Under a Brass Moon Blog Tour

UNDER A BRASS MOON

A Steampunk and Science Fiction Anthology

This anthology includes twenty-seven short stories intended to enchant.  Enjoy the works of Jordan Elizabeth, G. Miki Hayden, Benjamin Sperduto, D. J. Butler, Christine Baker, Lorna MacDonald Czarnota, Jessica Gunn, Lorna Marie Larson, Quinn Southwick, James Wymore, Terri Karsten, W. K. Pomeroy, Ashley Pasco, Jeremy Mortis, Grant Eagar, Amberle Husbands, Nick Lofthouse, Perry McDaid, and S.A. Larsen.

Here are just a few of the amazing stories you'll find in UNDER A BRASS MOON:

Maiden in the Clock Tower by Jordan Elizabeth: A young woman is trapped in a clock tower to be used as a pawn in an evil merchant's scheme. Can she escape to her true love?

The Queen of Cobwebs by Jeremy Mortis: Something is hunting people in the foggy streets, and the professor and his assistant are about to meet it.

Vacant by Nick Lofthouse: Where does a dreamer fit into a world where ideas are a finite resource from any one person? Could free thought be our savior, or just a sweet distraction from the inevitable?

Hour of Darkness by Ashley Pasco: Carissa Upton is just your average Victorian street urchin - little does she know that her life is about to change forever. Not only is her entire life a lie, but her future is uncertain.

A Connecticut Yankee in Queen Victoria’s Court by G. Miki Hayden: Engineering professor Dr. Alice Alante doesn't believe in time travel. But when she's sent to Queen Victoria's Windsor castle in a strange machine, her only choice may be to help build a dirigible to defend the crown.

Lucky Escape for Goldilocks Girl by Perry McDaid: On a new world structured to reprise all the patriarchal and elitist notions of the Elizabethan era, a young girl promised to an old but influential suitor chooses to rebel by masquerading as a Knight of the Road … or Highwayman.

Calliope by Terri Karsten: Roscoe Gordon dreams of bringing back his dad’s Steam Calliope, but he’s hindered by a pair of prank-loving ghosts. With their help, will he lead the parade or blow the whole thing up?

The Balloon Thief by Jessica Gunn: Adeline has made a name for herself as Beltham’s Balloon Thief for stealing high-priced jewelry items and leaving only a balloon in their place, setting sail for finer lands on her steam-powered hot air balloon. Adeline has been told the stolen rings and gems open a door on the mysterious Leikei, the temple in the air where she thinks her friend Colin is stranded. On her last robbery attempt, she’s arrested and forced to place her trust in the museum owner’s daughter who has her own reasons for wanting to get to Leikei. If she can trust her, Adeline just might be able to rescue Colin. If not, it might be the end for them all.

Ethereal Coil by S.A. Larsen: A new sin eater's refusal to do her job of keeping balance between good and evil awakens Wrath, one of the Seven Deadly Sins, endangering those closest to her.

Fritz Finkel and the Marvelous Mechanical Thing by Lorna MacDonald Czarnota: Every era has to begin sometime, and every inventor starts someplace. For Fritz, it is the opportunity to impress the "apple of his eye," the lovely, unobtainable Greta Spielmacher--the toymaker's daughter.  Fritz wants to be a toy designer, but he's the janitor. Will his special toy be the key to winning his lady love?

Henry the Tailor by Grant Eagar: Henry is a tailor and inventor of flying machines. Sophie is an agent for the English secret service. Henry and Sophie live in the alternate, steam powered world of Victorian England. The country is at war with Count Von-Friedrich and his horde of mercenaries. The spies of the count are killing and kidnapping the English scientists and inventors. Sophie’s job is to root out the spies and she uses Henry’s inventions as an enticement.

Talking Metal by W. K. Pomeroy: Five years after piloting a zeppelin to the other side of the world to find the spark, Saskia is on the verge of inventing greatness, but her old professor appears to have beaten her to the patent office, or has he?

The Women of Lastonia by Lorna Marie Larson: Earth's best team must learn why a distant planet won't join the Interstellar Alliance. Diplomacy is key, but the closed steampunk society has some primeval ideas on how to treat the fairer sex.


