I have been a huge fan of Charles de Lint for years. I was introduced to his work through his various short stories that he wrote for the Bordertown series. You can find some of them published in his short story collection Waifs and Strays, a book dedicated to urban fantasy stories about teens lost and on their own. He really captured my heart later when I started to explore his other work and read his book Memory and Dream, a fantastical book about an artist who can bring her paintings to life.

His newest work, coming out November 11th, has really caught my eye though. I love reading stories about dragons and they seem to be experiencing a resurgence recently. So I was psyched to hear about The Painted Boy.

The Painted Boy by Charles de Lint

Not only is it a dragon novel but it’s a non-western dragon novel. I look forward to being educated.

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine.

Princess Bookie is hosting another recreate a book cover contest!

Going for another try at this. Last time I tried this with my attempt at a cover for Mockingjay I didn’t even get one vote and was out in the first round.

I think I went over the top trying to make a nice entry this time to make up for it. Try, try again, right?

Made up of… I lost count on the number of images, all vector based and royalty free – with the exception of the mermaid, which was a plain 3d rendering I colorized and spruced up a bit. For the book Forgive my Fins.

I’m participating in The Great Flow Giveaway over at The Book Lady’s Blog, to win a copy of Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation. Basically, the point was brought up that talking about menstruation is considered a bit of a taboo topic and so in order to “work” for a copy you have to enter into the dialogue about, well, your flow! So, if you are at all squeamish about this sort of thing I suggest you cut away right now, because here are some of my experiences, and a lot of tips for survival.

Princess Bookie is hosting a contest to re-design the cover of a YA book coming out in 2010. You can find out all about Princess Bookie’s Recreate a Book Cover Contest and enter yourself if you want. There is a limit of 50 entries or a deadline of March 15th. Whichever comes first.

I decided to recreate the cover for Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins. It’s the final book in the Hunger Games trilogy and is coming out this August. I have read The Hunger Games and am going to reward myself with Catching Fire as soon as I get all caught up on reviews. So, needless to say, I’m excited! I did end up spoilering myself, though, when I read the synopsis of Mockingjay to design the book cover. Still looking forward to Catching Fire in spite of it!

The 2nd annual Bloggiesta starts today and I am looking forward to participating! I have a lot of little things I’ve been meaning to do around this blog that I want to get to, and a small back log of reviews that need to get done. I always reorganize and facelift in the new year anyway, so why not do it with friends?

Things I would like to get done include:

• New color scheme for the blog.
• Create some CSS short cuts.
• Increase compatibility with IE 7.
• Tweak to get idiosyncrasies worked out for Safari & Chrome.
• Drop down menus for Chatter, Challenges and maybe Reviews.
• Increase user-friendliness on the main page.
• Change social networking options on post pages.
• Add threaded comments.
• Write Review Policy for Contact page.
• Do write-ups for LOTR read-a-long and for Social Justice Reading Challenge.
• Get caught up on back-log of four reviews.

It’s going to be an interesting weekend. If my site suddenly looks broken for some reason, well, just give me a few minutes!