Showing posts with label author photos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label author photos. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 06, 2012

Wahoo! Wednesday - combined with the Armchair BEA post of the day

For anyone new to my blog, Wahoo! Wednesday is just a day to count my blessings and talk about things that make me happy or good things that are happening in my life. It's a feature I came up with years ago, dropped for a while and have recently revived.

Let's start with the A-BEA business, though.

Today, we're supposed to talk about networking. When I read that, I went totally blank. And, then I read Alyce's post and realized I have, in fact, done some networking in a matter of speaking. Let's start with my interview of Simon Van Booy. I was writing for Estella's Revenge ezine when I read the Turtle Point Press version of Simon's wonderful book of short stories, The Secret Lives of People in Love. I was so blown away that I asked to interview him. And, then one thing led to another and I ended up meeting up with Simon in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Here's a reprint of my interview of Simon Van Booy in 2007.

While I was in town, I also met up with the fabulous Colleen Gleason, the author of a number of romance series books. At the time, I was really into her Victoria Gardella Vampire series. I can't seem to find my interview post, but here's a link to the photos I took of Colleen and Simon.

I don't do many interviews because I don't consider myself all that hot at coming up with insightful questions, but I've also chatted with and interviewed Patricia Wood, the author of the fabulous, Orange short-listed Lottery. I could have met up with Pat when I was in Hawaii but I neglected to tell her I was coming. Darn.

Last year, I finally met up with my first blogging buddy, the very awesome and totally perky Carrie of Care's Online Book Club. That's Carrie in Charleston, South Carolina, at right. She and a writer friend from my online writing group years stayed at a Bed & Breakfast and spent our days touring the town, riding boats, eating good food and chat-chat-chatting. It was absolutely wonderful -- actually, my first buddy trip, apart from writers' conferences.

In the fall, Carrie mentioned that Simon Van Booy was going to be speaking at the Boston Public Library and that led to another trip to hang out with Carrie, this time in Massachusetts. We drove in to Boston on a rainy day, had coffee with Simon and then attended his reading. That's Simon with Carrie, at left.

More recently, I managed to meet Alex George, author of A Good American. I already linked to my photo of the delightful Alex George at Lemuria Books, but here 'tis, in case you missed it.

Whew! Much more hanging out with bloggers and authors than I realized. I need to do more of that, definitely. Maybe a book festival in the future?

In other wahoo news:

We have placed an offer on a house! I am terrified but excited that we finally found something we're interested in. We won't hear back from the seller till tonight.

Book wahoos!

I'm reading slowly because we've been back and forth a lot (the house we're interested in is 30 miles away from our current home) but enjoying my reading. Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada is an amazing WWII novel. Hans Fallada is the pen name of a German who died in 1947 and the story is about the resistance in Germany. It's going to take me quite a while to finish it, since I'm not finding much reading time and it's over 600 pages long but it's definitely a fantastic read, which is a huge wahoo! I've had trouble finding books that really grab me, lately.

Wahooey read #2 just arrived in the mail: Forbidden by Syrie James & Ryan M. James. It's a nice, light paranormal YA that I won from Alyce. Loving it, so far!

The other books in my sidebar are languishing but they're both excellent and I hope to get back to them soon. I need more hours in my day!

Crazy cat wahoos:

When I saw Isabel squeezing herself under the dresser, I grabbed my camera. I had no idea what drew her there, but I always try to capture the cat antics. So, I got a shot of her working her way into this 3" high opening. She has feather bones and is quite thin. There's no way Fiona could possibly do this.

It turned out Isabel had located a jingle ball. She batted it around beneath the dresser for a time and then grabbed it in her teeth and brought it out to play with. So cute!!

What wahooey things are happening in your world?

©2012 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery and Babble or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Emailbookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

A hodge-podge of miscellaneous including Fiona Fursday, Alex George and books

This is going to be a wildly disparate bunch of subject matter, but some of you are used to the occasional wacko post. First things first: I got to attend Alex George's signing of A Good American at Lemuria Books in Jackson (aka, "The Big City"), last night. Alex is an excellent speaker and every bit as charming in person as I've found him to be in our Twitter exchanges. I had a great time chatting with him and listening to his reading and discussion about the book.

Kiddo is officially on Spring Break, so this will be my last post for about 10 days. I'm planning to totally walk away from the internet. We'll see if that works. So, it's Fiona Fursday instead of Friday. Here is Fi in front of the shelf I call Grandpa's Shelf (because my grandfather built it):

I shared this photo -- one of my recent favorites -- on Facebook but I don't recall posting it here. It's one worth leaving up for a while. Every time I look at it, I can't help but grin.

And, one flower pic for the road. The wisteria is blooming all over town and it is breathtaking! I managed to spend some time in my church parking lot, beside which there is quite a lot of it growing.

My gerbera daisies are as big as saucers and about 90% of the trees are either budded or in full leaf. I still haven't planted a thing and I keep saying, "Soon, soon," but this may be another one of those years that I'm just too busy with the book purging (which is going very well) and spring cleaning (also plugging right along) to bother with the potted plants. I guess we'll see. I'm very happy with the improvements I've made in our living space, lately.

I've received quite a few books, this past 2 weeks, and I bought more than I should have (including a finished copy of A Good American, of course!) but I'll stick to just those that have arrived in the mail:

Each of the following were accepted for review by request from the author -- something I rarely do, but two of the authors are on my "Any time you ask," list:
  • A Whisper of Rosemary by Colleen Gleason
  • Akhmed and the Atomic Matzo Balls by Gary Buslik - (who managed to seduce me into reading his book by offering to share a photo of his cat, haha)
  • Kitty Cornered by Bob Tarte
From Shelf Awareness:
  • Next to Love by Ellen Feldman
  • Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms by Lissa Evans
  • The Reconstructionist by Nick Arvin
And, a bunch of children's books from 2 publishers. I'm considering hosting a Children's Week for these, although I usually just mix children's in with everything else:
  • Pobble's Way by Van Booy and Edelson
  • I Always, Always Get My Way by Krasnesky and Parkins
  • I Need My Monster by Noll and McWilliam
  • Zaira and the Dolphins by Pavon and Coco
  • The Word Collector by Sonja Wimmer
  • Drops of Life by Tiitinen and Tiitinen
The latter three are translations. I've received a few other titles I haven't mentioned but they went straight into my ARC piles, which are divided by release month, and they will be read so soon that I'm not going to go to the other room to haul them in here to list, although there aren't many. I'm reading one of them, The Land of Decoration by Grace McLeen (interesting book, so far). You can see why I have that note in my sidebar saying I'm not accepting books till further notice.

I wish you all a happy reading week! Again, I plan not to even get on the internet, so if it takes forever for me to approve a comment, don't fret. I'll be back in about 10 days and I always respond.

©2012 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery and Babble or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.