Do you need some summer laughs? Of course you do! Well, good news. Laura Toffler-Corrie's debut middle-grade novel, THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF AMY FINAWITZ, will be released into the wild next week.

It's a hilarious novel, with a brilliant and wacky cast of characters, and I know you'll be that person who guffaws on the subway while reading it. Because I still do. 

So. We're running a contest: a Fortune Cookie Twitter contest!

"Why fortune cookies?" you ask, innocently. "Well," I say, "fortune cookies play an important part in our heroine Amy's story."

One awesome way you can get a feel for Amy's fortune cookie flair is to read the sample chapter here. But here are some examples of fortunes Amy finds in the book:

• When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
• When you make change, come back a dollar.
• 7/5ths of all people do not understand fractions.

Your task: Tweet us your fortunes. What kind of fortunes? Well, fortunes specifically for writers! The fortune cookie you’d want to open if you were a writer working on a revision, or waiting for a review, or trying to get published, etc. The sky's the limit!

Let's start with the prizes to entice you.

• The GRAND PRIZE WINNER of the FORTUNE COOKIE contest will receive:
  • A signed copy of THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF AMY FINAWITZ
  • A critique of 10 pages of your work by Laura's super-editor Nancy Mercado!
• Runners-up prizes: A pack of these hilarious and evil fortune cookies! 

  THE RULES:

1. Follow author Laura Toffler-Corrie on Twitter: @LauraTofflerCor.  
2. Enter your fabulous, fortunes on Twitter. (Fortunes posted as comments to this blog post will be enjoyed, but not judged.)
3. You MUST use this hashtag in your tweet: #amyfortune (If you don't use it, we'll never see it!)
4. You may enter up to 10 (TEN) fortunes.
5. As we know, good fortune should SPREAD. Share the love! Spread the word about the contest! 
6. Laura, Nancy, and I will be the sole judges of the contest.
7. The deadline for this contest is 9AM Eastern Time on Tuesday, August 3rd (release day!). Winners will be announced Friday, August 6th. There are no exceptions to this! If any fortune tweets are sent after that time, they will NOT be read.

Now get thee to Twitter and start predicting!

Hey querying world,

I am taking a summer break from submissions. The pile has grown way up above my ears, and I'd like to be able to catch up on everything, and requested manuscripts, AND client work. So...

From August 1st to September 1st, I am not accepting queries. I'll update this on the submission page as well.

What will happen if you query me during the month of August?

Easy. You'll get a nice auto-response and the query will be moved to the trash. Please feel free to resubmit in September if you still think I'm a good fit for your project.

Thanks!