(Are You Interested in an Officially Licensed The The Wheel of Time™ Themed Coloring Book?) This offer no longer valid

Update: You can now preorder your The Wheel of Time™ coloring book at czukart.com

Are you interested in a Wheel of Time coloring book? If so, please read on and respond in the poll at the over at Facebook in the JordanCon group, Tarvalon.net (link coming) or here (look in the right sidebar until 2 February 2016). Your response will help determine how many coloring books to print. The more commitments to pre-order the sooner they'll be printed.

Details that will hopefully help to answer your questions:

•20 designs have been approved for "Patterns of the Wheel", coloring art based on The Wheel of Time™ (Note: original post was for 18. We've added 2 more.) I am an officially licensed artist for The Wheel of Time™

•Book dimensions are 8.5 x11 inches (21.2 x28 cm)

•Each drawing will be stand alone on a page of high quality paper (i.e. no bleed through to a drawing on the backside, or for easy removal should you want to display your art.)

•The drawings are all in my pysanky-inspired style. If you are not familiar with my art, you can visit www.czukart.com and check out some of my other works, including my first coloring book. I will also post some thumbnails of in the comments.)

•I anticipate the pre-order price will be $20 (USD) plus shipping (my website will calculate USPS postage.)

•Preorders can alternatively be picked up at JordanCon, if that option is selected when ordering.

•A few books may be available for sale at JordanCon in the print shop and in the charity auction. The price will be the regular (TBD) price, not the preorder one.

•I am not able (my own reasons, not the Con's) to (wo)man a table in the dealer's hall, though I will have a display in the art show and some of the originals will be available there.

•Books will remain available on my website, after the pre-order time period is over, until all are gone. There are no plans for a second printing at this time.

•I can mail overseas (my site will calculate postage and include it in the purchase price.)

•Currently working with Ta' veren Tees so that some will be available through their shop/convention tables at other conventions.

•Poll results will be tallied in mid February and I will place the print order accordingly.

•You will still need to preorder when that option opens up. I will post in this thread and separately when that occurs.

If you could indicate the likelihood of your pre-ordering Patterns of the Wheel, a coloring book based on the WoT), please indicate below. There also are options for ordering multiple copies. At this point, there is no differentiation as to how you plan to receive your pre-order, but there will be on the website when the ordering opens up. Please only vote in one place.

Thank you all so much! Robert Jordan has the most wondrous fans! 

Some pictures because that always helps.

 

The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo

I found this book intriguing, not so much for the actual story, but for the descriptions of life and afterlife in colonial Malaysia. Though I had a major in Asian studies, in my life before becoming a nurse, I hadn't retained much about the beliefs of Chinese afterlife (at least in the time period of the novel. One of the more fascinating mentions in the author's afterward was that though the concept of a ghost bride, a living woman married to a man after his death, or a dead woman married, after death, to a deceased man, was familiar in areas once under Chinese jurisdiction, it was not known as a precious practice in mainland China. The author speculated that this might be because of the deemphasizing of religion and spiritual beliefs by Chinese governments since the fall of the emperor. I also found it interesting that it was recommended to me by a man, and when I commented on the romance aspect in the book, he hadn't even noticed it when reading.

tags:  2016-read, read-on-recommendation, thank-you-charleston-county-library, first-novel-or-book, taught-me-something, made-me-look-something-up

Brody by Marco Canora

My freezer is usually full of bones. No, I'm not a serial killer; I'm a cook. I love when my home has delectable smells wafting from the kitchen. Early on, I learned that those bits and bobs others throw out can be saved and turned into delicious broths and stocks to enhance future recipes or suffice as a stand alone to sip. I've been doing this since the first Thanksgiving turkey I cooked (age 12) was reduced to a carcass, and my mother taught me how to make stock from it. Now that paleo diet has made such things trendy, my "stock" made from the bones remaining behind from meals has become "bone broth".

