Book Blog Tour - Big Sky Country

A little bit of fun for you today, as this post is a part of the Blog Tour Scavenger Hunt for Linda Lael Miller's newly released Big Sky Country ($5.99 Kindle). I've got an author Q&A, a book excerpt and a chance to win a copy of the book.

Author Q&A
Q: Which part of BIG SKY COUNTRY was the most enjoyable to write?
A: I loved writing about the livestock auction (go figure), which compromised the hero and heroine’s first date. (That’s a cowboy for you.) I also enjoyed penning the horse race scene.

Q: Which part was the least enjoyable?
A: I enjoy the whole process, though I admit I find the love scenes to be the most challenging. Trying to bring something new to a thing that’s as old as time can be hard work.

Q: How did you come up with the character, Joslyn Kirk?
A: Joslyn, like most of my characters, simply came to me as a brown-haired woman returning to her hometown to right an old wrong—one she’d had nothing to do with. As I wrote about Joslyn, she sort of flowered into a person I’d know if I met her on the street. It’s that way with all my story people—they become friends and I’m convinced that they’re real, somewhere.

Q: If you had to do it all over again, would you change anything in the book?
A: I would worry less about getting it perfect and just have fun with the process. Since “Big Sky Country” is the first in a series, the staging has to be just right to carry not only that book, but the others coming after it.

Q: How much, and what kinds of research went into creating this novel?
A: I do a sort of ongoing research—I consult a friend who’s an expert on rodeos, for instance. Most of my stories, though, are pure imagination. I try to get things right, but I’m much more interested in giving the reader an emotional experience and a little vacation from the real world.

Book Excerpt
By this time, he reckoned, all his deputies and Becky, the longtime receptionist, were probably fixing to send out a search party, complete with cadaver dogs and a plan drawn out on a grid.

The idea made him smile as he headed back toward the courthouse.

Joslyn Kirk overslept that morning, and when she opened her eyes, it took her a few seconds to recognize her surroundings and realize she was right back in the one place she’d sworn never to set foot in again—Parable, Montana.

Joslyn sat up in her sleeping bag—she’d arrived late the night before and hadn’t bothered to put sheets on the antique brass bed—and looked around, taking in the cabbage-rose wallpaper, the worn planks in the floor and ornate woodwork, the heavy wardrobe that served as a closet.

She was in the guesthouse behind that mansion that had been her home for most of her childhood.

Be sure to check out the rest of the Blog Tour for your chance to win a copy of the book and a necklace from Etsy (the entry button is on the bottom of the page). There will be a second part to the Scavenger Hunt next month, when her Big Sky Mountain is released.

The publicist sent me a paper copy of Big Sky Country for review and I'm about half-way thru it (I'll admit, I miss reading on the Kindle when I have to back to a paper book); after getting past the rather incredulous setup in the first chapter, it's been a pretty good read. Of course, I'm pretty sure I know how it will end, but isn't that true of most romances? It's the journey, not the ending, that makes the book.

Book Description
The illegitimate son of a wealthy rancher, Sheriff Slade Barlow grew up in a trailer hitched to the Curly-Burly hair salon his mother runs. He was never acknowledged by his father…until now. Suddenly, Slade has inherited half of Whisper Creek Ranch, one of the most prosperous in Parable, Montana. That doesn't sit well with his half brother, Hutch, who grew up with all the rights of a Carmody—including the affections of Joslyn Kirk, homecoming queen, rodeo queen, beauty queen, whom Slade has never forgotten.

But Joslyn is barely holding her head up these days as she works to pay back everyone her crooked stepfather cheated. With a town to protect, plus a rebellious teenage stepdaughter, Slade has his hands full. But someone has to convince Joslyn that she's responsible only for her own actions—such as her effect on this lawman's guarded heart.

Get $2 Off Select $5 MP3 Albums

It appears that the $2 off a $5 MP3 deal is back and valid on select $5 albums, for those with either a Kindle Fire or access to any Android device that can run the Amazon MP3 app. You must use either the App or the Music Store on the Kindle Fire, not a web browser to purchase the album. So, although I've linked in the list here, to make it easier to see which albums are on the list (it's mostly the same as the June $5 MP3 Albums list, with some changes (currently there are only 99 eligible albums, not 100). As before, be sure that you don't accidentally grab a version that has a digital booklet with it, also, as those are specifically excluded.

