Have “Christmas” in July!

Posted on July 3, 2019    Posted by      887 Comments

A picture of my collection

Hey! Want to win this ARC of A Very Scalzi Christmas, a collection of Christmas-related stories from me, including three new, never-before-published stories (including one ironically called “Christmas in July”)? Well, you can! Here’s how:

1. I just rolled a number between 0 and 999 using a ten-sided die (which I rolled three times), which I have now duly recorded. Your mission: guess which number it was.

2. Post your guess in the comment thread for this post, using a valid email address so I can contact you if you win (Put it in the email field, not in the body of the comment; that way no one will see your email address but me, and I’m not going to use it for any purpose other than this contest). Only one guess per person, please; additional guesses from the same person will be discarded.

3. If more than one person picks the correct number, I will use a random number generator to pick a number between one and [whatever the number of correct answers] and then pick, based on chronological order, the person who corresponds to that number. If no person picks the correct number, then I will pick the person who is the closest to the number, going down (so if the number is x, then I’ll look at x-1, then x-2, and so on). Again, if there are multiple guesses at that closest number, I’ll pick a winner based on the manner noted above.

4. If you are that person, you win! I will sign the ARC (and personalize it if you like) and mail it to you wherever you are on the globe. So, yes, this is open to everyone who has a valid mailing address, even if you live somewhere else than the United States.

This contest is open from the second I post it until exactly 48 hours later (at which point the comments automatically close), so roughly from 10am Eastern on July 3rd to 10am Eastern on July 5.

Or, if you decide the laws of probability may not work entirely for you in this endeavor, you can pre-order the signed, limited edition of A Very Scalzi Christmas from Subterranean Press directly, and when you do not only will you get the very handsome hardcover edition of the book, signed by me, you will also get the electronic version of the book as well. Two formats, one price!

And that’s it! Guess away!

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887 Comments on “Have “Christmas” in July!”

  1. NOTES:

    1. Post only the number you’re guessing, please. Comments without a number will be deleted to keep the thread focused, and also any comments with discourse unrelated to the contest or the book itself are likely to be trimmed.

    2. Again, only one guess per person, please. Additional guesses and posts will be disregarded (even if one of your later guesses is correct!).

    3. I’m not going to be answering any questions about the book in the comment thread here, so if you ask them, they will basically be shouting into the void. Sorry.

    4. Please note that ARCs are versions of the book that are sent to reviewers and such prior to copy-editing, etc, so there will be some errors, typos and so on in this version. This is what you deal with for getting an early peek.

    5. In addition to signing the collection for you, I will be happy to personalize it as well, to whomever you like, just let me know when I contact you, if you win.

    Good luck!

  8. 378. I was going to roll a 10 sided die at my end and post the results until I realized I am at my office and only have a 6-sided die. So I rolled one in my head, and this is what came up (I had to do it several times because it kept falling on the floor in my mind.)

  159. 666 (’cause, there’s a great “dyslexic’s Santa letter” story out there just waiting to be written/found)

  482. 983. Because ‘007’ was taken.

    Do all the people who forgot the leading zeros get their guesses considered? You can’t roll a ten-sided die and come up with their suggestions.

  550. In the spirit of the contest I wrote a python one-liner to generate the results of 3 random 10-sided dice rolls.
    [np.random.randint(10) for _ in range(3)]
    [5, 8, 6]

    586

  599. My guess is 516. I ordered mine. Probability and statistics and dice being a Vegas thing.