Welcome to the Stuff Your Stocking Blog Hop! Hundreds of prizes!
I am excited to be taking part in the Christmas blog hop on The Blog Hop Spot! My giveaway is winner’s choice. One person will receive his/her choice of any one of my eight titles in print, along with a new mousepad! Here is a look at your choices. Click on the covers to read an excerpt, or go to my website: www.QuietFuryBooks.com
Here are the rules:
1. Leave a comment here on this post, with your name and email address.
2. All comments/entries must be received between 7 a.m. EST Friday, December 16 and midnight EST Sunday, December 18.
3. One entry per person.
4. You must be 16 or older to enter.
5. You can live anywhere.
I’ll email the winner for his/her title choice and mailing address, so please be sure to keep an eye on your spam folder.
If you came here via The Blog Hop Spot, you’ve seen what all the excitement is about. Hundreds of prizes are being offered by 195 authors! If you haven’t been to the main site yet, be sure to hop on over to find and enter as many contests as you like: http://thebloghopspot.com/event-page
But, wait! Before you go, be sure to leave a comment with your name and email address for a chance to win your choice of one of my titles plus a mousepad!
My message board, the indie author/reader community BestsellerBound, is celebrating its first anniversary!
Or is it a first birthday?
Either way, it’s exciting news! BestsellerBound has grown into an incredible community. I am astounded at the talent of the authors. And, even better, they are truly among the nicest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of calling friends.
Celebrations need prizes, right? Of course! In honor of our anniversary/birthday event, a bunch of our members have gotten together to offer their books to interested readers. We have 11 prizes – 10 ebooks and 1 very special, not yet released, print book. Here is the list:
1 coupon code for a free ebook copy of The Dream by Maria Savva from Smashwords
1 coupon code from Smashwords for a free eBook copy of Caraliza and also Breathing into Stone by Joel Kirkpatrick
and…
1 free hardbound, signed copy of Joel’s secret 5th novel, shipped the week it is released.
*
Want a chance to win? All you have to do is leave a comment here, with a valid email address. You need to be 16 years or older and can live anywhere in the world.
Want a few more chances to win? Five other BestsellerBound authors are also running features on their blogs. Visit each one and leave a comment. You’ll receive one entry for each blog you comment on. Here is the list of participating authors, along with the link to their blog post:
The deadline for entry on all the blogs is midnight on Saturday, September 17. Winners will be notified via email, so please be sure to include a valid email address in your comment. The only other rule is that you need to be 16 or older.
A collection of short stories written by authors from the BestsellerBound group.
1. What Was Lost by James Sophi
2. The Art of Breathing by Jaime McDougall
3. Soul Windows by Jaleta Clegg
4. I Didn’t Know His Name by Darcia Helle
5. Red Route by James Everington
6. Make A Wish by Susan Helene Gottfried
7. The Last Chance Motel and Mausoleum by Joel Blaine Kirkpatrick
8. Isolation by Maria Savva
9. Beyond The Green Hills by Tom Gahan
10. From Joy We Come, Unto Joy We Return by Ami Blackwelder
As I put this anthology together, I was struck by the incredible talent we have in our BestsellerBound group. You’re welcome to join us there on our message board at any time.
Volume 2, as well as the BestsellerBound Short Story Anthology Volume 1, can be downloaded free in the following places:
Volume 2 is available on Amazon for Kindle but is currently 99 cents. Amazon does not allow authors to upload our own work and offer it free – only publishers are granted that right. We’re working on pushing Amazon to match the free “price”. You can help us by reporting it! Go to the Kindle page for BestsellerBound Short Story Anthology Volume 2. In the ‘Product Details’ section, you’ll see a link that says ‘tell us about a lower price’. Click on that and report it as free on Smashwords. (Just copy and paste the Smashwords link above.) That’s it! Every report helps us push it toward free!
Volume 2 will soon be available free in a variety of other places, including Barnes and Noble for Nook, Sony’s Reader store and Apple’s iBookstore.
Today is book launch day! Maria Savva and I are both sending our new books out to the world. Plus, we are giving away a print copy of each to one lucky winner! In case you haven’t noticed all our recent excited chatter, my book is called Into The Light and Maria’s book is called The Dream. Here’s a look:
Max Paddington refuses to go into the light until he finds his killer. This presents a dilemma, since Max is even less competent as a spirit than he was as a live person. No one sees or hears him and he can’t manage to get anywhere or do anything on his own.
