Welcome to my Christmas In July Extravaganza

Welcome to my CHRISTMAS IN JULY EXTRAVAGANZA! I’m excited about this event. I have some wonderful prizes to give away, some great writers for you to meet and some yummy recipes to share. On July 4th, I’ll be posting some of my favorite summer recipes and at least on that day, I’ll be asking you to post yours. We may do the recipe exchange other times during the month, too.

So, a little about myself. I’ve been writing since high school, though I can remember having imaginary friends who went on high adventures with me. So, I really think I started ‘writing’ before I knew I was writing. I wrote my first novel in high school, an Armageddon tale about teenagers who were put into suspended animation over a 25 year period. They awoke centuries later, after a nuclear war and appeared to be the only survivors. Of course, they paired up and there was romance in there somewhere.

My first romance novels were written in my early twenties, before I knew about agents, scene and sequence and head-hopping was a no-no. Not surprisingly, the one I set in was rejected.

I hung up my writing for a few years to raise my two daughters. About 5 years ago, I took up the writing bug again. I was first published in 2005 with a short story in a local anthology. That story has been revamped and sold to The Wild Rose Press. “A Cowboy’s Dream” will be coming out this Christmas.

I have has several other short stories published in anthologies through Highland Press under my other pen name, M. J. Sager: “A Second Chance at Forever” in NO LAW AGAINST LOVE; “Blue Moon Enchantment” in BLUE MOON MAGIC and “Soup d’Amour” in RECIPE FOR LOVE. I have one story written under Anna Kathryn Lanier with them as well, “Tempt Me Twice” in “Holiday in the Heart.”

Through The Wild Rose Press, I have one short story out in their Yellow Rose line, “The Priceless Gift,” a contemporary set in Montana. This fall, I’ll have a novella released through their historical Cactus Rose line. “Salvation Bride” is set in Texas and the heroine is a mail order bride. And as already mentioned, “A Cowboy’s Dream,” is coming out through the Yellow Rose line this Christmas.

I have half a dozen stories in progress, and one good completed novel – a historical set in 1880’s Denver. Though it’s good, it does need some revamping.

Well, as I said, I have two daughters, both grown and mommies of their own. They have blessed me with two granddaughters and a grandson. In addition to writing and family, I am also a full-time college student. I earned my A.A. in Teaching/history (with honors) in May and am transferring from the community college I was attending to a senior college to continue pursing my teaching degree.

So, back to this gift giveaway. Each day, I’ll draw a winner from everyone who comments during the day. Throughout the month, I’ll also hold a few extra drawings, basically whenever I feel like it, and give away additional prizes.

Also, don’t forget to visit the other blogs (links for them can be found on my website www.aklanier.com on my contest page. Each fellow participant will also be giving away a prize a day for those who comment on their blogs. So visit them and increase your chance to win a prize!

Tell us about yourself. Are you an author or a reader?

Happy holidays!

~Anna Kathryn

First winner

The first winner in my Christmas in July Blogging Extravaganza is Tanja. Yes, I know, it's not July yet. However, to get the word out, I sent an e-mail to people, asking them to forward it and to include me in their list of e-mail addresses. Those who did so were put into a drawing for a $10 The Wild Rose Press gift certificate. Today I held the drawing for those who'd participated and Tanja won. Congratulations!

Now, don't forget to pop in during the month for a chance to win lots of other goodies!

~Anna Kathryn

Coming Soon - Christmas in July

Bored with the hot days of summer? Wishing for the good cheer and fun of the holidays? Then come join the fun! Each day, during the month of July, Anna Kathryn and friends will pick a winner from each of their blogs. All you need to do is visit the blogs and leave a message. With six participating author’s, you have a chance to win one of 186 prizes throughout the month.

Skhye Moncrief
Sky Purington
Kyann Water
Tarah Scott
Crystal Atkins
Anna Kathryn Lanier

I'll have various authors during the month as guest bloggers. Here's a tentative list of who'll be stopping by:

Skhye Moncrief July 2
Patti Shenberger July 5
Michele Hart July 6
Cindy K. Green July 7
Stacey Joy Netzel July 8
Meagan Hatfield July10
P. L. Parker July 11
Jannine Corti-Petski July 15
Victoria Trout & Penny West July 17
Margaret Tanner July 19
Sandy Wickersham-McWhorter July 20
Anna Marie Norvack July 23
Renee Knowles July 25
Ginger Simpson July 27
Lily Stone July 29
Phyllis Campbell July 30

Stay tuned for a tentative list of prizes!

~Anna Kathryn

Win a Sony e-Reader

www.thewildrosepress.com

All this summer (June 11 – August 31), every time you purchase a title by any of these The Wild Rose Press' sponsoring authors (see list below), you will be eligible to enter our drawing to win a SONY eReader. The drawing will be held on Tuesday evening, September 2, 2008 at our weekly chat (9:00 p.m. eastern). (You do not need to be present in the chat room to win).

