You can stop laughing now!!!!  LOL

OK…I know I said I was going to cut back this year on challenges BUT my willpower caved.  However, I’m not even close to how many I signed up for 2012.   My thinking is, and hoping you “buy” my rationale lol since I have justified it to myself.  Since I did complete some, there were others that I didn’t even make a dent so I have to keep trying, right?  Right?  Help me out here, please lol.

This one I didn’t complete in 2012 but enjoyed it.  Plus I asked Lori from Escape With Dollycas Into a Good Book, to host it since the blog that had hosted it is no longer.  Here are the rules, plus I just LOVE the button.

Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book

I really enjoyed this challenge this year!
I see the blog that hosted it is no longer in the blogosphere so I have decided to host it myself.

Technical Stuff
This challenge will run from January 1st, 2012 until December 31st, 2013.
You can join anytime.

So there are two different ways you can set up your own A-Z challenge.

A – Make a list now of 26 books, picking one for each letter of the alphabet. For example: A – The Azalea Assault B- Blue Monday C – Crops and Robbers D – A Deadly Grind etc.

OR

B – How I plan to do it: Make a list on your blog from A-Z. Throughout the year, as you go along, add the books you are reading to the list. Hope that by the end of the year you have read one book for each letter. Towards the end of the year, you can check and see which letters you are missing and find books to fit.

Ready to join??

Bloggers grab the button and make a post about the challenge to encourage others to join! Use the post URL in the linky below.

Non-bloggers you can join too! Just keep track any way you wish and enter a link below if available or sign up in the comment section.

Follow Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book as there may be special announcements made about the challenge.

This next one I did complete but am going to give this one a little twist to it for 2013.  Since I joined this community 3+ years ago, 99% of the books I read are obtained from authors, publishers, publicists, agents, etc.   In 2013, not only will I keep track of the titles but give credit to those that have kindly and generously provided  me with the book.

Free Reads 2013

I so need this.  I have been, not only a reading slump, but just too busy to take the time to read, which I am missing.  I am hoping that participating in these Read-A Thons will turn things around for me and get me started for a productive and enjoyable year of reading!   Once the Read-A-Thon starts, I will be keeping a record of my progress on a sticky post that will go up on Jan 7th for bout of books.     Want to join me?   Details below:

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda @ On a Book Bender and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01am Monday, January 7th and runs through Sunday, January 13th in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure, and the only reading competition is between you and your usual number of books read in a week. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 6.0 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. – From the Bout of Books 6.0 team

• Bout of Books is a week long read-a-thon, run from 12:01am on Monday, January 7th through 11:59pm Sunday, January 13th in whatever time zone you are in.
• Bout of Books is low pressure, meaning participants are only asked to push themselves to read more than they normally would during any given week. There is no competition between readers.
• How much time a reader wants, and can commit, to read, tweet, or network with fellow bloggers is left to individual preference. All challenges and giveaways are optional.

And I will also be signing up for:

Hosted by Michelle at Seasons Of Reading

It’s here! The official sign up for A Winter’s Respite Read-a-Thon! It’s just a month away on January 21 – 27! It will start at 12:00am Monday and end at 11:59pm on Sunday.  Times are central standard time so adjust your times accordingly.  Of course, like most read-a-thons, the books read must be novels or novellas, adult or young adult are fine, and you can read children’s books too (as long as you do read some novels too).  You DO NOT have to participate the entire week.  Join in when you can, start in the middle, end early…whatever works best for your schedule.  As long as you sign in at the sign-in post and do some kind of wrap up post, you’re in for the big giveaway at the end.  As with my previous read-a-thons, it will be a week of relaxed reading during which we can personally challenge ourselves and whittle away those ever looming TBR piles/shelves/libraries.  I hope you will join me! I will not be hosting any mini-challenges, as we learned from my last two read-a-thons, focusing on the reading rocks. However, if anyone else would like to host a mini-challenge, you are more than welcome. We will have a few scheduled Twitter chats again (and perhaps some more reading sprints). Our twitter hashtag is #WintersRespite

Sign up in the linky below. You do not have to do a post now, unless you want to help spread the word (hint, hint…) If you don’t have a blog, use Facebook, Twitter or Goodreads. Having a blog is not required. Be sure to grab the button at the top of this post. (Don’t forget that this is just the sign-up linky. There will be starting line sign-in and wrap-up linkies during the read-a-thon and doing both is required to be eligible for the giveaway).

