I’m running a promotion!!

Program One

• You buy one of my paperback books from amazon.com, read it and write a review, and you can participate in the Buy-One-Get-One-Half-Off Program, and will receive an amazon.com gift certificate for half the retail price of any other paperback book by me. You are only responsible for 50% of the price plus shipping costs associated with the purchase! Once you’ve written your review, send me your email address using the secured contact form and I’ll get your gift certificate right out to you!

Program Two

• If you have an Amazon Kindle you can participate in the Buy-One-Get-One-Free program. Purchase one of my Kindle enabled books, write a review, and you will receive a gift certificate for the full value of a second Kindle book (mine are very reasonably priced). That’s right, two for the price of one! Once you’ve written your review, send me your email address using the secured contact form and I’ll get your gift certificate right out to you!

This promotion won’t last forever, so start reading right away! How cool of a deal is that? There are numerous books for you to choose from, just click, buy, write, and save…pick from any of the books below to get started:

Paperback Options:

Kindle Options:

I have three addictions in life: sour cream, peanut butter, and books.

As I’ve mentioned before, I can’t go to a bookstore without buying something, and I’ve had to actively avoid them because we’ve run out of space on our many bookshelves. Online bookstores, of course, aren’t so easy to avoid, especially since several of my books are available there :-).

Anyway - I also try to check out independent bookstores as well, even though we don’t have that many around here (though we should given that it’s Sacramento)….so I was curious - where do YOU like to do your book shopping? Take the poll and leave a comment!

As some of you in the states may know, yesterday, 18 February, was President’s Day.

If you’re not familiar with the origin of this…holiday…here’s a little snippet from the source du jour:

Presidents Day (or Presidents’ Day), is a commonly used, but erroneous, name for the federal holiday officially designated as Washington’s Birthday. It is also the official name of a concurrent state holiday celebrated on the same day in a small number of states. It is celebrated on the third Monday of February. [Link]

Yes, you read it right. It’s a false named holiday. It started as a celebration of our “Founding Father”, but then through a failed initial attempt to combine Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthdays, the retail industry stepped in and made the decision for us. President’s Day would celebrate ALL presidents, and it would be a shopping day for everyone who works at a company that recognizes the federal holiday (basically anyone but retail).

What that furthermore means, is that everyone who works retail is working on the 18th, while everyone who doesn’t work retail is SHOPPING on the 18th. It’s a win-win for everyone, in my opinion.

Now, I did not do much shopping on the 18th - only grocery shopping because I wanted to prepare a special dinner in celebration of yet another fake holiday. Instead of being a retail whore, I accomplished two primary things while I was at home on the 18th.

First, I solved our 4×4 Rubik’s Cube, which was not much of a challenge since we pretended it was a 2×2 and only scrambled it in groupings. I solved it using the exact same process as one uses on a 3×3 cube, but I was none the less impressed with myself.

Second, I finished the last edits on a short that I wrote last year, called The Peregryn. It will be available on the Amazon Kindle, and in downloadable e-Book format.

Third, ok so I did more than 2 things on the 18th, I did about 25% of the initial edit of the humorous adventure story that I wrote back in 2006. It’s around 58k words, so it’s taking me a bit longer to make the first pass, but I’m hoping to have it ready for publishing by end of year.

In other book news, David is actively editing The Venus Diary, and I hope to have his first round of edits incorporated by mid-March, in preparation for publishing by end of April. I have also submitted the first book in the series, Box of Hair: A Fairy Tale, to Barnes & Noble, Borders, and a local children’s book store for possibly inclusion in their brick & mortar locations. We’ll see what happens there.

So all-in-all, I worked on President’s Day just like many of you out there. But I did celebrate by cooking a yummy steak dinner, complete with asparagus and a festive salad.

Happy Birthday all ya’ll, except for he who must not be named.

You know you want to…

Click the image above to purchase the hardcover directly from amazon.com, or visit the official website below for Kindle Edition and Signed Edition options. Thank you in advance for your support of independent authors!!

I need your support and feedback and constructive commentary on what you like and don’t like - especially since I’m currently editing the two sequels to this whimsical fairy tale adventure.

If you buy it, please leave a comment and let me know - I might even acknowledge you in a future story :-).

Official Website - http://www.boxofhair-fairytale.com/

Oh NO!

Your trolley got away from you and now it’s run into someone’s car!

How many times has this happened to you?

You’ve just spent $200 at the grocery store, or perhaps your local warehouse club, and you’re unloading the goods into the trunk of your car, when SUDDENLY, the weight of the 24 pack of Diet Pepsi Vanilla, and the 400 thread-count Egyptian Cotton sheets have pulled your trolley across the parking lot and into a car across the way.

You weren’t paying attention to your trolley were you?

And now you’ve done considerable damage to someone’s car! You run to retrieve your cart, ignoring the large dent in the side or bumper of the victim’s vehicle.

No one is around, so why bother to put a note on their car about the incident? It’s just a ding, right? Everyone gets dings in their car at some point.

Awareness. Maintain close control of your baggages and packages to avoid them flying across the parking lot and totalling your neighbour’s Honda. When dealing with a heavy trolley, make sure it is braced gently against YOUR car, while you unload it into the trunk or the back seat. If necessary, have someone hold onto the cart while you are doing your work. This will prevent the embarrassment of others watching you as you run frantically across the parking lot screaming “LOOK OUT FOR THE TROLLEY!”.

Obviously, in the states you will have to adapt this to “LOOK OUT FOR MY RUNAWAY SHOPPING CART!”, or no one will have any idea what you are screaming about.

Here’s a fun little diddy that you can use for Black Friday, the biggest shopping day on the planet where people are buying things they don’t really need…

Betty Boughta bought some butter, but she said “This butter’s bitter! If I put it in my batter, it will make my batter bitter!” So she bought a bit of better butter and it made her batter better.

I was just minding my own business and casually browsing around on amazon.com and ran across this.

I really don’t know what to say other than this, for some reason, absolutely freaks me out.