Bitchin' Blog Posts
: Random Musings
by SB Sarah | May 16, 2013 | Thursday at 9:42 am | 15 Comments
When I announced the 2013 RITA® Reader Challenge last week, MissB2U asked:
I would be interested in any pointers from you or other reviewers here on the basics of writing a review. New skillset! Yea!
I am a little embarrassed that I haven't discussed this before, especially since we've been doing the RITA® Reader Challenge for years now. So, without further ado: reviews! Guidelines and suggestions only, because I don't think there are any firm and absolute rules about writing reviews. Everyone's opinion is different, and therein lies the rules and reasons for reviews.
There are many kinds of reviews, and they vary according to the forum for the review, the product being reviewed, or even the type of review for a specific kind of product. Book reviews vary as well. Some are evaluations of the romance as an argument: does the reader believe that the main characters have earned and will sustain…
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by SB Sarah | April 29, 2013 | Monday at 4:30 am | 52 Comments
In the open Whatcha Reading? thread last weekend, many of you said you were in a reading slump - which sucks. I hate when that happens.
Bryn emailed me and asked:
Reading today’s postings made me think: wouldn’t it be nice to have a list of books from my fellow readers that helped them break out of their reading slump?
If you are ever so inclined I’d love to see the titles that helped my fellow Bitches get their swing back.
Oh, hell, yeah. Of course!
If I'm in a reading slump, I do one of two things. I either go back and re-read something I know I loved and know I'll really enjoy reading again, like the Alpha & Omega series by Patricia Briggs, starting with Cry Wolf ( A | BN | K | S | ARe | iB ). Or, I'll read a little bit of a whole slew of things until I find something that grabs me. Sometimes I take a break and read nonfiction, and when I come back to the fiction, my brain is…
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by SB Sarah | April 21, 2013 | Sunday at 8:18 am | 13 Comments
In the back room at Turn the Page books is this poem: Why I Have A Crush On You, UPS Man by Alice N. Persons.
I had to share it here. Since that's a link to a picture, and isn't readable by screen readers, there is also a version of it read by Garrison Keillor.
I don't have permission to reproduce it here so I didn't, but oh, please, click either link and enjoy.
...
Speaking of Turn the Page, the signing on Friday was a lot of fun, and so well attended. You can see some pictures on their Facebook page. My scribbled notes:
I met many women who were "at doctor's appointments" that morning. Clearly medicinal books are needed! We prescribed them freely. More books! Take six and call us in the morning! First in line were two women who flew from Ireland just to attend the signing. They were supposed to go from Boonsboro up to Boston, but since travel there was not like that week, these two were treated to travel recommendations from everyone…
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by SB Sarah | March 21, 2013 | Thursday at 11:26 am | 61 Comments
Were you a Sunfire romance reader? I totally was. And even after I cracked the code of the cover art - whomever the heroine was pictured with in the cover art was usually NOT the dude she ended up with - I still read them.
I loved Caroline, and read that book so many times I looked up the author, which led me to one of my msot favorite YA reads ever, The Girl with the Silver Eyes.
And I had a particularly love for Jennie, which was about the Johnstown Flood, one the greatest clusterfucks of a natural disaster in American history.
I remember searching for more of these in the library and the bookstore when I was in middle school. I thought Roxanne was the most glamorous woman on a cover I'd ever seen - I think it was the bedazzled "R" on her sweater.
It seems I'm not the only one with fond memories of…
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by SB Sarah | March 03, 2013 | Sunday at 9:25 am | 5 Comments
If you follow me on Twitter, you might remember that I ended up in Twitter jail for tweeting so much about Tools of Change two weeks ago. You likely already heard a lot about the conference. The last day of ToC, I received a message that a friend of mine suffered a death in his family, so immediately after leaving Tools of Change, I traveled some more for the funeral, and thus this recap is later than I expected. But the time between the end of the conference and now has served to better adjust my thinking of the whole event.
I met some really interesting people and learned about projects that suffused me and the people around me with a heady dose of, 'Oh, that's cooool!' - such as Paperight, a chain of print-on-demand copy shops at cafes in South Africa, which was featured in the ToC Startup Showcase:
Using the Paperight website, copy shops can quickly, easily and legally print out and sell textbooks, novels, children’s books and more. Paperight’s outlets are predominantly in underprivileged parts…
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by SB Sarah | February 14, 2013 | Thursday at 1:46 am | 19 Comments
For the past two weeks, my inbox has been bombarded with an unrelenting bonanza of Valentines-related content submissions from people I do not know. I received several link bait lists of 25-Things-That-Do-Things-Plus-Sex, a full week's worth of dating advice guest columns, and requests for line advertisements for dating sites, sexual health supplements, and a guide to surviving divorce.
