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Showing posts from April, 2009

Author Guest Post - Jenny Gardiner

Readers, please join me welcoming Author Jenny Gardiner who will be guest blogging here today!  ****************************************************** WHAM, BAM, THANK YOU RAT!  By Jenny Gardiner  One time I heard a radio interview in which an author was promoting her book about sex. Sorry, I haven’t the slightest idea of the title of the book. But I did get a good laugh when she talked about a few studies in which researchers tested rats (or was it mice?) while they were getting it on. Rat foreplay Now first off, there is something particularly unseemly about being a voyeur to rat fornication. On so many levels. Not the least of which is because rodents having sex means even more rodents on the horizon. And those rodents will then repeat this wildly reproductive behavior, and so on, and so on. Having fended off my share of mouse infestations over the years, I believe that anything involving insidious rodent procreation should be vigorously avoided at all costs. But also, there’

Book Excerpt - Equality: The Quest for the Happy Marriage

About the Book   (In the Author's own Words) The journey through “ Equality: The Quest for the Happy Marriage ” includes a trip through history, where the most significant lessons civilization has learned over the last few thousand years are used to demonstrate not only the way to set up a positive relationship, but the causes of that relationship turning negative. Additionally, I dive into the science of psychology to answer the most basic question anyone asks who goes through the pain of divorce, “why didn’t we work out”? The basic premise of the book is that we have a 50% divorce rate yet there doesn’t appear to be anything happening to help solve this problem. Just because divorce has become a significant part of our culture doesn’t mean we should simply sit back while countless families suffer through the agony of splitting up. The toll to society tomorrow because of our culture of divorce today is impossible to determine but future generations will have to deal with t

Book Excerpt - Internet Dating Is Not Like Ordering a Pizza

About the Book Internet Dating Is Not Like Ordering a Pizza  by Cherie Burbach Have you become frustrated with Internet dating? If you've tried online dating and given up, or even if you thought the Internet wasn't right for you, this book will give you the courage to try again, this time armed with specific illustrations on what really works - from the profile through the dating stage. Don't waste another minute wondering why some people seem to have Internet dating success while you're still waiting for a response to your online ad. Through dozens of concrete examples, dating expert Cherie Burbach will show you how to write an eye-catching profile, search for, and meet the right person online. About the Author Cherie Burbach used her experience with meeting her husband online to pen At the Coffee Shop, a humorous look at the world of Internet dating. Cherie went on over 60 coffee dates in just six months. She met lots of great people and one of those turned o

Author Guest Post : The History of Murano by Marina Fiorato

The History of Murano : An Original Essay by Marina Fiorato Author of The Glassblower of Murano   "Murano is the glass heart of Venice." When writing the historical strand of The Glassblower of Murano it was important to me to get some sense of the significance of glass in Venice at the end of the seventeenth century. And when you visit, the evidence is before your eyes; the city seems to be almost made of glass. As well as boasting the most beautiful windows in the world, exquisite chandeliers hang from the frescoed ceilings of every palazzo, the basilica is clothed in jewellike mosaics comprised of nuggets of glass covered in lapis and gold; and at the other end of the scale the streets in the Merceria dell’Orologio behind San Marco are crowded with bijoux little shops crammed with glass fancies, beads, and bonbons. But it is Murano, one of the trio of islands set far into the Venetian lagoon, which is and was the glass heart of Venice. In 1291, an edict of the Great C

Book Excerpt - Butterfly Tattoo by Deidre Knight

Butterfly Tattoo by Deidre Knight  Samhain, E-Book, Releasing April 21, 2009 About the Book Michael Warner has been drifting in a numb haze since his lover was killed by a drunk driver. As the anniversary of the wreck approaches, Michael’s grief grows more suffocating. Yet he must find a way through the maze of pain and secrets to live for their troubled young daughter who struggles with guilt that she survived the crash. Out of the darkness comes a voice, a lifeline he never expected to find—Rebecca O’Neill, a development executive in the studio where Michael works as an electrician. Rebecca, a former sitcom celebrity left scarred from a crazed fan’s attack, has retreated from the limelight and from life in general, certain no man can ever get past her disfigurement. The instant sparks between her and Michael, who arrives to help her during a power outage, come as a complete surprise—and so does her uncanny bond with his daughter. For the first time, all three fe

Review - Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

  Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet Jamie Ford Ballantine  I had the pleasure of meeting author Jamie Ford on his recent book tour through the Pacific Northwest and wanted to spread the word about his fantastic first novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. Last week, Hotel reached the New York Times list and is currently in a fifth printing. This book is a classic love story against a much larger story (the removal of the Japanese from Seattle during World War II) and this simple, lyrical, haunting, and beautiful story will stick with you. I don’t give away endings, but it’s something worth reading the book for. In the flashbacks, the protagonist, Henry Lee, twelve years old, is Chinese, but it’s 1942 and the folks living on the West Coast of the United States are feeling just a bit vulnerable. When Henry’s staunchly nationalistic father pins an “I am Chinese” button to his son’s shirt and enrolls him in an all-white prep school, Henry finds himself friendless

Author Guest Post - Matt Rees

Readers, please join me welcoming Matt Beynon Rees , Author of The Omar Yussef Mysteries , who will be guest blogging here, again, today! ********************* Fiction more real than journalism By Matt Beynon Rees      In a cabbage patch on the edge of Bethlehem, the wife of a Palestinian killed there the previous night described hearing the fatal shot from the rifle of an Israeli sniper. The dead man’s mother raged and told me she had recognized his body in the dark by the denim jacket she recently bought him. I listened and thought: “This is great material. Too good, in fact.” It was 2001 and I was Jerusalem bureau chief for Time Magazine, covering the violence of the intifada. The dramatic story of this family ended up as the kind of colorful lead you read frequently in a newsmagazine, followed by something along the lines of this: “To be sure, the Israelis say this and the State Department says that and the Palestinians--surprise--disagree.” In that cabbage patch, as the winte

Author Guest Post - Amelia Grey

Today A Book Blogger's Diary is happy to host Amelia Grey , author of  A Duke to Die For: The Rogues' Dynasty , courtesy Danielle of Sourcebooks Publicity. ********************* Friends for Life by Amelia Grey It might sound downright corny but one of the most unexpected joys of my writing career has given me has been some of the best friends a person can have. When I started writing, it never entered my mind that I would meet some of the most wonderful ladies in the world. I was so unsure of myself when I wrote my first book that I never told anyone about it until the book was complete and I actually started trying to sell it. As I continued to write I started attending conferences and going to workshops, such as through the Romance Writers of America. And naturally, I started meeting people, mostly women and seeing the same ones at some of the same conferences and before I knew it I had author friends who I could call and chat with about the frustrations, f

Author Guest Post - Donna Russo Morin (and a Giveaway!)

Readers, please join me welcoming Author Donna Russo Morin who will be guest blogging here today! Her debut novel, The Courtier's Secret , a historical adventure from Kensington has just released. About the Author ( In the Author's own words ) Ironically, my first story was a romance. Oh yes, the numbers 2 and 4 were madly, desperately in love, but the pesky number 3 kept getting in the way. I was six years old. My mother still has the story, and others like it, folded neatly in a box, yellowing and crinkly. I turned eleven in 1969, the Summer of Love, and my writing turned to anti-war poetry and treatises on equality for women (I’d have burned my bra had they made one small enough to fit me). I read all the time and I kept writing, even if only between the well-worn, splotched pages of a psychedelic flower covered diary. Oh the drama, oh the humanity. Surely such soul searing prose and gut wrenching poetry meant I was destined to be the next great American author. In t