Reading Until Dawn -- Debrief

So the inaugural Reading Until Dawn Conference has come and gone.  This was my first go-round as a featured blogger, AND for a small conference.  The book events I've been to have either been short, afternoon or evening panel sorts of things, or RT, the great-gramma of them all.

Without reserve, I completely loved the small-conference situation.  As a first-year conference, there weren't many authors there that are on my auto-buy list, but I do love Darynda Jones' Charley Davidson series and most everything I've read from Jeffe Kennedy. Even so, the authors that were there, were creative and smart and fun, and I had a really wonderful time playing goofy games and getting to know everyone. I think you don't fully know a person until you've played Cards Against Humanity with them.

I can't help but compare this to RT, which is kind of a completely different planet in comparison. RT is really exciting, but... I'm not sure I like it better.  Casey, the organizer of RUDC, had a very clear vision that she did not want panels or lectures or anything that put the authors on one side of the room with the readers on the other, and I think she really succeeded in creating a situation where you could spend some fun time with any of the authors, bloggers, or readers that you hit it off with, or wanted to meet.  

Then there was the Featured Blogger thing. I'm a little on the fence about this. I mostly enjoyed putting everything together and running the fiction game; and it certainly pushed my posting frequency up to a place that I haven't seen in a while. I don't regret a minute of the time I put in and I'm really happy to have helped out Casey, who is just one of planet earth's Really Fabulous people. However, I'm not really sure that the posts were appealing to my usual audience. I worry that it was a little promo-heavy for my regulars.

I brought home a lot of books from the attending authors, and I will be reviewing as many of them as I can. I will of course give a disclaimer as to whether they were REALLY fun at the conference or just OK. I'm kidding, all of them were awesome, but of course I will note whenever I have a personal acquaintance with an author I'm reviewing.

I had a chance to talk to most of the authors that contributed to my fiction game and they all seemed to enjoy it.  I think my main lessons learned there is 1) start my back-of-the-house tracking spreadsheet early, because I did miss a few emails at different points which left a few authors wondering what was going on; and 2) set expectations on turn-around time. I had a couple of authors who got stuck, which isn't tragic since it's all in fun, but I need to be a little less timid about sending them to the back of the line if they're in a place where they have other priorities (which is COMPLETELY fine).  I might also try to figure out a way that I can run two stories concurrently to limit the gaps. Oh, and FYI: each story received a bit of a resolution... sort of.  I made chapbooks for the convention-goers with the whole story printed up.  I will run each of the two stories in the next couple weeks, top to bottom. So you have that to look forward to {wink}.

My 2016 conference schedule is kind of filling up already, as crazy as that is.  I'm for sure going to RT16 in Las Vegas.  I am really interested in going to the Historical Romance Retreat in Spokane, WA in September, because that one is drive-able for me.  I don't expect either of those to require much from me in the way of blogging or promotion.

HOWEVER, I have 100% committed to the Rust City Book Conference in August of 2016. Jackie has always been one of my staunchest and most loyal blog fans and mentors (I mean, she has her own tag here at Alpha Heroes), PLUS the conference is being held near my mother-in-law's house, so I will get good-daughter-in-law points practically for free. You can expect to see the occasional related post from me between now and the end of the year, and then more regularly starting in January.  I would welcome feedback from any of my readers as to how I can do this in a way that's interesting and fun, and not spammy.

So these are my thoughts on the con.  I realize that isn't much of a recap.  If you'd like to get more of an idea of what it was like, and whether you might like to go to the next one, I suggest you peruse the Facebook page, and if you have any specific questions I would be happy to answer them in comments or email. But let me just ask you this: Have you ever been to a conference with a pillow fort before? if not, I submit that you have been Missing Out.

Thursday Thirteen, Edition 32: The #RT14 Countdown!

You guys, I'm getting so excited about the RT Booklovers' Convention!  It's in New Orleans, which is one of the absolute best US cities to have a party in.  I've been counting days since October when I registered (47 to go) -- I have plane tickets, my seats reserved, my room reservation... what else do I need to do?

1. Get new Moo cards made
2. Hem up the sparkly dress for Mardi Gras World Carnivale party
3. Figure out shoes for same
4. Buy an O'Kane For Life tee-shirt
5. Book a discounted shuttle trip from/to the airport
6. Follow up on a blogger swag idea
7. Get a haircut
8. Make up my list of authors to stalk, er, um, I mean, authors I'd like to try to meet (I'm harmless, honest.) Schedule some meetups.
9. Follow Jackie's "Look Who's Going to RT" feature religiously
10. Start following the bloggers who are headed to the book blogger con one day ahead
11. Break in the new shoes I bought
12. Remember to pack the anthology that I want to have signed
13. Read something from each of the 700 authors that are attending.... uh oh.

