In the last couple of months, I’ve been happy to welcome many new blog readers and to celebrate I’m inviting everyone to enter to win a free, ARC (Advance Reading Copy) of Into the Land of Snows. All you have to do is leave a comment below to be entered. There are a couple of rules, though. I’m only going to be able to mail to a location in the US. Comments will close midnight (MT) on Wednesday, March 13th (2013). I will conduct a random drawing at that point and notify the winner. Enter only once. Just to have a theme, I’m requesting you comment on something about spring or summer. Here in Colorado, March is usually our snowiest month so spring often feels like it’ll never arrive. To start us off, I’ll post a comment so no one feels awkward to be the first to post.
Mar 14th: Thanks to everyone who entered. The winner is Augusta! Augusta- I’ve posted a notice on your blog but if you happen to see this first, congratulations. Please email me at himalayaspencerellis@yahoo.com. I’ll need your address to ship the book.
ellisnelson 
Thanks for coming over to my blog. I love this idea and may do the same! Best wishes in your new work of helping others write.
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Here in South Florida, our winter was more like spring—much too warm for my taste—and our summers are always brutally hot and humid! Now, in mid-March, we have to turn on the air conditioner nearly every night just to be able to sleep.
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Love this whole idea and hope I win, for sure. Put Knoxville on your springtime journey list. We have a killer Dogwood Arts Festival. Followed by the Biscuit Festival!!! http://ohtheplaceswesee.com
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Here in Texas, Winter is a four letter word that lasts only on certain days. Spring however, may begin as early as in December, continuing on and off for the next couple of months until it becomes summer. Snow to us is white sleet.
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Congrats on having ARC copies of your book. That’s very exciting. As for spring, in the Midwest the weather is so changeable. Sunny one minute and rainy the next. We might have snow again at Easter!
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I took a short vacation to Los Angeles a couple weeks ago. It was warm and sunny and springy. Then I drove all night to get back home. I stopped for a little break and some caffeine around 3am in central Utah. As I stepped out of the car and back into the cold for the first time, I absolutely hated my life. Thinking about it later though, it would be terrible to live without the winter here. We wouldn’t have enough water or appreciation for spring to be as beautiful as it is. Now, a few weeks later, it is sunny and almost warm enough for me to wear my shorts around. I do it anyway, even though it is still a little chilly, but I couldn’t appreciate how wonderful it is without the previous icy months.
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We are looking forward to spring here in Washington too. No snow this winter but a lot of gray days. 🙂
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Good luck with your book. As spring is traditionally the time of birth, when the world comes alive after its long winter sleep, it is appropriate that your book, a child of your imagination, should be coming to fruition now as well.
O thou with dewy locks, who lookest down
Through the clear windows of the morning, turn
Thine angel eyes upon our western isle,
Which in full choir hails thy approach, O Spring! (Blake)
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Love this idea. Great excerpt read too. As for spring, my mom always said, no matter what the calendar says, when you see your first robbin redbreast, it’s spring! I just moved here, but I can tell you, it’s spring in South Carolina for sure – there are robbins all over (and they are huge).
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from Issa, Japanese poet c. early 1800’s:
.
Winter lull —
No talents,
thus no sins.
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meant to be spring here but we just had a snow shower as I was going to the shops
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I live in Ireland so I cannot enter but I posted the competition on Twitter…
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Thanks!
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I can’t win the prize, because I’m not in the States, but wanted to show my support anyway. Good luck with the launch..just what you need to look forward to, now that Winter is behind us, and Spring Training is here: Summers just around the corner.
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I patiently wait by my window. As the steam rises from my hot tea and the aroma fills the room winter slowly melts into spring. I sense something new is around the bend for my life.
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The rain has been falling on the much needed soil, where drought has left much barren. I imagine the Native Americans nearby are dancing, as am I. And I am grateful. Love your book!
