Tag Archives: Mel Spenser

Contests, Linkity linkity link, Reading, Reviewettes

New and even more improved linkity post, now featuring bullets and subheadings!

26 Comments

Look for Misadventures in Stock Photography (Part the Sixth) tomorrow! Although I already have enough new covers of Candy Cane Guy for another post (or two…), we’ll give him a break and meet someone new tomorrow.

Contests

  • Chappysmom is having a Chuck (tv show) trivia contest – check out the details and participate quickly, because the deadline to enter is January 15 at noon EST. Prizes include 12 skeins of Sublime yarn, Chuck Season One on Blu-Ray, and a dvd on knitting cables.

Bookity Stuff

  • TeleRead also has a good beginner’s guide to using Calibre, an open-source ebook management tool. I don’t actually use Calibre to transfer books to my Astak (because the Astak’s directory structure isn’t maintained when using Calibre), but I do use it to normalize file names and convert formats.
  • Fun – a book cover archive… not for ebooks, alas. (I was hoping it would be a good research tool for my Misadventures series.)

Randoms

  • Oh, look, you can make your own Twinkies (hmm, nice that this is right after the fitness item). Since the cake recipe only has 1/3 cup of flour, it should convert to gluten-free quite easily. Hmm.
  • This link is here for no other reason than that I thought the picture was cute.

Humorous Bits

Reading Update
True Colors by Clare London. ebook. This turned out to be a very good and intense m/m romance after a sort of shaky start – I almost put the book away because there were so many different people introduced in the first few pages and I couldn’t figure out who was important and who was peripheral. But in the end? Totally redeemed, because Clare London deftly tied in those seemingly extraneous introductory bits.
Broken by Dawn Kimberly Johnson. ebook. Excellent m/m romance about a guy who was seriously injured when his partner was killed during a gay bashing two years before the story starts.
Miss Me? and Coming Out for Christmas (Miss Me, Book 2) by Mel Spenser. ebook and ebook short. Miss Me? is a decent m/m romantic suspense about Andy, a librarian who gets involved with Nick when Nick is in the library looking for cookbooks. Both of them then have to deal with a dangerous stalker who’s been harassing Andy for the last year. In Coming Out for Christmas, Ryan, one of Andy’s relatives, is staying with Andy and Nick over his college’s Christmas break when he realizes he’s gay. Miss Me? is definitely the stronger of the two stories.
Giving Thanks by Maura Anderson. ebook short. Ok Thanksgiving m/m romance about a couple dealing with the after effects of one of them coming out to his family and getting punched by his dad.
Bittersweet by Maura Anderson. ebook short. Very good m/m romance about a chocolatier making chocolates for a bridal shower who becomes fascinated by the man of honor when he picks up the chocolates. Both Bittersweet and Giving Thanks are also part of the Hot Comfort collection (next). (I already had these shorts when I won Hot Comfort over at Reviews by Jessewave last month.)
Hot Comfort by Luisa Prieto, Kimberly Gardner, Jet Mykles, and Maura Anderson. Collection of food-related m/m romances, with a cover that might look a little familiar. 😉 Although I already had the Maura Anderson and Jet Mykles stories, I hadn’t read the delightful “Cooking with Ergot” by Luisa Prieto (who signed my copy of Hot Comfort!) nor the very enjoyable “The Shape of a Heart” by Kimberly Gardner.
One Way Street by Laney Cairo. ebook. Very good m/m romance about a closeted Aussie rules footballer who gets really sick and turns to the guy he left without a word the previous year.
No One But You (Shining Victory, Book 2) by K.C. Kendricks. ebook. Whoops. I haven’t read the first book. Oh well. I’m not sure that would have helped me be less annoyed by the guys in this May-December m/m romance.
Give Me One Night by K.C. Kendricks. ebook. This was another m/m romance that I was “meh” about – the insta-love didn’t work very well for me. Plus I still had some big questions left at the end, things that really felt as if they needed to be tied up before the story ended but weren’t.
Beautiful Disaster by J.M. Snyder. ebook. Pretty good m/m romance about two guys who are in a pop duo.
Just Friends by Anne Thomas. ebook. Surprisingly good, slightly kinky m/m romance about a guy who’s had crush on his best friend for a while, then follows him to a leather club… I picked up both this and Beautiful Disaster when they were Amber Quill Press Daily Deals – I’m much more willing to try a book that I’m not sure I’ll like or that might be a bit outside my comfort zone when it’s 75% off.
Taming the Wolf and Unleashing the Jaguar (Animal Attraction, Books 1 & 3) by Michelle Houston. ebook shorts. Look! Do you recognize those abs and that towel on Unleashing the Jaguar?! Darn it. I missed this one before. Anyway. I read the second book (Embracing the Leopard) last summer, but it doesn’t matter, since these are all completely unrelated, other than all being short m/m romances about shapeshifters finding their mates and all inspiring the same “ho-hum” response from me.
The Wolfe Proxy by T.D. McKinney and Terry Wylis. ebook. While the storyline for this m/m romance had potential, the intermittently overdone writing kept pulling me out of the story as I flinched at particularly florid phrasing. Add insta-love, and… *sigh*
Weighted Measure by Chris Owen. ebook short. Nicely done m/m romance short about a computer geek who nearly lives online trying to find balance with a drummer who nearly lives out and about.

“Whoa. That must’ve been some of the spiked ‘nip the big kitty was talking about.” -Mayhem