Julie Kenner's Blog, page 85
June 4, 2013
The Cat’s Fancy is an ENT (Ereader News Today) bargain book!
I’m thrilled that The Cat’s Fancy (complete with it’s brand-spanking new cover!) is a featured bargain book over at Ereader News Today!
Check it out! And grab your copy before the price goes back up!
From New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author Julie Kenner aka J. Kenner…
“Ms. Kenner has a way with dialogue; her one-liners are funny and fresh. Her comic timing is beautiful, almost Jennifer Crusie -esque.”
—All About Romance
There are people in this world who believe in magic, who search for the possibility in their daily lives . . .
Focused attorney Nicholas Goodman is not one of those people. A rising star in a major law firm, Nick has all the pieces of his life in order: a great career, financial success, and a girlfriend whose father is one of his major clients. Everything in his life is neat and orderly—until the day Nick opens his door and finds a green-eyed, dark-haired beauty standing there. And she happens to be totally naked.
To these people, love is just as magical as a unicorn in your driveway . . .
Maggie is one-hundred percent, head-over-heels in love with Nicholas. He’s kind and smart and sexy, and she’s certain he’s the man for her. There’s just one problem: Maggie’s not exactly human. But through the power of magic, she’s given a chance. She has one week to make Nick fall in love with her.
One week to make “happily ever after” a reality.
THE CAT’S FANCY introduces Deena & Hoop, characters in the Protector (Superhero) series, and is a prequel to that series.
“The Cat’s Fancy deserves a place on any reader’s keeper shelf!”
—Word Weaving
“Ms. Kenner’s debut novel sets the stage for more glorious stories to come. I can’t wait!”
—The Belles & Beaux of Romance
“[Ms. Kenner] is a pure delight, she’s fun, she gives readers what they want, a story to take you away and make you forget the rest of the world. [The Cat's Fancy is] SPLENDID!!”
—Bell, Book & Candle
June 3, 2013
Why yes, the Oxford English Dictionary is exciting!
Just saw that one of my favorite books, The Professor and the Madman, is on sale for $1.99 for the Kindle!
It’s an absolutely fabulous book (I actually listened in audio) and I’m grabbing my copy right now so I can read it, too!
Check it out. It’s awesome!
Here’s what Publishers Weekly had to say: “The Oxford English Dictionary used 1,827,306 quotations to help define its 414,825 words. Tens of thousands of those used in the first edition came from the erudite, moneyed American Civil War veteran Dr. W.C. Minor?all from a cell at the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. Vanity Fair contributor Winchester (River at the Center of the World) has told his story in an imaginative if somewhat superficial work of historical journalism. Sketching Minor’s childhood as a missionary’s son and his travails as a young field surgeon, Winchester speculates on what may have triggered the prodigious paranoia that led Minor to seek respite in England in 1871 and, once there, to kill an innocent man. Pronounced insane and confined at Broadmoor with his collection of rare books, Minor happened upon a call for OED volunteers in the early 1880s. Here on more solid ground, Winchester enthusiastically chronicles Minor’s subsequent correspondence with editor Dr. J.A.H. Murray, who, as Winchester shows, understood that Minor’s endless scavenging for the first or best uses of words became his saving raison d’etre, and looked out for the increasingly frail man’s well-being. Winchester fills out the story with a well-researched mini-history of the OED, a wonderful demonstration of the lexicography of the word “art” and a sympathetic account of Victorian attitudes toward insanity. With his cheeky way with a tale (“It is a brave and foolhardy and desperate man who will perform an autopeotomy” he writes of Minor’s self-mutilation), Winchester celebrates a gloomy life brightened by devotion to a quietly noble, nearly anonymous task. Photos not seen by PW. Agent, Peter Matson. BOMC selection.”
Check out Virna DePaul’s Interview (and giveaway!) in which we discuss the Stark Trilogy, Demon Hunting Soccer Moms and more!
Recently, Virna DePaul and I interviewed each other, and now her interview of me is up at Romance at Random … and R@R is sponsoring a giveaway, too! Pop on over to read the interview and get the details!
And check back! I’ll link to my interview of the awesome Virna as soon as it goes up, too!
P.S. - Book two of my Stark Trilogy - Claim Me - debuted at number 2 on the New York Times bestseller list, and is now entering its fifth week on the USA Today bestseller list! And Complete Me comes out July 30. WOOT!
