And the Summer Reading Challenge winners are...

 

Illustration 174468593 © Kornetka | Dreamstime.com

And that's a wrap on the hearth/myth 2021 Summer Reading Challenge. Thanks to all who entered, and congrats to the rest of you who found new books to read by consulting our curated list. 

The grand prize winner of a signed copy of The Payoff is Tom Dent. The winners of the Pipe Woman Chronicles mugs, in no particular order, are: Tabitha Ormiston-Smith, Meredith Townsend DeVoe, Smoky Zeidel, Melody Stiles, and Vickie Koehler Averhoff. Congrats! I'll be contacting each of you to get details on how to get your prize to you.

That contest took a very long time from start to finish. Thanks to everyone for hanging in there.

As for my total? 72 books. I wouldn't have won my own contest! I knew I should have tried harder...

***

So I've just tonight uploaded the final few episodes of The Atherton Vampire 2: Out of the Coffin. They will be dropping on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays on Kindle Vella through October 22nd. 

In addition, every episode of the first Atherton Vampire novella is available on Kindle Vella right now.

I'll be releasing them both next month as regular Kindle ebooks, in time for your Halloween reading pleasure. There will be at least one more Atherton Vampire book -- book 2 ends on a sort of cliffhanger and I am going to have to resolve that if I want to sleep at night. Details on all of that, including preorder info, will be coming shortly. Stay tuned, as they say on TV.

***

That's it for tonight. I have other stuff to say, but it's too serious in tone for this particular post.

Besides, I've been at the computer for hours and I need to go hang out with my new kitty, Tigger, who I adopted from the Santa Fe Animal Shelter just yesterday. Here he is, a little high on catnip. No doubt you'll be seeing more of him in the weeks to come. 

Lynne Cantwell 2021

***

These moments of winning blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Get vaxxed!

The Summer Reading Challenge is wrapping up.

 

copyright Lynne Cantwell 2021

This is it, y'all. The final week of the hearth/myth 2021 Summer Reading Challenge has begun. And I have a confession to make. 

See the books in the photo? Well, the three books plus a Kindle. Anyway, they represent two things: The hardback copy of The Payoff is the grand prize for the person who has read the most books on our list; the others are books I fully intended to read this summer and never got around to.

I don't know about you, but ever since all this business with the pandemic started, I've had a really hard time concentrating for long enough to get much reading done. But when I compiled the the list of books that's the basis for the contest, I had such great plans. I'd already read a ton of the books on the list, and so many of the others looked really good. Surely I'd be able to dive in and knock off a bunch of them in short order. Right?

Yeah. Not so much. 

I started one and bailed. Then I read a couple of books that aren't on the list at all (what was I thinking?). I picked up one from the list that took me way too long to get through (I blame packing and moving for that), but I did finish it at last. Then I spent way too much time on Facebook. Then finally, last week, I knocked off one. Today, I started another, and I can tell I'll have that one done by the end of the week, no problem. But the books in the pile in the photo? I'll get to 'em. Just not by Saturday.

All of which is to say that if you, too, had good intentions to make headway on our list, but got sidetracked for some reason, don't feel bad. I'm right there with ya.

When you're toting up the books you've read, if you're pretty sure you'll finish the one you're working on by Saturday, go ahead and count it. You have my permission. I mean, I intend to do the same thing.

And if you're certain that you're not going to finish any more books by next weekend, that's okay, too. Go ahead and send me your tally now -- no shame, no blame. We've all had a rough year, after all.

*** 

If it's not clear from the foregoing: I'm accepting contest entries as of now. 

There are several ways to get your final tally to me: email me at lynne.cantwell@hearth-myth.com; leave a comment below; or I'll even take your total in a comment on Twitter or in a Woo-Woo Team post on Facebook. (Those last two weren't in the official rules to start with, but they are now.)

One more time, here's the list. Send me your totals by Saturday! I'll post the winners (and my own total) here on the blog next Sunday. Thanks! 

***

A couple of housekeeping issues: The final episode of The Atherton Vampire dropped on Kindle Vella on Friday, so if you're the sort of person who puts off reading a book 'til it's finished, go for it. In addition, the first three episodes of The Atherton Vampire II: Out of the Coffin will be released tomorrow. Sales of the first book haven't exactly beensmokin' hot. So while I intend to write a third book in the series, it won't be released on Vella; instead, all three will be available in Kindle editions before the end of October. Stay tuned for more on that.

bejotrus | Deposit Photos

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention that this month marks the tenth bloggiversary of hearth/myth. Yes, that's right -- I published my first post in this space on August 16, 2011. "I'm going to aim for a post a week," I said back then. "Let's see how long it lasts." Well, now we know: ten years and counting. Good job, me! This calls for balloons, and maybe even a cake!

Should I shoot for fifteen years next? How about twenty? Let's just see how long it lasts!

***

These moments of celebratory blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Submit your contest entries by Saturday, September 4th! And of course: Get vaxxed!

 

Transcendence giveaway winners! And some news.

I have been hard at work today on the new series which still doesn't have a name. I got started on it last weekend and then realized I didn't know where I was going with it. So I took a few days off, did some more research, wrote my typical rough outline-ish thing, and went back at it.

This new series is going in a slightly different direction than I originally thought. There will still be river gods. The rest is morphing -- for the best, I hope.

But enough about a book that's not even been written yet. I know you're all here to find out who won the contest. And I am here to tell you that the winners of the paperback copies of the Transcendence trilogy are Cassandra Darensbourg and Suzanne Given. Congrats, ladies! I've sent each of you an email. Please check your spam folder if you haven't received it. 

Thanks to everyone who participated. I can't tell you how happy I am to be getting these books out of my house.

***

Quickly, some other news:

* Mom's House is getting some recognition. I had two positive reviews that I forgot to mention last week (bad author! No donut!). In addition, this past Thursday, the memoir was featured on Book Doggy for 99 cents. Hint: it's still 99 cents through tomorrow at Amazon's US site, and also through tomorrow, it's 99 pence (that's how y'all do it, right?) at Amazon UK. So if you haven't had a chance yet to pick up a copy, now would be a good time to do it.

* I keep forgetting to mention that I'm going to be at an author signing event in Las Vegas on November 8th from 3pm-5pm. I'll be one of 100 authors in the same place, signing books and meeting readers. This is a free event for fans, and you're welcome either to bring your own books or purchase some in person (although I won't have a ton of inventory, so bringing your own copy might be better - just saying). Three lucky fans of all those who attend will win a Kindle Paperwhite!

