---

---

Congrats to Lea W, who won Impossible to Resist by Em Woods and Keeping House by Lee Brazil!

---

---

Contests

• Blodeuedd’s giving away two copies of The Legend of Michael by Lisa Renee Jones. Ends May 20. (US & Canada)

• Bloeuedd’s also giving away two copies of Carolyn Brown’s Love Drunk Cowboy. Ends May 23. (US & Canada)

Bookity

• New releases and more: Literary Escapism (UF/PNR), AAR (romance), Katiebabs (UF/PNR/romance), and Book Lovers Inc (UF/PNR/romance).

• Book/publishing news and more: Dear Author and ReadReactReview.

• If you like to read urban fantasy and you don’t know about Bordertown, catch up now (well, on May 24). I love how similar the book’s cover is to this photo that I posted a few years ago and thought looked like it belonged in the Borderland.

• VacuousMinx on reading outside your comfort zone (and don’t miss the cool comic about how hard it can be to write romance!).

• Paperback Writer highlights the free application Story Lite (Windows, Mac, Linux soon), which authors and editors might find useful.

• Tam shares what she’s learned about herself from reading m/m romance.

• Turn a vintage book into an expandex file.

• Ruby slippers/Wicked Witch bookmark.

• Sew a bookcase cover to help your books blend into your decor.

• The Author Fan Letter Blog Crawl kicks off on June 1! I’m not participating this year – I’m pretty sure nothing will ever top my experience last year. I posted about Charles de Lint; his wife read my post and then she and Charles donated a signed special edition book for me to give away!

Ebookity

• Eden Winters posted an epilogue to Settling the Score.

• Ava March posted a free short story that takes place about seven months after Bound Forever.

• Another waterproof case for Kindle or iPad, but this one allows you to use your headphones.

• Kindle ebooks are outselling print books on Amazon.

• Dear Author has an indepth look at the Amazon and Google Cloud Players, which aren’t making the music industry very happy.

• An author writes of his experiences pirating and crowdsourcing his own out-of-print books.

• Piracy puts a not-yet-released children’s book at the top of the Amazon bestseller list.

• If you were a fan of the ElfQuest comics, they’re all available to read free online.

• The New York Public Library has released a free iPad app that lets you browse their 1939-1940 World’s Fair materials.

• Some self-publishing humor from Paperback Writer.

Think, Do, Make, Learn

• Want to vacuum seal stuff without any specialized supplies or equipment? Try ziploc bags and a bike pump.

• Thoughtful post from VacuousMinx called “Americans are not the only readers on the internet.“

• Netflix streaming makes up more online traffic than piracy – I’d really think about this if I was one of the studios opting out of Netflix…

• Sir Ian McKellen is visiting secondary schools in the UK, talking about gay equality.

• Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. But why?

• New experiences may slow down our perception of time.

• Drinking a lot of coffee might reduce the risk of breast and prostate cancers.

• Be careful about eating melatonin brownies…

• Healthiest sleeping positions.

• The Center for Disease Control let us know that they’ll have our backs in case of a zombie apocalypse…

• It’s a bad year for allergies – maybe some of these things can help.

• Flowchart on proper office coffee-making etiquette – perhaps you could post this near the coffemaker?

Cookity

• Literal cup-cakes. (Thanks, CursingMama!)

• Ladybug cupcakes! (Do not contain actual ladybugs.)

• Cake shooters.

• Converse sneakers cake. (via The Kitchn) (Does not contain actual sneakers.)

• Dark chocolate-covered bacon turtles. (via The Kitchn)

• Review of the new Gluten-Free Cupcakes cookbook.

• Several mainstream companies are adding and discontinuing gluten-free products.

• Homemade veggie chips.

Crafty

• Knitted clock frame. (I might need to buy a clock for this project!)

• Gnome socks! (Thanks, Juni!)

• Embroidered growth chart.

• Embroidery sample magnets.

• Crocheted cup cozy.

• LEGO necklace.

• Cross-stitch stamped cards.

• Cross-stitched Donkey Kong bookmark.

• Who is this mystery knitter?! 😉

Cool

• George Takei vs. Tennessee’s “Don’t Say Gay” Bill

• Altoids tin mini garden.

• Quote.

• Linkity from MrsPao.

• Amazing origami and dioramas.

• Geeky plush kitties.

• Interesting way to save wineglasses from the evils of the dishwasher – if enough preorders are placed to make the product a reality.

• It looks like a painting, but it’s a photo.

• Use office supplies to make an X-Wing Fighter!

• Photo of Endeavour’s launch – make sure you read the first comment. 🙂

Cool or Wha…?

• A computer mouse made out of felt?! (Prototype only.)

• VW bus tent.

