Never Surrender (Even When it's Seriously Hard Work!)

As part of the celebrations for the release of Elana Johnson's SURRENDER, I'm posting about a time I did not surrender!

As Theresa Milstein pointed out, in real life where we don't have heroic battles to fight, our 'never surrender' moments come from simply refusing to give up when confronted with life's day to day struggles. Heck, even getting out of bed in the morning is a struggle for me! (Well, it is dark and cold in the mornings now, so it's understandable, right?!)

But I've been thinking over the things I've been through in life, and I don't think there has ever been a time where I have striven so single-mindedly, had such a definite and clear goal, as in my matric year at school. Sheesh, I had NO life that year! I had always done well at school, so obviously I decided that I needed to get an A in every one of my subjects (how's that for an attempt at over-achievement?! Ha!). So, yeah. I had almost no life and worked REALLY, REALLY hard. I still look back and marvel at the amount of dedication I had ... (it didn't quite carry through to university!)

I did not surrender to exhaustion or stress, and I got there!

And now I've decided this post is a good excuse to unearth some old(ish) photos from my matric year.

The one and only school photo of me that isn't completely hideous!

Matric class of 2003 :-)

Matric dance. I'm not sure how my date would feel having his face plastered on this blog, so, yeah.

One of my awesome friends made me a calendar for every day while we were writing finals. Every day I got to open a little window and there was a chocolate with a message attached to it. Super cool :-) (And I saved every single message!)

Congratulations, Elana, on the release of SURRENDER!

Elana Johnson's Book Covers Get A Makeover!

Elana Johnson's POSSESSION series just got a makeover! What do you guys think? Are you feeling the cover love? I think... pretty, pretty!! I mean, I love the pearly white (autographed!) version I have, but I must say, I've always been a fan of colour, so I'm in favour of the blues (not those kinda blues) :-) I like the new typeface as well. It's very... clean and modern-looking, nothing pretentious or showy about it. 

And the bird in the jar! Awesome! Though if I had to compare the two, I still think the butterfly wins. I mean, it's trapped in an ICE-BLOCK! How freaking cool is that?! (Like, literally, icey-cool...) <--- Sorry, terrible pun. It actually wasn't intentional!

I can't wait to read SURRENDER. POSSESSION finished on an AAAARGH-NO-are-you-SERIOUS-you-can't-do-that-to-your-characters kinda cliffhanger, and I'm super keen to find out what happens next!

Parcel in the Post: My Signed Copy of POSSESSION!

Several weeks back when Elana Johnson's POSSESSION was being released, Nichole Giles, Ali Cross and Windy Aphayrath hosted a blog hop where you could win a signed copy of POSSESSION just by writing about a time you broke the rules... My blog post, Good Girls Don't Skinny Dip, won me a copy! Yay!

I kept hoping it would arrive before I went overseas so that I could take it with me -- it certainly would have made the flight more entertaining! Instead it was something I got to look forward to on returning home (because -- I'll be honest -- having to stop holidaying and go back to work kind of sucks!)

Good Girls Don't Skinny Dip!

In celebration of release day of Elana Johnson's POSSESSION, Ali Cross, Nichole Giles and Windy Aphayrath are hosting a fun blog hop! You just have to write a post on your blog about a time you broke the rules... ;-)

Picture Source - Wikimedia Commons

At the high school I attended we had what were known as Bonding Tours [think of any definition of the term "bonding" and I'm pretty sure it happened ;) ] at the beginning of each year. The 12th Grade Bonding Tour was something students looked forward to from the time they arrived at the school, because while the venues for the other grades changed each year, the Grade 12s were ALWAYS taken to Sun City...

In case you don't know anything of Sun City, it's huge. There are loads of different hotels and resorts there. Since it was the height of summer my six best girlfriends and I decided to swim in as many different pools as possible before we left.

One night we came across a pool that was deserted--not a single person was either in or near the pool. The "wild child" of our group (this was most certainly NOT me) decided we should take advantage of the darkness and STRIP under the water! After much giggling and coercion we were all waving our bikinis around in the air over our heads while treading water completely naked! A somewhat terrifying feeling for a good girl like me ;-)

After several minutes a few strangers (ahem, boys...) came wandering towards the pool, which resulted in a whole lot more giggling and squealing as we all tried to put our bikinis back on before the boys got close enough to realise we weren't wearing anything!

~ ~ ~

So what rule was I breaking there? Uh... a social etiquette rule? A personal rule to not embarrass myself in public?! Hehehe... So what rule have you broken?

Win an Elana Johnson-doodled copy of POSSESSION!

Been trying to find something worth blogging about today and here it is!
In addition to this book you can also win an autographed bookmark and a $10 iTunes giftcard. How generous is Nichole of Random-ish??

Head over to her blog to find out more about this awesome giveaway :-)