Sorry, I actually started to do this this morning but we started picking up the house. Then watching an episode of Firefly on Blu Ray (my husband has never seen it before and I’m always happy to watch it again). And then we had to get dressed and go to the mall, where we spent 2 hours getting Brianna’s pictures taken for my MIL (long story and really painful experience. Ugh). And then we spent another hour in line so Brianna could see Santa. Gah! No more mall, please. But at least I’m getting it done before I leave for date night with my husband. He suggested it would be okay if I waited until tomorrow. Heh.

So anyway, Day 12. Thanks for all the wonderful things you guys said about the contest. I do have to admit, I’m kind of glad it’s over. Not the least because I can get all these boxes out of my bedroom! I feel for my mailman because I’m doing home pick up. For almost 20 boxes. Poor guy. On the good side, I do give him a gift card every year for Christmas (this year it’s to Famous Dave’s) and cold gatorade on hot days in the summer. So it’s not like I’m the WORST customer on his route. I don’t think.

The Day 12 winner is Maureen who said:

It’s been fun to see what prizes you’ve offered each day, of course. But it’s also been great to just think about the answers to all the different and unique questions you’ve asked and seeing what others thought too.

Maureen, please use the contact form to get me your full name and mailing address as soon as possible. If I don’t hear from you by Tuesday at 5pm Eastern, I’ll redraw for a new winner.

I know you’re all waiting for this part. The Kindles. After I disqualified a few people who entered multiple times (one person for entering five times, all on different days, and another for entering once the first day with a very incomplete form and then entering again at a later date. Sorry, your first entry is it!) we ended up with 612 entries for the first Kindle! The first winner I actually picked was also disqualified because they had random answers instead of the correct ones (kind of defeats the purpose!). So, without any further ado, the winner of the first Kindle is…

Pam P. in Stamford, CT! Congratulations, Pam. Please contact me as soon as possible with a list of what Samhain book you’d like from each of the 38 authors I’ve listed below. I’ll load them onto your new Kindle before I mail it later this week.

The second Kindle had fewer entries and multiple entries. 496 people tried their hand at this one. The winner of the second Kindle is Julie S. from Lee’s Court, MO. Julie, you also need to contact me with the list of books you’d like.

Congratulations to both of you! Please contact me by Tuesday, 5pm Eastern to get me your list of books or I’ll ship your Kindle without the books and you forfeit that part of the prize.

Thank you to everyone who entered. I really wish I could have given everyone some sort of prize and introduced you to how wonderful it is to have an ereader. I wish for you all to find one under the Christmas Tree!

I hope to see some of you coming back to read and comment on my blog, even now that there’s no prize to be had for doing so Of course, if you need some short term incentive, I’ll be posting a link to a guest blog on Monday, where I’ll be giving away a prize pack. I’ll also be doing one more giveaway sometime soon to give away one last prize pack I had assembled (why, yes, I did have a lot of books and things I acquired for giveaway!)

A special thanks to these authors for contributing money towards the purchase of the Kindle. It is these 38 authors who purchased the two Kindles for the contests. Without them, there would have been no Holiday Hell contest. I hope you’ll go back and check their websites out, look up their books (from Samhain and other publishers), read the excerpts and spread the word if you enjoy them. An author’s career is made on word of mouth.

Alexis Fleming
BH Dark
Dana Marie Bell
Evangeline Anderson
Gia Dawn
Jaycee Clark
JB McDonald
Katrina Strauss
Lauren Dane
Leah Braemel
Lorelei James
Lynne Maris
Mandy Roth
Michelle Pillow
TK Winters
Sasha White
Shannon Stacey
Taryn Blackthorne
Vanessa Jayne
Ashleigh Raine
Bianca D’Arc
Deidre Knight
Eve Vaughn
Jaci Burton
Jayne Rylon
Kate Davies
Kaye Chambers
Nicolette Derens
Lena Matthews
Lynne Connolly
Mackenzie McKade
Maria Zannini
Nicole Austin
Paige McKellan
Sela Carsen
Sloan McBride
Ursula Bauer
Lyn Cash/Bobbie Cole

Last, if you’ve stuck around this long, I’d love to hear in the comments if the contest convinced you to buy books from any of these authors.