Joe Cavelli is a private investigator, living an ordinary life. Then one day he walks across a parking lot, gets yelled at by a ghost, and his life only gets stranger from there.
Max and Joe team up to find Max’s killer. In the process, they form an unlikely friendship and change each other’s lives in ways they never expected.
***
Lynne cannot shake her feelings of dread; her dreams tell her she is making a terrible mistake, she must not marry Adam. But, how can she believe the dream? Lynne and Adam have shared their lives for three years now. She is certain she loves him.
It is not that love, which her dream warns against.
It doesn’t matter that she loves this man she will soon marry. If she marries him, the voice in her dream says her soul mate will die. Her true love will perish.
Soon, Lynne’s world is transformed and becomes almost unrecognisable, except for the déjà vu. Time doesn’t seem to mean much anymore, and
things are not quite as they seem. As her world spins out of control, Lynne must sort out what’s real and what isn’t to fulfill her destiny.
***
The Kindle format of my book is available and the paperback will be available on Amazon any moment! In the meantime, you can order the print copy from me on my website and you can find the ebook in all formats on Smashwords.
Maria’s book will be available in print and Kindle format on Amazon very soon, as well. For now, you can find the ebook in any format on Smashwords. And you can order a print copy from Lulu.
How about a little video entertainment? Here’s my trailer for Into The Light. You can find it on YouTube and my website:
You can also watch the very cool trailer Maria made for her book. Take a look here or check it out on YouTube:
Now let’s talk giveaways! As I mentioned at the start, Maria and I are giving one print copy of each of our books to one lucky winner! This is a 48-hour giveaway, running from 9 AM EST today, July 18, to 9 AM EST on Wednesday, July 20. You must be 16 or older to enter. This is an international giveaway! The only restrictions are that you must be 16 or older to enter and you can only enter once per person. To enter, all you need to do is fill out the form on the contest page of my website.
On my contest page, you will also find my regular monthly contest. This month I’m giving away a copy of my novel No Justice. You are welcome to enter both contests.
Maria and I hope that you’ll take the time to check out our books and enter the contest. We’re both quite excited about sending our babies into the world on their own!
I am long overdue for posting an update. Here’s a rundown on all the excitement going on:
Many of you know that a character by the name of Max has been chattering in my head for some time now. The book Max stars in is called Into The Light. Max is a ghost, you see. A stubborn, somewhat clumsy middle-aged man who is not at all happy with being dead. Max’s story is not what I’d set out to write. He had other ideas. (Hence, the stubbornness.) Then again, I hadn’t set out to write his story at all. I was working on something entirely different but he popped into my head and refused to go away. He talked to me constantly, kept me up at night. The other characters were forced from my head, that project was put aside, and Max took center stage. I’ve got a very cool cover design in the works and will be unveiling that, along with the book’s blurb, soon. I hope to have Into The Light out in July.
Next up: Free books! May is International Giveaway Month over on my contest page. Joining me in this giveaway is friend and author Joel Blaine Kirkpatrick. I’m offering two print copies of my novel Hit List. He is offering two print copies of his tantalizing novel Breathing Into Stone. Have you entered? If not, what are you waiting for? This is international. You can live anywhere. We’ll send the book as long as you have a mailing address, even if it’s a igloo in Antarctica! You need to enter by midnight EST on May 31. All you need to do is fill out the form: www.QuietFuryBooks.com/contests.html
Wait! don’t run over there yet! I have one last piece of news.
I’ve remodeled my website. The look is a little different and I’ve added a bunch of new stuff. You’ll find a Free Downloads page, where you can download short stories and anthologies. And you’ll also find a Things of Interest page, with a bunch of random nonsense written by me. I’ll be adding to these pages and, hopefully, keeping you entertained. I hope you’ll check out the site and let me know what you think. In case you’ve forgotten the directions there: www.QuietFuryBooks.com or www.DarciaHelle.com (Same building, different address. Weird, I know.)
There you have it – 24 separate prizes for 24 winners! Now, as much as I dislike rules, a few need to apply here:
You must live in the U.S. or Canada
You must be 16 or older
You must have a passion for indie authors (Okay, this is negotiable, though appreciated.)
You must enter before midnight EST on Monday, February 28
That’s it for the rules. Now all you need to do to enter is leave a comment, along with a valid email address. Please keep an eye on your spam folder to be sure your prize information doesn’t get lost there.