Today I am taking a big step, no make that a huge step.  When our friend Rebecca, from The Cadence Group, contacted me about today’s guest, I read the synopsis and thought this sounded like a great read!  Then I realized it was in the genre of YA.  But am thinking you will also agree with me, once you hear from the author.  I ask,  that you help me in welcoming, Jeffrey Blount to our group!

JEFFREY BLOUNT

Jeffrey Blount is an Emmy award-winning television director and an award recipient for scriptwriting on multiple documentary projects.  Born and raised in rural Virginia, he now lives in Washington, DC with his wife, Jeanne Meserve. They have two children, Julia and Jake.
Connect with Mr. Blount at his website, Facebook and Twitter.

GUEST POST

Shared Emotions

For me, writing is an emotional endeavor.  I don’t see how it could be any other way.   I sit alone with my plot line and my characters and I create a world.   Inside that world are feelings like passion, fear, anger, hurt, love and joy.   I have them, like items in a museum, strategically laid out to create a coherent experience for the reader.  If I do it well, then readers should, as they read, experience emotions similar to those I experienced as I wrote.   I believe I was successful at this with my recent young adult novel, Hating Heidi Foster.

 It is a novel filled with raw ecstasy and despair.   Many times, I found myself overcome with emotion.  Sometimes before I even began writing, knowing in my head what I was about to put my characters through; sometimes as scenes unfolded, the characters growing and reacting in ways that I hadn’t foreseen.   At any rate, when it was done, I was worn out.   I was simply drained.  But it was a good kind of exhaustion.

I am happy to say that readers are feeling the same way.  One reviewer wrote, “Heart wrenching and then heartwarming story.  A good but highly emotional read.”  Others have written, similarly moved.  Others I have spoken to about all the emotion and here’s where I’m going with all of this, the part that really saddens me.  As the author, I am not always able to share in the moment.  Why?  Because I’ve been there already.   Many, many times.

What I would really like is to experience what the reader is feeling as they tell me about a passage or a scene that touched them.  I want to feel what they feel at the moment we are having the discussion.  To share.  But, for the most part, I can’t.  Because I have lived with the characters for so long and altered their journeys so many times, I’ve lost much of the emotion.  This fact leaves me wanting and missing something in these precious moments.   It’s the only part of the writing process that I wish to be different.   However, I still want and really need these shared moments, because every author wants to know, not only that they succeeded in bringing something special to the reader’s life, but how.   If only because it makes us better at our craft.

ABOUT THE BOOK

From the Author:
As Hating Heidi Foster begins, Mae McBride stands by on a riverbed watching as her mother offers up the ashes of her father to the river’s fast moving current. She thinks of the great loss in her life and the cause of that loss. She thinks of Heidi Foster, her best friend since second grade.
Heidi Foster is home alone listening to music through her ear buds when fire sneaks into her bedroom and she has nowhere to run but her closet. There she waits for the painful end she knows is about to happen, but she is saved by Eddie, the father of her best friend. Heidi makes it out of the burning house, but Eddie does not. When Mae finds out, she blames Heidi for not being smart enough to get out of the house. She blames her father for putting Heidi ahead of her. She blames her friends for taking Heidi’s side. She begins to unravel amid that blame and her uncontrollable and atypical anger.
At the same time Heidi is beset by guilt, falls into depression and stops eating properly. She is wasting away physically and emotionally while waiting for Mae to let her back into the friendship that she misses so dearly.
Mae, consumed by her hatred of Heidi, the confusion regarding her father’s motives, the perceived desertion of her friends and her mother’s grief, loses more and more of herself.
What could possibly bring these two teenagers back to each other? A miracle?
Note: With the holidays coming up, this would be a great gift idea
for teenage daughters and granddaughters.
Purchase Links:   Amazon    B&N    IndieBound

THANKS TO REBECCA, AT THE CADENCE GROUP, I HAVE ONE (1)
COPY OF THIS BOOK TO GIVE AWAY.   OPEN TO US RESIDENTS ONLY

CLICK HERE TO ENTER

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I received a copy of this book, at no charge to me,
in exchange for my honest review.
No items that I receive
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that may be interested in purchasing this Book/EBook.