(And if you missed book 1, Release Me, grab your copy now! I'm thrilled that it's now in it's 12th week as a USA Today bestseller!)
P.P.S. And why not scroll down and share the post? After all, sharing is sexy!
XXOO
--J.K.

Movies, Music, and Changing Neighborhoods: Jenna Bennett talks about the Scene in East Nashville
Today I’m excited to welcome Jenna Bennett to the blog! She’s here to talk about her hometown and one of the most historic cities in America: Nashville!
Over the river and through the ‘hood…
It’s a fun time to be living in East Nashville, Tennessee.
Just last week, as I was driving down the street to pick the kids up from their last day of school, I had to dodge actors and actresses dressed like bank employees, complete with name tags, gathering around the old Regions Bank building on the corner of Gallatin Road and Ardee in East Nashville.
It’s a gorgeous old mid-century building, square and boxy, with plate glass windows and exterior walls of black and white stone in a checkerboard pattern. It’s been sitting empty for a year or more now, since the bank operation moved into a newly constructed space a mile further up Gallatin Road, beside the new Home Depot, and when they started etching the new logo on the windows the week before, we’d gotten all excited about the prospect that something new was moving in.
As it turned out, it was a fake bank, staffed by actors, only there for a few days, but it was still fun.
There’s a lot of that going on the neighborhood these days. Empty buildings coming back to life for a day or two, houses for sale being transformed into TV sets for the week, streets closing to make room for camera set-ups and portapotties.
They used to call Nashville the Third Coast. There’s the east coast, with New York, and the west coast, with Hollywood, and then there was the third coast. Nashville.
I’ve lived here since the early 1990s. The days of Melrose Place. Does anyone else remember Melrose Place?
Well, back in the day, I thought someone ought to make a TV show called Third Coast, sort of like Melrose Place, but set in Nashville, in an apartment complex I had my eye on near Music Row. It was going to be all about young professionals struggling to get a foothold in the music industry, etcetera, etcetera.
Guess I was ahead of my time.
I didn’t end up doing anything with that idea, obviously. I still wouldn’t know how to write the script for a TV pilot, although I daresay I could figure it out if I had to. But somewhere along the way, I did learn how to write books. And as it happens, I wrote some of them about Nashville.
About the neighborhood where I live.
About a struggling real estate agent selling properties in historic East Nashville.
The same neighborhood where a lot of exterior scenes from the TV show Nashville are filmed, since characters Scarlett and Avery live there.
East Nashville began life as a playground for the rich and famous back a hundred and fifty years ago. The Civil War was over, reconstruction was well underway, and in the 1880s and -90s, the elite began building summer cottages on the other side of the Cumberland River from downtown. They’d leave their fancy mansions in the Belmont and West End areas, and go across the river to summer in Edgefield.
It’s a gorgeous neighborhood full of old Victorian buildings—the ones that survived the fire of 1916, when more than 700 homes were lost, and the tornado of 1998, which damaged 300 more, and the flood of 2010, which put downtown underwater.
During the economically depressing 1970s and -80s, many of the old buildings were divided up into apartments, and the area fell into disrepair and crime. We moved to East Nashville in 1992, and within the first year we lived there, there were four murders within a block of us. It had a bit of a Wild West atmosphere back in those days—almost like when Frank and Jesse James rented a house on Fatherland Street because things were too hot for them in Missouri.
The renovation revolution started with the bachelors in the early 1990s, and these days, it’s fun to be able to tell the new people moving in that we were the pioneers, that when we arrived, the house down the street, the one that’s on the market for a half a million dollars right now, was forty thousand back then.
It’s amazing the difference a couple of decades can make. And it’s nice, after all the years of plugging away at building a neighborhood, and renovating our own fair share of houses, and having a part in helping people buy and sell a few hundred others, that East Nashville is finally getting what it deserves.
37206—where everybody’s somebody!
USA Today bestselling author Jenna Bennett writes the Cutthroat Business mysteries, about recovering Southern Belle and new-minted realtor Savannah Martin, who sells houses and solves crimes in East Nashville. She also writes the New York Times bestselling Do It Yourself home renovation mysteries as Jennie Bentley. An East Nashville resident since 1992, she shares her home with a husband, two kids, a hyper-active dog, a carnival goldfish and an African dwarf frog that survived a 4th grade science project four years ago.
