Talli Day!

What? Another blog promoting this book? You bet! If you don't know yet, Talli Roland's novel THE HATING GAME is universally rated five stars (every review I have seen anyway, which is quite a few).

I bought my copy this morning - even downloaded Kindle for PC especially.

So why this giant blogsplash?

Even a few sales in a short period of time on Amazon helps push the book up the rankings, making it more visible to other readers. The goal today is to propel The Hating Game onto the Kindle bestseller list at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk by spreading the word today.

Amazon.co.uk: http://amzn.to/hNBkJk
Amazon.com: http://amzn.to/hX2ieD

No Kindle? Download a free app at Amazon for Mac, iPhone, PC, Android and more.

Coming soon in paperback. Keep up with the latest at www.talliroland.com.

Interested, but wondering what THE HATING GAME is all about?

When man-eater Mattie Johns agrees to star on a dating game show to save her ailing recruitment business, she's confident she'll sail through to the end without letting down the perma-guard she's perfected from years of her love 'em and leave 'em dating strategy. After all, what can go wrong with dating a few losers and hanging out long enough to pick up a juicy £2,000,000 prize? Plenty, Mattie discovers, when it's revealed that the contestants are four of her very unhappy exes. Can Mattie confront her past to get the prize money she so desperately needs, or will her exes finally wreak their long-awaited revenge? And what about the ambitious TV producer whose career depends on stopping her from making it to the end?

Awards!

My hearty thanks to the wonderful Madeleine at Scribble and Edit who awarded me not one, but two awards! I wondered for a moment if "versatile" and "wholesome" were euphemisms for unpredictable and boring, then realised that this would actually make them mutually exclusive. So I'll take them at face value!

	In which case, I would like to pass on the Versatile Blogger award to (drum roll please!) The Golden Eagle at The Eagle's Aerial Perspective. This blog makes you think, makes you laugh, and even makes you better informed! It's worth a visit (and a follow).
	For the Wholesome Blogger Award, I would like to nominate Jai Joshi at her Tulsi Tree for her fascinating series on the Mahabharat as well as the other interesting articles she posts. An excellent blog you should visit!

I will be back in a few hours to splash Talli Roland. At least I think that's what we are meant to be doing.

Consider the Moon

If you are looking for my poem, I have taken it down for a few months while I submit it as a competition entry. If you would like to read it, e-mail me at dominicdem(at)gmail(dot)com

Dominic de Mattos
Nov 2010

Microfiction Monday 29 Nov 2010

Welcome to another round of Microfiction Monday courtesy of Susan at Stony River. Each week Susan posts a new picture and invites us to write a story in 140 characters or less.

Today's picture:



Doris sighed as the two men argued. It looked like the old man hadn't given them a bum steer after all. He'd given them two!

I couldn't resist a second one:

Dr Suess wasn't entirely happy with the early draft of "The Cat as a Hat".

I look forward to reading all the other entries!

Advent Sunday

Today is the start of Advent. I know we don't start opening our advent calendars or burning our advent candles until 1st December, but the season of advent really has started!



So what is advent? The word comes from the Latin Advenire - to approach and it covers the four Sundays approaching Christmas. It is a time of preparation, of self examination and (traditionally) self denial. It is very similar to the period of Lent which precedes the celebrations of Easter. Many people will be familiar with the idea of "giving something up for Lent" and it is because of this principle of a season of self denial. Somehow a similar period of abstinence for Advent seems to have been lost in history, although our New Year waistlines might be all the better for it if it had not been!

For many preparation for Christmas means cooking food, buying drink, wrapping presents, writing cards, decorating trees and houses (inside and out!), making travel plans, calming excitable children (of any age), soothing frayed nerves and checking the bank balance (with trepidation).

Try adding something new this year.

Make time to sit still in quietness for ten minutes, five if you are unnerved by the experience of quiet.
As you sit still ask yourself three questions:

• What part does kindness play in your life and how can you make it more central?
• Do you hold resentment in your heart and if so, how can you let go of it?
• When was the last time you told the people that you love most that you love them and when is the earliest time that can do so again?

Resentment or unforgiveness is a poison that will destroy our happiness and peace of mind. Forgiving others, for our own good, is the only cure. Kindness and love are a soothing balm that restores our soul. How we arrive at Christmas is up to us. We can be frazzled and over-wrought or we can arrive burden free and in the mood for singing carols!

Dropped in it!

I have been exceptionally busy these last few days with a to do list that would make Hercules blanch. So when my vicar asked me if I wanted to lead the Exploring Belief group tonight, I e-mailed her back and said that I had a mountain of things on, and I would be very grateful if I didn't have to do it. I should mention that I had half prepared something two weeks ago, but had had to cancel the session because I was ill. Anyway, I went along tonight and just before it started, she said that she hadn't got my e-mail until earlier in the evening and had e-mailed me back saying that I didn't need to go tonight. All was well. So the seven of us sat down with our coffees and after a brief chat, my vicar announces, "Now I'd like to hand over to Dom."
HELP!
I'm not sure any prayer of mine has ever been so heartfelt!

How well read are you?

Thanks to Jodi at Turning the page for alerting us to the BBC's lack of faith in the reading public

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.

Instructions:
• Copy this list.
• Bold those books you’ve read in their entirety.
• Italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish or read only an excerpt.
• Tag other book nerds.

Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
The King James Bible - why only the KJV?
Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
Nineteen Eighty Four (1984) – George Orwell
His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
Complete Works of Shakespeare
Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
Middlemarch – George Eliot
Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
Emma -Jane Austen
Persuasion – Jane Austen
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis
The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne
Animal Farm – George Orwell
The DaVinci Code – Dan Brown
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Atonement – Ian McEwan
Life of Pi – Yann Martel
Dune – Frank Herbert
Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Of Mice and Men – John SteinbeckLolita – Vladimir Nabokov
The Secret History – Donna Tartt
The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
On The Road – Jack Kerouac
Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
Moby Dick – Herman Melville
Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
Dracula – Bram Stoker
The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
Ulysses – James Joyce
The Inferno – Dante
Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
Germinal – Emile Zola
Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
Possession – AS Byatt
Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
The Color Purple – Alice Walker
The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White
The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
Watership Down – Richard Adams
A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
Hamlet – William Shakespeare
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Twenty eight - I guess that's better than six, but hardly well read when I look at all the classics I feel I ought to have read!

Why not copy the list and see how you shape up.
Do you exceed the BBC's not so Great Expectations?!