Once again, there's no date indicated as to when this offer ends, so I wouldn't wait too long to try it (right now, I see a box about the offer on the product details page for the albums included - so long as you can see that, it should still be a valid promotion; the first time I saw this promotion, it disappeared the next day). I also don't see any information as to whether or not this is a "limit one" offer, but last month you could buy as many albums on the list as you wanted and received the $2 discount on each one (you'll have to check your emailed receipt to check, though, as you don't get an invoice summary when buying on the Kindle).

The Fine Print
Purchase Select $5 MP3 Albums on Your Kindle Fire or on the Amazon MP3 App for Android and Get a $2 Discount Applied at Purchase.

1. Search for any eligible $5 MP3 album title in the Amazon MP3 App for Android or Kindle Fire. If you don't have the Amazon MP3 App for Android, download it here.
2. Purchase your album by clicking the "Buy" button and your $2 discount will be automatically applied to your order. The credit only applies to album purchases and not individual song purchases from the albums. The discount will not apply to album purchases made in the Amazon MP3 webstore or through your Kindle Fire browser. This promotion does not apply to digital booklet versions of the $5 album titles.
3. After your purchase, you can confirm that your $2 credit was applied by checking your order confirmation, which will be sent to you by e-mail.
4. Additional terms and conditions apply.

While looking thru the selections, I ran across two albums that aren't in the list, but are worth considering. Both are on sale for $2.99: The Paul Simon Collection: On My Way, Don't Know Where I'm Going and 100 Must-Have Movie Classics

A Matter of Principle for One Cent (K)

A Matter of Principle, Conrad Black's memoir, is currently on sale for a penny in the Kindle store. This looks like a pricing error by McClelland & Stewart (Random House) and it probably isn't supposed to be free, so if you are interested, grab it quick!

One thing to keep in mind? Although you can't send free books as a gift, you can send the ones that are a penny - so this is the perfect book to send to a friend, if you think they might be interested (if not, all it cost you was a penny!).

Book Description
In 1993, Conrad Black was the proprietor of London's Daily Telegraph and the head of one of the world's largest newspaper groups. He completed a memoir in 1992, A Life in Progress, and "great prospects beckoned." In 2004, he was fired as chairman of Hollinger International after he and his associates were accused of fraud. Here, for the first time, Black describes his indictment, four-month trial in Chicago, partial conviction, imprisonment, and largely successful appeal.

In this unflinchingly revealing and superbly written memoir, Black writes without reserve about the prosecutors who mounted a campaign to destroy him and the journalists who presumed he was guilty. Fascinating people fill these pages, from prime ministers and presidents to the social, legal, and media elite, among them: Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, George W. Bush, Jean Chrétien, Rupert Murdoch, Izzy Asper, Richard Perle, Norman Podhoretz, Eddie Greenspan, Alan Dershowitz, and Henry Kissinger.

Woven throughout are Black's views on big themes: politics, corporate governance, and the U.S. justice system. He is candid about highly personal subjects, including his friendships - with those who have supported and those who have betrayed him - his Roman Catholic faith, and his marriage to Barbara Amiel. And he writes about his complex relations with Canada, Great Britain, and the United States, and in particular the blow he has suffered at the hands of that nation.

In this extraordinary book, Black maintains his innocence and recounts what he describes as "the fight of and for my life." A Matter of Principle is a riveting memoir and a scathing account of a flawed justice system.

Today's Deals

Today's Kindle Deal of the Day is Pocket-47 ($1.99), the first Nicholas Colt Thriller by Jude Hardin, which received a starred review from Publisher's weekly.

Book Description
Fifteen-year-old Brittney Ryan has taken to the streets. Leitha, her older sister and legal guardian, hires private investigator Nicholas Colt to find her and bring her home. Piece of cake, Colt thinks. With Brittney's forbidden boyfriend's address in hand, he plans to make a surprise visit and put this one in the scrapbook.

But something more sinister is behind Brittney's disappearance, and Colt soon finds himself in an ever-widening maze of deceit, betrayal, and murder. When Colt learns what the mysterious phrase Pocket-47 means, he is haunted even more by the plane crash that killed his family and rock band twenty years ago-a crash he now realizes might not have been an accident.

