Blog With Bite!

Hey guys! It's almost Halloween and here's a blog group that is totally BOO-licious! Haha! Does that even make sense?!? Anyway, it's called BLOG WITH BITE and it's really cool! I'm one of the blogs participating...and what's great is that BWB goes on the whole time! Not just for Halloween!

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Author Uncovered: Danielle Joseph (Author Interview)

Hey guys! I'm interviewing Danielle Joseph this week as part of the contest I'll be posting tomorrow to SAVE SHRINKING VIOLET! Shrinking Violet is a great book and I love it! It's sweet! Just like the author of this book :-)





Her book:


Are you a morning person or a night owl?
NIGHT OWL!

What's the craziest thing you've ever done?
Oh, there has been plenty:)! Off the top of my head, though...in college my friends convinced me to call into a popular talk radio show and pretend I had problems with my strange roommate. I called and they put me through on the air. I was in one room while my friends were in the other room giggling! It was fun!

Pick one word to describe you.
Here's my uncreative response: creative:)!

What was the last book you read and didn't really like?
This is a tough question because i have read so many good books this year, most of them by debut authors. I'll just say that I tend to stay away from books with tons of description. That is not my style.

How does it feel like, knowing your books are on those bookshelves in the bookstores right now?
It's a wonderful feeling to know that Shrinking Violet is on the shelves in different bookstores around the world. I get excited every time that I walk into a bookstore and see a copy!

What is the best thing that's ever happened to you?
Besides, getting married and having my kids, it's definitely getting published! It really was a dream come true for me!

What's the last thing you've Googled?
Not to sound morbid but death. It's research for the novel that I'm working on.

What's the last song you had stuck in your head?
Boom Boom Pow by the Black Eyed Peas. I'm not sick of it yet!

Do you have any upcoming books?
Yes, my next novel, Indigo Blues is due out in Fall 2010 from Flux Books. It's another music-themed book but this one is told in two points of view. It’s about a song writer who breaks up with his girlfriend and writes a hit song about their breakup. It chronicles what happens when they are both instantly thrust into the limelight.

That's it! Thanks Danielle for letting me interview you!

Peace, love, and shrinking violets,

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The Dark Side of Blogging PART 2 - HORRID!

Hey again. When my younger sister checked her blog, she found an extremely mean comment on her cbox. This is what it said:

pissed off: you are even worse than your sister! stop asking for arcs! and how dare you not share them.

I'm extremely disappointed in whoever did this. Me and my sister only started requesting a few ARCs this September. I cannot stress enough the fact that WE DID NOT START OUR BLOGS TO GET FREE BOOKS! I am so annoyed with this person. It is so disappointing how people judge others.

Also, I'd like to thank these first few amazing bloggers who were the ones who supported me and my sister:
Kelsey - The Book Scout
Steph Bowe - Hey, Teenager of the Year!
Wendy - The Book Lush
Alaine - Queen of Happy Endings
Donna - The First Novels Club
Lizzy - Cornucopia of Reviews
Elnice - Ellz Reads

Thank you guys! So much! You guys are the best!

Peace, love, and books,

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My Version of The Dark Side of Blogging (but the comment was nicer)

Hey guys. As some of you would know, I was on vacation for the past few days. I was actually in Beijing, China with my folks seeing the sights. China doesn't give a lot of freedom on the internet, so I wasn't able to update my blog. Anyway, back to the point. When I checked my email, I was devastated to find that someone 'Anonymous' commented on my IMM post this week. This is what it said:

well this is new. you have had this blog, for what? thee months? and yet you have started asking for acs and signed copies from authors. you are not exactly leaving the most positive impression on yourself as a new blogger.

This was the exact same comment. It's true that I've been blogging for only three months. I've only just started requesting ARCs and books this month (September). The other times, those books were offered. You know Restoring Harmony, Sea, and Boys, Girls, and Other Hazardous Materials (I got them last week)? I didn't request them. Putnam asked if I wanted to review it, and I said yes because I wanted to. And whenever I request books or ARCs, I will always review them. No matter what. It's only if they're offered to me that there is a 1% chance I won't review them. But even then, 1% is really small...but that's because I almost always review the books I get. I NEVER started this blog just to get ARCs. I never even knew what ARCs were until my blog was about a week or two weeks old!

Another thing. I try to write all my reviews as honest, as objective, and as unbiased as I can.

THE BOTTOM LINE: I NEVER STARTED OR AM CONTINUING THIS BLOG JUST TO GET FREE BOOKS. Sure, it's an amazing plus, but I don't really mind if I don't get any ARCs.

Thanks for listening to my banter. I just wanted everyone to know what the purpose of this blog was: love of books, not free books.