----------------------------------

Find more Thirteeners at Thursday-13. Participants are welcome and encouraged to leave links in comments.

Connecting with Book Lovers

I mean, isn't that really why we're here? I hope you don't think it's creepy that I think of some of you as actual friends, whether I've met you face to face or not (and that would be mostly not...)

So I tried something new on Sunday -- even though I'm not much of a phone person (I lurrrrrrve texting way more than a forty-something should, but I promise never to abbreviate "you're" as "ur"-- I just can't do it, and that's how you'll always know I was born before 1980*).. where was I? oh yeah, not much a phone person, BUT how could I pass up the chance to talk Black Dagger Brotherhood with my best pal Jackie?

First I just dialed in for the audio but while we were talking I figured out how to log in to the chatroom (easy) and got to follow both angles of the conversation.  I do recommend you do both or you'll miss something.  Hosted by Jackie and Larissa, you really haven't lived until you've heard Jackie refer to a certain Black Dagger Brother as a "whiny little bitch" or Larissa get her smackdown going about Layla.

Anyway, it was SO much fun and they gave me like, "panelists" status mostly for just showing up so I wanted to give them a shout out and recommend that you check out the upcoming schedule and if you obsess over any of these series like I do (or have done) about the BDB, you should check it out.

Main page is here, and the upcoming schedule:

Time:	Duration:	Title:
04/22/2011 09:00 PM EDT	120 min	Katherine Kitty Katt with Gini Koch
05/06/2011 09:00 PM EDT	120 min	Morganville Vampires Discussion
05/20/2011 09:00 PM EDT	120 min	Kate Daniels Discussion
06/10/2011 09:00 PM EDT	120 min	Sookie Stackhouse vs True Blood Discussion
06/17/2011 09:00 PM EDT	120 min	Sabina Kane Discussion
07/09/2011 03:00 PM EDT	120 min	H&W Investigations with Jess Haines
07/22/2011 09:00 PM EDT	120 min	Hoodoo Discussion with Adrian Phoenix

__________
*Uh. Quite a while before 1980. Just sayin'.

Thursday Thirteen, Edition 18 - Riley Jenson

I really loved Jackie's February mini-challenge, and I really wanted to do it again this month. So I started with Keri Arthur, because I've been meaning to check her out, ever since I enjoyed her short story in the Hotter Than Hell anthology (wow, I can't believe it's been more than a year. The TBR pile is out of control, people).

The April Challenge involves a smackdown between two group author blogs: Fangs, Fur and Fey versus Deadline Dames. (There are prizes -- you should check it out!).

However, one thing that's getting in the way of me trying several of the authors on Jackie's April list is... Keri Arthur. OMG, I am SOOOO addicted to her Riley Jenson series.

Since it happened to work out this way, I thought I'd try a T-13 on the series so far. Usually I like to review a single book or a whole series, and believe me, I *will* finish this series. But I have a deadline so I figured I should just park the butt in the seat and get it done with what I've got so far. Here we go:

13 Random Thoughts about Riley Jenson
(Riley is the character, Arthur is the author)

1. Other reviewers have used the word "unabashed" a lot when talking about Riley's werewolf sexuality, and for good reason. This element of Arthur's world is incredibly well-done -- Riley's physiological need for sex and the werewolf cultural acceptance of "casual" sex and multiple partners creates inherent conflict with her significant others, and elevates the erotic scenes from merely titillating to critical plot- and character- drivers.
   
   
2. Riley is half werewolf and half vampire, with most of the best parts of both and few of the weaknesses, which is very cool.


3. Yet there is still a good balance with her physical limitations -- she's strong, even supernaturally strong, but her foes are supernatural too, and it usually seems like a pretty fair fight.


4. I love the way Arthur mines world folklore to bring nightmare characters and boogeymen to life. She puts a modern spin on the legends while respecting longstanding traditions, and the result is a suspension system for your disbelief that Mercedes-Benz would envy.


5. Riley wears fabulous shoes -- now, I am not a designer shoe kind of girl, but it's fun to read about her specially-made stilettos with wooden heels -- the better to impale the bad vampires with.