Valentine's Day, if you're at all related to the world of romance, is a very big day. Many authors have half-jokingly bemoaned the media requests for dating tips and romantic advice, because who better to ask than a romance novelist, who MUST be an expert on all things romantic, right? It's easy to get a little - or a lot - cynical about Valentine's Day, especially if you work within the romance publishing industry, and therefore receive a little extra pressure as the holiday reappears on the calendar.
It's almost trendy to really hate Valentine's Day, to rail against the commercial pressure to conform to one type of romantic gesture and sneer at the umpty-teenth advertisement for roses, chocolates,…
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by SB Sarah | February 08, 2013 | Friday at 6:36 am | 84 Comments
Here in the northeastern US, we're getting ready for a big ol' blizzard, a Nor'easter that is likely to bring an epic dumpus of snow to New England. Here in the NY metro area, the forecasts range from 3-40+ inches (7-101cm). (Wow. Snow in cm is WAY more impressive!) So I've been preparing by making sure the crock pot is clean, the cars have gas, we have shovels and salt... and I have BOOKS TO READ.
Seriously, can you get through a snow dumpus without books? Inconceivable!
So on my docket this weekend: The Chocolate Kiss, by Laura Florand, and, depending on how much time I have, The Dark Lady by Maire Claremont. That would be light and fluffy vs. dark and angsty, which ought to cause my brain no small amount of ?!. I couldn't get through the first book in Florand's series, because I thought the heroine was an asshole, but I started this one and am enjoying the hell out of it so far.
What about you?…
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by SB Sarah | January 23, 2013 | Wednesday at 8:20 am | 49 Comments
I noticed this weird thing when I was updating my own bio (something you should probably do at the start of every calendar year, just to make sure it's up to date and doesn't talk about upcoming books that came out in October 2011, not that I am guilty of that... no, not at all): most author biographies start with geography.
Is it me, or is that a little bizarre?
I mean, I'm guilty of it, too. I noticed this while I was formatting my about.me page, and my first thought was to say that I'm from Pittsburgh. Now, being from Pittsburgh isn't inherently interesting except that anyone else from Pittsburgh who is around my age probably knows at least four to six people that I know, because even though Pittsburgh is a biggish city, it's like a bunch of small towns all stuck together, joined permanently by a strange dialect, sports, slight weirdness, and a very midwestern friendlyness.
But is it the most important thing to know about someone, where they're from? Aside from anyone else from Western Pennsylvania…
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by SB Sarah | January 17, 2013 | Thursday at 2:36 am | 97 Comments
So many of us remember our first romance novel, and many more of us received (or stole) that novel from a relative. Passing down a much-loved book, romance or no, is something pretty common.
Last weekend, I shared The Princess Bride with my kids for the first time. It's 25 years old (gosh, I'm ancient) and it's still 90 minutes of movie awesome. I think my husband and I could quote most if not all of it, but afterward, my kids were doing it, too.
I got the idea from Stephen Thompson, part of the PCHH podcast, after he shared The Princess Bride with his children. I think there's a whole episode of 'pop culture you should hand down to your kid' in their archives.
Then a Twitter conversation with Jo Bourne, Kristen Callihan and Tien Tien after I tweeted about the movie night made me think. Bourne tweeted, "Never thought 2 pass it along. Then one day The Kid says "Mom, there's this great movie …" Later: "Re movies we can share with our kids. In the old days it…
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by SB Sarah | January 08, 2013 | Tuesday at 1:52 am | 160 Comments
Back at RT in 2012, Molly O'Keefe and I got to talking at the bar (like you do) (no, really, that's what you do at RT) and she told me she had to leave the convention early because her husband had scored tickets to see Bruce Springsteen live, and, well, yeah, she had to leave early. Because... Bruce.