The place is Sam's Town, 5111 Boulder Hwy, Las Vegas, NV, in the Sam's Town Live! room on the main floor. If you live near Vegas or if you happen to be in town that day, come on by. Hope to see you there!

***

These moments of promotional blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. (Vegas, baby!)

The Great Transcendence giveaway.

I promised last week that there would be a giveaway this week. So here we go.

It's hard for me to believe that so much time has passed since the idea for the Transcendence trilogy germinated in my mind. It started with a random stop at the Great Circle Earthworks in Newark, Ohio, in the summer of 2016, and ended at my desk in our old apartment in October of last year. During that period, the events I wrote about in Mom's House came to a head. You could say the Transcendence books were as transformative for me as they were for Maggie.

But enough about me. Here's the scoop on the contest:

I'm giving away two -- count 'em, two -- sets, signed (naturally), of the trilogy, which is comprised of:

Maggie in the Dark
Maggie on the Cusp
Maggie at Moonrise

Down below is the Rafflecopter thingy, which you all know how to operate by now. The contest is live as we speak; you have until midnight Saturday, July 7th, to enter. I'll announce the winners next Sunday, July 8th, at the usual time. Anybody anywhere can enter -- I'm pretty sure I can front postage to wherever in the world you are.

The question I want everyone to answer is a sort of preview of the next series, which is on my mind because I wrote the first words of the first draft of the first book today. Alert hearth/myth readers know this series will have something to do with river gods. But my initial idea is expanding as we speak, and may end up involving more than just the element of Water. So please let me know in the comments what your favorite element is -- Earth, Air, Fire, or Water -- and maybe a little bit about why, and I'll see whether I can work any of that into this next series of books.

Oh! The prizes!

One each of these can be yours! Enter below!

As always, the usual and customary rules apply:

1. Friends and family may definitely enter.
2. Winners of previous contests may win again.
3. There will be a winner. I am getting these books out of my house, one way or another.
4. As always, the judge's decision is arbitrary, capricious, and final.

Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

***
These moments of bloggy Transcendence have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

We have winners!

It's nearly moving day for us here at La Casa Cantwell, and we have all hit the stage where we are so totally over it.

The old place looks like a disaster area, but nearly everything is packed. Today (and yesterday -- long story, don't ask) we finished assembling the wardrobe at the new place. The movers will be here bright and early tomorrow morning.

And you, my friends, are the most awesome ever, because I will not have to move those two sets (13 books each!) of the paperback editions of the books in the Pipe Woman Chronicles universe.

Please help me congratulate Stephanie Grant and Amanda Smith, the winners of the giveaway! Ladies, I've emailed you for your addresses so I know where to send your books. (If you don't see my email, please check your spam folder.)

I'd love to write more tonight, but I still have to pack up the kitchen (aieeeee...). Thanks to everyone for playing -- you're the best!

***
These moments of bloggy winning have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Moving sale.

Moving. Ugh.

I mentioned last week that we're moving to a new apartment. Along with the usual packing and sorting and packing, we spent several hours yesterday at IKEA. I spent most of today at the new place, assembling the wardrobe I bought yesterday. Good times.

Anyway, there's a lot of packing still to be done, but one thing I would like to not have to pack are a bunch of paperback books in inventory. I bought several copies of each of the books in the Pipe Woman Chronicles last year, intending to run a giveaway on Goodreads...and forgot. The good news is that I now have two -- count 'em, two -- full sets of the three series to give away to you, faithful hearth/myth readers.

Sorry that the photos of the prizes are so awful. The lighting was bad and I've already packed my book stands. But all the books there! In order, they are:

The Pipe Woman Chronicles
Seized
Fissured
Tapped
Gravid
Annealed

Land, Sea, Sky
Crosswind
Undertow
Scorched Earth

Pipe Woman's Legacy
Dragon's Web
Firebird's Snare
Spider's Lifeline
Turtle's Weir

And the second edition of A Billion Gods and Goddesses: The Mythology of the Pipe Woman Chronicles.

The fun starts tonight and ends Saturday night, May 5th, at 7:00pm Eastern time. Unfortunately, I can only afford to ship these sets to folks in the US and Canada. (I also have a couple of sets of the Transcendence series that I meant to give away in this contest, but I realized I'd already packed them. So I guess I'll be giving those away next month -- and since there are only three books in that series, I'll be able to ship them anywhere.)

Of course, the usual and customary rules apply:

1. Friends and family may definitely enter.
2. Winners of previous contests may win again.
3. There will be a winner. I am not moving these books!
4. As always, the judge's decision is arbitrary, capricious, and final.

Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway


***
These moments of contested blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Contest winners, and happy Day of the Dead!

Thanks to everybody who entered the Rafflecopter for Maggie at Moonrise. We'll get to the announcement of the winners in a minute, but first I wanted to talk about what inspired me to include so many Day of the Dead-themed prizes. I mean, of course it's coming up this week, and Maggie does go to Mexico in this book. But I really like the spirit (pun possibly intended) behind the holiday.

That noted reference work, Wikipedia, says Día de los Muertos -- or more properly, Día de Muertos -- originates in an Aztec festival dedicated to the goddess Mictecacihuatl. Then it began in early August and lasted an entire month. But it was strictly a central and southern Mexican thing for hundreds of years. Día de los Muertos wasn't celebrated at all in northern Mexico until the 20th century, as Native cultures there had different traditions. Since the Mexican government made it a national holiday in the 1960s, though, it has spread throughout the country and around the world. It's even on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Today, the Day of the Dead is a three-day festival, wrapping in the Catholic observance of All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day. At mexicansugarskull.com, it says: "[Indigenous Mexicans] believe that the gates of heaven are opened at midnight on October 31, and the spirits of all deceased children (angelitos) are allowed to reunite with their families for 24 hours. On November 2, the spirits of the adults come down to enjoy the festivities that are prepared for them."

Old Town San Diego, 2011 | Lynne Cantwell

Families honor their dead by building ofrendas, or altars, at home. The ofrendas feature candles, marigolds, crepe paper decorations, sugar skulls, and photos of their deceased relatives. They leave toys and candy on the altar for spirits of children, and cigarettes and booze for adults. They also leave food on the altar, including pan de muerto, or bread for the dead. On November 2nd, everybody goes to the graveyard to have a picnic. There's music and card-playing, and folks clean their relatives' graves and reminisce about them. It's family-centered and fun.