6. The tech: Arthur's world is slightly futuristic, maybe 20-50 years down the road. The "tech" is mostly just extensions of current technology, done in a believable way that doesn't get in the way of the story. (I am especially fond of the earlobe comm-link).


7. Salliane, a/k/a Sal The Cow. She's a secondary character who shows up around book 4 and I love the banter between the two women. It sounds too hateful to excerpt but when you're reading it, you can hear the teasing underneath, and through several books you can see the friendship grow. I also like how impossibly efficient Sal is.
   


8. Series OCD rating: 11 on a scale of 1-10. I've been so anxious to acquire the series that I accidentally bought Bound to Shadows twice. I finished #4 sooner than I planned (at, uh, about 1:00 am) so when I found myself at a happy hour right next to Barnes and Noble, I strolled over and bought #5 and 6 both, just to be sure.
   


9. I like how -- most of the time-- Arthur's supernatural races are not inherently good or evil, but a little of both, just like the human race. Their individual characteristics may make them more prone to some vices or virtues, but there isn't a base assumption about the whole race.


10. Arthur's bad guys strike a good balance between scary/bad/evil/powerful, and defeatable. This is a tough thing for paranormal authors to accomplish, and Arthur does it well, book after book.


11. Inclusivity: Both race and sexual preferences have a role in the series. Most of the characters in the series are "color-blind." Beauty and attraction come in a wide variety of packaging, and Arthur portrays them effortlessly. A major secondary character is gay, and he and his partner are an integral part of Riley's professional team. As the m/m relationship develops over the several books, the difficulties they encounter mirror Riley's insecurities in a subtle but meaningful way.


12. The men in this series are TO DIE FOR. I mean seriously: a horse shifter. (Think about it. Uh huh.) Alpha wolves. Suave vampires (also scary ones, but the good ones are yumm).


13. I didn't intend to write a total rave - I had a couple of minor nitpicks - but I don't think I'm going to bother with them. As I compile my thoughts here, I'm coming to a surprising conclusion: I cannot think of a series that I have enjoyed more than this one. It's top 3 for sure, along with Meljean Brook's Guardians and Nalini Singh's Psy-Changelings. (The BDB... well, I have an irrational love for the first 4 books but as a series it's uneven at best.)
    

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others’ comments. It’s easy, and fun!

Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

A Quick Plug

I'm not very good at challenges. The quickest way for me to DON'T WANNA all over a book is for someone to tell me that I *must* read it. Even if *I* am the someone.

Yeah, welcome to my inner child. She's kind of a brat.

So anyway, I had pretty much decided not to sign up for challenges this year. I signed up for several last year and promptly ignored all of them, all year long. That takes a certain dedication.

But Jackie is wily. She is offering PRIZES. And it's a short term contest, not a year long one, which suits my attention span. AND it features a crew of some of the most entertaining writers around, The League of Reluctant Adults. If you're not following that blog, you ought to be.

So go to Literary Escapism to get the contest details. Of the 20 authors there, I've read two of them and I've been following Carolyn Crane (a/k/a CJ)'s blog for well over a year. I enjoy her blog writing so much, I can't wait for her actual book (due out in March, it sadly doesn't qualify for the contest).

Mark Henry and Kat Richardson are both local to me and I've had the pleasure of meeting them both at signings. Although I gave Henry's first book a mixed review, I will say that he is hugely funny in person and if you've missed his vlogs, they are worth the click (uh, only if your kids and boss aren't around. And if you're not eating anything.) I also spotted him in the back row with some other troublemakers at a Patty Briggs signing. I totally believe the tagline on the League blog that says:

We're a bunch of paranormal romance and urban fantasy authors who occasionally blog, make filthy jokes and prowl the halls of conferences and conventions with switchblades!

... particularly if by "switchblades" they mean "strong alcoholic beverages and possibly a video camera."

I've also read the first two Graywalker books by Kat Richardson but hadn't got around to doing any reviews. This will give me some incentive to get the 3rd one under my belt and get that review up! Besides being really engrossing ghost stories, they're set in the older part of Seattle near where I work. It was just layers of awesome to go to a signing right in Graywalker's main character Harper's neighborhood:


View Larger Map

Now I just need to figure out which of the other authors I want to try. If you're having trouble too, I recommend browsing through Jackie's archives. Glancing through that list, I'm pretty sure she has reviewed or discussed a lot of them over the last two years!

Bad Memer

From Jackie	From Book Maniac	From Jackie and Medical Librarian	From Jackie

And the latest, from Ciara didn't have a button, but if I were good with p-shop, I'd whip one up that combines images of books, Starbucks, chocolate, and a computer. Heh.