UNDER A BRASS MOON is available now from Curiosity Quills Press.  Grab your copy from Amazon and make sure to check out reviews on GoodReads.

Help us celebrate the release with the chance to win a $20 Amazon gift card.

All winners will be notified after verification of entry at the end of this promotion.  Prizes have been supplied by and the responsibility of delivery are solely that of the author and/or their representatives. Blogs are not liable for non-delivery on the part of the author. No purchase necessary.

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Free Kindle Download: Absolute Sunset by Kata Mlek

Absolute Sunset

by Kata Mlek

About the book:

Hanka didn’t ask to see the fates of her loved ones. She didn’t invite the raven into her nightmares, with his riddles of suffering and death. She didn’t ask, at six years old, to be responsible for saving her family.

But fate chooses us, and Hanka can either play the raven’s game, or watch her family die.

The question is, will the raven play by the rules? Or is Hanka his final victim?

Download Free Kindle

Book Review: The Boss Vol. 1 - 3 A Billionaire Romance Serial by Cari Quinn and Taryn Elliott

The Boss Vol. 1 - 3

A Billionaire Romance Serial

by Cari Quinn, Taryn Elliott

Kindle Edition
File Size: 2438 KB
Print Length: 243 pages
Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
Publisher: Rainbow Rage Publishing (May 21, 2016)
Publication Date: May 21, 2016
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC

Ratings: 

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

My thoughts:

This I got a free Kindle copy (not a review request). I liked both the main characters, plot - oh the whole story. I'm just disappointed in the ending of this book #1 (volumes 1-3). The secrets were kept far too long which made me extremely bored AND tired. I definitely want to read book #2 (paid) to know this something being kept unknown, but right now, I just want to stop and move on to other books.

About the book:

I came to work for Blake Carson under a ruse. I never guessed those false pretenses would lead to a job as his assistant. 
Or that I would end up pressed against a glass wall in his mammoth empire, naked and begging. 
I thought I was just using him to get back the only thing that mattered to me. And that he was using me too, for his own selfish, seductive reasons. 
Turns out neither of us have any clue who is using who. And it feels too incredibly good to stop. 
Especially since someone is out to get us—and Blake may be the last person I can trust. 
Or the only one.

Follow Friday: My take on DNF books!

Prompt of the week

What is your take on DNF books. Do you review them? Choose not to review them?

Well, you review the books you read, right? Although I did not get to the end of it, I still read the book. Just like any other book, it affected my mood, my thinking, though in a negative way. So for me, A DNF should be reviewed too.

Now - I am on nearly a month-long-hiatus. Read around 15-20 books. Half of these were DNFs. I'm seriously considering of just doing the star rating in Goodreads / Amazon and stating the word DNF. Yikes, don't have time and energy to write everything! 

Update: forgot to add, these ONLY star ratings for DNF books are all mine. Not from a review request. If it's sent to me by an author or publisher, a review will be posted definitely!

How about you? Happy Friday!

For newbies, to join the hop, 

visit Alison Can Read  or Parajunkee's View 

Recommended Read: The Blood She Betrayed by Cheryse Durrant

The Blood She Betrayed

Book 1 in the Heart Hunters series

by Cheryse Durrant

Amazon 5-star Rating - 67%

About the book:

Book 1 in the Heart Hunters series. 

Thrust into the technology-driven Earthlands, Shahkara must find the ancient Elnara death lantern - the only thing that can save her homeworld from the heart-devouring Taloners. 

She enlists the help of geeky billionaire Max McCalden, but soon finds that, as a half-Taloner herself, her blood demands what she knows she can't have - a human heart. 

Shahkara longs for love, but as deadly enemies attack at every turn, will her lust for Max destroy them both? 

Or will she find the strength to free both worlds from a threat more horrific than the demons that share her blood?

Book review originally posted in November 2013 

The Blood She Betrayed is the first book to the Heart Hunters series by a newbie author, Cheryse Durrant. The fact that this author is from Australia makes me want to jump for joy! lol Honestly, ever since I've read Keri Arthur's books (Australian), I've been looking out for other books with Australia as the setting of the story. Or any other countries aside from the US. Setting is very important to me as this is sometimes my deciding factor whether to continue reading or to DNF a book.

