So. It looks like I'm back form my unintended hiatus. I have no excuse except that I wasn't in the mood to journal. So, I didn't. Yeah. I'm planning on putting a second post up sometime in the very near future to babble about eveyrthing that's happened to me these last few weeks, but this post is going to be all about books. Sorry. See, I joined a week long read-a-thon and read a ridiculous amount of books and I've been posting reviews like a crazy woman. Which isn't all that different from what I normally do except that I got to brag over that week about how many books I read. It was awesome.

Anyway. I have close to 40 books I've reviewed and haven't posted here and I'm nothing if not determined to wear my fingers to the bone typing up links and witty remarks.

Let's get to it!

Book #315 - Ashes by Ilsa J. Bick - A gorgeous post-apocalyptic tale of survival. It gave me chills. Seriously.
Book #316 - The Aviator (Fantasies of New Europa #3) by Morgan Karpiel - Sexy steampunk! With airships and spunky women! Sweet!
Book #317 - A Bloody Good Secret (Secret McQueen #2) by Sierra Dean - I love this series. It's so fun you'll hardly be able to handle it.
Book #318 - The Seeking Kiss (Midnight Playground #1) by Eden Bradley - Vampires in a sex club. Yeah, I liked it!
Book #319 - Kiera's Moon by Lizzy Ford - I love Lizzy Ford's writing. Everything she's written makes me grin.
Book #320 - Destiny United (Shadows of Destiny #2) by Leia Shaw - A fun fantasy with vampires and fae!
Book #321 - Out in Blue (Return to Sanctuary #1) by Sarah Gilman - Loved the mythology for this one, with the angels being feared and demons being their protectors.
Book #322 - Motor City Fae (Urban Arcana #1) by Cindy Spencer Pape - Fabulous, fabulous series. I'm a little mad at myself for waiting so long to start it.
Book #323 - Greywalker (Greywalker #1) by Kat Richardson - I didn't love this book but it has some interesting mythology and I've been told the later books really pick up.
Book #324 - Bound by Blood by P.A. Lupton - FBI agent meets vamps. Chaos descends.
Book #325 - Motor City Wolf (Urban Arcana #3) by Cindy Spencer Pape - Like I said, love this series.
Book #326 - The Champion (Fantasies of New Europa #4) by Morgan Karpiel - More sexy steampunk!
Book #327 - Lord of Rage (Royal House of Shadows #2) by Jill Monroe - Love the Goldilocks feel to this one.
Book #328 - Captive Surrender by Linda Mooney - Sexy sci-fi! Aliens and humans cohabitating! Awesome!
Book #329 - Wild & Steamy Anthology - Definitely worth it for the Jill Myles story alone. *wink*
Book #330 - Alien Revealed (The Confederacy Treaty #1) by Lilly Cain - My string of sexy sci-fi books continues!
Book #331 - Maddy's Oasis by LIzzy Ford - I even like Lizzy Ford's non-paranormal books!
Book #332 - BIG Temptation by Robin L. Rotham - Steamy, naughty fun!
Book #333 - Raphael (Vampires in America #1) by D.B. Reynolds - This one was gooooood. I picke dup book 2 from the library this week.
Book #334 - Mojo Queen by Sonya Clark - Loved the worldbuilding and that the main dude wasn't really a good guy.
Book #335 - The Perfect Creation (Creations #1) by Marie Harte - And another sexy sci-fi to extend my streak!
Book #336 - Pack Challenge (Magnus Pack #1) by Shelly Laurenston - This whole series is HILARIOUS! I highly recommend it.
Book #337 - Tempest Rising (Jane True #1) by Nicole Peeler - I liked it, but I'm not in love with this series yet.
Book #338 - The Ghost and the Goth by Stacey Kade - LOVED this one. It was funny and sad all at the same time.
Book #339 - Spiderwork (Apocalypto #2) by L.K. Rigel - There's something about this series that keeps me coming back for more.
Book #340 - Firelight (Firelight #1) by Sophie Jordan - I really liked this book except that I wanted to punch the mom in the throat. Yep, I wanted to give her a full-on throat chop.
Book #341 - Exotic Indulgence by Vivian Arend, Lexxie Couper, Jess Dee - There's some serious menage action in this book.
Book #342 - The Demon Trapper's Daughter (Demon Trappers #1) by Jana Oliver - I'm dying to read the next in this series now.
Book #343 - Queen of the Dead (The Ghost and the Goth #2) by Stacey Kade - This series just keeps getting better.
Book #344 - Eighth Grade Bites (The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod #1) by Heather Brewer - Fun, but not one that grabbed me and tried to strangle me into submission.
Book #345 - Vampire in Denial (Blood Ties #1) by Dale Mayer - I really liked this book even with the killer cliffhanger.
Book #346 - Out of Time by Monique Martin - And this book is why I should read the synopsis right before I start the book. You know, so I won't be surprised by the vampires.
Book #347 - Dangerous Designs by Dale Mayer - This had a very cool alternate dimension vibe going on.
Book #348 - The Darkest Fire (Lords of the Underworld #0.5) by Gena Showalter - Decent, but I wish I had read a few of the LotU books first.
Book #349 - In Bed with a Highlander (Highlander 31) by Maya Banks - The trailer for this book is freaking HILARIOUS! GO WATCH IT NOW!
Book #350 - The Darkest Night (Lords of the Underworld #1) by Gena Showalter - Now, this was the book I should have read first in the series (instead of the prequel). Fab!
Book #351 - Staked (Time Brokers #1) by Sandra Edwards - Interesting, but it needed a little more fleshing out.

