Three Year Anniversary of the Joplin Tornado

Three years ago today was  a day that changed the lives of everyone who lived in Joplin, Missouri. 161 people lost their lives that day and hundreds were injured. Homes and businesses were destroyed. Before and after photos of our business are here.

We found out that day and the months after that we can bounce back from anything. We also found out that there are generous and caring people throughout the world. Thank you to the thousands of volunteers who have helped and who continue to help rebuild!

5-22-2014 3-52-56 PMThe storage area in the back of the store. Talk about heavy duty shelves!

On my Way to Work

This is not book related at all but I had to share this story. I stopped at the car wash this morning and when it spit out cnpca17757a-vimy change, one of the $1 bills flew away. As many of you know, I’m not feeling great right now so there was no way I was going to chase a $1 bill. 
After I was done and I was on the way to work, I was sitting at a street light and a Jasper County Sheriff pulled up next to me and got out of his car. I thought, “What’s wrong with my car? What have I done?” I rolled down my window and he gave me my $1 bill and told me to have a nice day! How’s that for a nice start to my day?

New Blog

When I started this blog almost a year ago I had no clue that there were so many good authors out there who were needing exposure. I started receiving requests for reviews and then I started joining blog tours. I also began receiving request to do cover reveals or book blasts and other media events to showcase authors’ books. I declined those offers because I already had so much going on on my blog. 

Because I now know that there are so many talented authors who need as much help as possible getting the word out about their books, I’ve decided to start another blog dedicated to just that. Whether it’s through cover reveals, book blasts, blitzes…whatever. That new blog is bound2escape.com. Today is my first post, a cover reveal for Breathe Again by Rachel Brooks. I still have tweaking to do to the site (especially the heading), but I’d appreciate you stopping by and checking it out.

Happy New Year – Blog Hop & Giveaway

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I decided to join this blog hop to force myself to think about my bookish goals for the next year.

Looking back on my goals when I started this blog in March, one thing I haven’t done is regularly blog about book-related travel. Although I don’t travel as much as I’d like, I’m going to start writing about any book related travels I do make.

I’ve done well at reviewing books by indie authors and have participated in quite a few book tours. In fact, I plan on decreasing the number of book tours I join this year so that I can focus more on books sent by authors and publishers. I’ve also been so busy that I haven’t been reading for pleasure; not that I don’t enjoy most of the books I read to review, but there are classics and popular books I haven’t read because I’ve committed to reading so many newer books. So, at least monthly, I am going to read a classic or other book just because I want to.

My main goal is to continue to find new authors (to me) and share their work with others. I am amazed at how many talented authors there are who are pretty much unknown and I’d like to help change that.

Giveaway

I’m giving away 3 paperbacks that I received over the past year to review: The March of the Toymakers by Julianne Victoria, Not for Profit by Glenn Shepard, The Sea-God at Sunrise by G.L. Tysk.

Rafflecopter giveaway

 

Merry Christmas

'merry christmas' photo (c) 2008, takako tominaga - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

Merry Christmas to everyone. It’s my favorite time of year! My heart goes out to all of those who are away serving our country or to those who otherwise can’t make it home to spend time with their families.
Thank you for all the kind words and support this past year as I started up this blog and continue to learn exactly what I want to do here.
My son and his fiancee are here from Iowa and Christmas morning we all go to my parents’ house to spend the day with family. Once breakfast and opening presents is done, we play games all day. It’s always a fun time and we always look forward to it. We will miss the family who won’t be there this year (CJ, Eric, Laurie, and my adorable niece, Vivian).

 

 

Book Buying Travels

8-20-2013 7-57-26 PMI went to a big book sale over the weekend. They had over a million books for sale! After standing for hours looking through all those books, I did find a few to buy and I even found a couple gems. They didn’t have shopping carts like the last big sale I went to so I found a box, filled it with books, went through the checkout line, took the books out to my car and put them in the trunk and then went back inside and started all over again. There were boys there who were wanting to carry the books outside for customers so, after the first load, I let them help me. They didn’t have to carry them too far since I was the first one there that morning so my car was in the best parking space.  Continue reading

Day Three in New York

We started the day at the Children’s Book & Author Breakfast. The featured authors were Octavia Spencer, Rick Riordan, Mary Pope Osborne, and Veronica Roth. All four were very good and I could have listened to them for a lot longer, which is saying a lot since I usually get bored with speeches. This was definitely my favorite event of the Expo. If I go again, I will go to all of the author breakfasts.6-2-2013 5-45-15 AMVeronica Roth, author of the Divergent series.

That was the end of the Book Expo for us. The rest of the day was for tourism. We took the subway to the World Trade Center. It was my first time on the subway and it was not dirty, not hot, not scary; however, at one of the stops when the doors opened, I saw a rat the size of a small dog running across the platform. My mouth must have dropped open because a guy sitting near me asked, “Did you see that?!” I wish I could have gotten a picture of that!

IMG_20130531_114407_088The view while waiting to go to the World Trade Center Memorial.

IMG_20130531_121801_090One of the memorial pools. So many of the names are of emergency personnel. I’d forgotten how many people lost their lives trying to save others.IMG_20130531_125607_330I had to stop at The Strand Bookstore. This is the view when you walk in.

IMG_20130531_195004_473Last stop: Wicked. It was amazing. If I ever go back to New York, I think I’ll spend my time and money on Broadway. The only negative about that night was that during intermission we got a text from my sister saying that tornadoes were headed toward Joplin and 2 tornadoes had touched down in St. Louis so it was hard to enjoy the 2nd half of the show not knowing what was going on at home.