Congrats to Lily, who won the copy of Strawberries for Dessert by Marie Sexton! Strawberries for Dessert is now available from Dreamspinner Press. (To promote Strawberries for Dessert, Heidi Cullinan posted a free short featuring Randy and Sam from Special Delivery and Double Blind.)
Contests
- Kristi’s looking for your tips on blocking a shawl with saw-toothed edging. Leave a comment with your tip by 11:59 pm MDT, August 6, for your chance to win a copy of her brand-new shawl pattern.
- LesleyW’s curious about your book prejudices. Leave a comment about said prejudices before August 7 for your chance to win a copy of The Vampire Shrink by Lynda Hilburn.
- Devyn Quinn’s giving away a copy of her new paranormal romance, Siren’s Call (Dark Tides), to a commenter on each of the three posts she made during her visit to Desert Island Keepers. Leave your comments by midnight, August 7, to enter.
- The Smart Bitches are giving away five ARCs of Jennifer Crusie’s forthcoming romance, Maybe This Time. Comment by August 8 for your chance to win.
- Jessica of ReadReactReview is celebrating her blogiversary with a contest. Comment by midnight EDT, August 8, for your chance to pick any two of the paper, in-print books she has reviewed.
- Bronwyn Green’s over at Fang-tastic Books, sharing what she loves about Michigan and giving away two of her ebooks! Winners will be announced on August 11.
- Janna’s on vacation, but she’s throwing a contest party at her blog while she’s gone! Each guest blogger post that you comment on between August 2 and 20 gets you an entry in the contest and a chance to win one of the six great prizes.
- EH is having a contest for readers outside of the US and Canada. Leave a comment by August 31 stating which of the gift packs you’d like to win.
Bookity
- New releases: Lily (m/m romance), Literary Escapism (UF/PNR; includes interviews, contests, & news), Katiebabs (forthcoming releases whose covers intrigued her), Renee (romances that she’s looking forward to), and Elisa (GLBT releases for July).
- Jessica’s Monday Morning Stepback is always good reading. And check out her review of the new book True Blood and Philosophy.
- Don’t miss Dear Author’s news posts.
- If you’re an author who read the article in the August issue of Romance Writer’s Report about online promotion and thought those were great ideas, Dear Author points out the problems with two of the ideas and suggests alternatives.
- Lifehacker has a useful post on how to set up your writing as a real business.
- The climbing library is gorgeous and very clever. I wonder if my condo association would notice me adding one…
- I’d like to see this tower made entirely of books.
- Awful Library Books finds some doozies that are still in circulation, like this 1957 edition of The First Book of Boys’ Cooking – they even included the recipe for making raw carrot sticks!
- Check out the Misadventure that Kris found! I added another example in the comments. Be warned that some of the other links in the comments are very NSFW.
Ebookity
- The Attorney Generals in Texas and Connecticut are investigating the potentially anticompetitive nature of the agency ebook pricing scheme.
- Good article from TeleRead on the need for standard ebook formats.
- Some Kindle humor.
Make, Learn, Do, Think
- Make New Orleans-style iced coffee to drink at home.
- Did you know that a half hour of exercise can increase your creativity for hours after?
- Iams has expanded its recall of certain dry Iams and Eukanuba brand pet foods due to possible salmonella contamination.
- As someone who’s been working in telecom for over 14 years, I found this look into AT&T’s disaster recovery centers fascinating.
- Curious where email spam comes from? Take a look at the real-time Google map.
- Yes! Vindication for my years and years and years of not making my bed. 🙂
- And vindication for being a twitchy, doodling meeting attendee!
- Good news! Sleeping in on the weekend may actually help you catch up on missed sleep during the week!
- A camera bean bag can provide an inexpensive and portable stable base for your camera. You could also make a larger bean bag, combine it with an acrylic cookbook holder, and have your very own beanbag bookstand.
- If you blog and you repost articles from other sources, be aware that companies are trolling for such use and slapping bloggers with $75,000 copyright violation fines.
