Over the last year I’ve been thrilled to see Brad’s Reader grow, with the number of visitors increasing each month. The only negative part of a growing blog is a growing problem with comment spam. While my filters do a good job keeping most comment spam out of my hair, a fair amount is still getting through. This means I’m spending more time marking comments as ‘Spam’ and less time writing posts.

Back in April 2009 I posted my comment policy, which is pretty straight forward. But I should probably highlight some of the main points again.

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I just wanted to take a moment to wish everyone on the intertubes a happy holiday! The snow has been falling in the Chicago area, meaning we might have a white Christmas this year – but playing havoc with the roads.  I’m planning to lay low, visit some family and try to relax as much as I can.

I also plan on getting a lot of writing done. I have two fiction projects I desperately want to finish so I can make them available on Smashwords (aff link) as soon as possible. These two works will be available for free so everyone can sample my fiction without forking over your hard earned cash

Have a great holiday over the next few days and please stay safe. I’ll back to my usual posting schedule either this weekend or early next week.

- Brad

P.S. There will be no Friday Link Love this week.

As Brad’s Reader gets more and more comments, the number of spam comments has also increased. I don’t see a lot of them because of the filter I have in place, but a few do sneak through. I generally try to give people the benefit of the doubt, although it can be a tough call sometimes.

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The current Brad’s Reader Giveaway contest is now closed for submissions. A winner will be picked and announced either later today or tomorrow. Thank you all who submitted an entry. I was approving your comments for as long as I could until I finally had to cut them off. As I said before, the winner will be picked completely at random.

If you don’t win today’s contest, don’t worry, there will be at least one more this month. I’m not saying what the prize will be or even how you will enter – you’ll just have to stand by.

Thanks again for all your comments. I enjoyed seeing what everyone is reading and will be adding a few of these titles to my growing reading list. I hope you visit Brad’s Reader again and write more comments, it always makes my day!

Good luck!

As promised, today marks my Brad’s Reader 3 Birthday/Anniversary giveaway. The prize will be a $25 Amazon gift card. I’m keeping this really simple: To enter to win, all you have to do is leave a comment under this post. What are you going to comment about? Tell us what the best book you have read in 2009. That’s it. You need to give the title and author. If you want to explain why it has been your favorite book of 2009, you are more than welcome to do so.

I’ll leave the comments open on this post for 24 hours, after that, no more comments will be accepted. I will then pick a comment totally at random. This means I take the number of comments from first to last and use a top secret, highly complicated random number generator to pick a number. Once the number is chosen, the corresponding comment will be the winner.

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December is now upon us and 3 years ago this month Brad’s Reader was born. This blog started on the Blogger platform with posts mostly about literature and a little about writing. Ebooks and publishing weren’t on my radar at that time. I was lucky to get a few visits a day. In fact, to boost my numbers, I’d post little ads on Craigslist advertising my new blog. The ads gave me a few more daily visits, but more often than not, they got flagged and were removed.

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Black Friday is long gone and now Cyber Monday is here. With a slumping economy retailers are trying to squeeze as much business as they can during this holiday season, even if it means deeply discounting their products.

I’ve been scouring the web for the best deals around and here is what I found.

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I wanted to take a moment to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving. I also wanted to thank everyone for visiting, reading and commenting on my little space on the internet. I am thankful for and appreciate every one of you. Keep those comments coming, they always make my day.

Originally, I wanted to write some grand post connecting literature to Thanksgiving, but didn’t get around to it. So I’m writing this little post. As they say, sometimes less is more.

Have a happy and safe Thanksgiving!

Blog Action Day has arrived. This is the one day when I try to set aside posts about literature, writing, publishing and ebooks and focus on an issue that affects us all. This year that topic is climate change – a very real problem this earth is facing (and last I checked, this is the only earth we have, for now). This is a day when bloggers from all over unite on a single issue.

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I just wanted to post a quick note to say that my internet at home is currently down. We are getting some upgrades and they turned our DSL off yesterday. Should be back up by tonight, if not, then soon. Currently I’m sitting at a local Starbucks using their WiFi and enjoying a nice caffeine buzz from a mocha latte.

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