Romance Comics. Bookstores Needed. And Links!

So many things to tell you about!

First: please enjoy Tom Hiddleston and Cookie Monster because why not?

Next! We are looking for more bookstores to feature in our Locally Sourced Romance column! If you know of a wonderful bookstore that has a terrific romance selection, we want to know about it so we can email the folks who run it and ask them nosy questions! Please email Amanda with your ideas and suggestions – and bonus points if you know the name of the manager!

And finally in the “housekeeping” department: we have some adspaces available for June 2015! If you’d like to enquire for more details, please email Sarah!

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If you’re going to be at BookCon this Saturday in the comfortable and lovely environment known as the Javits Center, I’ll be there, too!

I’m moderating Forever’s Romance Quiz Show – with authors as panelists!

Are you the ultimate romance fan? Test your knowledge against some of the most well-known authors writing in the genre today—Elizabeth Hoyt (Dearest Rogue), Jill Shalvis (Second Chance Summer), S.C. Stephens (Thoughtful), Hope Ramsay (Last Chance Hero) and Meredith Wild (Hardwired)—across all areas of romantic pop culture. Moderated by Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, you’ll have the chance to stump the authors and take home great prizes.

It’s at 1:00 pm on the Downtown stage at the Javits, Saturday 30 May. If you’re there for BookCon, I hope you’ll say hi, or heckle me, or both!

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The Kickstarter to fund the Fresh Romance comics line was a very large success – and the first issue is out! Just the sneak preview panels on the AV Club website made my fingers twitch to clicky-click-buy.

Via James L. comes this link, where Topless Robot also had some coverage of Fresh Romance, along with the news that the Denver Comic Con panel on Women in Comics had no women on it. From Topless Robot’s Jim Dandenau:

The first, from Kate Leth and Arielle Jovanellos, is standard high school fare: the cool kids are playing games to keep the masses and their parents twisting as to the real nature of their romantic entanglements, playing off status and expectations. Jovanellos nails the art here. These kids look every bit the cool ones, but she does a great job conveying their conflict in their body language and facial expressions.

The second story is from Sarah Vaughn and Sarah Winifred Searle, an Austenish (Jane, not Chuck, thank FSM) Victorian story about a woman heading to the altar who clearly doesn’t want to get married. Searle’s art is heartbreaking. Catherine, the main character, is so visibly dejected by the prospect of marrying someone she doesn’t care for that it’s hard not to feel depressed on her behalf. I can’t really praise it enough. If you read this and don’t walk away mopey, I don’t even know, man.

The last story is from Sarah Kuhn and Sally Jane Thompson, a sci-fi story about two alien baristas with matchmaking powers getting into math-coupling-related hijinx. Thompson’s art is fantastic, expressive and anime-inspired and a ton of fun, and this story being a little bit sci-fi was the one most in my wheelhouse.

If Sarah Kuhn’s name sounds familiar, it’s because she wrote One Con Glory, which Carrie reviewed.

You can buy the new issue of Fresh Romance from Comixology for $3.99. Which I’m so totally doing. Or already did. I’m not telling.

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I don’t know how I ended up on the USPS press release email list, but I glad I am because I think this is really cool. Flannery O’Connor is getting her own stamp!

Literary Arts: Flannery O’Connor 3 Ounce

The 30th stamp in the Literary Arts series honors Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964), who crafted unsettling and darkly comic stories and novels about the potential for enlightenment and grace in what seem like the worst possible moments. The color portrait on this stamp, a watercolor painting completed digitally, is based on a black-and-white photograph taken when O’Connor was a student at the Georgia State College for Women from 1942 to 1945….

The 93 cent Forever stamp will be issued June 5 in McLean, VA, at the NAPEX Stamp Show. Art director Phil Jordan of Falls Church, VA, designed the stamp with artwork by Sam Weber of Brooklyn, NY.

I love that the press release tells us who designed the stamp – especially because it’s lovely. I studied O’Connor’s works for several years in college (one of the benefits of going to a women’s college in the South and majoring in English: I studied Southern women writers like whoa and damn). I think it is So cool that she’s getting her own tribute stamp.

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 Via Sarah Mayberry – please note THIS LINK WILL CAUSE YOU TO LOSE MUCH TIME. The HuffPo Cliteracy Project, which is all about…the clitoris. Why it fell off (sort of) anatomy descriptions of women, and how big it really is.

And why it makes some cool jewelry – which I didn’t know about before now. Holiday presents sorted!

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And finally – there are two conferences being planned that you may want to know about!

First, in New York City: the RWA of NYC is hosting their annual Romance Festival at the Morris-Jumel Mansion on 20 June 2015. You can learn more about it at the RWA NYC website.

And second, the Romance Writers Organisation of South Africa is hosting a conference in Stellenbosch on 25-26 September 2015. They’ve just announced more speakers specifically in support of writers who publish books in Afrikaans, and will be announcing additional speakers and publishers soon. For more information, you can visit their site.

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What have you been reading online that’s been interesting? Anything you want to share?