Congratulations, and a pleasant surprise

Congratulations to the three winners of signed copies of Applewood, two from the Goodreads giveaway, and a third to a commenter over at Patricia's Vampire Notes blog. Though the contest is over, if you haven't had a chance to read my guest post, click the link and check it out. It was a first for me and I was a little nervous about it. Think it came out pretty good anyway.

Can't thank enough everyone who participated in both contests, and am especially delighted that in the end, 1330 people entered the Goodreads giveaway. If only a few of the non-winners are intrigued enough to pick up a copy, it will have been a success.

Goodreads has notified me of the names and addresses of the two winners, and those books will be in the mail within the hour. Still waiting to hear back from Patricia who won over there, however I suspect she's just waiting to hear back from the winner herself with their name and address.

Now, for the pleasant surprise:

I blogged here a few weeks ago about my author copies of Applewood arriving, noting they had come very well packaged, in one box, in two separate wrappings. They were so well packaged, in fact, I only opened one of them, and saw that my author copies were paperbacks. Nothing at all wrong with that, and I was delighted to receive them.

However, mere moments ago, having given away almost all the first half, I opened the second package and discovered . . . they were hardback copies. Applewood is the first of my books to even be offered in hardback, and it's a pretty cool feeling to hold one of them in your hands for the first time. Especially nice that I had absolutely no idea they were there.

In other news, got a very nice review of Applewood from the Minding Spot book review blog the other day. I'm also appreciative that she posted the review to Amazon, which helps a lot. Thanks for that, Wendy. I've posted an excerpt of the review over on the right. Click the link to read more!

As always, thanks for supporting my writing by checking out my free stories on Smashwords, buying my books, and for visiting this blog.

I've noticed too that more and more folks are taking a look at my comedic pirate adventure, Swash! For what it's worth, I think that too (in addition to Applewood, of course!) would make a great summer read for young and old alike.