Monday 2.0: "Love Saves the Day" Arrives!

Peeps, we gotta tell you, we're anxiously sitting by (okay, on) Mom's tablet, waiting for her to get home and Turn. It. On.

("One word, Mother. Red? Seriously??")

Why, you ask? Because people all over the internet are saying that their copy of Gwen Cooper's must-read book, Love Saves The Day, has arrived. And we can hardly wait for her to check the Nook App and tell us ours is here too!

If you haven't yet pre-ordered a copy... well.

Run, do not walk, to the nearest book store, or surf to your fave ebook site and get one. If it's anything like her last book (and we sneaked a peek at chapter one already and we can assure you it is) this falls into the "can't put down" category.

We're going to digress a bit and tell you about Gwen's last book. It's also how we met Gwen and her superstar kitty, Homer!

Well, kind of. You see, we hooked up with Homer on twitter. He's this cool blind kitty who, one day a few years ago, said "hey you guys, you should read my mom's book!"

So of course, wanting to support a friend, we kindly told him we'd be happy to. Mom bought a copy of Homer's Odyssey, not knowing Gwen was a real-life, honest-to-goodness author.

Oh my cat! Five pages into the book and she's thinking, "man, Gwen's good. Really really good. She should do this for a living!"

Um, Mommy, Gwen's a New York Times bestselling author.."

Boy was her face red. (It's not that Gwen's not well-known. Mom's just really bad at this. For instance, she could tell you there's a book out there now called "Hunger Games," but doesn't have a clue who wrote it. Seriously. She's doing good to know Hemingway wrote "For Whom the Bell Tolls"!)

But she got so excited about the amazing, compelling, can't-put-down story of Homer's life that soon she was telling everyone she knew (even strangers on planes, and she does NOT talk to strangers on planes) that they had to read this book.

It's so good that our dad, who only reads books to help him get to sleep at night, was forced to stop reading it because it was so gripping he wasn't getting any sleep. (He did finish it, just not while reading in bed ;-)

So now you understand why we're so excited about Gwen's next book, Love Saves the Day.

"Is it here yet, momma?"

But wait! There's more! (We were just dying to say that.)

Gwen is hosting a contest and anyone who purchases Love Saves the Day during the first week it goes on sale is eligible to enter - the winner gets an in-person visit from Gwen plus $500 donated to the animal-related charity of their choice. Sweet, huh?

Mom wants to say a word about that all-important first week a book goes on sale. She has several friends who are authors, and they've told her that this first week is something publishers look very closely at when deciding whether or not they're going to continue to publish an author. It's similar to that whole box-office-hit phenomenon at the movies.

So, if you're planning to buy Love Saves the Day anyway, please do it now.

Who knows? You might win a visit from Gwen and $500 for your fave animal charity.

(Second prize isn't too shabby either: a portrait of your pet by animal artist Sue Hains!)

So Mom got home (finally)...
to find this: 

Rats. They're making us wait til tomorrow to read it.