Monday, February 15, 2021

Winter's Respite #Readathon 2021 - Mid-Event Check-In #WintersRespite


The halfway point of our new month for Winter's Respite. Kind of hard to get used to the shorter month, but the winter sure is holding up its end of the bargain. I no longer live in Tennessee (moved back to Michigan) and they were hit with this huge snowstorm crossing the country. I used to complain about not having real winters there. Don't tell me climate change isn't real. There may be some believers down there now. lol

So, how's the reading going? I hope well. 

Share your progress, or post a link to an update post, in the comments section.

The prize page is live here. Thank you to everyone who donated. 

Note: For anyone who would like to read the two books on offer from Rick Marino for review, the author can offer free Kindle copies. Just leave me a comment or send me a message via the contact form (in home page menu).

Despite my joking manner above, I do hope you all are staying safe in this weather, and the pandemic...and I hope you continue to enjoy your winter reading. 


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Tuesday, February 9, 2021

Winter's Respite #Readathon 2021 - Prizes #WintersRespite


This is the giveaway/prize promotion page for all the prizes being given away for readathon participants. At the end of this post, you will find details regarding how the prizes will be awarded at the conclusion of the readathon.

Note: The authors of the books donated would greatly appreciate a review, if you win, on your blog and/or social media and/or on Goodreads, Amazon. Thank you! (This is not required to win.)



WINNER - Indy_Chick, Fiona
Rivals by Jennifer Lane - (2) (1) eBooks (International - Two winners)

“I embrace my rival. But only to strangle him.”
~Jean Racine

After landing her dream job as head volleyball coach at Ohio State University, Lauren Chase’s career has become a nightmare. Her only hope of saving her job is to recruit a star player to her team. Too bad the player’s twin brother has signed a football scholarship for OSU’s chief rival, Michigan. And too bad Michigan coach, Jeremy Trent, sends sparks through Lauren every time they cross paths. But no way will she pursue an attraction to a man who represents the university she hates.

Jeremy detests his boss, and he hopes that signing the nation’s #1 recruit is the ticket he needs to become a head coach himself one day. Lauren Chase is already a head coach, and Jeremy has to admit that she intrigues the hell out of him. He wants to know why her performance has tanked after winning a national championship. He wants to see beneath Lauren’s fast pace and dirty mouth. But he can’t get with a Buckeye, right?

Maybe rivals don’t have to remain enemies. Maybe they can learn to appreciate their opponent’s strengths. And, if they’re lucky—if they excel at the game—maybe rivals can bring out the very best in each other.

Psychologist/author (psycho author) Jennifer Lane invites you to her world of sports romance and romantic suspense with a psychological twist!

Jen fell in love with sports at a young age and competed in swimming and volleyball in college. She went on to become the Honda Award Winner for Division III Athlete of the Year. She still gets high from the smell of chlorine and the satisfaction of smashing a beautiful volleyball set.

Jen’s latest novel is Rivals, a romance between coaches from rival universities. Her Blocked trilogy also explores the transformation from hate to love. Particularly in this time of division, Jen’s favorite theme is finding common ground.

A romantic suspense trilogy (The Conduct Series) and a psychological thriller (Twin Sacrifice) complete Jen’s collection of stories. She calls Ohio home and shares writing space with her two trusted feline collaborators: Tuxedo and Tessa.

Whether writing or reading, Jen loves stories that make her laugh and cry. In her spare time, she likes to exercise and visit her amazing sisters in Chicago and Hilton Head.

Visit her at jenniferlanebooks.com


WINNER - Indy_Chick
Twisted Love by Wally Runnels - Print ARC (One Winner)

Roiling in political corruption and the raging violence of drug cartels in the California/Mexico borderlands, Twisted Love explores the redemptive power of love even amidst the most brutal and privileged echelons of contemporary society. Julietta Aguilar, a young archaeologist with a dark past shrouded with sordid family secrets, discovers a hidden chamber under the ruins of the Templo Mejor, in the heart of Mexico City. She soon finds herself enmeshed in an ancient mystery even as she tries to solve her father's senseless murder.Now followed by cartel killers, deadly supernatural spirits and thwarted by her own family, her quest for peace seems almost insurmountable – until she meets a man in black with a nefarious background who goes only by one name. Rocky. A fast-paced, gripping read reminiscent of fifties pulp, the characters in Twisted Love offer a dark study in human nature, with all the gory details of unbridled power, soul-searching hatred, strange fetishes, and macabre personalities etched on the reader's mind in searing black and white.


