The Final Chapter of the Goodie Bag Giveaway Extravaganza!

Okay, gang! I've got one more goodie bag left to give away. Susan is already enjoying her paranormal goodie bag,

and Lori's historical bag is somewhere out there in the USPS system, hopefully to arrive soon. The contemporary bag is still waiting for someone to claim it!

For your chance to win, post a comment below, even if you already posted on the last contest. The winner will be chosen at random, but you get extra chances for "liking" my Facebook Author page https://www.facebook.com/cherylbrooksauthor?ref=hl and for signing up for my mailing list. To join the mailing list, send an email to cheryl.brooks52@yahoo.com and put Mailing List in the subject line. You also get an extra chance to win by following this blog or by following me on Twitter.

Please include whether you "liked" my author page, signed up for the mailing list, or followed this blog or my tweets in your comment. If you've already done some of those things, that counts too, so please include it in your comment.

The contest closes at 9PM EDT on Sunday, September 1st, and I'll announce the winner on Monday, September 2nd. Due to the size and weight of these bags, the contest is limited to US residents only. Sorry! I'm also posting this contest on the Casablanca Authors blog, so there will be more competition this time. However, posting a comment on both blogs will increase your chance to win!

A reminder to those of you who haven't purchased your copy of Unbridled. It will be going off sale on most ebook sites on Sunday, August 31st and will only be available from Amazon for the next 90 days. It will be free on Amazon for 5 days during that time period. I'll keep you posted as to when that will be. In the meantime, if you want Unbridled for your Nook, get it while you still can! http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/unbridled-cheryl-brooks/1115181187?ean=2940016752440

I'm in Voice withdrawal...

Do any of you out there miss The Voice as much as I do? It's the only TV show I watch, and I feel sort of lost without it--with the result that I keep writing late into the night until all I can think about is diving into bed. Whether that's good or bad remains to be seen, but when I don't have the banter between Adam Levine and Blake Shelton to look forward to every week, I don't know when to stop working. Without The Voice, I don't get to meet incredible new talents and cheer them on. I stay at my computer until my hands get numb and my brain shuts down.

This photo was shamelessly stolen from The Voice's Facebook page

I wasn't sure Usher and Shakira could successfully replace Ceelo and Christina last season, but they were a perfect fit for the show--so much so that I'm a little sorry to see the originals return.

This photo was also snagged from The Voice's Facebook page

Sure, I missed Ceelo's outrageous costumes--and a few of Christina's--but I grew to like the replacement coaches as much as the singers they coached. They were genuinely sincere and put so much heart into the job, and it was wonderful to watch their team members bloom.

Yet another blatant theft from The Voice's Facebook page

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but you can bet that on September 23rd at 8pm Eastern, I'll be in front of the television.

And I won't be writing.

I'll be fantasizing about being coached by Adam Levine.

Do I really have to say where this came from? I think you know by now. . .

Oh, yeah. Team Adam. *getting major goose bumps*  I would so choose him...

Tasty Tuesday Zucchini Rye Bread!

This is that second non-sweet zucchini bread recipe I mentioned last week. When I made it, I mistakenly added two eggs instead of one. Not sure it made much difference, but the recipe I based it on (the Shaker Cheese Bread recipe in the King Arthur Flour cookbook) only called for one. Again, I used Ultragrain flour, but white flour is fine.

Zucchini Rye Bread

Ingredients

1 cup ultragrain flour

1 cup rye flour

½ cup grated Parmesan cheese

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp baking powder

1 ½ tsp sugar

1 egg

¾ cup milk

2 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsp pesto

¼ cup grated onion

1 cup grated zucchini

Directions

Stir all ingredients together, then bake in greased loaf pan at 350 degrees for 1 hour. This bread is still moist and delicious when toasted, but has a tendency to mold due to the high moisture content. Refrigeration is recommended.

We have a winner!

Congratulations to Lori McPhetridge! You're the winner of the second Goodie Bag Giveaway Extravaganza! Email me with your snail mail address and whether you'd like the contemporary or the historical bag and I'll get that sent out to you ASAP!

Look for the final giveaway on Friday, August 30th!