- Trying to increase your geek cred? Maybe shoes with keyboards printed on the soles will do the trick….
- I really like this nautical rope bracelet. I wonder if I could find black nautical rope to make one for myself?
- Make your own zippered case for a laptop or other electronic device.
- If you cross stitch and you’re a Mythbusters fan, you must check out the pattern for this famous quote from Adam Savage: “I reject your reality and substitute my own.”
- You know you want to knit duck feet baby socks…
Huh
- You will not catch me knitting any of these. Some of the comments are pretty funny, too. (Um, thanks??, MamaTulip!)
- If that thing’s the future of communication…
- Not sure why anyone would buy a $500 cat dress.
- Whoops – how closely have you looked at the shapes of the pieces of your puzzles?!
- Can’t say that I recommend throwing a brick into your washing machine.
- If you’ve always wanted to be able to punch a hole through the cap of a beer bottle and drink your beer through a straw (and you aren’t worried about the little metal disk now floating in your beer), you’ll love the BottleBop Bottle Cap Punch.
- July was National Ice Cream Month in the US. Consumerist listed ten bizarre ice cream flavors that you might want to try… or not. No, no haggis ice cream for me, thanks!
Cool
- Maybe the photographer in your life needs a Canon lens coffee mug?
Linkity Peeps
- Kristi’s weekly list of craft, photography, food, and humor links.
- KB’s weekly WTFery post. (NSFW)
- Marsha’s links to various knitting patterns for gloves and fingerless mitts.
LOL
- CJ and I achieved a tiny bit of notoriety from our post at Tor.com about best and worst job prospects in the urban fantasy economy. 🙂
- If you’ve ever had your lunch vanish from the fridge at work…
- I would hope that every university anywhere would read this xkcd and think carefully about its website… (Make sure you hover your mouse over the comic for additional text!)
- Discover the science behind why vampires sparkle! (Via Smart Bitches)
- Is it bad that I’d like to modify my car to do this?! And while I wouldn’t necessarily want to modify my car to do this, it’s pretty clever. (Thanks, Jeanne!)
- If you’ve ever wondered how to give your opossum a pedicure, wonder no more! (Thanks, Jase!)
- Some very unhappy wet kitties… (Thanks, MamaTulip!)
- And you know better than to leave your kitties in direct sunlight, right?
- This explains a lot, actually.
Teh Cute
- Just be warned that you might not make it out alive from the Daily Squee…
- Kitten! Very, very sleepy kitten! Tabbies! Melly! Kitten and the Bean. Floofy kittens! Silly kittens! Hungry kitten! Kittens! Kittens! Baby flamingo!
Reading Update
See what happens when I read long books instead of shorts?! I have a very short Reading Update. 🙂
Brushback (Evan Austin Mysteries, Book 1) by Jamie Scofield. ebook. Excellent m/m mystery about a Seattle private investigator hired to find an about-to-be heir by the mother who abandoned the boy and his father years ago. However, things aren’t quite as straightforward as that. 🙂 So… are there going to be any other books in the series?! This seems to be the only book from the press and the only book by this author… and no updates since the June 2009 release.
Double Blind (Special Delivery, Book 2) by Heidi Cullinan. ebook. Excellent m/m romance about a gambler who picks up and inadvertently saves a guy who just lost his last five dollars at roulette and isn’t sure what he has left to live for.
Loving Edits by Mickie B. Ashling. ebook. Very good m/m romance about a rich and prestigious editor, the writer/lover he dumped years ago, and the writer’s beloved and devoted boyfriend. The beginning might be tough to get through, because none of the three are shown in a particularly good light, but the payout is more than worth it (probably because of it)! I’m always hesitant to read menage, because so few authors have convinced me that it would work emotionally for everyone involved, but I can definitely add Mickie B. Ashling to my list of authors who can make it work.
Priority One by Stephani Hecht. ebook short. Good short m/m romance about a new paramedic, young and inexperienced in more ways than one, who’s living with his overprotective brother while trying to recover from a traumatic incident.