About the author
Wally Runnels was born in San Diego, raised along the border at his family's ranch (whose original deed was recorded in 1870), and has traveled extensively through Mexico and Latin America. Hanging out on the border between two countries, he's met a lot of unusual people: Hollywood types, Border Patrol Officers, smugglers, professional trackers, and people he won't mention by name.

He'll remind you that no matter how weird a story can get, it'll contain some grain of truth.

Instagram

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WINNER - MALLORY
Books by Rick Marino - Two books below (print copies - One winner)

Note: For anyone who would like to read the two books for review, the author can offer free Kindle copies. Just leave me a comment or send me a message via the contact form (in home page menu).


I Love You Very Muchly

I Love You Very Muchly is a true story about Nika, a Shih-Tzu puppy who was abandoned in a crate with no one to take care of her. Her new mommy and daddy found her and decided to adopt her. They did not know how it would work out because they had two large golden retrievers, but they wanted to try anyway. This the heartwarming story of a beautiful, fun, sweet, (and sometimes bossy) puppy who needed the love of her parents and the skills of the surgeons to save her life.


I Miss You Very Muchly City of the Cats: Nika's Trek to find Big Brother

Every year, some of our pets wander away from home, some never to return. Sometimes you get lucky (like our family) and they come home. Why do they ever leave, where do they go? They must have a reason to leave their safe surroundings of good food, fresh water, companionship, and the like.

This is the story of Nika, her desire to find her big brother, and the heroic measures that were taken by both humans and her new found animal friends to save her from certain doom.

About the author

Rick Marino and his wife, Teresa have been raising rescue dogs and cats for decades. They share their time between their home in Ohio and New Jersey. Nika inspired Rick with her personality and braveness to write the two books about her, her bother Marco and her sister Penelope Purr.


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Prizes from Stephanie Barko, Literary Publicist


Reveal by Megan Watterson - One paperback copy (U.S. only)

Harvard-trained theologian Meggan Watterson marched out of her church at age ten. With little-girl clarity, she knew something tremendously crucial was missing…the voices of women. Watterson became a theologian and a pilgrim to the divine feminine to find the missing stories and images of women’s spiritual voices. She knew women’s voices had never been silenced, just buried. But what she truly sought was her own spiritual voice inside her—the one veiled beneath years of self-doubt. At a sacred site of the Black Madonna in Europe, Watterson had a revelation that changed her. Rather than transcending the body, denying or ignoring it, being spiritual for her meant accepting her body as sacred. Only then, Watterson realized could she hear the voice of unfaltering love inside her- the voice of her soul. With passion, humor, and brutal honesty, Watterson draws on ancient stories and lesser-known texts of the divine feminine, like The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, making them modern and accessible to reveal the spiritual process she went through. She suggests that being spiritual is simply about stripping down to the truth of who we really are. Through her extensive work with women, Watterson found that she was not alone. There are countless women who long for a spirituality that encourages embodiment rather than denies it, that inspires them to abandon their fears but never themselves, and to be led by the audacious and fiercely loving voice of truth inside them. No matter where you rest on the spectrum of spirituality; religious or secular, devout believer or chronic doubter, freelance mystic or borderline agnostic, this story is about the desire in all of us to want to shed everything that holds us back. Reveal provides what religions have left out—the spiritual voice of a woman who has claimed her body as sacred—a woman who has found the divine insider her. In essence, this is a manual for revealing your soul. "I have spent the majority of my life gathering stories of the divine feminine. Each time before getting my masters degrees in theology and divinity, I went on a pilgrimage to sacred sites of the divine feminine throughout Europe. The first one was with a group and the second was on my own… The stories of the divine feminine, of Christianity’s Mary Magdalene, Catholicism’s Black Madonna, Hinduism’s Kali ma, and Buddhism’s Green Tara for example, allowed me to begin to see that I wasn’t as much of a spiritual misfit as I had thought. There was a red thread that became visible to me that ran through so many of the world religions, especially through their mystics, relating that the way to find the divine is to go within. And, that our potential to be transformed by going inward is exactly the same whether we are a man or a woman. The real barometer of our spiritual potential is not our sex, but the commitment of our desire to want to encounter the divine." Excerpt from Reveal