Thanks again to everyone who’s participated in the last two weeks’ of contests. As much as I’m glad it’s over, I’m going to miss the fun answers to all the questions and the hopping activity on my blog. You guys have been so much fun. I hope you all make yourselves a very happy, amazing holiday season.

~Angie

Tomorrow when I make this post, I’ll be posting the Kindle winners as well. Can you stand it? I can’t! I’m so excited for two of you to win Kindles. I wish I could be like Oprah and give one to all of you!

I was kind of sorry we had to end this contest, because I found the answers so interesting. Reading through yesterday’s comments about your re-reads, I was struck by how many of them are older books and how a few of the same seemed to pop up. Also, I was surprised to find some of you don’t re-read at all. I can’t imagine! There are some days where I get a particular scene or piece of dialogue from a book, or even an emotion, stuck in my head and I just have to re-read the book then and there. Reading through your comments made me have the mad urge to pick up some of those books you mentioned and re-read them.

For me, I do re-read. Not as much as I used to, but I love to re-read because I think it gives me a chance to really sink into the nuances and depths of a book. It’s why I do several editing passes, because I see things I didn’t see the first time.

Some of my comfort re-reads are the same as yours: Pretty much all of Julie Garwood’s historicals, especially The Secret, Saving Grace, Honor’s Splendour and The Bride. Naked in Death by JD Robb (as long time readers of my blog already know) and probably the first 5 books in that series. The Belgariad by David Eddings (as someone in the comments said, showing my fantasy roots), Warrior’s Woman
by Johanna Lindsey, and Tell Me No Lies (STP – Mira)
by Elizabeth Lowell.

One series that I have HAD to reread, probably three or four times, just to keep up with it, is The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. It’s so dense and there are so many plot lines, there’s just no way I could remember everything.

But enough about me. You guys want to know who won. The winner of the Day 11 prize pack was Megan who said:

I tend to turn to Laura Ingalls Wilder and the Little House books.

It’s been a lot of years since I read those books, Megan! Congratulations on your win. Please contact me using the contact form to give me your full name and mailing address so I can get your prize shipped out next week. If I don’t hear from you by the 15th, I’ll draw a new winner. Congratulations, Megan!

Thanks, everyone and good luck in the drawings tomorrow.

THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED.

This is it, the last day. Time has really flown by.

Every day from now to December 12th, I’ll be posting a new contest on my blog to win that day’s prize. Your entry is only good for that day. To win the prize for any other day, you’ll need to come back and enter again.

The grand prize at the end of the 12 days of Holiday Hell Contest is two Kindles, to be awarded to two lucky winners who have entered the Kindle drawings (which are seperate from the daily drawings. Entry into the daily drawings does not enter you into the Kindle drawings).

The fine print: You can win one of the daily Holiday Hell prizes and still be eligible to win the Kindle. You must complete the entry form for each daily contest entirely, double checking that your name and mailing address are correct because this is what I’ll use to mail your prize. If your prize comes back to me due to an incorrect mailing address, you forfeit your prize. Prize winners will be drawn before the end of each day following the contest (ie Day 1’s prize winner will be drawn before the end of Day 2) and will be announced on my blog. Kindle winners will be drawn and announced here on December 13th. All prizes will be mailed by December 20th.

Only one entry into each drawing per household/IP address. Duplicate entries will be deleted and entrants will be disqualified.

International entries are welcome and I will mail overseas, but will not guarantee receipt by Christmas as it will go by dolphin due to the obscene cost of shipping overseas.

I reserve the right to modify the rules at any time.

