Rachel Hawkins Guest Post and an awesome giveaway!

Please welcome Rachel Hawkins to Laura's Review Bookshelf!  While she is out promoting her brand-new, debut novel HEX HALL, she has graciously stopped by to give you a bit of insight into what it's like to be a writer.  There is also a lovely giveaway that comes with this post! You can see the prizes below Rachel's post!

HEX HALL was my first book, and as such, I'm justifiably proud of it! But even though it was the first book I actually completed, I still have lots of other projects I'm pretty proud of! So I thought I'd give you my Top Five Things Rachel Ever Wrote list today! ;-)

5) A Ridiculously Creepy Short Story For 8th Grade Earth Science

       I just stumbled across this recently. It doesn't have a title, and I have only a vague memory of writing it, but I remember that we had to do something "creative" to go along with the unit we were studying. So I wrote a short story about a peat bog. YES. A PEAT BOG. There's also ritual sacrifice, and quite frankly, I'm shocked my teacher didn't send me to the counselor. 

4) The World's Worst Romance Novel

       How bad is this "romance novel" that I wrote in 6th grade? Well, it's housed in a pink denim binder for starters. It also features a made-up country called "Enraina" and it's title is WE BELONG. That's right- I titled a book after a Pat Benatar Song. Awesome.

3) "Only Child"

      This is a "book" I wrote in 2nd grade. It's about a little girl who's an Only (like yours truly), who somehow manages to convince her parents to basically half-ass adopt a child so that she can have a sibling just on the weekends. Yeah. 

2) A Romance Novel That Is Actually Not That Bad

      Before HEX HALL, this was the longest thing I'd ever written. It's maybe about 30,000 words, but since I decided not to write in a linear fashion (sigh), it's something of a mess. I worked on it sometime in my early 20s, right after college. And despite its messiness, I still dig this story. There's treasure hunting, and a hot guy, and a sassy girl, and Belize... may revisit this someday. 

1) SKYTWISTER

     Truly, an epic and important piece of American literature, SKYTWISTER is about a princess. And a unicorn. And a witch. It was my first book, and I wrote it in Kindergarten. Honestly, I don't know why Harold Bloom hasn't written an essay on it yet, but there you go! ;-)

I am giving away a copy of HEX HALL book and the beautiful t-shirt!  They come in size S, M, L.  Please

comment here!