Circle, Coven & Grove Giveaway, Anniversary and Announcement!

I was on Amazon the other day, checking on something else, and I was astonished to discover that today is the one year anniversary of my rerelease of my first book Circle, Coven & Grove as an eBook. How time flies!

As some of you might know, CC&G was my first book with Llewellyn, so of course it holds a special place in my heart. They stopped printing it a couple of years ago (the only one of my books to go out of print) and so I put the book out myself with a fabulous new cover by Mickie Mueller.

Here is the new cover:

And here is the original print cover.

I want to thank everyone who was so supportive of this little book--you guys really amazed me! Plus I have good news! I've been talking to the publisher at Llewellyn (the fabulous Bill, who I got to hang out with at Pantheacon in February) and it looks as though they are going to put Circle, Coven & Grove BACK OUT IN PRINT! Yayayayay!

We're still ironing out the last few details, so I can't promise anything and I don't know when it will happen, but it looks pretty likely.

So to celebrate the anniversary of the new ebook edition (which will still be available) and the probable rerelease of the book in print, I'm having a fun giveaway for the next couple of days.

I'll be giving away one of my treasured print copies of the book (signed, of course) and Mickie has very generously included a very cool candle sconce from her Etsy collection. Check it out!

And tune in tomorrow, because Elisabeth Alba and I will be posting another report on the Tarot Project!

(Sorry, but this giveaway is for USA only, since these items are heavy to mail. But as usual, if an out-of-country winner is chosen, I'll send them something else cool but lighter weight.)


So, do you have a copy of Circle, Coven & Grove? If so, do you have the ebook or the print one?

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Everyday Witchcraft Celebration Giveaway!

I'm sorry I haven't been around much lately (see previous post for explanation). But I'm going to make it up to you by doing another big giveaway! Do you forgive me now? I thought you would.

In fact, I'm going to do two giveaways in a row, so be sure to check back at the end of the month to see what the second one is. (I have a surprise for you. No, I won't tell you what it is. That would ruin the surprise!)

This is a celebration giveaway, because I'm happy to say that it looks like my new Llewellyn Worldwide book,  Everyday Witchcraft: Making Time for Spirit in a Too-Busy World  is doing quite well, even though it was released almost a month ago.

Can I get a huzzah?

 In fact, here is what I saw when I looked on Amazon yesterday:

That's right--that says #1 New release!

At the bottom of the page, it looked like this:

Insert more "huzzah-ing" here.

Yes, I know that's not a real word. Never mind.

Those numbers are great for a book in its first week of release. For the end of a release month, they're fab. Of course, I only have five reviews so far, and I'd love to get some more (HINT, HINT, SUBTLE HINT), but over all, I'm very happy. I've also had lots of people writing to me and saying how much they love the book, which of course, makes me happier still.

So now I'm going to spread the happy by doing a giveaway! I'm going to give away one big prize pack with a double-sided tote bag (just one bag, but it has Everyday Witchcraft on one side and The Witch's Broom on the other), plus a notebook, postcard, and magnet, and a cool broom pen. Sorry, Magic the Cat is not included. She was just supervising.

PLUS, I'll be giving away TWO signed copies of Everyday Witchcraft!

As usual, it is easy to enter. You get extra points for doing things like buying a copy of the book and posting a review (which this time you can do every day of the contest, as long as you post it in different places each day, like Amazon, Goodreads, and Barnes & Noble ). Or you can just comment and tell me if you are excited about the book, love the cover, or just think Magic the Cat is the best prize-putting-together supervisor evah.



And of course, I'd love it if you'd spread the word. On account of you are all teh best readers evah.



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Cute Kitty in the Midst of A Horrid Week

Those of you who follow me on Facebook may already know that it has been a tough week here. Last Sunday night at 11:15 I got a call from my beloved step-daughter Jenn to tell me that her mom Jo had suffered a massive heart attack and gone into cardiac arrest at the local hospital. After seven minutes of CPR, they managed to stabilize her and send her to the Bassett Hospital in nearby Cooperstown, which is set up for cardiac patients. Jo has been in the ICU there ever since. Jenn flew out from San Jose late on Tuesday and we have been spending most of our days there since she got here. (Hence the radio silence here.)