To learn more about her doing and undoings, please visit her website, her Facebook page, or her Twitter.
Thanks to Jenna for coming on the blog! Nashville’s history is fascinating and romantic. What are some special things about your neighborhood?
P.S. - Book two of my Stark Trilogy - Claim Me - debuted at number 2 on the New York Times bestseller list, and is now entering its fifth week on the USA Today bestseller list! And Complete Me comes out July 30. WOOT!
(And if you missed book 1, Release Me, grab your copy now! I'm thrilled that it's now in it's 12th week as a USA Today bestseller!)
P.P.S. And why not scroll down and share the post? After all, sharing is sexy!
XXOO
--J.K.

June 1, 2013
A new #StarkOnSaturday excerpt from Complete Me, Stark Trilogy book 3!
And thanks so much to everyone who helped keep Claim Me on the New York Times bestseller list for three weeks and now into the fifth week on the USA Today bestseller list! Y’all rock!
I hope you enjoy this snippet from the upcoming Complete Me, book three in the Stark Trilogy that began with with Release Me, continued with Claim Me, and will conclude with Complete Me!
Slowly, he withdraws his fingers, and I can’t help but whimper. “Was that what she’s been imagining?” he whispers. “That salesgirl who knows there’s something naughty going on behind this door?”
I shake my head, forcing uncooperative words to my lips. “Not quite,” I say. “She’s imagining your hands on her, not on me.”
“Is she?” His brows lift slightly as if the possibility hadn’t even occurred to him. I can’t help but laugh. Damien knows damn well the effect he has on women. “Well, she can have whatever fantasies she wants.” He pulls me closer and holds me tight. “You’re my reality.”
“And you’re mine,” I say, feeling right then like the luckiest girl on the planet. Damien is safe and this afternoon’s funk seems like nothing more than a bad dream. Most of all, I am in his arms. There may be other shit going on, but all that can wait for later. For right now, I am content.
Want more? You can pre-order Complete Me from Amazon or from Barnes and Noble! On-sale July 30!
And if you missed Release Me, you can snag your copy from your favorite retailers here:
Random House
Amazon (print)
Amazon (kindle)
Amazon United Kingdom
Barnes and Noble (print or Nook)
Books-A-Million
Kobo
iBooks
Indie BoundAnd, of course, you can get Book 2, Claim Me, from these great retailers:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Books-a-Million
Random House
your favorite independent bookseller
in the U.K. from Amazon
in the U.K. from Waterstones
in the U.K. from WH Smith
More soon,
XXOO
P.S. - Book two of my Stark Trilogy - Claim Me - debuted at number 2 on the New York Times bestseller list, and is now entering its fifth week on the USA Today bestseller list! And Complete Me comes out July 30. WOOT!
(And if you missed book 1, Release Me, grab your copy now! I'm thrilled that it's now in it's 12th week as a USA Today bestseller!)
P.P.S. And why not scroll down and share the post? After all, sharing is sexy!
XXOO
--J.K.

May 30, 2013
Thanks, Bookbub! Grab When Blood Calls (Shadow Keepers series of paranormal romance, book 1) for 99 cents!
Check it out! Right now there’s a Bookbub promo going for When Blood Calls — J. Kenner writing as J.K. Beck. Grab your copy for only 99 cents before the deal goes away!
Don’t miss book one in the Shadow Keepers series of paranormal romances that New York Times bestselling author Lara Adrian calls “exciting paranormal romance with a sharp, suspenseful edge,” and #1 New York Times bestselling author Sherrilyn Kenyon raves is “riveting, dangerous, and not to be missed!”
P.S. - Book two of my Stark Trilogy - Claim Me - debuted at number 2 on the New York Times bestseller list, and is now entering its fifth week on the USA Today bestseller list! And Complete Me comes out July 30. WOOT!
(And if you missed book 1, Release Me, grab your copy now! I'm thrilled that it's now in it's 12th week as a USA Today bestseller!)
P.P.S. And why not scroll down and share the post? After all, sharing is sexy!
XXOO
--J.K.

