Laura K. Curtis's Blog, page 17

Crafty Monday: Make Them or Win Them Bookish Earrings!

Today we have a guest post (and guest giveaway!) from Deb Lacy of the fabulous Mystery Playground blog. Deb has great posts (I’m particularly fond of her speakeasy-themed ones). If you’re looking for vintage mystery covers, speakeasies around the nation, reviews, or just an all-around good time, I highly recommend checking it out.

I love books of all kinds so a few crafty friends and set out to make little book earrings. They are pretty easy to make and all of the directions are below. They make a great activity for a book club (if your book club is crafty) or fun and different holiday gifts. But if you don’t want to make them yourself, I’m giving away the pair at left to one lucky winner!

What you need:

1) Miniature books (I got mine from Hobby Lobby online)

2) Glue

3) Gold marker

4) Print outs of pulp covers (you can use the Mystery Playground Pinterest board for mystery covers, just shrink them to 25% when you print them in color.

5) Earring hooks. You need two hooks for each book earring for a total of four per pair. (You need one to glue inside the book to attach it and one for the actual earring.)

6) Wire cutters

7) Scissors to cut out the book covers from the Pinterest page

Step One:

Print your color covers from Pinterest and then cut them out. I used my pulp fiction cover Pinterest board and printed them out at 25% of normal size. Some of the covers weren’t the right size, so we just used the ones that were.

Step Two:

Glue the book covers onto the little books.

Step Three:

Take the gold marker and cover the page ends of the books so it looks like an old book with gold leaf.

Step Four:

Snip an earring hook with wire cutters and glue it into the book.

Step Five:

Assemble the earrings: this just involves connecting the earring hook in the book. I like to add a few beads using a wire wrapping technique.

And your book earrings are all done.

 

But, as I said, just in case you’re too busy to do these yourself, Deb’s kindly agreed to give a pair to one lucky winner! The perfect thing to wear to your next book night or conference!

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Giveaway of the Day: Holiday Bling!

Today’s giveaway is perfect for all the parties you simply must attend. Bright red dichroic glass with hints of purple, green, and even gold, this ring and earring set has sterling silver bases so as not to irritate your skin. The ring is adjustable (it’s “medium”, but as you can see from the side shot, you can just clamp it more or less closed to fit) and the earrings are posts.

 

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Giveaway of the Day: Hot Hockey Romances in eBook

2013 is almost over and I have to say that one of my favorite books of the whole year was one I read in January! Actually, I think I read it BEFORE January, but it was released in January. The cover copy of Crazy Thing Called Love reads:

Dallas TV morning show host Madelyn Cornish is poised, perfect, and unflappable, from her glossy smile to her sleek professionalism. No one knows that her iron will guards a shattered heart and memories of a man she’s determined to lock out. Until that man shows up at a morning meeting like a bad dream: Billy Wilkins, sexy hockey superstar in a tailspin—still skating, still fighting, and still her ex-husband.

Now the producers want this poster child for bad behavior to undergo an on-air makeover, and Billy, who has nothing to lose, agrees to the project. It’s his only chance to get near Maddy again, and to fight for the right things this time around. He believes in the fire in Maddy’s whiskey eyes and the passion that ignites the air between them. This bad-boy heartbreaker wants a last shot to be redeemed by the only thing that matters: Maddy’s love.

I loved, loved, loved this book despite the fact that I am not much for reunion romances in general. (I’ve often said that about O’Keefe, actually — I’ll read whatever she writes because even when she uses dusty old tropes she makes them sparkle like new.)

And today, I am doing a two-fer. The winner of today’s giveaway will also get the Going All In hockey romance anthology by Cassandra Carr, Isabo Kelly, and Stacey Agdern. I own this one, but haven’t read it yet. (Yes, I am behind on my reading as usual.)

Cover copy for this anthology sounds perfect, though…

HEDGING HIS BET: Cassandra Carr

Marcus Mitchell never thought he’d find the love of his life with champagne dripping from her shirt, but you can’t always plan these things. Annalise Alonso isn’t going to make it easy for him, though—he’s going to have to work for her love. Now, Marcus is taking a shot and hedging his bet on love.

