They Call Me Crazy blog tour‏ ~ Writing Made Me Rich, by Kelly S Gamble

Cass Adams is crazy and everyone in Deacon, Kansas, knows it. But when her good-for-nothing husband, Roland, goes missing, no one suspects that Cass buried him in their unfinished koi pond. Cass gets arrested on the banks of the Spring River for dumping his corpse after heavy rain partially unearths it. The police chief wants a quick verdict—he’s running for sheriff and has no time for crazy talk. But like Roland’s corpse, secrets start to surface, and they bring more to light than anybody expected. Everyone in Cass’s life thinks they know her—her psychic grandmother, her promiscuous ex-best friend, her worm-farming brother-in-law, and maybe even her local ghost. But after years of separate silences, no one knows the whole truth. Except Roland. And he’s not talking.

Available on Amazon US and Amazon UK

Do what you love and the money will follow. I’m not sure who should be credited with this advice, but I’ve heard variations of it my entire life. Do what you love, do what you love, do what you love--- and had I understood that in my early twenties, my life would certainly be different today. However, I was born hard headed, and my idea of ‘doing what I love’ included chasing the money. I always thought if I had a job that paid me a huge salary, the money would allow me the flexibility to be happy, and I would love the job because it gave me that freedom.

It doesn’t always work that way. I have always wanted to write, talk about books all day, and dream up stories all night. But where is the paycheck in that? Of course, there are those writers who hit that overnight bestseller and all their dreams come true. They are few and far between, and I knew that in my early twenties. No, the best thing to do was to get a good job and write in my spare time. Ideal, right? Get the paycheck by day and do what I love on the weekends, however, I neglected to factor in one very important component: Life.

Earning a paycheck is the priority if you look at life from that point of view. Then comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Kelly with a baby carriage, and all that ‘spare time’ available for writing is lost to responsibilities. Of course, I love being a mother, but even to do that in a way I thought ‘appropriate’ required a steady paycheck.

In my forties, when my two sons were teenagers, I found myself telling them "do what you love in life, the money will follow." But how could I, the money chaser, offer those words of wisdom? I decided if I was going to preach, I had better throw something in the plate. So I started writing seriously, finally, for the first time in my life.

A decade later, I have a job as a university Instructor. I talk about books and writing all day and explore my dreams on paper at night. I recently published my first novel and am working on the next. I don’t make the kind of money I used to, but I am happy, because I am finally doing what I love.

And that makes me rich.

Kelly Stone Gamble

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About the Author

Kelly Stone Gamble lives in a hunting lodge in Idabel, Oklahoma, and spends way too much time looking for Bigfoot and the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, both of which are said to reside in her 1,800 acre backyard. When she isn't writing, trying to keep her dog from befriending a skunk, or shooting various wildlife (camera shooting, that is), she teaches Communications, Humanities and English to students at Southeastern Oklahoma State University. Find out more at her website: www.kstonegamble.com and find her on Twitter: @KellySGamble and Facebook.

Blog Tour ~ White Swans A Regency World (book 1) By Annamaria Bazzi

          Kndíka’s second chance at life begins as a nightmare. Will the eerie eyes always looking down from the sky reveal themselves? Kendíka challenges the aliens no one has ever seen to bring about a better life for the humans trapped in the surreal Regency world she wakes up in. While getting to know her alien owner, she discovers the aliens aren’t so perfect and have much to learn about humans. Will Kendíka survive or perish, attempting to make life better for the people living on Regency?

