2013 New Year's Blog Hop

WELCOME to DAY THREE!

 

Rmember - There will be over 200 giveaways on each blog hosted by that Author or Blogger.

But that's not all....

We have THREE grand prizes. You as a reader can go to EACH blog and comment with your email address and be entered to win. Yep, you can enter over 200 times!

 

Now what are those prizes?

 

1st Grand Prize: A Kindle Fire or Nook Tablet

2nd Grand Prize: A $300 Amazon or B&N Gift Card

3rd Grand Prize: A Swag Pack that contains paperbacks, ebooks, 50+ bookmarks, cover flats, magnets, pens, coffee cozies, and more!

Carrie Ann Ryan
http://www.carrieannryan.com/
http://carrieannbloghops.blogspot.com/

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Again today we are participating in Carrie Ann's New Year's Blog Hop. Another year has come and gone, the end of the world didn't happen and now we are stuck in a year ending in Unlucky Number 13! But don't let that stop you, this year is a clean slate, the chance to right the problems from the previous one. What is the strangest New Year's resolution you ever made? Did you keep it? Chances are probably not.

The tradition of making promises on the turn of the year goes all the way back to the Phoenicians who promised their gods to return any borrowed objects and pay all their debts. In ancient Rome, promises were made to the pagan god Janus, for whom January is named, and the knights of the Middle Ages took a 'peacock vow' at New Year's as a symbol of their renewed commitment to chivalry and chastity.

There is no hard and fast formula for resolutions. Some people say you must make them before the final stroke of midnight on New Year's eve. Others are more liberal and say it should be done before the end of the first day of January. I'm not sure if there is any research as to success rates depending on when you make your vows.

The overall success rate for those who swear this year will be about 20%. Men are more capable of lasting than women; I would say because of their hard headed stance about failure. I quit making any resolutions when I stopped to think about the hypocrisy of the whole thing. Either I would keep these promises because I was truly sincere about the change asked for; or it was something I already do.

But expecting life long behavior changes because of a day seems a waste of time. So take them as you will. Let me know about the strangest New Year's resolutions you've made, and did you keep it. There will be two prizes, a $25 Amazon or B&N gift card (winner's choice) and a signed copy of my ebook, "Catalyst - Guardian Rising".

 



Now Available From Keith Publishing: Catalyst - Guardian Rising

In a post-apocalyptic future, the fate of the rebuilding world hangs in the balance. An unknown power seeks the forbidden knowledge needed to unleash total devastation once more upon a fragile Earth. It falls to one woman to safeguard the future of the Five Kingdoms.

Princess of the West, Vivienne has been plagued by nightmare visions of past and future since the moment of her birth. Now, to save all she loves from destruction, she must rise above the crippling self-doubts that have assailed her since childhood to become the prophesied Guardian—because the enemy is moving, and the world will soon plunge into a war of sword and sorcery.

But who is the enemy? And who is a friend? Can Vivienne trust anyone apart from her sworn protector, Devon?

The answers lurk in the past—but should the past be destroyed to protect the future?

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Excerpt from "Catalyst - Guardian Rising" :

My Nightmares

"...The Council of Elders thinks I am insane, unlucky to be born a woman and too young at the age of nineteen for the responsibility as my father’s only heir. Perhaps I am crazy. I did not ask for these dreams, these voices directing my actions. I have been cursed to spend my life reliving the nightmare of my birth. It has haunted my dreams since early childhood. The dreams created within me a deeply ingrained sense of doubt, questions of worth and abilities. Perhaps if the birth had been normal, all the torment and guilt which burned itself into my psyche would have ceased to be the essence of who I am. Instead, I was fated to have this repetitive horror as much a part of my nature as the blood streaming through my veins. My birth was a circus of violence, bloodshed, war and death. Hallmarks that created the basic characteristics of my personality were defined at the time of my voyage into this life.

For most of my life, from childhood through present, my dreams have encompassed a vast array of subjects, some familiar, others not. Sometimes I’ve dreamed of a strange world, where the sky pulsed a sickening shade of reddish-orange and the ground ran slick with blood. Other dreams contained mere shadows of people I did not know, doing things I could not see. Those dreams did not impress my brain enough to record their intimate details into my memories. But the complex details of my most horrific nightmares … those I have remembered with excruciating exactness. Those nightmares have at times driven me to the farthest reaches of my sanity where madness beckoned with welcoming arms, laughing when I gasped for air and tried to recoil from the horror.

In these repetitive, abominable shows, there is no past, no future — only an uneasy sense of existing simply in the“now.”

My worst and therefore most prevalent nightmare always starts at the same place: the laboring of my mother just prior to my birth. In this horror show, I can see the room and the people involved through several different sets of eyes, some at the same time. This gives me some interesting perspectives on everyone and their motivations. Despite the impossibilities involved in the complex process of dreaming, when I am locked within these nightmares, events never seem to be a part of my past. Everything and everyone seems to be moving in the “now,” not the “then.” But the pain and terror and the horror are always mine. I need bear no other person’s baggage — I have enough of my own.

Everyone is a product of their past. Since well before my birth my father, the Western Kingdom and the Northern Warrior tribes had been defending their borders against repeated incursions by followers of Minnlin, a renegade Druid, with exceptional talent for Mysticism and War Craft. Fifty years before my birth the Druid Master of that time, a grim fellow named Reave, gave his permission for the young Minnlin to be given instruction in both areas.

The Druids gave him free rein over the knowledge contained in their massive libraries. In their folly they allowed the young man to study unobserved and unsupervised within the forbidden Books they were sworn by oath to protect from abuse. With this lack of oversight from his teachers, Minnlin grew in talent but with apparently no sense of right and wrong. The Masters tried to keep the monster they created confined in the safety of the community. Too late they realized the potential for destruction he possessed. But Minnlin had seen his future, and he knew it did not lie within the thick stone walls of the Druid's Mountain Fortress. For half a century, the threat of a druid unbound to the Oath hung over the Five Kingdoms.

In fall, early November to be precise, the first winter snows began storming in from the oceans. Our lands, the Five Kingdoms, were thrust into sudden and horrific warfare. As the heavy, black thunderclouds began rolling over the craggy mountains that marched across the Western horizon, enemy forces in the East streamed up from the Plains through the rapidly closing passes and into the Forbidden Mountains, leaving behind the more hospitable lower climate. They continued fighting skirmishes and ambushes over the next six weeks. Both sides gained and lost territory during these encounters.

Even though my birth was imminent my mother, Katarina, decided to make a visit to see my father, the Western king, in the field becauseshe was determined not to give birth alone. She traveled to his headquarters, close to the actual front line, the manor home of friends King Der, ruler of the Northern Tribes, and his wife, Mari. With Der’s youngest brother Devon and Hana, a Tracker who was retraining as a Healer, also in residence, the king’s house was a safe harbor in the midst of war. My father, Philippe, was a nervous wreck having his very pregnant wife anywhere close to the fighting. But he was so happy to see Katarina after an absence of more than two months, for the first and only time in his life, Philippe threw caution to the winds and left his field tent for the traditional Winter Solstice Celebration truce and returned to the manor house to stay with Katarina. Before he could arrive, my mother went into labor."

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/f792290/