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 your 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
What happened to that cute little kitty, Mayhem? This one is very scary!
hmmm, makes me kinda glad we don’t havve any sparkly furry pink tiaras around here!
Um, May? That looks suspiciously like a yawn. Of course, you could be quite frightening. Srsly.
Dreaming again, Mayhem?
Mayhem is indeed looking quite vampish this morning… 😉
Thanks for the linky, linky…
L
OK, I wonder how much money I’d save…? But then again, I do end up getting the best books from the bargain bins.
Oh, Mayhem! Sparkly, and furry? How would you sleep with that on?!
That’s a great pic of May! You should stick it in Photoshop and play around with it. 🙂
How do you manage to get such neat shots of your kitties? Every time I take a pic of Mary Jane she looks wasted. Hey, wait. Maybe that’s why we’re out of vodka…
No sparkly, furry pink tiaras around here, Mayhem. If any showed up, they’d get forwarded on to you.
I don’t know about the worst sci-fi title, but the opening band for Green Day had a song called “Every Word from your Mouth is a Knife in my Ear.”
1. Jealous of those who get to go to the photography lesson.
2. Recently estimated the savings of my library usage – in excess of $5000 per annum.
3. That is a fantastic car magnet.
4. Not only can I bullet post, I can bullet comment.
5. I must be suffering from some odd blogger ADD…
Chris.. when they told you not to feed them after midnight & not get them wet.. they are SERIOUS. Now look what you’ve done!!
Nice book haul you have there!! **A little jealous, if I had not went to Wal-Mart last night and got a few of mine own** But I do love some of the ones you have there!!!
May… Wow… Didn’t know you had it in you!! Looking very scary!!! Now, if you could find some little creature to lay underneath you while take that picture!!! LOL!
Chris, you do get some awesome shoots of your babies!!! I love them! In fact that is one thing I look forward to everyday, seriously!
Hope you have a great day!!
I was ready to bite the heads off nails when I checked my calendar and found I would be out of town when Gale Zucker is teaching that photography class. Oh, well, at least the rest of the TC knitbloggers can learn how to photograph their knitting…
Thanks for mentioning the photo workshops next week, but bummed you can’t join us there. I figure one of the best parts of teaching in the Twin Cities will be meeting bloggers. Darn that work getting in the way 😉
*runs to request Romeo Romeo!
Hows about those light warrior books? I like wizards & witches WAY more than vampires….
(okay, Harry Potter, but Still….)
I liked the scholarly romance writers article. I’ve read a few of their books, I should catch up.
Goodness, May! Those are quite some teeth you have. I see why Chris needs to guard her yarn, and circular needle cables, and book cover corners…
That photography class sounds fabulous. Maybe you won’t get called in to work?
I like the book with the dog on the cover!! Were the k itties afraid of it?
Wow. I looked at some of the bad book titles and my brain just started cringing from the horribleness of it all.
I’m sure each of these imaginary books would read like the Eye of Argon too. *shudder*
I need to come up with something for that SFF cover contest. The other entries are hilarious! Btw, I finished Lover Avenged. VERY GOOD. I’m a little miffed at John’s sudden turn. But I thought the conclusion with Rehv was well done and the “love affair” between Lash and the Princess was epic.
May is looking particularly ferocious. Disturb her nap?
Those titles are a scream. I can’t wait to see the cover they come up with.
And – why am I not surprised that a guy can teach a course in Romance Lit and not get slammed for it?
Yikes – what a great set of teeth May has. You are so lucky with your great bookstores and I am so lucky you send me great books!!!
I think Mayhem is looking for a role in one of your books…
So, do cats and dogs get along? (“Branded by Fire”)
Oh if only I were closer to the Twin Cities. That should be a good workshop.
My what pointy teeth you have May!
Patti O’Shea and Virginia Kantra, hmm, those look good. I’ve seen V. Kantra’s books around. I need to look into both of these authors. Thanks for sharing.
uh-oh, is she after my sparkly hard silver and diamond tiara too?
The Heather Graham books confuse me because I always think they’re by the actress! And this month I might even read 1/3 of what you do 😉
I’m totally curious to know what you think about today’s latest Amazon fail re: deleting (in the mother of all ironies) _1984_ and _Animal Farm_ from Kindle owners who had legitimately purchased the book? I’m off to search for your eBook reader comparisons and info that I’m fairly certain I’ve seen here before. I was going to buy a Kindle for my birthday tomorrow, but am definitely double thinking that move right now.
Thanks for posting the article on scholarly writers empowering the romance genre. Too many people look down on romances. I sort used romance books for the local library book sale,and even among the sorters there is a mild put-down on my category.
(The sale days just passed and it was a hoot! I got to introduce customers to new authors, see happy faces as they found good titles and watch the books practically flying out the door.) Sure there are a lot of bad romances out there, but the same goes for every genre. I hope this attitude of putting down romances turns around soon.
ok – a bit late in the commenting (I hate it when work gets in the way like that!)
Mayhem, you could pose for the cover a book you know…… mmeeee-yooowww!