Happy Sample Sunday! Today I’m going to share something I should have shared weeks ago. The multi-talented Pablo D’Stair put together an anthology of short stories, written by various indie authors. The stories and writing styles are as diverse as they are entertaining. I was honored when Pablo invited me to share a piece of my own work. While I don’t normally write short pieces of fiction, I did have a short – and by that I mean quite short – piece that I’d written not long before. The scene had popped into my mind from nowhere in particular. I thought that, at some point, I might use it as a launching point for a novel. I still might. For now, though, this short piece stands on its own within this anthology.
Have I mentioned that I’m going to give away one print copy of this anthology? No? How could I have forgotten that! This book is called youre dead and i killed you: a conversational anthology of crime, noir, and murder. (The lower case letters and missing apostrophe are intentional.) To win it, you need to live within the U.S. or Canada and be 16 or older. Leave a comment with a valid email address before midnight EST on Friday, February 11. I’ll pick the winner Saturday morning.
Now, back to Sample Sunday. As I said, my piece within this anthology is short. I hope you enjoy.
***
Wilted Brown Eyes
I’ve never accidentally killed someone. That’s the thought I have as I step around the bed and peer down at him. His eyes are open but I can tell he doesn’t see anything. He’s lying on his back, framed by the edges of the black and crimson rug I’d bought to hide the wine stain on the hardwood floor. The blood leaking from his head gets lost in the crimson, making it hard to tell where the carpet ends and his blood begins.
I ease closer, looking for signs of life. His chest isn’t moving.
I’ve never accidentally killed someone.
I sit on the edge of the bed and look into his unblinking eyes. They’re brown. But saying he has brown eyes is really not telling the story at all. Brown can be dark and rough like old tree bark or light and soft like a new leather jacket. Brown has so many variables. It’s really not a color of its own but more of a category. His eyes are a wilted brown, like they’ve been left in the sun too long. Little dots of green brighten them, making me think of a crisp fall morning, before winter settles in and kills off that last bit of life.
I’ve never accidentally killed someone.
I always loved his eyes. The first time we met, he’d handed me a glass of champagne and said, “Hello. My name is Jake.”
“You have amazing eyes,” I’d said. Just like that. Words spilling from my mouth untethered.
Now Jake’s eyes stare up at the ceiling. The blood has stopped drizzling from that awful gash on the side of his head. His blood is on the nightstand. All over the sharp corner. Dripping off the edge.
I’ve never accidentally killed someone.
I sit for what might be a long time or might be a few seconds. Jakes’ eyes won’t look back at me ever again.
I’ve never accidentally killed someone.
Does it matter, really, if the act is intentional? Killing someone means they are dead, regardless of intent. Dead is dead. Right?
I’ve never accidentally killed someone.
I shake off this mantra I’ve been reciting in my head. Whether I’ve ever accidentally killed someone is of no importance. I killed Jake. And it wasn’t an accident.
***
The other stories within this anthology are not quite so short. I’m honored to be a part of this anthology. The talent there is spectacular. This book is available on Amazon. And it’s cheap! Take a look:
Caraliza. The name alone beckoned me. The cover pulled me in and demanded I read it. And, today, you’ll have a chance to win this haunting tale! Have a look:
A seventy-five year old secret waits in a lovely old portrait studio, at the end of a street in New York City’s Lower East Side. It is a secret, that drove to madness, a renowned photographer, ‘Papa’ Menashe Reisman, and left him to waste and die in his own studio, but haunted by every photograph he tries to take.When his great-grand daughter, Shelly, begs to have the old building, for a new renovation, she awakens more than any secret that Papa kept. She also awakens something darker, more evil, just across the street. Across the street, under the stoop, down a foul stair, where Caraliza was kept prisoner for two years; until the horrid events of that summer, in 1919.
***
The talented Joel Blaine Kirkpatrick authored this haunting story. He’s a bit shy about looking at the camera but he doesn’t hold back a thing when he writes. Caraliza is just one of his four brilliant books. As part of Giveaway Month, Joel is offering a free ebook copy of Caraliza to one lucky winner! Details to come.
Joel puts up with my questions and agreed to answer a bunch for me. Here’s what he had to say:
What and/or who was your inspiration for Caraliza?
Her name. I had finished my first novel a few weeks earlier, and wondered if a ghost story would be fun to write. I love ghost stories, but didn’t know if I could write something frightening. One night, very late, her name suddenly came to mind. Just rolling it around in my mind seemed to bring her to life. Instantly, she was my ghost, but writing her, realizing her condition – I arrived at the point in the story when she had to die, and cried while I wrote that.