Back to the story, The Blood She Betrayed is about Shahkara, a half-Taloner wanting to destroy the heart-devouring Taloners, her kind. Accidentally, when she entered Earth, she met Max McCalden, son of a billionaire and together they set out to find the Elnara death lantern that can kill all Taloner.

I loved the setting and so the plot of the story. Read the story in less than a week considering I was in 'hell' (busiest days of my work life) those times. I find all the characters interesting. As for the romance part, Shahkara and Max had good times together. Though the earlier part of the story I was annoyed with Shahkara's constant questions on every thing/gadget she sees. And like Max, I kept on forgetting she's from other world/dimension lol. Love the twists and mystery on Shahkara's past. I highly recommend this book, your money is well-spent on this one.

Purchase your copy

Wednesday Rewind: Guest Author│Slightly Grizzled Words of Advice for Fiction Writers Starting Out (Lana Cooper)

Slightly Grizzled Words of Advice for Fiction Writers Starting Out

So you wanna be a writer? A fiction writer? Sweet! Welcome to the club! What's your style, kid? Do you want to write horror stories? Science fiction? Chick lit? Romance? Contemporary fiction? Or maybe some unique combination of all of those animals? No matter what type of fictional tales you want to weave, there a few basics to keep in mind to help you keep your creative streak, morale, and sanity intact – and hopefully give you a leg up on success (however you may define it).

Find the Truth in Your Characters

Even the most fictional of characters is anchored by a small grain of truth. You know that disclaimer in fine print in nearly every fiction novel? The one that says that all characters in the novel are complete products of the author's imagination and any resemblance to folks living or dead is a coincidence? It's a hot load of monkey crap.  Many famous authors -- from Charles Dickens to Charles Bukowski -- have drawn upon their personal lives to create vivid and memorable characters.

Your novel doesn't have to include thinly veiled facsimiles of your Great Aunt Matilda and your rotten next door neighbor, but perhaps you can pull attributes of these people into fictional creations. Maybe your Great Aunt Matilda likes to bake apple pies for every neighbor on the block, even the rotten one. You could recycle your Great Aunt's trait of generosity and kindness to create an elderly vampire who shares her stock of hospital-procured blood with other younger vampires in her vicinity, even the former vampire hunter-turned-vampire himself who once tried to kill her. There's always a way to twist the truth into a glorious tableau of fiction.

Get Ruthless With Your Red Pen

More is not always better. Your typical George R.R. Martin or Stephen King novel may lapse into 200,000-word territory, but as a first time novelist, yours shouldn't. If you're planning on pitching your novel to an agent or publisher, the maximum word count that most will consider is between 80,000 and 100,000 words. Typically, many agents and professionals in the publishing industry see an uber-high word count as the mark of an amateur who hasn't learned to edit themselves and whose story may tend to meander. This isn't always the case. Maybe you truly are writing an epic. And that's cool. Don't stifle your imagination. Instead, perhaps pitch part of your epic as part of a longer series.

However, don't hesitate to read through your work once or twice to check it over for redundancies, plot holes, or non-essential parts of the story that bog your novel down. Take a 3- to 6-month break from your work once it's been completed before you start hacking away at it with your red pen. This way, you're not as emotionally attached to any words you may have recently written. Every writer has those warm n' fuzzy feelings of "OMG! That's, like, the best sentence EVER!" Taking a little time away from your work may help you to remove the rose-tinted glasses and better streamline your story into something that really reels your readers in and gives your finished work a great sense of pacing.

Remember Your Gift

If you have a story inside you just begging to be unleashed upon the world, there's nothing more rewarding than being a fiction writer. In doing so, you become part of a long, ancient line of storytellers who brought people together – around a campfire or a computer screen – to unite them with the gift of imagination. Stories have the power to touch people and make them not only feel, but understand those feelings because they see a little bit of themselves in those characters you've created. Stories give readers hope that maybe they, too, can be capable of doing great deeds like the characters in that tale they're wrapped up in reading at that moment.

And you, as the writer, know that you've helped give them that gift. That's a pretty good feeling to have at the very end of the story, don't you think?

Now stop wasting time and start writing!