Available on Amazon US and Amazon UK

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About the Author

Although born in the United States, Annamaria Bazzi spent a great deal of her childhood in Sicily, Italy, in a town called Sciacca. Italian was the language spoken at home. Therefore, she had no problems when she found herself growing up in a strange country. Upon returning to the States, she promised herself she would speak without an accent. She attended Wayne State University in Detroit Michigan, where she obtained her Bachelor of Science in Computers with a minor in Spanish. Annamaria spent twenty years programming systems for large corporations, creating innovative solution, and addressing customer problems. During those years, she raised four daughters and one husband. Annamaria lives in Richmond Virginia with her small family where she now dedicates a good part of her day writing. Find out more at Annamaria's Website and find her on Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads  

Guest Post ~ Researching for Authenticity in Historical Fiction, By D.J. Niko

Cambridge archaeologist Sarah Weston and anthropologist Daniel Madigan team up for another expedition and adventure in this second book in the Sarah Weston Chronicles. While working on the Qaryat al-Fau archaeological site in Saudi Arabia, the pair uncovers a mysterious ancient scroll composed as a riddle. As they attempt to date and decipher the scroll, a flurry of ills befalls their expedition and the scroll is stolen. Journeying through the worlds of the occult, corporate greed, geopolitical conflict, Judaic mysticism, and biblical archaeology, Sarah and Daniel race to uncover the powerful ancient message that could have an explosive impact on modern Israel.

Available on Amazon UK and Amazon US

Researching historical fiction and thrillers with historical themes is a little like going down the rabbit hole: you have to enter another world and come out, sweating and panting, on the other side before you can actually get it.

When you research and write about the ancient world, that’s especially true. I deal with time periods as far back as the sixteenth century BCE, when information wasn’t exactly plentiful and the recording of facts was sketchy at best. Think about it: historical documentation as we know it wasn’t a thing back then. The ancient Egyptians carved their conquests onto temple walls, the Israelites had an oral history that got passed down over thousands of years, the Greeks (before the days of Herodotus) painted pottery and inscribed ostraca, and on it goes. A few blanks to fill in? You can say that again!

A lot of people ask me, why the ancient world? Why not pick something more accessible, like, say, World War II or 1960s London? What can I say? Doing things the hard way is one of my more charming qualities. Ahem.

So how do I get my material? For starters, I hang out with a lot of archaeologists. Archaeology is one of the most important tools in understanding antiquity, because it provides hard proof of how people lived and died, when cities flourished and were destroyed, worship practices, and so on. The scientists working in the field are a wealth of information and, in most cases, fairly outspoken (and opinionated!) about their research. They are more than happy to give a novelist an earful.

In researching my first book, The Tenth Saint, I traveled to Ethiopia and spent time with historians at Aksum and monks at Lalibela, trying to understand the mindset of the people during the early centuries of the Common Era, when Christianity first infiltrated the Abyssinian Empire. I went down into the tombs of Aksum, walked through the catacombs beneath the rock churches of Lalibela, attended traditional ceremonies whose practices had not changed since ancient times, hiked to cave churches in the hinterlands (and I mean hinterlands), and studied the stele inscriptions of the nation’s early kings. Of course, I also sampled all the Ethiopian food, beer, coffee, and tej (honey wine) I could get my hands on. Hey, it’s the least I could do for my readers.

For the next book in the series, The Riddle of Solomon, I added another layer of inquiry to the standard archaeological research. The story is set largely in Israel and involves an antagonist who believes he is the Jewish messiah for whom the world has waited. This guy is ruthless in amassing the relics that will prove his legitimacy; chief among them are the plans for building the third temple in Jerusalem, meaning the original temple plans by King Solomon.

So, to research messianism, Judaic oral tradition, and the spiritual significance of King Solomon’s story, I consulted a couple of rabbis. They were very gracious to embrace a Greek Orthodox girl and, over several meetings, walk her through the fine points of Judaism. It was illuminating, to say the least, and I think the book is better for it.

For me, there is no substitute for experiencing a place first hand and interviewing the experts in person. But life does not always allow for this. My other means of research include university library archives, books written by ancient writers (for my current novel, The Oracle (due out November 2015), I am reading Plutarch, Herodotus, and Pausanias), museums, and, of course, the Internet. And this happens throughout the writing process, not just in the front end.

