Month: September 2012

Bloggiesta Ole!

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Fall is a busy time of year with school starting and with a number of other  blogging events going on, but we wanted to give everyone some  time to focus on those small tasks that fall by the wayside during busy times.  Bloggiesta is the perfect event to check off those to-do lists and also get  inspiration going into the wintry months! It’s also a great opportunity to  connect with other bloggers you may have not met before or haven’t talked to in  awhile. We’d love to have anyone interested to join in the fun!

I love to blog, but everyone who has a blog knows how time-consuming it can be.  I struggle to read, post and visit my other bloggy friends and I don’t have time to work on the basics of blog upkeep.  Two and half years ago I participated in my one and only Bloggiesta and accomplished and learned so much.  I think that year the biggest thing I learned and accomplished was how to back-up my blog.  Of course, this was BG (Before Gage) so I will not have as much time this go around, but I plan to join in as much as I can. My blog layout needs a little TLC and I can at least manage a mini-challenge or two.

It’s the weekend of September 28-30th, so hop on over to There’s a Book to sign up.  Your blog will thank you for it!

Jane:The Woman Who Loved Tarzan by Robin Maxwell

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Jane: The Woman Who Loved TarzanJane. Finished 9-11-12, rating 3.75/5, fiction, 320 pages, pub.2012

Cambridge, England: 1905. Jane Porter is hardly a typical woman of her time. The only female student in Cambridge University’s medical program, she is far more comfortable in a lab coat, dissecting corpses, than she is in a corset and gown, sipping afternoon tea. A budding paleoanthropologist, Jane dreams of travelling the globe in search of fossils that will prove the evolutionary theories of her scientific hero, Charles Darwin.

When dashing American explorer Ral Conrath invites Jane and her father on an expedition deep into West Africa, she can hardly believe her luck. Rising to the challenge, Jane finds an Africa that is every bit exotic and fascinating as she has always imagined. But she quickly learns that the lush jungle is full of secrets—and so is Ral Conrath. When danger strikes, Jane finds her hero, the key to humanity’s past, and an all-consuming love in one extraordinary man: Tarzan of the Apes.

Jane is the first version of the Tarzan story written by a woman and authorized by the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate. Its 2012 publication will mark the centennial of the publication of the original Tarzan of the Apes.  (from Goodreads)

I know next to nothing about the Tarzan story.  I vaguely remember seeing him fly vine by vine through the jungle in black in white as a kid flipping through channels.  And that’s it.  So, when I was offered a chance to learn his story from a viewpoint that interested me, I was excited.  I was pleasantly surprised at this telling of Jane’s story.

Jane is highly educated, opinionated and more progressive than her peers.  More interested in bones than marriage, she is the first woman to attend Cambridge Medical School and eager to join her father on one of his expeditions, much to her mother’s horror.  Father and daughter depart for the African jungle hoping to find the missing Darwin gene and instead find treachery, death, lies and separation.  When Jane is rescued by Tarzan she moves beyond the typical heroine and becomes a woman and scientist discovering passion for the first time.

I thoroughly enjoyed Jane’s adventures and Tarzan’s primal heroism and know that this is the closest I’ll ever get to an expedition such as this one.  With that said, adventure stories aren’t really my thing so there were small chunks of jungle time that I found myself skimming, but this is not a judgement on the storytelling, only on my reading habits.

This book was authorized by the Edgar Rice Burroughs Estate and is timed to celebrate the first publication of Tarzan 100 years ago.  Burroughs even makes an appearance at the beginning and end of the book.

As a newbie to Tarzan and Jane, I was totally captivated by their world and plan to check out more of Robin Maxwell’s novels about historical women.

Thanks to PR by the Book for getting this book in my hands.  Isn’t the cover cool?

Dyslexic Authors Quiz – guessing closed

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I was flipping through a book and found a list of famous people who suffered from dyslexia, a variable often familial learning disability involving difficulties in acquiring and processing language that is typically manifested by a lack of proficiency in reading, spelling, and writing (from Merriam-Webster).  It made me curious about authors who may suffer from this condition and after a little investigating I was surprised at the authors I found on this list.  Let’s see if you are too.

FIRST TIMERS ALWAYS WELCOME!

You have until noon Sunday to submit your answers as a comment.  Comment will be hidden until I post the answers.  No Googling! The person with the most points this round will win a B&N gift card (total $ based on # of total participants, so please play) and a randomly selected participant will win a fun prize from me.