Dear GAWD! That's all the reviews. *whimper* And I didn't even get to the non-review posts. Yikes.
Maybe that'll be later tonight.
For now, I'm sure I should do some work or something.
later.

I spent yesterday afternoon and evening babysitting my baby nephew Ryan. I love the kid but when he cries for 30 minutes straight because he's too tired to do anything else... not fun. Anyway. That's obviously why I didn't journal yesterday. You know, since I vowed that I would get back to blogging on a more regular basis. Sadly, I was tired by the time I got home. I went to bed. The end.

Okay. I have books. Books, books, books.
Book #311 - Cipher (Southern Arcana #4) by Moira Rogers - As usual, I'm all crazy fangirly about this series. Waffles! And Alpha werewolves! Awesome!
Teaser Tuesday - Werewolves, angels and ... actually, I don't know what the 3rd book is about. I've only read, like, 3 pages.

I'm going to go find the naughtiest book on my Kindle and read it. Later.

Where did this week go? It can't be Thursday night already. It can't be. I'm sure it's only Monday. Possibly Tuesday.

I came home from work today and took a nap. After I dragged myself out of bed I managed to wander downstairs and collapse in an ungainly heap at the kitchen table while my sister made spaghetti. I told her that I had the weirdest dream while I was napping and she was all "How the hell can you dream during a nap? When I nap I can hear Hailey talking and stuff." Me - "I don't know. I sleep hard."

Don't other people dream when they nap? I mean, I know normal people don't nap for 2 to 3 hours at a time so maybe I'm just freaky like that. Whatever. It was a weird, cool, awesome dream I had during my nap. I was pleased to have had it.

I do this whole book thing. Occasionally. Every once in a while.
Book #303 - A Long, Long Sleep by Anna Sheehan - This book really surprised me. It was sad and sweet and I'm glad to have read it.
Book #304 - Kiss of Midnight (Midnight Breed #1) by Lara Adrian - Decent, but not great. Still, I'll probably continue with the series.
Book #305 - Where Demons Fear to Tread (The Company of Angels #1) by Stephanie Chong - Another one that wasn't great but it was still pretty interesting.
Book Blogger Hop & Follow Friday - Books I want to get my hands on and books that made an impression on me. When I was young. And impressionable.

I have to work tomorrow. Part of me wishes I didn't have to. And part of me is excited because I'll be alone in the office and can listen to obnoxious music and talk to myself while reading. :D
Later.

This is my inaugural post trying the cross-posting feature from Dreamwidth to LJ. I'm going to assume I'm going to do something wrong somewhere and will have to spend hours tonight trying to undo it. I mean, that's about par for the course for me. So, you know, okay. I'm resigned to it.

On the other hand, if everything goes perfectly, I'm going to do a little jig. And praise Dreamwidth from here to the great beyond for making things easy on poor, confused souls like me.

Anyway. I've had the Dreamwidth account for a while and I've been using it as a backup for LJ. And by that I mean that I've been importing the content from LJ whenever I remember to. Which is about every three months or so. Yeah. I'm not so good about remembering. However, if I decide to go this route, I won't have to worry about importing. I'll have all my mental diarrhea automatically strewn across the internet. Isn't that fabulous?