CASTING THE DIE: Isabo Kelly

After she sees his murder in a vision, Nathalie Mendez knows she has to warn star hockey goalie Alexander Semenov of the danger. To keep him alive, she risks exposing her many secrets. But once the die is cast, her biggest gamble could be her heart.

PLAYING HER GAME: Stacey Agdern

Melanie Gould writes about passionate relationships, but keeps people at a distance…except when she’s promoting her books. Of course, she’s never gone head to head with a guy like Chris Emerson. Unfortunately, Chris is trying to behave, and someone like Melanie would destroy his plans to stay under the radar. So what happens when the woman the media has dubbed the ‘Girl in the Lace Corset’ and the NHL’s most infamous bad boy go one on one? Will they play her game? Will they play his? Or will they both end up in the penalty box?

‘Tis the season to stay warm with hot hockey players!

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This One’s for the Geek Girls

Yesterday’s necklace was totally floral. Today, I am giving away something a little more appropriate for the computer-obsessed. A sterling silver base features dichroic glass cabochons with a design reminiscent of circuit boards. This is small — it will fit a 6.25″ wrist perfectly. Of course, the circuit board design is abstract enough that it could work equally well as party bubbles!

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Giveaway of the Day: Spring Fling Necklace

As it gets colder and colder here in New York, I am already thinking about spring. But before spring comes the holiday season (and the release of Twisted, which I am trying really hard not to think too hard about), and we all need BAUBLES for that. Many people know that I used to make and sell glass beads. I also made the occasional full-on piece of jewelry, like the necklace I am giving away today.

This necklace is brand new, never been worn — it comes from the stash of jewelry I have from when I closed my business. It is made with genuine Swarovski crystals, sterling silver beads from Bali, and a single, focal pansy bead I made myself. The colors will remind you that spring is coming, even when buried in winter snow.

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Giveaway of the Day: A Match Made on Madison by Dee Davis

Do you miss the days when you could pick up a lighthearted “chick-lit” type romance? Back before the powers that be deemed Chick Lit dead and swore never to publish it again? I do. I liked those books. And now, author Dee Davis, best known for her romantic suspense novels, is bringing back some of her lighter titles, A Match Made on Madison and Setup in Soho in digital form and at a reasonable price. So if you’re like me and looking for something to take your mind off the serious troubles in the world at large or in your own, private world, why not enter for your chance to win a copy of A Match Made on Madison (Kindle or physical book–not available yet on other digital platforms).

Here’s the cover copy:

Manhattan glitterati with a desire to find the perfect mate have a new champion in matchmaker Vanessa Carlson. With her fledgling business giving her biggest rival – friend and mentor Althea Sevalas – a run for her money, Vanessa’s services are definitely a hot commodity. To prove once and for all who’s the best matchmaker in town, Vanessa and Althea enter into a competition to see who can score downtown playboy Mark Grayson as her client and send him walking down the aisle. Once a winner is crowned in this very public endeavor, there will be no question as to who rules Manhattan’s matrimonial mergers. But emotions often have a will of their own, and Vanessa learns that her rules don’t always apply.

Dee Davis giveaway

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Giveaway of the Day: Crocheted Cthulhu

Yes, you read that right. I love to make weird things when my brain won’t cooperate so I can’t write. This little guy is just a few inches tall, but he’s one of my favorites.  The pattern comes from the Cthulhu Crochet blog. He’s adorable, if I do say so myself, and he may be just what you need to rule the universe!!

So enter for your chance to win this sweet little stuffed horror for yourself.

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Thomas Pluck on Ninjas, MMA, and Chocolate Covered Potato Chips (and a giveaway)!

Today it’s my pleasure to introduce Thomas Pluck, a good friend and great writer. He combines the dark and the funny in a most entertaining way. So grab your salty-sweet snacks and have a listen and, when he’s done, sign up to win the omnibus version of  Blade of Dishonor in kindle or paperback! (ePub not yet available.)

