Andy Gavin giving away signed prizes to dedicated fans

In case you haven't heard, Andy Gavin wrote a book recently.

Yes, that Andy Gavin, co-founder of developer Naughty Dog (now the company in charge of Uncharted and The Last of Us) and co-creator of Crash Bandicoot and Jak & Daxter.

To promote his new novel, The Darkening Dream, which hit shelves on January 14 of this year, Gavin is holding a Naughty Dark Contest on his blog. He hopes that fans will help support his book and spread the word, and in return he's awarding signed goodies including the original Crash Bandicoot and Jak & Daxter games, copies of his book, and rare Crash collectible toys. He's even offering consolation prizes:

Have no illusion, the main purpose of this contest is to promote The Darkening Dream, help it go viral, and sell lots of copies. I love and respect my fans, so I won’t BS you. That being said, I like to think the book is very good, and I’m selling it very inexpensively ($2.99 as of 2/10/12). I’m also excited to send some of you guys cool schwag. A set of four signed Crash Bandicoot games even sold on Ebay recently for $453! So it’s sort of valuable stuff in its own way – particularly to fans.

I'm a huge fan of Gavin's work and would love a chance to take one of these bad boys home. My copy of Crash Bandicoot 2 has certainly seen better days.

The contest has entered its second round of entries. The Darkening Dream is available on Amazon for $2.99 Kindle, $14.99 paperback, and $24.00 hardcover. A description of the book (as listed on Amazon) is below:

Even as the modern world pushes the supernatural aside in favor of science and steel, the old ways remain. God, demon, monster, and sorcerer alike plot to regain what was theirs in Andy Gavin’s chilling debut, The Darkening Dream.

1913, Salem, Massachusetts – Sarah Engelmann’s life is full of friends, books, and avoiding the pressure to choose a husband, until an ominous vision and the haunting call of an otherworldly trumpet shake her. When she stumbles across a gruesome corpse, she fears that her vision was more of a premonition. And when she sees the murdered boy moving through the crowd at an amusement park, Sarah is thrust into a dark battle she does not understand.

With the help of Alex, a Greek immigrant who knows a startling amount about the undead, Sarah sets out to uncover the truth. Their quest takes them to the factory mills of Salem, on a midnight boat ride to spy on an eerie coastal lair, and back, unexpectedly, to their own homes. What can Alex’s elderly, vampire-hunting grandfather and Sarah’s own rabbi father tell them? And what do Sarah’s continuing visions reveal?

No less than Gabriel’s Trumpet, the tool that will announce the End of Days, is at stake, and the forces that have banded to recover it include a 900 year-old vampire, a trio of disgruntled Egyptian gods, and a demon-loving Puritan minister. At the center of this swirling cast is Sarah, who must fight a millennia-old battle against unspeakable forces, knowing the ultimate prize might be herself.