The point I'm trying (badly) to make here is that I have a Dreamwidth account. If you're so inclined, you can add me over on DW and I'll be all happy and joyful. Otherwise, I still plan on checking LJ and responding to comments and what have you. Not that there's a whole lot of commenting going on anymore. Which is not a complaint, just an observation. Hell, I'm not the greatest commenter in the world so I have no cause to berate others.

As a reminder, I'm on Twitter pretty much daily. If you do that Twitter thing and don't mind tipsy tweets and talk about how my mom and dad named my sisters and I after colors, follow me there and let me know so I can follow you back.

Since this is getting long...Books!
Book #299 - My Lady Taken (The Archangels #4) by Shirl Anders - A sassy and fun historical. I didn't even mind starting the series at book 4.
Book #300 - Altered (Setenid Blight #1) by Kimberly Montague - I loved this book. I'm on pins and needles for the next one to be written so I can see how things work out. *sigh*

There you have it.
*crosses fingers and hopes everything works properly*

Herein lies the post I wrote up on Monday.

...

Cole's been watching Naruto the last few days and it's kinda annoying me. I really don't remember it being so ... loud. And braying. God, I feel like I'm getting old when cartoons are starting to bug the fuck out of me. The loudness is especially annoying because I'm trying to finish up a scene in the EWM#1 and I really can't concentrate with it blaring behind me. You might be thinking "Well, Kelly. Send Cole out of your room and you won't have to listen to that damn show." You'd be correct. Yet, I'd rather bitch at the moment.

I'm pleased to announce that I finished reading the last of the Black Dagger Brotherhood books I own. It was an emotional journey, yet I did it.

I think I want to attempt to finish that EWM#1 scene one more time. Which means I have to babble about books for a minute...
Book #293 - Lover Mine (Black Dagger Brotherhood #8) by J.R. Ward - Outstanding worldbuilding, characters that don't quit and storylines that are revisited and expanded brilliantly... I'm in love with this entire series. LOVE!

That last BDB book was a 2 day book. 2 days of concentrated reading. It was lengthy. And fabulous. I'm tempted to get the next in the series but I keep reminding myself that I want to wait until it comes out in paperback so it'll fit on the shelf with the rest of the BDB books. I know. Awesome plan.

I'm done.
Later.

I did a whole lot of nothing today. Well... let me rephrase that: I did a whole lot of nothing outside of my house today. In fact, I barely got dressed. However, I finished up my epic retagging project over at Reading the Paranormal. It has made me hurt. Physically. My arm is aching from wrist to elbow. Now, it admittedly might have been me sleeping on it wrong or something (as an aside, my shoulder feels like I have a boulder under it) but I have a sinking suspicion that it was all the clicking and typing I was doing. I also have the food shakes at the moment. As in, I'm questioning whether I remembered to eat or not. Yeah, I really don't remember. Whatever. It'll go away. Or I'll die. I'm sure one of those things is bound to happen.

Oh, I also read a book. Like you didn't know that!
Book #290 - Lover Enshrined (Black Dagger Brotherhood #6) by J.R. Ward - These books are not light reading. For all that they're oversexed and considered to be paranormal romances, they do some pretty heavy lifting. Plus, they are full of emotion. Or they elicit a rather strong emotional response from me. I didn't cry this time, though. I totally sucked it up and held it in. Barely, but I managed.

Since my arm feels like it's going to fall off and I might possibly die from forgetting to eat, I'm going to go. I have another 2 books and one short story to read by the end of this weekend. I'd best get to it.

Two of my cousins and their respective husbands and girlfriends are in town. This means that the family gathered at Amb and Phil's house for dinner. There were drinks. I consumed a few. there was food. I ate well. There were many desserts. I did not share mine. My boy-cousin brought his new girlfriend. I imagine that meeting the entire family in one fell swoop is a frightening experience. We're loud. We tend to tell bawdy jokes. The jokes degenerate into downright dirty as the alcohol begins to flow.

Yeah. Scary.

I was going to make tonight an all night writing night but I don't think it's going to happen. As much as I want to, I'm exhausted at the moment. BECAUSE I MISSED MY NAP NOT BECAUSE I HAD A DELICIOUS BEVERAGE OR TWO. The good news is that I can bump my all-nighter over to Thursday night.

