I just wanted to let everyone know that BookHost is now live. It's a hosting provider created by a fellow book blogger and wordpress guru that is perfect from those wanting to make the jump from blogger to wordpress for the first time. I think It's also perfect for people like me who are new to wordpress and easily confused. Basically you just sign up and and that's it. No need to install wordpress, it's already installed along with your choice of premium themes and plugins available from CreativeWhim.com. If you've been wanting to try her Tweak Me theme or the Ultimate Book Blogger Plugin then here's your chance. Both are valued at $35.00 and were worth every penny to me. Here's some info on the theme and the plugin:  

Tweak Me Theme

The Ultimate Book Blogger Plugin

Plus there are plenty of other themes to choose from. Basically any of them built by CreativeWhim.com will be free for people who use her hosting. Other Themes that were built by other people not available. 

I use both of them on my site Jamie's Book Blog but I'm still a novice. I've seen some of the things that people who know html and wordpress can do with them and it's amazing. The plugin is what makes all of the indexes for my books look so nice. For instance if you'll look at My Reviews on my site you can search them by Title, Author, etc and that's all the plugin. I just had to create the page, menu, etc and it pretty much did the rest of the work. Same thing on my reviews, I just enter in the author details that I want along with a picture then when I'm writing my review I type in the name of the author, fill in the rest of the fields and plugin does it's magic. Okay I had to do some of the work but I never would have figured out how to make any of it look like that on my own especially without any html knowledge.

Here's a few examples:

Reviews by title
A Normal Review

I think I'm going to try and make the move this weekend and hope I don't destroy my site in the process. I really wish this had been available when I first started. It would have just been so much easier and I would have saved weeks on trying to find a theme, installing everything, learning about plugins etc. I'd definitely recommend looking into BookHost if you're new to wordpress or wanting to make the jump from Blogger. If you're an old pro at html and wordpress then it still might be nice just to have everything set up and ready to go for you. Either way give it a look and see what you think. I for one just really like the idea of hosting by a fellow book blogger and someone who can  help me out with wordpress problems.  

If you already have a site then you'd have to migrate it over to the new one which is what I'll have to do. Once I've finished then I'll let everyone know how the process went and what I think. 

It is kind of scary moving my site though. It was so much easier before I had built everything. I mean I'll still have the same theme but will have to go back in and set it how I like it and hopefully everything will go well. I don't know as much about wordpress as I would like to so it does freak me out a bit. Anyway I'm hoping to make the jump this weekend. Wish me luck.

Okay, sorry if you've all seen this one twice. I have no idea why but my original post is just not showing up for me under dashboard, blog, timeline, anywhere so I'm just going to redo it.  

I just wanted to let everyone know that BookHost is now live. It's a hosting provider created by a fellow book blogger and wordpress guru that is perfect for those wanting to make the jump from blogger to wordpress for the first time. I think It's also perfect for people like me who are new to wordpress and easily confused. Basically you just sign up and and that's it. No need to install wordpress, it's already installed along with your choice of premium themes and plugins available from CreativeWhim.com. If you've been wanting to try her Tweak Me theme or the Ultimate Book Blogger Plugin then here's your chance. Both are valued at $35.00 and were worth every penny to me. Here's some info on the theme and the plugin:  

Tweak Me Theme

The Ultimate Book Blogger Plugin

Plus there are plenty of other themes to choose from. Basically any of them built by CreativeWhim.com will be free for people who use her hosting. Other Themes that were built by other people not available. 

I use both of them on my site Jamie's Book Blog but I'm still a novice. I've seen some of the things that people who know html and wordpress can do with them and it's amazing. The plugin is what makes all of the indexes for my books look so nice. For instance if you'll look at My Reviews on my site you can search them by Title, Author, etc and that's all the plugin. I just had to create the page, menu, etc and it pretty much did the rest of the work. Same thing on my reviews, I just enter in the author details that I want along with a picture then when I'm writing my review I type in the name of the author, fill in the rest of the fields and plugin does it's magic. Okay I had to do some of the work but I never would have figured out how to make any of it look like that on my own especially without any html knowledge.

Here's a few examples:

Reviews by title
A Normal Review

I think I'm going to try and make the move this weekend and hope I don't destroy my site in the process. I really wish this had been available when I first started. It would have just been so much easier and I would have saved weeks on trying to find a theme, installing everything, learning about plugins etc. I'd definitely recommend looking into BookHost if you're new to wordpress or wanting to make the jump from Blogger. If you're an old pro at html and wordpress then it still might be nice just to have everything set up and ready to go for you. Either way give it a look and see what you think. I for one just really like the idea of hosting by a fellow book blogger and someone who can  help me out with wordpress problems.  

