What I Read Last Week & a NOLA update

Posted October 18, 2011 by Tracy in Reviews | 9 Comments

Home sweet home…and all in one piece!

I got back from GayRomLit last night…well really early this morning and I gotta tell ya – I had so much damned fun! I loved meeting all the readers, bloggers and of course authors that I met over the 4 days and it’s a time I’ll remember forever. I’m going to do a whole NOLA/GayRomLit wrap up over at Janna’s blog so I’ll let you know when that comes around and post the link. (I’ll post more pictures later as I want to get everyone’s approval to show their mugs on here first)

After our extremely fun time at Lafitte in Exile on Thursday night we got to do beignets & café au lait, author readings and a cruise around the French quarter before we ate lunch and then headed to the Creole Queen riverboat for an author signing on the water. I got to meet great authors that I had read and met some that I hadn’t but now want to. Yes, it’s true…my wish list has grown considerably. Lol

We had a pretzel party, a wine and cheese party, a hurricane party and of course the gay bar crawl. I did make myself known on Saturday night when I spilled my margarita down the back of Joyee Flynn’s pants. Yeah, talk about an embarrassing moment. Lol But we eventually made our way over to Lafitte’s again and spent the night drinking margarita’s, laughing and having fun. The bartender, Jimmy, was awesome and just adorable.

I gotta tell you that there was that time I went into the bathroom Saturday night and of course there’s no lock on the door (yeah, cuz they do shit it in there and it’s not shit. Lol) and had to pee. I did my business and was getting re-clothed when this woman pushed the door open. She, at first, was mortified that she’d walked in on me doing my pants up but then she just decided what the hell, came in and started peeing while I was still half nekkid. Oh. My. God. Really? I just had to laugh – and I did…for a very long time.

Belinda McBride, Clare London, Clare’s son David, Tam and moi

Squeee it’s Marie Sexton!, Clare London and Kate McMurray

I can’t possibly tell you every moment that was fun and funny because there were so many of them but trust me when I say I had a really, really, really great time.

Now – this post is about what I read last week…more or less. Lol Not much. Seriously, I ended up reading more than I thought I did but 2 of those books were on the way to and from my destinations via planes. It’s amazing what you can get read when you’re on a plane – and in an airport. I totally forgot about the TBR Challenge and yeah, didn’t do it. I’ll try to catch up for next month. (oh and no author links this week, sorry.  I’m just too damned tired and frankly – you can keep google working quite nicely while you look up the author.)

Anyway, I started the week with ZA Maxfield’s The Book of Daniel. Such a great story and just as wonderful as the first 3 in the series. Daniel was as such a crossroads in his life and he wanted to just make everything good in it by lying to people but he suddenly couldn’t lie to save his soul. Then there was Cam who Daniel really loved but Daniel and Cam had a hard row to hoe. They eventually managed to work it all out and it was great. 4 out of 5

I was lucky enough to have my GRL author lunch with ZAM & William Cooper, among others.  Here we are after we all stuffed ourselves with great food.

Me, Kayla Jameth, Shae Connor, ZAM, William Cooper & K-Lee Klein

After that it was Falke’s Captive by Anna Leigh Keaton and Madison Layle. This was the second story in the Puma Nights series. The second half of the quadruplets, Reidar and Kelan fall for a woman who is town to do genetic testing. What they don’t know is that she’s come to do it on animals – namely puma’s. Oops. Kelan gets captured and his blood taken. The family scrambles to get the blood back before people find out about the family and shifters and Kelan and Reidar work to not fall in love with the beautiful woman. This was a good second installment of the series. I liked this one only slightly less than book 1 as I thought it was a bit romance light – more of a fated mate thing – but it worked. I’ll post my review soon. 4 out of 5

After that it was a short called Surprises: Romeo Club by Brita Adams. The story was about a man who goes in to fill out an application for a dating service and gets a bit more than he was expecting. (m/m) 3 out of 5