Contrast that with Halloween, which was originally designed not to celebrate the dead, but to keep them from haunting the living. Although the idea behind the Day of the Dead is to keep the ancestors happy so the family's luck won't turn. So maybe they're not that different, after all.

Speaking of luck, here are the winners from the Maggie at Moonrise launch giveaway:

Great Goddess pillow cover and $10 Amazon gift card: Illume Eltanin
Sugar skull silicone mold: Will Griesmer
Sugar skull tiny trays (5 winners): Sharon Starns, Ashly Haraf, Amanda Whitley, Shirley Shepherd, Brian Lepak

Congrats, everyone! I'll contact you by email about mailing your prizes to you. Thanks to everyone for playing.

***
Maggie at Moonrise will indeed be released for Kindle this week, on Wednesday, November 2nd. I'm hoping to have the paperback out at the same time, but it may be next week. I'll keep you posted.

If you'd like a preview of Maggie's road trip, I've posted photos of her stops on a Pinterest board. Go here to see 'em: https://www.pinterest.com/lynnecantwell/maggies-road-trip/

***
These moments of festive blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Happy Halloween! ¡Feliz Día de los Muertos!

Great Goddess! It's a giveaway!

Thomas Aleto | CC 2.0 | commons.wikimedia.org

The greatest joy for me of falling down a research rabbit hole is learning new stuff. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I didn't know much of anything about the ancient city of Teotihuacán, near Mexico City, until I started doing research for Maggie at Moonrise -- and I knew less than nothing about the Teotihuacano pantheon, even though it's the basis for some Aztec beliefs.

Discoveries are ongoing at Teotihuacán (just as they are at Cahokia and any number of other ancient sites around the world). Of course, historically, most archaeologists were male. So it may not come as a surprise to you that until a few decades back, the accepted wisdom was that the Teotihuacanos' top deity was male -- a storm god nicknamed Tlaloc, the Aztecs' name for their rain god. Then in 1974 or so, a couple of researchers noticed that quite a few images of this god wore a skirt. In short order, pre-Tlaloc was deposed as the top dog, and the Great Goddess assumed Her rightful place at the head of the Teotihuacán pantheon.

The Great Goddess is both a Creator and a Destroyer. As you can see above, in this photo of a recreation of a mural at Tepantitla, the Great Goddess sports a headdress from which the Tree of Life grows. She is linked to jaguars, owls -- in this mural She's wearing an owl mask -- and spiders. In some depictions, She has spider-like mouthparts; here you can see the spiders dangling from the tree on Her head. She gives the gift of water, which cascades from Her hands in this photo. But She's also linked to darkness and the underworld (owls and spiders live in the dark), as well as to war. And She's sometimes called the Spider Woman of Teotihuacán, linking Her to the Spider Woman of the Navajo.

You've probably figured out by now that the Great Goddess shows up in Maggie at Moonrise. Yes, that's the cover on the right. I'm confident that I'll have this book out by November 1st, so I thought I'd get a little excitement going by doing another giveaway.

One of the prizes is a pillow cover that depicts the Great Goddess of Teotihuacán. The cover fits a 16" x 16" pillow. In case you don't have one, I'm throwing in a $10 Amazon giftcard so you can buy one yourself (or, heck, whatever you want).

The other prizes are Day-of-the-Dead-themed, as it's a Mexican holiday and we're coming up on it. There's a silicon sugar-skull mold, which I guess you could use for candy or mini-muffins -- I've used mine for ice cubes -- and some small sugar-skull trays, one to a winner. Each tray is about 2" x 3". They're labeled as not safe for food use, but you could put a tealight on it. Or a little bar of soap. Or whatever.

So that's it: One contest, seven winners. The contest runs until 6pm Sunday, October 29 -- but enter now, so you don't forget. The hearth/myth rules still stand:

1. Friends and family may definitely enter.
2. Winners of previous contests may win again.
3. There will be a winner. I am getting this stuff out of my house, one way or the other.
4. As always, the judge's decision is arbitrary, capricious, and final.

Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

***
These moments of contest-worthy blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

We have winners! and a knitting post.

First off, thanks to everybody who participated in the giveaway for the launch of Maggie on the Cusp. I've emailed all the winners, so check your inbox -- and don't forget to send me your street address if I don't have it yet (you know who you are).

I got a ton of good ideas for Maggie's road trip. In case you were curious (because I was), here's how the vote broke down:

Serpent Mound, Ohio: 3 votes
California: 2 votes
Cahokia: 1 vote
Mexico City: 1 vote

And for the "tell me where to send her" option, I received votes for the following destinations:

Bear's Ears National Monument, Utah
Canyon de Chelly, Arizona (Spider Rock)
Witch Mountain (see below)
Mackinac Island, Michigan (a.k.a. Turtle Island by the Ojibwe Indians)
Sedona, Arizona
Pacific Northwest

Witch Mountain sounds intriguing, but I'm going to need more info. I found a reference on this page to a Witch of Cedar Mountain, in Georgia. Maybe that's what the contestant was thinking of.

In any case, the suggestions are all awesome and much appreciated. And the timing couldn't be better -- I'm about 7,500 words into Maggie in Moonlight and she'll be hitting the road pretty soon. I may not get Maggie to all of these spots, but I'll definitely keep them in mind when I'm location scouting for future books. Thanks again, everyone!

And I keep forgetting to mention that Maggie on the Cusp is just 99 cents right now at Amazon -- as is the first book in the series, Maggie in the Dark. I'm going to leave the first book at a buck, but the price for book 2 will go up on Tuesday -- so if you don't have a copy yet, now's the time.

***
And now to the knitting portion of this post.

You may recall that I was working on a very cool shawl called a Fire Dragon Wing, but I was running out of yarn. Well, there's good news and bad news. The good news is that the maker of Lemonade Shop yarn did send me another skein -- yay! And the project is finished -- yay!

The bad news is that the colors aren't a very good match. Here's a shot of the part of the shawl with yarn from both skeins. The red from the new skein is pink and the orange is MIA.

But hey, it's done, and I'll wear it, and it's all good.

And I have moved on to another project. This one is called the Main Street Shawl. It's constructed very much like the Eden Prairie, which is still my favorite thing I've knitted. Here's what I have done so far. The lighting is bad in the top left corner of the photo, so I'll tell you that the square that looks maroon is a deep rose, and the triangle that looks black is actually purple.

My next step is to pick up stitches along the inside edges of the big V where the white yarn is sitting, knit a few rows of black for a border, and then fill in the empty space with the white yarn. Then I'll pick up stitches along the left side of the rainbow strip, do a black border, and knit a big chunk using the lavender yarn. Then I'll pick up and knit a black border around the whole shebang and it'll be done.

