Big News Announcement and Holiday Greetings

I know I have been a little scarce lately, but things have been crazy this year. Crazier, I should say. And December is always something of a wild ride, between running The Artisans’ Guild (50 artists, retail in December, ‘nuff said), making jewelry, and all the regular holiday stuff. Plus upstate NY winter and sick cats. But I’m going to try and catch up on all the news, starting with the big announcement I’ve been sitting on for a few weeks.

NEW BOOK CONTRACT!

In Friday’s Publishers Marketplace, there will be this announcement:

Non-fiction: Religion/Spirituality

Deborah Blake's A MODERN WITCHCRAFT PRIMER: GODDESS EMPOWERMENT FOR THE KICK-ASS WOMAN, a comprehensive guidebook to witchcraft as a female-focused religion, including detailed instructions on how to practice self-care in today's society through goddess worship and magic, to Daniela Rapp at St Martin's Essentials, in a nice deal, by Elaine Spencer at The Knight Agency.

That’s right; I signed a contract for my first mainstream nonfiction book, with St. Martin’s Press. This is really exciting for a couple of reasons. It will allow me to reach an entirely new audience, and hopefully help a lot of women who are trying to find ways to feel more empowered in an increasingly overwhelming world. Don’t worry, though—this doesn’t mean there will never be another Llewellyn book. This is simply a fork in the road, not an entirely new path. Still, it is VERY cool, and of course, I’ll be celebrating with a giveaway! 

Celebration Giveaway!

 Check it out: A Fire tablet, a signed copy of The Little Book of Cat Magic, a broom pen, a regular pen, a stuffed dragon, a black cat bookmark, and an assortment of other bookmarks!

We’re also shopping a contemporary women’s fiction book, and I’m working on the next book in the Baba Yaga series, which I hope to self-publish in the new year, other contracts allowing.

For those of you who are still holiday shopping for Yule and/or Christmas, I’ve got a bunch of fun things up on my (mostly moribund for the last few years) Etsy shop. There’s some jewelry (Pagan and otherwise), some signed books and tarot decks (usually with other goodies), and due to numerous requests, I’ve also created some spell kits for Opening to Love, Protection and Strength, Healing and Peace, and Prosperity. The kits are available in either lovely carved wood boxes or pretty organza bags, with or without signed books. You can check it out here:

https://www.etsy.com/shop/deborahblake

Keep in mind that we’re getting close to the holidays, and even with priority mail, I’ll need a few days to get things to you. So if there is something that strikes your fancy, order it soon.

 

 What the spell kits look like.

I’ll be doing an end-of-year wrap-up in a couple of weeks, but in the meanwhile, I wish you all a Blessed Yule, a Merry Christmas (a belated Happy Hanukkah) and all the joy in the world.

And now to the giveaway! As usual, all you have to do to enter is fill in the Rafflecopter form. No purchase necessary. Maybe you'll end up with an extra gift for yourself this holiday season.

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Beltane Birthday Celebration

My birthday was on Saturday, and I mostly celebrated it by celebrating something else. Beltane (May Day) to be specific. The current core three members of Blue Moon Circle drove about 45 minutes to Robin's house to "get the band back together" for the day. (Robin was one of the original members and is still a part of the group, but lives far away enough and is so busy, it is hard for us all to get together often.) She and my goddess-daughter Sophie wrote and put on the ritual--I told them my gift was being able to just relax and take part, instead of having to organize and put it on. Then we had a wonderful feast, along with Robin's husband George and son Nate. I got a few cool gifts (gemstones! beer made by monks!) and Robin baked me a birthday honey cake topped with lavender and rose petals to go with Chris's home made ice cream. The rain even held off until we were done. It was a lovely day. (And then I come home and worked on revisions, of course.) Plus, we realized it was the 14 year anniversary of the first ritual we all did together, which was pretty amazing!

Some of my favorite people

Ellen with pal Bailey

Sophie and her new kitten, Chris and her knitting

The ritual by the firepit

Our crafty Beltane pots we made and blessed for each other

Birthday honey cake

Corn for the feast!

Yum!

Nate and Sophie!

Me and my favorite kids

Our traditional GRRRR picture

Presents and a cute card (inside is says something about gray hair making you cute)

Blue agate wind chimes

more gemstones

I also got lots of lovely birthday wishes on Facebook and Twitter--thank you!

DANGEROUSLY FIERCE Release Day Giveaway Extravaganza

It's here! It's out today! What am I shouting about? DANGEROUSLY FIERCE, of course. This is the third book in the Broken Riders series, a spinoff of the Baba Yaga series. Berkley put out the first three book in series one and the first two in series two, but then I lost my contract, which meant that my faithful readers weren't going to get Alexei's story. I couldn't have that, could I? So I wrote it and self-published it (with the help of multiple brilliant first readers, a new cover artists, and the amazing Sierra Newburn, who did all the file conversions and uploading).

Didn't the cover come out well?

 And here it is! To celebrate, I'm doing a HUGE release day giveaway extravaganza. I hope you'll all help me to spread the word (both about the book release and the giveaway)--if this experiment is successful, I might even write another Baba Yaga or Riders book/novella/short story. We'll have to see how it goes. I hope you're as excited as I am!

