When, as a child, I questioned the wisdom of drinking hot tea on a hot day, my parents told me that it made you sweat, which is better. Back then we didn’t have an air conditioner in the house. They weren’t really a “thing” in my neighbourhood, at least outside of public buildings. We never had a window unit and didn’t get central air until the late 70s, early 80s.
My parents came from the UK–let’s get that out of the way. They HAD to have their tea. So even when it was 90 degrees outside, we’d be sitting with our cuppa, vying for a spot where there was a bit of a wind to cool off our sweaty skin. All stiff-upper-lip/do-it-because-it-feels-good-when-you-stop behaviour.
But that’s turned out to be a good thing. I can’t stand iced (or cold) coffee, but I’ve been conditioned to bear the heat of summer AND a scorching hot drink. I’ve learned to appreciate that extra layer of perspiration that cools me off when I come in contact with even the slightest of breezes.
Or I drink it in an air conditioned room.
Because who needs a stiff upper lip when you have A/C?
BUT, having said that, I still take my cup of tea upstairs to bed with me every night. I have a fan on my bedside table that blasts me with cool air.
There will be a couple of other posts on this subject over the next few days, but this one is for my regular readers, just to explain what kind of crazy (and exciting!) week it’s been for me. To explain why The Magician’s Curse is free for the rest of the month and maybe a bit beyond. I never really wanted it to be free, but I figured it was my best chance …
You see, I decided, just on a whim, to submit The Magician’s Curse to *BookBub as a Featured Deal. Total long shot, as they receive hundreds of submissions a day. It’s like winning the lottery. … AND I WON!! On July 24th, an e-mail will go out to roughly 870,000(!!!) subscribers to let them know my book exists and that it’s free!!!
This is HUGE for me (said Captain Obvious), so it was important that I get the second book in the series ready to go. And that’s what I’ve been doing for the past week.
If you haven’t read it yet, now is the time to get it. It will go back up to full price after the BookBub Feature, but it may stay on sale for a while longer if another submission comes through for me of a similar type, but exclusively through KOBO.
And finally, my other exciting news: the second book in The Great Dagmaru series is available for pre-order! My darling friend, Belinda Borradaile, (click on her name and follow her amazing FB page) really outdid herself with the new cover. Isn’t it gorgeous?
The Magician’s Blood is at the special low pre-order price of $2.99 until its release on August 10th. After that, the price will go up to $4.99, so be sure to pick it up early! (Click here.)
Here’s the blurb:
Herman Anderson is in love. Thrilled to travel across Canada with her boyfriend as his assistant onstage, she returns to her hometown—the first stop on the Great Dagmaru magic tour. Anticipating a reunion with her brother, instead she finds her family has moved without a trace.
Stephen Dagmar’s career as a stage magician is taking off. With Herman by his side, his only concern is her father’s dislike for him. But as Herman’s father makes a prediction and resolves to come between them, Stephen’s family curse returns to haunt him.
Darkness descends as the reality of the Dagmar’s incubus bloodline surfaces for the first time in over a generation. Can Herman and Stephen’s relationship survive this new trial? Will Herman survive at all?
A sinful tale of beauty and romance, love and determination, The Magician’s Blood will chill you and leave you breathless for more.
*18+ Contains explicit scenes.
This one is NOT a Young Adult book, as many readers seemed to think The Magician’s Curse was meant to be. So be forewarned.
Just a quick note about BookBub, in case you want to subscribe: I mentioned BookBub in another post here. Once you subscribe, you let them know what your favourite genres are and then they send you e-mails on a daily basis to alert you when there’s a sale on. You can also follow your favourite authors, so you’ll know right away when there’s a new release … your favourite authors like me … (click here if I’m not being obvious enough). 😉
Obviously, I won’t be sleeping much until this Tuesday and probably beyond. Knowing that I can expect (re: BookBub’s average download count for my genre) 22,600 copies of my book to fly off the virtual shelf tends to come with a prerequisite hourly SQUEE!!
Click to look at it close up. An incredible picture (rare for me) of a snail on a flower.
If you would like to participate in this prompt, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. To execute a pingback, just copy the URL in the address bar on this post, and paste it somewhere in the body of your post. Your link will show up in the comments below. Please ensure that the One-Liner Wednesday you’re pinging back to is this week’s! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.
NOTE: Pingbacks only work from WordPress sites. If you’re self-hosted or are participating from another host, like Blogger, please leave a link to your post in the comments below.
As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS), if you see a pingback from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.
Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so there’s no need to stick to the same “theme.”
The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:
1. Make it one sentence.
2. Try to make it either funny or inspirational.
3. Use our unique tag #1linerWeds.
4. Add our lovely new badge to your post for extra exposure!
The butterfly is one of the few insects we tend to be able to handle in profusion. Seriously, imagine going to tour a mayfly sanctuary. Or touring a housefly sanctuary, for that matter. Bleh.
For some reason, Winston likes to sit on my shoulder. You can’t see it here, but his front paws are up there too.
I think he thinks he’s a budgie.
If you would like to participate in this prompt, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. To execute a pingback, just copy the URL in the address bar on this post, and paste it somewhere in the body of your post. Your link will show up in the comments below. Please ensure that the One-Liner Wednesday you’re pinging back to is this week’s! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.
