Sunday Soup - March 16

Sunday Soup is... a little of this, a little of that, not too much work, and hopefully a tasty result.

Soup Dish:  book people are talking about...
At my house, March madness doesn't have anything to do with basketball:  it's all about the Girl Scout Cookies. Starting in late February, my house becomes the Cookie Depot for our troop, which is quite large-- we have about 30 girls this year.  I got the last of the cookies out of my house yesterday, and now just need to square up the accounting -- also, super fun!  Anyway, it's all for a good cause.

Then there's St. Patrick's Day.  Our family is not in the least Irish, nor are we in a particularly Irish community, but this year we decided to decorate a little bit, which entailed power tools and spray paint... I'm exhausted just thinking about it.  I put up a little faux mantel on one wall and my younger daughter and I decorated it.  It's probably kind of lame that that took up as much brain-space as it did, but it is what it is.

Anyway, on to Book Things!

✽How Public Libraries Are Solving America's Reading Problem Really good article, with really good news, IMO. How the publishing revolution is offering libraries a new life. Via the twitter feed of Seattle Book News.  

✽Anonymous reviews -- Two items in the news recently; first a petition endorsed by Anne Rice to remove the ability to leave anonymous reviews at Amazon.  Her endorsement can be found on her public Facebook page. Second, a major Australian paper announced that they will be publishing their professional reviews pseudonymously. Good summary article here.

My thoughts are mixed here.  Mostly I do not attempt to keep my reviewing identity secret, because I am just paranoid enough and just tech savvy enough to know that if someone really wanted to out me, it's just not that hard to do so.  Therefore, I started from the very beginning with the decision that I would not put anything online that I am not willing to have my name attached to, for any reason.  (The one place that this really inhibits me--heh-- from posting is discussions about erotica.  I would say things anonymously that I'm not really willing to have out there in front of the world.)

Amazon's review system is troubled, for sure.  I don't pay much attention to reviews or average stars.  I go more by word of mouth and reading an excerpt for myself, but there's no doubt that those ratings and reviews influence sales, for better and for worse.  It's a shame that some people have nothing better to do than to game the system.

✽Do you use photos in your blog? then this is BIG NEWS: Free Use of Images from Getty. If you read the fine print, you may find that once again, there's no such thing as a free lunch:

once the images are embedded, Getty has much more control over the images. The new embeds are built on the same iframe code that lets you embed a tweet or a YouTube video, which means the company can use embeds to plant ads or collect user information.

To be honest, that pretty much seems worth it to me, but your mileage may vary. Via Dear Author's Twitter feed.

Author News
Interesting stuff from some of my favorites!

✽Charlotte Stein's newest release is with a new Avon line -- I'm gonna need to check out both.

✽Ilona Andrews announces new book, new series, and new publisher -- very exciting.

✽Chloe Neill also has a new series beginning.

What I'm reading

✽Apples Should Be Red, a subversive, salty little novella by Penny Watson.  This is a second-chance romance, with characters edging into senior citizen territory. I have more to say about this one, but bottom line is -- I liked it, and you should read it.

✽Clean Sweep, by Ilona Andrews.  I read a little bit of this when it was published as a serial for free, and adored the world premise. Really loved it, and the full book!  Great story, but it felt like the beginning of something that might not get finished.  I'm getting spoiled about long-running series, I guess.

✽Crazy, Stupid Sex by Maisey Yates. How can you resist a title like that?  Another winning nerd-girl heroine.

✽Fury of Desire, by Coreene Callahan.  Book 4 in the Dragonfury series, and not bad on the adventure and series arc fronts.  I found the hero's character resolution to be a little jarring and not quite on target though.

 ✽Kinked, by Thea Harrison.  Good grief, I really, really loved this one. This is the story that I wanted for J.R. Ward's Vishous.  It's the story of two extreme entities, who have waited a long time to meet their matches.  When they do, sparks fly, and nobody has to give up who they are.

Outlander Watch... Och. I canna wait for Jamie and Claire onscreen.


Delightful photo via Outlander Life's Twitter feed:

 

Sunday Soup - October 20

Sunday Soup is... a little of this, a little of that, not too much work, and hopefully a tasty result.

Soup Dish:  book people are talking about...
✽Yet more deletions -- apparently, several online retailers are freezing up their self-publishing offerings to try to scrub them for porn, while also somehow attempting to not appear to be censoring. Good article at Gigaom, and an interesting personal slant from a successful author who also happens to have a deep technical understanding of what's being attempted.