I cried then, too!
I loved the photography angle, with the old cameras. Did you have to do a lot of research on that?
I’m a photography buff, but honestly believe that plate images, and the process to make them, is really magic; I certainly cannot do it. It was very magical 120 years ago. For a time, the public could not believe such things could be real. But when it became popular, as smaller cameras became available to average people, photography exploded. My research was mostly into which types of cameras were being used at the turn of the century, to select one that would fit the story. I wanted an easily used camera, which was still quite beautiful as an item. The Waterbury fit that description nicely.
Do you believe in spirits and hauntings?
I may have to. My family certainly does. They believe this house to be haunted, but I cannot feel it. And, that’s funny, cause I don’t like dark places. This house is secluded and quite dark at night. While others hear and feel strange things, I don’t get to participate. I’ve never had an encounter of mine own. It might be fun.
There were times, while writing this story very late at night, when the house was just a bit too quiet. I would distract myself with music, and lights.
If you could come back and haunt one person, who would it be and why?
I have a list. Honestly. I know someone who is so cruel in life, they deserve to be haunted. I would haunt family, but only in a good way, only to let them know I was still lingering.
You’ve been told by someone who is apparently an idiot that you use too many words. I couldn’t find any that were in the way or had the feel of excess baggage. What do you think of the current trend of major publishers to require cookie cutter books with specific word count requirements?
It is a dead end trend; limiting authors just to satisfy marketing needs. We are seeing the whole industry wobbling – resisting change while they thrash about trying to sell books. I don’t purchase books because of size, why are they all as similar as eggs? I only look to see how many pages there are, because I love long stories. Keep me reading for two weeks in a book…please! What I find humorous, in the last twenty years the number of ‘how to write’ books has multiplied a thousand fold. Not a one of them solved the problems in the industry. So, I say, leave the writers alone. They didn’t make the mess that the Big Six find themselves in. Put all the templates in the trash. That’s what they’ve proven themselves to be.
I’m all for tossing the templates.
Mashed potatoes or French fries?
Mashers, loaded, gooey – with Tabasco sauce in them. Yum! We only do fries in the car.
Tabasco sauce? Seriously? My mouth is on fire just thinking about that!
What is your favorite guilty pleasure?
I won’t reveal that. But it’s been a lifelong passion. Gummy bears make a good answer, take that instead. No? Writing then. I set many things aside to write. I’m a bad boy about that.
Now you’ve only made me more curious about that first guilty pleasure!
Rock and roll or country music?
Almost never country, but I do like folk music, which is very individual. I hate current Pop. I loved the British invasion of punk and weird from the 80’s. You didn’t ask all that, did you? Too bad. I’m passionate about blues, Stevie Ray Vaughan…
When I wrote Anoria, in Breathing into Stone, I listened to classical choral music, Gregorian chants. There is a stunning bit that plays in Lenin’s tomb in Moscow (or was, for half a century), called ‘Alleluia, Behold the Bridegroom’ I would listen to those haunting voices for hours, and type till my keyboard smoked. (link: www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000QPJ0B4/ref=dm_mu_dp_trk1)
Music does things to me; I can be very connected to it emotionally. My happy place is inside my headphones.
Headphones = happy place. Yup! For me, too! There’s something magical about crawling inside the music. I am a huge blues fan. Of course, that’s a conversation for another time.
When you write, do you require silence or do you prefer background noise?
Just answered that. I prefer to write with my headphones on. I lose any sense of time when I get to do that.
Getting back to Caraliza – this book is a mix of historical fiction and modern day. That might be a difficult mix for many authors but you pulled it off without a single glitch. What was the hardest part of blending these two worlds?
I’m an admitted amateur at the whole process. Nothing of it was planned or outlined. I just open my mind, close my eyes, and begin to see the world. I just dictate what comes to me visually. Every instant of the book plays for me, and I wander in and out of the settings, between and around the characters. I know what Yousep had in his pocket the first time he saw Caraliza. Admittedly, I might view a few photos of my setting, look into a bit of history of the place. I always turn to maps, to get a sense for where things are, but that is only to spark the visuals, which will come anyway.
When Caraliza falls lifeless, from Yousep’s arms, I only hear the sound of it. I turn away, because I can’t see that happen. He didn’t see it, you know, didn’t see her fall. He was being pulled away. It was the loneliest moment of her life, because, not even I saw it happen.
But, that wasn’t your question either. Sorry.