May 29, 2013
Hump Day Books from Marquita Valentine, Jean Brashear, Lisa Mondello, Barbara McMahon, Day Leclaire, Ginger Chambers, Dakota Madison, Jennifer Stevenson, Rogenna Brewer, S.J. MacIver, Lori Austin, and Julie Kenner
If you’re in dire need of a new read, and don’t want to break the bank, hunt no more! This week’s Hump Day Reads feature some great new books, most of which are at a reduced price!
Love Me Some Cowboy
5 full-length novels for 99 cents!
Learn more at Jean’s, Lisa’s, Barbara’s, Day’s, and Ginger’s websites!
Live For You (Boys of the South ~ Book 1)
A hot New Adult Romance featuring a bad boy bartender and the country music princess he can’t say no to.
Learn more at Marquita’s website!
Still Fine at Forty
FREE for KINDLE May 30, 31 and June 1
Learn more at Dakota’s website!
Fools Paradise (Backstage Boys)
Re-released with new cover above!
See Jen’s blog post from yesterday!
One Night In Reno
$0.99 short story!
Learn more at Rogenna’s website!
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GHOST OF A CHANCE
FREE from 5/29 – 6/2!
Learn more at Sharon’s website!
Beauty and the Bounty Hunter: Once Upon a Time in the West (ONCE UPON A TIME IN WEST)
The ebook version of Lori (Handeland) Austin’s RITA nominated western historical romance is on sale through June 4th for 2.99.
Learn more at Lori’s website!
The Cat’s Fancy
And last, but hopefully not least, one extra entry this week: My novel The Cat’s Fancy has just been reduced to 99 cents!
P.S. - Book two of my Stark Trilogy - Claim Me - debuted at number 2 on the New York Times bestseller list, and is now entering its fourth week on the USA Today bestseller list! And Complete Me comes out July 30. WOOT!
(And if you missed book 1, Release Me, grab your copy now! I'm thrilled that it's now in it's 12th week as a USA Today bestseller!)
P.P.S. And why not scroll down and share the post? After all, sharing is sexy!
XXOO
--J.K.

May 28, 2013
Writing Romances about Stagehands: Jennifer Stevenson on her Writing and and these Alluring Male Leads
Jen Stevenson joins me today to tell us her favorite kind of romance characters – and why they are so special to her. Keep reading and she might just make you crave your own stagehand!
Why I write romances about stagehands
by Jennifer Stevenson
via Shawn Anderson
I first fell in love with stagehands in college, sitting across the cafeteria table from the guy who would become my husband. He had a way of sucking an entire square of lime jello into his mouth that captivated me. His Levi 501s hung low on his hips, all creased and ripped from hard work. He swung his steel-toed boots like a dancing Lippizan horse. He laughed a lot.
I found out later that not all stagehands could steal my heart the way he did, but they all have a lot in common. They live and breathe the performing arts, but they can also screw in a lighbulb without making a production out of it. Many’s the time I’ve heard a stagehand drop a knowledgable remark about an opera singer’s career, shrewdly critique a new musical, or make terrible Shakespearean jokes. Stagehands can also build scenery, hang and focus spotlights, rig tons of equipment in dangerous locations, lug massive crates full of props, costumes, machines, speakers, and electrical equipment in and out of trucks, put them in place, and then move it all with the precision of a surgeon, night after Broadway night.
I write about stagehands because of this contrast between the glamour onstage and the grease under the hood. And for other things. They show an old fashioned chivalry toward women. They tend to marry waitresses—these being the women they see the most—and support them in style. They work insane hours, because during those months when the work is available, the pay is amazing, but when the theaters are dark, they make nothing. A stagehand doesn’t consider that he’s done a day’s work until he clocks past his straight eight.
Stagehands also have old fashioned issues that a romance writer can sink her teeth into: A stagehand may work so much that the wife gets restless out in her fancy suburban McMansion and wonders if he’s spending the night with a waitress who lives closer to the Opera House…since that’s how she met him, after all. A stagehand may work thirty hours in a row, taking stimulants to stay awake, and then knock himself out with booze so he can sleep in his car for the three hours until his next job. Any weekend evening, his girlfriend may be alone—because, while the rest of the world plays, he works.
