1/31/2011

Last day to enter drawing

This is the last day to enter the drawing for the copies of Blood Money and Rio Star.

We are scheduled for some pretty nasty weather tonight and tomorrow. If the power gets knocked out, I may not be back online for a couple of days, so please be patient. I'll hold the drawing as soon as I can get back, but if no one else enters, Snuffygump and Purplume will have it in a walkover. Only entries before midnight, January 31, are eligible. (Midnight my time, of course.)

Edits have been completed on Reef Runner, the third book in the Patty O'Donnell Mysteries series. It was originally scheduled for publication in March of this year, but due to unforeseen circumstances (my editor moved house from one state to another, with all the attendant hassles), the release date has been shifted. No word on precisely when, yet, but I'm hoping maybe May. We'll see.

1/13/2011

Enter for a chance to win Blood Money and Rio Star

I have two signed sets of my books, each with one copy of Blood Money and one of Rio Star, which I am holding a drawing for. For a chance to win one of the sets, just leave a reply to this post. (Spam and anything profanity-laden are automatically disqualified--it's my drawing, so I can set the rules.) I'll hold the drawing on January 31, and post the winner's names on February 1, at which time I'll need the winners' contact information, so if you enter, be sure to check back, otherwise I might not be able to get your books to you.

Creepy webstats

Sometimes, real life throws you something that just about makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Not long ago, my Sitemeter account did just that. It tells me generally how someone reached my site--if it was through a search engine, it gives me the search terms that were used. The search terms used were: pepper smith abducted.

Yup. Creepy. Of course, having been web-cognizant for a while, I knew already that there were a number of other Pepper Smiths out there, and since I knew I hadn't been abducted, I figured it was one of the others. I followed the link to run the search myself, but nothing popped up to explain why that search term had been used.

A while after that, I got a Google alert with a link to a post by Jose Mandojana that explained that odd Google search. Jose is a photographer whose work appears in magazines, and he was blogging about a photo he'd done of a Pepper Smith in California, who had been abducted as a 4-year-old and is now an adult in her 40s. Very good shot of an attractive woman in front of a stormy seascape. Her story, and the photo, are in this month's Glamour Magazine. His post about it is titled "Kidnapped".

On edit: There's a pdf of the Glamour magazine article here.