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An email has been sent to the winner and she has 48 hours to respond or another winner will be chosen.  Thank you to those that entered.

The holidays, is the time of year, when family and friends gather and today 2 such friends are stopping by.  They were here back in June and stopping by to tell us about the latest book.  So please help me give a warm welcome back to Caitlin from Caitlin Hamilton Marketing and author Rebecca Yount!!!

REBECCA YOUNT

REBECCA YOUNT trained from childhood as a concert pianist, is a published poet, and worked in education reform in Washington, D.C., but she always wanted to write. Coming from a family of writers, it wasn’t hard for her to put pen to paper, but it took an actual unsolved murder to give her the idea for her first novel. On a home exchange in England — something she and her husband regularly do — a villager told her about a local murder that remained unsolved, even by Scotland Yard. Sitting under a tree in a fallow field one day, she began to imagine what might have happened. The result was A DEATH IN C MINOR. In 2010 Rebecca underwent open heart surgery, which left her unable to write for two years. When she returned to writing she decided to publish the entire Mick Chandra series herself as e-books. She lives in northern Virginia with her husband, author and columnist David Yount.
Her website iswww.rebeccayount.com.

GUEST POST

MIND THE GAP:
TEN THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW BEFORE YOU FIRST VISIT ENGLAND

I was forty-eight before I first visited England.  Career, child rearing, and mortgage and college tuition payments postponed the holiday that my husband, David, and I had long dreamed of.

Although I traveled extensively across North America as a young teen and later as part of my job, I had yet to set foot in Britain and Europe.  On the plus side I had yet to suffer from jet lag.

When we first arrived in London in March, l990, I told David, “I’ve come home.”  Indeed, I can claim forebears in England, Scotland, and Normandy, harkening back to the 9th century.  But even my ancestors could not save me from the mind-dithering effects of jet lag getting to the Old Sod.

After checking into our B & B, we hastened to a neighborhood pub that David had found in the Michelin guide.  I was determined to eat “English,” so I ordered steak and ale pie with chips and peas — two standard sides.  The publican asked me, “Would you like fresh garden peas, or mashed peas?” For some reason — probably prompted by the jet lag — I could not even begin to wrap my head around that.

“What’s the difference?” I asked.

She actually rolled her eyes.  “Well…mashed peas are garden peas that are mashed.”

So, number one on my list of ten things to prepare for is:

l.  Know your peas:  The English eat peas by the load, so be certain to specify which kind of peas you prefer when the publican asks.  That way, you are spared the eye-rolling.

2.  And, for heaven’s sake, know your English:  What’s the difference between chips and French fries?  There isn’t any, except the former is English, the latter American.  Here are some other “Englishisms”:

0 Plaster = Bandaid;
0 Bap = A sandwich bun (not to hit);
0 Bonnet = hood of a car or other vehicle (not a hat);
0 Boot = trunk of a car (not footwear);
0 Hob = kitchen oven;
0 Boob tube = a woman’s tight, strapless dress top (not a TV);
0 Rubber = eraser (not condom);
0 Brilliant = okay, good, under control (not intelligent);
0 Cheers = thank you, have a good day, excuse me (not the bar in Boston);
0 Mate = male friend, (not partner, husband, or lover);
0 Bang on = harangue or nag (not hit on something);
0 Fry Up = full English breakfast consisting of two eggs (any style), toast (brown or white), baked beans, grilled tomato and mushrooms, bangers (English sausage), and back bacon           (lean, not streaky, bacon);
0 Snog = make out;
0 Frogs = the French.

And these are just a few examples of Englishisms.  It is not a bad idea to carry a portable English slang dictionary with you, as one would carry a French dictionary in Paris.

George Bernard Shaw got it right: England and America are two countries divided by a common language.

3. Be prepared to weather a heat wave:  Yes, yes, I know.  You mainly hear about the cold, rainy weather in England.  But what you may not realize is that the occasional spring or summer can be sweltering.

A few years ago David and I exchanged homes with a couple in Aylesbury, just north of London. After two perfect summer days, the weather turned viciously hot and the temperature rose, in fahrenheit terms, to three digits. This would not be an all-out disaster in America because we have access to air conditioning.  To say that there is no a/c in England is an exaggeration, but not much of one.  David and I were reduced to standing in the frozen food section of the local supermarket to try to cool down.