NOTE: Pingbacks only work from WordPress sites. If you’re self-hosted or are participating from another host, like Blogger, please leave a link to your post in the comments below.
As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS), if you see a pingback from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.
Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so there’s no need to stick to the same “theme.”
The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:
1. Make it one sentence.
2. Try to make it either funny or inspirational.
3. Use our unique tag #1linerWeds.
4. Add our lovely new badge to your post for extra exposure!
5. Have fun!
#1linerWeds badge by Cheryl, at dreamingreality646941880.wordpress.com/
What are the odds I’d come across this picture now, after forty-seven years–and what are the odds of giving him yellow hair and orange skin in 1971?
Obviously I was practicing my signature for when I became a famous artist. Haha.
If I’d known then what I know now, I’d have given him smaller hands.
If you would like to participate in this prompt, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. To execute a pingback, just copy the URL in the address bar on this post, and paste it somewhere in the body of your post. Your link will show up in the comments below. Please ensure that the One-Liner Wednesday you’re pinging back to is this week’s! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.
NOTE: Pingbacks only work from WordPress sites. If you’re self-hosted or are participating from another host, like Blogger, please leave a link to your post in the comments below.
As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS), if you see a pingback from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.
Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so there’s no need to stick to the same “theme.”
The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:
1. Make it one sentence.
2. Try to make it either funny or inspirational.
3. Use our unique tag #1linerWeds.
4. Add our lovely new badge to your post for extra exposure!
5. Have fun!
#1linerWeds badge by Cheryl, at dreamingreality646941880.wordpress.com/
This is really what stream of consciousness writing is all about, isn’t it? Emptiness.
Every time I’ve thought about writing this post today (and in the end I almost forgot to do it–imagine that), the only thing that has come to me has been the Taoist philosophy on emptiness being useful. A room with no space in it isn’t livable. Take things out of it–make space–and the emptiness makes the room useful.
For a long time I’ve endeavored to, once in a while, empty my mind. The largely western idea of the purpose of meditation–to sit and think about something, or to meditate on something–is the opposite of the eastern philosophy. I meditate to empty my mind. To clear out all the thoughts and regrets and worries for the future–and stress. Because once my mind is empty, I can fill it up with new ideas, better solutions, and calmer thoughts.
So how is writing stream of consciousness about emptiness? It’s a form of meditation. It’s the act of emptying our minds onto the page.
Tomorrow (Monday, May 14th) is the last day to enter the draw for my signed, misprinted copy of ON FIRE!
The winner will receive this beautiful anthology of toasty stories, released last year by Transmundane Press.
It would be awesome if you’d click this link and read the story of how I came about getting the book. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry … Okay, you might not cry. But it is a good story.
Or, you can just enter the draw here. The contest is open to mailing addresses in the United States and Canada only.
I think the first free book site that ever came to my attention was BookBub. It’s a huge site that boasts hundreds of books every day that it seems to be giving away. To me, it sounded too good to be true: must be either a scam or some kind of pirating deal that will, at best, infect my computer with a virus, and at worst, is cheating authors out of their royalties.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Authors spend money–in the case of BookBub, hundreds of dollars–to get their books featured on these sites.
New free-and-cheap book sites are popping up all the time. They gather the e-mails of avid readers and send out newsletters to let them know where to find the best deals. Some even have contests in which readers can win things like e-readers and gift cards. And it’s all perfectly legit.
If you adore books but your wallet can’t handle all that love, I suggest you subscribe to some of them. In fact, you can start here, at BookDoggy, where The Magician’s Curse is featured today. Here’s the link: https://bookdoggy.com/
Okay, bear with me. I’m going to tell you what I was thinking about the other day. It was one of those “whoa!!” moments you get, you know? Like when something comes into your head that’s so mind-blowing, you have to think back and try to remember if you’ve just smoked a joint? (For the record, I haven’t, in, like, many many years.) (Too many years to count.) (Like, really, a long time ago.) (I love stream of consciousness writing because it’s like you can’t take it back. It’s just … there.) (Like, whoa.) (Time to go back and see where I was heading with this. Just a sec.)
Oh yeah. The other day. So I was sitting in front of the computer, naturally, and I was reading, and it occurred to me that I was reading.
That’s it! That was my “whoa!!” moment. I was reading!! My eyes were deciphering these lines and squiggles on the screen and making sense of them instantaneously!! I was learning something at the rate it took my eyes to scan from one side of the page to the next. Isn’t that amazing!?!? How fast our brains are to not only recognize letters, but see them in an order that makes words make sense to us?!? It’s crazy, man!!
And now? What’s even better? My fingers are putting these letters on the screen as fast as I can think words (and spell them correctly) so that I can convey to you, (you readers!!) what I was thinking the other day.
This totally, completely stream of consciousness post that I’m almost afraid to read before I publish because I’m not allowed to edit it (my rules) and I’ll probably delete if I do read it, is brought to you by Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Read (whoa) the rules at the following link and join in! https://lindaghill.com/2018/05/04/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-may-5-18/
P.S. This post was written under the influence of pasta. No drugs (except caffeine) were consumed prior to the typing (whoa) of the above words. But I may open a bottle of wine now …
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