It’s hard to believe, but it’s been a year since I handed in the final proofs. To celebrate this, and the fact that Gomez just became a finalist in 2010’s Best Book Awards, I decided to throw Gomez a birthday party (or a BirdDay party, as we say in the Netherlands). As I’ve had a debilitating fear of throwing parties and no-one showing up since early childhood, I’d be more than delighted if you could come! (Read more about the book here. )

Of course, with every cool international party comes a gift bag. Here’s just some of the stuff attendants will get:

You can bring as many friends as you like, just don’t bring your crazy uncle who drinks too much and then tries to get me to go to the attic with him to see something wonderful. I’ve fallen for that before and I don’t mind telling you, I came away very disappointed!

Find out how to attend HERE.  And don’t forget to say you heard it from CMash Loves To Read!!!

It is always an honor and a humbling experience for me to be a host for a visiting author, especially when it’s at the author’s request. And today we have a very special and talented man, who is both author and noted physcian, that is taking time out of his busy day and discussing his latest book. So, please help me give a big welcome to Dr. Robert Greer.

Learn more about Robert Greer at wwwrobertgreerbooks.com.

FROM THE AUTHOR:
   The most frequent question I’m asked about my latest novel, FIRST OF STATE, is why a prequel? And that’s a reasonable enough question since you would think that after ten CJ Floyd novels readers would know my African-American Denver bail bondsman intimately. However, in my first CJ Floyd novel, THE DEVIL’S HATBAND, the reader meets CJ as a man of forty-four. In that novel you learn as much about the character as I could possibly weave into a single book. You learn that he’s a loner, that he has had a failed marriage, that he is a Vietnam veteran and that he is haunted by the horrors of that war. Yet as you follow CJ throughout the next nine novels, you never really know until FIRST OF STATE, what happened to him between the time he returned from Vietnam at the age of twenty-one and the opening of THE DEVIL’S HATBAND. How did CJ get to be who he is? Who taught him his investigative skills? How did he become friends with his murder-solving eclectic band of side kicks? And finally, what cases had he cracked and what murders had he solved prior to FIRST OF STATE?
   In FIRST OF STATE readers get to see a youthful CJ Floyd. An agitated troubled young man who is unsure of himself and a man who is haunted always by Vietnam. You have the opportunity to see him join his Uncle Ike’s bail bonding business and to watch him mature as an investigator under Ike’s tutelage. The reader also gets a glimpse of CJ as a novice western memorabilia collector long before he evolves into an antique collecting pro.

   ROBERT GREER’S latest novel—a prequel to his CJ Floyd mystery series—takes readers back in time to a very different CJ Floyd. It’s 1972, and the twenty-two year-old decorated war vet has recently returned to Denver from Vietnam with post-traumatic stress disorder. Navigating depression, he finds a friend in World War II vet and amputee Wiley Ames, who shares his passion for rare and valuable western memorabilia.
   When Ames and a mysterious Chinese man are found murdered, CJ’s already fragile world threatens to collapse. His attempts to find his friend’s killer are thwarted at every turn, and finally he joins his Uncle Ike’s business as a bail bondsman and bounty hunter. Five years later one of Ames’s treasured antique license plates turns up at a Denver flea market, and CJ is once again off and running. The trail to Wiley Ames’s murderer leads CJ down a dark path strewn with backstabbing antique dealers, conniving friends and relatives of Ames’s, and a shadowy musician. Equally a white-knuckle-ride murder mystery and a tale of a traumatized young man coming to terms with his past, First of State features the kind of fresh characters, street smart dialogue, and ingenious plot twists that have made this series a critical and commercial success.
Watch for my review in the coming weeks!!!

It has happened again….and the feeling never changes.  I still get excited and feel warm and fuzzy when someone leaves me that little message…”I have an award for you”.   I guess it’s because I still can’t believe there are people who really like my blog, a blog that began as a personal journal.

Teresa, from Diary of a Domestic Goddess (don’t you just love her blog’s name….I do!!!) presented me with this award on Friday.  If you haven’t visited before, please stop by, visit a bit and say hi.