One of the things which was imperative, from the first page, was the voice of the narrative. I wanted the first third of the book to sound like the texts of that era. It was important to me that my reader hear the early 1900’s. I played with the forms within the text to get there. So, when Shelly appears in the story, the ‘sound’ is obviously modern. You know you’ve come to the present in time.
Later, as the tale unfolds, the past mingles with the living, and you can hear that within the words. I don’t just tell you a spirit has appeared, I try to make you hear it.
And you did that beautifully.
What is the biggest challenge for you in being an indie author?
Time. Finding time. I wish this had all started for me years ago. I think I’m missing the books I might have created. The second? Finding readers. But, it is only natural I want more of them. We can never have too many readers, can we?
Nope, no such thing as too many readers!
Final words?
I have been terribly proud of one element in the book, which opened up so many wonderful things for me. The language. People cannot know, just looking at the cover, or reading the blurbs – Caraliza doesn’t speak a word of English in the entire text. All of her speech is Dutch, flawless Dutch, and her words are translated for the reader. I have a Dutch penpal, from The Netherlands, and she put so much love into correcting Caraliza’s voice. Her name is Irma van der Staal. That could have been the downfall of the story; to get all the Dutch dialogue wrong, or to just bore the reader with it. But, it becomes the key to the sweetness of the love that Yousep and Caraliza share. It was a barrier, which became a bond. I liked that a lot.
I read what you’d written about that at the back of Caraliza. You and Irma combined to do a beautiful job of showing us Caraliza’s native language. And I loved how her and Yousep’s bond grew, despite their language barrier.
***
Caraliza is one of those characters that will haunt me for a long time to come. Want to learn more about Joel and his work? You can find him on his website at www.BrownBrushBooks.com. You can also find him on his blog – The Tale’s the Thing – where he shows off his mad writing skills and his slightly off-kilter personality.
Here’s a look at Joel’s books on Amazon in both print and Kindle format:
I hope you’ll take the time to check out Joel’s books!
Now, I did promise the chance to win your own ebook copy of Caraliza. So here we go. All you need to do is leave a comment with a valid email adress. You must be 16 or older and you can live anywhere in the world – an igloo in Antarctica or a hut on a Hawaiian Island. Anywhere at all! Enter by midnight EST on Wednesday, February 9. I’ll post the winner’s name here. Be sure to keep an eye on your spam folder, as Joel will be contacting the winner with his/her prize information.
As promised, author Craig Lancaster joins me today. Yesterday, I talked about his new novel, The Summer Son. Craig has quickly become one of my favorite authors and I’m already waiting impatiently for his next book!
Craig has written a piece to share with us, in which he talks about the fact and the fiction within The Summer Son and teases with a short excerpt. He is also giving away a print copy of his brand new release! Read on for details.
I’ll stop my usual rambling and step aside. Here’s Craig’s piece:
WHERE FACT MEETS FICTION
By Craig Lancaster
Literary fiction brims with characters and settings that draw heavily upon – if not outright reflect – real-life models. Think of the nurse Catherine Barkley in Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms; she was built from Agnes von Kurowsky, a nurse Hemingway fell in love with while in Italy during World War I. F. Scott Fitzgerald (Jay Gatsby), Philip Roth (Nathan Zuckerman), Pat Conroy (Ben Meechum) and hundreds more – all of these writers use fictional characters imbued with their own experience as vehicles to explore the thoughts and societal mores of their time and place.
So rather than be coy about the two main characters in my new novel The Summer Son – Mitch Quillen and his estranged father, Jim – I’ll instead cop to the influences, and to the fictional extrapolations:
• Like Jim, my father was an exploratory well digger who spent his working days as an itinerant in the American West.
• Like Mitch, I was 3 when my parents divorced, and I went through much of my childhood separated from my father. Throughout my youth, I spent summers with him wherever he happened to be working at the time.
• Like Jim, my father grew up abused.
• Like Mitch, I spent the summer of 1979 in Milford, Utah. I was 9 years old; in the book, Mitch is 11.
For the most part, however, that’s where the similarities end. When I have an idea for a story, it’s often ignited by some real-world event – a memory, a news item, an anecdote I hear. I’m thankful for the initial spark, but really, that’s all it is. The meat on the bones comes in the days and weeks that follow, as I twist the idea around in my head and play “what-if” games: What if I change the setting or the circumstance? What if I put this character in extreme duress? What if the unthinkable happened? As those notions build, the idea takes on a critical mass that compels me to begin writing. That’s how I know I’m on to something. And by the time the “what ifs” are played out, my fictional idea often bears scant resemblance to the very real piece of inspiration that set it afire.
