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Mistletoe Madness Giveaway

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In these days of ultra cool electronics and games, I sometimes wonder if people care about homemade gifts from the heart.

 

I always try to make a few things for people on my list, but the busier I get with real life, the more I can’t quite pull off my big plans.

I just don’t have enough time to make all the things I want.  This year, I’m hurrying to finish some simple cross-stitch Christmas ornaments.  Next week I plan to do a lot of baking to take to family dinners.  One year I made easy flannel scarves, another year crochet bookmarks.

Yet I always secretly fear that people think homemade gifts are a little tacky or cheap.  What about you – what’s your favorite memory of a handmade gift someone gave you?

Comment on this post any time Dec. 16 – 23 to be entered to win a $25 gift certificate to any online book retailer of your choice (B&N, Amazon, ARe, etc.) and any book from my backlist, including a signed print copy of either Dear Sir, I’m Yours or Hurt Me So Good.  If you choose print, I’ll mail internationally.

Happy Holidays – let the Mistletoe Madness begin!

 

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Golden Release Giveaway

Celebrating Golden’s release from Carina Press tomorrow, I’m giving away this gorgeous tote from HautTotes (edited to note:  the size will be the larger full-size tote not the mini)!

To Enter:  comment on this post and tell me your favorite Asian movie.  Red Cliff?  Curse of the Golden Flower?  Legend of the Black Scorpion?  Or simply throw your name in the hat.  Anyone on the planet can enter — I’ll ship internationally.  I do not retain your name or address after the giveaway is over.

Optional:  for more chances to win, review or rate Golden on any online site (Amazon, GoodReads, your blog, etc.) and send me the link.  Each link will gain another entry in the giveaway.

This giveaway will remain open until midnight (CST) Sept. 10th.  If I’m unable to contact the winner after 48 hours, I’ll pick another name.

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Independence Day Giveaway

Happy 4th, America!  We celebrated last night by driving around our neighborhood in the pouring rain looking for our neighbor’s sweet golden retriever that fled their yard during another neighbor’s fireworks finale.  Luckily Annabeth is home safely in her yard this morning!

The monsters will be shooting bottle rockets and who knows what else today.  Thankfully it rained heavily yesterday so no chance for fire.  (Middle and anything to do with fire is always a scary proposition.)

If you’d like to do a little reading of your own today, simply post a comment on this post telling me which book of mine you wish you could read.  I’ll pick a name out of the magic hat and send the winner their desired book.  (I can offer up Golden although I don’t have the final ARC available yet — I can make you one.)

P.S. The journal giveaway is still open.

P.P.S. or is it P.S.S.?  Lord Regret is up for Summer’s Hottest Hero at ARe but is falling waaaaay behind in votes!

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Giveaway: Handcrafted Journal

How better to celebrate Return to Shanhasson’s release than giving away a gorgeous journal handcrafted by my new editor, Lisa?  She kindly stepped in during Deena’s illness and put the final polish on Shannari’s grand adventure.  Without her, Mykal would still be lurking in Keldar and you’d never learn about Shannari’s greatest test of all, and yes, her greatest sacrifice.

I adore paper products, all sorts.  From colored index cards, sticky notes, journals, notebooks, reams of stock paper…  It’s physically impossible for me to go into an office supply store like Staples or Office Max and walk out without picking up some new paper product.  I’d probably be up for Hoarders if the monsters didn’t so kindly assist me in using up my paper goods.  *sobs – I’ve actually considered putting my notebooks and ink pens under lock and key!* 

Most especially, I love journals, especially unique, handmade ones.  My only problem:  I “save” them for something really good…  Which means they don’t always get used.  I keep them on a shelf and admire them.  I may not fight the blank page syndrome too much when writing a book, but when it comes to my own thoughts, I do often hesitate to put such “trival” matters down, especially on “nice” paper.  But you know what?  Those thoughts are just as important.

So I’m ordering one for myself and one to give away here on the blog.

There are two ways to enter.

  1. Comment here and tell me about your own journaling habits or simply throw your name in the hat.
  2. For extra entries, rate or review any Shanhasson book (Rose, Road, or Return) on any review site (Goodreads, personal blog, formal review site, even facebook) or online retailer (Amazon, B&N, etc.) and send the link(s) via email to joelysueburkhart AT gmail DOT com.  I’ll put your name in the magic hat again for each link you send me. Pre-existing reviews are okay and eligible, but please do send me the links if you’d like an extra entry.  I don’t have time to hunt them all down and I don’t want to enter someone who may not be aware of the giveaway going on (and I won’t be able to track them down if they win).

*cough* Notice that poor Road has NO Amazon ratings?  *sobs*

This giveaway is open to anyone on the planet, even if you’ve won something from me before.  I do not retain your name or email addresses after the giveaway is over. 

Comments and links will be accepted through midnight July 8th CST and the winner will be announced on the blog July 9th.

Reviewers who’d like a copy of any Shanhasson book, please drop me a note to the same email above with your desired format.

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News Roundup

It’s free book week at Carina Press. A new free book each day! Details here.

I’m also over at The Romance Reviews today talking about The Bloodgate Guardian. Comment on any of my posts over there to be entered to win a $10 gift certificate to any online retailer of your choice.

Of course, I’m still giddy that Mykal has finally arrived! Return to Shanhasson should start filtering through book retailers over the next few days. I’m still looking for reviewers, so if you’re interested, drop me a note. (This is book 3 of a trilogy, not a standalone.)

