And the Winner Is...

Carla!  Your name was picked from the prize hat this morning, courtesy of my daughter (who is soon going to insist on some kind of sparkly dress and theme song to announce her if I keep making her do this).  Please send me your address at kendra@kendraleighcastle.com, and I'll get your book out to you this coming week!

Thanks to everyone for participating.  I now have a TON of new reads on my list to check out!  I'll be doing another giveaway once my author copies arrive, so keep an eye out:-)  Have a great weekend, everyone! 

Friday! And More Free Stuff!

Happy Friday!  I'm...not exactly sure where this week went on me.  Well, okay, I am a little, since I've resumed my passionate love affair with my Nook and am happily devouring Nalini Singh's Guild Hunter books (I'll be finishing Archangel's Kiss today).  The story is, of course, right up my alley (Angels! Vampires! Everyone is hot and many are snarky!), but her voice is the kicker.  Juuuust right, drew me right in.  I would like a man-harem of the Seven, please.  As soon as they can be delivered.  And of course, I'll have to read her Psy-Changeling series after this.  Hooray for getting into an author when she has a big backlist for me to enjoy!

So, a small announcement, and then I'll open the floor to discussion so somebody can win a signed copy of Dark Awakening, since I have another to give!  It looks like I WILL be doing at least a couple of HOT short stories for Nocturne's new Cravings line, which will be available online only (this is a more erotic counterpart to their Bites line).  I've just gotten the thumbs up on the outlines I did, so I couldn't tell you yet when these will be available, but I think quite early in 2012 with the schedule I've set up.  I will, of course, keep you posted!  I'm going to a dark faerie tale place with these, which should be a lot of fun! 

Aaaaand now,  the (very non-fancy) contest: like last time, open until midnight PST.  I'll do a drawing, assisted by my lovely hat-owning, paper-selecting daughter.  Just let me know if you'd like to be entered in the comments!  And for discussion, since I have the summer ahead and am determined to carve out more reading time on my brand spankin' new screened-in porch, what are the books you have REALLY loved this year?  Did you grab one that really lit a fire under you, like "OMG MUST KEEP READING NOM NOM NOM" (or something like that)?  I love to hear what people are reading, esp. because I love a book I can sink my teeth into myself:-)  I mean, you don't even want to know how excited I am that Dmitri's Guild Hunter story is coming out in September. *happy sigh*  Oh, and please check out this AWESOME review from the amazing Kristina!  She has a great book review site going, and I am completely tickled that she loved Dark Awakening so much!  Click HERE for the goodness!

What A Week!

Sadly, not in the greatest of ways, but at least I got my internet working this morning.  I feared/fumed that it was our nefarious local cable company once again...the internet goes out here a LOT...but it was just my stupid computer.  I'm starting to worry about the computer.  I think in the next year it needs to go bye-bye.  I can usually sense the disturbance in the Force when they're starting to lose their will to live:-)

Anyway, this will be a short-ish post today.  I've had bronchitis for a week, from which I'm sloooowly recovering (with the aid of lots of medication), and my sinuses finally sent me into a full-blown migraine last night, which I'd been concerned was trying to happen.  One of my eyes went numb.  At first, I wanted to chalk this up to the fact that I had to go to both my youngest kid's kindergarten "moving up night", followed almost immediately by my oldest child's "growing up night" (she is in 5th grade, it was a bunch of moms, and it was sponsored by Kotex...yeah, good times).  Sadly, no.  Mah head, it simply decided it was time to a'splode.

The only bright spot of the evening, in between the eye numbness of impending doom and the actual head explosion, was that my husband has finally gotten bored enough with the things he normally plays with at work to have decided to get the both of us actual, real live 21st century phones.  With internet, even.  Woo!  I realize how sad this is...I'm like the only person I know who didn't have a phone that could run the world.  I had never played Angry Birds (fixed!).  I had never had an app for, erm, anything (also fixed!).  So when I can look at the screen for longer than a few minutes at a time, I will be all about setting up my shiny new iPhone.  Oh yes...as an iTunes junkie, I kind of have to have the pretty Apple phone.  Brian got a Droid.  I think mostly because when you do various things, it says, in the cool robotic voice, "Droid!".  No, really, that may be his favorite part.  I fear for his work, though...he really, really likes Angry Birds.

So!  I will be able to tweet and facebook and whatnot from National this year while I am wandering around semi-lost in the enormous hotel!  Cool, huh?

Anyway, today let's talk technology, because I have no freaking clue what I'm doing with this phone.  Are there, uh, app-type thingies you would recommend?  Any good games?  Because really, this IS a toy;)  I am off to try and work now, but will check in later!