Determined to save Brittney, Colt struggles to untangle the threads of his own tortured past. Unfortunately, one of the most heinous and violent criminals in modern history has other ideas.

An Atlas of Impossible Longing ($1.56 / £0.99 UK), by Anuradha Roy, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $10.99).

Book Description
On the outskirts of a small town in Bengal, a family live in solitude in their vast new house. Here, swathed in silence, a widower struggles with feelings for an unmarried cousin while his motherless daughter Bakul runs wild with Mukunda, an orphan of unknown caste adopted by the family. Confined at the top of the house, the matriarch goes slowly mad, while her husband shapes and reshapes his glorious garden. As Mukunda and Bakul grow, their intense closeness matures into something else and Mukunda is banished to Calcutta. Although he prospers in the turbulent years after Partition, his thoughts are all of what was once his home – and he knows that he must return. This is a love story, as intricate as it is enchanting, about two people who find each other when abandoned by everyone else.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn ($2.99 Kindle, B&N), by Betty Smith, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle (which has a "P.S. Edition" with bonus material).

Book Description
The beloved American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the century, Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a poignant and moving tale filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with life and people and incident. The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg has enchanted and inspired millions of readers for more than sixty years. By turns overwhelming, sublime, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the daily experiences of the unforgettable Nolans are raw with honesty and tenderly threaded with family connectedness -- in a work of literary art that brilliantly captures a unique time and place as well as incredibly rich moments of universal experience.

This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

Jamberry ($7.99 paperback, no Kindle edition; $1.99 B&N), by Bruce Degen, is the Nook Daily Find for Families (requires NOOK Color or NOOK Tablet).

Book Description
Celebrating twenty-five years of Jamberry--a bestselling blockbuster with more than 1.5 million copies in print.

This NOOK Kids Read and Play book features narration, animation and interactivity. Kids can choose to hear the story read aloud and play activities on select pages of the book. Animations replay with a simple tap. Plus, kids can tap to enlarge text and pinch & stretch to zoom in on pictures.

A little boy walking in the forest meets a big lovable bear that takes him on a delicious berry-picking adventure in the magical world of Berryland.

Today's Deals

Money: Everything You Never Knew About Your Favorite Thing To Find, Save, Spend & Covet ($2.99 Kindle, B&N), by Harry Choron, is the Nook Daily Find, price matched on Kindle.

Book Description
Ever made a fast buck? How about traded cowrie shells for a bride or paid for gum with a $10,000 bill? This entertaining and information-packed miscellany explains our fascination with money and how it has shaped our world. Vintage photographs and artwork illustrate surprising facts, lists, and trivia about forgotten financial catastrophes and famous bank robbers, the history of bankruptcy and ancient money gods, wacky cash-related slang and get-rich-quick schemes for the ages. Witty and comprehensive, Money explores the one subject that really makes the world go round.

Today's Kindle Deal of the Day is Five Top-Rated "Brain Books" for $1.99 apiece.

