Getting to know you Blogfest

1. Name two [romantic suspense] authors who inspire you.

Nora Roberts and Francine Rivers. I love Nora R. for her versatility and longevity, as well as how prolific she has been. The fact that she uses a pen name in some of her writing, just like I do also means I have a special spot for her.

Francine is just such an awesomewriter, my best romance novel so far is Redeeming Love. The way she plumbs my emotions is almost second to none. She may be considered more inspirational romance than romantic suspense but her books do keep me on tenterhooks till I'm done.

The Twilight Saga - Breaking Dawn 1

The book was supposed to be for teenagers, but it has since moved beyond that. Now we have grown women, including myself taking sides on team Edward or Team Jacob, a fictional vampire and a werewolf. SMH @ Myself. Anyway, who's seeing it this weekend?

Playing Second Fiddle to your Man's Job

Read the following story and tell me if you think Vonny did the right thing. What would you do in her shoes?
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I was feeling real good and was headed out to Beck's Lounge for a little hang time with my gals. As I strolled leisurely along Torres Avenue, someone bellowed my name. I turned and........Christ, I haven't seen this guy in months!

"Steeeeeve!" I screamed as we both ran to hug each other. We were still busy forming 'long lost love' when a car horn blared, forcing us off the middle of the road. Never mind the driver's cursing, Steve and I had a lot to catch up on. With my initial date temporarily forgotten, we headed to the closest eatery. I was still filling Steve in on 'what's new' when my three phones started buzzing all at once. With profuse apologies, I placated my gals and then agreed to come back to Steve in two hours.

The Son of your Father's Concubine - Seun Salami

One sweet morning, I opened my email to check for new messages and the first had the same subject as the title of this post. I must confess, my heart sped up. I blinked and opened the email. It began...

Hello Myne, Okay...just to be clear, the subject is actually the title of my new book and nothing else. It is a collection of eight short stories dealing with subjects like rape, faith, the search for identity/adventure, etc but they are all tragedies. Many people have said it's a very lovely title...

I stopped there and had a nice laugh. Lovely title ko, sweet title ni, lol. It is definitely a catchy title though. I was intrigued enough to reply the email and want to know the young man who sent it better. I'll let him take it away now...

My name is ‘Seun Salami, I was born in Ogun State, Nigeria. I have a BSc in Journalism from the Lagos State University and I just concluded an MSc in Mass Communication at the University of Lagos. I’m first a writer and then I also work as an editor at a publishing firm. I read a lot and my job also means that I get to read a lot of books before they are published. My debut collection of short stories has just been published; it’s called The Son of your Father’s Concubine.

Applicants for US Visa Lottery Reduce, Canada Introduces Super Visa

One of my relatives applied for the diversity visa lottery last year and got an email around March telling them they got through. A few weeks later, another email came, saying it was a computer failure and they're sorry, the person did not make it. Can you imagine? Anyone who knows how most Nigerians regard the visa lottery as a ticket to heaven will understand what a let down that is.

Anyway, I'm not surprised that as the application period just ended, the US State Department says only 8 million people applied. This is in comparison to last year's figure of 15 million. The Department is saying it is because it removed Bangladesh from the list, but they can go and tell that to the birds. Apart from the disappointment with the system failure, there is the situation of the economy in the United States.

Book Launch - String Bridge by Jessica Bell

Today is THE day to help Jessica Bell's debut, STRING BRIDGE, hit the bestseller list on Amazon, and receive the all-original soundtrack, Melody Hill: On the Other Side, written and performed by the author herself, for free! All you have to do is purchase the book today (paperback, or eBook), November 11th, and then email the receipt to: jessica.carmen.bell(at)gmail(dot)com. She will then email you a link to download the album at no extra cost!

To purchase the paperback: Amazon USA, Amazon UK

To purchase the eBook: Amazon USA, Amazon UK

To listen to samples of the soundtrack, visit iTunes.

Ashley Billasano - Social Media and Sucide

I read about the teenager who tweeted and committed suicide on  Bumight's post - For Ashley Billasano. A few months ago it was Motunrayo Ogbara's suicide all over the blogs and Twitter. This got me thinking. Is it that there is more suicide now, or simply that it is more reported in the media? More disturbing, why is it usually so closely related to social media? Is there a danger that people are copying others who they see or hear commit suicide on Twitter or Facebook?

Social media guru, Trey Pennington wrote on twitter: 'Sure am thankful for online friends who are real friends offline, too. Love you.' just hours before his death. In Seoul, a former DJ tweeted, “I’m going to commit suicide. To all of you, even those who shared the slightest friendship with me, I love you,” and went ahead to hang himself. Clementi, the guy who committed suicide after being outed said farewell via Facebook: "Jumping off the gw bridge sorry." Some of you may remember Simone black, whose friends did nothing to help after she posted on FB, 'Took all my pills, bye bye'.

How to improve your Alexa Blog Ranking

In one of the blogging tips posts I did titled "I want more Comments", Amb Caleb commented that he needed some tips on ranking. That got me thinking because I didn't have a ready answer for him. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't as if I hadn't heard of blog rankings before, but, I had never really done anything beyond that.

I had found out about both Pagerank and Alexa earlier this year on one of my blog improvement wanderings around the interwebs. Google Pagerank measures the reputation of your site based on the weight it gets via search engines and is ranked between 1 and 10, the bigger the better. Alexa ranks your place among other sites based on traffic and other indicators and the closer you are to 1, the better. Google.com ranks #1 and some blogs I checked were up to 25 million. When I first checked , I was happy with my Pagerank 4 (both nairaland and Bellanaija are also 4), and though a bit confused by the Alexa ranking of 1.5 million.

How not to discipline a child - Judge's daughter releases video

See, I was born and raised in Nigeria where corporal punishment is allowed from primary through secondary school and so I'm a bit immune to beatings (one major disadvantage of punishments). However, my parents only administered the cane when necessary, and there were never whips or belts flying around.

I recently read about how a daughter, now 23, released a video of her father, a judge, whipping her when she was 16. Mike's post on Sparing the Rod was fresh on my mind then and I couldn't help wincing as I watched the blows land on the girl. Why would parents do that to their own child? Why would you vent your anger on a child in the name of punishment? And the mother, telling the girl to take it like a grown woman. What grown woman would take that kind of beating from another person?

Weekend Pictures - Some thoughts from FaceBook

So Facebook recently seem to have put more weight in pictures and nowadays, I find my timeline strewn with some of these nuggets among others. Hope you like them too...

Wise words and yes, you are beautiful. Remember, there's sunshine after every storm. Sometimes, we actually need the rain to wash stuff away so we can see clearly.