No, sadly, this is not my usual Monday rant.  Yes, I am currently ready to call a certain someone unprintable names, but I figure it’s best to ignore them as they obviously have the reading comprehension and manners of a five year old.  Maybe I’ll get back to ranting after the Christmas spirit wears off.

Anyway, that’s not what this post is about.  Here are some important announcements/questions for your reading pleasure:

1.  Would you be interested in being interviewed by me?

If you’re a book blogger or an author that blogs about books and writing, I would love to interview you.  Why?  Because I like doing interviews and I want to give my fellow bloggers/author-bloggers some publicity.  It also gives my readers a chance to discover other great blogs.  So if you’re interested in being interviewed, tell me below in the comments and I’ll be happy to get in touch with you.

2.  I’ve figured out the prize for completing The Mad Reviewer Reading Challenge!

(A big thanks goes to James Kennedy who suggested this in the comments!) Here’s what I will be doing: when you complete your challenge and another blogger completes the challenge on the same level or close to you I will put you in touch with one another.  You can then guest post for each other either about the challenge (what you learned from it, if you might do it next year) or just exchange reviews.  But how the grand prize is going to work is as follows:

Everyone who achieves Mad Reviewer earns 4 entries, Crazy Reviewer earns 3 entries, Slightly Sane Reviewer earns 2 entries and Sane Reviewer earns 1 entry.  I will put the names of the bloggers who have completed the challenge (and I have verified that they were honest) in a hat and draw one.  I’ll even do it on video so there are no complaints about honesty.  So what is the grand prize?

The grand prize will be a book blogger’s prize pack of a free book of your choice with the option of me to put my own annotations in it (some people like reading others’ annotations, but if you don’t like it, that’s cool too) and promotion on my blog.  Yes, it’s not exactly a large prize pack, but what I will do that other contest holders won’t is ship anywhere in the world, not just North America.  The promotion on my blog can be for either your blog or if you have a book out, I’ll promote that.

If more people enter next year’s challenge, I’ll likely up the prizes.  But for this first year I’ll stick with a free book and some promotion.

3.  Would you like to guest post for me?

Guest posting can be a drain on bloggers.  Believe me, I would know.  That’s why when someone guest posts for me, I always return the favour.  It helps both of us because we both get exposed to new readers and our readers get to read someone else’s thoughts.  I’ve had two amazing semi-regular guest posters, Caleb Flanagan and The Streetlight Reader, but a little variety is always nice.  For more information about guest posting, please check out this post.

4.  I will be posting a short story I wrote on Christmas.

I had intended on reviewing a Christmas-y book for Christmas, but I changed my mind.  I’m going to post a short story I wrote a couple years ago that I think a lot of writers and conspiracy theorists will be able to relate to.  It’s around 300 words and that’s all I’m going to say about it at this time.  If you celebrate Christmas, think of it as my Christmas present to you.  If you don’t celebrate Christmas, think of it either a special treat or torture, depending on whether you enjoy it or not.