1. “The diagnosis of dyslexia wasn’t available in the late fifties -bad spelling like mine was considered a psychological problem by the language therapist who evaluated my mysterious case. When the repeated courses of language therapy were judged to have had no discernible influence on me, I was turned over to the school psychiatrist.”  said the man who created Owen Meany  John Irving

2. The creator of Captain Underpants wasn’t held back by dyslexia and ADHD.  Dav Pilkey

3. “Being slow made me pore over sentences and to be receptive to those qualities in sentences that were not just the cognitive aspect of sentences but were in fact the “poetical” aspects of language…those qualities in language are as likely to carry weight and hold meaning and give pleasure as the purely cognitive, though of course we can’t fundamentally separate those things, although the information age does its best.”  said this Pulitzer Prize winner for Independence Day  Richard Ford

4. Maybe the most well-known African-American woman science fiction author who died in 2006 at the age of 58.  Octavia Butler

5.  “The first book I wrote, most of the letters where backwards and much of it is horribly misspelled, but it didn’t stop me.  Sometimes it pays to be too stubborn to listen to other people and in my case that was especially true.” said the author of the Dark-Hunter vampire series  Sherrilyn Kenyon

6. This science fiction author of the Sword of Truth series has dyslexia and is really into Ayn Rand’s Objectivism (which is popular this political season).  Terry Goodkind

7. “I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 12. In those days they thought that I was backward. I didn’t really feel at home with the written word until somebody gave me a typewriter. But, even today, I never send things out without having them checked by an assistant.” She has written a few books but more famously wrote the TV series Prime Suspect.  Linda La Plante

8.  (I) “was severely dyslexic and couldn’t spell, still can’t spell. So I was discouraged from writing and embarrassed”.  It’s a good thing for the popularity of fried green tomatoes that she overcame her insecurities.  Fannie Flagg

9. This one-name children/young-adult author won the 1991 Newbery Honor with his character Charlotte Doyle and in 1992 with Nothing but the Truth.  He was awarded the  Newbury Medal in 2003 for Crispin:The Cross of Lead.  Avi

10. This is prolific Emmy winning writer/producer and bestselling author (8 books in the Shane Scully series) sums it up with this, that his real fear for “dyslexic people is not that they have to struggle with jumbled input or that they can’t spell but that they will quit on themselves before they get out of school.” He was also one of Castle’s poker buddies (on ABC’s Castle) and his chair remained empty at the table for a year after his death.  Stephen Cannell

Answers to last week’s Thrilling Quiz here.  Leaderboard & rules here.

BBAW Interview Swap with another Stacy :)

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I want to introduce you to Stacy Juba, blogger, author, Reiki enthusiast.  She was a journalist and has written books in a few different genres.  Stacy blogs over at One Stop Reading and after you say hi to her here you should click over and check her out.  You might even find an interview with me over there 🙂

1. Did you start your blog as a way to promote your books?  How has it evolved?
I started my website first and added the blog about six months later. Since websites are static, I felt that I needed to add a blog so that I could keep getting my name out there and to have my site be more search engine-friendly. I made sure that the blog and the website were integrated, so that one would draw traffic to the other.
I discovered that having a blog was like being the editor of my own magazine. I enjoyed putting out quality content and receiving comments from readers. It wasn’t just about promoting my books even though that’s how it started; it was also about expressing myself, and connecting with other writers and book lovers.

2. You wrote your first book at 18 (wow!), what’s the best writing advice you’ve ever given or received?
I actually wrote it at 16, during high school study halls, and it was published by Avon when I was 18 after I entered it in a contest for teen writers. This was my young adult family hockey novel Face-Off, back in the early 1990s. I recently brought it back into print and put out an e-book edition. The best advice I’ve received is to be determined and to treat writing like a business. There is a lot of rejection on the writing path, and then once you do have your books published, it is a lot of hard work to build readership. If you want it to be more than a hobby, you have to invest a great deal of time and believe in yourself, as well as learn a lot about writing, editing, marketing, social networking, the publishing industry, and even about website design and e-book formatting.

3. You’ve written in so many genres, but which genre do you read the most?
I used to read mystery novels the most, but recently I’ve been reading a lot of sweet romances and romantic comedies on my Kindle.
I’m also writing a romantic comedy. I still love mysteries, but lately I’ve just felt like reading some lighter and more upbeat books.

4. Who or what inspires you?
As a writer, I’m inspired by the world around me and by following my interests. A subplot in my novel Twenty-Five Years Ago Today was inspired by my interest in Greek mythology, and my book-in-progress was inspired by a family trip to a theme park. Reading great books also inspires me. Reading a book fuels my desire to express myself through my own stories.

5. I love quotes, do you have a favorite?
I have Eleanor Roosevelt’s quote, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent,” on my Facebook page. I think it’s a good quote for writers, as you need to have a tough skin when your story is rejected or if you receive a negative review. I’ve always been very sensitive to criticism and I need to remind myself not to take it personally.

