The balloon goes Pop!

Seance time! It's late, it's dark, and it's the night before Halloween!

I will dim the lights as we take our seats at the large round table with its worn, white, delicate cloth and a crystal ball in the center. Join hands and close your eyes. Who do you see?

I imagine sitting on a sunny porch on a hot summer day sipping lemonade with the insanely intelligent and sweetly snarky Mark Twain. In his classic white suit and scruffy, laughing white beard, a cigar poking out of the side of his mouth, Mr. Twain gazes thoughtfully at the fluffy white clouds above magnificent magnolia trees before he begins his oration. I could sit here all day and listen to the witticisms flowing from his mouth.

At least we have what's been recorded (these are by Mark Twain from Brainy Quotes)

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.

It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.

Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

Some of the others we contacted in our seance were...

Authors - Charles Dickens, Edgar Allen Poe, Margaret Mitchell, John Steinbeck, Mary Shelley,Stieg Larsson, Dame Daphne du Maurier, Jane Austen, Washington Irving, Carl Sagan, & Dr. Seuss!
Actors - Stan & Ollie, Heath Ledger

Mysterious, exciting, and fun! Thanks so much to those participating and especially to my co-hosts! Angela, Gwen, and Roland! I really enjoyed reading everyone's posts!

But wait! Prizes! We have prizes! Each of us chose random winners from the participants and from the commenters on the posts - surprise!

The winners for me are...

Sheena Kay Graham and Donna Hole!

each receiving a Pop Travel gift!

 

Thanks again to all participants!

 

and

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

snap, crackle, POP!

Welcome, faithful friends! I feel like I'm fading from blogging. But I still try and visit as many as I can. And hopefully the things I share are worth viewing and reading! Like today I'm taking my Pop Travel Blog Tour over to Elizabeth Seckman! She's so romantic and full of spunk! A real sweetheart with some sweet books under her belt. I hope you will go visit her today, as I give some Lazy Housewife advice for staying healthy! Especially good for the sickie season! (Even though my little guy got a bug last week - can't prevent everything!)

I missed the Friday celebration with Vikki, but I do have several things to celebrate, so I'll say them anyway!

• My little guy's fourth grade football team won their second championship in a hard fought battle this weekend! They're so cute! I mean, fierce!

• I finally finished my last look at broken branch falls and am ready for the editor! Which left me free for the next celebration...

• I finally finished my wonderful friend's book! And here is my review:

Wilder Mage by CD Coffelt!

Wilder Mage exposes an underground world of magic hidden from humans, controlled by an evil, psychotic temptress. When mysterious, handsome Justus encounters fiery, independent Sable, their powerful magic isn't their only spark. Coffelt pieces the characters together in an intricate puzzle, filling the reader with anticipation of how it will turn out. I thoroughly enjoyed discovering how magic works in this realm and Coffelt's descriptions wrapped me into the scenes. I'm anxious for the next one!

Wilder Mage

CD Coffelt, Huntress

Musa Publishing

Amazon

B&N

GoodReads

Manic Reader

• And now, I'm super excited to get back into juicing up my sequels, Simulation in the Sleuth of the South, Cooper Files series... and Cradle Rock, in the Beast World series or Book of Ages series, can't decide which yet, after BBF.

Lastly, Angela, Gwen, and Roland Yeomans and I are offering more chances for people to win something in our FROM THE GREAT BEYOND BLOG HOP!

On October 30, our participants will write a post about a famous deceased author or celebrity they'd like to contact in our seance. If you didn't get a chance to participate, but still would like a prize, go visit the posts and comment and we'll enter those, too. So we will haunt the blogs, reading the posts, then the spirits will select winners from the commenters and from the posters, to be announced on October 31. The prizes will be frightfully good, including copies of our books and more! We hope you will join us for a ghostly good time!

Pop Out

Just popped in to pop back out again. Seems like that's all I do these days!
Hope you all had a fantastic weekend! We went to a fun harvest party - love to get out and talk to other moms, let the kids run around in the dark, and see the dads let loose, too.

So, today, I'm over at Julie Flanders's blog and I've switched our roles! I'm interviewing her for my blog tour. Since she will be releasing her second book The Ghosts of Aquinnah in Dec, I wanted to let everyone get to know her better, too! She's a fellow Cincinnatian, but we have yet to meet in person! Hopefully we will when we are accepted to an Ohio book festival next spring. Someday, Julie. Someday!

And don't forget to sign up for our Seance where we reach out into the Great Beyond! Since my senses tell me you all are so busy and may not have time to write a post, we are going to work out another way to raise the stakes for prizes... we'll let you all know the plan as the deadly hour approaches!