'Nightshade' Steps off the Bookshelf, Into the Blogosphere

Online, September 21, 2010 (Newswire.com) - Being a fictional character hasn't stopped Shay Doran from creating a series of increasingly spooky Youtube webcasts, a detailed blog, and a regularly updated Facebook page with over 700 friends and growing. He stars in the upcoming novel Nightshade, arriving at bookstores on October 19th. Debut author Andrea Cremer has brought her fictional universe to life with an invitation to readers: help Shay solve the mysteries of the centuries-old Rowan estate, and you could be written into the official Nightshade prequel. Her clever melding of the fictional universe with this one has garnered her the prestigious Booksie Award from BookSwim, America's favorite online book rental club.

Nightshade, a story about a young female werewolf falling in love with a human boy against the wishes of her pack, has already earned praises from the likes of New York Times bestselling author Cynthia Leitich Smith, who called it "a finely-wrought compelling tale of romance and treachery." The welcome intrusion of the fictional world doesn't limit itself to the internet: not only does the Nightshade website promise that you can even "text [Shay] straight to his phone," but readers can send an email to [email protected] to enter the running to receive a calla lily mailed to their address-a special package from, as one blogger put it, "a cute fictional boy."

The Booksie Award was created to honor all types of innovation and invention in the publishing industry, in anything from printing techniques to character development. BookSwim.com will announce a new Booksie Award each week during Author Appreciation Month. Honorees, like Cremer, are selected by a panel of publishing professionals and receive recognition on the BookSwim site and through BookSwim's content partners.

Cremer, an Associate Professor of History at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, began writing Nightshade after breaking her foot and being consigned to crutches for twelve weeks. She plans to follow Nightshade with two subsequent volumes, Wolfsbane and Bloodrose, as well as an official prequel and companion novel. Her other writing projects include The Inventor's Secret, a YA steampunk novel set in an alternate nineteenth century in which the American Revolution never occurred and the British empire's power reigns unchecked.