Thanks to everyone who commented on my post as part of the Heroes Blog Hop.
Debra Soles was the winner of my books.
Overall winners are:
Kindle Fire Winner:
Michele Ann Oboyle
(from Carrie Anne Brownian’s Blog)
$50 Amazon Gift Card:
Daphne Deaton
(from Kristine Cayne’s Blog)
Swag Pack:
Jan D
(from Karen McCullough’s Blog)
(Hey, that’s me! Good deal that one of my commenters was a winner!)
This post is part of the Heroes Blog Hop. Click on the image to the left for details.
There are lots of prizes, including a Kindle and a huge swag pack – see picture at the end of the post.
Comment here for your chance to win one of many great prizes — more at the end of the post.
What is a Hero?
There are lots of ways to define “hero.” The TheFreeDictionary.com website offers these as its first two entries:
1. In mythology and legend, a man, often of divine ancestry, who is endowed with great courage and strength, celebrated for his bold exploits, and favored by the gods.
2. A person noted for feats of courage or nobility of purpose, especially one who has risked or sacrificed his or her life.
When we talk about “heroes” as authors, we’re often using their fourth definition:
4. The principal male character in a novel, poem, or dramatic presentation.
Personally I find the number 2 kind much more interesting and prefer to combine number 2 and number 4 in my principal male character. I’m also interested in some of the less obvious forms of heroism, including the quiet, self-sacrificing kind that often goes unrecognized and unacknowledged in daily life. Those heroes are all around us.
Just as an aside, despite the specific role of number 4, I like to think of “hero” as a gender-neutral term. I’ve known a few female heroes in my time. But for the purposes of this essay, I’m using the gendered version of hero as a male character.
My novella, A Vampire’s Christmas Carol, actually uses the idea of heroism, what it is and what it means, as one of the major themes.
My heroine tells her reluctant vampire companion that she isn’t married in part because she’s been holding out for a hero. So far she hasn’t met anyone who even came close.
Over the course of one hugely important night for him, Carol is a reluctant witness to Michael’s heart-wrenching battle to hold onto what little humanity he has left. Doing that means not drinking human blood until the next morning. He only has to do it for ten more hours, but her presence and the continuing intrusions of his maker and nemesis provide temptation almost past bearing, while the deprivation causes him torturous pain.
It gives her a new view of what being a hero means and motivates her to do what she can to try to save him or at least ease his way if nothing else is possible.
Blurb for A Vampire’s Christmas Carol:
Can Christmas Eve get any more fun? On her way to her family’s home, Carol Prescott’s car slides into a ditch in a deserted area with no cell phone signal. The only available shelter is already occupied…by a vampire. To Michael Carpenter, Carol is the bait of a trap.
In an effort to hold onto his soul, Michael has resisted the urge to drink human blood for almost a century. Now he hovers between human and vampire. If he doesn’t drink from a human before the night ends, he’ll die. He’s desperately thirsty, but Michael has seen the soulless monsters vampires are and he prefers death. Carol is pure temptation to him, the Christmas present from hell…or is it from heaven?
THREE grand prizes. You as a reader can go to EACH blog and comment with your email address and be entered to win. Yep, you can enter over 100 times!
IMPORTANT: Be sure to leave your email address in your post, so we can contact you if you’re a winner!
Now what are those prizes?
1st Grand Prize: A Kindle Fire or Nook Tablet
2nd Grand Prize: A $50 Amazon or B&N Gift Card
3rd Grand Prize: The following Swag Pack!
Large Swag Pack
In addition, I’ll be giving away print copies of two of my books to one of the lucky commenters here on this post.
By the way, all of my books are on sale at Smashwords:
A Question of Fire is 50% off:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/43245
Magic, Murder and Microcircuits is 50% off:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/100257
The Night Prowlers is 50% off:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/131688
And A Vampire’s Christmas Carol is FREE!
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/109662
Check the right-hand column for the codes for the sale books!
MAGIC, MURDER AND MICROCIRCUITS is featured today at the
A Gift for Murder is now available in mass market paperback from Harlequin’s Worldwide Mystery Library. Order from the site: Harlequin Worldwide Library Worldwide Mystery
My romantic suspense novel, A Question of Fire, is featured at the Kindle Romance Novel Blog today:
I’m doing a guest spot at Terry O’Dell’s blog today, talking about my approach to magic in my recent novel, Magic, Murder and Microcircuits, and how I developed the system of magic I used for that book:
http://terryodell.blogspot.com/2012/04/magic-and-science-wizards-and-physics.html
Come on over and say hello!
I may have mentioned that Harlequin bought the mass market paperback rights to A Gift For Murder, to include in their WorldWide Mystery bookclub. It’s due out in late June and I’ve gotten the new cover for it.
