Robin Kaye | Stumbling Over Chaos

Author Nancy Herkness is giving away a K2TOG car magnet. Send her an email before July 20 for your chance to win.

If you’d like to find out more about that mysterious Canadian blogger, SciFiGuy, and have a chance to win a copy of Shadowfae by Erica Hayes, head on over to Marta Acosta’s Vampire Wire blog before the evening of July 18.

Live in or near the Twin Cities and you’d like to improve yourÂ knitting project and yarn photos? Author and photographer Gale Zucker (Shear Spirit) will be holding two 2.5 hour workshops at the Yarnery the evenings of July 23 and July 24. I’m jealous of whoever attends this, since I’m on call that week and the odds of getting called increase exponentially based on what you have planned and how excited you are by it.

This month’s free ebooks at the Suvudu Free Library are Karen Marie Moning’s Darkfever (highly recommended!) and Stephen Baxter’s Manifold: Time.

Orbit’s looking for the worst scifi/fantasy book title you can come up with so that they can put together “the most awesomely bad SFF cover in the world.” Even if you can’t come up with a title, it’s worth reading the comments for the titles that have been suggested.

It’ll be Young Adult Appreciation Month from July 19 – August 15 over at Book Smugglers. Not only will they have events throughout the month, they’re also encouraging bloggers to participate by writing a review of a young adult novel, posting it on August 15, and sending the review url to the Book Smugglers as soon as your post goes live that day. They’ll update their links to the reviews throughout the day.

Hee hee – a Jane Austen-related comic. And check out the great Evolution of a Hero wallpaper from Smart Bitches!

My library system has a clever “How much is the library saving you?” form that I recommend trying. If I checked out 30 books (at $15 each, which is a good balance between mass market pbs and hardcovers) and one music cd each month, that’s $460 saved. Now, I wouldn’t actually spend that much on books if I didn’t have access to a library – at the very least, I’d hit the excellent used book and cd stores in the Twin Cities much, much more than I do now.

Do scholarly writers empower the romance genre?

Reading Update
In the Midnight Hour and In Twilight’s Shadow (Light Warriors, Books 1-2) by Patti O’Shea. Paranormal romance set in Minneapolis, as written by a Minnesota author. And even better – the books are great! 🙂 They’re about a race of magic users called the Ginneal, who live side-by-side with humans, unnoticed. Not a vampire to be found.
Branded by Fire (Psy-Changelings, Book 6) by Nalini Singh. Another excellent paranormal from Singh, which answers the question about whether cats and dogs can get along…
Midnight’s Master by Cynthia Eden. Can a human anchorwoman and a very naughty level ten demon find true love together? This latest book in Eden’s Midnight series is a solid read.
Deadly Night (apologies for linking to the hardcover – the mass market pb had a Debbie Macomber book image for some odd reason), Deadly Harvest, and Deadly Gift (Flynn Brothers Trilogy) by Heather Graham. Decent thrillers featuring ghosts, psychics, banshees, and mysterious evil. The first is set in New Orleans, the second in Salem, Massachusetts, and the third in Ireland and Newport, Rhode Island. If you’re looking for something to read that isn’t as, um, graphic as many romances have become, I’d definitely recommend these.
Romeo, Romeo (Domestic Gods, Book 1) by Robin Kaye. Very good contemporary romance. This has CursingMama written all over it. 🙂
All of Me by Lori Wilde. Decent contemporary romance that’s apparently the last book in a set of related books about four friends in Houston and a magical wedding veil.
Catch a Mate by Gena Showalter. Ok contemporary romance about a service that people can hire to test whether their significant others will give in to the temptation to cheat. Not one of Showalter’s best.
Sea Witch, Sea Fever, and Sea Lord (Children of the Sea, Books 1-3) by Virginia Kantra. Selkies and demons and mer-princes, oh my! Very good paranormal romances (with no vampires at all), much of it set on the coast of Maine, the rest set off the coast of Scotland.