Peace, love, and awesomeness,



PS The Story Siren had a post about a kind of similar thing over here. I sort of copied her...hehe...hope you don't mind Kristi! If you do, then just tell me :-)

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In My Mailbox (7)

IMM is hosted by The Story Siren.

I know, I know! Why am I posting this so early? The reason is that I'm going to be on vacation from Friday (at 4am) up until Monday...so you might not see me until then. Anyways, I got A LOT of bookish things this week! I got four 2010 ARCs and a couple others for review! YAY! So, onto Les books!

The Received:

How to Take the Ex Out of Ex-boyfriend - Janette Rallison
Red Handed - Gena Showalter
Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side - Beth Fantaskey
Two-Way Street - Lauren Barnholdt
My Soul To Take - Rachel Vincent


The Won:

Hush, Hush ARC* - Becca Fitzpatrick (From Lilibeth! Thank you!)
*This is my second copy, so I might be giving this away on a contest or just give it away to anyone...hmm...or maybe a trade... :-)


For Review:

Restoring Harmony ARC - Joëlle Anthony
Sea ARC - Heidi R. Kling
Boys, Girls, and Other Hazardous Materials ARC - Rosalind Wiseman
Sing Me To Sleep ARC - Angela Morrison
The Ex Games (SIGNED) - Jennifer Echols
Taken By Storm (SIGNED) - Angela Morrison
A Map of the Known World - Lisa Sandell

From Lilibeth (THANK YOU!):

Hate List ARC - Jennifer Brown
Wake - Lisa McMann
Born Blue - Han Nolan


The Mooched:

The Boyfriend League - Rachel Hawthorne

The Swag:
None yet...but hopefully, soon! My sister and I love swaggers!

The Bought:
None...mom is still reeling from the amount of books I've gotten this week!

That's it! That's a total of SEVENTEEN books this week! WOW! Hurrah! What did you guys get? Comment here when you post...on Saturday or Sunday...hehe! I bet you've never seen an IMM post on Thursday before! Ha :-)

OHH! Again, as you've seen on many other posts, don't forget to join my contest for FOUR SIGNED Jenn Echols books here!

Peace, love, and books,


Les thanks to les awesome people:
***Thanks Jennifer for giving me The Ex Games! It was a pleasure to host you this week!***
***Thanks to Stacey for giving me and my sis all of those 2010 ARCs!***
***Thanks to Angela for sending me Sing Me to Sleep and Taken by Storm!***
***Thank you so much to Lisa for giving me A Map of the Known World! I've been aching to read it!***

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Endless Summer and Forget You - Feature

Hey guys! As part of Jennifer Echols week, this is a feature on her two new books releasing in 2010! These reads look fantastic and I really can't wait to get my hands (or eyes!) on these!

***Note: This is a part of Jennifer Echols Week! Come join my contest over here!***

Endless Summer (June 2010):





Lori should have known better than to date a pirate.

After finally getting together and going out on their first real date, only Lori and Adam could manage to fall asleep—and wake up seven hours past Lori’s curfew. Their parents forbid them to see each other. So Lori takes it upon herself to date boys scarier than Adam until her dad gives in.
But Adam won’t play along. He’s afraid Lori might fall for these scary boys. And when she goes out with the scariest boy of all—Adam’s own brother and her ex-crush—even the threat of being sent away to military school can’t keep Adam from swashbuckling his way back into Lori’s heart.
Can this forbidden love stay afloat, or will it sink in the watery deep?

Forget You (July 2010):





Zoey’s life in her Florida beach resort town is happy and organized. She’s the captain of her high school swim team, and she works for her dad at his popular water park. Then her dad has an affair with one of his employees, and her mother has a breakdown. But Zoey begins a committed relationship with a hot lifeguard, which makes her feel stable, even if things aren’t perfect at home. Everything is still under control.

Until she has a car accident that she can’t remember. She should have been with her boyfriend that night, but he doesn’t seem to know anything about the accident—and he doesn’t seem to care. The person who does care, and knows more than he’s telling, is Doug, Zoey’s darkly handsome arch-enemy who saved her from the wreckage. As Zoey begins to piece together what happened that night, she finds her sense of control over her life was only an illusion. And she inches closer to discovering the darkest secret of all: why Doug has fallen in love with her.

I told you so! These sounds amazing! June, July...hurry up already!!! These aren't the final covers by the way...I'm betting they look much better!

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Going Too Far by Jennifer Echols

Title: Going too Far
Author: Jennifer Echols
Pages: 256
Publisher: MTV
Publication Date: March 17, 2009

How far would you go?

All Meg has ever wanted is to get away. Away from high school. Away from her backwater town. Away from her parents who seem determined to keep her imprisoned in their dead-end lives. But one crazy evening involving a dare and forbidden railroad tracks, she goes way too far...and almost doesn't make it back.