It’s very different from the Five Star cover, but I like it!
I grew up in a family that loved baseball. From my earliest days, the New York games in particular were a frequent topic of conversation, not surprising since we lived on Long Island. My Dad, who grew up in Brooklyn, loved the Dodgers, and only reluctantly transferred his loyalty to the Mets when they filled the National League void in the city.
I still remember my Dad taking myself and my brother to the Mayor’s Trophy Game in New York when I was a kid. (Before the days of interleague play, teams in different leagues didn’t play each other during the season. The New York teams met in a pre-season game for bragging rights to the city. Need I say that in those early days of the ‘Amazin’ Mets’ they didn’t exactly dominate the series?)
But once in high school and college I didn’t pay much attention for a few years – until I was married and had kids and discovered I like sports better than anything else as background noise for my daily life.
Because I’ve lived in North Carolina for the last many, many years, I’ve grown to root for the closest major league team, the Atlanta Braves. But most of the rest of my family lives in the Boston area, so I pull for the Red Sox, too.
Last year, when I visited my family, one of the highlights of the trip was a tour of that grand old dame of baseball parks, Fenway. Even though it rained, and in fact poured buckets during the twenty or so minutes devoted to visiting the green monster, we had a terrifc time. Below are some pictures from the tour.
The tour actually starts in the gift shop across the street where you buy tickets and try not to buy a bunch of other stuff while you wait for the tour to start.
We started by sitting in the stands just to the right of home plate while the guide told stats and stories.
The view across the park to the green monster, the scoreboard, bleachers and light stanchions.
Some of the old original wood seats, repainted but no more comfortable now than they were when first installed.
The center/right field bleachers including the "red seat" marking the spot where Ted Williams hit his monster 508-foot home run.
Close up of the bleachers, showing the red chair. The story says the ball actually punctured the hat of the man sitting in the seat at the time.
Looking back from the left side upper level back toward the main part of the stadium, including the boxes.
Heading toward the seats at the top of the Green Monster.
Jim and I in the seating area at the top of the Green Monster. It was raining buckets by then.
The Championship banners flying from the side of the stadium.
Spring is upon us, and the season brings thunderstorms with it in most of the U.S. Thunderstorms mean lighting. Do you know how dangerous lightning is to your electronics? Do you unplug your computers, televisions, stereo systems and any other electronic devices before a storm? If not, why not?
Let me tell you a true story.
Some fifteen years ago, my family and I went to a concert in a city about fifty miles away. It was a great concert and we all had a good time. We noticed on the drive back that there were increasingly large puddles on the
ground as we neared home, but didn’t think much more about it. It was late and we were all exhausted, so we went directly to bed.
My youngest daughter, who has always been an early riser, was the first one up the next morning. Her favorite thing to do at that time was to listen to the radio or a CD on the stereo (with earphones) and rock in the
rocking chair. She was dismayed when she turned on the stereo and found it didn’t work.
Instead she tried to turn on the television, but it wasn’t working either. Since the lights were on, she knew the electricity was functioning, but apparently not much else was. As a last resort, she decided to turn on the
computer and play games. You guessed it. Computer wasn’t working either.
At that point she was still the only person awake, so she grabbed a book and tried to read, but she was understandably pretty distraught.
Once the rest of us got up, we went through the house, checking everything to see what worked and what didn’t. We didn’t know until later, when we talked to neighbors, that there had been a very bad thunderstorm the night before.
There’s no way to know for sure, of course, but we have to assume that lightning hit either our house or one of the power lines very near it. The final tally of destruction: stereo receiver, VCR, television, and computer. We
were fortunate that the television and computer were both older and about due for replacement anyway.
We learned our lesson. Now when there’s a thunderstorm approaching, we unplug everything, not just from the electrical lines, but from the cable as well. If we’re going out of town for a day, we check the weather
forecast. If we’re leaving for longer, we unplug everything just for safety.
Yes, it’s a bit inconvenient, but it would be more than just inconvenient to replace our electronic equipment these days. And since I’m an author and web designer, the loss of a computer would be more than just
inconvenient. It wouldn’t kill my business because I back up relentlessly, including using an automatic, offline back up service in Carbonite. But I would likely lose several days of work time, replacing hardware and restoring software and data.
I’d rather lose an hour of work time than risk losing days’ worth.
I unplug when the weather turns nasty. Unless you live in a place that isn’t prone to thunderstorms, I strongly suggest you do so as well.
To go along with the Spring Fling contest, I’m celebrating this with a price reduction on The Night Prowlers!
For a limited time, get your copy for just $.99