Gardeners! Plan to save that summer abundance with home canning

For gardeners, winter is both a welcome relief from toiling with their beloved Earth and a prison in which nothing can be grown. Even in warmer climates, the winter months hardly compare to the bountiful bliss of summer gardening. Gardeners know to spend their down time researching new plants, shopping seed catalogs, and studying pest and disease control techniques, but sometimes more focus is placed on producing the food instead planning how to consume every bit of it.

If you are a gardener who has yet to learn how to preserve food with home canning, then you are missing out on half the fun. Opening a jar of tomatoes in February that you put up in August is a very satisfying delight. It will let you revisit the glories of a summer enjoyed in your garden and allow you to eat the fruits of your labor long after the first frost.

Home canning often intimidates people. I know I hesitated for a long time before teaching myself this rewarding and addictive hobby, but home canning can be successfully accomplished by anyone who can read a thermometer and possesses the patience to boil water.

If you are considering adding home canning to your gardening skills, then there are some helpful steps you can take even in the winter to prepare for success.

1. Start reading canning recipes so you can get an idea of what you might like to eat. This will help you decide what types of fruits and vegetables to grow.

2. Study your seed catalogs and take note of varieties well suited to food preservation. Marketing materials will often note if a tomato cans well or if a cucumber is ideal for pickling.

3. Make small incremental investments in equipment like canning jars, a large water bath kettle, jar lifter, ladle, thermometer, and funnel. Although none of these items is particularly expensive, stretching out the purchases in the off season will keep your household budget happy. Also, this equipment can be downright impossible to find during the peak of harvest season.

Anyone looking for a concise guide to home canning, should bookmark my website Canning Local where you can find easy-to-follow directions for successful home canning plus yummy recipes.

My fantasy ebooks are now available at BarnesandNoble.com

Mainstream exposure to readers has been the elusive holy grail for me as I've marketed my fantasy series the past four years. But thanks to Smashwords.com my novels are now being distributed as ebooks to some major online retailers with BarnesandNoble.com being the first to have successfully added my novels to its digital inventory.

Now fantasy readers who like to shop the Barnes & Noble website will have the chance to notice my work. Just like at my website the first book in The Rys Chronicles epic fantasy series, Union of Renegades is free through B&N. And then the three subsequent novels in the series are $4.95 each. Of course I greatly prefer for readers to purchase directly from my website at www.braveluck.com because then I don't have to pay a distributor and a retailer, but it remains important for me to be available through a mainstream ebook retailer. Readers shop at major online retailers and only the lucky few stumble upon my little website, so I'm hoping to gradually gain some traction with the fantasy reading public. I must admit to being a little excited even if I doubt that sales at B&N where I'm buried amid thousands of other titles will exceed what I move through my website, but time will tell.

For Barnes & Noble customers seeking a good fantasy series, here are the links to my novels.

Union of Renegades
The Goddess Queen
Judgment Rising
The Borderlands of Power

To read Barnes & Noble ebooks, its customers need to download an eReader application for their particular devices, like iPhone, Blackberry, PC, Mac, or the Nook.

More classic ebooks in epub format plus a new book review

Although I'm sufficiently busy getting ready for the holidays, I have been pecking away at converting my collection of classics to the epub ebook format and adding to the content at one of my websites.

My latest titles now available as epub ebooks are:

A Trio of Tragedies: MacBeth, Hamlet, and King Lear by William Shakespeare - Some fine reading if you want to get away from all that heartwarming holiday stuff.
On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin

The famous works by Darwin are actually pretty good sellers, and I'm hoping that expanding my offerings to include epub will make them accessible to more interested readers. The Descent of Man is one of my favorites. I've always been fascinated by human evolution (wish we had more of it!) and The Descent of Man presents research on so many aspects of humanity and human history that you never hear anyone talk about these days.

Moving on to my latest book review. I read a work in the heroic fantasy genre called The Gateway by Glenn G. Thater. It was a good read and I gave it a respectable four swords rating. Read the full review of The Gateway at the Fantasy Tavern.

I'm also working on a brand new website that I will be revealing in a few days, so the blog might be a little quiet until then as I focus on that project.

Add your free fantasy ebook link to the directory at the Fantasy Tavern

I recently cleaned up my Fantasy Tavern website by sweeping the floors, polishing the silver, and kicking out the bums that hadn't paid their tabs. Now it's time to attract a new clientele. In addition to free access to my fantasy novel Union of Renegades, I decided to include links to other free fantasy ebooks. I got the list going by doing a search and collecting links to some decent reads, but I need input from other fantasy authors out there promoting their work with free ebook downloads so that this can become a more extensive and useful directory.

I am looking for links to fantasy ebooks that are permanently free instead of just a short promotional period. I know there are lots of writers out there attracting readers with free ebooks, and a link at the Fantasy Tavern would help you be a little easier to find.

I'm looking for works of fantasy, but I will be loose with the genre definition. The novels can be either online web novels or downloadable ebooks. You can provide a few lines of description for the novel as well. Please go to the Fantasy Tavern and contact me about adding your free fantasy ebook to the new directory. You will gain a permanent link and every little bit helps.

Beaver Research - Presumably a recession-proof business

Last weekend the family and I were out answering boat ads on Craigslist. While not finding an address in Portage, Michigan we passed a business that boldly labeled itself as BEAVER RESEARCH. As you would expect, the business appeared to be prosperous because there is a limitless need for beaver research. Naturally I took a picture of the sign.

Can you imagine working there and being the lady who has to answer the phone.

"Good morning, Beaver Research! How may I help you?"

Or

"Beaver Research, do you know your extension?"

Or

"Beaver Research. We KNOW beavers!"

I could go on like this all day.

Now, on my way home from discovering that Michigan industry does have a promising future, I saw a sign for this exit on the highway. I swear it's true.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Get in the mood for the upcoming Sherlock Holmes movie that will be released in the United States on Christmas by reading the original adventures by the masterful Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The short stories in the collection called The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes are clever, diverse, and marvelously entertaining. Holmes is a fascinating character and Doctor Watson is downright charming. I am very much looking forward to seeing him played by Jude Law. And I have no doubt that Robert Downey Jr. will definitely leave his mark upon the iconic character of Holmes.

This month at Falbe Publishing I am featuring The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. It is available in multiple ebook formats that you can tuck away on your reader, computer, or cell phone so you can access some Victorian Era mystery whenever you need to challenge your mind and amuse yourself.