Reviewing Ride With Me at Parajunkee's View

Today I'm reviewing Ride with Me by Ruthie Knox over at Parajunkee's View.  
Stop by and say hi!

Reviewing Slammed by Colleen Hoover at Parajunkee's View

Alright, y'all, I'm reviewing Slammed by Colleen Hoover over at Parajunkee's View.  
Go check out my rave for this fabulous self-published book. 

Reviewing Cowboy Crazy by Joanne Kennedy at Parajunkee's View

Ready for another Cowboy Romance?  
Check out my review of Cowboy Crazy by Joanne Kennedy --> here. 

Talking about Julie Garwood's 'The Wedding' at Parajunkee's View

I'm talking about one of my favorite books - Julie Garwood's The Wedding over at Parajunkee's View.  Haven't tried historical romance?  See why this one's on my keeper shelf.

I'm reviewing All Jacked Up by Lorelei James at Parajunkee's View

I'm reviewing All Jacked Up by Lorelei James over at Parajunkee's View.  
Looking for a cowboy romance?  You might want to give this one a try...

Reviewing Thoughtless by SC Stephens at Parajunkee's View

I'm reviewing Thoughtless by S.C. Stephens over at Parajunkee's View.  
This book left me torn on so many levels, come read my review to find out why.

I'm Reviewing Somebody to Love + Giveaway at Parajunkee's View

I'm reviewing Somebody to Love by Kristan Higgins over at Parajunkee's View.  

Come by and enter to win a copy!!

Reviewing Twenty Boy Summer at PJV

I'm reviewing Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler over at Parajunkee's View.  

Come by and see if this is a good summer read!!

Romancing the Weekend Review at Parajunkee's View

I've posted my first review over at Parajunkee's View - 

About That Night by Julie James.  Stop by and see if I loved it or loathed it!

Romance Junkee

Hey guys!  I know I've pretty much given up the ghost here, but I just couldn't stay away from the book-blogging world...I'm doing a new feature with Parajunkee - Romancing the Weekends!!!  I'll be doing regular Romance (non-paranormal) reviews on Saturdays.  I'm thrilled Rachel asked me to be a part of this - stop by here and say hi!!

ALA 2011: The Highs, The Lows, and The Embarrassing Moments

It's official:  I'm no longer a conference virgin!!!  Since I started blogging two years ago (yes - 2 years this month!!), I've seen all these great posts about book conferences and always wanted to go to one.  The books, the comraderie, the ambiance, the whole package... it always looked like so much fun!

Well it is....and it isn't.  Here's my own personal highs, lows, and an incident that will leave me forever cringing whenever anyone mentions fairies:

The Highs:
1.  Being surrounded by all things bookish and people who love books and reading.
2.  Hanging out with other bloggers like Rachel, Laura, Autumn, Christine, Sasha, Nerissa, Jess, and a few other bloggers I'm sure I'm leaving out...
3.  Meeting the authors who write the books I love.
4.  The books!  Here's a pretty good round up of what I went home with:

As you can tell from the pics, YA is hot!  So are Dystopian novels.  There are several books I'm super-duper excited about:
Forever and The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater
Succubus Revealed by Richelle Mead
Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan
The Girl in the Steel Corset by Kady Cross
The Name of The Star by Maureen Johnson
The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin
Wisdom's Kiss by Catherine Gilbert Murdock
Cold Kiss by Amy Garvey
Stay With Me by Paul Griffin

Okay, I'm excited about all of them but those are at the top of the list :)