The Day 12 prize pack is:

Vera Bradley Libby purse in Mesa Red
Signed by Josh Lanyon Partners in Crime
Devil’s Kiss by Brenda Williamson
With Nine You Get Vanyr by JR Ward and Teri Smith
Signed Nightwalker by Jocelynn Drake
Pleasure for Pleasure by Eloisa James
Acheron buttons

I can’t stress enough how important it is to read the rules and give exactly the information I ask for, as I will disqualify your entry if it’s not correctly–and completely–filled out and I would guess maybe a fifth of them come in incomplete.

For Day 12, our final day, I’m going to be selfish Tell me in the comments what you’ve liked about the last 12 days’ of contests!

Since we’re using the comments and not the form, don’t forget to come back and check if you’ve won so you can send me your address.

Good Luck!

Reading all the comments about all the wonderful things you did for the people in your life yesterday really made me smile. I unexpectedly received a wonderful compliment from an author (in a totally unrelated happenstance) yesterday, and I can tell you it made my week. I hope you’ll all remember the awesome feeling of making someone else smile and try not to wait too long (or for a contest) to do it again!

The winner of the Day 10 prize pack is Aliviah who said:

I run an RPG Harry Potter site. (haha I know, major dork here) But you meet people from around the world and have fun. xD

Today I brightened up my members day by posting a large comment for them to read about how much they rock, which they do. lol They get a kick when the moderators show appreciation to them for being awesome.

Congratulations, Aliviah!

Right now, the odds on winning the second Kindle are better than winning the first. We’ve had a lot more entries for the first Kindle, for whatever reason.

Despite the emails I’ve gotten from people saying they couldn’t find an icon (and just about every author has been named, so it seems different people have problems with different ones), the sheer number of completed and correct entries assures me that they’re all there and able to be found. And one of the authors went and found all of them, for both contests, in an hour, with no help, so I’m doubly assured they’re all able to be found.

The contest will close midnight December 12th Eastern time (I will delete any entries that come in after that, if for some reason I don’t get the forms down at that time), which is just two days from now, so don’t wait much longer to get your entries in. I’ll post the winners on the 13th. Once I post the winners, I’ll be emailing you to ask you to pick which Samhain book from each of the 38 authors you want me to load on your Kindle, so you might want to think about that…just in case you win!

I’ll be mailing the Kindles and all the prizes out next week, once I have all the responses and addresses in place, so the sooner you get back to me, the sooner everyone gets their prize (I’m only taking ONE trip to the post office during this holiday season, lol!)

Good luck!

Only one more day after this! Can you believe it?

Every day from now to December 12th, I’ll be posting a new contest on my blog to win that day’s prize. Your entry is only good for that day. To win the prize for any other day, you’ll need to come back and enter again.

The grand prize at the end of the 12 days of Holiday Hell Contest is two Kindles, to be awarded to two lucky winners who have entered the Kindle drawings (which are seperate from the daily drawings. Entry into the daily drawings does not enter you into the Kindle drawings).

The fine print: You can win one of the daily Holiday Hell prizes and still be eligible to win the Kindle. You must complete the entry form for each daily contest entirely, double checking that your name and mailing address are correct because this is what I’ll use to mail your prize. If your prize comes back to me due to an incorrect mailing address, you forfeit your prize. Prize winners will be drawn before the end of each day following the contest (ie Day 1’s prize winner will be drawn before the end of Day 2) and will be announced on my blog. Kindle winners will be drawn and announced here on December 13th. All prizes will be mailed by December 20th.

Only one entry into each drawing per household/IP address. Duplicate entries will be deleted and entrants will be disqualified.

International entries are welcome and I will mail overseas, but will not guarantee receipt by Christmas as it will go by dolphin due to the obscene cost of shipping overseas.

I reserve the right to modify the rules at any time.

