Soup Dish: on my mind this week
✽As expected, I spent the week enviously stalking the #RT15 hashtag. Along with the all of the fun pics of romance lovers boozing it up, reuniting with friends, goofing with cover models and posing against sexy wall cling pics, I saw this tweet and I can't stop thinking about it:
Pam Jaffee (spelled wrong in the tweet) heads up the amazing publicity team that runs the Avon Addicts, the program I've been privileged to participate in for three years now. I've met her at the two RT cons I've attended and I doubt there is a savvier person in the entire "Big 5" romance publishing world.
That's a scary thought. Change someone's career? Note that she doesn't specify whether the change would be for better or worse. I tried cross-posting my reviews for awhile, but many of Amazon's policies about reviews (like stripping out the link to my blog) annoyed me. Perhaps I'm being too selfish though. I'm giving some serious thought to this. Those of you that blog reviews more religiously than I -- do you cross-post? what do you think?
✽I am planning to go to Casey's Reading Until Dawn conference in October, but I need to get going on all the things I agreed to do! I can't believe we're in the second half of May already. WHAT.
✽Oh, oh! guess what I found out about? the Historical Romance Retreat conference for 2016. This one is drive-able for me, the list of attending authors is STUNNING, and I adore Delilah Marvelle, so this is on my DO WANT list also!
✽And while we're talking about conferences, next year's RT will be in Vegas, which seems to be a bit of a polarizer, and RT17 is rumored to be in Atlanta. I might break my every-other-year rule, because Atlanta seems cool. Well, not literally, it's not called Hotlanta for nothin'. But you know what I mean. I might be in the market for a roommate in Vegas, so if you're going too, maybe hit me up in August or September.
What I'm reading
✽Currently finishing up Engraved, by Karina Cooper. It's the second to last in this steampunk/alt history/urban fantasy series, and so so interesting. I love the world and the main character. I'll be honest though, I'm finding this book a little slow-going. It might be because I'm coming down with a delightful spring headcold, but it's also a function of the diction, which, in a bit of a nod to nineteenth-century penny-dreadful, is sort of deliberately lurid and ornate. I like it, but (because?) it slows me down.
✽Can you believe that it has taken me this long to give J.D. Robb a try? I picked up the first book, probably as an Amazon freebie, and I can totally see how addictive it will be. I'm slightly put off by the gruesomeness of the murder though, which is kind of why I don't read murder mysteries in the first place. With 30-some books, I need to watch my budget so I need to work out some kinks in my e-library account at the moment before I go glomming on this one.
✽I guess it's been a bit of a slow week in books because I can't think what else I've got. A few things I'm looking forward to in the next months:
- Beyond Innocence, by Kit Rocha. God, I love this series.
- Shards of Hope, by Nalini Singh. Soooooooooon, my pretty. Sooooooon.
- Taking the Heat, by Victoria Dahl. Buzz on this one is seriously hot. Why on earth isn't there a buy link yet??
- The Legend of Lyon Redmond, by Julie Ann Long. I guess this is fairly predictable of me.
- The Bourbon Kings, by JR Ward. Also predictable.
Outlander Watch... Och. I canna wait for Jamie and Claire onscreen.
So I missed an episode due to some traveling, and haven't caught up yet, and I'm kind of afraid to watch the finale. What's wrong me me??!
5 comments:
I've heard similar sentiments before - and I'm not entirely sure of "the why." I keep hearing that Amazon reviews are important, but why? Something to do with their search algorithms? I've spent my entire post-Amazon reading life patently ignoring their "reviews" but apparently people actually pay attention to them?
I've never posted on Amazon mostly because it seems like inviting troll trouble. Frankly I don't have that kind of time available in my life to deal with such nonsense. As it is I feel like I'm taking my sanity into my hands just posting pithy reviews on GoodReads - which is the only place I cross-post. And then it tends to be very brief "reaction" reviews, while my blog is more in-depth, wordier reviews.
I love the Robb series! The characters are really what makes this series for me so as you get further you are in for a treat! I would love to go to RT sometime as I watched all of the fun tweets as well. And I do post my reviews on Amazon but not Barnes and Noble. That is a very interesting statement and is making me think as well....
That tweet just makes me stabby. I don't review for the benefit of authors. Reviews are for readers. If an author benefits, hey that's serendipitous and cool but that's not why I do it.
I cross post my reviews to Goodreads and I tweet links. Reviews at Dear Author or AudioGals also get promoted on my blog. But I don't post reviews to Amazon or any of the other places. B&N won't sell to me so I'm hardly going to review books there and my Amazon account is in my own name, not my blogging name and I really don't want to link the two. But even if my reason was "I don't want to" that's fine. This idea that where I post a review or what might be in it takes the food out of the mouths of starving authors and their children just makes me cross. >.<
All of that makes total sense, Kaetrin, and if you feel strongly, then you feel strongly! I will say that none of the publishers I work with have ever pressured me to cross-post reviews, and I don't see that comment as pressure, just a publisher/publicist's point of view.
Wendy, I also am not too interested in opening up myself to the Amazon trolls. I do think that the ratings matter for people who are a little more naïve about how easily they can be manipulated.
Mostly, Amazon does not make it easy for me to post what I want to post, the way I want to post, so I haven't been doing it.
Samantha, thanks for stopping by. RT is super-fun and you're right, Nora's characters are almost always super-appealing to me. It's an interesting world, too; I don't do a lot of futuristic reading.
Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace. See the link below for more info.
#slows
www.ufgop.org
Post a Comment