This one, I have plenty of yarn for. As long as I don't run out of black...

***
These moments of road-tripping blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

The Big Maggie Giveaway.

First, let me say that here at hearth/myth, our hearts go out to the folks in the path of Hurricane Harvey. For those of us who are too far away to help in person, the Red Cross is taking donations of both money and units of blood. You can give online, and look up the location of a blood drive near you, at redcross.org.

***
Seems like a bad day for frivolity, but Maggie Muir Brandt -- the main character in the Transcendence trilogy -- has had experiences that are anything but frivolous over the course of the first two books. In Maggie in the Dark, her ex-mother-in-law practically ordered her to Rockville, Maryland, to help her recover from cancer surgery because the woman was so horrible that no one else would come. In Maggie on the Cusp, our heroine is back home in Indiana, but her mother seems to be losing her grip on reality and her brother wants Mom's house. To make things right for everyone involved, Maggie has to expose family secrets and navigate her own emotional minefield. And as a reward, she gets to renew the Earth. Which, to be honest, doesn't sound like much of a prize.

So in the final book of the trilogy, Maggie in Moonlight, she gets to hit the road.

I haven't started writing Book 3 yet, but I have a rough outline, and there are a few places Maggie is going to have to visit in order to move the plot along. But other than that, her itinerary is up for grabs. So I'm appealing to you guys: What should Maggie not miss on her road trip? She's going to be in an RV, so let's keep it to continental North America. Click the road trip question in the Rafflecopter below, and leave your suggestions in the comments.

Of course, contests offer prizes, and we have a few (photos in the Rafflecopter below):

• A commemorative Canadian quarter featuring Mishepeshu, the Underwater Panther, in its original packaging. (The Mishepeshu on this coin seems much nicer than the one in the Transcendence books.)
• A turtle hand puppet from IKEA for your favorite kid. Or for you. No judging here, no sir.
• Five lucky people will win a deluxe Maggie in the Dark bookmark, each adorned with a festive ribbon and a removable turtle charm hand-beaded by Yrs Trly.

So that's seven prizes total. Which means I need at least seven entrants. So step up, y'all.

The contest will run for a week, until 6pm Eastern Daylight Time next Sunday, September 3rd. But don't wait to enter. The prizes aren't going to get any better (trust me -- this is all I got).

The standard hearth/myth contest rules apply, and they are as obnoxious as always:

1. Friends and family may definitely enter.
2. Winners of previous contests may win again.
3. There will be a winner. I am getting this stuff out of my house, one way or the other.
4. As always, the judge's decision is arbitrary, capricious, and final.

Thanks for playing, and good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

***
These moments of contested blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Are editors negative people?

I saw an intriguing topic in a LinkedIn group a couple of weeks back. The title was something like, "Editors spend all their time finding other people's errors. Does that make them negative people?"

Gee, I hope not. Because Kat, Suzu, and I are officially hanging out our shingles (at long last!) as honest-to-goodness editor-type people. We kicked around a bunch of names, and concepts for names, and finally I just said, "Let's call it hearth/myth since it's kind of a brand already." So that's what we're calling it: hearth/myth editorial services. Or Hearth/Myth Editorial Services, if you want us to go all title case on you. Here's the logo (drumroll, please):

There's a tab up top that will take you to our bios. And there's contact info there, too, in case you're intrigued enough to want more information.

But getting back to this idea that editors might be negative people: I don't think that's true at all. And I know several authors who also do editing work, and they're actually very pleasant people. Detail-oriented, for sure. Funny, occasionally. Interested in helping others make their work look as good as it can, definitely. That's certainly what we're aiming for.

Now news editors might be a different story. Those folks are usually working under a tight deadline, so they're not going to suffer fools gladly. Still, I wouldn't call them negative -- just busy. Harried. And again, generally nice folks once the deadline is past.

I saw the link to that discussion in an email, and saved it because I didn't have time to read the thread right then. Now I wish I had moved faster, because the whole thing seems to have disappeared. I'd be interested to hear what you all think: Do negative people gravitate to editorial work? Or do editors become angry, cranky people because of the work they do? Or...? 

I promise we'll take any horror stories as object lessons.

***

I've still got some free copies of The Maidens' War to give away. Let me know if you're interested. Thanks!

***

These moments of bloggy editorializing have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell

Our West Virginia vacation, and hey! Another contest!

Most of us, I suspect, have a place or two in the world that we revisit over and over again. Either its natural beauty speaks to us, or we associate it with good times, or both.

Alert readers of hearth/myth know Colorado is one of those places for me. Another one is Pipestem Resort State Park in southern West Virginia. I even set my first book, The Maidens' War, there. And that's where my daughter Kat and I went on vacation a couple of weeks ago.

The first time I went to Pipestem, I was in my twenties and working in the news department of WKEE-FM in Huntington, WV ("KEE 100 FM -- it's a monster!"). The West Virginia Associated Press Broadcasters Association held its annual meeting at Pipestem for a couple of years running. Every time we went, my co-workers and I would talk about how beautiful it was, and how we wanted to go back in the summertime when everything was open -- including the lodge at the bottom of the Bluestone River Gorge, the one where the only way in or out is by riding the 3,600-foot-long aerial tram. It's a steep trip -- you gain about 1,100 feet in elevation from bottom to top.

Try hauling a suitcase across that.

To be fair, there's a trail, too. But you wouldn't want to haul your luggage down the trail. It's five-and-a-quarter miles long, downhill all the way, and you have to ford the river at the end of it to get to the lodge. Better to pack light and take your stuff down on the tram.

Anyway, some years later, when Kat and Amy were small, I remembered Pipestem. It's only about a four-hour drive from DC and the rates were extremely reasonable. Plus back then, the park threw in some nice perks for lodge guests: free admission to the pools, free tennis, and free mini-golf. Not to mention the free tram rides for guests staying at the lodge down in the gorge. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but free is my favorite price. Plus at the time, I was pretty much broke. So we stayed at the lodge, ate lunches out of a cooler and dinners at the snack bar, did all the free stuff, and had a great time.

I've lost track of how many times we've been back since then. Once, we got a cottage and brought Suzu along. Another time, I dropped the kids off at college and went by myself; I hiked every day, including the five-mile downhill run with the walk across the river at the end, and drafted the outline for The Maidens' War.

The tram stop at Mountain Creek Lodge.