✽The Last Hour of Gann by R. Lee Smith has readers stirred up.  Mandi loved it, Jane Litte loved it, Brie abandoned it. These sorts of reactions make me pretty curious, but at the moment I'm holding off.  Doesn't sound like my kind of story, but you never know.

✽I absolutely loved this piece about the reader experience, and how authors craft it: Romantic Attractions: The Thrills and Spills of the Reader’s Theme Park. Great fun, and you have to love an extended, well-sustained metaphor.

✽I really enjoyed this highly personal piece from John Scalzi about the books that influenced him. There's no bloviating about how these are The Best or The Most Important, just ones that matter a lot to him, personally, and a few words on the how and the why.

Titles That Caught My Eye ... 
A new ingredient for the soup-- books I might read; I'd love to hear what you think about them if you've read any of them or are also anticipating them.

✽Sarah Antonelli is on my radar now, due to Jessica's review over at Radish. With a tagline like "Quirky Romance Novels for Grown Ups…and Smart Asses," I feel I have to give it a shot, even though the premise of a quantum physicist who is also an undercover spy gives me a bit of pause.

✽Couldn't help but nab Coreene Callahan's latest Fury novel: Fury of Desire. Looks like special pricing for this week too; a nice price at $3.99 for a full-length book.

✽Amy over at Unwrapping Romance reviewed a book this week that made my eyebrows go way way up: The Sheik Retold, giving authorial credit to both Victoria Vane, a modern author, and the original author, Edith Maude Hull.  I read the original over a year ago now and just have not been able to put my thoughts about it into any coherent order.  As to the re-telling, I believe the book is now public domain but I have all kinds of questions about the ethics of putting both names on that, and whether any contact was made with Hull's heirs to use her name. Still, I am pretty interested in reading it.

What I'm reading
✽Just finished up Nora Roberts' The Last Boyfriend. I love her books so much. I love the way she writes kisses, especially first kisses, and the way her characters' professions inform their points of view. I love the way she chooses professions that are about doing, and making. You don't see cubicle jockeys in these worlds; there's a physicality to the characters' lives that I just... well... love. OK, I'm repeating myself. But honestly, nobody does it like Nora.

✽I'm working my way through Jill Shalvis' Blue Flame, which was a special bonus on top of It Had to Be You.  I'm finding it a bit slow, but I'm also having an extremely interrupt-driven week at home, so it may or may not be any fault of the text.  I want to see the characters through, so it's got that going for it.  The hero is an injured firefighter, and it seems unusual to me that the injury is bad enough that he keeps attempting to do romance-hero-typical-physical things, and well, kinda failing. So the heroine just does them for him.  It's interestingly off-kilter that way.

✽I finished of the Kat Richardson SeaWitch that I mentioned last week.  Shivery-creepy and delicious.  Great ghost story and another new twist in the mythology.

On Tap... what soup isn't a little better with a slosh or two?
I haven't really tried anything new this week. I'm enjoying more of the Abita Pecan and Sam Adams Cherry Wheat. I guess I'm kind of over the pumpkin ales, although I actually did quite like the ones I tried. Since it is still October, and the pumpkin ales still abound, I did a bit of research on "best of" articles, and I liked HuffPo's list the best -- it includes broadly-available beers and based on 5 or 6 articles, I think they caught most everybody's top favorites in this list. The one I'm most interested in trying now is the Elysian Night Owl Pumpkin Ale -- it's local, and highly regarded in quite a number of these "best of" lists.

A Certain Style

Shitkickers planted defiantly on the IKEA pressboard pile in front of her, glass of Trader Joe's finest three-buck chuck red at her elbow, Reader cracked her neck to one side then the other, the snap-crackle-pop action saying all that needed to be said about her day job in the cubicle mines.

She picked up the e-reader.  Ran a finger down the soft, aniline-dyed purple leather cover and gave it a narrow-eyed look.  Clicked it on and suffered the inexplicable delay while it came to life.  One of these days, she promised herself, she'd find the right neck at Amazon and have a little heart to heart about device latency, because goddamn.  There's just no reason for that.

The list of unread items swam into view and she settled a little deeper into the Scotch-guarded cushions.  Thinking about titles. And authors.  Sometimes it all felt so hollow.  There were so many of them.  And she loved them, she really did, each and every one... while they lasted.  (Well, mostly.)  But was all worth it for those rare few that brought the magic.  The shift.  Taking her out of the routine of work-eat-chores-sleep, and transforming her into powerful, otherworldly creatures, human and otherwise, who lived larger than life.