Because I’m all about recycling and reusing, I use this information in other ways. In recent years, I’ve been repackaging the research and lecturing about it to private groups and continuing education students at academic institutions. It’s just another vehicle to get my name out there, sell books, and share some of this fascinating knowledge in a more direct way. If you’re curious, you can see some of my lectures on YouTube.

As I state in my Twitter profile, I have become an antiquities geek thanks to all this research (I’m really fun at cocktail parties), but if the work seems more authentic because of it, I’ll take the ridicule.

I will leave you with this fun quote by Homer: “I did not lie! I just created fiction with my mouth!”

 D.J. Niko

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About the Author

D.J. Niko is the pen name of Daphne Nikolopoulos, an award-winning author, journalist and editor residing in the USA. She writes archaeological and historical thrillers, bringing to life the places and characters of the ancient world. A lifelong traveler and adventurer, she personally visits and researches in the places she writes about--with particular relish for the more remote ones. Her debut novel, The Tenth Saint, was released in 2012 to critical acclaim and has received the Gold Medal for Popular Fiction in the Florida Book Awards, a juried competition to identify the best literature in the state. The second book in the Sarah Weston Chronicles series, The Riddle of Solomon, was released in 2013. Both The Tenth Saint and The Riddle of Solomon will be translated into German and sold in the German market starting in fall 2015. The third book in the Sarah Weston series, titled The Oracle, releases in November. When not writing, Daphne enjoys spending time with her twin kindergarteners, cooking (Indian food is a favorite), traveling and reading. Find out more at her website www.djnikobooks.com and find her on Facebook  and Twitter @djnikobooks. 

Special Guest Post by Matt Stephens of Inkflash - a revolutionary new way for authors to promote their books

Looking for a new way to make your books really stand out from the crowd? Now you can bring them to life in a 3D “room” that anyone on the Web can visit. 

For a long time, I’ve felt like something is missing from the online book buying experience - which currently seems way too clinical. So, almost a year ago to the day, I quit the day job and set out to create Inkflash: a VirtualReality (VR) book discovery website; I’ve since been joined by a couple of programmer friends, and we launched the new site about a month ago.

What Inkflash absolutely isn’t is a replacement for bookshops. Faithful 3D recreations of bookshops have been attempted before, but utterly failed to set the world alight - and with good reason. The real experience of a bookshop is the touch and smell of the books, the ambience as you step in from out of the rain or the noise of a city street, that rather awkward avoidance of eye contact with other shoppers; and, best of all, the return to your home with a carrier bag of prized new tomes. Any attempt to create an online version of that would be doomed before it got off the ground.

But I still wanted to create something that’s more of a fitting experience for buying books than a clinical point-and-click website. So Inkflash, then, is something brand new. Authors can sign up to create virtual “rooms” that are themed to evoke the world or period that their books are set in; and visitors can browse for murder mysteries in virtual recreations of Victorian London, or find perfect books for Winter in a snow-laden park where the only sound is the crunch of their footsteps.

The result is something that, I hope you’ll agree, is far more than simply an attempt at a 3D bookshop. Inkflash mixes social media with Virtual Reality (yes, the sort seen in 1990s movie The Lawnmower Man), with a particular emphasis on books and authors. But you don’t need a chunky VR headset to use Inkflash: simply visit the website, click the Start Exploring button, and settle in. The site is an ever-growing labyrinth of themed rooms; the perfect way to spend a Sunday afternoon exploring books, and discovering new authors along the way.

Rooms are linked via doorways, so visitors to the site can wander from one room to the next, exploring books and discovering new authors as they go. Although Inkflash is still very new, it’s already shaping organically into different “neighbourhoods” of historical novelists, science fiction authors, romance authors and so forth. A room itself can resemble a dimly lit cave, a stormy mountainside, a castle, a twinkling panorama in outer space; or even a pub. Whatever befits the books contained within the room.

