I hate April Fool’s Day. Probably because I’m the gullible sucker who believes every news story until the very last paragraph screaming GOTCHA! So far today, I’ve wondered:
- how the Obama administration really planned to shut down the Internet every Wednesday to help promote reading in one of its initiatives for a book-publishing bailout program (via ShelfAwareness).
- how Ann Aguirre could really leave the wonderful Bradford Agency to sign on with the new Dear Author Agency (as I dreaded having to hash out contracts with legal-eagle Jane Litte), and how Jane’s friendship with the Smart Bitches could have ended up in such a nasty-sounding lawsuit.
- how this guy was was going to protect us from the end of the world.
Except, wait, that last one’s real. Author David Robbins models the costume of Blade, a character from his wildly popular Endworld series.
So what stories have gotten you today? I have a few signed, limited-edition chapter booklets from Angie Fox’s DANGEROUS BOOK FOR DEMON SLAYERS. Everyone who comments gets one until I run out.
Romantic Reading 
April 1, 2009 at 1:53 pm
OMGz. I’d completely forgotten it was April Fool’s Day. LOL. Thanks for the laugh, Leah!
Faye
April 1, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Hi Leah, I heard you about the Dear Author one. I didn’t realise it was April Fools until after my chance to fool my family was missed.
April 1, 2009 at 3:33 pm
ON Facebook, one of my author pals, Jeri Smith-Ready posted that they were going to take back Neil Gaiman’s Newberry award–she got a bunch of us! (On purpose).Also on Facebook (dangerous thing), Candace Havens got fooled by a “they’re cancelling Dollhouse” spoof and passed it on to fool the rest of us as well 🙂
April 1, 2009 at 3:46 pm
gasp! Not Dollhouse…
April 1, 2009 at 3:54 pm
Don’t panic! (Just because I did. And Candy, and a bunch of other people.) It was an April Fool’s joke, apparently. This is the connection she had on Facebook: http://jijr.com/XQr
Although I’m still worried…
April 1, 2009 at 8:09 pm
I didn’t get fooled by this – but I though Expedia’s offering discount trips to Mars was pretty funny… “Now save up to 3 billion dollars!”
http://www.expedia.com/daily/mars/flights-to-mars/
April 1, 2009 at 8:12 pm
uh, whoops. 3 trillion, not billion
April 1, 2009 at 10:43 pm
I took an online class with Angie Fox. Would love that book.
I have laughed all day at DA/SB feud. Very clever.
April 2, 2009 at 6:37 am
The dear author thing got me going for a while. Like you, I was thinking “Why would Ann leave Laura Bradford? I thought she loved her agent.” Then the whole submission page was outrageous. In the end, it was the submitting your query on $46 paper which made me say “Hey, wait a minute…” Still feel like an idiot that I fell for it. :p It was quite an elaborate joke…
April 2, 2009 at 9:08 am
I first saw Smart Bitches’s twitter about how her world changed. That made me curious enough to check SB’s website and found out about the lawsuit. Believe it for a second since the documents looked very real until I recalled the date. It was a good laugh.
Did you get the Writer Beware go federal story?
April 2, 2009 at 9:52 am
Least favorite day of the year. I too was falling for the smartbitches/dear author joke…until I remembered Sara asking about professional wordpress layouts for something they were doing.
Even though I dont’ like being tricked, they really covered all sorts of angles by bringing other blogs in on the joke.
April 2, 2009 at 10:37 am
We fooled (and enraged) a few folks over at http://www.boxingoctopus.blogspot.com with a fake story about a $12M at auction publishing deal for the memoir of a puppy spurned by the Obamas.
I was feeling pretty full of myself ’til my own son seriously punked me with a call about how he needed new housing as he’d been kicked out of his dorm. Argh!
April 2, 2009 at 11:01 am
I’m so gullible, too, Leah. Colleen Thompson got me with the 12 million dollar sold-at-auction deal for the memoires of the spurned Obama pup over at Boxing the Octopus.
April 2, 2009 at 11:22 am
Have you seen this one? Project Publishing. A reality tv show:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/blog/660000266/post/1530013553.html
April 2, 2009 at 11:48 am
@Keri – I totally missed the Project: Publishing. Good one!
@Colleen & Elisabeth – Thing is, I bet that puppy book would sell.
@May – What’s the Writer Beware story? Missed that one too – which is probably a good thing.
April 2, 2009 at 12:39 pm
You have $12M to spare, I can make it happen. 😉
April 2, 2009 at 1:20 pm
LOL. That’s what I thought too, which is why I fell for it!!
April 3, 2009 at 7:53 am
Still laughing over the puppy tale on Colleen’s blog! Too funny!
April 3, 2009 at 10:52 am
Here is the link to the Writer Beware story.
http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2009/04/exciting-news-for-writer-beware.html
April 3, 2009 at 10:55 am
@May – I would’ve fallen for that too, I’m sure. Well, maybe only up to the point about the guns.
April 3, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Totally forgot it was April Fool’s Day, kinda sad about it.
April 3, 2009 at 4:06 pm
No foolin’ — just got great news 🙂
I won “Best of the Best” in the EMILY contest! (I thought at first they were kidding, but thankfully not…)
April 3, 2009 at 4:51 pm
That’s fabulous news, Deborah. Thanks my chapter’s contest and it’s really a big one. Very, very prestigious! Congratulations!
April 3, 2009 at 6:43 pm
It was a great one to be a part of–very “user friendly” and pleasant folks in charge. They should all be that way 🙂
Kudos to you and your chapters. (And apologies to Leah, didn’t mean to highjack your post….)