In writing “The Summer Son,” I was driven by two big “what ifs”:
What if a father and son had been separated for nearly 30 years by the fallout from a violent summer?
And what if one of them didn’t know the whole truth?
The novel begins this way:
The first call came on a Tuesday night. I yelled at Cindy from the garage to pick up. On the fourth ring, I dropped the armful of newspapers I was packing into the recycling bin and ran to the extension in the kitchen.
“Hello?”
“Mitch.”
My guts coiled.
“Dad?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s up?”
“Nothing.”
Seven words in, we hit the wall again. I counted on hearing from Dad once a year, somewhere around Christmas. I would return the favor of a call in March, on his birthday. We left the rest of the holidays and landmark dates to languish in the inertia of silence. To hear from him outside our usual calendar rattled me. I wasn’t sure I wanted to press ahead and find out what prompted the call.
“So,” I said, fracturing the uncomfortable silence that had settled over us. “What’s been going on?”
“Nothing much. Just sitting here, watching TV.”
“Not much happening here, either. You caught me cleaning up in the garage.”
“If you’re busy, I’ll go …”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying. I just thought Cindy and the kids were in the house, but I can see now” – I pulled back the kitchen curtains and saw my wife standing at the grill on the patio – “that they’re outside.”
“What are they doing?”
“Looks like Cindy’s grilling up some dinner. Avery and Adia are playing on the swing set.”
“You’re busy.”
“No, Dad, I’m not …”
“I’ll call back another time.”
He was gone.
I hope you’ll give The Summer Son a whirl and see where the story – mostly but not entirely fictional – goes from there.
The Summer Son, which will be released tomorrow (January 25) by AmazonEncore, is Craig Lancaster’s second novel. His first, 600 Hours of Edward was a 2009 Montana Honor Book and the 2010 High Plains Book Award winner for best first book. His website is CraigLancaster.net.
Leave a comment below for a chance to win a signed copy of The Summer Son.
A few contest rules:
1. Must be 16 or older and live in the U.S. or Canada.
2. Please enter only once per person.
3. Use a valid email address, as this is how the winner will be contacted. Also, keep an eye on your spam folder. The winner will need to reply with shipping information.
4. Enter before midnight on Saturday, January 29. The winner will be announced here on Sunday, January 30.
That’s it! Go ahead and leave a comment for your chance to win!
And while you’re waiting for the weekend, check out Craig’s books on Amazon:
We had an amazing group of authors participating in the first of what I hope will be an annual event. Hundreds of print and ebooks were offered and nearly 1,000 people entered! The event is over and the winners have been picked. Are you one of them?
If you haven’t been contacted, don’t despair. I have not finished notifying all the winners and authors. It’s a daunting process but it’s also been fun! I hope to have everyone notified by mid day tomorrow.
The event pages listed all the books will also remain for a couple of weeks. You can do a little browsing and perhaps some book shopping, if the mood strikes!
Thank you to all the indie authors for participating and making this event such a huge success! And thank you to all who took an interest in our books and entered our contest!
and Maria’s book is called 
along with a new hat 
by Joel Blaine Kirkpatrick
, 
, and 
and 
, 
, and 
, 
, 
. (The lower case letters and missing apostrophe are intentional.) To win it, you need to live within the U.S. or Canada and be 16 or older. Leave a comment with a valid email address before midnight EST on Friday, February 11. I’ll pick the winner Saturday morning.
. The name alone beckoned me. The cover pulled me in and demanded I read it. And, today, you’ll have a chance to win this haunting tale! Have a look:![](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0557425093?ie=UTF8&tag=quiboo0d-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0557425093"><img border="0" src="4172Gpr5GOL._SL160_.jpg"></a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=quiboo0d-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0557425093" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /> "Caraliza")
. Craig has quickly become one of my favorite authors and I’m already waiting impatiently for his next book!
; she was built from Agnes von Kurowsky, a nurse Hemingway fell in love with while in Italy during World War I. F. Scott Fitzgerald (Jay Gatsby), Philip Roth (Nathan Zuckerman), Pat Conroy (Ben Meechum) and hundreds more – all of these writers use fictional characters imbued with their own experience as vehicles to explore the thoughts and societal mores of their time and place.
was a 2009 Montana Honor Book and the 2010 High Plains Book Award winner for best first book. His website is 