come to the dark side

The Fall Book Tag

   Something about Rowell’s writing style feels like nothing I’ve read before, and I love it! I mean. This ending is iconic for a reason. The movie kind of captured it, but not . . . quite.  All of them are nonstop, brutal action, TBH.  I think I caught up on all of Tessa Dare’s backlist in two months, and then I couldn’t wait for this second book in the Girl Meets Duke series to come out.  All. The. Feels.…

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Top Ten Tuesday, Villain Edition

Want to join in on the fun? Go sign up at That Artsy Reader Girl and come blog hop with all of us bookworms. I have to admit, I love a good villain. The action seems more exciting, the stakes are higher, the plot is richer and the snark factor (in the best books) goes up by a factor of fifteen. All good things. This week’s list asked us to come up with our top ten, so here you go. Best Creepy…

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Books That Lived Up to Their Hype

Watching a book get smeared all over popular culture is a bit anxiety-inducing for me. When a book has legions of adoring fans, I want to trust them. I really do. They must like it for a reason, right? It’s popular and everyone seems to love it. But will I love it? Is it too hyped? Does it deserve all the praise? Wait, did yet another person just rate it five stars on Goodreads? Every bookworm knows this feeling. It’s anticipation, mixed…

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Top Ten Tuesday: Please Just Stop the Series

Slightly cheating for this week’s top ten, but I hope you’ll forgive me. Back in October I wrote a post for Books Rock My World that has a lot to do with the topic for this week. If you didn’t know I write for that site, now you do know. Unless you hated one of my articles, in which case haha, no, that’s totally another SE White. It’s a very common name. Don’t flame me. Anyway. Leaving a series unfinished is a guilt…

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Is a Book Con Worth It?

I recently attended my very first convention, the Romantic Times Convention in Reno, Nevada. As an introduction to a SUPER new scene, this was nice and gentle. I’ll do my best to give you the pros and cons and lead up to my answer to the question: was it worth it? Pros for going: Discount option available with the FANtastic day pass. The RT convention includes this wonderful option for a one day fan pass that was steeply discounted at 55$ (USD). I’m not…

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The Social Media Beast Requires Regular Feeding

In this day and age we authors have to put ourselves out there, hanging weightless in cyberspace with multiple tentacles dangling into the ether. We need a “platform”. We’ve got to have an “online presence”. It’s necessary to “network”. Because this day and age is “cruel”. No? Just me thinking that? Anyways. *nervous cough* There are websites, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, podcasts, all asking for online participation. There are writer’s associations, critique groups, pitch fests, conferences, panels, needing your physical…

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Frequently Used Words in Romance: Top Ten Tuesday Post

Yay for finding new gems in the blogging world! Thanks to signing up for new mailing lists I found out about the Top Ten Tuesday blog posts. They looked like so much fun, I couldn’t resist. A place to let my inner booknerd shine? A way to geek out over obscure bookish things? AND an excuse to make listicles about books? Yes, please. If you’re interested in joining in, the link and explanation of how it works is here on That Artsy…

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Learn to Write Well by . . . Watching Movies?

Wait, what? Did I seriously just tell you to sit down and waste time watching a form of media that has nothing to do with meeting your word count goals? . . . yes. With some caveats. I don’t mean “watch a movie every day” or “ignore your writing to watch your favorite film” or “binge that Netflix show ’cause some random writing advice on the Internet said to”. Don’t do that. Media responsibly, and etc. etc. No, what I…

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The Hammer of Ban*

*And no, “Ban” is not an up-cycled traditional French men’s name. I literally mean “ban” as in “refuse access” New self-hosted website, new world, brave new problems. So far I have been extremely lucky in the troll department *knocks on wood*. Mostly because my site is very small, possibly because the tiny niche of aspiring writer is a hard one to have a big old troll issue with? For whatever reason, I mostly got useful, legit comments on the old…

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Write All The Tropes

I spend a lot of time over at Books Rock My World bashing on tropes. And yes, they do deserve a bashing. Overused or done with a heavy hand, tropes smother and choke a story. Poking holes in them doesn’t mean that I dislike tropes, however! They are classic for a reason. Having that feeling of familiarity is comforting, and helps me invest with the characters as they go through their story. To me, tropes are both the foundation of…

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