6. Blogging takes a lot of time.  How much time do you spend writing posts and reading other blogs?
I used to spend a couple hours per week writing and editing posts, but now it’s just a few hours per month. I’ve found that less is more when it comes to blogging. If I blog too much, then it takes away from my time to work on my novels.  I publish guest posts on my blog, but just a couple per month as those take time to set up. I don’t read any blogs on a regular basis, just due to time constraints, but I do follow links for blog posts on Twitter, Facebook, and Triberr if a title catches my interest. It is amazing how many talented bloggers are out there, providing informative and entertaining posts.

7. You are trained in Reiki, tell us about it.
Reiki is a form of hands-on energy healing. I’m very interested in holistic practices such as Reiki, acupuncture, hypnosis, massage, Tai Chi, etc. and I took a few classes to become trained in the different levels of Reiki. I don’t practice it professionally, but I use it on myself and on family members from time-to-time, and I’ve incorporated aspects of it into my books.

8. What’s your favorite read of the year so far?
I guess I would say the Hunger Games books. When I started the first one, it took me several chapters to get into it, but once I did, I found the characters compelling and the storyline fresh. I still have one more book left to read in the series, and I know I’ll devour it in a couple days.

Stacy Juba – One Stop Reading: Books for Adults, Teens & Children
* Web Site: http://stacyjuba.com/blog/
* Amazon page: http://ow.ly/99G2J
* Twitter: http://ow.ly/99G6J * Facebook: http://ow.ly/99G8i

Sundays with Gage- Parents Night Out

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This weekend my parents came and stayed with Gage while Jason and I snuck away for a night.  We didn’t go very far, but we had a free hotel stay and a night out planned.  I made a check on my bucket list.  We attended a local theater’s yearly fundraiser, Murder  by the Falls.  Let me tell you how fun it was.  It started with drinks and appetizers, we then went into the theater for Act 1 (surprise, surprise someone got murdered).  They then sent us out into the streets to find clues.  There were four clues in storefronts (we found them all) and there were four actors around the village that were available for questioning, but you had to figure out who they were.  We then met at town hall, grabbed some dessert and found our table with six other ‘detectives’.  We all had to come up with one answer and our team did pretty well even if we didn’t win.  We knew the who and the how, but missed most of the why.  The village is a popular place on the weekends and we had more than one person ask us what was going on since there were several hundred ‘detective’ combing the streeets.

The play.

Offering clues on the street.

Aha!  I think I have it! (Otherwise known as the goofiest picture I’ve taken in awhile so I had to add it)

It was a fun night and we can’t wait to put on our detective badges again next year.  Since this is supposed to be about Gage, here’s how he felt about us leaving for the night.  He’s a cool kid 🙂

Isn’t it great when authors leave comments on your blog?

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I love comments, all comments.  Okay, maybe not the 50 at a day I get from lista de mail, but all comments from real people.  I don’t always respond in a timely fashion, but I LOVE to read them.  It makes me feel like I’m not typing into a black hole, you know?

Sometimes I even find a comment left on a review from the author.  In honor of Thrill Week I wanted to tell you about an author who has left a blog comment on 3 of the 4 books of hers that I’ve reviewed (and I’m sure the fourth was just an oversight ;)).  Karen E Olson, author of the Tattoo Shop series, is a blogger’s dream.  She never offered me a free book, but she offered me something better, feedback.  Isn’t that awesome?  I am psyched to meet her when I attend Bouchercon next month. (the 3 reviews-Ink Flamingos, Driven to Ink, Pretty in Ink)

So, tell me, what authors are good about leaving comments on your blog?  Let’s give them a shout out where it’s due.  And to start I should say that Beth Hoffman, author of Saving Cee Cee Honeycutt, stops by and comments often.  Love her 🙂

Thrilling Quiz – guessing closed

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In honor of Thrill Week, our first quiz this round is all about mysteries and thrillers.  I hope every one will give it a shot.  Last round we had a record number of participants (46!) and I’m hoping to continue that trend.  FIRST TIMERS ALWAYS WELCOME!

You have until noon Sunday to submit your answers as a comment.  Comment will be hidden until I post the answers.  No Googling!  The person with the most points this round will win a B&N gift card (total $ based on # of total participants, so please play) and a randomly selected participant will win a fun prize from me.

Directions-Take a look at the photo of mysteries/thrillers that are the first in a series.  Choose the correct title and then choose the correct main character.  You’ll have two answers for each book.  Good luck and have fun!!!  Guesses are encouraged.