This most recent trip wasn't anything that momentous -- which, after the year I've had so far, was perfect. Kat went with me -- Amy had to work -- and all we did was read books, sit on our balcony, and ride the tram up to get lunch at the other lodge. Very restful.

You're waiting for the contest part, aren't you? Okay. It's easy. I'm not even going to do an annoying Rafflecopter this time.

The Maidens' War gets no love at all. It's my first book, published by a small press, and nobody ever reads it. The poor thing has only one review on Amazon. So I'm offering a free Kindle copy to the first five people who ask for one.

Also, I picked up two fun Pipestem souvenirs while we were there earlier this month. If you post a review of the book at Amazon, send me a message (email or Facebook or here on the blog -- wherever) and I will send you one of them. But you have to be one of the first two people to post a review.

Got it? Okay. In sum:

• Free Kindle copy of The Maidens' War to the first 5 people who ask.
• Pipestem tchotchke for the first 2 people who post a review at Amazon.

While you're deciding whether to play, here's a video of one of our tram rides this year. Flora, fauna, a view of part of that five-mile downhill trail, and massive rattly noises as our tram car goes over the support towers. Enjoy! And good luck!

***

These moments of bloggy vacation memories have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Happy birthday, hearth/myth!

I had a little time on my hands before we left for West Virginia. Can you tell?

Well, the blog is four years old as of today. I thought it was time to spiff things up a little. So I gave hearth/myth a makeover for a bloggiversary present.

But of course, the best birthday parties involve gifts -- and not just for the birthday boy girl blog, but for the guests, too. You know, like a door prize. Or if we're going to be truly classy, a schwag bag.

I'm fresh out of fancy totes and million-dollar watches, but I did manage to put aside $10 for an Amazon gift card, as well as a set of paperbacks of the Pipe Woman's Legacy duology, which of course I will sign for the lucky winner. All you have to do is help me figure out when Webb's birthday is.

See, when I was plotting Annealed, the final book in the Pipe Woman Chronicles, I had to know when Sage would make her appearance. She had to be born at pretty much the same time as Naomi was brokering the power-sharing agreement between Jehovah and the pagan pantheons. That put her birth in the general vicinity of May 2013. I also knew that I wanted Sage to be born on the Taurus/Gemini cusp. Gemini would make her creative and adaptable, while Taurus would make her grounded, but stubborn. After looking at the calendar and what I needed to accomplish between the end of Tapped and the mediation, I settled on May 15, 2013, as the date of Sage's arrival. And it fits her, doesn't it? Sage is creative, forthright, pretty well grounded for somebody who's been told since birth that she's slated to save the world -- and stubborn as the day is long.

Then, when I was planning Scorched Earth and realized Tess would need a lawyer, I decided to bring Naomi and her family to Washington for a visit. And I didn't want Sage to be an only child; a kid with a pedigree like hers needed a younger brother to annoy her. Hence, Webb.

The events in the Pipe Woman's Legacy books occur primarily in the fall of Sage's junior year of college, which makes her 20 years old. Webb is a senior in high school, which makes him 18. There's no discussion of a birthday celebration for him in either book, so his natal day cannot be any time from late August through early December. He's crafty in multiple ways -- he's a Trickster, allied with Iktomi, and of course his superpower is knitting and other types of fiber art. He knows the future. And he's extremely loyal.

So your task, should you choose to accept it (and I hope you will!), is to assign Webb a birthday. Post your suggestion someplace where I can see it -- in the comments below, ideally, but I'll accept suggestions at Facebook and Twitter, too, as long as you also enter the Rafflecopter.

Now, I know y'all will be tempted to give Webb your own birthday, or your brother's or whoever, but that's not going to cut it unless you can back it up with a reason. So: not just "it's my birthday!" but "Webb reminds me of So-and-so because (s)he knits/loves spiders/is very loyal, and So-and-so's birthday is this date." Or you could do some astrological-type research. Or whatever.

I know that's a lot of parameters, but you've got a week to work on it. Contest closes next Sunday, August 23rd. Good luck!

The usual and customary hearth/myth giveaway rules apply, to wit:

1. Friends and family may definitely enter.
2. Winners of previous contests may win again.
3. There will be a winner. I am getting these books out of my house, one way or the other.
4. As always, the judge's decision is arbitrary, capricious, and final.

a Rafflecopter giveaway


***
These happy bloggiversary moments have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Seasons: Going to the beach in Michiana.

Julia had finished her blissful dip in the lake and had stretched out on her towel to dry off. The water was cool, even in August, and the hot sun felt good on her body. In a few moments, the breeze had begun to lull her to sleep.

As she dozed, she became aware that the noise level nearby had shot up. But it was only when a young voice cried out, “Julia!” that she realized she knew the people responsible for all the racket.

-- from Seasons of the Fool

Summer is, hands down, the best season in Michiana.

Our house has never had air conditioning. It gets humid, sure, but usually it's stifling only for a couple of weeks in July and August. Other than that, the temperatures stay pretty reasonable, thanks primarily to the tree canopy that keeps the direct sun off the roof.

Even so, the house would get warm inside in the summer. My mother had kind of a crazy system for regulating the indoor temperature. She always woke up early anyway, and when she got up -- when the house was still filled with cool night air -- she would close the windows almost all the way. Then she'd run fans to keep the air circulating. Between all that and the tree canopy, the temperature inside the house stayed almost tolerable until mid-afternoon or so -- at which point the outside temperature would begin to drop, so Mom would open the windows again.

Her system never worked for me. As a night person, I always get up too late. By the time I've rolled out of bed, it's already starting to warm up outside. My own system involves turning on the fans full blast and hoping for the best. And if it's really awful, I'll go to the lake for a swim.

I took the photo up top last summer at Stop 39, the beach that's closest to our house. About those stops: My parents told me there used to be a bus that ran along Lake Shore Drive from Michigan City, Indiana, to New Buffalo, Michigan. But at some point, a storm washed out a chunk of the road. So now Lake Shore Drive only goes to Stop 41 and there's no bus service at all to my old neighborhood.

Anyway, I never knew how spoiled I was, growing up with a beach so close by, until I went swimming in the Atlantic for the first time. To me, as a kid, a crowded beach was one where seven or eight families had their groups of towels laid out; it was never so bad that you were jockeying for enough real estate to put down a single towel, the way it can be at the ocean. Of course, the beaches in our neighborhood have no parking nearby, so it's just the locals. That cuts down on the crowding quite a bit.