Unlike actors, rock stars, and other performers in show business, stagehands are real men. They sweat. They wear toolbelts, not makeup. They’re thick-muscled, not scrawny. They don’t wonder if you still like them if you haven’t said so in the past five minutes. A stagehand knows who he is, down to his socks. He knows what he’s good for, and he has a workingman’s pride in doing it, and he gets paid handsomely for it. He’s comfortable in his skin.
Daip Survivor
A stagehand is often overeducated for his job. He builds canoes in his spare time, reads Kafka on the flyrail between rigging cues, plays in a band, buys and manages apartment buildings, flies to Viet Nam to count whooping cranes. He’s also coarse, funny, sexy, strong, competent, and often dangerously bored, so he gets into the kind of trouble that makes a romance writer’s mouth water.
Moreover, stagehands tend to be, to use their term, “related.” Families of stagehands joined their union in the early twentieth century and intermarried, swapping waitresses to keep the bloodlines strong. A stagehand knows everybody he works with. His dad knows everybody he works with, and his uncles and cousins and his grandpop too. A big city Local is a lot like the English Regency Upper Ten Thousand, only smaller. Instead of judging one another by lineage, rank, and income, stagehands measure themselves by lineage, skills, and the number of hours they work. It’s a hot-house atmosphere of struggle and pride, privilege and hard labor, a small town full of blue collar hunks nestled inside the barely-larger community of glittering lights and art, balancing on top of a huge city: a universe that a romance writer can’t resist. Not this romance writer anyway.
Jennifer Stevenson has immortalized stagehands in her Backstage Boys series. Re-released this spring are King of Hearts and Fools Paradise, available at Amazon and at Book View Café. Find her at http://jenniferstevenson.com or on Facebook.
Thanks to Jen for coming on the blog! Who are those sexy stagehands in your life?
May 27, 2013
What better to celebrate Memorial Day than a 99c deal on five cowboy romance novels plus a blog hop?
Plus, they’ve got a fun blog hop going! Be sure to follow the link and join the fun between now and May 30 – and leave a comment for a chance to win free books and a grand prize $50 gift card!
Who can resist a tough, rugged cowboy? Not these feisty, determined women!
Five Hot Cowboys, Five full-length novels only 99 cents!
In Nothing But Trouble by USA Today Bestselling Author Lisa Mondello, city girl Melanie Summers must spend an entire month alone in the Wyoming wilderness with sexy rodeo cowboy, Stoney Buxton, without getting into trouble. Possible? Not a chance in the world!
USA Today Bestselling Author Jean Brashear adds Lone Star flavor with Texas Secrets. Boone Gallagher returns to the only home he’s ever known only to find it’s been willed to a sexy stranger who’s intent on leaving. He must keep her there for thirty days or it will be lost to them both.
Love romantic reunion stories? Then USA Today Bestselling author Barbara McMahon has the perfect book for you! Crazy About a Cowboy brings you Sam and Lisa Haller, who divorced for all the wrong reasons. Now Sam wants his ex-wife back for all the right ones.
Once Upon a Cowboy by USA Today Bestselling author Day Leclaire introduces Cami, a lovable, greenhorn spitfire determined to become a cowboy, despite the objections of her sexy rancher boss.
And last, but far from least, Waldenbooks bestselling author Ginger Chambers offers a heartwarming treat with Love, Texas, in which Cassie Edwards returns to the hometown she’d forsaken to negotiate the sale of land belonging to the Taylor family. Hard-working rancher Will Taylor, once her girlhood crush, is all man now and fighting hard to save his heritage. When attraction flares, will true love triumph?
What Readers Are Saying About These Authors:
“Emotional depth and situations that tore at my heart. This is exactly what I want from a romance.” (about Ginger Chambers, Love, Texas)
“I can never get enough of Day Leclaire’s novels. It’s all about the characters, and these are especially lovable, funny, and heartwarming … not to mention sexy. I really identified with Cami’s act-first, think-later personality. Adorable!” (about Day Leclaire, Once Upon a Cowboy)
“A great story about second chances at love. A hunky cowboy and a feisty cowgirl and a cute little boy to round off this romance.” (about Barbara McMahon, Crazy About a Cowboy)
“I really enjoyed this, er, literary foreplay. I knew that when these two finally made love, they wouldn’t just be going through the motions—there were going to be some fireworks….Jean Brashear is a terrific discovery for me.” (about Jean Brashear, Texas Secrets)
“Loved this book so much I didn’t put it down till I was finished. Highly recommended for a very good read.” (about Lisa Mondello, Nothing But Trouble)
Do you love cowboy romances? Being from Texas, how can I resist?!