Yeah, the shift.

She could really use that after the week she'd had, but the odds seemed low.  Just hadn't been feelin' it lately.

Her ice-blue eyes scanned the list again and she let them land on a name she'd lingered over before, but hadn't taken to the next level.  Coreene Callahan had first made an impression at RT2012 - the female was pure energy, passing up fellow conventioneers with her staccato stride down the beige hotel corridors; her sassy blond coif flipping as she talked over her shoulder to her slower companions.  All Reader had caught from that was "my dragons," but it was enough.  Enough to find out more....

................................

OK, I just can't keep that up any more (it seemed like a brilliant idea at the time to do a whole post in that style.... but as it turns out, nope).  What I'm trying to say here, is that Callahan has a very familiar style, and if you're into JR Ward, you will recognize it, right down to the shitkickers and referring to the women as "females;" a violent transition from apparently-normal-human to super-powerful paranormal being, which requires an intense, life-threatening feeding session and hopefully an equally intense sexual encounter.  She also does the "civilian/human outsider cop caught up in the warrior world" book.  So far no one has crawled off to die in a cave, but you'll also recognize the bonded mate thing.

So, lots of similarities.  I have panned authors before for series that were too copycat for my taste, and this one is even MORE similar in a lot of ways, but somehow I just liked it anyway.  I love the dragon shifters; the action/fight scenes are intense and well-choreographed (a challenge to do in mid-air); and what can I say, I'm a sucker for the stories where the toughest guys fall the hardest for their women.

Recommend!

Thursday Thirteen, Edition 25: Because of RT

Unsurprisingly, my TBR list jumped up exponentially during and after the Con.  I think I've officially reached the point where I can never catch up, but I will have a helluva time trying.  Here are Thirteen of the new-to-me authors that I hereby swear to read before the end of the year:

Because Jackie of Literary Escapism has threatened me with bodily harm (and I'm pretty sure she could take me),

1. Chloe Neill and
2. Jennifer Estep

top my list.

3. Coreene Callahan, because of that awesome swag.  (Also, I have a dragon related project percolating in the back of my head.)
4. Katharine Ashe, because she was so interesting to listen to at the panels.  Bonus, she's also an Avon Author so I can make the Addicts program people happy too.
5. Kieran Kramer, because "If You Give a Girl a Viscount" has to be the most unbearably cute title ever.
6. Kathryn Kennedy, because "Lords of Illusion" looked pretty yummy.  Hope I can jump in at book 3 without too much lostness.  I've noticed a number of reviews popping up so check it out.
7. Katie Porter, a new project from Carrie Lofty, whom I adore, and Lorelie Brown, who is new to me.  Because?  Because NOM, that's why.
8. Zoe Archer, who's actually been on my list for awhile.  Now I have not one but two actual books in hand, it's time to get cracking on that.
9. Jade Lee, because she was so entertaining and warm at the conference and I promised I would. :-)
10. Jaime Rush,  because all I need is another paranormal series to become addicted to, right?
11. Sophie Jordan, because I've gotten out of the habit of trying new historical authors, and that's just dumb.
12. Kris Tualla, because I feel a little Viking thang coming on.  I confess, I have MISSED Viking romance!
13. Janiene Frost, because now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure she was on Jackie's hit list.  Also, I totally got to have dinner with her one night during the conference and I've hardly bragged about it at all.

Bonus:

Clay and Susan Griffith, because steampunk vampires, bee-yatches.  What else do you need to know?








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RT 2012 Swag: The Awards

Now, I know many of you are gearing up for BEA in New York. But I won't be going to that, or AAD, or RomCon, or RWA, so forgive me if I hold the RT experience close, polish it lovingly, and revisit it for weeks or months to come for inspiration. In the three or so weeks since RT ended, I got sent to Sydney, AUS at the last minute for work for week, attended/led an all-weekend Girl Scout Campout, hosted an out-of-town colleague for a week (which meant no lunchtime reading or blogging, boo), hosted a secret chat with two other bloggers for a future hopefully-awesome post, and also gave notice at work. Plus of course that whole mom/wife gig. So while I've continued to read as much as I can, I have had little mental space to get caught up.

However I remain really inspired by RT. I'm going to kick off with an easy and fun one: all about the swag. Now, swag is not why we go to cons. It's a fun side benefit, though. Since I was attending long-distance, I shipped home a good sized box full of books. Being cheap, I shipped them book rate, so they didn't arrive until I was in Sydney, so it just drew out the whole gratification thing for weeks.

