When I opened my birthday present, aside from the gift itself, out fell two twenties and a ten. And the first thing I thought was, Now I can buy more groceries.

As you know, sometimes the life of a writer sucks. But I do have a summer software contract lined up, which should fund this year’s big book giveaway. As we say: I’m just writing to make money until my software-development career takes off.

Nonetheless, I did manage to stop by the Used Book Superstore yesterday, on a lark. I told myself I’d only check for Holly Lisle titles that I didn’t have. Didn’t find any. (No surprise.) And then I happened through the foreign-language section and the advertising-and-marketing section and the religion section.

… and one that is currently red.

These are not just books I happened to have lying around. On the contrary, I picked them up while browsing the Used Book Superstore (all except for the red one), specifically because I enjoyed them. They aren’t necessarily my favorite of favorites. (For that, see the Talyn giveaway, which is at least one of the favorites of my favorites.) But I rated each one at least 4 stars strong. And each one has vibrant and memorable characters, which is the most important element in a story.

These four books come from a range of genres: romantic comedy, sci-fi comedy, autobiography, and classic mystery.

See at the bottom of this post for how to enter the giveaway.

Here are the books:

Holly Lisle’s move inspired me. In the process of moving, she got rid of a huge amount of stuff, and now she has a clean house. Wow. I’d like a clean house, one where everything has a spot and there’s a spot for everything.

As it turns out, we’re coming to the end of our lease, and now we’re looking to move to a cheaper apartment. Which provides a great opportunity to get rid of massive amounts of the stuff we’ve been piling up for the past 16 years.

Included in this stuff are over 5 bookcases worth of books, and some of these bookcases are literally falling apart. Now, there are a number of books I haven’t yet read (and plan to read), a number of books I read again and again (or refer to from time to time), and a number of books that are classics (or that don’t actually belong to me). But that still leaves most of those 5-bookcases-plus of books. I so wish to keep my books, because I’m a sentimental pack rat. (Besides which, they’re still good books, and it would be a shame to waste them.) But we need to make room. So I’ve been doing some soul-searching, and I’ve resolved to get rid of at least half of my old books.