Then there’s the story about how it rained 19 out of 21 days when we were staying in Durham for a three-week exchange. But that’s for another time.

4.  In rural areas, beware of three-legged pets:  This is a back-handed way of warning the traveller about narrow, visibility-challenging roads.  England is a country that offers one-way rural roads for two-way, speeding traffic.  And heaven help you if a combine comes at you in the opposite direction. Since combine drivers are disinclined to apply their brakes, your only recourse is to drive into the nearest field.

Three-legged pets are domestic animals who have been struck by vehicles on these narrow, winding roads, lose a leg to surgery, then hop around on three appendages (competently, I might add).  In my crime novel, A Death in C Minor, I honor these brave beasties by having a three-legged dog, Molly, discover the murder weapon.

5.  Demand your right to ice: Pubs in England are licensed by the government, so the amount of liquid served is regulated.  Every glass has a line at its top to indicate the required level of beer, wine, or soft drinks. Ice is regarded as an enemy by Her Majesty’s government, because it displaces some of what you are drinking. This poses an obvious dilemma to us Americans since, goodness knows, we want our drinks to be cold.

Instead of declaring to the publican, “Go ahead, cheat me.  Displace the liquid,” I have learned to ask for “an American Coca Cola.”  Invariably, the server will ask, “What’s that?” And I answer, “A coke with lots and lots of ice, and a slice of lemon.” Typically, I get what I want.  On home exchanges to Britain we take along our own ample-sized ice trays.  Forget automatic ice makers in England.  You’d have a better chance of finding the Holy Grail.  You can purchase bags of ice at supermarkets, but make haste on Friday and Saturday evenings, or the local revellers will beat you to the punch.

6.  Be polite:  Even when complaining, be nice about it.  The Brits already have a negative image of Americans as Neanderthals who don’t know which fork to use at the dinner table.  They will, however, respond positively to good manners. Tossing in some self-deprecating humor doesn’t hurt, either.

Once, while converting our American dollars to British pounds, I said to the cashier, “We’d like to exchange our worthless American currency for your inflated pounds, if you please.”  The poor man could scarcely stop laughing.  On another occasion, when David and I went to the old historic Haymarket theater to see a play, I looked around and said, “I wonder when the fire marshall was here last?”  Not only did the audience in our section laugh, but some actually gave me a round of applause.  So remember: good manners + self-deprecating humor.

7.  Never say “yuck,” when a Brit confesses a fondness for Marmite.  That would be equivalent to their disdain for peanut butter.

There are additional tips about traveling in England, such as: 8) don’t expect the men to be wearing bowler hats; 9) don’t expect thick fog, as in the Jack the Ripper movies; and 10) don’t expect to see charming Cockney chimneysweeps dancing on rooftops. Those are remnants of the past.

Finally, should you happen to encounter Her Majesty, do not speak until spoken to!

Otherwise, have a lovely time.

ABOUT THE BOOK

In THE ERLKING, New Scotland Yard Detective Inspector Mick Chandra is back in London. His American girlfriend, Jessica Beaumont, has moved in with him and is busy trying to revitalize her career as a concert pianist. Mick is setting up a drug sting operation when he learns he has been reassigned to the Yard’s Pedophile Unit.

Children in north London have begun to disappear. The situation is dire. With Mick’s record for solving cases the Yard hopes that adding him to the team will bring about a quick resolution.

Someone who calls himself “The Erlking” is behind the disappearances. Rumors abound that The Erlking is head of a ring in which a prominent member of the government is involved. Mick and his team need a big break.

To write this book Rebecca researched real-life cases and consulted Scotland Yard. In this new Mick Chandra mystery, she takes readers into a dark and disturbing world, reminding readers that while redemption is not always possible, justice is, especially when Chandra is on the case.

THANKS TO AUTHOR, REBECCA YOUNT,
I HAVE ONE (1) EBOOK TO GIVEAWAY

CLICK HERE TO BRING YOU TO THE GIVEAWAY ENTRY PAGE

DISCLAIMER
No items that I receive
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or given to family and/or friends.

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ONE WINNING BOOK PER HOUSEHOLD
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FRIDAY 12/21   ADDENDUM:

Due to the nonresponse from one of the winners, another winner was chosen.  An email has been sent and if she has 48 hrs to respond or another winner will be chosen.

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