NaNoWriMo 2014

I've never done this before, but I thought it'd be a good challenge and a way to practice writing - I'm participating in NaNoWriMo 2014! NaNoWriMo means National November Writing Month, and is an international online group of people that for one month ban together and lend support, and write 50,000 words of a first draft of a novel. See nanowrimo.org for yourself if you find that interesting and haven't heard about it before!

I've had a story idea (haven't we all) knowcking around for a year or so, and hey, don't we all need something fun like this to distract us from all our other commitments? I have a 50,000 word thesis upgrade due in May, so I might as well practise writing 50,000 words in one month, so I can write 50,000 more over the course of 6.

Anyone else out there participated in NaNoWriMo before? Will you be doing it this year? Words of advice? Words of warning?

Book Launch Tour: The Vesuvius Isotope, by Kristen Elise, Ph.D.

I'm taking part in a blog tour for the release of The Vesuvius Isotope, a new thriller by drug discovery biologist Kristen Elise, over at my other blog, Musings of a Palaeolinguist.

All the posts on Kristen's blog tour are related in some way to the content of her new novel.  Click to read about "The Crocodile Library of Tebtunis"!

You didn't know I had another blog?  It's about archaeology and linguistics and stuff... go see ;)

The Vesuvius Isotope:
When her Nobel laureate husband is murdered, biologist Katrina Stone can no longer ignore the secrecy that increasingly pervaded his behavior in recent weeks. Her search for answers leads to a two-thousand-year-old medical mystery and the esoteric life of one of history’s most enigmatic women. Following the trail forged by her late husband, Katrina must separate truth from legend as she chases medicine from ancient Italy and Egypt to a clandestine modern-day war. Her quest will reveal a legacy of greed and murder and resurrect an ancient plague, introducing it into the twenty-first century.

Kristen Elise, Ph.D. is a drug discovery biologist and the author of The Vesuvius Isotope. She lives in San Diego,  California, with her husband, stepson, and three canine children. Please visit her websites at  ww.kristenelisephd.com and www.murderlab.com. The Vesuvius Isotope is available in both print  www.kristenelisephd.com and www.amazon.com) and e-book formats (www.amazon.com for Kindle, www.barnesandnoble.com for Nook, www.kobo.com for Kobo reader.) 

The Sweet Bookshelf

Etsy shows me were the traffic to my shop is coming from, and I love checking it out because I end up finding blogs that have linked to me or posted one of my items!  More often than not I find a great blog I'll continue reading as well, and here is one of them!

The Sweet Bookshelf is a great blog of book reviews - tons of them are by self published authors which really interests me (when am I going to join the Kindle group of self-published novel fans??).  I saw my antique bookshelf necklace listed a few posts down as well so it looks like there's lots of goodies to find on this site :)  Run by Mary from Scotland, you'll like her clear friendly writing style - and so do tons of others, judging by the 500 readers (through google) I just joined!  I will be coming back to read soon...