So, what could be the lows, you ask?  Really, there were only a few:
1.  The Lines - ohmygodthelines!!!  If you wanted to meet an author or snag a popular ARC, you had to be prepared to wait for it.  And wait.  And wait some more.
2.  The giveaway information was inconsistent.  For example, a friend wanted The Predicteds by Christine Seifert.  Saturday they told us they were giving them away on Sunday.  We came back on Sunday and they said "Sorry, that giveaway was yesterday".  Wait, what?  But really, for the most part, the publishing people were really nice and wanted to talk about what I wanted to talk about - books!
3.  Disappearing publishers:  I was so excited to see Dreamspinner Press there on Saturday.  I enjoy their publications and they had plenty of books on display.  I asked if they were selling, as they had some print titles I wanted to purchase (most booths wouldn't sell their stock until Monday) and they said they were giving them away on Monday, however, they did not come back Sunday or Monday at all.  I would have paid -I bought other books I wanted- they had some great titles!!!
4.  The not-really-their-fault-but-still-disappointing-incident:  The Lost Copies of Crossed by Ally Condie. This book was the catalyst for my coming back on Sunday (I was supposed to attend on Saturday only)I waited in line for an hour, I was #65 - pretty good, right?  Well, the stock disappeared, no one knows where it went.  I heard it was around 300 copies that went missing.  Penguin was very nice about it though and took everyone's address and promised to mail a copy.  I've already started stalking my mailman.

And, the Embarrassing Moments:
1. First, my most embarrassing moment, aka How I Met Julie Kagawa. I had been waiting in line for Crossed *sobs*, and Rachel and Laura were at the Harlequin booth.  I walked up to where they were standing, and someone asked one of the two ladies behind the booth for a particular ARC.  I asked the other woman for an ARC I was interested in.  As she turned to ask someone to get it for me, Rachel turned to me and said "That's Julie Kagawa."  Me: "What?"   Rachel: "The woman you just asked to get a book, that's Julie Kagawa."  Me: *white as a sheet* Thinking, oh shit, what do I do? ...of course I apologized profusely.  I couldn't even look at her.  I kept turning to Rachel to ask her questions.  Finally, Julie graciously asked me if I would like a signed copy of her book and who to personalize it to...  Me: "To the idiot who didn't know who I was and asked me to fetch her a book?"

Here's the thing - Rachel, Laura and I were standing in line *sigh* to see Nalini Singh *squee!* a few hours later, and I made mention of how embarrassed I was that I asked Julie Kagawa to find me a book.  Guess who was standing right behind me?  Yup, you guessed it - Julie Kagawa.  Where's the hole in the floor when you need it?  Seriously, though, she was very gracious and laughed with me, not at me...really.  I think.

2. I'm sure I've mentioned before how shy I am.  Other bloggers say are social butterflies online...not me.  Don't believe me?  Well, we went to a small gathering of bloggers at a local wine bar.  Probably 20-25 bloggers.  Basically I knew about 3 people (5 if you count my husband and Rachel's husband).  I got a little anxious about socializing with all these strangers.  So I went to the restroom and texted my BFF from the stall.  Then I tweeted about my social phobia.  Yes, from the bathroom.  Go me.  But, eventually, I was pulled out of my shell and did manage to socialize with the book ladies while our menfolk drank beer and talked about being married to book bloggers.  Or sports.  Or something.

So, all in all, ALA 2011 was FAWESOME!!!  Would I do it again?  Absolutely! 

Book crashers?

Earlier in the month, Jeaniene Frost announced she was going to be in New Orleans this weekend, and then earlier this week, she announced when/where she'd be signing books. She was part of Undead.con, and even though I wasn't able to go to the con, I still wanted to meet her. Parajunkee and I hatched a plan to crash the signing...okay, maybe I called the bookstore and they said it shouldn't be a problem, LOL. She was so sweet and I was so shy - she asked me something (probably how to spell my name, duh!) and all I could blurt out was "I'm tongue-tied!" But she was very gracious and I did end up talking to her for a few minutes. I mentioned I wanted to get Chapter 32 signed and she laughed and talked about that for a few moments. She also mentioned how much she and her husband love to visit New Orleans, which always makes me happy to hear.


We also got to meet Karen Essex, author of Dracula in Love. She was very sweet and gracious (and look at that gorgeous hair!), and while I remembered to tell her I'd been hearing very good things about this book (I assume authors like to hear when they generate good buzz, lol) and was looking forward to reading it, I forgot to tell her I read Leonardo's Swans and really liked it. *sigh*

(note to self, stop pushing your hair behind your ear before you take a picture with an author!!)

I had a very nice time with Parajunkee, we had coffee with her family in a little coffee shop/courtyard while I waited for hubs to come pick me up. I had a lot of fun :)

The next author that I'm aware of that's coming to New Orleans is Karen Marie Moning - she'll be here Martin Luther King weekend and having a big two-day event for the release of the last book in her Fever series - Shadowfever. Since I don't get Monday off, I don't know which day I'll take off from work to go; I'll have to wait to see what her itinerary turns out to be...


