Black Friday Blog Hop

While the rest of the US is out handling the crowds, fighting for their holiday gifts, some of us like to stay in, shop online, or just ignore Black Friday all to together. This year, join us in our second annual Black Friday Blog Hop! It's a ONE DAY hop where we're giving away prizes, talking about books we love, and most likely  eating left over turkey. :-)

The hop is November 23rd and is ONE DAY only.

But that's not all....

We have THREE grand prizes. You as a reader can go to EACH blog and comment with your email address and be entered to win. Yep, you can enter over 200 times!

And while we do that, we are EACH doing a giveaway. Yep. There will be over 200 giveaways on each blog hosted by that Author or Blogger.

Now what are those prizes?

1st Grand Prize: A Kindle Fire or Nook Tablet

2nd Grand Prize: A $75 Amazon or B&N Gift Card

3rd Grand Prize: A Swag Pack that contains paperbacks, ebooks, 50+ bookmarks, cover flats, magnets, pens, coffee cozies, and more!

Post a comment with an email addy for a chance to win a $5 gift certificate to Wild Child Publishing!

Black Friday.  Ever wonder where that name came from?  Does it mean that’s the day the stores move their red sales figures into the black?  Or could it mean that you’ll come away form the stores black and blue from all the elbowing to get those bargain prices—but they left off the blue?

Wikipedia had this to say: The day's name originated in Philadelphia, where it originally was used to describe the heavy and disruptive pedestrian and vehicle traffic which would occur on the day after Thanksgiving. Use of the term started before 1966 and began to see broader use outside Philadelphia around 1975. Later an alternative explanation began to be offered: that "Black Friday" indicates the point at which retailers begin to turn a profit, or are "in the black". 

I’m trying to figure out why they would give that name to traffic, do all people in Philly drive black cars?

I know one thing I avoid the stores from Black Friday onward.  I don’t like crowds, I mean seriously some of these people don’t need to worry about that deal on a laptop, but worry about the sale on deodorant in isle 5. 

On the few occasions I have been to a store on Black Friday I did not come away impressed with humanity.  The last time I went was in 2006, no that’s wrong it was in 2005.  One retailer had laptops on sale, and I needed one.  I had this thing about needing to feel something, reach out and touch it before I bought it.  Black Friday can give new meaning to reach out and touch someone.  Just ask the people who got sprayed with pepper spray last year so some woman could get that new Xbox for her kids.

That year I went back to the electronics department, it wasn’t very crowded, but there were none of the laptops on the shelf. A small group of people were standing by the stock room door.  One man said the clerk had gone back to get more.  So I stood there with everyone else waiting,  One woman near the front had two carts and nothing in either one.  She stood in front of those double doors like she was manning a police barricade and no one else was getting through with ID and registration.  Or at least a cart with a battering ram.

The clerk comes out with a flat utility cart (you know the ones you see sitting in the store and so want to have someone push you around the store on while you giggle like an idiot?) and the woman in front grabs a laptop off the stack.  Her kids also grab one each, so now she has four.  The clerk is explaining to her that the limit is one per adult shopper.  Another shopped manages to break through her cart barrier and she screams at him: I was here first, put that back! I’m telling.

I’m telling? Really?  Who is she going to tell?  Do they have laptop police in the store, or maybe her mom works there?

Next another shopped manages to get one and the woman starts to threaten the clerk.  Now two things here, one: she has four already, make that six, as her kids have continued to add boxes to her carts, and two IS SHE NUTS?  She’s already been told she can’t have more than one.

Suffice to say I had no interest in this little play of human stupidity.

I get in line ot check out, I’ve had enough be banged by carts by insane people who are sure I am going for that one item they wanted.  Unless it’s aspirin for the headache I now have, they have no worries.

I get to the front and low and behold I am in line behind the laptop hog. She has at least 8 of them.  I hear her tell her oldest kid, wait until we get these listed on e-bay we are going to make a killing. I kept looking at those boxes as she put them on the belt thinking, all I wanted was one, one for me to use, to have and to hold, not make money on.

I am startled out thoughts of my one true love named Dell, but the woman’s loud voice as she went to war with the cashier: I don’t care what your stupid add says I can have as many as I want, that’s the law, you can’t stop me.

Law?  Is there a law that says you can buy as much of whatever you want even when the store clearly stated one per adult shopper?  I tried several searches involving quantity and shopping in the search criteria, apparently the internet isn’t up on any such law, but I did get quite a few returns for places selling Viagra.  I think google was trying to tell me something, make love not war on Black Friday.

Security comes out and they confront the woman.  I say to the cashier, I’d really like one of those laptops, do I have to wait for them to be taken back to electronics before I can get one? The words were no sooner out of my mouth when there is a loud crash as the woman pushes all the laptop boxes with the laptops inside onto the floor and tries to stomp on them screaming, it’s not right, it’s not fair I was here first . . .

The cashier looks and me and says do you want one, you don’t have to wait for them to be taken back to the department?

Is she kidding me?

Apparently the store didn’t care that they’d been dumped on the floor, and some of them stomped on—because that backroom clerk was there with his silver trolly picking them up and as he headed back people were eager to grab them off his transport.

I think I will just stay home, read a good book, drink some spiked egg nog, maybe put up the holiday tree, 

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Shannon Running Deer is American Indian by blood, he has forsaken his people's ancient ways to embrace the "modern" world as a wealthy, highly successful trauma surgeon.

His comfortable existence begins to unravel when, seemingly by chance, Shannon finds himself gradually drawn into the past. Pursued by an ancient evil, he knows he can change the future, if he can survive the past.

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