John made a choice to stay. To enforce the rules. To serve and protect. He has nothing but contempt for what he sees as childish rebellion, and he wants to teach Meg a lesson she won't soon forget. But Meg pushes him to the limit by questioning everything he learned at the police academy. And when he pushes back, demanding to know why she won't be tied down, they will drive each other to the edge -- and over...

Rebellious and misleading, Meg gets drunk and and finds her friends and herself inadvertently rescued by the police officer arresting them; Officer Johnafter. As punishment, Meg has to ride through the night with him, trying to stop any trouble that might happen. It isn't as bad as she assumed, but the mystery of John's past with the bridge, haunts her. And as she gets closer to him, sparks start to fly. But can two people with two painful pasts come together to create a better future? They just might.

Filled with lies, hurt, and major drama, Going too Far is a beautiful, thought-provoking read that overcomes all stereotypes and leads you to an unexpected ending. Meg and John are both sensitive, three-dimensional characters that try to push each other over the limit. They are completely unfathomable to one another at first, but the more they spend time together, their layers are slowly peeled away and they find themselves completely looking through each other's pretenses.

The emotions swirling through Going too Far are powerful, and raw. Completely layered and entangled, Meg and John's emotions have everything to do with their decisions. They've both had traumatic pasts and they're both broken and hurt, still unrecovered with well-hidden grief. Echols reveals painful truths through this very personal and extremely well-expressed story.

Seeing through Meg's eyes is simply eye-opening. She is such a different and complicated character. Her feelings and relationships with her friends and John are what makes her perspective real and moving. You can see her grow throughout the story and finally find herself where she belongs. A+ :-)

The Bottom Line: Going too Far is a strong and evocative read. It really resonated with me unlike any other book. No words can truly express how I feel about this novel. All I can say is that Jennifer Echols has permanently cemented herself as one of my favorite authors.

---Report Card---
Originality: 10/10
Ending: 10/10
Characters: 10/10
Plot: 10/10
My reaction/enjoyment: 10/10
Theme: 10/10
Imagery: 10/10
Setting: 5/5
Voice: 5/5
Style: 5/5
Tone: 5/5
Cover: 10/10
Total Score: 100/100 (A+) !!!This, and Perfect Chemistry are the only title-holders for The Holy Grail: Beholder of the perfect 100!!!

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Author Uncovered: Jennifer Echols (Author Interview) + SIGNED books GIVEAWAY!

Hey guys! This entire week, I'm hosting Jennifer Echols in my first Author Week! YAY! Anyway, I had the pleasure of interviewing her and so...here it is! Enjoy!

***Note: This is a part of Jennifer Echols Week! Come join my contest over here to win FOUR SIGNED Jenn Echols books!***




Her Books:



Her Upcoming Books:


***Note: These aren't the final covers yet***

Did you always want to become an author?
It was always in the back of my mind. I had confidence that I could do it because my grandmother was a writer (unpublished--she gave up too soon). I had this terrific role model, and it never occurred to me that I couldn’t do what she’d done.
However, I was also interested in art and music. I painted and airbrushed a lot when I was a teenager. In college I considered being an art major or an architecture major, but I concentrated on music instead. I planned to be a high school band director. But I absolutely loved my English classes, and by the middle of my sophomore year, I’d decided I wanted to be a novelist.

What do you see as your strengths and weaknesses as an author?
Dialogue is very easy for me. Characters’ conversations just pop into my head. What’s hard for me is writing what comes in between the characters’ words. In fact, the editor for my first book, Major Crush, asked me if I’d been a screenwriter, because the book read like a play. I had to add a lot of internal monologue and body language to flesh that novel out. I think (hope!) I’ve learned from that experience.


What's the most interesting thing a reader has ever said to you?
This was not actually said TO me...but book blogger Persnickety Snark said in her review of my novel The Boys Next Door, “Echols is the YA equivalent of crack.” I nearly died laughing when I read that. She is a trip.


Do you have any must-haves when you're writing?
Coffee and my iPod. I make a soundtrack for each novel.


How does it feel like, knowing your books are on those bookshelves in a bookstore?
It feels awesome. It took me a long time and a lot of manuscripts to get published, and I never, ever take the success I’ve had for granted.

Did you base any of your characters on real people?
No. I don’t think I could if I tried. The characters need to be a certain way to fit into the story, and the story is everything. If I set out to write about a real person but I also wanted to write a great story, I don’t think the real person would survive intact.

What are your ten, most favorite things?
1. My family
2. My best friend, writer Victoria Dahl
3. My job as a novelist
4. The beach
5. Cadbury Creme Eggs (Ohh! Yummy!)
6. My iPod
7. Incubus
8. The scent of roses
9. President Obama
10. Book bloggers! (YAY for book bloggers!)