WINNER - MICHELLE
What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez - One hardcover copy (U.S. only)

A woman describes a series of encounters she has with various people in the ordinary course of her life: an ex she runs into by chance at a public forum, an Airbnb owner unsure how to interact with her guests, a stranger who seeks help comforting his elderly mother, a friend of her youth now hospitalized with terminal cancer. In each of these people the woman finds a common need: the urge to talk about themselves and to have an audience to their experiences. The narrator orchestrates this chorus of voices for the most part as a passive listener, until one of them makes an extraordinary request, drawing her into an intense and transformative experience of her own.

In What Are You Going Through, Nunez brings wisdom, humor, and insight to a novel about human connection and the changing nature of relationships in our times. A surprising story about empathy and the unusual ways one person can help another through hardship, her book offers a moving and provocative portrait of the way we live now.

An Oprah Favorite Thing, Christmas 2020.


The Boy, The Mole, The Fox & The Horse by Charlie MackesyOne hardcover copy (U.S. only)

The Sunday Times Bestseller and New York Times Bestseller.

A book of hope for uncertain times.

Enter the world of Charlie's four unlikely friends, discover their story and their most important life lessons.

The conversations of the boy, the mole, the fox and the horse have been shared thousands of times online, recreated in school art classes, hung on hospital walls and turned into tattoos. In Charlie's first book, you will find his most-loved illustrations and some new ones too.

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PRIZES FROM YOUR HOST

Prize One (One winner)
I will make a $15 donation to the winner's choice of a human rights organization, such as the ACLU, Boys and Girls Club, Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD, Amnesty International, It Gets Better, Planned Parenthood, or another human rights organization of your choice (food banks, homeless shelters would also apply), perhaps your local chapter or a local organization. This giveaway is open internationally. Note: I will not donate to any organization that does not believe all are equal, regardless of gender, race or sexual orientation.

I hope you will consider having your donation made to one of these organizations fighting on the front lines of the Black Lives Matter movement (click each link to learn more).

Unicorn Riot
NAACP Legal Defense Fund
Campaign Zero
Movement for Black Lives
BYP100
TGI Justice Project
Audre Lorde Project
Metro Atlanta Mutual Aid Fund
National Bail Fund Network
The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights


WINNER - FIONA
Prize Two (One winner)
Winner's choice of any book title from the bargain books (these are generally used books) section of Better World Books. They ship internationally (priced at $3.98 or less) OR a $3.00 Amazon eGift card
.

Giveaway Details
This is a readathon participant only giveaway. To be eligible, you must have signed up, participated and added a link to the official readathon wrap-up post (I will give everyone until Friday, March 5th at 11:59 pm EST to complete their wrap-ups). We no longer use a linky for wrap-ups. There will be a Google form on the readathon wrap-up post where you will enter your info, your wrap-up link, and answer yes/no on whether you want to win a prize or not. We have a total of 9 prizes. This means there will be 9 winners. I will award prizes on a first come, first served basis. I will draw the 9 winners with random.org and email all 9 at the same time. The first person who emails me back with their choice gets that prize. I will mark off the prizes as they are taken. Winners will be chosen after the wrap-up post deadline (see above).

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Monday, February 1, 2021

Winter's Respite #Readathon 2021 - It's time to read! #WintersRespite


Let's kick those new year's resolutions to READ MORE into high gear! Are you ready?

If you have any questions about how things work, check out the guidelines in the sidebar menu or the sign up post, or you can always leave me a comment (or send me a message via the contact form). The linky below is the same one as the sign up linky. If you do a starting line/goal post, just add your link again, but be sure to put "goal post" beside your name, i.e. Michelle @ True Book Addict (goal post).

Some really great people (authors, publicists) have donated prizes this time. Thanks so much to them! I'll have the prize page posted by the end of the first week. 

I will post a mid-event check in post at the halfway point. Our hashtag for the readathon across social media is #WintersRespite. Stop by our Facebook group, Goodreads group and check out our Instagram. I also forgot to mention we also now have a Facebook page. If you haven't already, stop by and give us a like. Thanks! (You can also access all our socials via the links in the sidebar menu.)

Okay...that's it. Happy reading!

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