As ‘The Writing Desk’ is a blog for writers, I’ll go into some detail about how Inkflash can help you, as an author, to promote your books. But first I’d like to emphasize that getting a room on the site is really straightforward; and being an author with a room on Inkflash is actually a lot of fun (and more activities on the Web should be fun, not tedious!)

A nice benefit of going 3D is that the books themselves, which have become very “flat” on the Web, are more like tangible objects again, that you can pick up and turn around: 

Even Kindle books can (optionally) have back covers and book spines now.

I’d initially planned to offer author rooms free of charge, but quickly realised that this wouldn’t necessarily work, even for the authors involved: having taken the time to set up a themed room that perfectly represents your books, you wouldn’t want thousands of people to set up “casual” rooms for free, drowning out the quality with copious amounts of quantity. Instead, there’s a small monthly fee of £10/month. This also means we can afford to spend time modelling each room individually; so each author has a truly unique home for their books. (Everyone can view the rooms for free, of course).

So, your new room is set up, and anyone on the Web can visit. How can you best put Inkflash to use, to promote your books?

Your author room can be used as the hub of your book marketing activities, or as a “side dish” that complements your other activities with a nice dash of 3D. Either way, a few very quick, straightforward activities will help you get the best from your Inkflash author room and help your books reach a new audience.

First, the most obvious (and most effective) way: link to your room! Each room has its own bookmarkable web address; e.g. historical novelist Fredrik Nath’s room is at:

http://inkflash.com/FredrikNath . As with any web page, as web traffic to your room grows, the room will grow more popular; more people will link to it, and so on. It’s the “old-school” viral network effect, from before social networks became popular.

Your room can also be displayed on your own blog or website, rather like embedding a YouTube video. We provide an “iframe builder” to make this very easy to do; and it’s a great way to add a touch of 3D magic to your own site:

Inkflash will fit right in with your social media marketing plan; for example, anyone who visits your author room can tweet a “room photo”, at the click of a button. Your author room - along with your books - may just go viral!

Repeat visitors are the lifeblood of any website, and your author room is no exception. So it makes sense to keep the room updated with new content. Thankfully, this is made easy for you, as we can display blog feeds, Twitter updates etc, on a “message wall” inside the room. Everything in the room is interactive; so posters, videos and message walls can link back to your website or book page.

If you’ve spent time and/or money creating a book trailer, you’ll want to feature it everywhere possible. How about on a video wall inside your 3D room? It’s funny how our perception of the world can play tricks on our senses, but in a virtual environment it really is like seeing your book trailer up on a big cinema screen.

We also embed the YouTube version on your Book Details page, along with any reviews of your book. So, in addition to your 3D room, the Book Details page can become a central hub of activities around your book, automatically updated:

A fair few of you will have participated in virtual book tours; they’re a wonderful way to launch a book or to increase a book’s visibility for a time. On Inkflash, you can add a new dimension to book tours, literally. As it’s easy to add and remove books and posters from your room, you can host a guest author’s book during their tour, along with a personalised note describing the book, and a link to its Amazon page.

Here’s where a virtual book tour (Inkflash-style) really pays off though. When someone views a book’s details page, they’ll see a list of links to all rooms that the book appears in:

So if you’re hosting a book by a guest author, your room will also appear. More inbound links to your room means, we hope, a growing audience and more book sales for you.

That about wraps it up for now… there’s actually plenty more I could mention here, including our future plans for Inkflash, but the term “information overload” springs to mind! Perhaps there’s scope for a follow-up Inkflash article on The Writing Desk… Please feel free to post any suggestions or questions in the Comments section below.