What is your typical day?
I wake up at 4:30 a.m. and write for two hours. At 6:30 my son wakes up. I get him ready and take him to school. I run between 3 and 5 miles or go work out at the YMCA (which I’ve been doing a lot lately, because it won’t stop raining!). I come home and work as a freelance editor for about four hours. I write some more. I pick up my son from school and take him to the playground or soccer practice. I make a very disappointing dinner (I am an AWFUL cook). My son and I watch Mythbusters, Dirty Jobs, American Chopper, or car racing. (When I was growing up, my older brother controlled the TV, so I am used to this sort of programming.) My son goes to bed, and my husband and I read or watch a movie.
At some point during the day, I try to slip in more writing time, but it’s difficult around here. For instance, right now, my son is standing outside my office, shooting his Nerf gun, and the cat is chasing the Nerf darts. It’s not a peaceful place conducive to deep thought.

Congrats on the new release of Ex Games! Do you have any upcoming books apart from Forget You and Endless Summer? Are you working on something else?
Thank you so much! MTV Books will publish another of my YA romantic dramas in July 2011. I haven’t decided what it will be yet, but I will probably write a big chunk of it during NaNoWriMo in November. I’m also working on an adult romance that I haven’t sold yet. Cross your fingers for me!

Well, that's it! Good luck to Jennifer that her adult romance gets sold! I'm also going to be participating in YWP NaNoWriMo! Can't wait! And again, don't forget to join the contest for her books here!

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Moody Monday (3) - Part of Author Week (1)

Hey again peeps! This is my awesome new meme...created by MOI! YAY! Okay fine, my sister over at The Bookologist, helped me...she thought of the name and inspired me a little :-)

Anyway, Moody Mondays is a meme dedicated to how you currently feel...but with a little twist...hehe! You have to use the title of a book (with the picture) to portray your mood! Ain't that cool? Feel free to use this meme! Here is the link to The Works.

***This Moody Monday is also part of Author Week with Jennifer Echols!***

Here is my Moody Monday book:

I'm on crutches and I feel like I'm...

...GOING TOO FAR! Seriously! I just had to walk to the kitchen w/ crutches!

How far would you go?

All Meg has ever wanted is to get away. Away from high school. Away from her backwater town. Away from her parents who seem determined to keep her imprisoned in their dead-end lives. But one crazy evening involving a dare and forbidden railroad tracks, she goes way too far...and almost doesn't make it back.

John made a choice to stay. To enforce the rules. To serve and protect. He has nothing but contempt for what he sees as childish rebellion, and he wants to teach Meg a lesson she won't soon forget. But Meg pushes him to the limit by questioning everything he learned at the police academy. And when he pushes back, demanding to know why she won't be tied down, they will drive each other to the edge -- and over...

How do you like this week's Moody Monday? Hot? Not? Give your opinion below in the comments. And of course I want to see what your MM is! Put it in the Mister Linky below! :-)

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MEGA Jennifer Echols GIVEAWAY - Author Week (1)

Hey again peeps! You guys know that I'm hosting Jennifer Echols this week right? So to kick off the week, she was SUPER DUPER nice to let me host a contest for EACH ONE OF HER BOOKS! And they're SIGNED! That means that FOUR of you guys will be able to get one copy of one of her books:



The Prizes:
Going Too Far (SIGNED!)
The Ex Games (SIGNED!)
Major Crush (SIGNED!)
The Boys Next Door (SIGNED!)

---Now, onto the contest entry thingies---

You HAVE to do these in order to be eligible:
+3 Follower of my blog
+2 Follower of my sister's blog: The Bookologist
+1 Leave your email!!!

Extra Entries:
+1 If you go to Jennifer's website and tell me one thing you like about it.
+1 If you subscribe to my blog via email-it's in the sidebar
+1 If you link this on twitter (put in @ReggieWrites so I know, if not, it doesn't count)
+1 If you link this on your sidebar (NO LINK, NO ENTRY)
+4 If you link this contest on an actual post (NO LINK, NO ENTRY)

Rules:
-Open only to US Residents (But if you have someone who can send it to you, that's okay as well)
-This contest will end on October 9 at 4pm (GMT+8) unless this contest doesn't meet at least 40 entrants...then, it will be extended.
-The winners will be announced on October 10 or 11.
-You have to post everything in one post to make it easier (hehe...I'm so disorganized sometimes!).
-I will use The Contest Winner Picker for picking the winners for this contest.
-I have the right to extend or close this contest without any notice.

***A GIGANTANORMOUS THANK YOU TO JENNIFER!***

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