Carol's Notebook

Grab your current read. Let the book fall open to a random page. Share with us two (2) "teaser" sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12. You also need to share the title of the book that you're getting your "teaser" from...that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given. Please avoid spoilers! My teaser: If there had not been a Netherfield ball to prepare for, the younger Miss Bennets would have been in a very pitiable state, for from the day of the invitation, to the day of the ball, there was such a succession of rain as prevented their walking to Meryton once. The earth was again soft, and the dead numerous. -pg. 71,  Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Graham-Smith Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Play along....

I want to thank David Liss for taking a page in my notebook  today to share some of his thoughts. Based on the Disgruntled Writer's Book There was a time when Hollywood film options were a nice – sometimes very nice – supplemental income for novelists.  I still recall with both amusement and delight the late-into-the-night duel between two studios for the rights to my first novel.  I recall with less amusement and less delight how, after throwing money at the wrong (not bad, just wrong) screenwriter and wrong director, the studio ended up with an unworkable project and walked away.  Now that novel has been revived as a potential film, thanks to the free options, an increasingly common arrangement in economic-downturn Hollywood.  In the past few weeks I’ve agreed to a free option and a free option renewal for two books.  The bad side is that no one is paying me money up front.  The good news is that, absent the power-brokering...

I've got a couple of sets of winners to announce, but first I have a new winner for The Juror by George Dawes Green. One of the orginal winners already got her hands on a copy. Renee G Congratulations to the winners of How to Score by Robin Wells. Laura chey Freda Mans Geraldine Carlene And congratulations to the winners of Off Season by Anne Rivers Siddons. I'm sorry I didn't post this on Saturday like I was supposed to, but I was exhausted. Cindy V Belinda McNabb Marie scottsgal Amanda I'll be sending you all e-mails today or tomorrow. I'll just need your mailing address to pass on to Hachette Book Group. Thanks so much....

Thanks to Marcia at The Printed Page for hosting Mailbox Monday. My mailbox was pretty full this week, thanks in part to wins at Drey's Library and Jo-Jo Loves to Read! I don't know where I'm going to find the time to read all these great books. A Darkness Forged in Fire by Chris Evans Konowa Swiftdragon, once commander of the Calahrian Empire’s renowned Iron Elves, is now a disgraced ex-soldier. Though elvish, Konowa is more comfortable with metal and fire than with nature and, like all the Iron Elves, was marked at birth for an ill-omened destiny by the malevolent Shadow Monarch. When a prophetic Red Star falls, awakening lost magic, Konowa is recalled to find it with a new regiment of Iron Elves—except this bunch is the dregs of the military and not even elves. Their journey is plagued by monsters and an unforeseen rebellion, but the worst is to come. The Shadow Monarch’s play for the Star is a ruse...

Any Minute by Joyce Meyer (abridged audiobook) Sarah Harper is driven, pursuing happiness in all the wrong places. She wants to do good and not hurt the people she loves, including her son, Mitchell, and her husband, Joe. But her drive to succeed overrides all else. It's not until she faces a chance encounter with heaven and spends time with the grandmother who prayed for her every day when she was a little girl that she begins to see how her own mother's bitterness created a hole in Sarah's life--a hole she has been trying to overcome for as long as she can remember. For the first time, Sarah sees that God created her for a special purpose. When Sarah returns to her own life, she is a woman with a mission. And the unsuspecting world around her will never be the same again. The Giveaway: Thanks to Hachette Book Group, I've got three audiobook copies of Any Minute to giveaway. To enter, just leave...