Congrats to Carla A, who won her choice of A Guitarist in the Fae Queen’s Court (Fae Connections #1) by Amber Kell or the Unconventional At Best anthology!

Congrats to Andrea, who won Dead Shot by JL Merrow! Dead Shot will be released August 26 by JMS Books.

Over the next five to six weeks, I’m going to be buried in a big work project, so I won’t be commenting on blog posts as much as I usually do. My never-very-under-control inbox is now completely out-of-control. And we’ll just see how well linkity goes… 🙂

Contests

• Kaje Harper’s giving away winner’s choice from her backlist at midnight CDT August 24, August 25, and August 26.

• Charlie Cochet’s giving away an ebook copy of The Auspicious Troubles of Chance. Closes midnight EDT, August 26.

• K-Lee Klein is giving away winner’s choice of an ebook copy of Countdown to Daddies or Lucius’ Bite (Family of Misfits #1). Not sure when this one ends.

• Win an ebook from RJ Scott’s backlist. Closes August 27, midday GMT.

• Those are just a couple of the contests from the Rainbow Review Blog Hop – go check out the full list of participating blogs (with contests)!

• Cole’s giving away an the Fraternal Devotion anthology from Storm Moon Press. Closes midnight CDT, August 29.

Bookity

• New releases and more: Literary Escapism (UF/PNR) and Fiction Vixen (romance etc).

• Book and publishing news from Dear Author. And reading, writing, and writer links from Vacuous Minx.

• Is reading one of the keys to being a great leader?

• The lazy way to catalog your books: take a picture of your bookshelf and add it to Evernote, where OCR will make it searchable.

• Becky Black on “writers, social networking sites and entitlement.”

• Kaetrin wonders whether Eve Dallas and Roarke are archetypes.

• Keira Andrews on the importance of copy editing, inspired by this Dear Author post and the ensuing comments.

• Kassa ponders rereading as she packs up books in preparation for a move.

• “Are paper books sacrosanct?“

• “Books cannot be killed by fire…“

• A garage door that looks like bookshelves.

• How Hollywood converts novels to movies.

• “50 Shades of Cover Art“

• 50 Shades of Lorem Ipsum… (NSFW)

• 24 “library-centric” web sites.

• The dangers of stray books.

• I’ve done this more than once…

• Book quotes become illustrations. (Thanks, Juni!)

• Bookstore kittens.

Ebookity

• “That $4 cup of coffee is worth the cost – your eBook, not so much“.

• “Why aren’t publishers pushing ebooks?“

• “On ebooks, the personal library and the value of space.”

• How to simulate eInk on your smartphone or tablet.

Think, Learn, Do, Make

• Interesting points and plenty to think about in this article about why dry food isn’t a good thing for cats and dogs. (Thanks, Jeanne!)

• “How do cats purr?“

• What causes ice cream headaches/brain freeze?

• Americans throw out about 40% of our food.

• Make your own cotton candy machine for cheap.

• “8 great moments in the history of editing.”

• More possible new evidence of Amelia Earhart’s aircraft.

• Infographic comparing the internet in 2002 to now.

• Dangerous and/or annoying things people do with their smartphones and how to quit doing those things.

• NASA discovers a dinosaur footprint.

• Two posts on what might happen if everyone on earth jumped at the same time.

Cookity

• Spiced sweet potato ice cream. (via The Kitchn)

• Basil ice cream.

• 10 decadent chocolate cakes.

• Snickerdoodle blondies. (via Bron’s Pinterest)

• Blueberry-pecan loaf cake. (via The Kitchn)

• Autumn chopped salad. (via Bron’s Pinterest)

• 10 bacon-spiked salads.

• African beef and peanut stew.

• African peanut soup. (via The Kitchn)

• Chicken tagine with apricots, almonds, and chickpeas.

• Linguine con Vongole.

• Loaded baked potato dip with homemade chips.

• 10 lighter breakfasts for late summer.

• 15 kale recipes.

• 15 snacks to take in your lunch.

Gluten-Free

• Gluten-free vegan chocolate zucchini bread.

• Gluten-free zucchini lime scones.

• Gluten-free, dairy-free double chocolate cocoa brownies with marshmallow polka dots.

Drinkity

• Thai basil-watermelon margaritas. (via The Kitchn)

• Guava-orange margaritas. (via The Kitchn)

• Vinho verde and gin spin.

• 10 lemonade recipes.

Crafty

• Make an oilcloth iPad cover. (via CRAFT)

Cool

• Giant snail attacks hapless woman on park bench! Or… does it? (Thanks, Jeanne!)

• Can you spare 80 seconds to watch nine billion years of the universe’s existence?

• Handmade Doctor Who quiet book.

• Star Wars plushies.

• Tea. Earl Grey. Hot. (via The Mary Sue)

• LEGO Spiderman.

• Art-inspired cakes.

• Photorealistic ballpoint pen drawings. (Thanks, Jase!)

• Sisters recreate their childhood vacation photos.

Cool or Wha…?

• Stan Lee centerfold photo. (via The Mary Sue) (Surprisingly SFW.)

• Lovecraft art meme.

