I’m the guest blogger over at Unleash Your Story today, talking about how reading is a necessity for me. To find out more about Unleash Your Story, a competitive fund raiser to benefit Cystic Fibrosis that challenges writers and readers to meet word or pages read goals while raising money. More details at Unleash Your Story.com. read more »
It’s Unleash Your Story time to benefit Cystic Fibrosis. The Madison chapter of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation does an annual benefit that raises money to fight cystic fibrosis and encourages you to read and write as much as possible. There’s prizes, too! The grand prize for the person who raises the most money will win a quilt handmade by Michelle Baker. (Y’ALL. Check out the turtle quilt Michelle made.) The grand prize quilt? Cowboys, baby: shirtless cowboys with incredible quilt stitching details like boots and hats. There are pacesetters, too: author Lori Wilde is challenging writers with a 3000 words-a-day… read more »
One of the features I’m most proud of at the Borders True Romance Blog is that each Friday we’ll be featuring a guest column from one of the many awesome romance bloggers writing online today. This week, we’re kicking off with Jessica from Racy Romance Reviews, and she’s talking about escape and art in romance - and what we readers get out of romance novels. (Also, I want to say: I LOVE her new glasses). My favorite part of what she says today: “Romances feed our minds by presenting human life, especially romantic love, in its complexity and diversity…. Yes,… read more »
Thanks to Dr. Vivanco, who is 200 times more cool than “Los Vivancos,” we have… an academic paper about you. No, really. Awhile back Candy and I were contacted by a grad student doing an ethnographic study of the Bitchery style of communication. Miriam Greenfield Benovitz presented her paper, “The Interactive Online Romance Community: Contests and ‘Covers Gone Wild’” at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association in May 2008, and her paper has been made available online. You can find a link to the PDF on that page. Another link to the PDF can be found at the… read more »
Thing the first: Diana Rowland interviewed me for Magic District. She wanted to examine the issues facing romance, science fiction, and fantasy novels - and I apparently wanted to use the word “element” about sixteen times too many. It’s like an elemental drinking game at this point. Thank you for the interview, Diana! While I was traveling in scenic, windy, and unquestionably awesome Iowa, a segment I taped for Better.tv aired in a whole mess of places across the US. Host Audra Lowe interviewed me about the Bosoms, the power of romance in a recession, and what to do about… read more »
Over at Romancing the Blog, Malle Vallik, the Oracle of eBook is writing a series of articles about “how and why authors should embrace web 2.0:” An author’s most valuable resource is time. New media offers you a number of tools to best utilize your time for book promotion. I hear that! Vallik points out that the lit-match-on-dry-brush speed of news spreading in the online romance community is one indication of exactly HOW fast and how wide information can reach others using 2.0 networks. From good news about romance to #amazonfail and amazon rank, we are exceptionally connected, some of… read more »
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… read more »
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… read more »
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… read more »
From my Twitter a few days ago: Review blogs are valid because we host discussion of readers, not because we know best what books are good/not good. Book review blogs aren’t effective b/c of the review. They are effective because of the discussion among readers who aren’t being talked down to by review who writes with presumption that s/he knows best. Reviews=discussions on blogs, not monologues Since I wrote the above, I’ve been thinking about the role of the book review blog, either as Evil Killer of Newspaper Book Sections or as Example of Future Horizontal Marketing and Collaborative Success… read more »
Last night Hubby and I were totally burnt out. I don’t know if it was because we were getting up earlier this week, or if we had both had arduous weeks at work, or if it was just a slightly-higher-than-normal level of tiredness, but by 8:45 we were both on the couch, unable to move. If we’d had battery meters, there would have been barely any red left. We were some tired people. Hubby sat with his laptop, figuring out his fantasy baseball freeze roster, emailing friends, and watching 56,314,852 simultaneous basketball games. I thought that was the most stressful… read more »
There are no tools here. Just about everyone is curious and interesting, and everyone does a little something different. But if I were going to make one recommendation, it would be this: there need to be more sessions about readers. As in, the actual humans who READ the ebooks. Debates about DRM and format, open source and the logistics of creating an ebook are important. Displaying the new devices - way important. But discussing ANY of that without also examining the readers who are BUYING the ebooks means that the true solution to any of the questions cannot be reached.… read more »
Sudbury Star reporter Angela Scappatura wrote a marvelous article about the advantages of reading romance in the face of criticism and derision, even from her own editor. I’m so flattered to have been interviewed, but more than that, I’m proud to be a part of romance-positive coverage in the media. Yay romance, and yay Angela! Nice job! My favorite part, and I’m egotistical enough to say so: Romance novels are certainly not considered “stylish” but masses of women are still tearing them off of book shelves like the latest Manolo Blahnik. “You can sneer all you want, but it’s a… read more »
Men who read romance are among the hottest men around, in my opinion. Here’s an email from a happy romance reader whose husband appreciates the genre: [W]ith regard to men reading the Romance genre, let me share this: Among other things, my husband holds a double Ph.D. in political science and economics, speaks five languages, is a member of the (exceedingly boring to me) international heraldry society (he can interpret most any coat of arms at a glance), daily scans several international newspapers (in their language) and I consider him to be one of the most intelligent men I have… read more »
Paperback Swap newsletter subscribers received a very spiffy missive in their inboxes today: Richard Pickering, Master at Arms of Paperback Swap, went the way of SBiT Patrick, and has read - and enjoyed - romance. Another one succumbs to the sultry, turgid wonderment that is our favorite genre! Seems Richard noticed his significant other sniffling over a book, and when he asked what was so great about the story, she said, “You wouldn’t understand.” Oh, I hear you there. He took the challenge. He read some of her romances, and said: I actually enjoyed them! Yes, I am man enough… read more »
© 2005-2012 Smart Bitches Trashy Books, LLC • FTC disclaimer • View Mobile Site •
powered by Expression Engine & mantitty • website design by Moxie Design Studios™