As Ann Landers used to say, forty lashes with a wet noodle for me.

I’m very lucky to have several friends out in the blogosphere who have “adopted” me and helped get the word out about Alpha Heroes. A year ago, I had no idea what a blog meme was. Now, I sort of have a backlog to deal with. I’m going to use the holiday bustle as an excuse. (Is it working?)

I mean, some of these involve effort. For the Six Values one. I started to write my post for it, but it turned into “Six Things People Should Do/Be AND WHY THIS CERTAIN PERSON IN MY LIFE WHO DOESN’T/ISN’T IS DRIVING ME BATSHIT CRAZY RIGHT NOW” …

<deep breath>… and let’s face it, no one wants to read that. The process of letting that post cool off ended up in more than a month of procrastination.

Then other awards/memes came along but I didn’t want to respond until I had that first one taken care of, and, well, now here we are.

I see these awards as less about how great Alpha Heroes is and more about how loyal these friends are. So, Ciara, and Jackie, and Book Maniac, you have my sincerest appreciation and admiration. And I’m going to knock out all these memes in one go.

Being me, I’m going to put a little bit different spin on it. Most of the blogs I love and read regularly are linked in my sidebar, and thanks to my procrastination, most of them have already received and passed along these awards. Every day I get more and more enjoyment out of the strengthening bonds and friendships in this little blog circle, but now and then I feel the need to expand my boundaries. So my pledge, as the recipient of these lovely awards, is to do a new Thursday Thirteen tomorrow with a list of new(ish)-to-me book blogs. Some of them are fairly new and I know their authors will appreciate you stopping by and leaving a word or two of encouragement. I’ll also be updating my blog roll over the next few days.

In this way, I hope I’m “paying forward” a little bit of the support I’ve received, especially from Ciara and Jackie.

The End

Antholopalooza by the Numbers:

69 Novellas and Short Stories (Hah, I swear I didn’t plan that!)
60 Different Authors
44 New-to-Me Authors
19 Anthology-related posts
11 Anthologies read
8 Mr. Linky sign-ups (seriously, that’s kind of pathetic, but thanks for trying, Jackie!)
4 Thursday-13s (last one is tomorrow)
2 Guest Posts
2 Anthologies left unread on the shelf
2 Cheated on Antholopalooza with 2 full-length novels (coincidence?)

I can't believe I did this, but I went and bought ANOTHER anthology today. Despite the fact that I'm a) burned out on them and b) still kind of lukewarm on them as a category, I can't let there be something by Meljean out there languishing unread. So First Blood is waiting for me. I'm a fast reader, but even I can't finish it tonight to change my numbers.... but it's not IMpossible that I might finish Thicker Than Blood in 2008.

For those of you who missed out this month or couldn't squeeze it in with the holiday hubbub, Jackie is hosting the Bookworm Carnival in January with, you guessed it, an anthology theme. So you'll get another shot, and maybe I'll squeeze my last 2 3 anthologies in over there.

Happy New Years' everyone. Be safe ringing in 2009, and may next year be the best one yet for you and yours.

Advance Planning

I didn’t really do any challenges in 2008. I didn’t know that much about them, and I've always pretty much hated anything that smacked of “required reading." But one thing I’ve really liked about keeping this blog and becoming involved with other book bloggers is the way I hear about great books. So this year I’m going to commit to a couple of challenges that are near and dear to my heart. It’s kind of a funny process for choosing what challenges to join – I don’t want to join too many, because I already have a job, and it doesn’t make sense to me to join challenges about books I would probably read anyway—for example, Naida is hosting a challenge to read 5 romance books in 2009. Um. I will most likely hit that mark within two weeks. Maybe less, given that there’s a holiday in there, so I’m not signing up for that one—not much point for me (though, since Alpha Heroes is totally about romance novels, I'd like to think I could serve as a resource for that particular challenge).

As a fast reader, I’m all about quantity; I go through lots and lots of books, and while I’m loyal to authors I like, it takes a LOT of them to keep up with me, and then sometimes I just want something new. Like grocery shopping when I’m hungry, being in a bookstore all unprepared when this feeling hits me can be a very dangerous thing. I think it will be a great exercise in discipline and planning to try to stay ahead of that cycle with a list I can keep in my back pocket. (Or sidebar. Whatever.)