• 3000 new words were added to the official Scrabble dictionary, including “grrl”…

• The Cosby Sweater Project.

Wha…?

• Fair is fair: pejazzling has arrived.

• Triple Double Oreos arrive this summer…

• Creepy garment made from udon noodles…

• Someone’s named a baby after the Facebook “Like” button…

LOL

• Handy flowchart to help you determine if you will be raptured this weekend.

• Whoops. Apparently the TSA at the Minneapolis-St Paul Airport forgot to notify the local police that it was running a bomb detection test…

• Found a website that you think would look better with a piece of bacon? Like Google maybe? Here’s how to add bacon to any website. (Thanks, Jase!)

• Beware of slippers that look like they want to devour your feet.

• Promotional kitten basket!

• Flying spider marmoset! (Thanks, Jase!)

• How kittehs perceive themselves…

Teh Cute

• Kitten! Pesky cheetah cub! Safe kittens! Fox kit! Kitten! Fox! Kitten! Polar bear and cubs! Kittens! Ferret! Cat and kitten! Tiger! Opossums! Kitten! Baby mongoose! Kitten! Baby platypus! Kittens! Tigers! Kitten! Baby ferret! Kitten! Lion cub! Baby fennec! Lemur and baby! Koala twins! Black cats and kittens!

Reading Update
Camwolf by JL Merrow. ebook. Very good paranormal m/m romance about a Cambridge fellow who becomes fascinated with one of the students – a student with secrets and a past darker and more painful than his own.
Lonewolf by JL Merrow. free ebook short. Good short m/m paranormal romance about Carl (who turned the main character from Camwolf into a werewolf) as he tries to find the man who turned him into a werewolf.
Riley’s Regret (Lost Shifters #11) by Stephani Hecht. ebook. Very good paranormal m/m romance about Eagle shifter Riley, whose behavior has become increasingly unpredictable and erratic.
Heart in Hand (Warder #3) by Mary Calmes. ebook. Very good paranormal m/m romance about a hearth who’s in love with his warder, but doesn’t want to burden him and so hasn’t been completely open with him. And then it’s almost too late, as things take a nightmarish turn. This went way too quickly, but I didn’t want to put it down.
The Trouble With Angel by JM Cartwright. ebook. Very good m/m romance about a pro baseball player who suddenly has two kids to take care of, so he shanghais his agent’s assistant into helping him with the kids.
Back Home by RJ Scott. ebook. Very good m/m romance about an architect from Vermont who’s been living in London to avoid his brother’s boyfriend, even though his brother died two years ago. Then his dad gets sick and his sister begs him to come home to help salvage the family construction company…
Galaxy’s Heart (Sutter’s Bay #3) by Shawn Lane. ebook. Good m/m romance about an artist who moves to Sutter’s Bay with his traumatized brother, hoping it will be a good place for his brother to get better, and runs into someone from his past. Here’s hoping we don’t have to wait too long for Leo’s book… 🙂
Language Lessons by Jay Bell. ebook short. Sweet short m/m romance about a promiscuous high school senior who doesn’t really understand what love is.
Trust in Me by Lori Toland. ebook. Good m/m romance about a guy who unexpectedly runs into the first guy he slept with, and it brings up all sorts of memories and issues for him. (I did get a titch frustrated by the Big Misunderstanding.)
Remember Me? by Lynn Lorenz. ebook. Very sweet (occasionally a bit too) m/m romance about a doctor who recognizes a nearly dead man in the ER as his first love from ten years ago.
Cover Art by Caroline Stephens. ebook short. Sweet short m/m romance about a brutally shy romance writer who has a crush on the cover model who’s on all his books.
Off the Page by Ryan Loveless. ebook short. Cute short m/m romance about a writer who finds himself writing his interactions with his roommate into his historical romance. I had one niggle about the actual sex scene, which lacked any sort of prep, lube, or condom.
Doing Love Right (Beach Duo #2) by Diana DeRicci. ebook. Good m/m romance about a wedding planner, recently dumped, who wakes up after a party to discover a strange man in bed with him… a strange man who know an awful lot about him. This would’ve been better without the near-purple prose during the sex scenes. (Eyre, there’s an orphan!)
Man Whore (Personal Demons #1) by Pia Veleno. ebook. This so-so paranormal m/m romance consisted of two storylines that took way too long to converge, giving the book an incoherent and disjointed feel. The first storyline was about an artist who slept with a different man or woman every night. The second storyline was about a bunch of demons who seemed to be up to no good.
Cum for Now, Stay Forever by P. Lee. ebook short. Meh short m/m paranormal about a guy staying at a beach house who has a hot encounter with a mysterious stranger. The euphemisms, they hurt me.

---

“What? Can’t a girl hang out in her toy basket without being disturbed?!” -Mayhem