During the year leading up to Inkflash’s launch, there were real signs that social networking and Virtual Reality will soon converge: not least when Facebook bought VR headset pioneer Oculus for a mind-boggling $2 billion. Social networking has already shaped how we all sell and market our books; and now, it seems, VR is shaping up to play a big part in the future of social networking. So it follows that book marketing and VR will also converge in a big way. So the timing really couldn’t be better. As web-based VR becomes more mainstream, authors on Inkflash will be very well positioned to ride this new wave. If you’re an author (aspiring or published), I hope you’ll join us on Inkflash very soon!

Matt Stephens

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About the Author

Based in London, Matt Stephens is the owner and co-founder of Inkflash, and founder of indie Historical Fiction publisher Fingerpress. Before that he spent 20 years as a software developer, mainly in finance, and wrote some books on software design. Authors who would like a virtual room on Inkflash should contact Matt without delay, at: matt@inkflash.com and follow him on Twitter @InkflashVR and @maffstephens. 

Guest Post By Carmela Cattuti, author of Between the Cracks: One Woman's Journey from Sicily to America

Join Angela Lanza as she experiences the tumultuous world of early 20th century Sicily and New York. Orphaned by the earthquake and powerful eruption of Mt. Etna in 1908, Angela is raised in the strict confines of an Italian convent. Through various twists of fate, she is married to a young Italian man whom she barely knows, then together with her spouse, immigrates to the U.S. This novel is an invitation to accompany the young Angela as she confronts the ephemeral nature of life on this planet and navigates the wide cultural gaps between pre-World War II Italy and the booming prosperity of dynamic young America. Author, artist, and teacher Carmela Cattuti created Between the Cracks as an homage to her great-aunt, who survived the earthquake and eruption of Mt. Etna and bravely left Sicily to start a new life in America. This is the first in a trilogy.

Available on Amazon US and Amazon UK

The Magic of the Alchemical Process and the Courage of our Vulnerability

Having just published an historical novel based on my great aunt’s experience of the 1908 earthquake in Sicily, I started to think about the alchemical process of growth open to the human race residing on this planet. In order to open ourselves to this transformation process we must have what the Italians call “coraggio,” a quality highly regarded by the culture. The word means courage, but when an Italian says it, it is more of a blessing of confidence to transcend the obstacle or confront the issue at hand. A person with great “coraggio” always triumphs regardless of the outcome. This is especially true of the writing process, particularly when we are dealing with difficult material.

In my novel, I see the main character, Angela, moving into a time line that is regenerative and healing. Many of us living at this period in history possess courage in spades, and are waking up to who we really are. Those who remain steeped in the constructs of religion and politics may take a few more life times to develop enough courage to extricate themselves from these paradigms. But for those of us with enough courage (energetically developed over life times) to face the amount of imposition placed upon the human race from the media, politics, and religion, our transcendence is assured. The time line is created, all we need to do is bring it into our awareness. This is what Angela attempts to navigate. She realizes she cannot stat in Sicily; she has to traverse the unknown to a more positive life.

It took a great deal of courage for my great aunt to survive that massive disaster, then marry a man she hardly knew and immigrate to a strange country. I wrote her story and I am humbled by it. Her younger sister was never found and for the rest of her life she often wondered if she was still alive. Many years later she and her husband returned to Messina to see if they could locate her, but there was no evidence that she had survived the earthquake. I think her story is a tribute to the indomitable human spirit.

From what I can remember of our conversations, she was very much in touch with her inner knowing from the time she was quite young. When she was a child both her parents died and she and her brother were sent to live with grandparents while her young sister was sent to live with an aunt, so from early on she had confronted loss and abandonment. After the earthquake she was even more alone, surviving on the streets until the Americans came and took children aboard ships. She ended up in a convent and was raised by the Sisters of Charity.

Her early life was an intense alchemical experience that strengthened who she was and what she came to the planet to accomplish. A less developed soul without an abundance of courage would have perished or given up. Her relationship with the Catholic Church was superficial and the energy of her worship was focused on the Blessed Mother. Even though she was raised in a strict religious atmosphere where her behavior was closely monitored, the construct of religion was not a force behind her spiritual beliefs. She was vulnerable to criticism for her “Mary Worship” by the Italian Community, but she persisted in having an altar devoted to Mary in her home regardless. As writers, is it imperative that we develop the same stamina and we continue to explore unknown territory, not only for our personal development but for our readers’.