I played a little fast and loose with the facts in Seasons of the Fool when I gave Dave a summer job as a lifeguard. It's been decades since any of the villages in Michiana have hired any. Which is kind of surprising, and dangerous, because riptides do happen in Lake Michigan. We learned as kids not to go in the water when a rip current is present -- but not everybody knows that, or knows that if you get caught in one, you should swim along with the current and eventually it will take you to shore. (That's your public service announcement for today. You're welcome.)

All good things must come to an end -- including summer, and this series of blog posts, and the Kindle Scout nomination period for Seasons of the Fool. We've got just another couple of days for folks to vote for the book. If you want a free copy, now's your chance to get in line for one -- and if you know someone else who would enjoy it, please let them know to click here and vote!

I'll keep everybody posted on the outcome via Facebook and Twitter. (Fingers, toes, and eyes crossed....)

The Rafflecopter will wrap up at the same time as the Kindle Scout nominations do -- so now's the time to enter. Up for grabs is a Kindle Fire HD6 in your choice of color. Rafflecopter doesn't play well with Internet Exploder, so if you're having trouble with the form, try it in another browser (either Firefox or Chrome or something). Good luck! And please tell your friends!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

***
These moments of swimmingly warm blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Seasons: Winter in Michiana.

Julia glanced out the window. It was snowing so hard now that she couldn’t see the trees at the back of her property. She went to another window, trying and failing to see the Stareks’ house across the street. She thought maybe she could see a glimmer from Ms. Thea and Ms. Elsie’s through the murk, and wondered how the ladies were getting on. Then she thought of Dave – although really, she hadn’t stopped thinking about him since running into him at the store.

She picked up her phone and texted him: You OK?

-- from Seasons of the Fool

I've lived here in DC so long that sometimes I wonder what it would be like to live again in a place where it snows.

Oh, DC gets snow. Sometimes we get a pretty good-sized snowfall. Some years, we even get a lot of snow. But those winters are a far cry from the winters of my childhood.

Michigan City lighthouse (Russell Sekeet | flickr.com)

The school bus would pick up the kids in my neighborhood and then take Lake Shore Drive west, through Duneland Beach and Long Beach. Through the bus window, we got to see Lake Michigan in all of its moods: calm, with few waves; stormy, with high surf; and frozen.

And we almost always went to school, regardless of the weather. Here in the mid-Atlantic, if there's a couple of inches of snow in the forecast, the powers-that-be will give the kids a day off -- even if the snow hasn't started falling yet. It's faintly ludicrous. I mean, I get that part of the problem is logistical. a lot of kids have both parents working these days, and if school is going to be canceled, the parents need to know in time to arrange for somebody to stay home with them. But the other issue is that DC doesn't know how to handle an honest-to-goodness snowfall. Instead of sending the plows out as the storm is underway -- which is what happens north of here -- the highway departments around DC will wait 'til the storm is over, and only then begin digging us out.


To be fair, where I grew up, we got a lot more practice -- particularly on our side of the lake, where we would often be treated to the winter phenomenon known as lake-effect snow. Here's how it works: when the wind blows out of the northwest, it picks up moisture as it blows across the lake. The moisture-laden air cools as it moves over the land, the water in the air condenses, and it snows. A lot.

Here's a satellite picture of Lake Michigan so you can see how that works in practice. The area circled in blue is Chicago, more or less. See how you can see the ground on that side of the lake? Yeah. Now look where the red circle is. See how it's all white there? That's Michiana.

I wrote a lake-effect snowstorm into Seasons of the Fool, just to make the book as authentic as possible. However, I did not include the other fixture of winter life in Indiana: high school basketball.

For the uninitiated, basketball is almost as big a deal in Indiana as high school football is in Texas. For many, many years, Michigan City had just one high school -- Elston Senior High -- and the whole town would get behind the team every winter and cheer them on to victory. We even won the state championship in 1966. I was in third grade that year, and I still remember the signs at my elementary school in support of our Elston Red Devils.

By the time I got to high school, we had a second school in town: Rogers, whose mascot was the Raiders. (I wanted them to be the Rogers Ramjets, but nobody ever listens to me.) Unfortunately, splitting the student population also split our roundball talent. Elston still routinely won sectionals -- our longest streak was 24 years in a row, from 1952 to 1975 -- but we'd often get knocked out at regionals by one of the South Bend teams. However, in 1975 -- my senior year of high school -- Elston made it all the way to semi-state before losing to Lebanon. We were devastated, of course.

But I got over it the following year, when I was a freshman at Indiana University. The Hoosiers brought home the NCAA championship in 1976.

Like I said, basketball is a big deal in Indiana.

***
Back to the present day. I had a great time this weekend at the World Fantasy Convention here in DC. I met lots of cool people, did a reading for the new book, and came home with a bulging satchel of brand-new books. Rest assured that a number of them will be Rursdays eventually.

Next Saturday, I'll be gallivanting again -- this time to New York City for the Self-Publishing Book Expo.

As you know, Seasons of the Fool is up for nomination at Kindle Scout through Wednesday, Nov. 26th. And as a thank-you to you guys for putting up with me this month, I'm running a contest to give away a Kindle HD6. If you win, I'll even let you pick the color. The entry form is below; if it doesn't work for you, try using a different browser than Internet Explorer.

Good luck! And tell your friends!
a Rafflecopter giveaway

***
These moments of wintry blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Seasons: Halloween in Michiana.

“Maybe this isn’t a good idea,” Ms. Thea murmured behind her. “It’s so close to Samhain. The veil is already thinning.”

“Maybe it’s the best idea,” Ms. Elsie replied quietly.

The conviction in her voice gave Julia the courage to step into the labyrinth.

At the moment her toes touched the path inside the ropes, everything changed.

- from Seasons of the Fool

As (I hope!) you know by now, Seasons of the Fool is up for nomination at Kindle Scout. The nomination period for my book closes Wednesday, Nov. 26th, which gives us four Sundays between now and then. Four Sunday blog posts...four seasons...I'm sensing a theme here....

Darron Birgenhaier | flickr.com

We've established that I'm old, right? When I was growing up in Michiana, trick-or-treating was an actual thing. We would get dressed up in our costumes and traipse around to the neighbors and hold out our little buckets or bags, and they would give us candy. It wasn't until I was a little older that people started getting spooked by stories of razor blades in apples and the like. And then came the stories about crazy, trippy people handing out drugs instead of candy, and, well, that's when most parents instituted the practice of checking over one's haul and tossing out anything that wasn't wrapped.