And, on a personal note - after the signing I went out with hubs for dinner for his birthday. We ended the evening at a tattoo parlor :) Check me out:

(That's between my shoulder blades, not my whole back, lol)

Does this blog design make my butt look smaller?*

*It does, doesn't it?

Just a quick post to show off my new look - I think it's pretty fab if I do say so myself!

Parajunkee is a miracle worker!!! If you heard any thumping or groaning over the last few days, no your house isn't haunted, that was Parajunkee banging her head against her desk and groaning, because I promise you I am no html master and peppered her with a gazillion questions :) I know she's pretty well-known for her dark looks, but I think she did a fabulous job with my requests - light and uncluttered.

Thank you Parajunkee for my fabulous new look!

Meeting Maggie Stiefvater, Carrie Ryan, and Jackson Pearce

I was playing around on twitter a few weeks ago, and stumbled across a tweet that Maggie Stiefvater was coming to New Orleans. I was thrilled - I haven't read her books yet but Shiver is definitely on my TBR, so the chance to meet her had me all excited. Little did I know she was bringing some friends:

(left to right: Jackson Pearce, Maggie Stiefvater, and Carrie Ryan)

Excuse my bad camera skillz, they were so entertaining I kept forgetting to take pictures! They each told funny stories about being an author and answered some of the most common questions they get. I really enjoyed seeing them interact with each other - as I watched and listened, I thought to myself "This is a perfect example of how women should treat each other - they're incredibly supportive and genuinely like each other."

Maggie talked about how she used to hate the question, "what made you decide to write this book?", until she met an author she admired, Melina Marchetta, who wrote Saving Francesca. She was thrilled to be speaking with Ms. Marchetta, and asked, "What made you decide to write this book?" and had an "ah-ha" momet. (I had to chuckle, because as she was speaking, it popped into my head that I thought this was the book that Danielle at Alpha Reader had gushed about this book several months ago; then Maggie mentioned Melina was Australian, at which point I thought "Bingo!")

Carrie Ryan was sooo nice, she actually approached us while we were looking at the books for sale, trying to decide if The Dead Tossed Waves was a follow-up to The Forest of Hands and Teeth or a separate book. She told a very entertaining story about how she ended up writing about Zombies, and talked about her upcoming short story in Zombies vs.Unicorns, which looks like it's got some great authors on board! And she wrote a really nice dedication to my son (and his bum leg) when she signed his books for me.

Jackson Pearce is a new-to-me author, she wrote As You Wish, a book about genies. She also talked about working with editors and when asked what book she wished she'd written, her answer was "Harry Potter", of course everyone laughed!

Now, I haven't read Shiver yet, but apparently one of the characters writes notes to himself on his hand? Look closely at the picture below:


It was hard to get a good picture where you could see there was something there, but apparently that is a story idea that will (hopefully) be going into Forever, the third book in The Wolves of Mercy Falls series. The whole time she talked, she moved her hands around, behind her, one hand over the other, and I couldn't help wondering how many ideas she'd accidentally wiped off, until she mentioned it's on there in Sharpie ink.

AND, while I was there I got to meet one of my fellow New Orleans- area bloggers: Parajunkee!
I have to tell you, Rachel has some crazy good marketing skills - she had absolutely adorable bookmarks and business cards that she gave to the authors. Why didn't I think of that?!? She told me that this was her first signing; I've gone to a few so apparently I'm on the slow end of the learning curve. Rachel put up a few good pics and some more info in her post here.

(Me and Parajunkee with our loot!)

I really hope this is the start of more authors coming to New Orleans. The gathering for this group was intimate (read: small) but there really wasn't any promo - as I said at the beginning of the post I found out by accident!

Thank you Peace, Love, & Pat and Parajunkee!!!

So....how do you like my new look?

Many, many thanks to Peace, Love, & Pat:




I won a header contest over at her place to be designed by Parajunkee!!


Parajunkee's design blog:




and book blog:




Thank you both so much - it feels like Christmas!
I keep clicking back to look at it.....I love it!!!