ACW Birthday Celebrations Scavenger Hunt and $150 Gift Card Giveaway!

Stock image used with permission from TheMins

Narelle here. This week marks our blog's first anniversary and we're celebrating with an extra special birthday giveaway. One lucky reader will win a $150 Gift Card. Read on to discover how to participate in the ACW Scavenger Hunt and enter the Gift Card drawing.

We started our blog a year ago with group goals and a vision for the future. Our goals included:

• Promoting Australasian Christian books and authors to a local and international audience. 
• Providing insightful reviews of Christian books. 
• Providing quality writing craft blog posts for aspiring authors.
• Creating a Facebook group that connects writers, readers and builds community.
• Working in partnership with Australian Christian Readers Blog Alliance (ACRBA) to promote ACRBA book tours. 

ACRBA organises free blog tours for Christian fiction, non-fiction and childrens books. ACRBA members who blog regularly can request free review copies (print and/or electronic) and post a review of the book on their blog during the ACRBA tour week. 

ACRBA has created a new membership category called Friends of ACRBA. These members can support the authors and ACRBA by posting the ACRBA tour post on their blog. The only criteria for joining Friends of ACRBA is to have a blog and there's no minimum posting commitment. This category could suit the following people:

• Current ACRBA members who aren't meeting the minimum 2 posts per week criteria on their blog. 
• Authors who can't request review copies of books through ACRBA from their publisher due to a financial interest reviewing conflict. 
• Bloggers, including authors and readers, who want to support authors but don't write or post reviews on their blogs.

If you have any questions about ACRBA or Friends of ACRBA, please ask in the comments below and check out our the post on Why Join a Blog Alliance?

http://australasianchristianwriters.blogspot.com.au/2014/01/why-join-blog-alliance.html 

More information on the ACRBA membership criteria can be found here.

http://acrba.blogspot.com.au/p/requirements.html

ACW Birthday Scavenger Hunt - Win a $150 Gift Card!

Today we are starting our ACW Scavenger Hunt that will run over 5 days, September 1-5. You'll find a list of clues at the end of each post. The answers are on the ACW blog member's website that is listed with each clue. The grand prize is the $150 Gift Card (in Australian dollars, converted to USD for Amazon and NZD for Soul Inspirationz) that can be redeemed at one of the following stores:

• Koorong (Australian readers only)
• WORD (Australian readers only)
• Soul Inspirationz (New Zealand readers only)
• Light the Dark (worldwide, flat $5 Aust dollars shipping to anywhere in the world)
• Amazon.com (worldwide)

The Scavenger Hunt closes at 2pm on Sunday, September 7 (AEST). The winner will be announced on Tuesday, September 9. 

Scavenger Hunt Entry Rules:

1. Complete the Rafflecopter entry below.
2. Complete the online form below with your personal details and all the answers to the clues. We respect your privacy and your information will not be shared.
3. Leave a comment on this blog post, Monday September 1.
4. Extra entries can be gained, up to a maximum of seven, by: following @ACWriters on Twitter, tweeting the giveaway, following the ACW blog, and leaving a comment on the blog posts each day from September 2 - 5.
5. Only entrants with all the correct answers will be eligible to win the Gift Card. If no entrants meet this criteria, the entrants who scored the highest number of correct answers will be entered in the drawing.
6. The Scavenger Hunt closes at 2pm on Sunday, September 7, 2014 (Australian Eastern Standard Time, AEST).
7. The winner of the grand prize, $150 Gift Card (Australian dollars), will be announced on Tuesday, September 9, 2014.

Good luck! Don't forget to leave a comment on today's post, complete the online form and complete the Rafflecopter form to enter the drawing. 

As an extra special gift, we're giving away a $10 (US dollars) Amazon Gift Card from Amazon.com to a reader who leaves a comment on today's post. The $10 Amazon Gift Card giveaway closes at midnight on Sunday, September 7 (AEST). The winner will be announced on Tuesday, September 9.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

ACW SCAVENGER HUNT CLUES:

Clue 1 from Jo-Anne Berthelsen: What is the name of my first non-fiction book? 
http://www.jo-anneberthelsen.com/

Clue 2 from Ian Acheson: What is the name of the award Angelguard recently won? http://ianacheson.com/

Clue 3 from Mary Hawkins: What is the title of my book where the heroine's name is Brenda Sparks? 
www.mary-hawkins.com

You'll find the next group of clues in tomorrow's post. Good luck!

Reminiscing about books from my past.

By Jenny Blake

As today is my 50^th Birthday I have been creating a memory album with a difference. The idea for the album came about because at the start of the year I was waiting to see the specialist about having my gall bladder removed due to a nasty attack in Dec. I have been having issues for a few years only I didn’t realise the reason. I thought the surgery would be last week and that I would be still recovering. I thought of creating an album where friends from around the world could send a memory, note or blessing with a photo to include. The album has turned out much better than I expected as I can look at the notes and photos for years to come when I need encouragement.

This takes me to this blog post. In the album I have a few photos of me as a child and one of the first gifts I remember as a child was a cute little blue basket. The next birthday present that I remember is a book with 3 fairy tales in it. It was from Mum and Dad and became my favourite story book. I was about 6 at the time. I had never heard of The Snow Queen before but it quickly became my favourite fairy tale of all time and still is. The other 2 stories were The Ugly Duckling and The Flying Trunk. I took this book to share at show and tell at school and read it over and over. I still have my copy and you can see it was well loved.

I was given books quite often as a birthday gift including many of Enid Blytons books. My next books that became my favourites were the Magic Faraway Series. I so wanted to have that tree near me and climb to those lands at the top of the tree. I remember being given Mr Gilliano’s Circus and also the Naughtiest Girl at School. I loved all the series.

When I was about 11 I remember being given Pollyanna. Mum said she read this series as a child. She had loved the series and wanted to share it.

The year I turned 16 Mum gave me the first 4 books in a series she loved as a teen, Little Bush Maid by Mary Grant Bruce and I fell in love with this series.

I loved reading as a child and when I was at school every month we would take home an order form for a book club which we could order books at a very good price. I bought some really good books that became my favourites from the club. (Mum and Dad also bought some for gifts for me). I remember Helen Keller’s teacher and Betsy were two books I loved and still have to this day. They were clean books that parents knew would be safe to buy a child unlike many books these days. I have to also mention I bought the Narnia series after receiving the first one for myself and tried to get through my wardrobe and the other series that impacted me. Little House on the Prairre which I have been watching while I have been recovering.

Do you have memories of a special book you were given as a child or do you have favourite books that stick in your memory from childhood? Please share and join with the spread of cup cakes and milk shakes (hot chocolate for my North American friends who are freezing)

JENNY BLAKE (aka Ausjenny) is an avid reader. When not reading she enjoys watching cricket, in fact you could call her a cricket fanatic, scrapbooking and jigsaws. She volunteers at the local Christian bookshop where she can recommend books to customers. Her book blog is where she reviews books and interview authors. Her goal is to help promote new books and encourage authors. Her blog is athttp://ausjenny.blogspot.com and is Co-Founder ofhttp://acrba.blogspot.com