Urban myths die hard. Just last week, I opened a bag of miniature Milky Way bars and found one that had missed the wrapper machine at the factory. I debated whether to throw it out. But it was in a factory-sealed bag and it didn't look like anyone had injected anything into it, so I ate it. So far, I'm still here.

The thing I remember most about trick-or-treating in Michiana was it was cold. Late October near Lake Michigan is not for the faint of heart. My mother used to buy my Halloween costume a size bigger than normal, because it was pretty much guaranteed that I'd have to wear my winter coat under it. And yes, sometimes we would already have snow by Halloween; I remember stepping over snowbanks to get to people's doors.

I have a confession to make, and it's in relation to this: A few days ago, advice columnist Prudence posted a letter from a woman who complained that poor kids were getting all her good candy. "Halloween isn’t a social service or a charity in which I have to buy candy for less fortunate children," the sniffy woman said. "We already pay more than enough taxes toward actual social services."

Prudie, bless her, shut her down. "Stop being callous and miserly and go to Costco, you cheapskate," she said. I wanted to stand up and cheer, because I was one of those 99-percent kids who would go trick-or-treating in better neighborhoods to get better candy. I mean, come on -- it's common sense. Who wouldn't rather get a bunch of candy bars than a bagful of Smarties?

Ms. Cranky One-Percenter, I have the perfect solution for you. Next year, band together with your neighbors and get everybody to agree to hand out nothing but Necco wafers and Laffy Taffy. I guarantee that the following Halloween, your neighborhood will be a ghost town for real.

***
Partly to take my mind off the Kindle Scout thing, I'll be out and about this month. Next weekend, I'm attending the World Fantasy Convention. I'm doing a reading (from Seasons, natch) on Saturday the 8th at 3:30pm. If you're planning to attend WFC this year, I hope you'll stop by.

The following Saturday, which would be Nov. 15th, I'll be in New York to attend the Self-Publishing Book Expo. I'm not speaking or reading, but I'm looking forward to sitting in on some panels and learning some new stuff.

And as a thank-you to you guys for putting up with me this month, I'm running a contest to give away a Kindle HD6. If you win, I'll even let you pick the color. The entry form is below; if it doesn't work for you, try using a different browser than Internet Explorer.

Thank you, and good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

***
These moments of bloggy nostalgia have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Scorched Earth is coming. Now what?

As promised, the final installment in the Land, Sea, Sky trilogy, Scorched Earth, will hit virtual bookshelves sometime mid-week. I'm aiming for Wednesday, June 11th, but it might be a little sooner than that, depending on how quickly Amazon and Smashwords can process the file. I'm still putting the finishing touches on the manuscript, but I fully intend to upload the e-book files before I go to bed tonight.

As part of the celebration for finishing the series, I'm throwing a little party on Facebook. Consider this your invitation to stop by on Saturday, June 14th, between 1:00pm and 3:00pm Eastern time. Just like with the party for the Undertow launch, we'll have some games and music, and there will be prizes. A whole bunch of my indie author friends have given me copies of their books to give away -- I'll be previewing them on the event page all week -- and I have some other prizes lined up, too. Hope you can join us.

Of course, I couldn't leave my blog readers out. So you will see below a Rafflecopter for a $25 Amazon gift card and two $5 Amazon gift cards.

You will notice that one of the entries is a poll question. You see, I'm not the kind of writer who has a drawer full of writing prompts. Instead, I start one book and pursue it to completion, and then cast around for something else to write about. I used to feel like I was doing it wrong. But then I found out Stephen R. Donaldson, who's been writing novels for a lot longer than I have, is the same way. If the system works for him, I decided, it can't be all bad.

But here's the thing: once I pull the trigger on this book, I will need something else to work on. This is why I like writing series -- I don't have that floundering feeling when I finish a book because I've always got the next one teed up. Unless, that is, it's the final book.

I wouldn't be dithering now, but my editor asked me the other day whether I was interested in doing Camp NaNo with her in July. I hadn't planned on it, but if I can come up with an idea before July 1st, why not? 

I have come up with a couple of not-even-half-formed ideas. I could write about Naomi's kids, Sage and Webb, but I'd like for them to get a little older first. I could also do something else with Tess, Sue, and Darrell; originally, I'd planned to be done with them after these three books, but they are all moving on to new chapters in their lives at the end of Scorched Earth and Darrell's new gig, at least, could be pretty interesting. I could also write a completely new fantasy series that I've just started thinking about. Or I could try writing a novel of magic realism; I don't have any more to go on than that at this point, but heck, Seized began as a challenge to myself to write an urban fantasy, and you see where that's gotten us.

Or I could take the rest of the summer off.

Anyway, feel free to give me your opinion. Vote in the poll and/or leave me a comment below. Thanks, and good luck!

The Rules (sorry, gotta have 'em):

1. Friends and family may definitely enter.
2. Winners from my previous contests may win again.
3. Someone will win.
4. As always, the judge's decisions are arbitrary, capricious, and final.

P.S. As promised, the Kindle edition of Summer Dreams is now available at Amazon for 99 cents. Just as with 13 Bites, we're giving all the proceeds to children's literacy programs.

a Rafflecopter giveaway


***
These moments of bloggy celebration have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

We have a winner! and: The knitting chair odyssey.

First off this week, congrats to Melissa Bowersock, who won the contest for Sage's birthday last week! Melissa, I'll get the stuff to you shortly. To everybody else, thanks very much for entering.

Second, thanks very much to the new Pipe Woman Chronicles fans (at least, I hope they'll be fans once they read the books...) who bought the omnibus at the very special price of 99 cents this weekend. The sale is still on for another few hours, so if you've been meaning to blow a buck on the whole series, or to tell someone else to get a copy, now's the time. And thank you in advance.

***

The chair, complete with my WIP.

When the Universe speaks to you, you might as well just pay attention and get it over with.

This is my knitting chair. It has a long and storied history with our family, starting in 1998, when I bought it for $10 at a thrift store in Denver, Colorado. It was then upholstered in a gold-and-black chenille fabric -- not my first choice, but the seat was comfortable and the bones were in good shape, and I didn't have the cash at the time to be overly picky.

It moved back to DC with us and eventually settled in our basement. (Yes, it's the same basement that Darrell remodels in Crosswind.) The basement was damp, of course, and then it flooded during one bad rainstorm. The upholstery was already wearing out, and now it smelled of mildew. So I looked into getting it reupholstered into something I could stand to have in the living room. First, I thought I'd tackle the job myself. After I read up on it, I decided against it. For one thing, buying the tools would have cost as much as the fabric; for another, pulling the fabric taut apparently requires a fair amount of upper body strength, which I ain't got.