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With the arrival of the equinox, it will soon turn to Autumn here in Central Otago, a dramatic landscape of big skies, waving tussock and sweeping mountain vistas. If I win, will you let me nominate a school in the US to donate a copy of your book to?
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Sure.
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This looks like fun! Here in Miami it already feels like summer, but without the unbearable heat.
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It is almost spring in northern CA, some days it is warm enough the kids strip down to nothing and play in the dirt, today was not one of them. I am looking forward to the strawberries recovering enough to produce fruit! 🙂
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It’s spring already here in southern New Mexico. One of the bushes I never quite finished cutting back is now showing green buds. I guess I have one more chance to shape it properly before I can’t see the branches properly again.
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Checking out your blog, thanks to your like on mine. Awesome work, good sir.
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Ellis, this looks like a great book. I will check it out on Amazon. Have a great weekend,
Mark
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Spring brings warmth and wild winds to Hopiland. But, after this cold winter look forward to more warm walks into brush.
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The greatest benefit of Summer is that each day there is more light to read by.
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My friends and I have all put in our order for spring, but so far Mother Nature seems to have it on back order. We’ve gotten more snow in the past two weeks than we did during actual winter.
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I sometimes joke that you know it is spring in iowa the day you step outside and the air is permeated with the odor of manure. A great sign the ground is thawing!
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” Spring is sooner recognized by the plants than by men”
Asian proverb
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What a nice idea!
I love spring here in Northern California: everything is in bloom, the birds are singing. Neil wanted to sit out on the deck this morning in the sun, listen to the birds, ‘listening to spring’!
Spring has sprung!
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Another snow storm has its site set on the Front Range here in Colorado, a sure sign of renewal, and hope–hope that summer won’t continue to lie in a drought-laden path.
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I love how spring creeps in here. On the central coast of California we don’t have seasons like some places do, but we do have them. These last weeks Spring has made it to some streets but not others. Two streets up the plum blossoms are in full bloom and the Heavens Breath bushes have scented the air. on our street the trees stills stand bare waiting for spring to sneak down here and entice out the blooms.
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Already seeing signs of spring in SC. My screened porch is covered in pollen.
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I’m going to talk about summer in a haiku:
Fingers of the sun
Trace lines, sweat runs down my face
And I take a dive.
Thanks for giving me an opportunity to read your book! 😀
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I’m in-:)
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I love that your topic to win your new book titled, “Into the Land of Snows” is to write about spring! Hopefully in Boston, we’ll be out of the land of snow very soon, but it’s not looking promising.
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It was starting to warm up, but this morning I woke up to pouring rain and fifty degrees… I’m sure that’s nothing to a lot of people, but in Southern California that’s pretty cold. We’ll probably wake up to seventy degrees tomorrow, knowing how the weather works around here.
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We don’t really have a spring down here, just a cool season, a hot season, then an extremely hot season, and monsoon season… its all weird. Normally by now the hot season has begun, but its still a bit on the cool side. Slowly thawing out in the 70’s ;p Oh now that I think of it my rose bush lost a few leaves this winter and they’re all coming out fresh today, saw a few buds forming too!
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It must be spring here because the birds are singing like crazy! And the weather is crazy too — freeze in the morning and swimming weather in the afternoon.
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Winter, or what passes for it in a place that knows little about the turning of leaves, snowdrifts or Weather Channel histrionics, still clings to My Area like a child who’s not quite ready to go home from the county fair. “One more ride!” Those of you with kids, you understand.
Soon, however, we will have clear skies, sailing weather and before you know it we’ll all have our barbecues fired up!
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The crocuses have popped up this week past, and I saw our first honeybee, a sure sign that the fruit trees will begin to bloom soon. Spring is definitely my favorite season of the year.
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I hate spring/summer even though as a child it was my favorite time of year… now it just reminds me that roaches are going to hatch soon and it’ll be 114 F for weeks on end. D: I hate the desert.
