I recently chucked over a $25 Christmas bonus to my web designer, Frauke Spanuth of Croco Designs (whose latest showpiece is the Dear Author overhaul). And Frauke, as fabulous a woman as she is a graphic designer/code master, offered me a $25 X-mas voucher to giveaway.

What can you do with a $25 design voucher? Well, you can get yourself a set of banner/badge ads designed for All About Romance, for instance, which she has done for me recently. I think my bookmark design was for about that much too. Throw in a bit more cash, and you can get yourself a web template, which I got at the beginning of 2008 for $75, if memory serves. (Of course prices are subject to change without prior notice, etc.) And if you don’t have a webpage, she does great myspace layouts too–I’m going to have her do mine next year.

(I host my newsletter through Frauke’s other company, Janus Portal, and let me tell you, a more economical deal on e-newsletter hosting I couldn’t find.)

Sooo, what do you have to do for a chance to win this fun little prize? Well, since I’ve recently said that I should do more for my publisher, I’m going to do just that. Tell me about your favorite Bantam author(s) in the comment. (And since this is already my blog, you can leave me out.)

I’m going to start.

First up Shana Abe, one of the most lyrical writers working today.

Mary Balogh, who’s going to have 4 books out back-to-back early next year.

Sarah Addison Allen, whose debut Garden Spells I enjoyed very much.

Linnea Sinclair, a fellow Nelson Literary Agency client, is published with Bantam Spectra.

Jill Sorenson will have her Bantam debut released January 27, 2009.

Sharon Page will have her Bantam historical debut released February 24, 2009.

And my agent keeps telling me that if I want to do a big martial art epic, then I need to read Diana Gabaldon‘s Outlander–and of course, Gabaldon is a Bantam Dell author too.

Wow. Pretty darn good covers one and all.

Now it’s your turn. Tell me which BantamDell authors rock your world. And if you have testimonials of Frauke’s fabulous work, feel free to gush also.

Updated to add: The winner will be picked on December 25, of course.

I know you’ve been thinking, well, sixty hours a week isn’t that much, there is still 52 waking hours left to update this blog and run the pay-it-forward contest. That would be very true, if I hadn’t spent so many of those 52 remaining waking hours getting my new website into shape.

Well yesterday, after all sorts of wrangling, the new website finally went live–which necessitated some further wrangling, as the remote browser turned out to be a lot less forgiving than my local browser. But now everything works–in IE and Firefox at least, though it is somewhat wobbly in Firefox: the formatting is a little off at times and the “back to top” links remain stubbornly comatose. And my gorgeous and smart husband just pointed out to me that my printable book list is a Microsoft Word document, which is limited to the Windows platform. So I guess I’ll be switching it to a pdf file very soon.

And I know this will be disappointing to the two diehard Sherry Thomas fans out there, but the DELICIOUS excerpt isn’t live yet. I had actually styled the exerpt and everything before I remembered that I can only post as excerpt what my publisher uses on its website and in print. So that will go up as soon as I know what portion of DELICIOUS Bantam plans to use.

But still, go ahead and give it a look-see. The newsletter subscription is live, though it will be a few more days before the subscription page is styled to look exactly like my site.

A great big happy-sobbing “Thank You” goes out to my friend Michelle McGinnis, a true web maven, who has been instrumental in helping me achieve my dream of becoming my own webmaster. Just think, before Michelle came into the picture, I didn’t know about syntax-sensitive editors or link checkers or even how exactly my html files would upload into my server.

A great big “Thank You” also goes out to Frauke of CrocoDesigns, the woman responsible for the look of the new site and a consummate professional in every way.

And thank you so much, dear blog readers, for your patience. I will try to better at blogging when all the craziness calms down a little.

Here’s a little guest-blogging I did at the Valenduckie event at The Good, the Bad, and The Unread, in case you are desperately looking for something to read.

Until next time.

Updated to add: My Library Journal interview is online and that is everything you’ll ever need to know about me.