I’ll be planning a giveaway shortly — any requests?!?

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Carina Press Anniversary

In celebration of our one year anniversary, I asked as many of our Harlequin team members and Carina Press freelance editors as possible to write a short blog post, talking about what the past year or so has been like for them, working on Carina Press. I deliberately didn’t provide any direction other than that, because I wanted to see what people came up with, in the spirit of Carina’s 1st anniversary. I was so pleased when I saw what they’d all come up with, and had to say (and some of these posts made me just a little teary)! I hope you enjoy the post, and look for your opportunity to win a Carina Press book at the bottom of this post. ~Angela James

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Lessons from Carina’s First Year

Gina Bernal is a freelance editor for Carina Press. You can follow her on Twitter.

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Wow, I can’t believe it’s already time to wish Carina Press a happy first anniversary. Not to be cliché, but it does feel like just yesterday that I shot an email to Angela James saying, “Hey, I hear you might be looking for editors…” Lucky me, I made the team. Working for Carina has been a pleasure, but it’s also been a tremendous learning experience—both professionally and personally. Carina’s first year as a publisher also happened to be my first year in an exciting, emerging part of the industry, in a new job, living in a new city. And I’ve learned some interesting lessons along the way…

The writer’s imagination is endless. Carina’s motto is “Where no great story goes untold,” and that wholehearted approach to finding compelling reads means our inbox is filled with a little bit of everything. Great, good and—if I’m being honest—sometimes bad, the variety of manuscripts assures that a batch of submissions will be anything but boring.

Digital publishing moves fast. Tight deadlines keep us all constantly going, but it’s rewarding (and not a little nail-biting) to see a book you love go from acquisition to a reader’s hand in less than a year.

Working in a virtual office doesn’t have to equal isolation. Having always worked in chatty, cooperative offices, I was apprehensive about working from home as a freelancer. Who would I bounce ideas off of? Who would listen to a random rant? Though Carina’s editorial team is scattered across the US and beyond, the “water cooler” environment fostered by our email loop and social networks means someone’s usually there to lend support or share a laugh.

There’s a slippery slope from smart skirts to sweatpants. You know you’ve gotten way too comfortable working from home when your significant other asks “Why are you dressed for dance class?” and your only reply is “Oh, I’ve been wearing this all day.” Yes, I’ve gone from having once been the dressiest person at my old job to coveting Old Navy stretch gaucho pants. All my cute shoes are crying in the closet. Writers and other stay-at-homers, I hope you can commiserate.

Everybody knows Harlequin. Readers or not, people recognize the Harlequin name. The brand is synonymous with romance, and telling someone you edit books for Harlequin’s digital-first imprint is guaranteed to spark an interesting conversation. Makes for a fabulous icebreaker.

Twitter is addictive. Does this need further explanation?

Novellas can pack a storytelling punch. Lately, I’ve become a slow reader. Seriously, I’m jealous of people with active Good Reads update feeds. Novellas provide a fast treat…and a sense of accomplishment when you finish quickly! Some of my Carina favorites include Tia Nevitt’s The Sevenfold Spell, Ginny Glass and Inez Kelley’s Dirty Laundry series, Eleri Stone’s Mercy, Nicole North’s Laird of Darkness, and Seleste deLaney’s Badlands (full disclosure: I edited the latter two).

Romantic Suspense is disproportionately represented in my editing repertoire. While I enjoy romantic suspense, I don’t read tons of it for pleasure—maybe five to ten percent of my for-fun romance reading could be classified as suspense. But as an editor, about thirty percent of the books I’ve worked on thus far are romantic suspense. No explanation for it, but when reading submissions those suspenseful storylines have an undeniable allure.

They’re all real books. Working in digital publishing has made me especially touchy when people say they don’t read ebooks, they read “real” books. People work their tushies off to write, edit and produce ebooks and they’re just as real as any hardcover or paperback out there, thank you very much.

Here’s to a great first year and many more to come!

To celebrate Carina’s one year anniversary of publishing books, we’re giving away some prizes. Today, on each of the nineteen blogs our team members are featured on, we’re giving away a download of a Carina Press book to one random winner (that’s nineteen total winners!) All you need to do to be entered to win is comment on this post. You can enter to win on all nineteen posts. In addition, on the Carina Press blog, we’re giving away a grand prize of a Kobo ereader and 12 Carina Press books of the winner’s choice. Visit the Carina Press blog to enter to win, and to see links to all 19 of today’s blog posts.

And a sincere thank you from all of us, to our readers and authors, for making Carina Press’s first year a success!

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Giveaway: Eternal Rider by Larissa Ione

When I mentioned to Larissa on Twitter that I was planning to give away two copies of Eternal Rider this week, she sent me some awesome swag including signed bookplates! 

I can’t wait to dig into this spin-off series – I totally gobbled the Demonica books!

If you’d like to win a signed (via bookplate) copy of Eternal Rider with official Larissa Ione bookmarks, simply comment on this post and tell me your favorite character that Larissa created.  (Or throw your name in the hat)  I’ll keep this giveaway open through March 31st and announce the winners on April 1st here on the blog.  This contest is open to anyone on the planet, even if you’ve won something from me before.

P.S. Don’t forget that the steampunk heart necklace giveaway is still open!