Book Giveaway Announcements
Feb 14th
In Maggie Stiefvater’s Shiver, Grace and Sam found each other. Now, in Linger, they must fight to be together. For Grace, this means defying her parents and keeping a very dangerous secret about her own well-being. For Sam, this means grappling with his werewolf past . . . and figuring out a way to survive into the future. Add into the mix a new wolf named Cole, whose own past has the potential to destroy the whole pack. And Isabelle, who already lost her brother to the wolves . . . and is nonetheless drawn to Cole.
At turns harrowing and euphoric, Linger is a spellbinding love story that explores both sides of love — the light and the dark, the warm and the cold — in a way you will never forget.
Comes out in stores everywhere July 20th. Pre-order here.
Enter to win an advanced review copies of LINGER, Sisters Red, The Dead-Tossed Waves, and The Replacement on Maggie’s blog
Sewing a Friendship is about a group of girls who are having a sleepover when they discover an invitation to a fashion show. When the four friends read that five participants are needed to enter, they reluctantly decide to include nasty Kiki Shaver, who’s never been very nice to them. With the help of Sokron’s grandma, whom she calls Babushka, they are miraculously able to get ready for the fashion show in a short period of time. In the meantime, they all learn that they need each other and figure out how to work together. In the end, they all become friends with Kiki, who learns the value of friendship.
One winner will be randomly selected from the qualified comments received by Sunday, February 28, 2010, at midnight ET.
Read more about this contest here on Susan Heim’s blog.
Book Lovers Inc is giving away A MATTER AMONG COWBOYS by Destiny Blaine, REAL VAMPIRES HATE THEIR THIGHS by Gerry Bartlett, ACCIDENTALLY DEMONIC by Dakota Cassidy.
Everyone including those living out of the United States is welcome to enter. Just leave a comment here telling her which book you would like to win and share a book that’s on your wishlist whether it is not released yet or has been out for a while but you haven’t gotten yet. Giveaway ends on Tuesday, February 16, 2010.
Employment Law: Commissions
Feb 8th
Am sitting here this lovely snow day doing homework, even though I don’t have class until Wednesday at the earliest (and that’s iffy; we’re due another snowstorm Tuesday night). Might as well get it out of the way now, right? Especially since I have a midterm next Monday (it was supposed to be this Wednesday).
Started with Employment Law, which is my last class, since it’s the class I usually don’t get to and I’m tired of going in not having done the reading.
Anyway, I just came across this lovely tidbit in the book (which is by Rothstein and from Foundation Press):
Employers may not shift the burden of business losses to their employees by deducting them from pay. A California appellate court held illegal Neiman Marcus’ practice of deducting from sales associates’ commissions a percentage of merchandise returns. Hudgins v. Neiman Marcus Grp., 41 Cal.Rptr.2d 46 (Ct.App.1995)
My jaw dropped a little. When I was working for Boscov’s (before the local store got shut down when the company declared Chapter 11) in the jewelry department, we earned commissions. If what we earned commission on got returned, they deducted the commission from that check, or the next one, or whichever one was relevant. But more telling (and more likely to be illegal) is, if the return happens after the employee has quit/been fired, the whole department splits the return and has to eat the deduction.
I’m tempted to talk to my professor about that. I wish I’d know it back when I was working retail…
THE SWEET SCENT OF BLOOD, Suzanne McLeod–Review
Feb 6th
I came across this book in kind of a funny way. Back before finals beat me up last semester, I was posting book reviews on my blog, and one of the people who came to read one was Suzanne McLeod, which I know because her friends page was listed as a referral page. So I clicked. Come to find out she’s a writer, and fellow member of the Urban Fantasy Fan livejournal community. Since I’m always looking for new books to read, I looked around for hers, and lo!
An urban fantasy book set in London? I love urban fantasy set in London! The Black London novels by Caitlin Kittridge and the Constantine comics are some of my favorite reads. The first book of the series was endorsed by Charlaine Harris and Simon Green. And I liked the back cover blurb (taken from the spellcrackers.com:
‘My name is Genny Taylor. I work for Spellcrackers.com. It’s a great job, pays the rent, lets me do the thing I’m good at – finding magic and cracking it – and the bonus is it’s run by witches, which stops the vamps from taking a bite out of me.
Not that vampires are the big bad any more, not since they launched a slick PR campaign – oh, and they brought the goblins on board. Now the vamps are sought-after celebrities, and Getting Fanged and taking the Gift are the new height of all things cool.
But only if you’re human.
And I’m not.
I’m Sidhe fae.
And I know firsthand just how deadly a vampire can be.’
Sounded good to me.
More >
Copyright Laughs
Jan 31st
Sundays suck. Today especially sucks because I’m doing a week and a half’s worth of homework in a day, instead of something fun like reading the new MUCH FALL OF BLOOD or writing EXILE (I will get past the 20k word mark if it kills me damn it!)
Still, some of this stuff cracks me up.
Brown & Denicola, Copyright, Foundation Press:
"The inventor of Sherlock Holmes controls that character’s fate while the copyright lasts; the first person to conclude that Dillinger survived does not get dibs on history." — Judge Easterbrook, Nash v. CBS, Inc.
"The facts of the Oliver case are particularly odd, even for California."
"Four of these were fictitious listings that Rural [a telephone company that produced telephone number directories] had inserted into its directory to detect copying."
Happy New Year
Jan 4th
Well, December was a busy month for Charity and I, what with the holidays, finals, and the like, but I think we’re back! Today I stumbled upon a really interesting website, named, aptly enough, Stumble Upon. I found a really interesting site that immediately made me think of Charity, right off.
http://www.tastespotting.com/ is described as…
Founded in January 2007 on the idea that we eat first with our eyes, TasteSpotting is our obsessive, compulsive collection of eye-catching images that link to something deliciously interesting on the other side. Think of TasteSpotting as a highly visual potluck of recipes, references, experiences, stories, articles, products, and anything else that inspires exquisite taste.
We don’t use the term “potluck” for the hell of it. Everyone brings something to the party here: the user community submits images/links from around the web and the editorial team reviews the submissions. What finally gets served up on the site is a beautifully refined set of the community’s contributions.
…and is a collection of frankly beautiful images of food that I would love to cook. The recipes are pretty well done, but it’s the photographs that are inspiring. I can’t gush about this site enough–and I’m not even the cook of the duo!