About the Author

Lana Cooper was born and raised in Scranton, PA and currently resides in Philadelphia. A graduate of Temple University, she doesn't usually talk about herself in the first person, but makes an exception when writing an author bio. Cooper has written extensively on a variety of pop culture topics and has been a critic for such sites as PopMatters and Ghouls On Film. She's also written news stories for EDGE Media, a leading nationwide network devoted to LGBT news and issues. Cooper enjoys spending time with her family, reading comic books, books with lots of words and no pictures, and avoiding eye-contact with strangers on public transportation. "Bad Taste In Men" is her first full-length novel.

Her latest book is the humorous nonfiction, Bad Taste in Men.

For More Information

• Visit Lana Cooper’s website.
• Connect with Lana on Facebook and Twitter.
• Visit Lana’s blog.
• More books by Lana Cooper.
• Contact Lana.

Bad Taste in Men

Author: Lana Cooper
Publisher: Delightfully Dysfunctional Books
Pages: 352
Genre: Humorous Nonfiction
Format: Paperback/Kindle

About the book

Have you ever felt like even Mother Theresa has got more game than you? 

If you have, you'd be in the same boat as geeky, awkward metalhead Nova Porter. 

Bad Taste In Men follows Nova from her prepubescent years through young adulthood and her attempts at getting dudes to dig her. 

Juggling self-esteem issues, small town outsider status, and questionable taste in guys, Nova is looking for love in all the wrong places - like the food court at the mall. Nova's circle of friends and her strange(ly) endearing family more than make up for what her love life lacks. 

Along the way, Nova alternately plays the roles of hero and villain, mastermind and stooge; picking up far more valuable life lessons than numbers for her little black book. 

One part chick lit for tomboys and one part Freaks and Geeks for kids who came of age in the mid-'90s, Bad Taste In Men is loaded (like a freight train) with pop cultural references and crude humor. 

From getting laughed at by your crush to being stood up (twice!) by a guy with one eye, Bad Taste In Men showcases the humor and humiliation that accompanies the search for love (or at least "like") as a small-town teenage outcast, managing to wring heart-warming sweetness from angsty adolescent memories - and jokes about barf and poop.

Purchase your copy

**first published in October 2014

Book Spotlight with Excerpt: Shadow Wings by JC Andrijeski

Shadow Wings

by JC Andrijeski

About the book:

In a time of great darkness, can Ilana help an angel regain his wings?

Hunting a fallen angel bent on changing human history, Archangel Raguel finds a mysterious key that throws him out of the angelic realms, abruptly turning him human.

He wakes naked in Gorky Park, in 1980s Moscow, wings gone and no ability to communicate with the other side. Picked up for public drunkenness, he asks for help of KGB Agent Ilana Kopovich, who is investigating a far more gruesome crime––the murder of a half-dozen children whose bodies were left mutilated in the middle of Red Square. Little does she know, the murderer she’s trying to put behind bars is the same demon Raguel’s been chasing.

Raguel asks for Ilana’s help, and she quickly realizes she needs him. Together they must stop the demon before he commits his final crime and brings the world to the brink of war.

Excerpt:

Purchase your copy

Recommended Read: A Lady at Willowgrove Hall by Sarah E. Ladd

A Lady at Willowgrove Hall 

(Whispers On The Moors #3) 

by Sarah E. Ladd 

Amazon 5-star Rating - 63%

About the book:

Her secret cloaks her in isolation and loneliness. His secret traps him in a life that is not his own.

Darbury, England, 1819

Cecily Faire carries the shame of her past wherever she treads, knowing one slip of the tongue could expose her disgrace. But soon after becoming a lady’s companion at Willowgrove Hall, Cecily finds herself face-to-face with a man well-acquainted with the past she’s desperately hidden for years.

Nathaniel Stanton has a secret of his own—one that has haunted him for years and tied him to his father’s position as steward of Willowgrove Hall. To protect his family, Nathaniel dares not breathe a word of the truth. But as long as the shadow looms over him, he’ll never be free to find his own way in the world. He’ll never be free to fall in love.

When the secrets swirling within Willowgrove Hall come to light, Cecily and Nathaniel must confront a painful choice: Will they continue running from the past . . . or will they stand together and fight for a future without the suffocating weight of secrets long kept?

Book reviewed originally posted in March 2015

I don't really choose books because of covers but this time I did. It was soooo nice to look at and very intriguing! 

