www.marilynbrant.com

Thursday, August 27, 2009

A Love of Coffee and Mysteries

It has been truly a delightful journey for me getting to share this fun Starbucks VIA™ taste-testing experience with so many of you. Thanks to you all! Thanks for your time, your willingness to try out some new coffee, your enthusiasm and creativity (there were some WAY cool recipes :) and, mostly, for simply popping in here to comment or even just read my posts and the responses of others. You've made me want to seek out new ways to make my tiny corner of the Blogsphere even more enjoyable for visitors...

The polls were closed at midnight on the "vote" for the favorite VIA™ Ready Brew flavor, and the results are in the right-hand column (just under my book cover photo). They are:
Colombia: 25%
Italian Roast: 56%
Both equally good: 18%
Neither: 0%
Of course, since only 16 out of the nearly 100 tasters formally voted (!!!), we didn't get the full range of potential opinions on the poll. However, judging from the comments people made on the prior post (August 20th), it was probably a fairly accurate sampling. So, again, thanks to all of you who shared opinions!

Now, the winners of the drawing...

I put the names of all the people who wrote out recipes into my son's Cubs hat and drew a name: celi.a (congrats!), you win the Crazy for Chocolate book, the ARC of According to Jane and the $10 Starbucks giftcard!

Then, I added to the slips of paper already in the hat, the names of all the other people who contributed thoughts, ideas, comments, etc. during our tasting week and drew 4 more names: Lucy, vvb32reads, Bethany and Nean (yay, ladies!), you each win the Crazy for Chocolate book, the ARC of According to Jane and your choice of one coffee: a 3-pack of the Colombia VIA™, a 3-pack of the Italian Roast VIA™ or a 1 (1.5 oz.) packet of ground Berres coffee. (Leave a comment here or email me at marilynbrant AT gmail DOT com to let me know your preference.)

I'll mail out all the prizes to everyone within a week!

Also, today I have the great privilege of being a blogging guest of amazing author Hank Phillippi Ryan (her newest novel, Air Time, JUST came out this week, and she'll be visiting here soon, too!). She invited me to join her and her wonderful fellow mystery authors on Jungle Red Writers for the day and, being a long-time mystery fan, I couldn't be more thrilled. If you have a chance, please visit us there and share the name of one of your favorite mystery writers. I'm blogging today about a few of mine :).

9 comments:

Pamela Cayne said...

Heading over to play on another fun blog now!

Marilyn Brant said...

Aren't you just wonderful, Pam?! (The answer is YES. :)
Thank you.

Cecelia said...

Thanks so much! You are awesome. The coffee was good too, of course. YAY!

Marilyn Brant said...

You're welcome, Celia!! Hope you'll enjoy everything :).

Nancy J. Parra said...

Hi Marilyn,

I am watching my e-mail every day for when they ship your book...I'll squee like a fan girl when it finally comes.

:) Cheers!

Judy Croome | @judy_croome said...

LOL Marilyn I couldn't vote in the coffee tastinge experience because (gasp) we don't have Starbucks here in South Africa and, even if we did, (bigger gasp) I don't drink coffee!! :O

Will pop over to your guest blogging site to have a peek.

Marilyn Brant said...

Aw, Nancy, thank YOU!!! *hug* I can tell release day is getting closer because I'm ever more nervous... :)

Ann~I won't hold not drinking coffee against you, my dear, but I'm *stunned* that there's no Starbucks in South Africa! Must have a talk with them about this--LOL! (And thank you for visiting Hank's site, too. :)

Joelle Charbonneau said...

Can't wait for the book...sorry I didn't get to post on the coffee taste test. A kid with a broken leg made me a little scattered. However, Andy does want me to say that the red is more robust and the orange is more mellow:) I drink them both with lots of cream and sugar, so they are pretty equal to me.

Happy upcoming release. I am so excited!

Marilyn Brant said...

Joelle~OMG!! Your baby broke his leg?! Oh, no... Hope it will be quick healing--for all of your sakes!!