Angela was bombarded with family obligations and tragedy, but she persisted in her spiritual development and serving others, even when they were less than kind. Her influence on my life has been profound and when I think I am having a difficult time filling a page, I refer to her life and it puts everything into perspective.

Carmela Cattuti 

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About the Author

Carmela Cattuti is a writer, visual artist, and teacher. She is the author of Between the Cracks, a novel based on her great aunt's inspirational journey from Sicily to the U.S. Carmela is a graduate of Boston College's masters program in literature. Join her Facebook community, find her on her Twitter, visit Carmela's blog and hear her talk at Blogtalk Radio. 

Special Guest Post ~ Death of a Dishonorable Gentleman, by Tessa Arlen #HFVBT

Lady Montfort has been planning her summer ball for months, but when her husband’s degenerate nephew is found murdered, it’s more than the ball that is ruined. In fact, Lady Montfort fears that the official police enquiry is pointing towards her son as a potential suspect. Taking matters into her own hands, the countess enlists the help of her pragmatic housekeeper, Mrs. Jackson, to investigate the case, track down the women that vanished the night of the murder and clear her son’s name. In this enchanting debut novel Tessa Arlen draws readers into a world exclusively enjoyed by the rich, privileged classes and suffered by the men and women who serve them. 

Available on Amazon (Kindle) Amazon (Paperback) 

Barnes & Noble (Nook) Barnes & Noble (Paperback) 

Book Depository Books-a-Million IndieBound Kobo

   

Why did I write Death of a Dishonorable Gentleman and How did I go about it?

When I decided to write a mystery there was no question in my mind that it had to be historical as I am a romantic. The first decade of the 20th century offers a world very different from ours today and yet the era is completely accessible; our great-grandmothers were Edwardians! I remember mine quite clearly, she was always beautifully turned out and a stickler for little things like perfect manners.

If I went back in time I would want to live in an era that had at least the rudiments of electricity and plumbing in my beautiful country house. Other proviso’s would be that I had pots of money, being poor in 1912 would be terrible, and I wouldn’t go without my wonderful egalitarian husband with his 21st century sensibilities toward women. But the real draw was that this age produced some of the most interesting, eccentric and colorful characters of recent history, simply crying out to be included in a murder story. 

How I wrote my first book serves no useful purpose other than to relate that I woke up every morning charged to write my story and was deeply proud when I had finished my first draft in October 2008 of 158,000 words . . . 800 pages. The thing was huge it was enough for two books. So I set to work to prune down those endless paragraphs and run on sentences until I had a something almost acceptable.

Second time around I was a little more disciplined in my approach. This is how I wrote Death of a Dishonorable Gentleman, and the next in the Lady Montfort series:

• Before I throw myself into writing the story I think about the people who inhabit the world that I have created. I research the houses, towns and villages they live in, the part of England where the story takes place and of course the time in which the story takes place, especially the year in which I am writing. What extraordinary things were happening in 1912?  If I want my characters to stay true to who they are I have to understand them and know them intimately:  their place in society, what they look like, their odd little idiosyncrasies and habits, likes and dislikes, and the part they play in my story. However clever your plot, it is the characters who make your story live. Write bios for them if you have to – I do. 
• With place, time and characters organized it is time to map out the plot-line. And also consider what happens to make these people do what they do. Are they changed by events in the story? What travails did they go through to succeed or fail? I plot the beginning the middle and the end in skeleton form. I do not write one word of the story itself until I am clear on some very specific points and where they fall in the arc of the story. I do this is by writing a little synopsis for each chapter and scene.  Kind of like the chapter headings in Victorian novels: Chapter One: In which Edwin’s parents die of Spanish influenza; he discovers that there is no will. His father’s older brother (a drunkard) is appointed guardian, and moves into the house with his grasping wife. Edwin makes plans to run away. This does not mean I stick to it when I am writing; it is just a guideline for me so I don’t get lost halfway through my story.
• With a workable idea for a plot, the characters in place and the world they live in securely entrenched in my mind I start writing. This is the best part!  Sometimes the characters take over and tell the story for me. I write away – and keep on writing until the end. I only re-read what I have written the previous day and then on I go.  Then I return to the manuscript and start to re-write and shape.
• At the end of my second draft. I give myself a thorough pat on the back, ice my swollen fingers and put the manuscript away.  This hiatus from the second draft is for at least six weeks – sometimes longer. In this time I jot down ideas I have, but I don’t go near the manuscript. This is percolating time; when my sub-conscious is brewing away while my conscious is making beds and weeding the garden. If I miss writing I dream up ideas for other books, write blogs and catch up with social media. When I return to the manuscript I promise you that it is at this time the holes and the gaffs and the inconsistencies will be kind enough to say who they are. 
• What comes next is the real slog.  You discover a favorite noun or adjective pops up a hundred times in three consecutive paragraphs. This is edit and polish time. Do it until you suspect you are beginning to over-work your story and stop. Voila!

Tessa Arlen

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About the Author

Tessa Arlen, the daughter of a British diplomat, had lived in or visited her parents in Singapore, Cairo, Berlin, the Persian Gulf, Beijing, Delhi and Warsaw by the time she was sixteen. She came to the U.S. in 1980 and worked as an H.R. recruiter for the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee for the 1984 Olympic Games, where she interviewed her future husband for a job. Death of a Dishonorable Gentleman is Tessa’s first novel. She lives in Bainbridge Island, Washington. For more information please visit Tessa Arlen's website. Read Tessa Arlen's blog at Redoubtable Edwardians. You can also connect with her on Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads. Subscribe to Tessa Arlen's Newsletter.

Death of a Dishonorable Gentleman Blog Tour Schedule:

Monday, January 5 Review at Reading the Past Review at Back Porchervations Review & Giveaway at Mina's Bookshelf Tuesday, January 6 Review & Giveaway at Unshelfish Review & Giveaway at The Maiden's Court Wednesday, January 7 Review & Giveaway at To Read, Or Not to Read Spotlight at The Never-Ending Book Thursday, January 8 Review at Buried Under Books Friday, January 9 Review at Mel's Shelves Guest Post on The Writing Desk Interview at Back Porchervations Saturday, January 10 Review at With Her Nose Stuck in a Book Monday, January 12 Review at Flashlight Commentary Tuesday, January 13 Review at Girl Lost in a Book Spotlight & Giveaway at Let Them Read Books Wednesday, January 14 Review & Giveaway at The Book Binder's Daughter Thursday, January 15 Spotlight & Giveaway at Passages to the Past Friday, January 16 Spotlight at Just One More Chapter Monday, January 19 Review at Beth's Book Book Tuesday, January 20 Review at The Lit Bitch Spotlight & Giveaway at Peeking Between the Pages Wednesday, January 21 Spotlight & Giveaway at Teddy Rose Book Reviews Plus More Thursday, January 22 Review at Musings of a Bookish Kitty Monday, January 26 Review at A Literary Vacation Spotlight at CelticLady's Reviews Tuesday, January 27 Review & Giveaway at The True Book Addict Wednesday, January 28 Review at A Book Geek Thursday, January 29 Spotlight at What Is That Book About Saturday, January 31 Review & Giveaway at The Calico Critic Monday, February 2 Review at Book Nerd Tuesday, February 3 Spotlight at I Heart Reading Thursday, February 5 Review at Layered Pages Friday, February 6 Guest Post & Giveaway at Historical Fiction Connection