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Congratulations Bridget of BridgetChumbley.com!  If you send me your mailing address (email to wordvixen {at} gmail [dot] com ), I’ll send out your autographed copy of CJ Darlington’s Thicker Than Blood.

For those who didn’t win but would still like a copy, or who are unfamiliar with this books, click the link to read my review of CJ Darlington’s Thicker Than Blood. You can order a copy via my link on that review, or visit CJDarlington.com and enter her weekly(?) contest to try to win a copy there.

I always find Allyn Hane’s posts to be amusing and informative (always a good combo). Right now he’s doing a series on backlinks and that series is a part of a larger series on SEO in general.

His most recent post How To Get Links by Darren Rowse and I Agree is about, well, how to get links! Basically, this post focuses on 301 redirects and the “family of brands” concept (yanno, where you go on a site and at the bottom they have links to all their related sites). Very good post with good information, but I’d recommend checking out the rest of his posts on backlinks since there’s a lot more to quality link juice than just what’s in this post!

Anyway, the point of this post is that he said something that struck me as rather funny in his Darren Rowse backlinks post.

…I call this “content pruning” and it is based on John Chapter 15 of the Bible believe it or not. I will do a full posting on this in the future as it is very important when you want to build and sell a site for $30,000.

Emphasis mine.

This cracked me up that anyone would base any element of SEO on a portion of the New Testment. However, the devotional that I’ve been reading ironically (is that the right word?) had John 15:1-8 as that day’s reading. Oh yes, God is a joker.

OK, so what is John 15 about? Well, the first part of the chapter is the “I am the vine, you are the branches bit. If you’re not familiar with the Bible, the exact words of verses 1 and 2 are:

¹ “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. ² Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away;^[a] and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.

Bwahahahaha! Seriously! Who knew the Bible could teach you SEO? (For those who aren’t into making money online, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and it just means a way of making your content attractive to Google.)

In other words- if you have a crappy site that isn’t pulling its own weight, cut it off. Sell it, let the domain run out, scrap it and start over. If you have a site that IS doing well, edit the content, change the anchor links, edit tags, and so on, so that your site will perform better.

Ok, so I’m amused by the dumbest things.

Now, I also wanted to send out some linky love to another great internet marketer. She wrote a review of Brian Clark’s Scribe SEO uh… for lack of a better word, plug in. While she doesn’t call it a scam, she does declare it a waste of time and money. The product is aimed at SEO newbies, yet the price starts at $27 a month, for what amounts to a digital post it note. SEO newbies aren’t going to be making enough money to cover the cost of the plug in, and the plug in is totally unnecessary for anyone who knows enough about SEO to make back the monthly fees.

Still, I’d recommend going over and reading her review, because Brian Clark shows up and makes a total pig’s snout out of himself in the comments. It’s quite amusing. Bad publicity, but funny.

Please note: if you arrived here by searching for a review of CJ Darlington’s Thicker Than Blood, or were sent here by following a link- in other words, if you’re not a regular reader of this blog, there is a little something that you should know before proceeding.  I am an aspiring author, and most of my readers are also aspiring novelists. We tend to read books differently than the average reader. And, in deference to my readership, I tend to review books from a writer’s point of view. In addition to this, the author has been a good friend of mine for about 15 years. Because of this, I know a lot of backstory, a lot of her personal history, and I also know some of what’s coming in the following books of the series. This does color my review a bit, and since it all factored into how I read the novel, I can’t leave it out entirely. This may or may not give you the information that you are looking for, but if you decide to stick around I certainly hope that you’ll find it helpful.

Thicker Than Blood by C.J. Darlington is a story about a pair of estranged sisters. Their parents died in a car accident when they were just teens. One went to live with an elderly relative, and then grew up to become a rancher, starting off as a field hand and working (and investing) her way into full partnership. The other ran away from her pain, ended up making some hard decisions, some bad decisions, and more or less mucking up her life.

The twist comes when Christy (the messed up sister) tries to rectify one of those old bad decisions and it puts her life in danger. She ends up escaping into the loving arms of her sister, though the reunion is anything but hugs and kisses.

Thicker Than Blood by CJ Darlington is a book about relationships. Relationships between sisters, between close family friends, between those of us who are totally messed up and God.

