Month-long Giveaway on Night Owl Reads

Fellow blogger Nickle Love runs Night Owl Reads. In addition to her reviews, she features an Author of the Month series. This month's AotM on her blog is Karen Amanda Hooper, author of TANGLED TIDES and GRASPING AT ETERNITY. Nickle will also be giving away e-copies of the books, so be sure to check out her blog and learn more about the fabulous Karen Amanda Hooper.

Night Owl Read's October Author of the Month

Pay it Forward - Awards

Last week I received two awesome awards from a brilliant writer/marketing consultant/blogger extraordinaire. If you don't know Shelli Johannes, you really should check out her blog and get to know her. Not only is she a well-connected, agented author who writes MG and YA, but she always has great blog posts, author interviews, agent interviews, and book give-aways. Seriously, check her out.

The two awards Shelli passed on to me were:

The Circle of Friends Award

and

The From Me to You Award

Thank you so much, Shelli!

As is tradition, I'm passing these awards on to five wonderful people who are kind enough to constantly visit and comment on my blog. The general rules are that the recipients pass the awards on to five more bloggers, link back to the giver of the award, and let the awardees know you gave them the award.

So without further ado, here are my Pay it Forward recipients:

Gina at Insatiable Readers
Tahereh at My Literary Wonder/Grab A Pen
Medeia Sharif
Shelli Howells at A*Musings
and
Lacey Boldyrev

A big thanks to them! And now, since I've reached 100 followers, I'd like to give this award to all of you who visit my blog. I really appreciate all of you.

First Blog Award

What a thrill! My blog is only a few months old, and I've already received my first blog award. Woohoo!

Isn't it pretty? I received this award on Friday from Gina, a very cool person and wonderful blogger who runs Satisfaction for Insatiable Readers. Thank you so much, Gina. If you didn't know it already, you totally rock! Even though I'm not technically a book reviewer, I do learn about manuscripts and upcoming books of the writers I interview, so it's nice to be included with such a prestigious ensemble.

But wait, there are rules:

If you are given this award you must first accept it by leaving a comment on the post you were nominated on. Then copy and paste the post and add it to your own blog. Make a list of the last 5 books you read and pass the award on to 5 other bloggers (no backsies!). Please also identify the blog from which you got the award and don't forget to tell them they have a blog award!

My 5 Most Recent Reads

Dead as a Doornail by Charlaine Harris

Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris

Graceling by Kristen Cashore

Club Dead by Charlaine Harris

Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris

As you can see I've been making my way through the Southern Vampire Series - and yes, I'm a True Blood fan. And I'm Team Eric, in case you're wondering.

And now, without further ado, I present the award to the following bodacious bloggers:

Book Journey

Book Chick City

In Which a Girl Reads

Sarah's Random Musings

Books and Movies

Congratulations to each of you! All great and informative blogs which I encourage my followers to check out.

Sick Note

Hello, everyone. As you might guess from the headline, I'm feeling very ill. I've caught some bug that's stuffed up my head and is making me ache all over, especially when I cough.

So, yeah. It's not fun being me at the moment.

But I wanted to give the aspiring writers out there a heads up on a couple of contests in the blogosphere.

There's a contest going on at Got YA that focuses on voice in your manuscript. Your entry should consist of 200 words from your manuscript that best showcases your story's voice. Entries will be judged by author Hannah Moskowitz and agent Taylor Martindale of the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency. The contest is open until this Friday.

Also, there is a contest beginning on May 1st at author J.A. Souders's blog and details can be found here.

Good luck to all that enter! Be sure to let me know if you win and I can announce it here for you.