Because so many people love this series so much, I've decided to do a multiple winner giveaway, and spread the love around. Here's what we've got:
 
The Grand Prize: A Kindle Fire 7 (with Alexa...I'm not sure how they fit her in that little box). It's red!

Plus Prize #2
A large tote bag (for all your books, of course) and a notebook with the cover on them

Prize #3

Signed copies of two of the few remaining ARCs (advanced reader copies) of Dangerously Charming and Dangerously Divine, the first two books in the series, plus a fun dragon. (There are a LOT of dragons in Dangerously Fierce...)

Limited edition ARCs!

 Prize #4
Signed copies of the mass market versions of both Dangerously Charming and Dangerously Divine, plus the last of the cool key chains I had made for Dangerously Charming promo, and one small and one large magnet.

I love these key chains, don't you?

Plus all the winners will get these great bookmarks, a postcard, and a magnet.

To enter, just fill in the Rafflecopter form below. As always, no purchase is necessary and you get credit for anything you've done already, like sign up for my newsletter.

If you want to run right out and buy the book, here are some links. It will be available in both eBook AND print form, although right now Amazon is the only one with the print version available. I'll let you know when the print versions are available elsewhere. (There was a tiny glitch with Amazon, so right now there are different links for print and for eBook. We hope to get that fixed soon.)

ALL THE LINKS:

Barnes and Noble - https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dangerously-fierce-deborah-blake/1128017377?ean=2940155144502

Amazon ebook - https://www.amazon.com/Dangerously-Fierce-Broken-Riders-Book-ebook/dp/B079YVCBHT

Amazon paperback - https://www.amazon.com/Dangerously-Fierce-Riders-Deborah-Blake/dp/1985772620/

Smashwords - https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/794760

iBooks - https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/dangerously-fierce/id1351761072?mt=11

Kobo - https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/dangerously-fierce

(Before you ask, no, I won't be putting it out in audiobook form. I know people love those, but they're very expensive to produce, alas.)

Don't forget that the most helpful thing you can do for an author besides buying the book is to review it and spread the word...assuming you like it, of course.

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New Year's Day at Casa Blake

I usually spend New Year's Day happily by myself, but this is a tough one, because I'm losing my beloved Magic on Wednesday. (She's barely eaten in the last few days and is clearly uncomfortable; the tumors are huge now. They'll burst on their own and kill her soon, and I want better for her than that, so the appointment has been made, and I'm keeping her comfortable until then and treasuring every damned moment.)

We started the morning like so many others, with Magic sitting on my lap while I ate breakfast and read my book. She still purred, which made my heart happy. It has always been my favorite way to start off my days, and I'll miss it. Well, actually, I started off the morning staring at the thermometer and making rude noises. But then breakfast. (It was -13 here when I got up. Ugh.)

Breakfast snuggles

That's just rude

Then in the early afternoon, my friend Ellen (who found me Magic, along with her brother Mystic and mom Minerva almost 16 years ago) came over for a low-keyed New Year's celebration geek style: Chinese food, Scrabble, and watching this year's Doctor Who Christmas Special (which I had gallantly held off on watching so we could do so together). We got Peking Duck, one of our favorites, and Magic happily nibbled on a bit of duck meat.

Peking duck? Well, maybe just a bite or two.

 It made me happy to see her taking such pleasure in our treat. (Although admittedly, all the Chinese food in our little town is fairly mediocre. Still, I didn't have to cook it. And I love duck almost as much as Magic does. Ribs, too, although she didn't get any of those.)

Feast!

 The Doctor Who episode was actually pretty terrific, and it was nice to share it with Ellen.

Last time we'll see this

It was great

 Magic spent most of the meal sitting next to me, although she quickly got bored with the duck. She always supervises everything I do, from eating to writing. Not sure how I'll do either without her. Yes, she IS the boss of me.

Sitting next to me, supervising as usual

 Eventually she wandered off to sit on the bed with (but at a reasonable distance from) her brother and his pal Angus.

It was a three cat afternoon when the sun hit the bed

 Apparently she was my good luck charm, because then Ellen went on to beat me. By six points :-)

Ellen pondering a clever word

We play nine letter Scrabble, so we can get even more vicious and make even longer words.

All in all, it was as good a New Year's Day as I could have hoped for, and I even finished up by writing 3,000 words on the current manuscript, after a nap. (What am I working on? Tune in soon, and I'll tell you. I'm just about ready to talk about it.)

I hope your first day of 2018 was a good one, and that if, like me, it is starting off tough, it gets better as it goes along. I am looking forward to sharing mine with you in the days to come.

Magic and Mystic Turn 15!

If you are a regular here, you have probably heard quite a lot about Magic the Cat (Queen of the Universe) and her brother, the giant gray kitty Mystic. To me, they will always be my "kittens," since I got them, along with their mom, from the shelter when they were only about ten weeks old.

So tiny and adorable! But the size of Mystic's feet should have warned me...

Who could have resisted those faces?

