I briefly mentioned in Monday’s post that it was time for all of you with a camera and a desire to read another fun book in the Gardella Vampire Chronicles to prepare yourself to support author Colleen Gleason during the first week of the release of her book When Twilight Burns.

The way you can do that, and get a chance to win fun prizes, is to get your gear ready, put your creativity cap on, and plan to hit your local bookstore during the week of August 5th through August 11th!

And what can you win? Come with me and I’ll tell you.

Continue reading A Picture is Worth? →

(All images are portions of the painting ‘Art Heart’. Copyright Greg Spalenka)

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”
~Thomas Merton

One early Friday morning in June of 2006, the 23rd to be exact, I awoke early and posted a Friday Favorite on artist Greg Spalenka. I had long admired his art and was especially enamored of the image that I opened the profile with, his collage/painting Art Heart. I didn’t have any particular reason for choosing to feature Spalenka’s work that day, it just felt right. Little did I know how right that feeling would turn out to be.

Continue reading Jan-Ai Scholarship Week: Day One, remembering Jenn See →

“A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken.”
~James Dent

I have mentioned on this blog before that seasonal changes have a great effect on me. Though it be a seemingly arbitrary date, the day that signals a change of season, in concert with the weather changes in and around those days, seems to provide a natural, unconscious, jump start for me. Without making a fuss over it I find that my reading spikes, times of greatest energy, etc. seem to fall in line very clearly with the beginnings of those 4 seasons around which our year is structured.

Summer, I must admit, is my least favorite of the seasons. I do not think it was that way when I was a child, but the lack of a ‘summer vacation’ as an adult causes me to see this season simply as the one in which it becomes unbearably hot and humid and my desire to be outdoors all but dries up with the grass.

A couple of years back I determined that I was no longer going to let the summer months pass by in a wave of heat. Looking back over previous years I noticed that the number of books I read, etc. dwindled miserably in the summer. It was then that I decided that each summer should be treated as if I was still a kid…at least in so much as I could still have some sort of summer reading program of my own. In addition I could set other goals for summer accomplishments that would help me resist the natural tendency towards sloth.

Continue reading Tis the Summer Of… →

To quote from Shakespeare’s play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, we have now come to “the true beginning of our end”.

Depending on where you live:

“in the Northern Hemisphere on: June 20, 2008 at 7:59 PM EDT; and in the UK on June 20, 2008 at 23:59 UTC.”

tonight is Midsummer’s Night…the Summer Solstice…and it marks the end of our second annual journey to the land of “Once Upon a Time”.

But with sadness comes joy, because there are prizes to be had!

Continue reading The Beginning of the End →

(Snow White, Anne-Julie Aubry)

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”
~Ursula K. LeGuin

Way back on March 21st it seemed that a nearly endless journey was before us. The Once Upon a Time II Challenge began. Through the course of the past 3 months nearly 100 people have joined in our challenge and, to date, there are 407 book reviews on the Once Upon a Time II Review Site. That is very impressive and I am sure it will become even more impressive in our final 11 (if you count today) days of the challenge.

Continue reading As We Near the End… →