Tag Archives: Blogging Virgin

Special Guest: Kelly!

You guys!!! Today we have yet another incredibly special guest with us! My friend Kelly, who is a romance reader, and this is her very first ever blog post! I kinda had to nudge her into sending me this because she was all nervous. Personally I think she did fabulously, and I hope she’ll blog here again! So everyone please give Kelly a warm welcome and show her some love!

I have been debating with myself as to what I should write about.  Seeing that we just kicked off a brand new year, one would think I should take a trip down memory lane.  But to be honest, I have no idea what the first romance I ever read is.  Must have made quite the impression.   And I know it’s also already been done.
And because I am not a fortune-teller, predicting the future isn’t a good idea either.  Therefore, I prefer to focus on the here and now.  So, with that in mind, I am going to do my take, so to speak, on getting to know you, with a twist.  🙂
WHAT AM I READING? : 
         At present I am about 2/3 of the way through Silk is for Seduction by Loretta Chase.  Someone please tell me why I haven’t read more Loretta Chase.  She writes smart, strong heroines.  No namby-pamby, simpering ladies here.
WHAT AM I WATCHING? :
      Obviously at the moment, I am typing a blog post  😉     What I want to do, is give props to some of my fave new shows this year.
Two Broke Girls (CBS – Monday  8:30)  Caroline’s dad is basically a Bernie Madoff type and now Caroline has had to resort to working as a waitress in a greasy spoon and ends up rooming with her cranky co-worker, Max.  Max is an aspiring cupcake baker and since Caroline has a finance background, the two are doing their best to save enough money to open their own shop. This show can be a bit crass and may even border on vulgar, but, it always makes me laugh.
Revenge (ABC – Wednesday  10:00)   Who hasn’t dreamed of destroying anyone/everyone who has ruined their life?  This show proves that while revenge may be sweet, it doesn’t always go as easily nor as smoothly as planned.
Person of Interest (CBS – Thursday 9:00)   This show is hard to describe.  A machine spits out the name/number of someone who is about to be involved in a crime.  Only problem is, you don’t know if said name/number is the victim or the perp?
WHAT AM I LISTENING TO? :
      This one is harder for me than the others.  I listen to a little bit of everything.  Top 40, Oldies, Country, Classic Rock.    From Adele to Elvis to George Strait to ZZ Top.  🙂
WHAT AM I BAKING/COOKING? :
     Ummmmm …  I nuked a chicken chimichanga for lunch.  Does that count as cooking?  😉
WHAT AM I THANKFUL FOR TODAY? :
     Thankful that it is yet again another weekend!   🙂
So now it’s your turn!   Who/what are you reading, watching and/or listening to.  Any good eats?  Either at home or out?  What are you thankful for?   I am always looking for new ideas and inspirations.   Inquiring minds or maybe just I, want to know.    <G>

Special Guest: Mary F!

Hi Everyone! I’m sneaking this one in on the “proper day” going by West Coast Time. Cuz there’s where I am. Totally. >.> Anyway it’s the third Saturday of the month! Which means we have a guest post from a member of the romance community who is a reader! 99.99% of the guests are solely readers – and they’re all here in that capacity only on the special guest post days. Isn’t that fun? (It was the balance me originally only having one guest author a month. … Any more readers wanna volunteer? ;-))

MORE IMPORTANTLY! This is Mary’s first time ever writing any sort of blog post. YAY!!!

I’d like to thank Lime for the opportunity…. THANKS LIME (I’m actually suspicious of this here, because I had to hound Mary for this post. So everyone be nice to her!)

I’m a married mother of two girls. Both are out of school now. My husband likes the books I own only in the respect that it could be used for kindling in a fire! I don’t blame him for that though – at last count my collection was over 2000. And we live with books in every room in the house….LOL

Now is the time of year when I go over what I’ve read. It was a hard decision to decide what my faves were this year. So this leads me to the questions of:

What makes a keeper for you? How easy is it for you to give up books you own? Do  you keep a log of what you’ve read? At what point do you decide to quit reading a book when it doesn’t keep holding your interest? How often do you give a book a second chance? If you had a chance to meet your favorite author what would you ask them?

Mary Froelich

Thaaaaaaaaaank you Mary!!! I really appreciate you writing this post for me. 🙂 So we both wanna know – books! You! Talk!

Special Guest Stacie Recaps RT11 (With a SWAG Giveaway!)