If you already have a site then you'd have to migrate it over to the new one which is what I'll have to do. Once I've finished then I'll let everyone know how the process went and what I think. 

It is kind of scary moving my site though. It was so much easier before I had built everything. I mean I'll still have the same theme but will have to go back in and set it how I like it and hopefully everything will go well. I don't know as much about wordpress as I would like to so it does freak me out a bit. Anyway I'm hoping to make the jump this weekend. Wish me luck.

Hmm, Okay last night I made a post about Bookhost which is the new hosting service created by a fellow book blogger and worpress guru but it was late, I was feeling bad and the antibiotics I'm taking are making me so sick so I just saved it as a draft.  Just a bit ago I finished tweaking it and published it but noticed it had yesterday's date so I edited it and gave it today's date and now I cannot find it anywhere.  So if anyone finds my missing post please send it back home and tell it that it's not in trouble :/  

Anyone else had a runaway post?  Stupid military time always gets me, I may have set it for the future.  Hmm, now I'm thinking about time travel, I've always wondered if there was a way to invent a program and send an email into the past and win the lottery.  I so wish I could write, that sounds like a great book to me :)

I've tried searching by tags but that's not doing any good.  I just can't seem to find it.

Is it a coincidence that the first one looks like Hitler? I think they're mocking us.

Note from Me, uhm Jamie: Congratulations!!!  Yes it deserves three exclamations. The site looks wonderful and I love the purple elephants plus the star ratings on the book reviews look really nice too.  I've been in such a bummed out mood and this totally made my day.  I like it when good things happen to people. Winning Contest = Good :D

You guys asked for it - so go check out THE GRAND WORLD OF BOOKS new design and let me know what you think.

For the design, it was requested that I use elephants and purple colorful tones. The first thing I thought was the Holi festival, when I was given that description. It's not as chaotic as that particular event...I did reign myself in a bit - but what do you think?

Stop by THE GRAND WORLD OF BOOKS to check it out live and give a little XOXO if you think the design works.

Really enjoying it so far.  Things are starting to get interesting :)

Sweet, I just saw this today.  Jason Brant has released an Omnibus Edition of his post-apocalyptic zombie thriller series The Hunger.  Each book is $3.99 while the Omnibus Edition is 9.99 so this saves you a few bucks if you were interested in getting it.  I loved this series!

Here are my reviews for each book:

1. Devoured: The Hunger #1

2. Consumed: The Hunger #2

3. Ravaged: The Hunger #3

I also love the artwork on the covers.  He has a seriously talented person working on his covers.  Actually all of his covers rock!  If you like love some mean mutant zombie post-apocalyptic destruction with great characters and lots of action then give this one a shot.

John Cassaday/Marvel Comics

I'm Beast and it's pretty dead on:

You got: Beast

You’re smart and kind, but you’re not very comfortable in your skin. You can do a lot of amazing things, but you’re mainly driven by an impulse to overcompensate for your low self-esteem. You have a strong moral compass, but sometimes get a bit self-righteous.

Anyone else remember this one?  

I tried to find more videos but just couldn't seem to find any other good ones.  I'm going to have to hunt down some dvd's or something because it's been so long that I just can't remember much about it other than it had some insanely crazy characters and that I never missed a show.  I can remember there being this crazy airplane pilot that I liked a lot.  At least I think it was an airplane pilot lol.  

Anyway, here's to fond memories :)

(Jamie: this is a Reblog from Olga Godim's blog If you haven't seen it yet and want to help her choose a cover then just head on over to her blog and let her know which one you like the most.  I like 2 and 3, it's a rough decision.  1 and 2 look similar but have different patterns around the top and bottom where the text is)

Please help me choose a cover for my new book - a selection of humorous UF short stories about a young witch and her squirrel familiar. Together, the kick butt of the bad guys and help friends in need. The first two differ only slightly. I appreciate your input, friends.

           Cover #1                           Cover #2                         Cover #3                           

Jamie’s Indie/Foreign movie of the week.

Hello everyone. I’ve decided I’d like to share some of my favorite movies with the world. Most of the movies that I enjoy are either independent or foreign films and today’s movie is Brotherhood of the Wolf which is my top pick for movie of the freaking week/month/year/hell decade. 

Here’s a link to the movie at IMb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0237534/

If I could only pick one movie to own then this would be it and there’s few movies that are as fun to watch with someone for the first time with the exception of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071853) which is just too comical when you get their reaction after the ending. Usually it’s wtf? What was the point? Hehehe. Yeah I know those links are ugly like that but I’m paying proper respects to a site that encourages people to link to them. No permission needed so thanks IMb.