Tinsel and Frost by Eden Winters. ebook short. Sweet short holiday m/m romance about a former ballet dancer who’s now a stripper after a career-ending accident.
The Distance Between Us by L.A. Witt. ebook. Decent m/m romance that, unfortunately, drove me completely nuts more than once or twice, or I would’ve rated it higher. It’s about two guys who have been together for ten years and finally broke up recently. However, they’re still living together because of the housing market – they can’t afford to sell their house and they can’t afford to pay rent somewhere else and pay the mortgage on the house. They get a very hot roommate and then both get sexually involved with him. I wanted to slap the two main characters. Many, many times.The sex-to-story ratio was seriously skewed. And this wasn’t one of the menage books that worked for me. All of this is a shame, because I really like L.A. Witt’s writing.
So Much More Than Naked (Books 1 & 2) by D.J. Manly. ebooks. Um. These m/m romances were codependent trainwrecks of pseudo-bdsm, the two main characters were both TSTL, and I only kept reading out of sick fascination for how bad it could get.
“Well, ok, I am less bored now that Mom finally opened the windows again.” -Mayhem
Lol, melting cat, epic
A recent post from blodeuedd..Review- Sizzling Sixteen – Janet Evanovich
I’ve actually already read one of these!! Yay me! (Double Blind) Plus, that free short with Sam and Randy for the new Marie Sexton book was gorgeous. What a cute way to promote the book!
A recent post from Kaetrin..Recent Holiday Reads
Congrats Lily!
Oh, I like the sound of Tinsel & Frost…but then I like dance 🙂
Ohhh, and the climbing library is giving me ideas way beyond my means. Fun though *grin*
Thank you! Oh May – can you see any naughty boys from the window? *whistles innocently*
A recent post from orannia..Juggling
I think the fact that you went ahead and admitted to your lack of cleverness with the title is rather clever:)
Is that a photo distortion or does May have two different colored eyes?
And, FYI, I finally bought my domain name:)…new blog address:
http://innermonologueofamadwoman.com
Yipee.
Whoa, that’s a lot of dairy. And fat. And wheat…
Still think AT&T’s DR sites are so friggin’ cool. But, I’m a telecom geek like you are. 😀
A recent post from Brigitte..Could It Be!!
Melanie: Her eyes are both the same color. I was just messing around with focal black & white in Picasa. 🙂
Brigitte: Woot!
I am seriously going to send that article about making your bed (or not doing it) to my mother. She was always on my case about not doing it; love that I was right 🙂
A recent post from Alison..The cute- it hurts
I don’t know, the “trainwreck” book looks interesting if you judge the cover. See any bats out there, Mayhem?
A recent post from margene..On the Other Hand
Chris- I can’t talk to you right now, I’m too busy printing and folding little Daleks…..
A recent post from Lorraine..Its here
Thank you for the linkage, as always, Chris. And you are putting my links posts to shame! This is awesome!
A recent post from RRRJessica..Blogversary Contest with stat reveal for the curious or bored
I want to catch up on sleep, but it will have to wait until next week.
I too do not make the bed (unless there is important company over, not that they are seeing my bed). There are too many other things to do!
A recent post from Seanna Lea..sometimes the knitting wins
Hey there Lady!!! I’ve been hanging with kiddos more this summer and it’s been great. :0) But I wanted to drop in and see how things were on your part of the continent…good, it looks. 😉
Whoa! What happen to May’s eye? Summer heat maybe? Or boredom making the mischievous creep in? LOL!
I’m very interested in how the Tx/Ct vs Apple & others will turn out…that will mostly set the stage ebook pricing in the future since in the spotlight.
I used to carpool with a woman who’s windshield washers shot over the top of her car at high speeds. She used it several times on tailgaters. It was quite funny. One time, even the tailgater’s passenger was laughing at it.
To use that yogurt lid trick you’d need to paint.
So much linkity goodness today!!!
Still can’t get over the snow hats/masks/things. Terrifying.
LOVE the Star Wars cupcakes, but made the mistake of showing them to my kids and now they think I should make them. Silly, silly mama. Sillier boys.