When you purchase any title from these authors simply email your order number to: SONYREADER@thewildrosepress.com. This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it. FREE READS DO NOT COUNT AS PURCHASES. Make sure you have a current email address and/or include your contact information so we can find you if you win.

You may enter as many times this summer as you wish. If you purchase more than one title in the same order, feel free to send two emails and include the order twice. We will verify that you did indeed purchase more than one title.

The following are the sponsoring authors for this wonderful contest. Please look for their author information on our web site and enjoy some fabulous reads this summer from these participating authors. If you click on the author's name it will take you directly to their books on our site.

Donna L. Bolk

Allie Boniface

Linda Carroll-Bradd

Laurel Bradley

Rachel Brimble

Charlotte Chalmers

Elaine Cantrell

Pam Champagne

Christine Columbus

Sandra Cormier

Cheryl Cornell

Amy Corwin

Sharon Cullen

Donna Dalton

K.M. Daughters

Debbie Doggett

CarolAnn Erhardt

Valerie Everhart

Samantha Gentry

Cindy Green

Kathleen Grieve

Larry Hammersley

Stacy Dawn

Sharon Horton

Tara Nina

Anna Kathryn Lanier

Marly Mathews

Nicole McCaffrey

Donna Michaels

Stacey Joy Netzel

AnneMarie Novark

Cindy Spencer Pape

PL Parker

Katie Reus

Jane Richardson

Donna Marie Rogers

Pam Roller

Emma Sanders

Kathleen Scott

Carol A. Spradling

Debra St. John

Lily Stone

Browyn Storm

Leanne Tyler

Brenda Weaver

Nita Wick

Teri Wilson


Good luck!

*No purchase necessary to win the SONY eReader. If you do not purchase a title, you may enter the contest by mailing a post card to The Wild Rose Press, Sony eReader Contest, P.O. Box 708, Adams Basin, NY 14410. Please include your name, email and contact information. In addition, you must write down three titles from any of the participating authors. Postcard entrants will be added to the names of email entrants and a winning entry will be drawn on September 2, 2008.

Jingle All The Way

CHRISTMAS IN JULY

Bored with the hot days of summer? Wishing for the good cheer and fun of the holidays? Then come join the fun! Each day, during the month of July, Anna Kathryn and friends will pick a winner from each of their blogs. All you need to do is visit the blogs and leave a message. With six participating author’s, you have a chance to win one of 186 prizes throughout the month. To make certain you don’t forget, subscribe to Anna Kathryn’s blog!

Skhye Moncrief
Sky Purington
Anna Kathryn Lanier
Kyann Water's
Tarah Scott's
Interviews With Authors

I'll be doing author interviews, giving away books, gift certificates, 'Smart Women Read Romance' T-shirts and lots more. Hope to see you here!

~Anna Kathryn

Ear fungus is not FUN.

The first week of May, I realized I had an ear infection. I'm usually one to hop right down to the doctor whenever I don't feel good. But this one time, I decided I'd just suffer through it and let it run its course. Besides that was a very busy week - an RWA meeting, I was graduating on from the Junior College I'd been attending, Mother's Day was Sunday.

But the ear ache didn't get better and I was draining fluid, so on Saturday morning, after getting through graduation (with Honors, btw) I went to the clinic at my doctor's office. The physician's assistant looked into my ear and said, "Oh, you have something growing in your ear." That wasn't the response I expected.

Well, for the next month, I went back and forth to my doctor, taking ear drops and antibiotics. One of the antibiotics was Bactrim. I'm sure that I've taken that before, it's a familiar name, but I can't say for sure. At any rate, I took it and a Vicadin for pain as soon as I got home from the pharmacy. Within minutes, I was itching from head to foot. I called my doctor's office, who told me that I should take some benydril. I don't have benydril in my house, so I grabbed the 6-month-old granddaughter and rushed off to the phramacy. With welts now forming on my arms and legs, I bought the benydril and a bottle of water. At the counter I ripped open the package and opened two pill pods. The pharmacist stared at me, and then said "are you going straight home?" I said, "yes." "Well you should, because those will make you drowsy."

I just stared at the woman. I'm breaking out in hives, I'm itiching from head to foot (literally, the soles of my feet itched) and this woman wants me to WAIT until I get home to take the pills? Yeah, right. Besides, I'd be more worried about the Vicadin I'd taken 45 minutes before, but she didn't know about those....

Okay, we learned I'm allergic to sulpha drugs...first thing I've ever been allergic to in my life.

So, after a month and the infection/fungus not getting any better, I asked to go to an Ear, Nose and Throat specialist. He confirmed the fungus and the fact I had a big hole in my eardrum. He filled my canal with cream and told me to come back in a week. I did. He said it was looking good and to come back in a month to check the progess of the hole in the eardrum.

