Just like Oprah, without the burden of wealth and fame...

In my blog roll you will find Baby Squared a fun blog written by Jane Roper about the joys and trials of being a mom to twin toddler girls. Jane lives in the Boston area and is trying to get a book published and has made the top 100 in the Amazon.com Breakthrough Novel competition. Now she is in the running to try and be one of the final three.

So, to help the cause and get her more exposure - i.e. get the five or so people who read this blog who are also not Oz Spies because she already knows about the competition to read the excerpt, I am giving you the link to download it, for free, at Amazon.com here.

I have downloaded and read it and LOVED it. I can't wait to be able to read more. It takes place in a fictitious town in Maine, but it might as well be Friendship, ME where I spend time each summer. The smells and the sounds were right there in my mind as I was reading the excerpt.

Sometimes I don't connect with an author's voice. When I attempted to read "A Confederacy of Dunces" or "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" I completely did NOT connect with the writing. Nothing about either book grabbed my interest and I stopped reading. In fact I stopped reading anything that Oprah suggests to her "book club" because whenever I read something she recommended, I hated it. Oprah and I apparently have very different sensibilities. Go figure. Oprah - fabulous wealth and her own empire; me - picking up dog poop in the backyard while wearing my pajamas because Cooper insists on being in the sandbox at 7am.

Anywho, it may help that by reading Jane's blog I have become familiar with her style, but a blog about your real life is a very different animal from writing a work of fiction. There is character development and creating a world with details and depth and it is HARD. I truly feel Jane has talent and while she feels she is a long shot for getting into the top three, I am hopeful that she eventually gets it published so we can all read the rest of the tale.

Otherwise I will have to stalk her and make her tell me the rest. Like I have time for that. Good luck Jane! And since the excerpt is free to download, tell three friends, and tell them to tell three friends...