Each character has depth, believable, interesting. Character building is the most important aspect of the book and in novels like this, it is even more important because readers are transported to a historical setting. Readers should be able to connect to the characters and setting and this one has both. Cecily, Nathan and some minor characters have their own back story which also made the book captivating.

As much as I love the book, got one negative things to say. The appearance/revelation of one of the characters in the mid part of the book was so predictable. I was on denial this could happen to a book so good.

Overall, it was engaging and well written. I'd definitely read more books from this author. 

Purchase your copy

Free Kindle Download: Jake Carter & the Nightmare Gallery

Jake Carter & the Nightmare Gallery

by Kevin Folliard and J.T. Molloy

About the book:

When 6th grade outcast Jake Carter meets the enigmatic Dr. Shade, his dreams become reality. Shade's miraculous technology grants access to the mental realm of the dreamscape, where anything is possible. Furthermore, Jake discovers that his long lost twin brother Luke has been serving as Shade's loyal protégé for the past seven years.

Download Free Kindle

Free Kindle Download: Necessary Decisions by Giacomo Giammatteo

Necessary Decisions

A Gino Cataldi Mystery

by Giacomo Giammatteo

About the book:

Gino Cataldi is a man hanging on by a thread. Cancer took his wife, and drugs put his son in rehab. All he has left is his badge.

When a teenage girl is kidnapped it brings back nightmares from the worst case he ever worked—the one that tore his life to shreds and forced him out of Philadelphia.

Gino doesn't want this case but he knows he has to take it. Not just to save the girl, but to earn redemption for what went wrong in Philly.

What do you do when you’ve lost everything?

Gino—a cop who pushes the limits of the law…
Lonny—a good man struggling to feed his family…
Scott—a biotech executive who has everything a man could want…
A band of ruthless kidnappers…

They all come together in a thriller you won’t be able to forget.

Everyone has decisions to make. This one could cost Gino his badge—and a young girl her life.

Download Free Kindle

Book Review: Summer's Dream by Mary E Hanks

Summer's Dream

Second Chance Series Book 3

by Mary E Hanks

Series: Second Chance Series
Paperback: 314 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (October 20, 2015)

Kindle Edition
File Size: 2114 KB
Print Length: 314 pages
Publication Date: October 19, 2015
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC

Ratings: ★ ★ ★ ★ 

My thoughts:

I love second-chance romances, immediately purchased this without reading the whole synopsis. The story is sweet and heartwarming. I liked that the author wove a realistic relationship between husband and wife. The reconciliation with their newfound faith feels so right. Looking forward to reading Ms. Hanks other books in this series.

Purchase your copy

About the book:

Summer dreamed of becoming an artist and painting natural beauty on canvas. But all that changed when she married Joshua Hart, a man carrying a powerful dream of his own. With a temper to match his wild-boy good looks, he stormed out of their marriage to pursue a life as a musician, leaving her alone and, unbeknown to him, pregnant.

Five years later, Summer is busy raising her daughter and managing the family's camp and retreat center in the woods of Eastern Washington. With her artistic dreams all but forgotten, her world turns upside down the day Josh shows up with an offer to help her get the camp ready--and plans for divorce.

Only Josh didn't expect to find a blue-eyed darling who calls him "Daddy" living at Hart's Camp. Not to mention his surprise over the attraction he still feels for Summer Day. Can he make amends for the past? Or is it too late?

Ty and Winter Williams, marriage-retreat speakers, share their heartwarming story of second chances, and Summer and Josh must face the choices they've made. Is God's grace enough to carry them through the divorce? Or can He change their hearts and help them find their way back to love?

It's Monday! What are you reading?

"It's Monday! What are you reading?" is a fun meme hosted by Kathryn @ The Book Date. This is where we share the books we have read the last week and our reading plans for this week.

Books to Review

Summer dreamed of becoming an artist and painting natural beauty on canvas. But all that changed when she married Joshua Hart, a man carrying a powerful dream of his own. With a temper to match his wild-boy good looks, he stormed out of their marriage to pursue a life as a musician, leaving her alone and, unbeknown to him, pregnant. 

Five years later, Summer is busy raising her daughter and managing the family’s camp and retreat center in the woods of Eastern Washington. With her artistic dreams all but forgotten, her world turns upside down the day Josh shows up with an offer to help her get the camp ready—and plans for divorce. 

