I visited the Seven Kingdoms this weekend

Finally purchased Bitterblue yesterday. I could not put it down. Well except to eat, and sleep and take care of necessary bodily functions. All I can say is Kristin Cashore is a motherfracken genius. I loved how she wove all three story lines of the two other "companion novels" together. I was so happy to see Fire. I cried a little.

Favorites lines from books

So I'm not usually excited when AlleyCat writes on herself - but I have to admit I like this project she did with some of her 8th grade classmates

Golden Lines
AC is a 1.46 or so

Maggie Stiefvater is giving away a bunch I mean a BUNCH of books!

I was lucky enough to meet Maggie this year at an impromptu book signing. It wasn't a scheduled signing or anything, but she had tweeted that she was going to be in Elliott Bay Books signing stock, and if any of her followers happened to be in the area, to go ahead and stop by. I was so excited because I missed her signings in the Seattle area and was really bummed so I snuck a little extra time into my lunch hour (more like a lunch hour and a half) and tracked her down. She was super sweet. Signed all of my books (five) and even drew a wolf in Forever. (Yes I did a little happy dance on my way back to car)

I know. I know. Quit rambling Cass and get to the goods. What are the rules? How do you win this bounty of books? Well, you have to pick your favorite post from her Blog. Easy. Right? NO. So much to choose from. But once you finally whittle it down to one super fantastic favorite post, the hard part is over. Now all you have to do is talk about your choice on Facebook, tumblr, twitter, heck if you still have a myspace account you could talk about it there. Just as long as you can copy and paste a link back into something fascinating called a GIANT CONTEST TABULATING MACHINE WEBSITINATOR. (I'm not quite sure what it is exactly but hope it is something magical)

Okay so now that you know how to enter, are you curious what my favorite post was? It was pretty easy. It was this one HERE. Yes November Cakes. Come on guys. Who wasn't excited to find out that Maggie made up a recipe to a made up food.(Actually my excitement came later, keep reading) Maggie posted the recipe before I read the book. (Yes, it took me a while to finally set aside the time. I can't just read a book a a little bit at a time. I have to devote large blocks of time so that I don't miss anything in the worlds I like to visit) So when I first saw the November Cakes post I thought "Clever girl. That's kinda neat." But it ended there. I filed the post away in my mind and went about my business. See I didn't read the book until Thanksgiving weekend, and when I got to the the part in the book where November Cakes came into play? My mouth started to water and I remembered her post and hurried back to jot down the recipe. This time my thoughts were "Wow. Not only does she write, play musical instruments (including but not limited to the bagpipes) scores music, creates stop motion book trailers and finds time to talk to the folks at NASA, but she creates her own recipes too? Genius!" And it gets better. Now she has improved on the original recipe and says you should use this one here.

So even though the November Cakes post might not have started out as my favorite post, it sure ended that way after reading The Scorpio Races.

And even though it's not part of the contest, I want to tell you what my favorite tweet of Maggie's was this year. It was on November 23rd. You all know just which one I'm talking about don't you? She was hinting about the WinterNovel she had been working on and was giving her followers a teaser. She said that if we were fans of a certain work of hers, two words would tell us who she was writing about. Wait. You look confused. You do know which tweet I'm talking about. Right? It was this tweet right here:

Yes that's right. We are going to be taken back into her world of the Fae. And I for one can't wait. Hurry Maggie. I want to read The WinterNovel. Like Now.

Where does the time go?

So much for trying to post more often. On December 6th I was so proud to announce that I was back. I'd joined many a social networking site and was ready to start developing my Cassidy Finn online presence, and now? Geez, it's December 27th already. Where did the time go? Well, two things happened to keep me from the Blog.

December 7th - my laptop died. It was a refurb oldie not worth the money to try and fix :-( Though I love my iPhone (and I mean LOVE it) I didn't think it was realistic to try and post to the Blog from it, and my world kind of turned upside down anyway...

December 8th - My mom was diagnosed with colon cancer (1 day after she turned 66). I have spent the last 19 days playing chauffer and meticulous note taker for my mom and dad as we have gone from one doctors appointment to the next. She will be having a PET scan on Tuesday the 29th to see just how far it has spread.

I hate cancer. This is the fourth time it has touched my family. Three of the four are still with us, and the one that is gone beat the cancer many years ago. Both my brother who had melanoma, and my cousin who had leukemia are doing well but they were lucky enough to have early detection and got a jump start in battling the monster. They say early early detection is key, especially with colon cancer. Sadly my mom hasn't been to a doctor in many, many, many years so early detection was not in our cards. The nasty monster is in advanced stages, already moving to her liver and lymph nodes (and who knows where else the PET scan will find it). She will be having surgery on January 4th, and start chemo on January 25th. We've been told that surgery and chemo won't cure her, but her oncologist (who is the same one that treated my brother) says that the treatment will hopefully prolong her life for several years to come. If you are reading this and you feel so inclined, please send a silent prayer, positive thought, or well wishes in her direction.

Christmas was good. Everyone babied my mom like we should have been doing all along.

Books for Christmas. I am proud to say my eleven year old daughter (also known as my mini me) asked for books and (video games) for Christmas. She received 3 video games (1 was educational) and 17 books. Yes SEVENTEEN. She is our little reading machine. I was beaming with pride when I read her wish list this year. My family was so happy to oblige her that between my mom, dad and two brothers, she received every book on her wish list. I even received a book that had been on my wish list "City of Glass" by Cassandra Clare. All in all twenty-one books were given as gifts among my family. As an aspiring writer (and avid reader) I couldn't have been happier to see all those books as they were unwrapped.

As you can see I'm posting again. My sweet hubby interpreted my subtle hints*and gave me a netbook. (*I'll admit, the hints weren't so subtle. I left numerous adds lying around and moaned and groaned about not being able to write because my laptop died, but it worked, didn't it?)

There is a surprise birthday party on January 2nd, for my dad who will be turning 75. This was planned long before mom learned of the cancer, and she's happy that she could put the surgery off until after the party. My sister was already coming home (from Denver) with her family for the party and now she will be here for the surgery too.

I'll be back later. I want to write about a great community of YA writers I have discovered via Twitter and and joined back in November.

Thanks for stopping by.

Cassidy