Bitchin' Blog Posts
: Princeton
January 20, 2011 | Thursday | 46 Comments
First, there’s a lot of terrible stuff going on around the world as far as natural disasters. There’s floods and mudslides and all sorts of horrible things. I have heard from a few readers that Australia, Queensland specifically, faces a horrible cleanup after torrential rains caused widespread flooding. Local papers are reporting that donations have dried up (I presume the pun is intended there), and residents are finally able to go try to salvage their homes and businesses. The Romance Writers of Australia are hosting a book drive to help replenish libraries, schools and community center book collections - as…
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July 07, 2009 | Tuesday | 38 Comments
Deirdre Donahue of USA Today profiled romance novelists Eloisa James and Julia Quinn, and feature some random bloggers (us!) in an article about how smart women read and write romance. Oh holy crap, I can’t tell you how proud I am to be part of romance-positive coverage. Looking at the intelligent and fierce women who write and read our favorite genre, Donahue’s piece lets James, Quinn, and Harlequin CEO Donna Hayes speak for themselves. Their quotes are frank and supportive of the genre - and reveal what we’ve known all along: that we’re clever, savvy, and so damn intelligent. The…
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May 26, 2009 | Tuesday | 105 Comments
I have been wrong before. I maintained a false attitude about Harlequins and got schooled as to how wrong I was. I got royally schooled at Princeton about inspirational romances and the community of women who read them, and the corporations who distribute them. So I think I may have been wrong about self-publication. Yes, there is no curation and some of it is outrageously crapalicious. Indeed, there is a stigma to flipping a book over and seeing “iUniverse” instead of “HarperCollins” or “Berkley” - like flipping a greeting card over and not seeing “Hallmark.” iUniverse, in my mind, often…
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May 05, 2009 | Tuesday | 57 Comments
If you missed the great awesome news: RWA has a new chapter, the Rainbow Romance Writers, a GLBT Romance chapter. WOO HOO! How awesome is that? Mazel tov! I first heard the news from RWA President Diane Pershing at the Princeton romance conference, though she asked at the time that the announcement not be made until the final details had been filed - so I didn’t mention it then. There was, however, applause and squeeing at the time. No comment on who exactly was squeeing. So while I was waiting for the official word from RWA, which went out 1…
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May 02, 2009 | Saturday | 15 Comments
As Malle Vallik pointed out in her Tweet about this article, author Joanne Rendell has posted a marvelous examination of romance in academia and in the current market economy over at Huffington Post. ...the accompanying explanation that “escapist urges” are fueling these sales wasn’t satisfactory for me. Isn’t all fiction escapist in some way? I wondered. And why are readers escaping into this particular kind of fiction? ...I realized that it was too hasty to rush to this conclusion. Romances are not one kind of thing. Neither are their readers. And to draw fast conclusions about the genre and its…
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April 28, 2009 | Tuesday | 88 Comments
At the RT booksigning on Saturday, someone came up to meet me. I absolutely love putting faces to names that I read online. When this very kind and interesting person left, she said, “Thank you for being honest.” I loved that. I so appreciate when people let me know that they enjoy the site, and I love how she put it: “Being honest.” There’s no implication of acceptance or even of agreement with what I say. But there is acknowledgment of honesty, and its value. At the panel Jane and I gave Thursday about blogging, I said that any person…
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April 28, 2009 | Tuesday | 2 Comments
Joanne Rendell asked to interview me about romance and the economy, and the future of the genre in a recession. What could be more fun to talk about than books and money, right? If you leave a comment over there (NOT HERE) you can be entered in a drawing to win a copy of Beyond Heaving Bosoms. Rendell is also going to be writing on her Huffington Post blog about the Love as the Practice of Freedom? Conference at Princeton last Friday. When I have a link to that, I’ll post it here. She was one of the lucky folks…
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April 27, 2009 | Monday | 19 Comments
1. Alyssa Day brought me bosom cookies. There is nothing better than sugar and baked goods in homage to bosoms. Thank you! And Barb Ferrer made the trip for the day just to say howdy to me and to her buddies. 2. So many people stopped to meet me, which made me incredibly happy. Side Note: a very kind person stopped me while I was setting up my computer at Mr. Romance and said, “I know this is rude, but I wanted to tell you how much I enjoy your web site.” Please know: NOT RUDE! AWESOME! I’m often moving…
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April 27, 2009 | Monday | 17 Comments
If you read the Twitteration, you probably got a micro-sense of the Mr. Romance pageant last night. Heather Osborn calls it the mangeant, and clocking in at just under an hour, it was a zippy-mangeant, too. The battery on my laptop hadn’t charged all the way yet. The opening was funny and silly and sort of slapstick - a lady was reading a book, and the contestants come out from backstage one by one and dance with her. While they were all sculpted and earnest about it, she was hamming it up to the audience, laughing and giving about 42…
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April 24, 2009 | Friday | 23 Comments
I haven’t been able to keep an active transcript of every presentation, though I know Sarah Frantz has, and once her entry is up I will certainly link to it. But if you’ve been following the Twitter feed for the conference you’ve heard very, very brief snippets of the proceedings. Twitter is great for real time updates but in terms of the layered depth of the presentations, 140 characters is nowhere near enough. It’s impossible for me to capture the amazing thematic ideas and concepts that are being discussed. Session I: Love and Faith: Romance and Religion Evangelical romance fans…
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April 24, 2009 | Friday | 7 Comments
After a night of dueling pianos and a very late bedtime, Jane and I headed over to the Wyndham Convention Center this mornign under the impression that our panel on blogging was at 230 pm. In fact, I booked the flight to Princeton based on the idea that I wouldn’t be able to leave until after 5pm. Imagine my shock when, at 11:10 I received a text from Jane saying, “Our session is at 11:30am.” It was at 11:30 on the scheduled card in our registration, too, and I hadn’t noticed. DOH. I was being interviewed by a holy crapping…
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April 22, 2009 | Wednesday | 14 Comments
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned the epic clusterfuck of travel I have going on this week, but in case you’re curious, here we go. Presently I’m at Romantic Times in Orlando, where today I’m on a panel about historical romance with Jane. Then, this afternoon I’m on a panel about social networking and new media with Ron Hogan. That will be so difficult, since there’s really nothing about Twitter or the growing power of using a social network to reach consumers (*koff koff Dominos *koff koff Amazon) that we can talk about in terms of author promotion. Then tomorrow…
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March 31, 2009 | Tuesday | 13 Comments
I’ll be updating this page as more events are scheduled, but as of today, here are all the places you can meet either Sarah or Candy. We’re still waiting on word as to whether we’ll be appearing together this summer. That’ll set the tectonic plates a-dancing, for sure. I’m trying out this site called BookTour.com, where you can see all the events I have lined up online, subscribe to an RSS feed. I’m also listing the events I know of for certain below, because (a) BookTour didn’t have everything available, such as the Princeton Conference and Lady Jane’s Salon, and…
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March 28, 2009 | Saturday | 6 Comments
Smack in the middle of RT, I’m flying up to Princeton to take part in a closing plenary at the Love as the Practice of Freedom? Romance Fiction and American Culture conference. Check out the schedule. No, specifically, the plenary I’m on: 5:30-6:30 Closing Roundtable: Romance Reads the Academy * Michelle Buonfiglio, blogger and reviewer (Romance: B(u)y the Book) * Sarah Wendell, blogger and reviewer (Smart Bitches, Trashy Books) * Diane Pershing, romance author, President, Romance Writers of America (2008-2009) * Monica Jackson, author, paranormal romance; contributor to “Blogging in Black” and other author websites…
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