Bloggers to Authors: Where Do You Cross the Line?

My darlings, you may think I'm deep in hibernation, but I assure you, it's not the case ;).

NOT ME

For one, I'm reading my new shiny books and having a blast so far. Two down, eight to go! Though you might say I'm savouring them, as opposed to swallowing the whole pack in a hunger frenzy.

Secondly, I'm bursting with blog ideas, which seem to have a penchant for haunting me when I happen to wake up in the middle of the night. I might as well get up and write my blog posts then, because I swear, they would be enchanting. Too bad I love my bed even more than I love my books and music (I'm not even kidding), so, come morning, I'm left with a bunch of awesome ideas (because luckily, they seem to stick, at least for the most part), but I've lost the equally awesome wording I had come up with during those night interludes. I should probably write the stuff down on a piece of paper at least, but again, my bed is king.

BED IS HEAVEN. PERIOD

Anyway, I was working on my Black Knight review yesterday, but made a point to get distracted by some pleasant errands, not to mention Twitter thought I'd better take care of a few other things first. So, after my usual Goodreads and Twitter routine, I explored a handful of links, came up with some author questions for a blog post, emailed said questions, saved new favourites and documents on a pendrive, then got wild and emailed Christopher Pike. I had a question about Black Knight (or better, the whole Witch World series) that I wanted to take off my chest before actually reviewing the book...plus I added a couple more things. To my utter amazement, I got a reply less than 90 minutes after. Picture me wowed. As usual when it comes to his interactions with fans, Mr. Pike was polite and exhaustive (despite keeping it short), but didn't go out of his way to be what you'd call friendly. It's understandable, I guess, in his position. Though I would have liked him to say a word or two about the page I dedicated to his work on my blog (I sent him the link). Just the "thanks" word, you know. He didn't even need to actually go there and take a look. On the other hand, again, I suppose he has to be wary of giving too much rope to perfect strangers. I think he actually scared himself when he wrote Master of Murder LOL.

I'M WATCHING YOU

Now, you might think I'm digressing, but I'm not. Well, not that much. Because the whole emailing-Christopher-Pike thing is somehow related to the topic I'm bringing you today. [...]

What's New: "Deadgirl" Sequel on Its Way - Did I Tell You How Good the First Book Was?

Hi my lovelies!

So, these latest gray and humid winter-not-winter days have been transfixed by a ray of light, for me at least. I mean, light-light. Literal light. Beware and behold, because I'm about to make a pun.

A few days ago, the author of two of my favourite YA novels, B.C. Johnson, announced the long-awaited sequel to one of them. Now, you're not allowed to ignore who B.C. Johnson is, because I mentioned/reviewed his books Deadgirl and The Bad Rescue of Devon Streeter freely in the past two years or so. So, unless you are a new follower/reader, I'm sure you heard me drop a vague hint about them sometime. But if you need a recap:

Deadgirl review + book trailer

Deadgirl: Puck's background (Puck being a character in the book)

Deadgirl comes back and gets a sequel

Deadgirl blog tour & my interview with B.C. Johnson (I know, NO ONE reads an interview with an author they don't know already - but this guy is fun, I promise)

Deadgirl in A Reader's Quirk #4

The Bad Rescue of Devon Streeter review

Plus, I wrote a guest post on Emily Reads Everything about the Afterlife sub-genre, where of course Deadgirl features prominently...

Christmas/New Year Book (and Music) Haul (FINALLY!)

I FINALLY MADE IT! *squees without shame*

After a long, long time, I was able to order TEN books from my usual webseller as a birthday/Christmas present for myself. (Well, my parents might have had a, um, marginal role in it...because they were generous as usual, what with Christmas coming and my birthday being on Dec. 14th...You know my job pays shitty, right?).

So, I went online and selected ten books from my TBR list that for some reason I was particularly looking forward to reading, plus four CDs/DVDs by Queen and Billy Joel that I had been dying to get my hands on for quite a long time. They stole half of my books budget (which I had set at 200 euros...), but it's not like I could help it, because 1) music is the only thing I spend my money on besides books, and 2) I had to catch up with them before the artists in question came up with more stuff (which seems to happen every Christmas...). Both Queen and Billy Joel are making a whole lot of their old live music available, so it's dangerous to miss a year of releases. I had skipped Queen's Live at Rainbow (CD & DVD) in 2014, so I was already too far behind...

I suppose you're not particularly interested in my Queen/Joel purchases, but I will mention that - besides Live at Rainbow - I ordered Queen's A Night at the Odeon CD+DVD, and Billy Joel's CD+DVD called A Matter of Time-The Bridge to Russia. The latter will also be a trip down memory lane for me, since it records the legendary BJ's Russian concerts and documentary from 1987, snippets of which I remember avidly watching on MTV at the time, when I was still a relatively new Joel fan (though I had been drawn to his music since I was a young teen, and I had already been following Billy's career for about 5 years back then). I haven't seen any of the stuff anymore for almost 30 years, which makes me feel...um...yes, old, thank you for the cue ;P. What I really meant to say was...emotional?
(BTW...my only complaint is that I'll have to wait till late February in order to get my package delivered...since they say one my my books can't be obtained for at least 6 weeks! Ugh).

Enough of that. I know you want books, books, BOOKS! So here goes the list of those I've just requested, broken down by genres/Reading Rooms...