Archive for the ‘General’ Category

As you may have seen so far this week, I am participating in a blog tour to promote the novel Buying Time by Pamela Samuels Young.  On Monday I reviewed Buying Time and you can read that review here.  Then on Tuesday, Pamela took part in a guest post, giving advice to authors who are in a bit of a writing slump, and you can see this amazing advice here.

Today, I am doing an author spotlight on Pamela, so that we can all learn a little bit more about her and her book (Information taken from Pamela’s website).

About Pamela Samuels Young

Corporate attorney Pamela Samuels Young has always abided by the philosophy that you create the change you want to see.  Fed up with never seeing women or people of color depicted as savvy, hot shot attorneys in the legal thrillers she read, the Compton Native decided to create her own characters.  Despite the demands of a busy legal career, Pamela accomplished her ambitious goal by rising at four in the morning to write before work, dedicating her weekends to writing and even spending her vacation time glued to her laptop for ten or more hours a day.  The Essence magazine bestselling author now has four fast-paced legal thrillers to show for her efforts.

Pamela’s debut novel, Every Reasonable Doubt (February 2006), won the Black Expressions Book Club’s Fiction Writing Contest, received an honorable mention in the SEAK Legal Fiction Writing Competition and was a finalist for USA Book News’ Best Books of 2006 awards in the mystery, suspense and thriller category.  Her second novel, In Firm Pursuit (January 2007) was honored by Romantic Times magazine as a finalist for Best African-American Novel of 2007.  Murder on the Down Low (September 2008), Pamela’s third release, was an “Editor’s Pick” by Black Expressions magazine and a finalist for the 2009 African-American Literary Awards in the mystery category.  Pamela then published her first stand-alone novel, Buying Time (November 2009).  The Black Caucus of the American Library Association honored Buying Time with its 2010 Fiction Award, calling the book “a captivating, suspenseful thriller.”  Her short story, Setup, was selected for the 2006 Sisters in Crime anthology, LAndmarked for Murder.

Pamela has achieved a successful writing career while working as Managing Counsel for Labor and Employment Law for a major corporation in Southern California.  Prior to that, she served as Employment Law Counsel for Raytheon Company and spent several years with the law firm of O’Melveny & Myers, LLP in Los Angeles.  A former journalist, Pamela began her broadcasting career as a production assistant at WXYZ-TV in Detroit, where she was quickly promoted to news writer.  To escape the brutal Detroit winters, she returned home to Los Angeles and worked at KCBS-TV as a news writer and associate producer..  

A former Coro Foundation Fellow, Pamela has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from USC and a master’s degree in broadcasting from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.  She received her law degree from UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law and was formerly an adjunct professor at the University of Redlands’ School of Business.  Pamela currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Southern California Chapter of Mystery Writers of America and is the Fiction Expert for BizyMoms.com.

Pamela is a frequent speaker on the topics of discrimination law, writing and pursuing your passion.  She is married and lives in the Los Angeles area.  You can find out more about Pamela by visiting her at her website / Twitter / MySpace.

About ‘Buying Time’

Waverly Sloan is a down-on-his-luck lawyer.  But just when he’s about to hit rock bottom, he stumbles upon a business with the potential to solve all of his problems.
In Waverly’s new line of work, he comes to the aid of people in desperate need of cash.  But there’s a catch.  His clients must be terminally ill and willing to sign over their life insurance policies before they can collect a dime.  Waverly then finds investors eager to advance them thousands of dollars – including a hefty broker’s fee for himself – in exchange for a significant return on their investment once the clients take their last breath.
The stakes get higher when Waverly brokers the policy of the cancer-stricken wife of Lawrence Erickson, a high-powered lawyer who’s bucking to become the next U.S. Attorney General.  When Waverly’s clients start dying sooner than they should, both Waverly and Erickson – who has some skeletons of his own to hide – are unwittingly drawn into a perilous web of greed, blackmail and murder.

If you head over to Facebook there are some AMAZING contests being held by Orion Publishing Group on their Facebook pages!!!  And I thought you all might like to hear about them so that you can go over there and enter them straight away! 

The first Facebook page I would like to draw your attention to is Cherry Picks.  This is a page dedicated to all fans of Women’s Fiction.  Their current giveaway is for Katie Agnew’s books – Saints V Sinners and Wives V Girlfriends.  I love the cover of these books – very eye catching!  All you have to do to win these books is become a member of the page and then send an email to Orion (details on Facebook).