Last on the list was Sage Creek by Jill Gregory. This was about a woman heading home to her small town in Montana after she’s betrayed by her husband. She finds that she still has a crush on her best friends’ brother and lo and behold he has a crush on her too! There’s a lot going on in the book with their romance, her mom’s romance, her opening a bakery, the hero’s daughter and his ex-wife and a crazed stalker. While I liked the book as a whole sometimes it was a bit much to take. 3.25 out of 5

And that is it. I think I read about 15 pages while I was in NOLA and then I fell asleep. Lol Maybe I’ll catch up this week but yeah…probably not. Lol

My Book Binge reviews that posted last week:
Holly Told Me To Read it! Honor’s Splendour by Julie Garwood


Happy Reading!!


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9 responses to “What I Read Last Week & a NOLA update

  1. You have some of the cutest pictures I swear. I never really saw you taking them either. That group shot of your author lunch is a very nice picture (as is the one of all of us.. nice).

    I read one book I think on the whole trip and kind of stalled on Book of Daniel (about halfway before I ditched it for Clear Water by Amy Lane, will probably go back to BoD eventually).

    Oh randomly… I saw you read the Julie Garwood. I love her. I think I've read everything she's ever done but her historicals are so much better than the contemporaries.

  2. Tam

    Except for the yaoi I read madly so I could give it to Clare (and ended up giving it to Jackie), I read nothing for about two weeks with all the traveling. I did get a good whack of 2nd Lord of the White Hell done yesterday on the plane.

    Great pics. I really must look at mine. LOL Too tired to get out the memory card.

  3. LOL, you read more than I thought you would considering you were at a convention 🙂 sounds like you had a lovely time 🙂 Glad for you, Tracy!!

    Hmmm, I was considering Sage Creek, but seems it's not really special. Guess I'm going to pass now.

  4. Kassa – It's all about the stealth…whether it's bitch or just pictures. lol
    I didn't take all that many pictures – that's why you never saw me taking any. It's sad how distracted I was. I had such an opportunity to get great drunk pictures and never took them!!!
    Except for that last book I read the others while I was at my sisters. I only read about 15 pages in NOLA and then crashed.
    I think I'd only read 1 Garwood and when Holly saw that she said I MUST read Honor's Splendour. Some folks left recs on the post so I'll have to check those out. If you have favs of hers you'll have to let me know which ones those are.

    Tam – Did Clare not want the Yaoi or was just willing to let you pass them on to Jackie? (who was great, btw).
    I have to look at my pics too. I just grabbed a couple from the sd card last night to post here. 🙂

    Nath – As I told Kassa – all those books were read while at my sisters at the beginning of the week. The last was read on the plane home! lol No time to read when I have all that talking to do in NOLA. lol
    Sage Creek was good but there was a lot going on. I'm sure she wanted to tell us about the town but it got to be a bit much. Also, the heroine was so focused on having a baby and it annoyed me a bit cuz it felt like nothing in life, no matter how happy she was, would be perfect until she was a mother. IDK I just didn't care for that part of it.

    KZ – Oh having you there would have been icing on the cake! We did talk about you so you were there in spirit. lol Hopefully next time we can work it out so that you can join us – I would love that. 🙂

  5. Tam

    When she says we talked about you KZ she means in a positive way, not bitchy. Honest. LOL

    Clare was just going to take it back for me and mail it to Jen since that would cost less. But Jackie and Stephani will read it now and mail it on, probably to Catherine in New Jersey. So I using Clare as my mule, a yaoi mule rather than a drug mule. LOL

  6. You did get some great pictures!! 🙂

    I didn't get much reading done at all, either. There was always just so much going on, it seemed.

  7. KZ – of course…what Tam said. Definitely spoke of you in a positive way. 🙂

    Tam -Yeah, I can't see Clare being your mule but if it works – hey, more power to ya. lol

    Patti – I didn't know that about the spilling of the drink=fun. I'll have to remember that the next time. lol Jimmy was awesome. I just wanted to take him home and hug him to death.

    Chris – It's amazing how little I got done but I figured it's not every day I get to spend with all those fun women…reading could wait. 🙂

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