Everyone knows that peanut butter and chocolate go great together. But when you dip a chocolate covered potato chip into peanut butter, something magical happens. First, your heart explodes and you gain thirty-eight pounds. But after that, your taste buds relish the incongruity of the flavors, and your brain’s pleasure centers admit that this is the perfect trifecta of decadence.

This works with stories, too. Let’s take a look at the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie. They took something awesome, pirates, which we will call the potato chip, and mixed them with another fantastic idea, zombies, which will be chocolate. But that wasn’t enough. We can argue over whether Johnny Depp’s flamboyance was the peanut butter (I try not to think of Johnny Depp covered in peanut butter, but it is difficult, isn’t it?) or if it was the monkey, but needless to say the trifecta made the movie and spawned an enormous franchise that has never captured the same simplicity, perhaps because guys with a conch shell for a head aren’t the “chocolate” of zombies, or because “fun” movies shouldn’t be 3 hours long, but I’ll leave that for the historians to decide.

When David Cranmer of Beat to a Pulp approached me with the idea of a story about an MMA fighter named Reeves duking it out with ninjas over a stolen sword, I thought that was a great idea. I’ve trained in mixed martial arts (Kachin Bando, Burmese boxing and grappling, for the record) for eight years now, and the people I’ve met because of it are as colorful and entertaining as a whole boatful of Johnny Depps in sorta-drag, if not more so. I traveled to Japan to support my friend Peter during his first fight, and the Japanese Shooto fighters I met form a crazy brotherhood. I didn’t meet any ninja, but I loved the ’80s ninja craze and have watched enough Japanese action movies and samurai films to absorb all I needed to know.

But when I sat down to write this, it wasn’t enough. I had potato chips and chocolate, which are pretty damn good together. I knew something was missing, and that was World War II.

When I researched Japanese swords, I learned that the most famous of all, the Honjo Masamune that was passed down among the shoguns during the Tokugawa period, went missing during the Second World War. It was said to have been given to an American soldier for protection, but has never resurfaced.

I had found my peanut butter.

Blade of Dishonor has been described as an intelligent ’80s action movie mixed with a World War II epic with a heart-pounding romance weaved in between. It begins with Reeves coming home from Afghanistan to see his grandpa Butch, a World War II vet, when he finds him embroiled in a centuries-old battle between ninja and samurai over a stolen sword. Butch’s story, from a young park ranger drafted into the war, where he falls in love with a stoic Montana cowgirl during his training, was the final element the story needed. I dived so deeply into the World War II elements that I dedicated the book to my 92 and 94 year old great-uncles Dominic and Jimmy, who served in the war and inspired much of the tone of those chapters. (Uncle Dominic still goes dancing with his young 70-year old girlfriend. We can learn a lot from him).

So is Blade of Dishonor as good as chocolate covered potato chips dipped in peanut butter? That’s for you to decide. I won’t mind if you get peanut butter on the pages while reading it.

I don’t judge.

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Givewaway of the Day: Tegu Magnetic Wooden Block Set!

My nieces and nephews have all been fascinated by Tegu approximately forever. The blocks are magnetic, so you can build OUT as well as up. Tegu has so much going for it. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Not only because the blocks are cool in and of themselves, but because the company is socially and environmentally responsible. Their mission is to create a sustainable living for folks in Honduras, and they work at it every day. When you buy their blocks, you’re helping people learn skills, gain employment, generally improve their quality of life.

The “Discovery” set is 26 blocks, plenty big enough for any project, but not overwhelming, and usually retails for around $75. This one is in the “jungle” colors.

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Giveaway of the Day: How to Murder a Millionaire

I love Nancy Martin’s Blackbird sisters mystery series. I talked about them over on Deb Lacy’s Mystery Playground blog a while back (along with a recipe for yummy sangria) because I think if you like light, fun mysteries with a touch of snark and a feminine feel, you’ll love them, too. But I know it’s hard to try a new author when your favorites have books out and you have limited funds, so I figured I’d give away an e-copy of Nancy’s first Blackbird sisters book, How to Murder a Millionaire and let you see for yourself why I like them!

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