THREE cool things in blogland

Item #1: Loretta Chase Long Weekend

This is super exciting, and it starts Thursday, which is in just under two hours at The Book Smugglers.

THURSDAY - A review of Loretta Chase’s new book, Your Scandalous Ways. To wit:

James Cordier is all blue blood and entirely dangerous. He's a master of disguise, a brilliant thief, a first-class lover—all for King and Country—and, by gad, he's so weary of it.

Oh, dearest James, I highly doubt we will become weary of reading about you. Or of the Loretta Chase long weekend!

FRIDAY- collaborative post with mini-reviews from other reviewers and bloggers of their favorite Loretta Chase books. Yours truly appearing, assuming the thing I sent passes for a review.

SATURDAY - Interview with Loretta Chase herself, and Thea and Ana will have THREE copies of Your Scandalous Ways (blue blood and entirely dangerous. He's a master of disguise, a brilliant thief, a first-class lover. Hello.) to give away.


Item #2: More DIK madness.

How do I even explain DIK? (a.k.a. Desert Island Keepers.) It started with a handful of bloggers IM-ing about which books they'd bring to a desert island, and tussling about who would get to bring what, and then it expanded to others jumping ship and swimming ashore with their books.

It then devolved into the which-heroes-do-you-get-to-bring smackdown, a draft style insan-o-rama that went on for seven days and probably 2000 comments across numerous sites. And wow, thanks to the diligent and inspired work of Sarai and Tracy, it's a blog. Like our own island where 25 bloggers group host authors and entertain whoever wants to drop by. Whew! Things are happening at Desert Island Keepers.

Item #3: A major contest at Book Binge.

It's the Summer Fun contest at Book Binge! I love this contest. You can win one of a selection of cool bags, filled with books. There is a bag here for everybody, and it appears you can pick your books, too.

This a big prize. You have to follow a few rules, it's like a little scavenger hunt, but it appears to me that nobody has yet entered, so the odds are great, and you have until the 30th.

I'm so entering. Here is the bag I would fill with books. Okay, wait, I narrowed it down to 2.

One funny side note about this contest: Observe, when you go there, the mysterious 4-H clover logo they developed for the contest. The Book Binge girls, I believe, are from California, so perhaps they don't know 4-H. I, however, was in 4-H. I hung out in the farm area of the state fair. Cornfields bordered my school playground! A total wacky blast from the past to see that there.

But wait, hold on, OMG, now I can't even remember what the four H's stand for! Head, hands, heart...and health? Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Late breaking note: When I woke up this morning I decided the last H could be for HEROES.