CL Raven's Se7en Challenge!

So, a fantastically fun tweeper, Anya Breton, has challenged me to a fun blog game. Here are the rules:

Go to page 7 or 77 of your manuscript or WIP. Go to the 7th line down then copy and paste the next 7 lines into your blog. Then tag 7 other people and ask them to do the same.

From my upcoming book, Fire With Fire, premiering May 9th:

J didn't often get the urge to apologize, but she had a hunch that Christian wouldn't have been nearly as eager for Ophelia's help if he had known who she was bringing with her by proxy.

"Browne," Ophelia mused. Her fingers stilled on the keys, at least for the moment. "Nothing particularly promising at first glance. He grew up poor in a neighborhood like this one, rose to prominence first on an athletic scholarship, then academics after he injured his knee in his second year of college." The man frozen on Ophelia's screen was younger than the one from Browne's office, though he still carried with him the patrician air of money a lot older than one generation. It was amazing how a good haircut changed a man.

AND NOW! I solemnly tag Lenore Wolf, Angela Goff, Kathy Lynn Hall, Chris Smith, C.C. Cole, Tiffany King, and Zoe E. Whitten. Have fun, guys!

I just made a statuette out of tinfoil, DON'T JUDGE ME.

You know why I love being a blogger? You get to accept awards in your pajamas! The fantastic Gareth at 1000 Trillion Suns has nominated me for the Versatile Blogger Award! (Practicing a speech in front of my bathroom mirror, anyway, doesn't make me weird, does it?) Outside of giggling and preening, here are a handful of rules:

1. In a post on your, blog, nominate 15 fellow bloggers for The Versatile Blogger Award.
2. In the same post, Add the Versatile Blogger Award.
3. In the same post, thank the blogger who nominated you in a post with a link back to their blog.
4. In the same post, share 7 completely random pieces of information about yourself.
5. In the same post, include this set of rules.
6. Inform each nominated blogger of their nomination by posting a comment on each of their blogs.

My Nominations:

Caroline Clemmons

Book Obsessed

L.J. Kentowski

Rai29

Kathy Lynn Hall

Kirsten

Sarra Cannon

Unikorna

Alchemy of Scrawl

Charissa Weaks

Tara

Mimi Barbour

Jessica and Donna

Melissa, Anachronist, and AimeeKay

And with another curtsy back to the very generous Gareth.

And now for the random facts about me:

1) I have more colors of nail polish than I have shoes.

2) I keep my laundry change in a silver skull named Yorick.

3) I name all of my electronics. The laptop is named Nikita, my iPod is named Cameron. (Because it's a tiny machine that likes music, duh.)

4) I have to carry a day planner to remember what day it is.

5) In spite of #4, I can sing every lyric to a song I heard once six months ago.

6) Stephen King and Teddy Ruxpin are jointly responsible for my horror fascination.

7) I have a weird fetish about my pens.

ATTENTION READERS!

Indie Book Blowout is doing a fantastic 12 Days of Christmas sale for all of your reading needs, but it gets better! They're also giving away a Kindle Fire or a $200 Amazon gift card: entry details are here. It looks as if you need to be a member of Facebook to win, so if you are (you poor bastards), be sure to stop by and give it a look-see. Everyone likes free stuff!

Unabashed Happy Post

Mondays suck. I've been aggressively using exclamation points all day in an effort to compensate.

Firstly, Alchemy of Scrawl brought my attention to this super idea, Adopt an Indie Month! I don't have time to participate with NaNoWriMo entering its homestretch, but I'm super-excited to read everyone's interviews and blogs!

Books Read Recently:

Let's Get Digital: How to Self-Publish and Why You Should by David Gaughran. I particularly liked the segment on formatting (I can break a website by looking at it wrong, that chapter wouldn't stand a chance if it were possible to dog-ear an e-book) and the stories of all the self-publishing authors who are currently making it--not the three who get talked about all the time.

And again: True Porn Clerk Stories, with bonus thanks to everyone who RTed me on Twitter! Reading it again only made even happier to have rediscovered it. Given the books advertised around it (eep), I should have mentioned: it's not erotica. (With no disrespect to the romance writers I know!) I was seventeen when I starting reading the blog for the first time, and I didn't become a serial killer, but Davis talk fairly frankly about some of the covers that she saw over the course of the job. Chalk it up as a firm NSFW.