As y'all know, I live in Jersey, and I spent every summer here as a kid. Springsteen is... well, he's Jersey. To quote Jon Stewart, another person from Jersey, when Springsteen was part of the Kennedy Center Honors program:
"I am not a music critic. Nor historian, nor archivist. I cannot tell you where Bruce Springsteen falls in the pantheon of the American songbook. I can not illuminate the context of his work or his roots in the folk and oral history traditions of our great nation.
But I am from New Jersey, and so I can tell you what I believe, and what I believe is this:
…
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by SB Sarah | December 22, 2012 | Saturday at 2:01 am | 75 Comments
Once again, it's holiday travel time. With Christmas Eve and Christmas Day falling on a Monday and Tuesday respectively, I'm betting there's a whole lot of moving around going on between yesterday and today - and waiting. Always waiting!
Which would mean that we're carrying books with us, right? I mean, when are we NOT carrying a book?
I'm currently between books and trying to figure out what to read next. I took a break from romance to read some nonfiction about efficiency and workplace prioritizing (and how being busy is not the same as being efficient or even effective) (darn it) so I'm looking for something to begin reading. It's both awesome and unnerving at the same time. Sort of like jumping in a cold pool: I have to just start reading and jump in already.
So, whatcha reading this weekend? What's making your brain and eyeballs happy?
Safe travels, happy holidays, and good reading to all of you!
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by SB Sarah | December 17, 2012 | Monday at 1:43 am | 58 Comments
I've been researching series orders and connected books, and have noticed a few times the author on GoodReads or elsewhere giving her own book five stars. I'll be honest: I pretty much always roll my eyes when I see an author giving each of their books a five star rating, not the least of which because it's disingenuous.
But I also ask myself (every time I see this happening), would I give my own books five star ratings? Would I rate every example of my own writing five stars?
Nope, probably not. Definitely not.
I probably should, because as the author or co-author I should be the best emissary for my books. But in each case, and this goes for books published elsewhere and entries published here, I can see things I would change or do differently, things I wish I'd known when I was writing them that I know now. I can't read entries on the site without wanting to make edits and rearrange paragraphs. Books are subject to the same wish to continue…
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by SB Sarah | December 04, 2012 | Tuesday at 12:01 am | 35 Comments
Recently, after reviewing a book I finished only because I wanted to know how it ended, we discussed the term we would use to describe a book we're finishing not out of compulsion but due to morbid or frustrated curiosity.
Thinking about why I finish books and how I feel about them while I'm reading made me realize some things about how I grade books. In many cases, I begin identifying the grade while I'm reading. I have noticed that there is a difference between my reading due to mild curiosity and reading because I am compelled to keep reading. There is an obvious difference between reading because I cannot stop, because I am unable to close the book and do something else until I finish one more page, one more chapter, one more scene, and whoops, it's 2 am and there's the end of the book - and reading because, meh, whatever. I have a hard time deciding not to finish a book, and have to repeatedly give myself permission to put a book down unfinished and start something else.
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by SB Sarah | November 24, 2012 | Saturday at 2:32 am | 105 Comments
If you're in the US, it's a four-day weekend, unless you're in the US AND located in western Pennsylvania, where I grew up. Then you might also have Monday off because it's the first day of deer season. I had off school when I was a kid, anyway, and was all afronted when I had to go to work the Monday after Thanksgiving weekend. Don't you people know it's the first day of deer hunting season and we should all be home reading books?!
Anyway. Sometimes I think vacation reading comes with a lot of pressure. The books must be good, if I save them for vacation! But then, I'm also surrounded by a lot of (very loud)(omg)(seriously) family for most of the weekend, and tend to grab my Kindle and go hide in a closet for an hour to read. And at that point, I'm so desperate for silence I could be reading a digitized version of my scanner's instruction manual written, and it'd be the Bestest…
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by SB Sarah | November 21, 2012 | Wednesday at 12:17 pm | 39 Comments
As I mentioned in my review of A Stolen Season, I went from reading because I was convinced I was missing the Magic Thing that had created positive reviews for this book, to reading because I just had to find out how the plot was resolved.
As I said on Twitter, there's almost an annoyed affection I feel for a book that I really dislike but am compelled to finish. I just had to know how the ending was going to happen, even if I didn't enjoy the book or the characters - and that's something which has happened to me before.
I figured there had to be a term for that. So I asked on Twitter and Facebook - and wouldn't you know, people had ideas, but not one definitive term. There are, however, really, really good suggestions.
I Storified the Twitter conversation here:
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