Hey there, vampire rangers. Here’s how it is.

This week, THE PRESIDENT’S VAMPIRE will go on sale everywhere THURSDAY, APRIL 28. For the day of APRIL 28, if you buy the book and send proof of purchase — an email copy of your receipt, a pic of you with the book, a DNA swab, a scan of your paper receipt — to chris@chrisfarnsworth.com, then you will get an official President’s Vampire Tour 2011 T-shirt.

It looks like this:

Of course, there are some rules.

• This offer is only good for APRIL 28, 2011. That starts at 12:00 AM on Thursday and ends at midnight (UPDATE: That’s Pacific Daylight Time). Get me your pic or email within that time frame, or you don’t get a T-shirt.
• I will pay standard U.S. Postal Service shipping to deliver the shirts. If you are out of clean clothes and need a good shirt for your cousin’s wedding, let me know and we’ll discuss getting it to you sooner.
• This offer is not good for my first book, BLOOD OATH, even if you purchase it within the time period. Sorry.
• If you’re ordering on Amazon or BN.com or any of the online stores, email me a copy of your receipt. That will count.
• Anyone who pre-ordered the book — don’t worry, you’re not left out. Send me a copy of your receipt on April 28 within the 24-hour period.
• Anyone who’s buying the book for your Kindle, Nook or other mobile device, you’re eligible as well. Send me a copy of your receipt on April 28 within the 24-hour period.
• Supplies are limited; first come, first served, as decided by the time the email hits my inbox. (Don’t worry. I’ve got a lot of them. If I run out, I’ll happily dance over to the T-shirt shop and make more. But don’t dawdle. Twenty-four hours is the limit.)
• One T-shirt per book.
• Attempts to game the system or cheat mean no T-shirt for you. I also reserve the right to revise the rules to keep things fair and honest, or to include anything obvious I might have forgotten.

There will be a Twitter-based contest on Thursday with even more fabulous prizes, so keep an eye on @chrisfarnsworth. And, as always, stay bloodthirsty.

Today, the paperback edition of BLOOD OATH will hit stands everywhere.

This is kind of a big deal for me because in the dark ages before Borders, Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com, my main bookstore was the paperback rack at the local M&W. For years, that and the public library would sustain me between the all-too-rare trips to the bookstore downtown. (My hometown, due to a mix of poor urban planning and geography, didn’t even get a mall until I was a sophomore senior in high school.) I was introduced to many of my favorite authors because they were slotted into spaces on the wire racks by the comic books and magazines. There was something so great about discovering a new book in the Fletch series or getting scared just by reading the back of a Stephen King novel.

I really hope someone else has that same feeling when they see this at the local grocery store:

In other news, I can see that I’ve been neglectful in my relentless ego-surfing and self-promotion. Here are a few spots around the Internet where my name has popped up lately.

• Robin Bradford has a great, insightful post about BLOOD OATH and the inherent problem of bloodsuckers falling in love with their food source. It also has a brilliant title: EAT PREY LOVE. If that had been the name of the Julia Roberts flick, I might have even gone to see it with my wife. Thanks for all the kind words, Robin.
• The Terrebonne Parish Library system is going to have a discussion of BLOOD OATH on March 2. The reason this geeks me out: that’s located in Houma, Louisiana, which, as every fan of Alan Moore will know, is the home of the muck-encrusted SWAMP THING. In my mind, that’s almost a team-up between him and Cade.
• Super-Powered Fiction Files has some very flattering things to say about BLOOD OATH, too. Thanks.
• And I will be guest-blogging all month at LitFest Magazine. I promise 90 percent original content. Or at least 70-85. Somewhere around there.

2011 is here — yes, I know, it’s actually been here for a while — and thanks to Richard Feliciano, I’ve got a brand-spanking-new website to go in with the new year.

For those of you I haven’t already bombarded with the news, THE PRESIDENT’S VAMPIRE, the sequel to BLOOD OATH, will hit stands April 28, 2011. If you can’t wait that long, there’s a preview included in the paperback edition of BLOOD OATH, available March 1. Even more bloody mayhem included, I promise.

More features will be added to the site as we get closer to the launch date — including an original, untold tale of Nathaniel Cade, as well as previously classified files on his persistent enemies in the Shadow Company.

For everyone who’s read the first book already, thanks so much. It’s going to be a great year.

My interview with Minnesota Public Radio’s Kerri Miller is here on the MPR website. Also, you can now pre-order the paperback of BLOOD OATH, and pre-order the sequel, THE PRESIDENT’S VAMPIRE. And let’s not forget the stylish merchandise you can grab at Zazzle.

OK. That’s it for the message from our sponsors. Now, the news:

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss: Tea Party Senate candidate has reporter cuffed for asking questions at public event.

How President Obama blew it.

Twenty-eight songs from Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow.

Why TV is so great and movies are so bad right now.

Creepier than Cloverfield: Video of mysterious sea creature. (Begins at 1:30.)

Guide to Bigfoots around the world.

Nathan Fillion is already an A-lister to me. (Wow. That looks really creepy when it’s typed out like that.)

Why do “True Blood’s” vamps have their fangs on the laterals, not the cuspids? This is actually something that’s bothered me for a while. Leave it to The Answer B!tch to uncover the truth.

The weirdest moments from Archie Christian Comics. I read all of these as a kid. The weird part is, at the time, none of them struck me as weird.

Gawker Media now has more readers online than any newspaper except the New York Times. To be fair, most newspapers have scandalously few pictures of giant goldfish, so it’s sort of their own fault. (Other news buried in that chart: the LA Times is getting killed by everyone except the Wall Street Journal, which charges its users for some content.)

If I had a million dollars: art deco motorcycle. (Via BoingBoing.)

Messing with Sasquatch in Minnesota.

The first 40 pages of my novel BLOOD OATH, in German. (My high school Deutsch teacher, Herr Luttman, would be so proud.) BLUTIGER SCHWUR hits stands in Germany on September 13. Also, Suspense Radio interviews me with my brilliant publicist Megan Underwood Beatie.