It's April 5, Everyone!! Updates and housekeeping (ugh!)

What a great day it is today!! April 5 is my son's 4th birthday!! Happy Birthday to my little Oliver.. he was much wished for and I couldn't have asked for a little boy more perfect than my little guy. Oliver's big sister is pretty special too, and we are going to Chuck E Cheese.. the mother of all Kids Fun places, as it is always picked by the kiddos for their birthday celebrations. Since my stepdaughter is almost 17, I feel like I've been going to Chuck E Cheese's for quite a few years. Now I feel old.

Another fabulous reason for April 5 being a great day is that two of the favorite books that I've read this year are being released!!

TO BE QUEEN by Christy English... And you can enter right here to win your own copy of this great story of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Two lucky winners, plus it's an international giveaway! I highly recommend this title, and you can see my review by clicking here!

Elizabeth I: A Novel by Margaret George (click for review).. another huge chunky book but I loved every page of it! This is a fabulous book and I am looking forward to reading her backlist after this reading experience. And I get to meet the author tomorrow night at the Arts and Letters Live Lecture at the Dallas Museum!!

If you are in the Dallas area, you won't want to miss this chance to learn about Margaret's research on one of our favorite historical figures. Rest assured, I will be posting all about my experience, I am so excited to meet her!!

And as a side note, some not-so-nice person decided to open apparently a fake wordpress blog called The Burton Review, using my old domain which I lost several months ago due to Google technical errors. It has been a nightmare, and I almost wanted to give up the blog altogether I have been so frustrated with these domain issues.

So now when I am googled as The Burton Review, that fake site comes up. GRRR!! In an effort to not have another fake site pop up, I have again purchased another domain, http://www.burtonbookreview.com/ but the blogspot domain will auto-direct you to the current site, thankfully. When you have time, update your bookmarks and links to http://www.burtonbookreview.com/ and I would really appreciate it so very much. The more times Burton Book Review gets googled and clicked hopefully it will knock out the old domain off its pedestal as top of the list. Which I loved being top of the list back when it was mine! Again, another GRRR.

If you are a new linker, and would like an  updated button, please use the button below. I have made it a little smaller than the previous button, so if it is on your sidebar this one may fit better anyway. Let this be a warning to others.. purchase the variants of your "trade name" if possible as far as .net and .org etc because this has been a headache.

And on yet another frustrating note, for those who subscribe to this feed via Google Friend Connect, I have no idea why but the feed may not be updating in Google Reader. If you can, I would appreciate it if you signed up to receive my posts via email instead of relying on the google reader, which hasn't updated in a month for me, but it did for one of my followers (confused!). On the top left hand corner of my sidebar, you can sign up to receive the emailed updates. I have a sneaky suspicion that my traffic has dwindled because of the stupid google reader not updating.

If you do use Google Reader, you need to hit the link under the Email Subscribe, and subscribe in a reader..
Subscribe to The Burton Review and once your are there click ADD SUBSCRIPTION.
That should update your feed to your google reader since I just set that one up. Definitely the most sure-fire way to receive my posts would be the Email Direct feature, but it couldn't hurt to try both. Annoyance, right? Why does Google make everything so difficult?!

In case blogspot users weren't aware (I wasn't till today).. there is a spot on the Settings for Email & Mobile. Once you find that page from your dashboard, you can select the option to convert your pages to Mobile-friendly on mobile devices. This is a feature that I think everyone should use.. especially those blogs like mine that are heavy on the graphics, and it makes the mobile surfer much happier to be able to see your actual content much better. There are some bloggers who don't realize that their text doesn't show up on mobile devices because your backgrounds don't show up. For one particular blog I attempted to visit on the mobile phone there is a white background and white text... makes it kind of difficult to read it.


The NEW button!

HAVE I LOST YOU YET?! HANG ON!! Onwards to happier things...I wanted to direct you to a new spot on HF Connection which features a guest post from book/author publicist Diane Saarinen whom many of my fellow book bloggers may have worked with before. Diane would love to see some of your thoughts on the topic of Pitching Book Bloggers. She mentioned one of my pet peeves how authors out of the blue tell me when they want me to run a review, even though they have never read my review policy. They don't seem to realize that we book bloggers take time out of her personal lives to offer our book reviews, and many of us work full time and have families to take care of first. Before I go crazy venting here..hop on over to Historical Fiction Connection and join in on the discussion. You also have the opportunity to purchase her newest ebook on Pitching Book Bloggers, and if you are a book blogger you can get it free.

Happy April 5th everyone, Happy Birthday to my crazy Oliver, and Happy Release Day to Christy English and Margaret George!!