Happy Monday!
It IS a happy Monday even if I had to come back to work today after some time off last week.
On Wednesday RWA had their Literacy Signing and it was HUGE. Seriously. There were so many authors there and the ballroom was massive. I loved that the authors were given so much space to work but man, trekking that thing was exhausting. lol I got to meet and talk to a lot of great authors and get pictures with some of them. I had a handy sheet with all the authors and the table layouts and I STILL managed to miss some of the authors I wanted to talk to. Pooh. But here are some pics I got:
 |
||
| LB Gregg – Always beautiful with a wonderful smile on her face! |
 |
| HelenKay Dimon – Such a cutie |
 |
| Holly, Jodi Thomas and moi. Jodi is so very sweet and I loved listening to her accent. |
 |
| Kira Brady – Haven’t seen her in years (since SF RWA). Love the hair! |
 |
| Julie Anne Long – OMG total fan girl moment. I tried not to make a complete fool of myself but it wasn’t easy. |
 |
| Sabrina Jeffries – Sweet and funny – she was cracking me up |
 |
| Jessica Scott – So good to finally meet her after emailing back and forth. She’s adorable. |
 |
| Elizabeth Hoyt – Another total fan girl gush over Elizabeth. Yes, it was embarrassing. |
 |
| Sarah MacLean – We saw her right after she had her own meltdown over meeting Linda Howard. 🙂 |
On Friday I drove back down to RWA (after taking Thursday to recover) and the So Cal Bloggers had lunch with Thea Harrison and her agent, Amy Boggs. We had a great time talking about Thea’s books, paranormal reads in general, books that we were looking forward to releasing and just lots of great stuff. Julie James popped by near the end and we all managed to get a picture together.
 |
| Renee, Wendy, Holly, Rosie, LB Gregg, Me, Julie James, Rowena & Thea Harrison |
I loved just hanging with my buds. I love talking books and family and just “being.” That’s almost the best part of these things.
 |
| Wendy & LB Gregg |
 |
| Rosie and her drink (ok, it was only a Pellegrino) |
Rowena, Holly and I had lunch with Julie James on Saturday and then dinner with Carina editor Mallory Braus and Vivian Arend. OMG talk about a roaring good time. I don’t think I’ve laughed that hard in a darn long time. Vivian kept Rowena and I in stitches, lemme tell ya.
 |
| Me, Holly, Mallory Braus, Vivian Arend & Rowena |
I of course got to see all of my wonderful blogging friends, Renee, Rowena, Holly, Rosie, Wendy and honorary So Cal blogger, Lisabea aka LB Gregg and I met new ones as well. Overall it was a really fun time and I’m so glad I went. Next year I think I’ll have to save my money and register for the conference, I think it will be worth it.
 |
| Wendy, Rosie and LB dressed to kill for the RITA’s. |
While everyone was at the RITA’s, Holly Rowena and I went back up to our room where Rosie texted us to the minute info on the RITA winners (she’s such a giver, that Rosie). Somehow Holly and Wena got on a conversation about multiple partners and they started telling me about Coulter’s Woman by Maya Banks and how the men were all brothers. Now, the girls ask me, when said brothers are all doing their woman at the same time, wouldn’t one brother be tea-bagging another? And then went on to describe positioning, etc. I played dumb and they decided to reenact the scene for me, how gracious of them. Wena’s the woman, Holly is 1 brother, the pillow is another and well, the invisible one is behind Wena. Do you see the pillow tea-bagging? I gotta hand it to them, they did a fine job showing instead of telling. lolol
 |
| Wena and Holly and their teabaggin scene. |
Because of all this wonderful fun I had I didn’t get much reading done but it was all good.
I started the week with Return of the Viscount by Gayle Callen. This was the story of a woman who marries an old friend of her father’s by proxy as she’s in England and he’s in India. She never thinks to see him and frankly thinks he’ll be dead soon as he’s old. Yeah, he’s not old and he shows up on her doorstep. You can read my full review here but it was a really good story. 4 out of 5
Next was Now or Never by Michele Bardsley. This is the second book in the Wizards of Nevermore series and while it was a great paranormal it had basically no romance to speak of. Yes the hero and heroine were drawn to each other and it was made to read at the end like they would be together but really, no romance. Bummer. The story of the House of Ravens trying to take over the world was really good though and that saved the book. I read this for Book Binge. 3.5 out of 5
The Short and Fascinating Tale of Angelina Whitcombe by Sabrina Darby was a short historical novella having to do with an actress and courtesan who is hired by a man’s mother to bring him out of his war induced shell. I’ll post my review for this one tomorrow.
Last for the week was Men of Smithfield: Mark & Tony by LB Gregg (previously released as Gobsmacked). Yes, the Men of Smithfield are being re-released by Carina Press and this first book comes out next Monday. I’ll post my review of this one this week.
Well that’s it for the week. I KNOW not a lot of books but it’s hard to read when you’re having so much fun! 🙂
My Book Binge reviews that posted this week:
Happy Reading!
Haha, we had so much fun laughing, fangirling over different authors and oohing over the different beautiful dresses.
I miss all of your faces already! Thanks for sharing the pics, I'm totally stealing some of them.
And I found my copy of Double Standards and the heroine pisses me off way more than the hero does but I will admit that the hero was a total jerk too. Still, I'm loving this re-read.
It looks like you had a BLAST! *snickersnort* about that Coulters Woman reenactment…
Thank you so much for all the photos – looks like a blast! And you are so photogenic!
I loved Gobsmacked!
So great to see everybody last week! And I can't believe you got reading done. I never seem to get reading done during RWA week…..
Wena – You've made a breakthrough with Double Standards! The fact that you can see he's a jerk is awesome! lol
We did have a great time. It was wonderful to see you this weekend!
Chris – That reenactment had me in stitches!
Orannia – It WAS a blast! And thank you for the compliment – I always hate getting my pic taken. 🙂
Gobsmacked was great – Mark and Tony is just as good!
Wendy – Well, I only managed to get Mark and Tony read at RWA and that was while you all were in your seminars. lol
It was so good to see you. We'll definitely have to get together again soon!
Great week, loved the pictures!
Thank you for the awesome pictures. Esp the er…demonstration. Lol. It almost makes me feel I was right there with you….Almost. 😉
Gobsmacked was great – Mark and Tony is just as good!
Sorry, but Mark & Tony is a straight re-release of Gobsmacked, yes? Just checking 🙂
Leslie – Thanks!
Little Alys – Was the demonstration not wonderful? They had me laughing so hard I could hardly take the picture. lol
Orannia – (this is for the readers of the comments since I already emailed you)
The book is the same story but reedited and tighter, imho. 🙂
Awesome!! So glad you had so much fun at RWA! I'm so sad to have missed it this year, sigh. And LOL, that's a lot of books in my book for such a busy week!
Nath – We did have SO MUCH FUN! I loved being there and just talking BOOKS. Loved it.