lots of cool people! Afterward I did an interview with Justine Magazine.

That evening, I was honored to be part of a panel at the Mulbery Library that included some amazing authors: Lauren Kate, Scott Westerfeld, Maureen Johnson, Ally Condie, and Ellen Hopkins. We spent an hour or so answering questions and telling stories and laughing. Then we signed and met MORE cool people.

Afterward, another great dinner out with Krista and a few others from Random House.

Thursday: I had a meeting with the good people at Simon & Schuster, including the hilarious and Batman-loving Liesa Abrams, the editor for THE 13TH REALITY. I also got to meet fellow client of Michael's and superstar Lisa McMann, who has a big series debuting this fall called THE UNWANTEDS.

I saw the Buzz Panel for middle grade where Lisa and my good friend Matthew Kirby were honored. Matt's book ICEFALL also comes out this fall.

Then I walked the floor a bit with Michael, went back to my hotel, and wrote over 4,000 words before crashing. BEA inspires you to do such things. (both the writing and the crashing.)

Friday: Flew home!

I'll post again soon about what's going on in the Dashner world. In the meantime, here is a picture of me with the three most important people in my author career: Krista, Michael, and Emily.

The Death Cure cover

I present to you the amazingly awesome combined talents of artist Philip Straub and the Random House CB design team (click on the picture below to see it nice and big). I want EVERYONE to tell me what they think in the comments.

Here is my opinion: I love it!!! It's easily my favorite of the three books, and I loved all of them (hence the three exclamation marks).

Now, what do you think? I've also included the nifty 3D version for your viewing pleasure (no glasses needed).

Please spread the word and link all your friends and family to come and have a look. Also, you can now preorder it at your preferred location: CLICK HERE. This is the third and final book of The Maze Runner trilogy and will be available on October 11th.

Three Days.... And a Story

Just making sure that everyone knows we'll be revealing the cover for THE DEATH CURE in three days. On Thursday, the 28th, at 7:00 am EST.

Any predictions on what the cover art may look like?

See you then......

EDIT: Oh, and also, Shannon Hale is hosting an event today where a bunch of authors share an embarrassing or humiliating experience at an event. CLICK HERE.

Here's mine:

I'll never forget one of my very first booksignings. It was my first book, A Door in the Woods, which was done with a small indie publisher. I had grand expectations, of course. I mean, I was a freaking published AUTHOR now!

It was the first of many, many signings which taught me that I wasn't all that, or even close to it. In fact, I was pretty much none of that. I sold one book. I basically accosted this person, begging them to take a look at my newest bestest book. It was a pity sale, no doubt.

One lady asked me where the bathroom is. Another asked me where the cookbooks are. One of the employees stood about five feet from me at one point and kept trying to sell ANOTHER AUTHOR'S BOOK to people as they walked by. I watched as many people studiously examined the store for a way to walk by me without possibility of being engaged in conversation. You would've thought I had leprosy.

I felt about 2 inches tall when it was over. And I swore to always buy a book if I ever saw someone else in the same predicament! Which is why I own some very.... odd books. But they're signed!

See you Thursday.....

Awards, Movies, Events, Announcement

Hey guys! I have a few things to tell you about. You'll wanna make sure you make it all the way to #10.

1. I'm very honored that my book, The Maze Runner, just won the 2011 Kentucky Bluegrass Award for grades 9-12. I especially love this because it was voted on by the actual students. That means more than anything. Thanks, Kentucky!

2. For all you movie and Hunger Games fans, I did a guest blog today for the website, wordandfilm.com. It's my thoughts on five kinda obscure but awesome films you can watch while you wait: CLICK HERE.

3. Looking for a good book while you wait, too? Check out the latest from my good friend Frank Cole. It's called "The Guardians of the Hidden Scepter" and anyone who likes fantasy, adventure, and humor will enjoy it. CLICK HERE.

4. I know this drives my readers who don't live in Utah crazy, but I have another big event coming up here. (Don't worry, I'll be heading all over the country here and there throughout the year, especially when Book 3 comes out in October.) This one will be in Logan, UT, at the main library, at 6:00 pm, on April 22.

Oh, and it's not just me. Some other little authors you may have heard of: Shannon Hale, Ally Condie, Brandon Mull, Jessica Day George and the illustrator Nathan Hale. Lots of NYT Bestselling authors on that there list. And one Newbery Honor winner. And one guy who's owed me dinner for over a year (Initials BM, which also happens to stand for bowel movement).

5. Other upcoming events: TLA in Austin, TX (April 13-14), Signing at The King's English in SLC (May 4, 5:00 pm), Storymakers Conference in SLC (May 6-7), Battle of the Books in St. Louis (May 10), and Book Expo America in NYC (May 24-26). I sure hope to see a lot of you!

6. I just noticed this a little after the fact, but I wanted to thank all the fans who voted for me as one of their favorite Random House authors. Quite the group! CLICK HERE.

7. You guys really need to "Like" the official Facebook page for the Maze Runner trilogy. There is some really cool stuff on there. Check out the recent youtube videos with dreamcasts for the movies, done by Shay Cohen. CLICK HERE. And friend me if you haven't yet, too.

8. Following me on twitter yet? No?!?!? Do: CLICK HERE.

9. You all need to see the movie, Insidious. Unless you're scared of haunted houses, demons, or faces of creepy old ladies reflected back at you in the window. I loved the music in this film. I also really liked The Source Code and Limitless recently.

10. Announcement: we will officially be revealing the cover for The Death Cure (coming October 11) on Thursday, April 28th, first thing in the morning. That's three weeks from today! You guys are gonna LOVE it.

Oh, and thanks again, Kentucky.