Today I’m writing at Austin Chase Coffee, which is right next door to the Fisherman’s Terminal. There’s a big glass wall on one side of the room, with the coffee roaster right on the other side. So shiny! So many colored lights! So many turning machines! It’s hypnotic, like an episode of HOW IT’S MADE without the v/o.

Anyway, here’s some big news: The official title for book 3 is going to be CIRCLE OF ENEMIES. Yay! I like it, not least because there isn’t another book on Amazon.com with that title. Also, Google Alerts won’t be sending me links to people who’ve posted Queensryche lyrics.

All CIRCLE OF ENEMIES posts will still be tagged with the working title, MAN BITES WORLD, just like GAME OF CAGES is tagged EVERYONE LOVES BLUE DOG.

Also, I want to talk a little about the book giveaways I’ve been doing. I want to clarify a couple of things: You can enter once for each item, but you can request as many books as you want. I don’t care if you ask for all 31. You can also win as many times as luck allows; you don’t have to stop requesting books after you’ve won one.

I’m not actually picking any winners. Here’s what happens: I receive comment notifications for every LJ and blog comment. Each day’s contest has it’s own folder in Thunderbird, and I drop the email notifications into the correct folder. Once three days have passed since the blog post went live, I make sure there have been no requests within the previous 24 hours; I don’t want to cut things off if people are still actively asking for the book.

Once both conditions are satisfied, I open the folder in Thunderbird and my 8 yo son rolls a die. Whatever the number he rolls, we count down that many emails and that’s the winner. (If he rolls a number higher than the number of emails, he rolls again.)

So far, all the winners have been LiveJournal people, and none on the blog. In part, that’s because LJ comments outnumber blog comments four or five to one in some cases. I’m sure there’ll be a couple of blog commenters getting books at some point–random chance can’t keep favoring LJ forever.

And as of yesterday, all of the claimed books had gone into the mail. The first five, I believe. The giveaway for day six, Ombria in Shadow, will be chosen tonight (as long as no one new jumps in to ask for it.)

If anyone has any questions about this, or if I’ve been unclear, let me know. But one thing I did want to emphasize is that I’m not picking winners of each book. It’s all random chance.