And the winner is . . .

The winner of a copy of SHADOWS by Ilsa J. Bick is . . .

Mary D.!!!

Congratulations, Mary!  I've already sent over an email so be sure to get back to me ASAP!  And a huge thank you to everyone who entered!

Just a reminder to those who do enter my giveaways, if I require you to do something in order to enter, say follow a blog, that means it's a REQUIREMENT.  Not an option.  If I give you a yes or no option, the no option being facetious since it's a requirement and I expect entrants to actually comply with requirements, you need to select yes (or otherwise comply with the requirement).  If you select no IT WILL KICK YOU OUT OF THE GIVEAWAY.  While my no option may be facetious I will not consider your answer of a joking manner.  I'll take it as no, you didn't comply with the requirement and yet entered anyway and I'll delete your entry from the form list.  I don't believe this is all that difficult.

Hell, YOU CAN LIE TO ME.  I don't actually confirm the winners are followers.  I work on the honor system out of no other reason than I'm far too lazy to follow through on that.  I'm comfortable in the knowledge that people may be humoring me.  If I give you a silly answer option and that's what you pick I'll default it to you complying.  If you tell me yes I'll take your word for it.  Tell me no and I'll roll my eyes and delete your entry.

Bottom line - DON'T ANSWER IN THE NEGATIVE.  It seriously boggles my mind how many people do.  That just shows me that 1) you didn't read the directions, 2) you blatantly ignored the directions and/or 3) you figured I wouldn't care either way and I wasn't really being serious about the requirements.  None of these things are good.

Am I asking for too much?  I don't think so.  I'm giving you a chance to win something for nothing out of your pocket except a few seconds of your time.  Some people think that's too much for me to be asking.  Those people can blow me.  For me to get in a position to be able to give these books away was a basket of dicks in work so forgive me for wanting a modicum of return on that.  Silly, Donna, I know.

/rant

WTF is Wrong With This Picture?

Oh hey!  Yeah, I'm back from vacation and I have some MAJOR LIFE-CHANGING NEWS to report but I'll get to that later because if I don't talk about this now my head may explode.

I've been seeing this cover around the blogsophere for a little while now and every time I see it I hear a fork scraping against a plate.  It's just such a nonsensical cover that I end up tripping over it.  I mean this chick might as well put a velvet bag over her head for all she can see.  But super awesome sword wielder!

IT'S KILLING ME!  C'mon.  She's wearing chain mail over her eyes?  WTF sense does that make?  Is her name Charles Bronson because this girl's got a death wish wearing that thing.  Unless this is an elaborate game of pin the tail on the donkey I don't know about.  Not to mention after a while she'd have a forehead that started at her crown and no eyebrows.  OMG this bothers me.  Irrationally so.

I understand authors have very little influence on their covers and as of late covers aren't doing too great of a job matching what's actually in the book.  In that same vein hooray for kick ass female katana slinger on the cover.  Kudos.  Except she's about as effective as Blinkin in that gear.


Hopefully it's just a piece of flare used for the cover and fighters don't REALLY wear chain mail over their faces in this book.  I'm well aware that face guards in general can be a bitch to see through.  Anyone that's been in a catcher's mask knows this.  But . . . that's chain mail.  If she goes in direct sunlight she'll end up with a grill on her face, it's heavy to begin with, it'll rip out every hair within reach and SHE WON'T BE ABLE TO SEE OUT OF IT.  Already this book is at a disadvantage for me because the cover is just downright ridiculous.  That shit would have to be magical two-way chain mail or the MC would have to have x-ray eyes for it to be of any use other than looking bad ass.  Except that badassitude shrivels pretty quickly when you realize she couldn't get out of her own way because of it.  It sounds like a decent book but the cover . . . has me going NO FUCKING WAY already.  Bad.