The Day 11 prize pack is:

Samhain Coffee Travel Mug
Apron
The Write Ingredients Cookbook
Retro Lucy Lu’s Mighty Little Peppermints box
Lords of Ch’i by Ciar Cullen
Signed Sexy Devil by Sasha White
Signed Stranded by Eve Vaughn
Signed Awaken to Danger by Catherine Mann
Signed Worth Every Risk by Dianna Love Snell
My Lady Faire by Emily Hendrickson
Taken: the Spaniard’s Virgin by Lucy Monroe

I can’t stress enough how important it is to read the rules and give exactly the information I ask for, as I will disqualify your entry if it’s not correctly–and completely–filled out and I would guess maybe a fifth of them come in incomplete.

We’re going to use the comments again today. In the comments, tell me what your favorite re-read/comfort read book is. Easy!

Since we’re using the comments and not the form, don’t forget to come back and check if you’ve won so you can send me your address.

Good Luck!

Sorry for forgetting to post the winner yesterday. By the time I remembered, I was in bed, and I was comfy!

Day 8 was the day you all gave me such fantastic ideas for questions I could ask for this contest. I made a list so I could use some of them for future contests.

The winner of Day 8 is:

Valerie from Poughkeepsie, NY

Day 9 you all shared with me the best and worst gifts you’ve given or received and some of them had me really laughing out loud. The winner of Day 9 is:

Paula from Finland (our first international winner!) who said:

The best gift I’ve received is a bright light lamp that has lasted for years and years. The worst has probably been the digital scale my mother gave me. She means well, but Christmas is the last time you want to be reminded of your weight…

Congratulations to both of you!

THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED. PLEASE VISIT THE MAIN BLOG PAGE FOR THE CURRENT CONTEST.

Every day from now to December 12th, I’ll be posting a new contest on my blog to win that day’s prize. Your entry is only good for that day. To win the prize for any other day, you’ll need to come back and enter again.

The grand prize at the end of the 12 days of Holiday Hell Contest is two Kindles, to be awarded to two lucky winners who have entered the Kindle drawings (which are seperate from the daily drawings. Entry into the daily drawings does not enter you into the Kindle drawings).

The fine print: You can win one of the daily Holiday Hell prizes and still be eligible to win the Kindle. You must complete the entry form for each daily contest entirely, double checking that your name and mailing address are correct because this is what I’ll use to mail your prize. If your prize comes back to me due to an incorrect mailing address, you forfeit your prize. Prize winners will be drawn before the end of each day following the contest (ie Day 1’s prize winner will be drawn before the end of Day 2) and will be announced on my blog. Kindle winners will be drawn and announced here on December 13th. All prizes will be mailed by December 20th.

Only one entry into each drawing per household/IP address. Duplicate entries will be deleted and entrants will be disqualified.

International entries are welcome and I will mail overseas, but will not guarantee receipt by Christmas as it will go by dolphin due to the obscene cost of shipping overseas.

I reserve the right to modify the rules at any time.

The Day 10 prize pack is:

Black Currant Liquorice (from Australia)
Acheron button and lanyard
Australia cell phone charm
Signed by Jaci Burton Exclusive Anthology
Signed Reinvention of Chastity by Eve Vaughn
Melting Iron by Ann Cory
Trophy Girl by Melani Blazer
Sweet Moon Dreams by Rose Marie Wolf
Signed Knight of Darkness by Kinley MacGregor
Tanner’s Scheme by Lora Leigh
Satin & A Scandalous Affair by Jan Colley
Signed His Style of Seduction by Roxanne St. Claire

I can’t stress enough how important it is to read the rules and give exactly the information I ask for, as I will disqualify your entry if it’s not correctly–and completely–filled out and I would guess maybe a fifth of them come in incomplete.

