The first romance novel I ever read was Message from Nam by Danielle Steel. Though I don’t read Danielle Steel anymore, that book holds a special place in my heart. It started the journey that led me to where I am today.
The author who is indirectly responsible for getting me hooked on romance forums/blogs is Judith McNaught. After I read all her books, I went looking for when her next book would come out. Judith is a somewhat elusive author and finding news on her was not easy to find. It eventually wound up at the Judith McNaught Bulletin Board, which was the beginning of the end for me. That is the place where I discovered how many other amazing authors were out there. I also met other women like me; Women who loved romance as much as I did; Women that I am now life-long friends with.
I am a pretty fast reader and I soon found myself surfing Amazon.com for new authors. I would skim lists, read reviews, anything to find another great book. That led me to start reviewing on Amazon. Some authors that I love today were discovered by reading an Amazon review. So I wanted to do the same for someone else. Amazon reviewing has changed somewhat since then and I haven’t reviewed there in years.
So how did I come to start blogging? I met this girl online about five years ago. She lived almost right next door to my aunt in Southern California. After we got to know each other through email and phone calls, I went down to visit my aunt and then met Holly for the first time. I think Holly will agree that our first meeting was a little strange. It’s not every day that you meet someone that you’ve only talk to online. We hit it off as well in person as we did online. A few years after that, Holly asked me to join Book Binge. She wanted to use me for my reviews. g
And the rest is history.
Leave a comment introducing yourself and how you became a part of the romance blogging community (whether as a blogger or a reader) and you have a chance to win the following:
The first romance novel I read was The Flame and The Flower by KEW. That’s all it took. That book gave me a life long love of history and romance novels. I’ve subsequently read hundreds of romance novels…it’s the only genre I read.
I first visited an author website a couple of years ago when I came upon Kinley MacGregor aka Sherrilyn Kenyon. I couldn’t believe it. There were actually people out there, like me, who loved the genre. After a lifetime of being ragged on for my reading tastes, I was in heaven.
That first visit lead me to other author sites and eventually here, to the lovely ladies at The Book Binge. Even though I don’t read many of the same books as are reviewed here, I still greatly enjoy reading the reviews. They’re all very witty and funny. In turn, this site led me to many others, including TGTBTU, SmartBitches, and Dear Author, which has quickly become one of my favorites.
Thanks ladies, for sponsoring a wonderful site for those of us who love the romance genre!
My first romance novel, I think, was The Pride of Hannah Wade. I have always loved reading, but my time was limited until I retired 2 years ago. Now I read one book after another.
I got started reading blogs by looking up author websites after reading books I especially enjoyed. Links on those sites led me to other sites and then to others. Now, I visit favorite blogs every day. This one is a particularly good site!
Thanks for always being interesting and entertaining!
The first romance novel that I remember reading was one by Johanna Lindsay. I’m hazy on the particular title, but I know it was a Mallory novel and I fell in love with her books after reading it.
I’m a reader who works at a public library. I know, perfect place right! LOL
I read mostly paranormals and erotica but I will read anything good. I can’t sit still for long without picking up something to read. I just wish there were more hours in the day.
I have met so many wonderful people online, both authors and readers and I’ve gotta say that romance authors and readers are the absolute best of the bunch. Doesn’t everyone agree?
Deidre
I cannot remember the first book I read that I would consider a real romance, but I was young…maybe 10? I’ve always loved romance and most of it probably has to do with the fact that I’m chronically single. 😀
And as for how I got into the romance community? I blame most of it on eharlequin’s site. Found them by accident about 3 or so years ago and that was that. Now I’m a chronic blogger and part of quite a few blogging things. It’s a blast. 🙂
Let’s see, I started reading romance about 2 years ago thanks to a friend of mine. I would look up the authors online to see what books they had out which would lead to other authors. It has only been recently that I started reading blogs and started my own. I really got into blogs after joining the Wicked Writers Yahoo Group.
Hrrm, I’ve been reading romance for far longer than I’ve been on line, but I fell in love with on-line forums… well, 11 years ago, when I was planning my wedding, but even before that in the 80s, there was a forum/bulletin board for one of my college classes that I really enjoyed. It only lasted a semester though, and I sort of forgot about it until I got on aol in ’96.
No idea what my first romance was — I started sometime in the 70’s when I was in jr. high. Lost to the mists of time.
Letters from Nam was the last Danielle Steele I read, though, LOL.
Lisabea (Nose in a Book) popped my blog cherry. 😀 I found Mary M through the Amazon forums and she joined my Yahoo group. Then when she started posting links to Lisabea’s Manlove Monday posts, I started visiting LB’s blog, which led me to visit other blogs, which inspired me to start my own. And here I am. 🙂 So you can blame Lisabea and Mary M for my blog.
(No need to enter me into the contest though. I just answered for fun.)
I’ve been reading romance for over three decades (what? I started young 😀 ) However, I only discovered romance blogland a few years ago. First I discovered Suzanne Brockmann’s scrolling board back in… 2001? and a few years later I found ADWOFF (Nora Robert’s fan-run board) and then Elizabeth Lowell’s board and a little after that I found the SmartBitches. From there it exploded (like bunnies!) now I have close to 70 blogs in my bookmarks that I visit daily (even if I don’t comment in everyone).