In the meantime, I need sleep! Busy, busy, weekend....

Goodie Bag Giveaway Extravaganza Part Deux!

Today I'll be giving away the second of three goodie bags from various conferences, each of which have been put together from some of the items you see here. Two of my own Cat Star books have been added to each bag.

One of the bags contains mostly contemporary titles, and the other bag is more historical. The paranormal bag has already been won!

For your chance to win, post a comment below, even if you already posted on the last contest. The winner will be chosen at random, but you get extra chances for "liking" my Facebook Author page https://www.facebook.com/cherylbrooksauthor?ref=hl and for signing up for my mailing list. To join the mailing list, send an email to cheryl.brooks52@yahoo.com and put Mailing List in the subject line. You also get an extra chance to win by following this blog or by following me on Twitter.

Please include whether you "liked" my author page, signed up for the mailing list, or followed this blog or my tweets in your comment. If you've already done some of those things, that counts too, so please include it in your comment.

The contest closes at 9PM EDT on Sunday, August 25th, and I'll announce the winner on Monday, August 26th. Due to the size and weight of these bags, the contest is limited to US residents only. Sorry!
The next giveaway will be on next Friday, August 30th!

Thursday Thoughts

I freakin' LOVE the Internet. If I'd had to go to a library to research everything I looked at yesterday, I'd still be there. As it is, I can get diagrams and maps, ethnic names and their meanings, a recipe for damn near anything, along with the name of those nifty little clips that rock climbers use--not to mention the hand signals used in dog training.

Why do I need to know all of these things? Well, when you find yourself writing about things you don't know firsthand or can't make up off the top of your head, you have to do some research. And whether you hate it or love it, Google is an incredible time-saver. Nora Roberts talks about the days when she used a manual typewriter and carbon paper, but I'd be willing to bet that most writers would give up their word processors before they'd give up the wealth of information at their fingertips.

Nah. I don't want to give up either one, particularly since I'm a mediocre typist, or whatever it is you call people who do that these days. There are times when I can't spell a word correctly to save my life--or hit the right keys. I love my spellchecker and my grammar checker--although I find that little green squiggly line much easier to ignore than the red one. I love autocorrect, but only up to a point. My iTouch let me down when I went shopping for urad dal on Tuesday. Not having any idea what "urad" meant, my Touch corrected it to read "Yard dal." Needless to say, the guy at the international grocery had never heard of it and actually recommended the urad dal. Stupid me, I tried for something that seemed more familiar and wound up with Toor dal, which is perfectly good stuff, I'm sure, but not exactly what I was after.

I'm rambling again, and Budley is here with the teriyaki chicken, crab rangoons, and fried rice. At least I know what that is.

I'll be starting another goodie bag giveaway tomorrow. The paranormal bag has already been won, which leaves the bags that are predominately historical and contemporary . Be sure to stop in and post a comment for your chance to win!

A bit bleary-eyed at the moment...

I spent most of yesterday researching, shopping, and cooking a few traditional Indian dishes as research for the first book of my romantic suspense trilogy. Not bad, but anyone who tells you that ground coriander seed doesn't taste like the leaves of the plant (cilantro) is lyin' to ya! I had to add some other spices to tone it down a bit. Wish I'd inherited the cilantro-loving gene, because the stuff is in EVERYTHING these days.

My agent seems interested in the RS series, so it may get shopped around to a traditional publisher--which means that it'll be ages before anyone gets to read it. My Sourcebooks editor still wants an erotic romance trilogy from me, and she's about to read the Rebel manuscript along with two of my other early manuscripts with the idea of using one or both of them as the start of a new series. Not sure where that will lead, but a lot depends on how things go with Rebel. So far, I'm not having too many good thoughts in that direction.

I was up until midnight on Monday reposting all of the recipes from the old CBEB blog. So they're here if anyone feels the urge to cook. I'd forgotten about a lot of them. When you consider that the first post was in 2009, that's not too surprising. Made me sad to take out the hunk pics, though. I'd forgotten some of the guys, too!

Enough rambling. Enjoy your Wednesday!

PS. I mailed the goodie bag, Susan!