Haunted Halloween 2012: Guest Post - Ironskin author, Tina Connolly + A GIVEAWAY!

HAPPY BOOK BIRTHDAY TO TINA and IRONSKIN!!!

Halloween, with Face Paints and Duct Tape
By: Tina Connolly

My family is big into Halloween. Big into homemade costumes. My mom often thought it would be adorable if we all went around together in a themed group—I'm the oldest of 4, but we're pretty well spaced apart, with 12 years between me and the youngest. So her wish only happened once – two friends of ours were Dorothy and the Scarecrow, I was the Tin Man, my younger brother (sibling #2) was the Cowardly Lion, and my sister (sibling #3) was dressed in the ubiquitious yellow dog costume we all wore as a baby and declared to be Toto.

I was fond of exactly three things—books, theatre. . .and art. So I was always drafted to help with Halloween, of course. One year, sibling #2 wanted to go as the Energizer bunny (remember those commercials?) Grandmother sewed the pink rabbit costume and I made the drum out of cardboard, paint, and lots of duct tape. (I remember being particularly enamored with the structural possibilities of duct tape.) Later, in an inspired moment, sibling #3 took the pink rabbit costume and went as the Easter Bunny. The year after that, Mrs. Santa Claus.

At some point mom got me a face painting kit and signed me up to volunteer for everyone else's school carnivals. Which actually I loved—I like being on the inside of things. I like being in the place where the magic happens, even if that means you see all the greasepaint and sawdust and sweat. Then naturally, eventually, the face paints came out at Halloween. I spent an hour one year transforming fairly-patient sibling #3 into a monarch butterfly. And a couple years later, into a leopard.

When my husband and I moved to Portland, I was poking around on Craigslist and I ran across a professional face painter who was working the Rose Festival (our big 3-week fair) and needed an assistant. She told me later that she got tons of applications. But mine came with those two photos of my sister. I didn't tell her they'd taken me an hour each to do. (An hour? OMG, you'd get slaughtered by the lines of children. . .or at least by their parents.) That's how I got into face painting—and shortly thereafter became significantly faster.

In recent years, sibling #4 has dressed up for Halloween as The Riddler and Dr. Strangelove. Even more recently, he got some face paints and went to ComicCon dressed as Two-Face. The more families grow up and change, the more everything stays the same. . . .

Title: Ironskin (Ironskin, #1)
Author: Tina Connolly
Publisher: Tor Books, 304 Pages (October 2nd, 2012)
Add to: Goodreads

Synopsis: Jane Eliot wears an iron mask.

It’s the only way to contain the fey curse that scars her cheek. The Great War is five years gone, but its scattered victims remain—the ironskin.

When a carefully worded listing appears for a governess to assist with a "delicate situation"—a child born during the Great War—Jane is certain the child is fey-cursed, and that she can help.

Teaching the unruly Dorie to suppress her curse is hard enough; she certainly didn’t expect to fall for the girl’s father, the enigmatic artist Edward Rochart. But her blossoming crush is stifled by her own scars, and by his parade of women. Ugly women, who enter his closed studio...and come out as beautiful as the fey.

Jane knows Rochart cannot love her, just as she knows that she must wear iron for the rest of her life. But what if neither of these things is true? Step by step Jane unlocks the secrets of her new life—and discovers just how far she will go to become whole again.

Find Tina Online:

Website | Blog | Twitter | Facebook

Order Ironmask Online:

Amazon | Barnes and Noble | The Book Depository

Order Signed Copies Online: >>>HERE<<<

Book Trailer:

Enter to win a SIGNED cover flat for Ironskin!

• ONE winner will receive this signed flat

Rules and how to enter:

• Please fill out the Rafflecopter form below to enter this giveaway.
• Name & Email Address must be provided.
• You must be at least 13 years old to enter.
• This giveaway is open to US residents only.
• Giveaway ends: October 17th, 2012 (12:01AM EST)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Don't forget to stop by and check out who Jessica is featuring today for Haunted Halloween!

REMINDER: *If you are interested in the COMMENT CONTEST, remember to include your email address with your comment for an extra entry. Please ready full entry rules HERE.

Tina, thanks for sharing tales of Halloween's past with us. I wish I was talented enough to do face painting! Also, thank you for donating the signed cover flat for giveaway!