Now, it’s a common misperception that is founded in truth  that Christian books are nothing but sermons in thin polyester disguise. This is very true of many older Christian fiction books, and even currently of some particular genres and publishing companies. This is certainly not true of all of them, and most of the Christian fiction I read certainly doesn’t fit that category.  It’s also a hard line for truly talented Christian writers to walk. Many feel that it would be a betrayal of their faith to NOT put in a sermon or two, and others fear that allowing any shred of their personal beliefs to shine through might spoil the story or limit their market. For many others it’s simply a part of the story since it’s a part of them.  I bring this up, because there is a bit of overt Christianity in Thicker Than Blood. I can’t call it preaching, because it’s not. It’s something that’s kind of hard to explain, but in my opinion it was handled very well- not detracting from the story but adding to it. Your opinion may differ.

A common complaint that I heard about Thicker Than Blood by CJ Darlington is that there wasn’t enough romance. And this is true, in my opinion, but since I actually know CJ, I was personally surprised to find as much in it as I did!  Of course, I know who the main character ends up with in the next book, but honestly, I couldn’t help pulling for a certain different character. *sigh*

There are a few sensitive spots for a some people. If you’re vehemently Pro Choice, this book will probably irk you. There is also a physically abusive man in the book (the one that the main character-Christy- is running away from). This might be a little sensitive for some, although if you can handle it, CJ wrote that character really well. I mean really, really well. I’m not sure if it’s a compliment or not, but I actually think the abusive ex-boyfriend (Vince) was the best fleshed out character in the whole book. I’ve told her before that she should be a suspense writer (Thicker Than Blood is simply labeled as “Contemporary”), and his character just proves it. Although, maybe that would be more suited to a thriller. Not sure.  What I do know is that if you struggle with writing genuine, realistic baddies, you’ll want to pick up a copy of this book as a study guide. If you’re anti-Christian, just ignore the parts that irritate you and study his character.

I echo the sentiments of the many other reviews and comments that I’ve seen on my friend’s book- it’s really, really good. Maybe I’m biased, but with so many others saying the same thing, I think it probably doesn’t matter.  I noticed a missed opportunity to add a little more suspense to a section of the novel- a rare first edition Ernest Hemmingway plays a large part in the plot- if a part of the reveal had been left out till later, the suspense would have been raised for the next chapter or two. It’s not a big deal, but it could have made a big difference in the pacing of the book.

Also, I noticed, as did another reviewer, that most of the internal thought scenes were basically digesting the action that had happened in the previous scenes. No new information seemed to come out of those, and as a result, I felt as though the space was being wasted. I didn’t get to know the characters any better than I had through watching them act. I would have enjoyed a little more time spent learning about the secondary characters instead in the same space.

As far as I’m concerned, CJ’s debut novel is really strong, with a great story, no cardboard characters, and some really great insider info on the rare book trade (it’s her day job). Even though it’s not in the genres that I normally read (chick lit and fantasy), I did find it rather hard to put down at night. My mother said the same, and even told me that at one point she had to put it down over night before continuing because she found a Vince scene too intense to read before trying to sleep. She also told me that she’s planning to buy a copy for a friend of hers because she’s afraid that if she lends it, she won’t get it back.  She also found it amusing that Christy’s drug of choice was sherry.  Very amusing. I think she spent about 10 minutes giggling about Christy drinking sherry to me.  Yeah, mom’s cute.

I suspect that the fact that her book has just gone into its third printing (remember, it was only released at the end of December), and the fact that Amazon has actually raised its listed price by almost $1 means that other people quite like it too! Check out some more reviews of Thicker than Blood, then buy a copy, or come back here and leave a comment. If you’d like to win an autographed copy, put in your comment that you’d like to win a copy (Travis can’t enter because he already won a copy when I posted about TTB before- though it hasn’t been sent because I haven’t had a chance to get CJ to autograph it yet- but I should have that on Saturday- sorry it took so long Travis!). To win, you must leave a comment stating that you want it, have a blog or website where you will mention the book (you don’t have to review it, but you do have to at least say “Hey, I won this book over at Vixen’s blog!” though a review would be appreciated. You also have to live in the continental USA cuz I’m cheap, and leave a valid email address (the one you use to leave a comment is fine) so that I can contact you and get your mailing address if you win. Entries end some time around 11:59pm Thursday, March 11, 2010, give or take a few minutes either way. I’ll try to announce the winner that Friday, but I tend to be lazy and sometimes things happen to prevent me from actually doing anything that I should be doing. But, I’ll still notify the winner so I can get their mailing addy.

Aaaaaaand, I think that’s it! I really wish I could write a better review than that, but my writing brain just hasn’t been functioning lately.