The trailer doesn’t do this one justice and there’s a big reason why it became an instant classic and according to wiki it was the second highest-grossing French-Language film in the United States since 1980.

This film is unusual for a historical film with the martial arts and action scenes in it. This movie freaking has it all: an excellent storyline, great acting, suspense, drama, a bit of a romance, some horror elements, political intrigue and action that would be way over the top in any other film but is fantastic in this move. The fight scenes are beautifully choreographed and just rock! If you haven’t seen this one yet then go find. I I don’t care if you have to rent it, buy it, stream it, whatever just watch this movie. This is one my absolute favorites and no matter how many times I watch it I never get tired of seeing it.

I originally watched it with English subtitles. I just hate to watch a dubbed movie but if you don’t want to miss a second of the incredible fight scenes then the English version is actually quite good. Sit back, grab some popcorn and get ready for a kick ass movie. There’s nothing shallow about this movie and I don’t care whether you love or hate historical movies, you’ll still love this one. Brotherhood of the Wolf just completely defies any genre or label

I love the era, the clothing, the dialogue, the sets, and every little brilliant detail in this movie. Finding out who the Church’s/the Pope’s personal assassin was the ending is just freaking epic. The villains were perfectly deliciously evil and the hero’s had such a layer of depth to them. The whole movie just had layers and layers of depth to it that I find lacking in so many other movies. This right here is how it’s done and I wish

Hollywood would take a few notes. Just thinking of this movie has me nerd/fan drooling on my keyboard. I think I’m going to have to get this one out and watch it again tonight.

Sorry I wanted to write about the movie itself but I just could not figure out how to do so without ruining it so you’ll just have to settle for my fanboy infomercial. If it actually leads you to watching this movie then that’s good enough for me 

Enjoying it so far.  I'm not too far in though.  Just haven't been feeling so hot this week.

I just wanted to give everyone a heads up that there is a huge concentrated botnet attack against wordpress sites going on at the moment.  Basically they try and log in to your administrative account by guessing your username and password.  There are a lot of steps you can take to help prevent your site from being vulnerable.  The most important step is to make sure that you have a very strong password that uses both Upper and Lower case alphabets, numbers and symbols and is at the very least 10 characters long.  I make mine a lot longer than that.  Also it is VERY important to make sure that your username is not left as Admin or Sysadmin.  I've had 11 attacks on my site this morning already and nearly every one of them tried to log in as admin which is the default username for wordpress. Changing that is important.

There are a whole host of plugins that you can use for security and I'd rather not go into the specifics of which ones I use and I'll explain why in a bit.  Two days ago my spam filters caught two different comments. The first one said

Hοwdy, i read youг blog occasіonally and i owո a similar one and i was just curious iif you get a lot of spam fеedback? If so how do you pгotect against it, any plugin or
anything you can suggest? I get so much lately it’s driνing me mad so any help is very mɦch appreciated.

Notice the misspelled words and the vague reference.  They mention NOTHING specific about my site and this is one way you can usually tell spammers from real comments. I believe this person or bot was fishing for information in the hopes that I would leave a reply telling them the kind of security I use.  

Here's another one:

Thіs is a topiϲ that iѕ close to my heart…

Best wishes! Exactly where are youг contact ԁetails though?

This is a topic that is close to my heart?  It's a freaking book review. And I know my reviews aren't so damn good that they would be close to your heart!  Again notice the vague reference to my site. This is how spammers do it, they'll leave comments such as great site, or thank you for the informative post.  Now some real people may do that too but most of the time it's spammers.  I also think this person was fishing for information such as my email.  I have a way for people to contact me on my site but my email address is HIDDEN on purpose.  It just says contact me.  It's very easy to find ways to do this..  

Here's the newest piece of spam I received 

Hello! I simply would like to give a huge thumbs up for the nice
data you might have right here on this post. I shall be
coming again to your blog for extra soon.

Again notice the vague reference? They're all starting to look the same. I don't provide NICE DATA, I do book reviews and this guy's name was SEO which is a huge black flag to me.  I'm thinking about adding SEO to my blocking list.

While those are just spam the attacks are a whole different matter.  I think those first two spams were connected to some attacks on my site a week ago.  The very next day that same IP tried to log into my account and after 7 attempts I ramped up my security and blocked their IP.  I get real time notices when things like this happen and I had just woken up when it started that day.  Today I woke up after all of the attacks but my security did it's job.  

I'd love to be able to discuss what I use but with someone fishing for information like that I'd rather not reveal what security features I'm using since I have a link to my Booklikes blog on my site and anyone would easily be able to trace it to here and find out.  I doubt it would help them too much knowing what I use but why take those chances.  

