Free Goodies From ALA Part 2

As mentioned in a previous post, I attended the American Library Association Conference in New Orleans at the end of June.  My first panel was mystery authors ( see part 1). My next panel discussion was a Romance panel  titled "Isn't It Romantic" with Julie James,  Stephanie Laurens, Robyn Carr, Brenda Jackson, and Adrienne McDonnell. It was interesting to hear about the previous careers of these well known writers. Julie James was a lawyer, Stephanie Laurens was a cancer researcher, Robyn Carr had a nursing degree and wrote for years before being published. Brenda Jackson has a business degree and worked for years in insurance management. Adrienne McDonnell is a college literature professor. 

All of the authors talked about how they got into Romance and who their inspirations were- Stephanie Laurens was a Georgette Heyer fan and Brenda Jackson was a Katherine Woodiwiss fan. Her son is named Brandon after one of the late writer's characters. All of the women told their stories and talked about their new works. They all agreed that Romance gets a bad name by "serious" authors but that Romance books were the first ones to address women's issues like domestic violence, date rape, divorce, single parenthood, and many others.

After the discussion books were handed out and signed. Here's my stash;

Julie James-  A Lot Like love

Stephanie Laurens-  It Happened One night, The Reckless Bride, ARC of Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue ( her next trilogy)

      Brenda Jackson-A Silken Thread
    
      Robyn Carr-Harvest Moon

      Adrienne McDonnell- The Doctor & the Diva

Later on in the Penguin booth, I got free signed copies of Nalini Singh's new hardcover- Kiss of Snow and and older paperback- Play of Passion.  I also got The Heir and The Soldier from Grace Burrows at the Harlequin booth. She is a new author to me but I have enjoyed reading the first book and am starting the second.

So, it was a great conference for me- lots of knowledge and lots of freebies!

Gotta go read now!

Free Goodies from ALA (American Library Association) Conference Part 1

I went to the ALA conference in New Orleans the last week of June and had a wonderful time. We stayed in the French Quarter,  which is amazing-unfortunately the 96 degree weather (with humidity =110) curtailed too much exploring. The conference was great and I enjoyed sessions on grantwriting, ebooks, planning library programs, and seeing the latest in library technology. The real fun came when I attended two panel discussions with some of my favorite authors.

The first panel was called The New Miss Marples and was moderated by Jane Cleland, author of the Josie Prescott mysteries, which all revolve around an antique appraiser from New Hampshire.
Panel members were: Elaine Viets ( Dead End Job and Mystery Shoppers Series), Nancy Martin ( Blackbird Sisters and Roxie Abruzzo Series), Rosemary Harris ( Dirty Business Mysteries) and Rhys Bowen ( Molly Murphy and Constable Evans Series).  All of these are authors that I own all of their books. They had a great discussion on cozy vs. hardcore mysteries and talked about their different points of view with the series they write. They also lamented that fact that their publishers seem to want to push them into writing darker mysteries which is not their inclination. It was an interesting hour and a half. After the panel discussion, the author gave away hardcover copies of their newest books and autographed them. Lucky me, I had held off buying three of the four books since I knew I was coming to ALA. Here's what my haul was:

 (Now If I could have gotten an advanced copy of  the new Blackbird Sister book from Nancy Martin, my life would have been complete....... ) Seriously, these are all excellent authors and their books are great reads. Our library has most of them, and if not, they can be requested from other libraries. Most of the earlier books in their series are out in paperback if you want to buy them.

Stay tuned for Part 2 where I talk about the Romance Author Panel and my even bigger haul!