Marco Canora also has been making and partaking ofbroths for years, though he is much more skilled, and has a better stocked kitchen than I do. For instance, I tend to throw my ingredients into my crock pot, with water and a touch of apple cider vinegar to help break the good stuff in the bones down. I'm betting that he has multiple stockpots, and someone else to do the dishes. I've never bought veggies and meats/bones to make my broths, simply relied on scraps and leftovers, but given some of the recipes in this book, I just might buy some supplies. Brodo is both the name of the take out window behind his Hearth restaurant in New York City, and the Italian word for broth. It's also the name for this collection of Canora's recipes for brodo and for some other recipes associated with it. My mouth is watering. This was a good find, which I intend to put to use

Thank you to blogging for books and to the publishers for sending me this copy. And thank you for giving me a destination to visit when I next get to New York City.

Tricky Twenty-Two by Janet Evanovich (and contains a correct usage of RAFO!)

I like to listen to the Stephanie Plum novels on audio because I absolutely love what Lorelei King does with the voices. I used to occasionally read the books, but missed Lula and Connie's voices, or Ranger's "Babe". (Hearing them in my head just wasn't the same). Plus, I listen while doing housework, or when driving. The stories are usually pretty insignificant, but this one will forever be "in which Stephanie choses-- or not. Because we really won't know til the next one what actually comes down."  Wanna know who? RAFO.*

I get by with a little help from my friends -or- how two Amys amuse each other from afar

Yesterday, I returned home to find this sight at the end of the hall outside our apartment and posted a picture on social media:

I'm guessing husband's new tai chi sword has arrived at the apartment.

My friends are clever, and the usual round of comments followed, the first being from Spedbug (who has been mentioned a couple of times in this blog, and also shares the name "the other Amy" with me).  "Either that or a snake has mailed itself to you. Be very careful"

I couldn't get the image of snake-in-a-box out of my brain. It tumbled into the images from The Little Prince, depicting a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. (For those unfamiliar, here's a link to The Little Prince, boa and hat illustrations.) Every time I looked at the four foot long box, lurking quietly in the corner where it had been since I dragged it inside, I smiled.

The rest of the day tumbled on. Husband arrived, opened box. Sword. No snake, though I looked extra carefully through the packing. 

Usually, I turn electronics off in the evening, muting texts, calls, resisting the lure of the great beyond bound up in the internet, shunning videos and television after a certain hour. But there's an exception to almost every rule, and last night, the phone stayed on, which gave the opportunity to check email once more before turning it off. There, I found an alert for a blog post, which really confused me at first, because though it clearly was from my friend Speddy's blog, it had the name of this one in it. I clicked through.

And then I laughed. Joyous laughter. Javaczuk peered over my shoulder, so that we both were hovered over my iPhone, bathed in the light of its screen. And we laughed. 

It's 9 panels of deliciousness (especially if you're a snake), humor, czuk tidbits, geek humor, and creativity. And she didn't even know about the song I used to sing when I went in our back yard by the lake, to warn the cottonmouths away. But she's right. I'm small, gray, and in some circles, known as Mouse. Click on over to An Unwanted Delivery. You can add a smile to your day.

Edited to add my own drawing of the scene:

The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion

The Rosie Project was great. It would have been a hard mark to meet, and, for me, didn't make it. Tired just a tad too hard, and lacked the refreshing charm of the first novel.

The Girl with Ghost Eyes by M.H. Boroson

As I read this book, I wondered if it was a secret history*, and what actually happened to San Francisco in 1909 (even though the book is set a tad earlier).

Wonderful mixture of Daoism, ghost hunting, martial arts, San Francisco's Chinatown, magic, a great central character, and a couple of great side-kicks, who may, or may not be ghosts and monsters. I got lost in some of the forms in fighting, but then, I have trouble remembering the forms doing Tai Chi, and I do that every day (and have for almost 4 years now.)

Found this via a FB post of author Michael Livingston, who mentioned seeing the book on the shelf near his own book, while travelling at Christmas. Good tip. Wish I had energy to write a full review, but have just enough to give it a hearty thumbs up.

*Secret histories are those tales set in our world, within our events and time lines, but depict additional happenings than what we are told in our history books.

Tags: read-in-2015, thank-you-charleston-county-library, fantasy, secret-history, taught-me-something, made-me-look-something-up, places-i-have-been, will-look-for-more-by-this-author