So instead, I contracted with a furniture restoration guy to replace the stuffing and re-cover the chair. Something like $800 later, I had a comfy chair that looked great in my Southwest-and-denim living room. (Yes, I blew $800 on a $10 chair from the thrift store. That's how comfy it is.) I put an Ott lamp next to it and it became my knitting chair. I've logged a lot of hours in that chair, on one project or another.

The big reupholstering occurred in 2008 -- just six years ago. So I was dismayed last week to notice a big frayed spot on the front edge of the chair. (See it on the right-hand side in the pic?) Not having a spare $800 for another reupholstering job, I covered the seat with a pillow slip and set about looking for a less expensive solution. In other words, a new chair.

I started a Pinterest board for my favorites (here it is, if you're interested). One of them is a bonded-leather tub chair that swivels; I was intrigued by the concept, but not sure whether it would be comfy. Plus it was one of the more expensive options, and freight delivery further jacks up the price.

I decided to go with the blue wingback, even though it wasn't perfect. So this afternoon, I got in the car and headed for World Market...and drove right past it while daydreaming. Ah, well, I needed to go to Trader Joe's anyway; I figured I'd go there first, and stop at World Market on the way home. So I got what I needed at TJ's...and found myself following someone else into the furniture store next door.

Now, I'd been avoiding regular furniture stores. The merchandise is usually scaled for a mini-mansion, not an apartment. And the sales guys drive me nuts: "Hi! Can I help you find something? What are you looking for? What style? Sure you don't need a sectional? I can give you a sweet deal on a whole living room suite...." I mean, I know they get paid on commission and they're just doing their jobs. I don't fault them for that. I would just rather tour their selection in peace.

But it was almost as if I were being prodded to go into this store. So I did, against my better judgment. And just inside the door was a bonded-leather, swiveling tub chair, for half the price of the one on my Pinterest page. And it was comfy!

Needless to say, I bought it. It'll be delivered Thursday. I'll post a picture next week.

***
This moment of Universal blogginess has been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Happy birthday, Sage!

(Spoiler alert: If you haven't yet read the entire Pipe Woman Chronicles, this promotion will give away part of the ending. Sorry about that. But c'mon, Annealed's been out for a year -- there's gotta be a statute of limitations on this kind of thing.)

It was a girl, of course, and we named her Sage -- both for the herb, and for the wisdom we all hoped she would develop as she grew up in this brave, new world we had all midwived into being.

-- from Annealed

One year ago this past week, in the Pipe Woman Chronicles universe, Naomi Witherspoon Curtis forged a truce among the pagan pantheons and Jehovah. And then she gave birth to Sage.

There's a party going on in the Curtises' cabin outside of Golden, Colorado, this weekend for Sage's first birthday, and here at hearth/myth, we're celebrating, too. Starting this Wednesday, The Pipe Woman Chronicles Omnibus will be on sale at Amazon.com for just 99 cents. It's a great opportunity to pick up all five books at an amazingly low price -- less than 20 cents a book! -- and with a snazzy new cover, yet (that's it over on the left). The sale will run through next Sunday.

Don't forget that Amazon offers Kindle reader apps for just about every electronic platform on the face of the planet -- PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android, and I've probably missed some. Click here to check it out.

In addition, I've created a party favor of sorts for one lucky hearth/myth reader. It's a collection of five Safari Ltd. animal figurines, one for each of the original Pipe Woman Chronicles covers. I had to make some compromises -- the Gravid buffalo is brown, not white (feel free to paint it yourself...), and I had to settle for a leopard instead of a jaguar for Fissured. But I found a great horned owl for Seized, a gray wolf for Tapped, and a baby phoenix for Annealed. Here's the set:

In case you're not into toys, I'm throwing in a $10 Amazon gift card, too.

The contest runs through next Saturday, May 24th, at 11:59pm Eastern time. The entry form is below, and it's on the Giveaway tab on my Facebook page, too. Good luck!

The rules (sorry, gotta have 'em):

1. Friends and family may definitely enter.
2. Winners from my previous contests may win again.
3. Someone will win. I bought these figurines months ago and am getting them out of my house now, one way or the other.
4. As always, the judge's decisions are arbitrary, capricious, and final.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Surf's up Thursday!

As I write to you, here on this Sunday night in mid-March, it's snowing outside. Again. This is approximately the 273rd time it has snowed here in the mid-Atlantic this winter, and I am pretty much sick and tired of it.

But there's a ray of hope that warmer days are coming. Just yesterday, I ran errands without a jacket. Today, before the snow began, I saw a robin! And this Thursday, March 20th, is promising for two reasons: it's the spring equinox, which is the traditional first day of spring in the U.S.; and it's the day Undertow will be released.*

The events in this book occur over Labor Day weekend (for non-U.S. folks, that's the weekend preceding the first Monday in September) in 2023. It's the last big summer weekend, and a lot of people spend it at the beach. So to celebrate both the release of the book (which, coincidentally, is set in Norfolk and Virginia Beach, VA) and the end to this freakishly long winter, I'm throwing a virtual beach party on Facebook next Saturday, March 22nd, from 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Eastern time.

I have lots of stuff planned. I've pulled together a playlist of beach music, and a number of my fellow indie authors have generously donated copies of their books as prizes for the games we'll be playing. I've got some other fun prizes, too. And we're getting things cranked up already. The caterer is  setting out the food, and we're recruiting lifeguards and nominating cabana boys and girls, and talking about who should play Tess, Sue and Darrell.

Of course, we'll have door prizes, too. But because Facebook gets cranky when you try to post a contest there, I'm putting the Rafflecopter for the door prizes here on the blog. I'm going to be giving away a $25 Amazon gift card and two $5 Amazon gift cards. All you have to do to enter is let me know you're planning to come to the party. Simple enough, right?

The usual and customary hearth/myth giveaway rules apply, to wit:

1. Friends and family may definitely enter.
2. Winners of previous contests may win again.
3. There will be winners. I am getting this stuff out of my house, one way or the other.
4. As always, the judge's decisions are arbitrary, capricious, and final.

Hope to see you Saturday! Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

*By the way, you can pre-order Undertow right now at both B&N and iTunes for 99 cents. On Thursday, the price goes up everywhere to $2.99. (Editing to indicate that the 99-cent deal is not available at Smashwords. Sorry for the confusion -- it was totally my fault.)

***
These moments of bloggy springtime certainty have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.