My friend and fellow mama-writer, one of the most savvy internet book marketing women I know, Christina Katz, is once again running her Writer Mama Back-to-School Giveaway where she gives away one book or magazine subscription every day in September. On September 25th, I’m delighted that Mama, PhD will be included in a trio of anthologies edited by Literary Mama editors Shari MacDonald Strong and Amy Hudock.

Our books — Mama, PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life; The Maternal Is Political: Women Writers at the Intersection of Motherhood and Social Change; and Literary Mama: Reading for the Maternally Inclined–will be up for giveaway on September 25th. To see a complete list of what you can win, visit Christina’s Writer Mama blog. You can enter every day if you want, so bookmark her site and visit again and again. Good luck!

To celebrate the publication of her new book, 31 Hours, novelist and friend of Literary Mama Masha Hamilton is hosting a contest:

Email a paragraph or story (500 words max) about when your intuition has been right about your child.

The top five stories—selected by Masha and guest judges—will get a free hardcover copy of the book and have their stories featured on the 31 Hours site.

Entries accepted until: September 30, 2009
Winners announced: October 16, 2009

Don’t send your entries to me; forward them to mashaATmashahamiltonDOTcom

Stuck in a rut? Try baking a wedding cake (number 17), creating a sacred space (number 40) or blowing off the day (number 99). Have some money to burn while you shake things up? Then try hiring a personal shopper (number 47), painting your house a wild color (number 70) or have a cosmetic surgery procedure (number 33). If you need to spark things up on the cheap, then maybe spending 24 hours in bed (number 89), kissing a total stranger (number 60) or living with less (number 93) is the way to go. The List: 100 Ways to Shake Up Your Life, by Gail Belsky, offers 94 other ideas, ranging from serious to silly, for ways to jump start a slow day or a sluggish period in your life. I’ll give away a copy of the book to one commenter who offers their own idea for shaking off the blahs. As for me, I’m off to join an ambulance crew (number 7)…

Did you hear about the Mama, PhD gear? We’ve got t-shirts, of course, and hats and bags, but did you also know we have the all-important license plate holders and beer steins at our Cafe Press shop? Sure, why not?

So as long as we’re making all this stuff, I’ll be giving some away to faithful readers every once in a while. Today, I’ve got one men’s large Mama, PhD t-shirt for the first person to post a brief review of the book on our Amazon page. And by brief, I do mean brief; if all you have in you is “Nice cover!” then I’ll be satisfied with that. I’m just looking for a little action over there. Post your blurb, send me the link, and you get a cozy t-shirt, good for a nightshirt, beach cover up, or a gift to the Mama, PhD-supporting man in your life.

And next month, maybe I’ll give away a stein!

Grateful Gramma wins the Writing Motherhood paperback giveaway; thanks to all of you who entered. I’ll look for another book to give away next month!