Truth and Lies and a $10 Amazon Gift Card Giveaway!

I have been fortunate this week to have Marcia Hoehne send me a blog award (Because, you know, it's all about the blog bling!). Thank you, Marcia!

To accept this award I must:
*Thank the person who gave me the award and link to her.
*Add the award to my blog.
*Tell six outrageous lies about myself and One Truth.
*Nominate six creative liars...er, writers, and link to them.
*Let my nominees know they have been nominated.

Just to make this interesting, I'm adding a $10 gift card to Amazon.com as a prize! Like Marcia, I'm a bit of a rebel and plan to change the rules. I'm telling two truths and four lies. Choose your two truths and enter them in one comment. For each truth you guess correctly, your name will be placed in a drawing for the gift card. You have until midnight Friday, March 12th to enter. Winners (and truths) will be announced March 14th.

*For an additional entry, become a follower, and tell me so (or that you already are one) in a second comment.

*For an additional entry, post a link to this contest and then post a comment giving the URL. For the sake of my own organization, if you post a contest link in more than one location, please give each URL in a separate comment. In this category, you can enter as many times as you have cyber-places to post the contest.

Time to unleash the bald-faced-liar creative writer in me. Can you tell? Truth or lie?

1. When I was 15, I found 47 four-leaf clovers in one summer. I still have them. They're pressed in wax paper and stored in a Dr. Suess "Go, Dog Go" book.

2. I once fed 35 Texans chili so hot it'd burn a hole in your cheek and make your tongue drop out, but they still added their own habanero peppers that they carried in their pockets; ran into Kris Kristofferson's belt buckle (he's really tall); chatted up with Johnny Cash (he was a true gentleman), and talked to Johnny Paycheck on the phone - all in one day.

3. I rode the Tilt-A-Whirl 42 times in a row at Coney Island in Cincinnati, because I love my daughter.

4. My husband and I were arrested on our first date.

5. I sang a singing saw part in Aram Khachaturian's "Concerto for Piano and Orchestra" with the Dayton Philharmonic Youth Orchestra. The guy who was supposed to play the saw got sick, and there was no back-up saw player. I was the only one who could sing that high.

6. I competed at the Grape Stomp Competition at the Hollister Grape and Fall Festival in Branson, Missouri. It was over a week before my toes were no longer blue.


There you have it - 2 truths and 4 lies. Good luck! And now, my creative liar nominees...

1. Rena
2. Christina Farley
3. Carrie Harris
4. Julia Karr
5. Chocolateer
6. Sara McClung

E-book Caper -- Front Street and namelos

Kent Brown, Executive Director of the Highlights Foundation, sent out this email offering free e-book downloads until April 1st. The message is as follows:

I normally trash any e-mail that includes the word free in it. And I often ignore any that mentions e-book, as I'm not up to date on that technology. But I concocted this experiment and egged on my friend Stephen Roxburgh, who is an early adopter of e-books and things high tech. I got used to seeing him in a rocking chair engrossed in his Kindle. Stephen has been a student of the book in whatever format most of his life and is articulate on the importance and magic of story, independent of platform.

Front Street, founded by Stephen and now part of Boyds Mills Press, has among its recent publications four great novels, which we selected for this experiment. They are characterized by the gentle hand of Stephen Roxburgh and the skills of colleagues he trained and inspired.

The novels are ACCORDING TO KIT by Eugenie Doyle (2ce4), CITY OF CANNIBALS by Ricki Thompson (d35f), THE DOG IN THE WOOD by Monika Schröder (3bd5), and WARRIORS IN THE CROSSFIRE by Nancy Bo Flood (2ac4).

To get your free electronic copies, go to www.namelos.com and locate the book by title or author by browsing or use the "search" option. When you get to the book page, enter the unique code provided for each book (shown in parentheses above) in the box in the lower-left corner of the page (under the list of prices) and click "submit." You will be asked to provide your name and e-mail address and to select the file format you want. You will receive an e-mail with a link that will download the file you selected to your hard drive, from where you can transfer it to your preferred reading device.

The code will allow you to download one file format per title. If you need a file format that is not provided, write directly to Stephen (roxburgh@namelos.com) and he'll provide it.

Frankly, it's an increasing challenge to get attention for novels, particularly first novels.

So, in cooperation with Stephen Roxburgh and his new venture, namelos llc, we are offering for a limited time downloads of the four novels. From now until April Fools' Day, you can put these on your e-reading device without charge. And since we are doing this to get the word out, we would be very happy if you shared the opportunity with your friends.

We want everyone to know about these books.

Boyds Mills Press has the hardback editions in stock, and they are available through all the places you buy books. Namelos llc will be selling the e-book versions of these titles in April and beyond. Almost all other Front Street novels are available now for purchase to download at www.namelos.com.

If you take advantage of this special offer, you can expect namelos to keep you up to date on the books they are offering in e-book format. If that's not to your liking, you will have a chance to opt out.

I cannot answer your technical questions—Stephen can do that—but I'd be happy to hear about your experience with this experiment.

Kent Brown, Executive Director, Highlights Foundation, Inc.
Former Publisher, Boyds Mills Press
KBrown@boydsmillspress.com