1. H.The Case of the Missing Books by Ian Sansom    u.Israel Armstong  

2. C.The Informationist by Taylor Stevens   o.Vanessa Michael Munroe  

3. I. Knots and Crosses by Ian Rankin    t.Inpector Rebus  

4.  E.Still Life by Louise Penny     p.Chief Inspector Gamache  

5. D. Case Histories by Kate Atkinson   s.Jackson Brodie

6. K.Dead Cat Bounce bt Sarah Graves  l.Jacobia Tiptree

7. A.Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn  m.Lady Julia  

8. B.Heartsick by Chelsea Cain    n.Archie Sheridan

9. G.Don of the Dead by Casey Daniels    r.Pepper Martin

10.  J. Sworn to Silence by Linda Castillo  q. Kate Burkholder 

11. F.Truly, Madly by Heather Weber   v.Lucy Valentine

Sundays with Gage – Is Gage too young for IT?

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So Gage and I have been reading IT for the IT-along.  After about 5 minutes this is what happens.  Do you think he’s too young for IT?  Do you think it’s wrong for me to exploit my child this way just to be entered for a prize?  Discuss.

And over at Marce’s for Thrill Week she has two mystery teasers.  You should see if you can figure them out.

Gage will be back next week all rested up and hopefully not too scarred by his time with the clown.  Here’s my fave Gage photo of the week…

 

Thrill Ride Questionnaire (Blog Hop)

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Thrill Week, September 1-8

Marce is hosting Thrill Week for the second year and I’m thrilled.  Last year I found out about new authors and series and blogs.  I’m expecting more of the same this time around.

Thrill Ride Questionnaire (all responses relating to genres: Mystery, Thriller, Suspense)

1) Introduce yourself

I’m a stay-at-home-mom to a toddler.  I wish I had more time to read.  I live in Cleveland, Ohio with my husband and son.  Oh, I’ll be attending Bouchercon 2012 in October.  If any of you other mystery lovers are attending, I’d love to meet you.

I’ve been blogging for 4 1/2 years and my reading choices are eclectic, but I always find myself going back to the mystery/suspense genres.  With the birth of my son almost 2 years ago the blog’s focus expanded.  I now blog about books, movies, and my son.  I also have a weekly bookish quiz on Tuesdays for fun and prizes.  Stop by this Tuesday, I’m working on something worthy of Thrill Week.

2) What has been your top 3 reads this year? Link your reviews

In just the thrill genres I’d choose the whole Tattoo Shop series by Karen Olson (there are 4), Without Fail by Lee Child (#6 of the Jack Reacher series), Buried Prey by John Sandford (#21 of the Lucas Davenport series).

3) What are you currently reading during Thrill Week?

 I’m reading IT by Stephen King for the IT-along & listening to Stolen Prey by John Sandford, the latest in the series.

4) Do you have an all time favourite cover in the genres above?

Nothing is coming to mind, but if I think of one, I’ll add it.

5) What debut author(s) or new to you author(s) have you read within the last 12 months that have impressed you?

Karen Olson (Tattoo Shop series), Robert Pobi (Bloodman), Daniel Palmer (Delirious), Chevy Stevens (Still Missing)

6) Favourite trilogy or series you recommend to others to read in the genres above?

Harlan Coben’s Myron series has only gotten better, John Verdon’s Dave Gurney series, Jeffery Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme series, Les Roberts’s Myron Jacovich series is a local and personal favorite

7) What popular author(s) have you NOT read but is on your Wishlist?

Mark Billingham, Marcia Clark,  Harry Dolan, Nicci French,  the list goes on an on.

8) Other than blogs, share with us what other tools you use or subscribe to in order to keep up with the latest news on authors, new releases, book tours, etc?

Barnes & Noble, Shelf Awareness, Goodreads.  Mostly it’s blogs, though.

9) What current book is hyped among the blogosphere that you want to read or are not interested in? Why or why not or link your review if you have read it. 

I really need to get my hands on Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.  I don’t know how it can possibly live up to the hype, but I MUST read it.

10) What is most important in these genres to you? Plot, characters, location, dialogue, red herrings, narrator or what mix of them? 

I like a fast plot with great dialogue (Harlan Coben) but I also like a slower mysteries as long the characters are compelling.  And I love to be shocked 🙂

11) Recommend a book made into movie you thought both were good?

I thought A Simple Plan by Scott Smith was an excellent read and the 1998 movie with Billy Bob Thornton, Bill Paxton and Bridget Fonda was great too.

12) Recommend a book you would like to discuss with others and possibly the author?

 I liked Bloodman by Robert Pobi and have to think he would be fun to talk to.

Thanks for stopping by if this is your first time.  I’m looking forward to finding some great blogs this week!