And of course, earlier this year Karen invited me to post regularly on her blog so… hey, it’s also history! 😛
Yay, I can post a comment while at work. 🙂
Anyhow…I am a voracious reader, going through about one book a day. I was first introduced to romance reading after an impulse buy of The Bride by Julie Garwood while waiting to pick up prescriptions at a CVS/Pharmacy. From thereon I met a friend who introduced me to the early works of other great authors such as Catherine Coulter, Jude Deveraux, Linda Howard, Johanna Lindsey, Andrea Kane, Judith McNaught, Diana Palmer, and Nora Roberts. After having glommed almost all of the impressive backlist of the authors mentioned above – save for those that were out of print – I scoured the authors’ websites relentlessly for any updates of their upcoming works. As I was not keen on trying out new authors without others’ recommendations, I impatiently awaited new releases from my favorite authors. It came to a point that I ran out of reading material and there was only so much re-reading I could do in short time span. At the time, I hadn’t realized that there were romance forums or blogs available so it was Amazon that I turned to for readers’ book reviews and recommendations. My eyes finally opened two years ago when I was looking for a book review on a book that tagged my interest and there wasn’t one available on Amazon. I googled the book instead and Dear Author website came up. Since then, I have come to rely on Dear Author, The Book-Binge, The Book Smugglers, TGTBTU, and Stacey’s Place (just to name a few!) for book reviews and recommendations. I don’t run out of reading material for long now because there’s always some new book or author that I’m introduced to. Best of all, I don’t feel so alone in my reading. My family and friends used to make fun of me for reading so much – and romance books, at that — but I can tell them now that I’m not alone in my reading. I love it that I can actually discuss books I read with others and express my opinion without being criticized.
I don’t remember the first romance I ever read–I know I started probably in junior high with Sweet Valley High and Silhouette First Love and the like. A geometry classmate in high school introduced me to grown-up romances, and I’ve been reading it ever since! As for blogging, I started following a couple a year or two ago, and have been delightedly trailing authors and fellow book-lovers around the internet ever since. It can be a big time eater, but it’s such a fun way to be part of a community of fellow readers!
I started off reading Mills and Boon. *sigh* Lynne Graham and Susan Napier were my favourites, actually I still read them.
I’m mostly a lurker but pop up now and then for contests. (Am I a bad person??) And maybe if the topic is interesting.
I’ve been reading romances again back when my youngest was going to library programs and I’d pick up Harlequin or Silhouette Romances that they had.
I started a blogging about books this year when I participated in the eHarlequin Challenge and I wanted to make sure I didn’t lose the reviews and copied my reviews to my blog.
I love that I can subscribe to blogs on google and start or end my day skimming and/or reading way too many blogs. (over 90% are romance blogs)
I’ve been reading forever it seems like, come from a family of readers, though I’m the only one into historicals and paranormals, so it’s great to chat a bit about them with online friends.
My aunt gave me Danielle Steel (no longer read either), then Rosemary Rogers but what turned me onto romances was a friend I worked with who said try The Wolf and the Dove by Kathleen Woodiwiss – been a fan of historical romances ever since.
When the internet first came to be, I quickly found all the author and book sites around for info on upcoming releases, backlists, etc. then got into yahoo groups reading ebooks. I’d get to blogs occasionally, usually Sybil’s (the Good, Bad and Unread) meeting her on a reader group I found. Had plenty of emails with all those groups and didn’t want more coming, so hard to keep track and I didn’t get to many. Then another girl on the reader group mentioned Google Reader where I could follow blogs easily, so now I’ve been following more and more of them. So I guess you could say Sybil got me into blogging mentioning at the group some of her blog posts and to come on over to her pond.
I’ve been reading romance since high school. My first romance was “The Bride” by Julie Garwood. I started visiting and commenting on blogs about two years. One of the first blogs I followed was Writeminded.
heykim from cali
read from firends then started to a trip to canda and got a book from my aunt cause was bored and got hooked on the hot love story and culd not stop this was in 2001
kh
I began my romance reading career when I was 13 or 14, I believe it was a Victoria Holt book that caught, or maybe even a Danielle Steel..20 years later I have read almost all of teh ones that have been around that long, Nora (own all of her books), Johanna Lindsey, Julie Garwood, well you get the idea.
I began blogging about my books over this past summer, I needed a place to log what I had read and what I thought of the books…I then began talking to others that had book blogs through forums like shelfari and goodreads, and it went from there…
Now I as soon as I finish a book I am blogging about and looking o see what others have thought of it. I have also found a TON of NEW authors through the various blogs that I read including this one..
About a year ago I was flirting with an extended dark mood and decided to throw over the nonfiction reading that I suspected reinforced my increasingly morose tendencies. A flyer on an old book by Catherine Coulter resulted in a glom of her Sherbrooke series and a desperate search for more of the like – books with guaranteed HEAs that would get me out of my own head and leave me with a smile.
I started with literature-map.com to find more authors and soon found myself on The Book Binge, SBTB, Dear Author, Rip My Bodice and now Alpha Heroes and Racy Romance Reviews, all the while formulating an extended wishlist, stacking up a towering TBR pile and generally informing myself about the genre and having a grand old time (is this where I confess to having three work-in-progress books myself?). I don’t blog (yet) but I’m feeling like it’s out there somewhere. A girl needs somewhere to record her obsessions, right? Everyone’s been enormously welcoming and I couldn’t be happier to have busted my mental bleakness and landed in such a great community. What a blessing!
I have been a bookworm forever but I started reading romance about 6 years ago after I had my first child and stayed home with her. About a year after that I started playing online and ended up at the RT message boards. That led me to a few people’s blogs (Stacy~ in particular) and my hubby suggested that I start my own blog. I was reluctant but then decided that it was a good way to track my books because i found myself check out books I had already read. So I started my own blog about 3 years ago and found myself hanging around others blogs more often and meeting a lot of new people.