Diana Peterfreund, whose debut novel Secret Society Girl will be released in twelve days, is holding daily ‘contests’ on her blog. All you have to do is comment on her daily blog to be entered to win the drawing held the following day. Sounds great, right? Well, the catch is that she doesn’t actually tell you what the prizes are. You could be lucky enough to get an ARC, or…not so lucky. I’m taking my chances. I read her blog pretty regularly—even added her to the link list on my blog.

Also, Jessica Trapp (a member of my RWA chapter) has launched a new feature/contest on her website. It is a Read-a-Thon that encourages positive reviews (and couldn’t we all use more of those). To be entered to win the drawing, a reader must sign-up, read 10 full-length romance novels, log the books on Jessica’s site, and post a positive comment. The prize is a $250 gift card to the winner’s bookstore of choice and a matching contribution to their chosen school or library. Each additional five books can win you another entry into the drawing, and each of Jessica’s books count as five books each!

Talk about some great promotional ideas!

I’m really hoping that Romancing the Blog is continuing with their ‘Open Blog Night’ because I just sent them a blog entry/article that I hope they will publish. It’s about…what else…self-publishing!

Other than that I haven’t been doing any writing for the last few days. I have company in town, and every time I have a few minutes of time to relax, I’ve been doing other things. Today I actually did some ‘surfing’ though and found so many cute blogs, crafts, and ideas!

Look at these miniature gardens—I think they’re absolutely adorable and would love to have one of my own.

I also stumbled across this Danish site, and now I wished I hadn’t. I like so many things and have no way to buy them. Maybe I just need to plan a little trip to Denmark…

Hard to take maybe, and not the only point of view, but certainly enlightening…

A rant from The Man in Black, Jason Pinter

If more agents accepted email queries, this would be a lot easier. Still a huge trial, but a tad bit easier…