Cleaning Up

Do y'all find interesting bits around the web and start a post, thinking you'll add to it later? Well, I do, and I'm trying to clean up the extra stuff, so here's a fun smorgasbord of trivial tidbits:

• Suggestions for reviewing policies for wannabe reviewers to help publicists find their blogs - Posted by Paula Krapf of Author Marketing Experts, Inc.

• Let's Hear it for the Boy: Guys Read and Guys Lit Wire

• A while back, Weekly Geeks asked us to share a cause we were passionate about - mine is the death penalty, or, more precisely, its abolition.  Death Penalty Focus

• Promoting authors: Josephine Damian pointed out this article Library Journal about the Ghosts of Belfast.  How else do you promote authors?  Whenever I check out at the bookstore, I mention a recently released book I'm excited about, and tell them who it would be a good recommendation for.  So, for example, I said to one checkout person who commented on my YA purchase that she should keep an eye out for Forest of Hands & Teeth, and suggest it to people looking for a gift for teen girls.
  

From Shelf Awareness

• findingoz.com
  

• The New Statesman explored "How celebrities saved, then killed, the book trade," observing that the publishing industry "has cultivated an unhealthy obsession with celebrities . . . to the detriment of proper books and authors."
  

• Think you're prepared for bad times? Take the Guardian's "literary apocalypses" quiz because, even as "the end of the world grows nigher and nigher . . . there's still time to tackle our hellishly difficult quiz before the lights go out."

My Newest Tattoo

My son's name starts with O, my daughter's name starts with L, and my husband's name starts with P.  Can you see all three letters in that middle design?  I don't wear a wedding ring (I just can't do jewelry on a sustained basis), so this shows the world I'm a marked woman.  Sort of.  And it looks pretty.  My other tattoo is on my lower back, and I definitely don't know y'all well enough to go that far.  Maybe someday.