We’re going to use the comments again today. This one is going to be a little different. I’ve been pretty stressed and cranky this past week, and feeling a little let down by recent things. I read a post yesterday by an author who seemed to be feeling the same way, and she signed off by encouraging everyone to say something nice to someone in their life. I liked that because, well, I know the world doesn’t revolve around me no matter how much I want it to! So for today’s entry, your assignment is to go say (email, text, smoke signals, IM, Twitter, post on Facebook/MySpace/your blog, hire a banner airplane, etc) something nice to someone you know, something that might pick up their day (and yours!). Then come back here and tell me whose day you brightened and how you let them know/told them. You don’t have to tell me what you said, just who you said it to and how you did it. Obviously, I have no way of checking that you actually did this (unless you painted your nude body with the message and ran through town, thus making sure you appear in the news–don’t do that), so I’ll just rely on your good faith that you’ll do this–something that’s fairly easy and will make someone smile. Let’s spread a little holiday cheer!

Since we’re using the comments and not the form, don’t forget to come back and check if you’ve won so you can send me your address.

Good Luck!

THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED. PLEASE VISIT THE MAIN PAGE FOR RECENT CONTESTS.

Every day from now to December 12th, I’ll be posting a new contest on my blog to win that day’s prize. Your entry is only good for that day. To win the prize for any other day, you’ll need to come back and enter again.

The grand prize at the end of the 12 days of Holiday Hell Contest is two Kindles, to be awarded to two lucky winners who have entered the Kindle drawings (which are seperate from the daily drawings. Entry into the daily drawings does not enter you into the Kindle drawings).

The fine print: You can win one of the daily Holiday Hell prizes and still be eligible to win the Kindle. You must complete the entry form for each daily contest entirely, double checking that your name and mailing address are correct because this is what I’ll use to mail your prize. If your prize comes back to me due to an incorrect mailing address, you forfeit your prize. Prize winners will be drawn before the end of each day following the contest (ie Day 1’s prize winner will be drawn before the end of Day 2) and will be announced on my blog. Kindle winners will be drawn and announced here on December 13th. All prizes will be mailed by December 20th.

Only one entry into each drawing per household/IP address. Duplicate entries will be deleted and entrants will be disqualified.

International entries are welcome and I will mail overseas, but will not guarantee receipt by Christmas as it will go by dolphin due to the obscene cost of shipping overseas.

I reserve the right to modify the rules at any time.

The Day 9 prize pack is:
Mango Liquorice (from Australia
Australia cell phone charm
Air New Zealand travel pack
Acheron buttons and lanyard
In a Heartbeat by Donna Richards
Signed Death of a Pirate King by Josh Lanyon
Tethers by Sara Reinke
You’ll Be the Death of Me by Stacia Wolf
Signed Surviving Demon Island by Jaci Burton
The Taming of the Duke by Eloisa James
Lone Star Courtship by Mae Nunn
The Loner’s Guarded Heart by Michelle Douglas

I can’t stress enough how important it is to read the rules and give exactly the information I ask for, as I will disqualify your entry if it’s not correctly–and completely–filled out and I would guess maybe a fifth of them come in incomplete.

We’re going back to the comments today (because I like to keep you on your toes!). Thanks to yesterday’s contest, I have some new ideas for questions to ask. One of the most popular recommendations was to ask: What is the best (or worst) Christmas present you’ve ever received or given? I’m leaving it a little more open with the different options so you can answer more easily. Leave your answer in the comments but don’t forget to come back and check to see if you’ve won, so you can send me your mailing address.

Good Luck!

Unrelated to anything, but I have been so cold all day. Just very chilled. I’m going to log off after I post this and snuggle under a soft, fuzzy blanket with my husband, who’s like a walking heater.

The winner of the Day 7 Holiday Hell contest is Jennifer from MD who said:

I really like all the free e books. I think it is a good way to get us hooked on a new author.

You weren’t alone in liking those free books, Jennifer! That and the Discover New Authors program were the most popular mentions. Congratulations! I have your mailing address and will be mailing your package out by the 20th.

Thanks to everyone who entered and good luck in the last few days of the contests!