 And yet, somehow, today they are turning fifteen. I don't know how it happened. (After all, I'm not getting any older, right?) We lost their mom last March, so I confess that it is a little scary seeing them getting older. But mostly they're pretty healthy, aside from some arthritis in her back that makes it hard for Magic to jump up on the couch and the desk anymore. Here are the new stairs I bought to help her out, along with an ottoman by the couch. (She picked up on the ottoman right away...the stairs are taking a little longer.)

Magic enjoying the sun.

 I confess, as much as I love all my cats, Magic and I have always had a special connection. Until a few years ago, this was one of her favorite positions. Especially if I was cooking. She would leap straight up from the floor to my shoulders. Needless to say, this worked a lot better in the winter when I was wearing a lot of layers... (She also co-wrote a number of my Llewellyn books.)

When they were younger, the siblings were also quite close. (You can see mom Minerva in the background. I'm pretty sure she was saying, "You two get along now.") As they got older, that was no longer true, in part because Mystic liked to throw his considerable weight around.

Although as you can see, he is usually pretty laid back.

Don't bother me...I'm napping.

 This picture was taken last week, on a cold but sunny day. You can see they've carefully spaced themselves out with Angus in between.

Truth be told, it doesn't matter if they are fifteen or five, they will always be my babies.

So I'm going to celebrate their birthday the same way I celebrate everything else--with a giveaway! Happy birthday, babies. Mama loves you more than the moon and the stars and chocolate.

Mystic, checking out the goodies

My yearly calendar, featuring book covers and cats, plus a Magic the Cat notebook and mousepad, a cute card from one of the shop artists that I think looks like Mystic, and a little black cat.

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RELEASE DAY! Dangerously Charming is here!

It's here!

Are you as excited as I am? I hope so.

I know I've been doing a LOT of promo for this book, and I promise, after today, we're going back to cute kitty pictures and stuff like that, but bear with me for one more day of shouting about this book I'm so proud of, okay?

In case you missed it, I'm doing an informal Release Day party on my Facebook Author Page (you're following me there, right?) from 3PM-9PM today, October 4th. I'm giving away all sorts of goodies and generally sharing my joy with whoever shows up. Will you be there to help me celebrate?

Here's a couple of links you might want to check out, in the meanwhile:

For a fun look at Day’s adventures, there is a short-short story over at Literary Escapism

http://www.literaryescapism.com/49061/on-the-cmcon17-beach-one-wild-ride-by-deborah-blake

Plus I have a guest post and giveaway at Fang-Tastic Books http://fang-tasticbooks.blogspot.com/2016/10/guest-blog-and-giveaway-dangerously.html and you can read the first chapter and enter the giveaway over at The Qwillery http://qwillery.blogspot.com/2016/10/excerpt-from-dangerously-charming-by.html

If you wish you could hang out with me in person, here’s a link to a video interview I did at Shelf Addiction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHJCTr5v9gI

AND Amazon has the print version on sale right now for $6.29, for those of you who like a bargain. Here are a few of the buy links:

Barnes & Noble |Amazon |Penguin

If you do buy the book, I hope you’ll post a review on Amazon, B&B, and/or Goodreads when you’re done, since those reviews are a big part of what gets other people to read the book.

Thanks to all of you for all the encouragement and cheering about this book. It means more to me than I can say. Happy Release Day to us!

Yule Celebration Giveaway!

Yule, also known as the Winter Solstice, starts either Monday night or Tuesday morning, depending on which part of the country you live in. (If you're in the Southern Hemisphere, you're observing the Summer Solstice instead, of course.) In celebration of all the holidays at this time of year, as well as my new Llewellyn book contract (you KNEW I was going to do a giveaway for that, right?) I'm going to do one last giveaway this year. It's a cool one!

Everyday Witchcraft tote bag and notebook, plus a broom ornament, plus swag!

Isn't this adorable?!

OMG! Look what's on the back of the tote bag!

The giveaway includes a reversible oversize tote bag with EVERYDAY WITCHCRAFT on one side and The Witch's Broom (still on sale in Kindle form for only $2.99, but I have no idea for how long!) on the other side. Also, the last of my Everyday Witchcraft notebooks, and a cool Yule broom ornament I special-ordered from some lovely Pagans in France on Etsy to give to my family and friends--this was the last of those, too. See how special y'all are? Plus, of course, some misc. swag and bookmarks and such.

By the way, check out how popular Everyday Witchcraft still is! (I tend not to check, so when I happen to look at the page, it is always a pleasant surprise. Thanks SOOOOO much to all of you who have bought a copy!)
#11 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > New Age & Spirituality > Wicca, Witchcraft & Paganism > #15 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Religion & Spirituality > Earth-Based Religions > Paganism & Neo-Paganism

All you have to do to enter the contest is to use the Rafflecopter form below and choose some or all of the options. (USA only this time, alas. Don't worry, I'll do another world-wide one in the new year.) 

Tell me, what do you celebrate at this time of year? Hanukkah, Yule, Christmas, or some combination? What do you do to celebrate?

Wishing you all a fabulous holiday season and a blessed Yule!

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