Teaser Tuesdays (June 18): The Firebird

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Here's what you do:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page (or your current page)
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My Teaser:

 I didn't answer straightaway. My thoughts had slipped backward to yesterday morning--the dim, shadowed room with its gray light that might have been filtered through clouds, or through rain, that I'd viewed through the eyes of a man waking up in his bed.
____________________________________________

THE FIREBIRD by Susanna Kearsley. Pg 26-27

PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT with either the link to your own Teaser Tuesdays post, or share your ‘teasers’ in a comment here (if you don’t have a blog).

The Event: A New Bookcase

For the longest time I've admired those ladder bookcases, you know the ones with the slanted front, with shelves that get narrower as they go up. The bigger ones look like an A-frame sliced in half, at least from the side.

With every new novel in progress, I expand my permanent research library by at least a dozen books. Usually quite a few more (the current WIP can claim 26 active titles in use, though a few of those were already in my collection).

Not long after I began accumulating the new book stash earlier in the year, it became clear I needed to find them a home. Despite one full height bookcase, a smaller 3-shelf case, half the cupboard space in my desk, and a row of "currently in use books" on the sideboard beside my desk, my office space had become cluttered with ever-rotating piles of homeless books, like so:

But then, O Frabjous Day, the ladder bookcase I ordered finally arrived. In a box. With A Lot of Assembly Required.

Don't let the writing on the box fool you. I took one look at the bag of hardware that would be involved and, hardware assembly not being my thing, put it down quick like.

Next morning I awoke to find the bookcase faerie had come to visit. As if by magic, my bookcase was assembled and waiting to be filled with all the books waiting to be shelved.

O Yet More Frabjous Day! Here it is in all its glory:

As you can see, there's room to expand on these shelves. I love room to expand!

I LIKE having that empty corner filled. We used to have a dog crate there. Dog decided he didn't want his own room.

Not only does it fill that empty corner and hide a bunch of unsightly wires that keep me connected to the outside world, now my books have some breathing space (and room to expand, as books inevitably do in this writing cave), and I am feeling like a very blessed writer indeed.

photo by Jamarmstrong Flickr Commons

We Have a Winner!

Thanks to everyone who stopped by, commented, and entered the drawing this past week. I enjoyed reading about your experiences with living history and reenactments. 

Out of twelve entries I picked a random winner (or random.org did). The winner of a copy of Living History: Drawing on the Past, by Cathy Johnson, and an ARC of Burning Sky is..................

Susan Craft

Congratulations Susan! I'll be emailing you shortly for your address.

Thanks again, everyone!

Research Wednesdays: Living History, Drawing on the Past

Or We-Search Wednesdays, for alliteration's sake.

Today I'm highlighting a little book that packed a big punch when it came to outfitting botanist, artist, and physician Neil MacGregor, one of the main characters in Burning Sky.

Living History, Drawing on the Past by Cathy Johnson is a lovely little book that should be bound in leather like a traveling journal, with a whang-and-toggle closure, because once you open its pages, that's what it feels like you're reading. Someone's actual field journal.

The pages are filled with sketches and handwritten annotations. Sketches of historical peeps. Sketches of an artist's field equipment. Sketches of a naturalist's accoutrement. Or that of a topographer, or a spy.

There's a section on the everyday frontier accoutrement a person might need while exploring outside the bounds of settlements and towns.

And more, like an appendix with tips for creating a persona for living history and reenactment events. 

I think so highly of this little book that somehow I wound up with two copies in my possession. To give it more of a shout out, I'm going to give away my extra copy. It's not brand new, but it's unmarked and very much like new (and it's signed by the author). I'll pair it up with a signed, pre-release ARC* copy of Burning Sky.

If you'd like to win a copy of Living History, Drawing on the Past AND a copy of Burning Sky, leave a comment on this post today, Thursday, or Friday (I'll close the drawing at 9pm Pacific Time Friday the 14th--USA addresses only).

~ Mention whether you've participated in a historical reenactment event, and if so where and, historically speaking, when? If not, have you witnessed such an event? Tell us where, the time period, or event.

I'll do a random drawing over the weekend and post the winner's name here on the blog.

Updated to add: if you would, please leave an email address so I can contact you if you are the winner. Those who've already commented, don't worry. If you're the winner I'll track you down. Mwahahaha...

Updated Friday Evening: Comments, and the drawing, are closed now. Thanks everyone for entering. I'll do the drawing and announce the winners in a bit...

I grew up on the east coast, and we had friends from Florida who participated in Civil War reenactments (as rebels, of course!). When they came to our area, we would trek out to see them, the women of the family in camp, the men on the field as soldiers. The fellows had the opportunity to be extras in a Civil War miniseries, the title of which escapes me now. (Juanita, if you read this, remind me what that miniseries was, please!).

*An ARC is an Advance Reading Copy, released before the finished book. It's the unproofed galley, bound in a cover, so there will be a few typos that were caught in our final proof reading edit. But it's very very close to the finished book.