Thanks for mentioning the contest! 😀
Loved your post at Tor! Good job! Nice links today. Nice kitty too! My cats have decided to live on the roof and come in through the upstairs bathroom window to avoid the puppy. Guess they’ve been listening to the Beatles.
A recent post from Julia Rachel Barrett..How much sex is too much
the $500 cat dress is very WTFckery worthy. 🙂
A recent post from katiebabs..Some Shocking Publishing News- Barnes & Noble Up for Sale and Dorchester Publishing Ends Mass Market Publishing
The rope bracelets were all the rage among a certain set when I was in HS. I was not in that set, however. Didn’t have a beach house. And I’ve just been reading some books about the brain and focus. Knitting in meetings does it for me.
Watch my blog next Monday for a post inspired by one of your links!
I work for a university… the index link is sad but true, so true. And they SOOOO don’t want to hear it!
A recent post from Miranda..Fantasy Contest Bar in the Rain
So glad the windows are open!
I’m currently reading the new PJ Tracy, so far totally worth the wait!
I have never wanted to give my opossum a pedicure. Nor to buy a $500 cat dress (which would soon become vacuum fodder). But thank you anyway. I do, however, want that library.
Also – re the Star Wars cupcakes… have you seen the Star Wars pancake molds? 😀
A recent post from Nicole..August Snippet the First 862010
I would buy a kitty shaped lipstick!
I used to work with a copywriter who took particular delight in stealing the office drill sergeant’s lunch. (Sheesh, how hard is it to spell sergeant?)
Yay! Thanks again for the book and the mention, too!
Lots of interesting links today. I had a lot of fun clicking and reading.
I loved Double Blind and totally agree with you about So Much More Than Naked. I’ve got book 2 in my TBR but haven’t read it yet.
A recent post from Lily..Weekly Update 31 and The Friday 56
Dangit – There are so many book I want to read and when I think I have them all you go and give me more! Arrg. Um, thank you. lol
That climbing library is very cool. The video to the book tower is just a leeetle creepy with that music.
A recent post from Tracy..M-M Challenge Review- Fair Game by Josh Lanyon
I love the climbing library!
I have a “shake and bake” bed. I just shake out the comforter and go on. I’m also a doddler, especially when I’m on the phone. At meetings, I tend to sketch.
I’m not sure I’d buy a $1 cat dress. It wouldn’t be worth the blood loss.
ROTFL at the opossum pedicure!
A recent post from Sydney..Why yes- I do knit
Oh, that article on sleeping in on the weekend totally validates my wacky sleep schedule! And as a usually twitchy, doodling meeting attendee, that article on floating attention was quite vindicating. Wow, I’m now loaded with amunnition for the next time someone gives me the evil eye during a meeting or someone claims I can’t catch up on sleep. Thanks 😉
A recent post from Ava March..In Search of Beach-Dwelling Cookies
How did I miss this yesterday, especially last night when I was bored?
Love the book tower. I never make my bed either, but I rarely move in the night so I just have to smooth it out. Unlike the kid where it looks like a tornado went through.
That alien baby sperm ghost is gonna give me nightmares. Jeebuz. And now I’m gagging at the ice-cream flavours.
I have to wonder what ships at sea or passing planes thought of the fireworks. Kind of freaky, but cool.
I’ve gone into a diabetic coma from Daily Squee.
Books. Umm. I’ll pass on the last ones. I’ll have to check out Eden’s, Stephani’s and maybe the m/m/m one. I like it as a rule but if I don’t like the characters I’m liable to bail before it gets worthwhile.
A recent post from Tam..New York- Philly and Home
That climbing library? WANT.
A recent post from naomi..catching up
Awww, I want weather that allows open windows. :/
A recent post from naomi..catching up
Hi there! I was pointed in your direction and I just wanted to say thank you for reccing Brushback! I’m so glad you enjoyed it – and yes, there is a sequel coming. I’ve got more adventures planned for Roman and Evan, so your recommendation is very encouraging – thanks again!