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About time to fire up the lawnmower in Snohomish, WA.
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Here, the daffodils came up early, then we got frost – don’t know if they’re still alive. Hoping the Bradford pear tree buds weren’t damaged – gorgeous when they bloom!
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I live with perpetual summer missing the glory and beauty that is Spring as the Earth renews itself.
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Daffodils, daffodils, daffodils! A yellow carpet of cyclops following the sun. Love the snow though…your book cover is simply magnificent!
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Summer, summer,summer. Here in the south, my azaleas have been blooming for a month, even with some cold weather. I don’t think we have spring, so summer,summer,summer!!!! I love the warmth of the sun and the breeze blowing softly over my skin. It makes me feel alive.
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We are getting the snow that the earlier blogger had in DC up in the New England area. I’m at my desk, struggling to write my next blog, as I daydream of the Berkshires. As a child I would come to stay with my grandparents, up an old dirt road, no tv, no real phone(yes a party line phone) spending the time with my cousins. My grandfather a history teacher, my grandmother a librarian, a lot of time reading. Now I’m grow up,(still no tv, phone line just a little better)with a combined family of four kids, and just waiting to spend time their with our family.
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The beginning of the week we had 10″ of fresh snowfall. Today I keep hearing crashing noises as snow and ice melts off the roof. It’s definitely March.
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A pleasant spring haiku about being mauled by birds from the land of quo:
Chickadees attack.
Angry cloud of cute little birds.
Bad chickadees. Bad.
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Summer always meant Fourth of July at my Gram’s…it was her birthday, as well as the country’s. We’d sit on the stone wall to watch the town’s parade, then we younger family members would stage our own parade in the long, double ended drive. Some years, I think ours were better!
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Spring comes late for us – April. Starting my tomatoes next week though.
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Yesterday, while out for a run down in White Oak Bayou, with the downtown Houston skyline in view up at the top, I found a lone bluebonnet in full bloom. Soon there will be carpets of them in Texas… In the meantime, I am enjoying the cool weather, and not anxious for summer! –Aggie
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Believe it or not, after a relatively mild winter, we had a huge dusting of snow here in the DC area yesterday. Of course, most of it’s melted today. Washington’s weather is like its politics – up and down, and unpredictable.
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Where I currently spend my days is a place of endless summer. I am most at peace sitting at the beach, but have moments when I yearn for a vision of snow capped beauty. Congratulations on your book!
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When my lilac buds, it’s spring!
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My favorite flower for scent amd memories. Mother’s Day was celebrated by cutting massive amounts of lilacs at an abandoned homestead in upstate NY. Thanks for reminding me!
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It is still winter here in VT, too. I so want it to be spring. Maybe if I finally get my veggie seed order in, that’ll help?
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I don’t need to be entered…. I have my own copy. I would just like to mention again…so other blogger/readers see this, too… Into the Land of the Snows is a very special book…one that resonates at many levels…I highly recommend it to others! It’s special!
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Thank you for that!
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As a former baseball player and coach, the arrival of spring is magical and the winter’s duration always too long. The mere glimpse of green in the Kansas grass means it’s time to “PLAY BALL!”
Good luck with Into the Land of Snows.
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I recently moved to Missouri from California and was welcomed by two huge snows–24 inches total! Spring makes me think of cultivating seedlings indoors near an east window with the hope and belief that I can grow an organic garden in the warmer months.
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Damn you, living in the US!
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Springtime, brings out much beauty. From plants bursting out with blooming colors to skys permeating with countless cloud formations to people shedding their usually bland coverings by dressing in vibrant spring attire, it is an exuberant expression of renewel regardless the source!
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I am patiently waiting and watching the bush next door in my neighbors yard for that forsythia bush to pop out that beautiful yellow….don’t worry daffodils I’m watching for you too, Spring is lovely here in the DMV area
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I’m looking forward to the spring bulbs blooming and the pastel colors of Easter.
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