Links: Honeybees, Happy Dogs, & Diversity

Workspace with computer, journal, books, coffee, and glasses.It’s Wednesday! If you’re in the Northeast, I hope you all made it through the lovely little blizzard we had yesterday. If you’re not, I still hope you made it through Tuesday like a champ!

Cheerios is giving away wildflower seeds to help #BringBacktheBees! To receive your packet of seeds, just fill out this form. Cheerios is also working to turn their oat farms into bee habitats.

Sarah is also hosting another Live Scream this Saturday, March 18 at 1:30pm EST!

Sarah: If you’d like recommendations or you’d like some advice, please feel free to email me. I have one advice email already, and am happy to add more, though please keep in mind I’m as full of it as anyone else.

If you liked Carrie’s review of Fresh Romance Vol. 1, the team is back with a second volume! Also paired with their Kickstarter is an original graphic novel that’s a Romeo & Juliet retelling. I backed this project and I’m really looking forward to seeing what EMET comics does next.


Battery chargers!

Every few months a bigger, better, and lighter weight battery charger comes out. At this point I have 3 in various sizes—lipstick sized, 6.5oz, and the 12.5oz, which lives in our travel bag. I can recharge my kids' DS, tablets, my phone, etc, before it runs out of charge. - SW


Continuing on the topic of diversity, author Brenda Jackson discusses her difficulties in becoming a bestselling author:

After being rejected by them a lot during the 1980s and early 90s, because there was no market for African American or black romances. Anything I did was almost automatically: “No thank you. We’re not interested.” The market was not interested until Kensington took a chance and came up with Arabesque, which was a line dedicated to black love, black romance. Just like anything else, everybody waited to see how the sales would do, and the sales went out the roof. And then other publishers started looking at black authors, and said, “Hey, they’re making money. Maybe we need to cash in?”

Check out the full interview and let me know what you think!

For all our readers across the pond, did you attend the London Meet-Up? Weren’t able to make the first one, but want to attend in the future? Readers Maria and Anne have started a Goodreads group for coordinating future events and to keep track of all the books they talk about!

This is probably my favorite video making the rounds this week. A Jack Russell terrier does horribly on an agility course, but he’s just so proud of himself anyway. Plus, the announcer is completely charmed by the dog’s infectious energy.

Don’t forget to share what super cool things you’ve seen, read, or listened to this week! And if you have anything you think we’d like to post on a future Wednesday Links, send it my way!

Comments are Closed

  1. Julia aka mizzelle says:

    The other one I’ve seen is Mia the Beagle. Mia gets distracted at a crucial moment and the announcer says “No, no, don’t be a beagle…”

  2. M & M says:

    Amanda and Sarah, thank you for posting the link! That’s really fab!
    Details for our next meet-up are now up. It’s scheduled for the 1st of April.

    This week I am completely in love with Patrick Stewart and the Pit bull he is fostering. Here is a link to some of the vids he has posted. I wish I could adopt that dog so badly. Can you be broody for a dog?

    http://www.dogster.com/lifestyle/sir-patrick-stewart-is-winning-and-melting-hearts-with-his-pit-bull-foster-dog-ginger

  3. Jill Q says:

    Thanks for all the links. Furthering the diversity conversation, I’m really enjoying the twitter feed @diversaesthetic (sorry if I misspelled that) by Book Voyagers. Maybe you guys have covered it already? It covers lots of YA and NA as well as romance. It makes me want to buy allll the books. Book aesthetic posts are my weakness 😉

  4. Mikaela says:

    sigh. Of course I am going to London the week before the next meetup. (This, btw, is a really common theme with this trip. All the interesting things are happening either 1 week before or 1-2 weeks after.)

  5. Crystal says:

    I feel like Patrick Stewart’s doggo is going to be a big, foster fail. so much love. I think he’s going to find that he can’t live without her.

  6. M & M says:

    @Mikaela: oh no, that’s a shame. But we will be doing some more meet-ups after the April one, so stay tuned!

    @Crystal: I’m thinking the same thing. They’ve already bonded!

  7. No, the Other Anne says:

    @Mikaela Go ahead and give us a shout on the Goodreads page anyway. I’ll be around and always happy for company poking around the bookstores of London!

  8. Rachel says:

    Also, a very happy 56th birthday to Fabio!

  9. Leanne H. says:

    I love the idea of a Goodreads group for SBTB readers! I think I saw other readers interested in a Chicago meetup… maybe we could have a Chicago Goodreads group? I will investigate…

  10. […] Linkity from Smart Bitches. And more linkity from Smart Bitches. […]

  11. Dejla says:

    One of Oriana Papzoglou’s novels about Patience McKenna has, as a suplot a romance writer named Ivy Tree, who is black but has been forbidden by the publisher to say this. Her contract (and they own the Ivy Tree pseudonym,so one way and another, they could kill her career and leave her penniless) requires this. One of the execs in a sleazy magazine who wants to do an article on her revealing this racist contract — but that would mean she would be in violation of her contract and her life would go to hell in a handbasket.

    The books themselves are funny, suspenseful, and skewers any number of cliches and slight weirdness of writers in general. And it skewers the romance publishers and how they work. Really, it’s very funny. Took me years and library searches to find the four books, but now I have them on my Nook, and I am a very happy camper.

  12. Heather S says:

    Someone pointed out on FB that the wildflower seed packets from Cheerios are not region-specific, which may result in invasive species being planted and potentially do more harm than good.

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