A Happy Birthday Give-away

Happy Birthday to Me

As the title of this post suggests, today is my birthday. To be precise, I’m turning fifty-three today. I stopped paying real attention to my birthdays some years ago. After all, age is just a number and the older I get the more I feel my mental age is falling ever further behind the numerical reality.

This particular birthday is different though for two, strongly related, reasons.

My mother was fifty-three years young when she unexpectedly died. To put it in very blunt terms; if I live another five months I’ll be older than she ever got to be. This idea is both scary and devastatingly sad. I don’t think I truly knew how young fifty-three actually is until I reached the age myself.

This year also marks the moment in time when I will have had as many years with my mother as I’ve had without her. It is strange to think that from this year forward I will have lived ever more years without her love and support.

So yeah, this particular birthday is not as easy and festive as others have been and future birthdays will hopefully be. Having said that, my mother would be the first to tell me not to dwell on the negatives but to embrace the positives instead. With that in mind I’ve decided to turn today into a celebration.

As you may know, I am Dutch and in the Netherlands we have this wonderful tradition where people give a special treat to others on their birthday. This usually takes the form of cake or something edible along those lines. Since it is not possible to share sweet treats over the internet I’ve decided to do something else.

A few days ago I received my author paperback copies of Scenes from Adelaide Road from Pride Publishing. To celebrate my birthday I will be gifting one signed copy away. In order to win it, all you need to do is leave a comment on this blog post below. I’m happy to send the book to wherever the winner happens to live, so location won’t be an issue. Please leave a way for me to contact you with your comment. I’ll be picking a random winner on Sunday, January 31^st.

Good luck and Happy Birthday to Me!