Rest in peace Carrie Fisher, my love my life

I'm sure all of you who've been following this blog from the start know that Carrie Fisher has always been quite special to me.  The news of her death today has been especially hard since she was my hero.  Without her I wouldn't be the person that I am today and it saddens me so much to know that she's never coming back.  Rest in peace my sweet princess, my love my life.  You will be forever missed. :(

2016: a Year in Review

For some people 2016 has been quite a flop.  At the beginning I thought 2016 was going to be a pretty bad year as well, but it seems I had that backwards.  So I'm going to do another "A Year in Review" post with you guys and share all the great things that have happened this year! 

• Already at the beginning of the year, things were already turning out really good, for me and the rest of the ABBA fan community. :D  I received Frida, Benny, and Bjorn's autographs on the 28th and I really haven't stopped smiling since then!  I'm still super thankful to Gorel Hanser for making it possible and letting my dream about getting all four of ABBA's autographs come true!  (I already had Agnetha's autograph before that, so now I have all of them!!!)
• Talking about dreams coming true, ABBA got together not just once but TWICE this year!  When I say getting together, I am not saying that ABBA performed together and sang, I just mean that the four members stood together in public next to each other!  And it's just soooo amazing!   Plus Agnetha and Frida sang together at the second reunion, so that makes it so much better!
• My best friend in the whole entire world and I got to meet for the first time in the almost 3 years that we've known each other!  It was such an amazing experience and it's quite amazing how the ABBA fandom can create such beautiful friendships between fans!  <3
• My ABBA collection expanded quite a bit!  When I first became an ABBA fan, I never expected to have this much stuff.  I know, it's kinda small compared to the collections of who knows, but it's still quite large for me! :D
• My book that I had been working over a year on illustrating and writing finally got released!  :D

And much much more happened!  I just can't list it all since either I can't remember or it's not blog related or both. :)

And now that 2016 is almost over, we have 2017 to look forward to!  Learning more about ABBA's virtual return is definitely going to exciting, but there's going to be so much more I'm sure!  So now I'd just like to wish all my followers a very Happy New Year and I hope 2017 will be just as exciting and amazing as 2016 was! 

Love,
Becky/ABBAFan456

Happy 70th birthday Benny!

Happy 70th birthday, Benny!  I hope your birthday is filled with happiness, joy, celebration, and lots of love!

The Story of ABBA for Young Readers OUT NOW

The moment you've all been waiting for... 

The Story of ABBA for Young Readers is available to purchase right now!  You can purchase both cover variants on the CreateSpace EStore and Amazon!

CreateSpace links
Variant A
Variant B

Amazon

I'd like to thank everyone who has helped me with this book -  my family and friends, and of course thank you for bearing with me for so long to get The Story of ABBA out!  Thank you so much, and I hope you enjoy my new book!

~Becky Laine

Peter Loner's Incredible ABBA Mixes

I've been wanting to post about this amazing YouTuber for quite some time now but never did find the time to do a good post on it!  My bad. :)

Peter Loner is an absolutely amazing person!  He does some really amazing mixes of ABBA's songs, filtering out the main vocals and revealing some pretty amazing backup vocals/instruments in the tracks!  He does more than just ABBA - Karen Carpenter, Ted Gardestad, you name it!  You can check out his YouTube channel here or check out this thread on the ABBAChat forum where a member has gathered a lot of his mixes!  :D

The Story of ABBA Blog Tour: Day 1

Today kicks off The Story of ABBA Re-Release Blog Tour!  From the 11th to the 16th, we will be sharing posts until the book release!

Taking part in the blog tour are Roxanne Dickson (December 12th), Rachael Ritchey (December 13th), and Allison Rose (December 14th & 15th).  Be sure to check out their blogs over the next couple of days to follow the rest of the tour, then return here on the 16th for the release!

For my part of the blog tour, I would like to show the two cover variants for my book.  When coming up with the cover design, we couldn't decide whether to pick one that's similar to the cover of the first edition or one that's completely new!  In the end, we decided to go with two!

The first one is the one that you've all seen on previous posts:

and here is the second one:

I've drawn this picture of the cat dresses numerous times over the past 4 years and was a little disappointed when we couldn't fit it into the final book.  So we placed it on the second cover!

Which cover do you like better?  Let me know in the comments!

We're also running a giveaway for a chance to win coupons to purchase The Story of ABBA for Young Readers at a reduced price!

Send Birthday Wishes to Benny

You can send them here! :D

Happy 5th Birthday, Benny Anderdoll!

Happy 5th birthday to my dear little Benny doll!  5 years already?  Wow, time really does fly! :D

Happy 39th birthday, Peter!

Wishing a happy 39th birthday to Peter Christian Ulvaeus!  I hope he has a fantastic day full of celebration and love! :D