You guys! So the totally awesome Stacie said she was going to RT and I pounced on her and was all “you must do a recap for my blog!” And she was all “*skeered*” and I was like “DO EET!” So here she is! She’s all kinds of fabulous and I totally wouldn’t mind being her when I grow up. (I’d say this if I was older than her as well. Which hell, I might be. 😉 Who knows with all this interwebz craziness.)

2011 RT Booklovers Convention Recap by Stacie (aka @GeishasMom73)

This year, RT 2011 was held in Los Angeles at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel. This was my first ever RT and I didn’t know what to expect. As an RT Virgin (I even wore a button all week stating so) I was pretty disoriented for the first day and a half. There was so much going on that I didn’t know where to start. I was overwhelmed not only by the event but by the amount of SWAG I was given. I believe I shipped approximately 5 pounds of SWAG home. I received t-shirts, tote bags, buttons, pens, bookmarks, excerpt booklets and a few NSFW promo items. *Stick around until the end of the post for a little giveaway.

The reader and writer workshops were fantastic. There was something for everyone. Even though I am a reader, I ended up attending more writer workshops than reader events. Listening to authors like Lauren Dane and Kate Pearce talk about their writing process was fascinating. I even sat in on an author chat with Dean Koontz (he was very funny and self-deprecating btw). The LA ATF conducted a 2 hour workshop that included watching an ATF police dog attack a faux criminal. They also provided 17 different firearms that the audience could handle. To balance out the testosterone heavy ATF event, the next day I attended a reader event where marabou boas and Spank Me rulers were standard issue!


Let’s get to the parties! One of the big draws of the RT Convention has to be the parties. There were awesome reader parties during the day and huge events at night. Many people brought elaborate costumes for these events. I felt the Ellora’s Cave Bollywood party was the best of the bunch. Great entertainment, food, party favors and promo items (albeit usually NSFW). The Avon party was a close second. They had carnival food (corndogs, caramel apples plus a margarita bar) as well as authors signing free books. I believe I received 10 signed books at that event alone.
OMG books! In the four days that preceded the Book Fair I received dozens of free books. Between the registration bag, the goody room and the parties/events I checked off half of the titles on my wish list. By the time the Book Fair arrived I had already filled the two Priority mail boxes that I had brought in my luggage and I still had more books to buy. The Book Fair was awesome and the authors were friendly and gracious. One of the perks of being an RT attendee was being allowed entrance to the Book Fair 15 minutes before the general public. I knew Ann Aguirre was giving away free hardcover copies of Enclave so I made a bee-line to her table to snag my copy.

The Mr. Romance pageant or mangeant was a huge event. I can honestly say that I’ve never been to anything like it. The crowd was rowdy and ready to have a good time. I’m a pretty reserved and shy person (my twitter personality is totally different) so having a male model rip his t-shirt off onstage and throw it into the crowd was shocking. Having that t-shirt fall into my lap rendered me speechless. I was told I turned a lovely shade of rose. LOL *And no, I did not keep the t-shirt 😉

The most fun I had was meeting all of my online friends in person. I met a ton of people that I only knew through Twitter. Everyone was just as cool in person as they are online. I now understand why everyone keeps returning to the RT Convention. It is one of the few times that you can meet up with your online friends from around the country. They try to cram as much fun into that one week as possible. It’s like a big family reunion but fun.

I want to say a special thank you to Megan Hart and Lauren Dane for convincing me to attend this year’s RT. I had a blast. You both went out of your way to make sure I felt welcome and I really appreciate it. I’m already looking forward to RT 2012 in my hometown of Chicago! I encourage everyone to attend if you can. And thank you Limecello for talking me into writing this post for your blog. You can put the brass knuckles away now. 😉

***And now for the giveaway***

I know you skipped reading the post and jumped down to the important stuff. Don’t lie. 😉

I have 3 prize packs of SWAG to give away. Some of these items may be racy so everyone should probably be at least 18 years old.

1st is an Ellora’s Cave 2011 calendar plus various SWAG

2nd is a deck of Ellora’s Cave playing cards (the cards have EC cover art on them) plus SWAG

3rd is a selection of Romance Trading Cards plus SWAG

In the comments tell me the prize you want to win. If you want them all, list your order of preference and leave a way to contact you. I’ll draw 3 names this weekend.

You heard (well, read) it! Them’s the rules and since Stacie and I are both punchy tired, hope it makes sense 😀 (Also, the less said by me the better because RT10… well. Yeah.)