The second Facebook page is called Fierce Fiction, which is dedicated to fans of YA fiction (something I have been reading quite a lot of lately).  They are hosting a giveaway for The Adamantine Palace by Stephen Deas.  Again, all you have to do is become a member of the page and send in an email to Orion.




Now, the last page (and my personal favourite) is the Gollancz Dark Fantasy page and they are hosting a very, very exciting giveaway! You could win the ENTIRE SET of Kitty Norville books by Carrie Vaughn!!!  All you have to do is imagine that you are a supernatural creature with a problem that needs Kitty’s help.  Email your problem to Orion and the most inventive entry wins the whole series!

Jamie over at Book Junkie’s Bookshelf is hosting a book blogger twitter hop today, where we can find lots of great book blogs to follow on Twitter (whilst hopefully also getting more followers for ourselves). Visit Book Junkie’s Bookshop for more details on how to take part.

If you follow me as part of the Twitter hop please leave a comment for me here and I will come and visit your blog!

Jo Cotterill is the author of Star Crossed, the first book in her new Sweet Hearts series (you can read my review of this book here).  Jo has shared her top 5 list of leading men with me.  Why don’t you let me know what you think of this list? Do you agree and who would you include on your list?

1. David Tennant (he can be my Doctor Who any day!)

2. Adrian Lester (the man from Hustle – smooth and charming)

3. David Boreanaz (Angel from Buffy the Vampire Slayer - a GOOD vampire!)

4. Colin Firth ( from Bridget Jones’ Diary and Love Actually.  Quiet and shy, aww!)

5. Robert Sean Leonard (Loved him in Dead Poets’ Society, now he’s a doctor in House.)

Jennifer from Crazy for Books has come up with a great new meme that I will be taking part in.  It follows in the spirit of Friday Follow but it is specifically for book bloggers! I am very excited about this blog hop as it will give me a chance to find out about lots of other book blogs that I might not have known about otherwise.

If you want to join in the fun, all you have to do is visit Crazy for Books and sign up with McLinky.  Then just have a look through the other blogs that are signed up and hopefully make lots of new bloggy friends!

If you find my site through the Book Blogger Hop leave a comment here and I will come and visit your blog.

Happy blog hopping x

Hi everybody!!!

I haven’t been able to do much stuff on my blog this week and that is because of something pretty big that has happened:

I gave birth to my baby boy on Thursday 22nd April at 12.16pm.  He weighed 7lbs 6oz and came along after a quick 3.5 hour labour!!!

So here is a picture of little baby Callum:

I am hoping to participate in a few memes this week but I may not have time to visit and comment on other sites or write many reviews for a little while.

Take care everybody x

Recently, I have received some more blog awards but haven’t had time to post about them yet.  So I thought it was about time I got around to doing this so that I could properly thank the lovely bloggers who have passed them on to me.

I received the One Lovely Blog Award from C Mash Loves to Read, so thank you Cheryl.  As I have recently passed on this award to some other bloggers (see post here) I won’t be passing it on again.

I also recieved the Beautiful Blogger Award from YzhaBella’s Bookshelf.  I have received this one recently as well (see post here), so I will not be passing this on again.

Last but not least I received the Sugar Doll Blogger Award from Darlyn & Books.  The rules for this blog award are that I have to list 10 things about myself before passing it on to other bloggers.  Hmmm, this is going to be difficult but here goes:

1. My favourite food is chocolate!!!
2. I will be 28 on my birthday in May.
3. I rely on my car too much!  I didn’t realise how much so until it recently broke down and now I don’t feel like I can get anywhere!
4. I hate having to go shopping for pushchairs!  This one is hanging over my head at the moment as I really should be looking to buy a double pushchair before the baby arrives but I just can’t seem to bring myself to start looking for one!
5. I don’t have any brothers or sisters.
6.  My favourite film ever is Dirty Dancing.
7. My favourite ever character from a book is Jamie Fraser from the Outlander books by Diana Gabaldon – I think I am a little bit in love with him ;)
8. When I was a kid I always wanted to be a teacher when I grew up.  I quickly changed my mind though after doing two weeks work experience at a school!  I just was not cut out to be a teacher!
9. My husband and I have been together for nine years and married for five of them.
10.  The number of books that I read has gone up loads since I started writing this blog and this means that quite often my house resembles a pigsty.  I blame all of you other book bloggers who read such great books and write such great reviews that I just have to go out a read those books too ;)

I would like to pass this award on to:
1. Dreaming of Books
2. Reading Angel
3. Candace’s Book Blog
4. Midnight Glance
5. Obsessed!