Only Josh didn’t expect to find a blue-eyed darling who calls him “Daddy” living at Hart’s Camp. Not to mention his surprise over the attraction he still feels for Summer Day. Can he make amends for the past? Or is it too late? 

Ty and Winter Williams, marriage-retreat speakers, share their heartwarming story of second chances, and Summer and Josh must face the choices they’ve made. Is God’s grace enough to carry them through the divorce? Or can He change their hearts and help them find their way back to love? 

* * *

I came to work for Blake Carson under a ruse. I never guessed those false pretenses would lead to a job as his assistant. 

Or that I would end up pressed against a glass wall in his mammoth empire, naked and begging. 

I thought I was just using him to get back the only thing that mattered to me. And that he was using me too, for his own selfish, seductive reasons. Turns out neither of us have any clue who is using who. And it feels too incredibly good to stop. 

Especially since someone is out to get us—and Blake may be the last person I can trust. 

Or the only one.

* * *

Crystal Frost has spent her whole life believing she's ordinary, and her mother has long held the secret of her heritage. When Crystal begins seeing the ghost of a dead classmate, her life spirals out of control. She’s faced with the threat that everyone will find out she’s a freak, as if the struggle to figure out her new-found abilities wasn’t enough pressure. Crystal has to find some way to save the people who have come to her for help all while trying to keep her abilities a secret. Will she be able to fulfill these overwhelming demands while solving the mystery that is the ghost of Olivia Owen?

Currently Re-reading

The women of the Waverley family -- whether they like it or not -- are heirs to an unusual legacy, one that grows in a fenced plot behind their Queen Anne home on Pendland Street in Bascom, North Carolina. There, an apple tree bearing fruit of magical properties looms over a garden filled with herbs and edible flowers that possess the power to affect in curious ways anyone who eats them. 

For nearly a decade, 34-year-old Claire Waverley, at peace with her family inheritance, has lived in the house alone, embracing the spirit of the grandmother who raised her, ruing her mother's unfortunate destiny and seemingly unconcerned about the fate of her rebellious sister, Sydney, who freed herself long ago from their small town's constraints. Using her grandmother's mystical culinary traditions, Claire has built a successful catering business -- and a carefully controlled, utterly predictable life -- upon the family's peculiar gift for making life-altering delicacies: lilac jelly to engender humility, for instance, or rose geranium wine to call up fond memories. Garden Spells reveals what happens when Sydney returns to Bascom with her young daughter, turning Claire's routine existence upside down. With Sydney's homecoming, the magic that the quiet caterer has measured into recipes to shape the thoughts and moods of others begins to influence Claire's own emotions in terrifying and delightful ways. 

As the sisters reconnect and learn to support one another, each finds romance where she least expects it, while Sydney's child, Bay, discovers both the safe home she has longed for and her own surprising gifts. With the help of their elderly cousin Evanelle, endowed with her own uncanny skills, the Waverley women redeem the past, embrace the present, and take a joyful leap into the future. 

Next to read

It's October in Bascom, North Carolina, and autumn will not go quietly. As temperatures drop and leaves begin to turn, the Waverley women are made restless by the whims of their mischievous apple tree... and all the magic that swirls around it. But this year, first frost has much more in store.

Claire Waverley has started a successful new venture, Waverley’s Candies. Though her handcrafted confections — rose to recall lost love, lavender to promote happiness and lemon verbena to soothe throats and minds — are singularly effective, the business of selling them is costing her the everyday joys of her family, and her belief in her own precious gifts.

Sydney Waverley, too, is losing her balance. With each passing day she longs more for a baby — a namesake for her wonderful Henry. Yet the longer she tries, the more her desire becomes an unquenchable thirst, stealing the pleasure out of the life she already has.

Sydney’s daughter, Bay, has lost her heart to the boy she knows it belongs to.. if only he could see it, too. But how can he, when he is so far outside her grasp that he appears to her as little more than a puff of smoke?

When a mysterious stranger shows up and challenges the very heart of their family, each of them must make choices they have never confronted before. And through it all, the Waverley sisters must search for a way to hold their family together through their troublesome season of change, waiting for that extraordinary event that is First Frost.

How about you? What are your reading plans this week? 

Happy Monday!