Julie James

Hi everyone!  Mark your calendars if you’re in the Chicago area.  On Saturday, March 13th, I’ll be doing a book signing with several great authors: Beth Kery, Joss Ware (also writing as Colleen Gleason) and Shiloh Walker.  The info is:

Barnes & Noble
Webster Place
1441 West Webster Avenue
Chicago, IL 60614

The signing is from 3-5pm. For those of you driving, there’s free parking in the lot for 90 minutes with store validation.

In other news, I wanted to say a special thanks to The Chicklit Club, for naming Practice Makes Perfect one of their favorite reads of 2009!

And now I’m off to find a plumber who’s working this holiday week. . . I took a shower yesterday and came downstairs to find it raining in my kitchen.  Merry Christmas to me.  :-)

Thanks to everyone who participated in the holiday giveaway!  I had a blast reading your responses.  So without further ado, the winner of the $25 book store gift certificate is. . .

JESS!

(comment #72)

Congratulations, Jess!  Email me at info@juliejamesbooks.com with your snail-mail address, and be sure to let me know whether you would like a gift certificate to Amazon, Borders, or Barnes & Noble.

By the way, the cookies were christmas trees, gingerbread men (yes, one with a peg leg), snowmen, reindeer, and snowflakes.  And they sure did taste great.

Happy holidays, everyone!

Please note: the giveaway is closed.

In the holiday spirit, this weekend I decided to make sugar cookies with my two year-old son.  Now, I’m not exactly what one might call “good” in the kitchen, but normally I’m at least decently capable when it comes to making cookies.  Not this time, apparently.

Those have to be the saddest, most pathetic sugar cookies I’ve ever seen.  But my son and I had fun making them, and he told me they’re “delicious,” so that’s all that matters.  To continue the holiday spirit, I thought I’d run a contest: I’ll give a $25 gift certificate to Borders, Amazon, or Barnes & Noble (at the winner’s choosing) to one random person who leaves a comment below correctly identifying what at least one of these cookies is supposed to be.  The contest will remain open until 8pm CST on Sunday, December 13th.

On another note, the fabulous Katiebabs of Babbling About Books is running a fun holiday contest this week, where, in honor of her pal Mho Fho, you can enter to win your own personal demon sheep.  That’s right, a demon sheep.  Now that is a contest worth checking out.

Happy holidays!

I’ve been so MIA these days.  For essentially the last three weeks, my house has been invaded by painters, tile guys, and carpenters.  Of course there were delays, and things took far longer than expected, and for a while it looked as though the carpenters would be having Thanksgiving dinner with us.  But finish they did, at 4pm the day before Thanksgiving.  Phew.  Not like we were cutting it close or anything, ending a fairly major remodeling project a mere 20 hours before we had 21 guests over for dinner.

That being said, the carpenters did a beautiful job.  One of the things we added to our living room was a bookcase–my new favorite spot in the house.

What’s great is that I was finally able clear off some of my other shelves (which were two and three rows deep with books).  So now I have not just a TBR pile, but an entire TBR bookcase.

That’s got to be at least fifty books there. . . I love how one of the TBR books is 1-2-3 Magic, Effective Discipline for Children 2-12. Given the state of my two year-old these days, I’m thinking I might want to break that out sooner rather than later.   And yes, that is Twilight over there in the upper right corner.  I keep picking it up but never seem to be in the right frame of mind to start it.  And a couple of these books I received for free at the RWA conference, and sometimes those end up being the best surprises.  No expectations, I can just dive in without any idea of what they’re about.

How about you?  What’s the state of your TBR pile these days?  Got anything good in there I should know about?