So if you haven’t already seen these blogs, I would recommend them – they are all great!

Jennifer from Crazy for Books has come up with a great new meme that I will be taking part in.  It follows in the spirit of Friday Follow but it is specifically for book bloggers! I am very excited about this blog hop as it will give me a chance to find out about lots of other book blogs that I might not have known about otherwise.

If you want to join in the fun, all you have to do is visit Crazy for Books and sign up with McLinky.  Then just have a look through the other blogs that are signed up and hopefully make lots of new bloggy friends!

If you find my site through the Book Blogger Hop leave a comment here and I will come and visit your blog.

Happy blog hopping x

Well, I was lucky enough to receive another award at the weekend – the One Lovely Blog Award!!!  I would really like to thank Lina at Fingers in the Pie and Cathy at Minding the Middle for passing this award on to me.  It is always a lovely surprise to receive an award.  Now, onto the rules:

I would like to thank Jenn from 4 Crazy Kids, a Hot Daddy and a Frazzled Momma for passing on the Beautiful Blogger Award.  It was a lovely surprise!

There are a few rules to accepting the award so here they are:

1. Thank the person who nominated you

2. Copy the award and paste it on your blog

3. Link to the person who nominated you for the award

4. List 7 interesting things about yourself

5. Nominate 7 other Beautiful Bloggers

Ok, so 7 interesting things about me – that’s a tough one.

1. I am expecting baby number 2 on 4th May and I’m officially the size of a house already!
2. It is my dream to have 4 children!!! I know, I must be crazy.
3. I know all the words in Finding Nemo as my little boy has developed a bit of an obssession with it!
4. I can name every type of JCB ever made – again, thanks to my son.
5. I have a pet cat called Izzy who doesn’t really like people – including me!
6. I have my dream job – working in a library surrounded by books all day (well, except for the fact that I’m on maternity leave at the moment!).
7. Since I started blogging, I have spent far too much time on the computer and not enough doing housework!

Right, so now it’s time to pass this award onto 7 Beautiful Bloggers.  My choices are:

1. Off My Bookshelf
2. Rundpinne
3. The Eclectic Reader
4.  Aubut Life
5. Blackberry Jam Cafe
6. Confessions of a Wannabe Baker
7. The Bookette

So if you haven’t already seen these blogs, I would recommend them – they are all beautiful.

I got another award this week!!!  This time it was from Sarah over at Sarah’s Book Reviews and it was the Blogger Buddy Award.  Thank you so much Sarah, I really appreciate it.

I would like to pass this award onto Darlyn at Darlyn & Books.

Thank you Sarah and Darlyn for being such great blogging buddies, and I hope to make many more friends whilst I continue blogging.

I would like to thank Darlyn over at Darlyn & Books for giving me my first ever blog award… for having a blog that is soooo kewl.  Darlyn – I think your blog is incredibly cool too!

So I am going to pass this award onto some other bloggers who I think also have cool blogs.

1. Book Chick City
2. Alaine – Queen of Happy Endings
3. Marg – Reading Adventures
4. Lori – Escape Between the Pages
5. Sarah – Sarah’s Book Reviews

Thanks again to Darlyn and thanks to all the other bloggers out there with cool blogs!

Hi everybody!

Welcome to my new blog dedicated to my love of books.  My name is Chrissie and I am 27 years old.  I have been married for 5 years and we have a 2 year old little boy and another little one on the way in May!  I currently work in a library and although I love my job I am hoping to become a stay-at-home mum at some point in the not too distant future.  I love spending time with my husband and little boy, reading (obviously!), watching films and eating out (I’m not entirely sure any more that my waistline is all baby bump!).

I love reading most types of fiction, but my favourites are historical, chick-lit and vampire fiction.  As you can tell, I have quite a wide range of books that I enjoy.  I used to buy loads of books every month but I managed to curb that once I started working in a library and was able to feed my obsession that way.  But now my obsession has taken on a new form -  my lovely husband bought me an e-book reader for Christmas and now I am rapidly filling up the memory on it with collections of books from any author I can lay my hands on.  I curently have roughly 1000 e-books on there and I’m showing no signs of stopping any time in the near future! I think deciding which book to read next will be a bit of a challenge!

I decided to start up a blog because I love to read and share my views on books.  I hope to meet other like-minded people through this blog and to introduce others to new authors as well as being introduced to new authors myself.

I hope you enjoy what you see on this site and please feel free to leave comments – I would love to hear from you.  Also, if you really like it please show your support by becoming a follower of the site.

Happy reading!

Chrissie x