P.S. - Book two of my Stark Trilogy - Claim Me - debuted at number 2 on the New York Times bestseller list, and is now entering its fourth week on the USA Today bestseller list! And Complete Me comes out July 30. WOOT!
(And if you missed book 1, Release Me, grab your copy now! I'm thrilled that it's now in it's 12th week as a USA Today bestseller!)
P.P.S. And why not scroll down and share the post? After all, sharing is sexy!
XXOO
--J.K.

May 25, 2013
Stark on Saturday for your Memorial Day Weekend: A snippet from Complete Me (Stark Trilogy, book 3) & Ian Somerhalder eye candy!
And thanks so much to everyone who has put Release Me back on the USA Today bestseller list (it’s in its 12th week!) and kept Claim Me on the New York Times bestseller list for three weeks and now into the fourth week on the USA Today bestseller list! Y’all rock!
And as I’ve mentioned so many times on Facebook, although there are a lot of guys who could do Damien justice, I’m pretty partial to Ian Somerhalder. So here’s some Ian eye-candy to lead you into the holiday weekend!
I hope you enjoy this snippet from the upcoming Complete Me, book three in the Stark Trilogy that began with with Release Me, continued with Claim Me, and will conclude with Complete Me!
“I know,” I say, my lips against the cotton of his shirt. “I get it.” I tilt my head back and look up into his eyes. “That doesn’t mean it hurts any less.”
“Then let me try to make it better.” He eases me away from his body, then bends down to kiss the corner of my mouth. “Is that where it hurts?”
I shake my head as tears tease my eyes and a small smile tugs at the corner of my mouth.
“No? Then how about here?” His lips brush my jawline, and I suck in a breath, undone by the sweetness of his touch.
“No,” I say, and my smile is no longer tremulous.
This time, his lips find the indentation at the base of my throat. I tilt my head back, giving him better access, and feel my pulse beat wildly against his lips. “That’s not it either,” I whisper.
“Tricky,” he says. “How can I kiss it and make it better if I can’t even find it?”
“Keep looking,” I say.
“I’ll never stop,” he promises. His lips drift down, pausing over my heart that is pounding in my chest. “Not here, surely,” he says, then moves on as I laugh, the sound cut off by a raw, sensual cry when his mouth closes suddenly over my breast.
“Damien!”
His arms around my back support me as he suckles me through the silky material of this insanely expensive dress. His teeth graze my sensitive nipple, and I arch back, lost in a desperate haze of pleasure.
“Here?” he murmurs, his lips never fully releasing me.
“Yes,” I say. “Oh, God, yes.”
“I’m not so sure,” he says when he takes his mouth off me. “I’d better keep looking.”
He shifts me gently off his lap and lays me down on the soft grass, his legs straddling my waist.
“Damien,” I murmur. “What are you—“
He hushes me with a finger, then leans over me, his mouth on my breast again. I groan with pleasure. “I told you,” he says. “I’m going to kiss it and make it better.”
Want more? You can pre-order Complete Me from Amazon or from Barnes and Noble! On-sale July 30!
And if you missed Release Me, you can snag your copy from your favorite retailers here:
Random House
Amazon (print)
Amazon (kindle)
Amazon United Kingdom
Barnes and Noble (print or Nook)
Books-A-Million
Kobo
iBooks
Indie BoundAnd, of course, you can get Book 2, Claim Me, from these great retailers:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Books-a-Million
Random House
your favorite independent bookseller
in the U.K. from Amazon
in the U.K. from Waterstones
in the U.K. from WH Smith
More soon,
XXOO
P.S. - Book two of my Stark Trilogy - Claim Me - debuted at number 2 on the New York Times bestseller list, and is now entering its fourth week on the USA Today bestseller list! And Complete Me comes out July 30. WOOT!
(And if you missed book 1, Release Me, grab your copy now! I'm thrilled that it's now in it's 12th week as a USA Today bestseller!)
P.P.S. And why not scroll down and share the post? After all, sharing is sexy!
XXOO
--J.K.