The tease:

Mmm. It's a big one. Size matters, in this case, don't you think?

First and foremost, of course, are the books.  These are all signed by the author:

Somewhat frustrating thing about the JR Ward books -- her line was moving VERY VERY fast.  Lover Awakened was supposed to be signed for a friend with just a signature, but I was angling to try to get a photo taken and she signed it before I could say anything.  Plus she signed them both "To Nicole" which isn't actually my name.  Are there any "Nicoles" out there who would like this book?  (I bought a new copy for the original intended recipient.)  I was hoping to pick up a hardback of Dark Lover but she didn't bring those.  Oh well, live and learn.  I didn't take any of my own books to be signed, out of sheer laziness.  I did not want to haul them on the plane.

These books are not signed, but are nevertheless awesome:

There are a couple in there that I could have had signed, if I had had sufficient organization/togetherness.  I ran into Sarah MacLean and Sabrina Jeffries several times, for example.

Bookmarks, cards, and cover flats are the most common souvenirs.  I got lots:

I had a fun time yesterday adding some of them into the scrapbook I brought to collect signatures, along with photos and notes.

Then there are the keyrings, pens, and other trinkety things:

Now, one should not assume by this pile that this was all that was available,  Most of these came with the bags, as I was a little hesitant to pick up a lot of little things that I don't truly have a use for.

*****

Speaking of bags, like any good conference, thanks to Sylvia Day and Shayla Black, RT gave away some well-designed and highly useful tote bags.  Funny story -- I was chatting away with Jackie and Casey from Literary Escapism, and a couple of other attendees on the second day of the con, and they were telling me about some of the previous night's late-in-the-bar antics (which I missed, because I stayed off-site).  Apparently some of the businessmen in the lounge were a bit more, um, adventurous than usual in their... interactions... with the RT attendees, even more so than you might expect from the stereotypical drunk business guy in a hotel bar.  And someone said, "yeah, but did you SEE what is printed on those bags?"  Hmmm, yeah, I can see how that might influence a guy in a bar:

Hee.  Anyway, the bags were very useful. I don't think I'll be taking mine to work though.

*****

My dad's an artist, and quite fond of nudes.  He always had a couple of pin-up calendars over his workbench in the basement.  So I feel I will just be following a family tradition by putting this awesome calendar up in my office:

So amidst much competition, I'm going to give this calendar 

Alpha Heroes Award for Best Eye-Candy Swag: 

Hot Damn Designs Calendar

 *****

One of the evening parties gave away these adorable charms, attached to a bookmark:

I ended up with two.  Now, I have two daughters, so you'd think that would be simple. (I also considered earrings for moi.)  But the older daughter is into a few of the YA authors who were in attendance, so she received some bookish swag, plus a bag with some of her favorite anime characters on it.  The younger one was pretty much out in the cold on that end.  So one of these charms went to a fairy-obsessed niece, and the other is on a pretty silver necklace around Daughter The Younger's neck.  Very successful.  Thus:

Alpha Heroes Award for Prettiest Swag:  

The Magical Highland Fling Silver Charm

*****

Now, as it happened, after the con, I took my rental car and drove downstate about 3 hours to visit my mom & dad.  But I forgot my sunglasses!  (This happens a lot to people from Seattle.)  But never fear, I had these:

 I believe there is some sort of story behind these, but I'm in the dark (ouch, sorry) about it.  Perhaps we'll be lucky and Ms. Aguirre can fill us in?  Now it must be said, these are novelty items and not the most comfortable for hours of wear.  But still -- free, and right there when I needed them, and UV protected (don't wear sunglasses that aren't, very bad for your eyes, no matter how novelty-cool).  Thus:

Alpha Heroes Award for Most Useful Swag: 

Ann Aguirre's Too Cool For School Sunglasses

*****

Now, finally, there was one bit of swag that absolutely cracked me up, and put the author's name and work in front of me in a really memorable way.  Since I also did quite a bit of flying in April, I found the gum quite useful.  I'll be checking out this author just because of how clever this was:

Alpha Heroes Award for All-Around Cleverest Swag: 

Coreene Callahan's Anti-Dragon-Breath Minty-Fresh Gum

*****

And that's my list!  Award winners receive only bragging rights and my sincerest best wishes.  Void where prohibited, restrictions may apply in California and Maryland. Hope you enjoyed this run-down!