Wherein I Grind My Teeth a Little at Photobucket

I am currently reading TYGER, TYGER, BURNING BRIGHT by Justine Saracen. It's a WWII set novel about a group of people working again the Reich in an attempt to do their part to bring it down. Here's the blurb because I kind of suck at those -

Twelve years of terror end with a world in flames. Behind filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl’s stirring footage of a million joyous patriots, the horror of Nazi Germany slowly unfolds. It engulfs Katja Sommer, a “good German” with dangerous desires; Frederica Brandt, a traitor to her homeland; Rudi Lamm, a homosexual camp survivor and forced soldier for Hitler; and Peter Arnhelm, a half-Jewish smuggler on the run. Under the scrutiny of the familiar monsters of the Third Reich, their enablers, and their hangers-on, these four struggle for life and for each other. Love does not conquer all, but it’s far better than going to hell alone. (netgalley.com)

It's a story of survival and courage and fighting against something that seems all powerful. But you wouldn't know I'm reading this (unless you looked at my Goodreads profile) because the cover isn't in my 'Currently Gnawing On . . .' spot like all my currently reading books go. Why? Because Photobucket deleted the image for violation of their terms of use. You can find those terms of use here. Now considering I've been using Photobucket to post book covers to route here for years, it couldn't have been just simple copyright infringement. They would have put the kibosh on my and everyone else's accounts eons ago. Well, here's the cover of TYGER. Why do you think they deleted the image?

Do you see it? Because I didn't when I originally uploaded the image. All I saw was the cover of the book I'm currently reading. But it appears Photobucket saw a member attempting to promote the Aryan nation by colorful book covers. Deleted. Imagine my surprise when I see a big white block in place of where the book cover once was.

Of course I read the terms and the only area where this cover can, VAGUELY, be wedged into is the following -

The following items are prohibited: anything that is patently offensive or promotes racism, bigotry, hatred or physical harm of any kind against any person or group;

Okay, sure, I get that. But how does this apply to the book cover? Is the mere presence of the swastika "patently offensive or promotes racism," never mind it's context? Seriously? Do you know how many books, the non neo-Nazi kind, are out there with swastikas on the cover? I can't go into Barnes & Noble without coming across at least one every time. Usually it's some kind of era spy/espionage novel of the Vince Flynn-type variety.

This bothers me. Yes, I totally get the connotations of a swastika. I'd have to be brain dead not to. But . . . this one's on an historical fiction novel about people fighting against the Nazis. This isn't promoting any of the prohibited items.

I'm not going any farther than to rant a bit here about it. I know when to pick and choose my battles and this is one that would be lost before it's fought. I just don't think it's too much to ask for a little context behind images. I don't like having my images deleted because of the mere presence of a symbol simply because that symbol is there. Christ. Google the damn book title at least.

And just FYI, I'm almost done with TYGER and it's a pretty good read and takes a look at Nazi Germany from the inside trying to get out. I'm really digging it. Nyah.

A Gun-Friendly Tidbit for Authors

No, this is not a threat. No, this is not specific to any book that I've read recently but something I've been noticing in books where characters use guns that I've read within the last year. Really I'm more aware of this because I've been trained and have been actively using firearms for the past year.

Now that I've thoroughly scared people, I'll point you all to this diagram -

Let me draw your attention to the part labeled "trigger." More often than not, I've been seeing characters cock this part of the gun. That is wrong. Now draw your eyes up and slightly to the left, to the part labeled "hammer." This little part is often neglected in non-dominate fiction gunplay (read: where the story isn't gun-filled, you just have a character that happens to use a gun in a scene). This, folks, is what gets cocked. When one cocks the hammer, it makes the trigger a single action pull that requires far less weight to fire. The trigger isn't cockable. It's cockless.

I don't know if this is the author or the editor or just a socially acceptable fallacy but every time I read about a character cocking a trigger it's like scraping a fork against a plate. And this statement is handgun-neutral. It's said regardless of whether the gun is a revolver or semi-automatic, exposed hammer or shrouded. Apparently characters always find something to cock when it comes to a gun. It just sound so western, I guess. Total badass . . . ? Except when it doesn't fit the gun it goes kind of . . . limp . . .

So I beg of you, authors, when you insist on giving your characters guns, make them use them properly. If you have them cock triggers, you might as well have them pull a slide on a revolver too. It helps, too, when you get all fancy with your gun-telling, to not have them cock a gun when the hammer is shrouded on that particular model. You're just having them do extra work for nothing.

Let's keep the cocks away from the triggers, shall we? Triggers get pulled, hammers get cocked. Cock hammer, pull trigger, in that order. That is all.