So the 50 New Authors Challenge, hosted by Jackie over at Literary Escapism, really appeals to me. I touched on it a little bit this year (before I changed the blog format) by just keeping a list of new authors I wanted to try. My personal rule for this challenge is going to be that if I’ve read a short story or novella by the author, it still counts as a new-to-me author. Just because; I’m being arbitrary about it and last I heard, there are no Book Challenge Police.

Mechanics: I’m going to keep a sidebar item through 2009 with links to the challenge updates. I’ll to try to post monthly on how each of my challenges is going.

To start off, here is an incomplete list of authors I want to sample in 2009. I’ll give an update near the end of January of 2009 on how it’s going. Here’s my list so far, in no particular order—recommendations welcome! Actively solicited, even; that’s mostly how I got this list:

1 Ilona Andrews
2 Linnea Sinclair
3 JL Langley
4 Samantha Kane
5 Kelley Armstrong
6 Josh Lanyon
7 Rachel Vincent
8 Karen Chance
9 Justin Gustainis
10 Jeri Smith-Ready
11 Shannon McKenna
12 Katie MacAlister
13 Alexis Morgan
14 Anya Bast

Long Overdue

It doesn't take long to get addicted to blogging -- reading, writing, and perhaps the most fun, following link to link from one interesting place to another to another to another, in the classic Give A Mouse a Cookie style. You can find yourself in some pretty amazing places in this manner if you have some time to kill.

Several people have been kind enough to place links to Alpha Heroes on their blogs, and it's past time that I returned the favor, and maybe pay a couple of them forward. I've already posted the links in the sidebar, and here's a little more info on each one:

Ciaralira: possibly the best alignment with mine. Ciara & I both read a lot of everything. Bonus: you get to check out her photos from her recent Ireland trip. <drool>

Literary Escapism: dive deep into the world of paranormal and urban fantasy romance. Jackie knows her stuff.

Paperback Writer: Lynn Viehl's blog. I'm not going to list the blogs of all the authors I follow -- I can't read them all anyway, but this one is different. Viehl blogs about writing, about books she loves, about blogging, and about e-publishing. It's fun and fresh and if you like her books, she offers some nice freebies on a regular basis.

Reader, I Married Him: brand new and promising, an academic take on the social themes and attitudes reflected in genre romance. I absolutely loved her first substantive post on masculinity and chivalry (and any fan of the Flight of the Conchords is alright by me).

Teach Me Tonight: I have to admit, this one is sort of on probation with me. I discovered it in late February and loved what I saw, but lately it's been less interesting to me. The recent post (April 27) promising to discuss genre & sexuality devolved so deeply into academic babble that eventually it didn't even seem like English to me. I'm also a little disappointed to discover the dialog in comments to be pretty cliquish. Still, there've been some great posts in the past so I'm hoping it's just a down phase that they'll come back out of. This is kind of a stressed out time of year for academic types, I guess.
___________________________________________________

The Biggies: I'm not linking these in the sidebar because I think everyone knows about them, but just in case you don't, check out:

Dear Author
Beyond Her Book - Barbara Vey at Publisher's Weekly
Romancing the Blog
Smart Bitches, Trashy Books
All About Romance (And yes, I kind of stole the idea for my header graphic from here. My photo is one that *I* actually took though, and I'm pretty proud of it. )
___________________________________________________

When I'm not reading, working or wrangling my kids, a lot of the time I'm crafting. I'm big into scrapbooks, quilting, and cross-stitch. Between that and my artist husband, there are a number of art-craft blogs that I follow:

Mechronomicon Creepy, scary digital art. Yeah, I married the guy.

Daz Cox's Art Blog Darren is a re-connected high school friend, the crush that never was. He's got some amazing stuff up here.

Hoola Tallulah Hoola is living a life I fantasize about -- she moved her family to rural France and spends her time raising veggies & small livestock and making adorable crafty things. I'm sure I wouldn't last a week in her place, but it looks and sounds completely idyllic.

Doodleblog: an amazing, amazing quilter.
___________________________________________________

Then there are folks that are just plain interesting to read, whatever they choose to write about:

The Dog's Pajamas O'Donovan reeled me in with this blog last year when she promised a post per day. That pledge ended at New Years', so now all us poor addicts limp along, waiting for her pearls. She is also a co-blogger here at Alpha Heroes upon occasion. (My Lynn Viehl addiction is totally her fault).

Half an Acre A friend's musings about life as a grad student.

Poor Richard's Daughter Sometimes funny, sometimes poignant. Hard to describe but well worth the read.

Last but not least, if you are in the Chicago or central Illinois area and love jazz vocals, check out Stephanie.