Jo is also a friend of mine and a frequent guest at Blue Moon Circle events, as well as being my best friend Ellen's other best friend. (Basically, we are a strange modern family.) And of course, this has been especially rough for Jenn. Jo is slowly improving every day and we are hoping for the best, although it will be a long road to recovery.

But in the meanwhile...I decided I needed to do something to cheer Jenn up.

Again, if you follow me on Facebook (and clearly if you don't, you are missing out on all the News), you will know that as I was returning from my visit to San Jose in mid-February, my friend Ellen, who works as a dog groomer at our vets' office, called to tell me about a little cat someone brought in who reminded her of my recently lost Samhain.

This little cat, who they think is about six months old and only weighs 4 1/2 lbs, was found in a snowbank, almost dead. She's apparently pretty tough though, since she made a full recovery. They were looking for someone to adopt her. I fought it...I swear I did! But it kept feeling like Samhain had her paw in this, and eventually I caved and said I'd take her. But I had to wait for her to be spayed, and for a second feline leukemia test to come back negative.

When I called on Friday to see what they thought about me bringing her home temporarily, I was told that the second test had been done, she'd been given her booster shots, and was ready to go! So I brought her back home (I'd had to skip the hospital for the day to catch up with things at work, so Jenn was coming in later with a friend) and surprised Jenn with a buddy to hang out with in the upstairs bedroom at night. There may have been happy squealing :-)

Here's the newest member of the family: Luna (so called because it looks to me like she has a partial lunar eclipse on her face, and when I was trying to decide whether or not to take her, I pulled The Moon tarot card)

What do you think?

For the moment I am trying to keep her upstairs with the intention of introducing her to the other cats slowly. But she is affectionate and full of beans and has already made a break for it once, so something tells me that isn't going to work. I'll keep you posted.

In the meanwhile, I'd intended to do an overdue giveaway to celebrate the four book deal from Berkley, but it is going to have to be a little more overdue, since I'm pretty much on hospital duty until Jenn goes home on Thursday. (And then I'm going to be madly playing catch-up.) But don't worry, I haven't forgotten about it, and soon enough, there will be another fun batch of goodies up for grabs.

Did I mention I also had to replace my furnace unexpectedly? Oh, the joy.

Here is a fun picture from the wonderful Christmas Day we all had together in December.

Jo, Ellen in the back, Jenn, and me on a much happier day

So, that's life, really. Some good stuff, some bad stuff, and always, cats. Thanks to all those who sent their good wishes on Facebook--they were all much appreciated.

SURPRISE! Meet the New Baba Yaga and Chudo-Yudo

As many of you know, I am hard at work on the next Baba Yaga book (after Wickedly Dangerous and Wickedly Wonderful). I thought you might like a sneak peak at our third Baba Yaga and her (mostly) faithful dragon companion, Chudo-Yudo.

Here is our first Baba and Chudo-Yudo

And here is our second

The first cover is a pretty good rendition of what I'd envisioned, and the second isn't quite what I had in mind, but not bad. Of course, we are a long way from having a cover for book three, tentatively called "Wickedly Powerful" (they won't even start working on it until the book itself is done), but I thought you'd like a look at how I envision our third Baba, Bella Yates, and her dragon is his disguise.

Are you ready? Here's Bella

And here is her Chudo-Yudo, who she calls Koshka (which is Russian for a female cat--kind of an inside joke between them, since he is neither a female or a cat, really).

Surprise! Yes, we finally have a Chudo-Yudo who is a CAT! (Doesn't he look as though he could actually be a dragon, though?) This is a picture of a Norwegian Forest cat--they can grow to be over 30 pounds, although of course Chudo-Yudo is even larger than that.

What do you think? Are you happy? Surprised? Excited?

I'm really pleased to finally be getting a cat on the cover. I hope you are too!