“Beware! I will suck your blood and steal all your sparkly furry pink tiaras as you sleep! Bwa-ha-ha!!!” -Mayhem

Congrats to the winners of my Contest of BABEL – Margy, Cindy, Chris S, Cristina N, and Kimmy L! Since I can’t resist accumulating cheap and good books from the library withdrawn store and the thrift store, I’ll definitely do this again sometime.

If you really wanted to win Larissa Ione’s third Demonica book, Passion Unleashed, in the Contest of BABEL, head over to Morbid Romantic’s blog – she’s giving away five copies! Leave a comment by 11:59 pm EDT, July 5, for your chance to win.

Largehearted Boy’s having a Largehearted Housecleaning and is giving away a 50 book + 50 cd prize package! Leave a comment by midnight CDT, June 26, for your chance to win (and cause your mail carrier or UPS driver to hate you forever).

Quite the kerfluffle over Amazon’s mysterious DRM book download limits for Kindles. And an interesting take on Amazon and ebook DRM, which points out that Amazon’s mp3 store is DRM-free and focused on working for any device, but not so with ebooks…

Extremely link-filled and very informative article about ebookstores, readers, and more at the Know Something Project.

Customize your Sony Reader!

Dear Author has a nice article about the components (correctness, stlye, taste) that shape a reading experience.

The July 7 Berekley Crime mystery releases are posted at Darque Reviews.

BookSeer is pretty cool – you fill in the author and title of a book you just finished reading and it suggests other titles you might like.

Twenty signs that you might be reading too much romance. This was my personal favorite: “You clip the covers off your romances and make a mantitty wallpaper collage.”

Reading Update
Even Demons Get the Blues by Maree Anderson. ebook. This was a well-written and steamy novella. More detail at Fang-tastic Books.
Sins and Shadows: A Shadows Inquiries Novel by Lyn Benedict. Very powerful urban fantasy about a PI dealing in the supernatural. No vampires, CarrieK! 🙂 Plenty of gods (Greek, Christian), witches, and even an ancient being of riddles… My only real complaint was that it dragged a bit near the end. Well, that and that I sort of wished it was a paranormal romance, so I could get the HEA I wanted for the ending.
Pandora’s Box by Natalie Stenzel. Totally reading these out of order – this is the first book in Stenzel’s series about the puca brothers and associates. I’m sure I would’ve picked this up sooner if the cover was as, um, enticing
as those of the sequels!
What Happens in Vegas… After Dark by Jodi Lynn Copeland, Lauren Dane, Kit Tunstall, and Anya Bast. Excellent and scorching hot collection about the paranormal side of Las Vegas. *fans self* Oh, you’ll have to click through to see the cover – bit too scorching! Review at Fang-tastic Books.
The Highwayman (Silhouette Nocturne: Wicked Games) by Michele Hauf. This title might sound familiar. 😉
Heart of the Dragon, Jewel of Atlantis, and The Nymph King (Atlantis, Books 1-3) by Gena Showalter. The Greek gods created Atlantis to house their mistakes: vampires, demons, gorgons, nymphs, harpies, humans who can turn into dragons, and more. Although the two entrances to Atlantis are protected by veils of mist, humans manage to find the mythical land and Atlanteans occasionally make brief forays into our world. This is another good series from Gena Showalter. Of the first three books, The Nymph King was definitely my least favorite (I thought it was a bit weak), although I can’t fault the cover! 😉 I also read The Amazon’s Curse, which is an ebook novella that takes place after the fourth book, which I haven’t read yet. Whoops. Hey, it was on my ebook reader and I’d forgotten The Nymph King at home. Be warned that The Amazon’s Curse does contain spoilers for the fourth book.
Just One of the Guys by Kristan Higgins. Nicely done contemporary romance. I cried a bit. In fact, my only real issue with the book (and I’m beginning to suspect this is just part of the author’s formula) is the main character’s obsession with her ticking biological clock. Also, please note that the dog on the cover in no way resembles the dog in the book, other than that they’re both dogs.
Too Hot To Handle by Robin Kaye. Another nicely done contemporary romance, featuring a male lead who’s a bit less alpha arrogant than in many romances.