Share 7 5 things about myself
Pass the award to 15 5 bloggers recently discovered
Notify the blogger recipients
Link to the blogger who gave the award

1.  The happiest time of my life was during my boys’ childhoods.  Our house was always the “house to go to and hangout”.  During the summer, their friends were here every single day having fun in the pool (hubby couldn’t understand why the grocery bill was so much money but had to have pickies, pizza, soda, etc etc.)  I loved it!!!!
2.  Always wished I could sing4.  I am terrified of heights

3.  I’m a crier..happy, sad, whatever the situation, I cry.

5.  I am a Nervous Nelly and worry too much…working on changing that!!

I am now passing the torch to: (in no particular order):

It is always an honor and a humbling experience for me to be a host for a visiting author, especially when it’s at the author’s request. And today we have a very special and talented man, who is both author and noted physcian, that is taking time out of his busy day and discussing his latest book. So, please help me give a big welcome to Dr. Robert Greer.

Learn more about Robert Greer at wwwrobertgreerbooks.com.

FROM THE AUTHOR:
   The most frequent question I’m asked about my latest novel, FIRST OF STATE, is why a prequel? And that’s a reasonable enough question since you would think that after ten CJ Floyd novels readers would know my African-American Denver bail bondsman intimately. However, in my first CJ Floyd novel, THE DEVIL’S HATBAND, the reader meets CJ as a man of forty-four. In that novel you learn as much about the character as I could possibly weave into a single book. You learn that he’s a loner, that he has had a failed marriage, that he is a Vietnam veteran and that he is haunted by the horrors of that war. Yet as you follow CJ throughout the next nine novels, you never really know until FIRST OF STATE, what happened to him between the time he returned from Vietnam at the age of twenty-one and the opening of THE DEVIL’S HATBAND. How did CJ get to be who he is? Who taught him his investigative skills? How did he become friends with his murder-solving eclectic band of side kicks? And finally, what cases had he cracked and what murders had he solved prior to FIRST OF STATE?
   In FIRST OF STATE readers get to see a youthful CJ Floyd. An agitated troubled young man who is unsure of himself and a man who is haunted always by Vietnam. You have the opportunity to see him join his Uncle Ike’s bail bonding business and to watch him mature as an investigator under Ike’s tutelage. The reader also gets a glimpse of CJ as a novice western memorabilia collector long before he evolves into an antique collecting pro.

   ROBERT GREER’S latest novel—a prequel to his CJ Floyd mystery series—takes readers back in time to a very different CJ Floyd. It’s 1972, and the twenty-two year-old decorated war vet has recently returned to Denver from Vietnam with post-traumatic stress disorder. Navigating depression, he finds a friend in World War II vet and amputee Wiley Ames, who shares his passion for rare and valuable western memorabilia.
   When Ames and a mysterious Chinese man are found murdered, CJ’s already fragile world threatens to collapse. His attempts to find his friend’s killer are thwarted at every turn, and finally he joins his Uncle Ike’s business as a bail bondsman and bounty hunter. Five years later one of Ames’s treasured antique license plates turns up at a Denver flea market, and CJ is once again off and running. The trail to Wiley Ames’s murderer leads CJ down a dark path strewn with backstabbing antique dealers, conniving friends and relatives of Ames’s, and a shadowy musician. Equally a white-knuckle-ride murder mystery and a tale of a traumatized young man coming to terms with his past, First of State features the kind of fresh characters, street smart dialogue, and ingenious plot twists that have made this series a critical and commercial success.
Watch for my review in the coming weeks!!!

It has happened again….and the feeling never changes.  I still get excited and feel warm and fuzzy when someone leaves me that little message…”I have an award for you”.   I guess it’s because I still can’t believe there are people who really like my blog, a blog that began as a personal journal.

Teresa, from Diary of a Domestic Goddess (don’t you just love her blog’s name….I do!!!) presented me with this award on Friday.  If you haven’t visited before, please stop by, visit a bit and say hi.

Share 7 5 things about myself
Pass the award to 15 5 bloggers recently discovered
Notify the blogger recipients
Link to the blogger who gave the award

1.  The happiest time of my life was during my boys’ childhoods.  Our house was always the “house to go to and hangout”.  During the summer, their friends were here every single day having fun in the pool (hubby couldn’t understand why the grocery bill was so much money but had to have pickies, pizza, soda, etc etc.)  I loved it!!!!
2.  Always wished I could sing4.  I am terrified of heights

3.  I’m a crier..happy, sad, whatever the situation, I cry.

5.  I am a Nervous Nelly and worry too much…working on changing that!!

I am now passing the torch to: (in no particular order):