Less than a week later, the fungus was back. He filled my ear canal with cream again. Today I returned for him to check the progress. It's better, but the problem two weeks ago was the hole in the eardrum. Usually he gives drops for a week, too. But the drops burn when they pass through the hole in the eardrum, so he didn't give them to me. But since the fungus came back, he removed the cream today and put wicks in my ear canal. The hope is that the wick will hold the drops and fight the infection and not let the medicine pass through the eardrum, where it'll burn.

Yep, ear fungus is not fun!

I'll keep you posted on the results.

~Anna Kathryn

Guest Blogging

Okay, so I'm going stir crazy over here in the hot heat of Texas. Yeah, that's it, the heat is frying my brain. The fact I'm the contest chair for an RWA chapter contest, that received 2.3 times as many entries this year as it did last year, and I had to find judges for those entries, might also have something to do with my craziness of late.

But, I digress. So, I thought I was guest blogging on Ginger Simpson's blog. And I am, but what I was really supposed to do was guest chat on her yahoo loop. I wrongly remembered I was supposed to guest blog on the blog while at a play date for my granddaughter and no computer was to be found. But I stopped by my mom's and dropped in a blog, thinking all was not lost.

When I finally got home about 4 PM, I had a zillion messages asking where I was, since I was supposed by guesting on the loop. I quickly put up some posts, talking about my day, and my stories.

But I can still guest blog for a while (not really sure how long, but a week or two). So I will be over there and I see that a few other authors are blogging as well and leaving lots of interesting posts. So hop on over and check it out (see post below for the link, please).

I'll be thinking of something interesting to say, I promise!

~Anna Kathryn

I'm guest blogging

Come join me on Monday, June 16th while I guest blog at Ginger Simpson's blog "Dishin' it Out."

http://mizging.blogspot.com/

I'll discuss my newest projects, post excerpts and give away prizes! Don't miss out on the fun!

~Anna Kathryn

Win a Prize

Pamper your feet - get ready for summer.

Win a Bath and Body Works Foot Scrub and Lotion set. All you need to do is sign my guestbook (found on my website) during the month of June. All those who comment will be put into a drawing for the prize.

Find my guestbook at www.aklanier.com. There's a link to it on the bottom of my home page.

Good luck.

~Anna Kathyrn

More on Salvation Bride

Well, as "Computer Woes" will tell you (see below), my computer is giving me woe. I had to upload my cover at my mom's and thought to add more information once I got home. No can do. Computer won't let me. So, here's the information I wanted to put with the cover below:

The hot dusty town of Salvation, Texas has more than its share of secrets in 1873 when Laura Ashton's stage rolls into town. Sheriff David Slade has no idea what baggage his mail-order bride is bringing into his life. Throw in the nightmares from his Civil War days and he's got more than courting to contend with. Laura's a woman ahead of her time, a woman trained in medicine. And she's got a will that could move mountains. Unfortunately, the only mountains in Salvation are in Sheriff Slade's memory. Can the determined doctor heal his pain, or will the dark secret in her past turn up to steal his Salvation Bride?

"Salvation Bride" will be an electronic book released this fall, I should hear more on the exact date in a few weeks. It's a 29,000 word Historical, set in the fictional town of Salvation, Texas, which is near Bryan/College Station (home of the Texas A & M Aggies).

It takes place 7-8 years after the end of the Civil War and David is still living with the repercussions of it. Laura is a woman ahead of her time, as the blurb says. She was trained as a doctor by her uncle, whom she lived with after tragedy befell her parents.

I'm very proud of this book and can't wait for its release.

~ Anna Kathryn

Salvation Bride Cover

Here's the cover for my story coming out in the Fall of 2008.

Internet Woes

My computer or my Internet service, one, is not playing nice. For the last few weeks, it has decided that on occasion (actually, on lots of occasions) it'll 'not respond' to what I've asked it to do. Usually, what I've asked it to do is open my e-mail. But, nope, it doesn't want to do that.

I have AOL, which I get and pay for through my DSL connection with my phone company. So, when I had enough of the 'not responding' responses, I called the phone company to complain. They informed me that the problem wasn't theirs, even though when I opened Internet Explorer and not AOL, it does the same thing. So, I tried to contact AOL about it. They told me, via a recording, that I didn't have the AOL program that allowed me live accesses to the Tech Dept. and if I wanted to talk to someone about my AOL problem, I had to upgrade my program.

WTF?

So, far, I've not bothered to call back my phone company or AOL. But I'm going to. Isn't taking money for a service and then not providing that service fraud? When I can't even open my mail and read it, something is drastically wrong.

One of the other things I've been trying to do is upload onto this blog my newest book cover. I can reach the 'done' page, but before the 'done' button pops up...well, AOL decides 'not to respond.' So after trying for a half dozen (or more times) I just gave up.

All in all, it's very frustrating.

I hope some day, soon, it fixes itself, if not, I may have to take this up with both my phone company and AOL...neither one of whom will like me very much when I'm through.

~ Anna Kathryn