• Anyway I just wanted to give everyone a heads up.  You can only change your Admin name that first time.  I think once you've changed it from Admin then you can't change it again but you can create a new admin account and give yourself admin privileges and then delete the old one but be super careful, test it out before deleting anything.  You wouldn't want to lock yourself out.  Also be sure to make regular backups of your site in the case that it does become compromised.  I'm hoping that the attacks are slowing down but regardless be careful and play it safe.  

When I was a teenager we moved to a new town. It was a very small place compared to the big city I had lived in and I was not used to living in the country. I always had a hard time making friends and I wasn't happy about leaving the few friends I had behind. So we moved, I didn't have a license yet, I think I was about 15 and had just taken drivers ed. so I didn't have a vehicle and of course everyone seemed to have one already in high school. I didn't fit in with all of the country people nor did I fit in with the other ex-city people. I wasn't super smart so I didn't fit in with the nerds and I didn't even fit in with the rejects. For that first year I knew nobody. I had no friends and while I finally left most of the bullying behind I still had a few issues at this new school. What is it about being quite that just attracts so many jerks? But it was a smaller school so it had less bullies which was a good thing.

Every day I spent my lunch time in the library. I'd usually scarf down my food outside then go upstairs to the small library and get on one of the computers and play games like Oregon Trail (my pioneers always ended up with a stupid disease and died or the stupid oxen drowned lol.)  I wasn't reading a lot at this time. I used to read in the years before and I was still collecting comic books but reading actual books. Nope.  I have no idea why I stopped.

So one day I grew bored of  the poor pioneers who were trying to cross the Oregon Trail and started looking around at the books in the library and I was about to give up.  Nothing looked promising when all of a sudden three book covers that were standing together caught my eye.  So I decided to go on over and look at them.  I don't know why but the covers always remind me of tiles for some reason or like those tile graphics used in the video game Baldur's Gate.  The books happened to be A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin.  I read what they were about and they sounded pretty good so I checked them out.

I can remember being completely enchanted by the story and I  loved the setting of the Archipelago. For some odd reason I had Ged or Sparrowhawk who would one day be the Archmage set in my mind as a white guy with blonde hair and blue eyes. I don't know why, maybe it's because up to this point all of the main characters especially wizards were always portrayed as white people. And in the Tombs of Atuan I thought the princess was a dark skinned Egyptian or close to one because her culture was very much like I imagined Egypt to be like. But then I noticed a sentence that was talking about Ged's scar which always stood out as very white against his dark skin. Say what? Come again?  That's right, Ged was black and the Archipelago was a very colorful place. Ursula K. Le Guin enjoys writing colorful worlds and avoids stereotypes when she can. So now I was really impressed. When I was older I can remember reading so many messages and mail's from people thanking Ms. Le Guin for creating a hero that they could relate to and for finally creating a hero and wizard who wasn't just your stereotypical aged white wise man.

These books really rekindled my love of reading. I was just completely transported to another world, one which was unlike any I'd ever read about before and the likes of which I haven't seen since. For that year these and other books were my friends and I spent every free moment hanging out with them. I moved back to the city with some relatives the next year and went to an even worse school. It was a lot more upper class than I was used to and I had an even harder time fitting in but they had a wonderful library which included books that I'd never seen before in a school library (I don't think I've seen many of these in a school library since to tell the truth). I first read Anne Rice there and so many others.  I was way behind in school. I'd spent most of my freshmen year just skipping class, going to these old train tracks and climbing up on an old abandoned train that had set there for years and I'd sit up there and just read until it was time to go home. I'd head to the local library each morning, grab a few books then off to my train I'd go. My English teacher at this new school took pity on me and knew I loved to read so she'd let me do book reports for extra credit which was very cool. She also lent me quite a few books from her personal library and I enjoyed each and every one of them.  I wish I could remember her name. I'd love to thank her for encouraging me to read like that and for giving me something to look forward to and enjoy during that rough time.

I moved back  home the following year and ended up making two really great friends. They were both country boys,  hard working, and just great guys but I still read every chance I got. These books really made such a huge difference during that time and I haven't stopped reading since. They eventually moved that old train but it was there all the way through my Senior year when I finally dropped out and got a G.E.D. I'd finally had enough of school and was ready to move on. My two friends were a grade ahead of me and both had moved so I pretty much went back to skipping class and reading on my train. It's a shame they moved that old thing. I wish it was still there because every so often I get the urge to go climb up on it, lay down and stare at the sky and remember all of the great adventures we had together.

Jamie

P.S.
I now love it in the country :)                        

Note: The cover above is not the original beautiful covers that I am referring to.