• Brain Power, by Michael J. Gelb, Kelly Howell and Tony Buzan
  Virtually everyone fears mental deterioration as they age. But in the past thirty years neuroscientists have discovered that the brain is actually designed to improve throughout life. How can you encourage this improvement? Brain Power shares practical, state-of-the-evidence answers in this inspiring, fun-to-read plan for action. The authors have interviewed physicians, gerontologists, and neuroscientists; studied the habits of men and women who epitomize healthy aging; and applied what they describe in their own lives. The resulting guidance — along with the accompanying downloadable Brain Sync audio program — can help you activate unused brain areas, tone mental muscles, and enliven every faculty.
• The Practicing Mind: Developing Focus and Discipline in Your Life, by Thomas M. Sterner
  Early life is all about trial-and-error practice. If we’d given up in the face of failure, repetition, and difficulty, we’d never have learned to walk, tie our shoes, or ride a bike. So why, as adults, do we often throw in the towel when at first we don’t succeed? Modern life’s technological speed, habitual multitasking, and promises of instant gratification don’t help. But in his study of how we learn (prompted by his experiences as a musician and adult newbie golfer), Thomas Sterner has found that we have also lost the principles of practice; the process of picking a goal and applying steady effort to reach it. The methods Sterner teaches show that practice done properly isn’t drudgery on the way to mastery but a fulfilling process of building focus, mind-calming clarity, and joy-filled effort in and of itself. The practicing mind savors the baby steps that lead to great strides.
• Creative Thinkering, by Michael Michalko
  Why isn’t everyone creative? Why doesn’t education foster more ingenuity? Why is expertise often the enemy of innovation? Bestselling creativity expert Michael Michalko shows that in every field of endeavor — from business and science to government, the arts, and even day-to-day life — natural creativity is limited by the prejudices of logic and the structures of accepted categories and concepts. Through step-by-step exercises, illustrated strategies, and inspiring real-world examples, he shows readers how to liberate their thinking and literally expand their imaginations by learning to synthesize dissimilar subjects, think paradoxically, and enlist the help of the subconscious mind. He also reveals the attitudes and approaches that diverse geniuses share — and anyone can emulate. Fascinating and fun, Michalko’s strategies facilitate the kind of lightbulb-moment thinking that changes lives — for the better.
• The Right-Brain Business Plan, by Jennifer Lee
  Millions of artists, entrepreneurs, crafters, and solopreneurs dream of making a living doing what they love. But turning their vision into a viable business plan can feel like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Jennifer Lee knows what it’s like to make the entrepreneurial leap — and how to do it successfully. The key is showing creative types how to use — rather than stifle — the imagination and intuition that make them creative in the first place. Lee’s illustrated, colorful worksheets and step-by-step instructions are playful yet practical, enabling readers to get down to the essential business of defining their vision and nailing down plans for funding, marketing, networking, and long-term strategy. Both budding and seasoned business owners will benefit from Lee’s wonderfully original approach.
• The Misleading Mind: How We Create Our Own Problems and How Buddhist Psychology Can Help Us Solve Them, by Karuna Cayton
  Buddhism asserts that we each have the potential to free ourselves from the prison of our problems. As practiced for more than twenty-six hundred years, the process involves working with, rather than against, our depression, anxiety, and compulsions. We do this by recognizing the habitual ways our minds perceive and react — the way they mislead. The lively exercises and inspiring real-world examples Cayton provides can help you transform intractable problems and neutralize suffering by cultivating a radically liberating self-understanding.

The Immortalists ($1.56 / £0.99 UK), by Kyle Mills, is the Kindle Deal of the day for those in the UK (the US edition is $2.99/KLL Eligible).

Book Description
Dr. Richard Draman is trying desperately to discover a cure for a disease that causes children to age at a wildly accelerated rate—a rare genetic condition that is killing his own daughter. When the husband of a colleague quietly gives him a copy of the classified work she was doing before her mysterious suicide, Draman finally sees a glimmer of hope. The conclusions are stunning, with the potential to not only turn the field of biology on its head, but reshape the world. Soon, though, he finds himself on the run, relentlessly pursued by a seemingly omnipotent group of men who will do whatever it takes to silence him.

Finnikin of the Rock ($7.39 Kindle, $1.99 B&N), the first novel in Melina Marchetta's young adult Lumatere Chronicles series, is the Nook Daily Find for Families. If it isn't price matched on Kindle by evening, I'll probably go ahead and get this one from B&N, as there are starred reviews from BookList and School Library Journal. I've reported the lower price to Amazon and hopefully enough other people will do so to get it to drop.

Book Description
Finnikin was only a child during the five days of the unspeakable, when the royal family of Lumatere were brutally murdered, and an imposter seized the throne. Now a curse binds all who remain inside Lumatere’s walls, and those who escaped roam the surrounding lands as exiles, persecuted and despairing, dying by the thousands in fever camps. In a narrative crackling with the tension of an imminent storm, Finnikin, now on the cusp on manhood, is compelled to join forces with an arrogant and enigmatic young novice named Evanjalin, who claims that her dark dreams will lead the exiles to a surviving royal child and a way to pierce the cursed barrier and regain the land of Lumatere. But Evanjalin’s unpredictable behavior suggests that she is not what she seems—and the startling truth will test Finnikin’s faith not only in her, but in all he knows to be true about himself and his destiny.