Music Monday 5/30

Hope everyone is enjoying the long weekend!  Today's bit of musical inspiration is actually visual too.  I had planned to use something else more pertinent to a book, but this is too gorgeous to resist, and the music could work very well for a romance, I think.  I absolutely love violin.  Complete sucker for it.  In FACT, I had a string trio at my wedding, I love strings so much:-)  As for the video...it honestly just took my breath away.  This, my bloggy friends, is Iceland in all its glory.  I had no idea it was so full of light.  Sometimes, it's nice to be reminded that there are still places like this on earth, little touched and full of beauty. I think my idea of heaven might look a bit like this.  Enjoy.  And to see it a bit larger (well worth it) simply click the first link beneath the vid.


Raw Lightscapes from Enrique Pacheco on Vimeo.

Lucky Thirteen

Warning, mushy post ahead!

The Guy I Fell in Love With, Circa 1997, with Fizgig

For me, this is a sweet day...Brian and I are celebrating our 13th anniversary.  And for the first time in all those thirteen years, he actually lined up a babysitter himself and planned to take me out to dinner without my knowing about it!  My grin was a mile wide...even after all this time, it's nice to know he can still surprise me.  Not that he needs to most of the time.  The man puts up with my weird hours, handles living with me when I'm a watery mess, and pushes me to follow my own dreams while I move around the country to enable him to follow his.  We've shared a lot of joy, much of it from the three beautiful kids we've made together, and weathered our share of sorrow and difficulty too.

I was little more than a kid when I met him...eighteen and just starting to figure myself out, much less other people.  Mr. Confident scared the hell out of me in some ways...I knew it was going to be serious from the get-go, and I was a master of the unserious.  But hell if I could figure out how to let him go.  He's tricky like that:-)  I married him a week after he graduated from the Naval Academy, a month shy of my 21st birthday.  We were young and stupid, but because of it I think we rolled with the punches more easily than we might have had we met even a few years later.  In a lot of ways, we've grown up together.  And because of good fortune or just simple compatibility, neither of us fell out of love with the people we've grown into. 

Neither of us is perfect: he's got a temper, I've got a mouth, he's into structure and I seem to roll with a certain amount of chaos whether I mean to or not.  He is not a romantic, and I...well, take a look at what I write.  But my husband is honest, true, unfailingly loyal, and deeply good-hearted.  He's the sort of man who rescues small creatures from the road, meticulously paints teddy bears or clouds on nursery walls, and sends the kids into shrieking gales of laughter by being a big kid himself.  Oh, and he still looks damn fine in a uniform.  In short, I got a good one, and I'm glad he's mine.  Happy Anniversary, babe.  Thanks for loving me.

We Have A Winner!

Thanks so much for playing along, everyone!  I had my daughter pull a name out of a hat this morning, and the winner of a shiny new copy of DARK AWAKENING is...

NANCY!  Congrats!  Drop me a note at kendra@kendraleighcastle.com, and I'll get your book out to you on Tuesday.

I'll be giving away another book this coming Friday, so be sure to come back!

Dark Awakening Giveaway!

It's Friday!  Friday, Friday, gettin' down on...oh, God, forget I sang that.  Anyway, a couple of days ago, I received a most excellent surprise from the fabulous Latoya Smith: four hot off the press copies of my book!  They are gorgeous.  So, so gorgeous.  I was on my way out, so I grabbed one and forced all the parents at my youngest kid's preschool to observe its beauty.  Probably they were afraid, but I was excited:-)

In any case, I gave a copy to the graphic artist who did the Dynasty tattoos for me, and I'm hanging onto a couple until my actual box of author copies arrives, but I thought it would be fun to give one away.  Because, hey, Friday, free stuff, it's all good.  I'm not going to get fancy, just do a drawing, so if you'd like to be entered let me know in the comments.  Contest open until midnight tonight (PST), and I'll announce the winner tomorrow.

And for discussion, since I started with that awful earworm of a song (the Epic Mullet Guy version is way better), what other sings make you crazy in a "this sucks but it won't leave me alooooone" kind of way?  A recent one for me was Nickelback's "This Afternoon" (you click that link at your own risk...some of the band is cute, but the video quickly becomes obnoxious bimbo overload).  Yes, I know there are a lot of Nickelback fans out there.  I'm not one of them, belonging to the prestigious Every Time a Nickelback Song is Played, God Kills a Llama group on facebook.  And yet, despite my lunging to change the channel every time I heard the opening chords of that song, there it would stick.  Sometimes for days. *shudder*  Share you pain, win free stuff.  It's all good!

Happy Friday, everyone!