• Geeky corsets made from kids bedsheets.

• You could try living on Mars time to liven up your next staycation…

• IKEA plans to build its own district in Hamburg, Germany.

• Lightning bolt power strip.

• Illegal rainbow street art in New Mexico.

Wha…?

• If you have AT&T, do not do this while roaming, unless you have a spare $35 million!

• Donkey wifi.

• Moth-shaped smoke detector.

• Mobile phone throwing world championships.

• A daycare was running a toddler fight club…

LOL

• Fun parody video in which shirtless gay men lampoon Romney. (Thanks, Seanna Lea!) (Hmm. Probably a bit NSFW.)

• NASA parody video.

• xkcd on star ratings. (Don’t forget to hover!)

• The comma sutra! (via Kate)

• How to fold fitted sheets.

• Chopsticks can be challenging.

• A wise choice…

• I knew it!

• Happiness is simple.

• Send in the rescue squad!

• Why cats are better than dogs. (Thanks, Majken!)

• Cat math… and it doesn’t even take that many cats.

• Dog mermaids.

Teh Cute

• How did you celebrate Black Cat Appreciation Day on August 17?

• Lioness and baby! Tiger and… tree! Black jaguar! Baby cheetahs! Tiger and baby! Lion and baby! Not Mayhem! Cheetah and baby! Baby snow leopard! Lioness and baby! Lion and baby! Black leopard! Black jaguar! Tigers! Tiger! Cat and kitten! Black kitten! Baby snow leopard! Baby panda! Red panda! Snow leopards! Baby cheetah cam! Clever otter! Baby snow leopard! Kitten! Baby sand cats! Baby elephant and birds! Cat and kittens! Snow leopard and babies! Bun! Cat! Kitten! Kitten! Baby snow leopards! Polar bear and babies!

Reading Update
Point of No Return by NR Walker. ebook. Very good m/m romantic suspense about a closeted cop who’s attracted to the new boxing coach at the gym, who turns out to be equally closeted. How handy! 🙂 As they become closer, will they be able to survive the dangers involved in a cop’s job? I’ll definitely look for more from this author in the future.
No News Is Good News (Florida #3.5) by KA Mitchell. free ebook short. Good kinky short m/m encounter between Aaron and Joey from Collision Course that ends right as But My Boyfriend Is starts.
But My Boyfriend Is (Florida #4) by KA Mitchell. ebook. Very good m/m romance about a deeply closeted guy with a lot of guilt about his straight identical twin being gay bashed. Can he keep lying to himself about the attraction he feels to the guy who stepped into the fray and saved his twin’s life? This started out a bit rough for me, as I wasn’t feeling much sympathy for the closeted twin until about halfway through the book. Anyone want to bet that the next book’s about Tate? 😉 Later: The more I think about it, the more I feel like I got cheated out of a couple of chapters that should’ve been between the last two chapters, or the last chapter and the “I’m really an epilogue, but I’m called the final chapter” chapter… 🙁
Bad Boyfriend (Bad in Baltimore #2) by KA Mitchell. ebook. reread. I needed a reminder of how good KA Mitchell can be… Excellent kinky m/m romance about a teacher who’s dumped by his closeted boyfriend of ten years, then picks up a hot younger guy at a bar to take along to the baptism of his ex’s baby. Things just sort of spiral from there. 🙂
Drunk Text by seventhswan. free online. Very good m/m romance about a straight college student who wakes up hungover one morning covered in finger paint with a text on his phone that suggests he had sex with a guy the night before… Reread. I enjoyed this just as much as the first time I read it in February.
The Square Peg by Jane Davitt & Alexa Snow. ebook. Good kinky m/m romance (with more potential than was realized) about an accountant who inherits a share in a bar from his estranged father and gets off to a rough start with the other owner.
Finding Forever (Sutter’s Bay #4) by Shawn Lane. ebook. Sweet m/m romance about Galaxy’s younger brother Leo, who meets a closeted guy with an abusive, homophobic father. Unfortunately, this felt rushed and incomplete, or maybe not fully developed. The amount of story definitely needed more pages.
Theory of Attraction by Cleon Lee. ebook. arc. Sweet m/m romance about a hunky teaching assistant who becomes fascinated with one of the other more geeky teaching assistants. Alas, the object of his interest rebuffs him and flees at every opportunity. Unfortunately, the choppy style (not enough sentence opening variety) started to wear on me after a while, but that’s something that may improve with more writing experience.
Little Squirrels Can Climb Tall Trees by Michael Murphy. ebook. Extremely uneven but ultimately meh m/m romance set in NYC about a short and excessively exuberant guy who woos a much taller and rather naive doctor from Oklahoma. The biggest problems I had with the book were the ludicrous number of exclamation points and the tendency to go into excessive detail during scenes that didn’t seem to belong in the book, then skim quickly over things that merited more detail.
Deadly Secrets (Dark Kings of Eternity #1) by Savannah Hartley. ebook. The saddest thing about this book is that there’s the hint of an interesting story buried deep, but even though this ended on a cliffhanger, I’m not inspired to read more.

“Your training is coming along well, young Mayhem.” -Chaos