Thursday, December 26, 2013

While You Can

If you live in Pasadena you have very little time to load in supplies before The Parade. Soon the streets will be overwhelmed and tough to navigate. You don't want to starve, so plan ahead. Over here we're putting up vegetables and stacking bags of flour and coffee in the cellar.

I got a superb Christmas eve present: a double book review from Library of Clean Reads. (They have two reviewers and both read it and liked it so it got two reviews.) Library of Clean Reads is a great blog for those who like books without too much sex, too much violence or too much swearing. I can take some of the above, but too much and the book becomes all about the sex (or the violence, or the swearing) and not about the story. Camelot & Vine has some violence and "mild religious expletives." My heroine mentions sex in fond ways but never actually gets any. She's not exactly pious.

I appreciate that they took time to read and review it. It's hard for independent authors to get honest reviews without paying for them, but most book bloggers won't take money and they won't post a review if they can't give your book at least three stars. So if they read it and mum's the word, it probably means "ick."

I'm watching a squirrel tiddle-toe across the top of my back fence, switching his fluffy tail. I love my office but there are distractions.

Where was I?

Yes! I want to announce the winner of Saturday's "Casting Light Upon the Darkness" blog hop. John pulled Nicole Evelina's name out of the hat. Nicole will receive a free copy of Camelot & Vine. I'm happy to say she sounds excited. Nicole also writes about the Arthurian legends so she knows the subject and will know what liberties I took. Hopefully that won't mean "ick."

Here at our house we will make one more sortie for supplies, then hunker down for a few days. I hope I've thought of everything. If I haven't, that squirrel had better watch out.


10 comments:

dive said...

Yay! Great reviews, Petrea (and wholly deserved).
Is it Parade time already? Wow! I'll be watching it online from Olde England. We're due another big storm here so a bit of California sunshine will be most welcome.

Book Dragon said...

I had a LOL at "squirrel".

My brother and SIL do the same thing around Memorial Day and July 4th. They are near a lake that is popular with boaters/skiers/drinkers. Some years they leave town.

Dina said...

Lots of good news in this post.

But do they really have painted shopping carts or was the red and green for Christmas?!

Unknown said...

Clever informative post for those who don't live in Pasadena. :-)

Petrea Burchard said...

Dive, the parade is always on New Year's day unless that day falls on a Sunday. Then we have it on the 2nd. We expect 75 sunny degrees Fahrenheit for the 1st.

Your relatives may have it worse, BD. At least we don't have to move out.

Dina, I'm not sure where the green one came from. The red one is from Trader Joe's and I took the picture in their parking lot.

JM, I exaggerate only slightly! For one who is uncomfortable in crowds, just shopping for groceries on a weekend is undesirable.

Eric Baker said...

Windows - both friend and bane to the writer, but enough about Microsoft. Thank you for the tip on the The Clean Reads blog. I will certainly have to take a look.

Petrea Burchard said...

Love the Windows joke!

Anonymous said...

Whatever we don't use during the Rose Parade shutdown, we'll shuffle over to the earthquake supplies.

Bob Crowe said...

Congratulations. That's a bit of a coup. I remember watching the Tournament of Roses parade on television as a child. Sitting in our apartment in wintery Queens, Pasadena seemed like an impossible idea.

Petrea Burchard said...

Hee hee, Hiker. The only thing that won't last that long is the beer.

Me too, Bob. I watched from northern Illinois. I kid Pasadena about the Parade, but I love living here.