Speaking of writing, my girl-cousin had offered to do a read through for me on my Epic Werewolf Masterpiece. Due to the massive rewrite I'm subjecting it to it isn't quite ready for human consumption. In fact, it's something of a hot mess at the moment. I have faith that I'll whip it into something readable at some point but I wouldn't want to unnecessarily scar anyone by making them read an incoherent story. So, she's still planning on looking it over and I'm going to work my ass off to get it to a point where I don't mind someone reading it.

Yay!

Okay. Books.
Book #287 - Damian's Oracle (War of Gods #1) by Lizzy Ford - I'm so pleased I found this author. She gives some good story, if you know what I mean.
Book #288 - Blameless (The Parasol Protectorate #3) by Gail Carriger - Alexia travels to Italy to find out answers and discovers the wonders of pesto along the way. Hilarious!
Teaser Tuesday (07/19/11) - Lots and lots of steampunk! With warriors! And pertness! It might sound weird, but it's true.

I'm skating the edge of tired now. The very thin edge. I'm off to kick my kid out of my bed so I can collapse.
Later.

I have a terribly tragic story to tell. Terribly tragic. Like, small children and those easily driven to tears should avert their eyes. Not that small children should be reading my blog with how often I say "fuck" but that's beside the point.

I have no internet access at home. I KNOW! How can I go on?!?! Woe! *crumples dramatically and weeps* I'm going to be without it until Monday. MONDAY! It's like the world is telling me to get outside or get a life or something. I don't like it. I'm scared. Hold me.

In all seriousness, I don't know what's wrong with our connection. I swear that we paid the bill. I have a feeling that our modem just got fried and the technician is going to have to replace it. Oh, and the window they gave us for the tech to come by is from 8 AM to 7 PM. Dude, technician guy, you suck. You need an 11 hour window? Fuckers. All of them.

To make a long, tragic story short, I've been burning up the internet here at work today to soak it in so I don't go into withdrawal or something. I don't remember the last time I was offline for over 24 hours. I might end up stark raving mad and be one of those people you hear about on TV whose neigherbors are all "She was such a nice lady. We never expected this of her." Yeah.

Anyway. I have half an hour until I'm off work so I'd better not dally too long or I'll end up with a half-written post and an angry scowl.

Onto the books!
Book #282 - The Warlord's Secret by Lizzy Ford - Not a perfect book by any means but I was captivated by it. Don't ask. I can't explain it.
Book #283 - Misfit by Jon Skovron - I liked the book, I didn't like some of the stylistic choices the suthor made. Does that make sense?
Book #284 - Soulless (The Parasol Protectorate #1) by Gail Carriger - OMG! Loved it! I was all O.O as I was reading it. And there was laughing. Out loud. While I was alone. Yay!
Book Blogger Hop & Follow Friday - I put up a picture of a man who looks like he wants to juggle two chickens. I know. I know.
In My Mailbox (07/17/11) - The Oodles of free ebooks edition - Holy pancakes! I picked up a hell of a lot of books this week. *whimpers*

On this note, I leave you until at least Monday morning. If the world ends, somebody text me since I can't get my news form twitter until then.
Later.

I wasn't going to post this evening since I posted a couple of times early early this morning but I wrote after those posts and I'm excited that I have word countage to report. Yay!

Although I'm editing, I'm adding so much new narrative that it's changing the entire complexion of the story. In a good way, I hope. The original time line, from beginning to end, took place over the course of a month. I had to squeeze in way too much stuff and when I went back and reread it it wasn't believable that everything that was happening would happen over such a sort range of time. So I'm taking my girl out of the hero's bedroom (TEMPORARILY!) and giving her time to settle into her new life with a pack of werewolves. She's a mess. I couldn't justify her character changing from a girl who had been repeatedly abused to trusting those around her without reservation so quickly. Now she's getting the time to learn that not everyone she meets wants to hurt her. That said, I do get to throw a jealous female tiff that I had originally plotted back into the mix because now that my girl is not directly under the protection of the big, bad werewolf she's a little more vulnerable to petty hatred.

This excites me, guys!

I ended up adding 916 words today, putting my total at 109,118.

This is especially thrilling because I was doing some crazy sleeping today. I went to bed at 5:30 after dropping Heather and Hailey off at the airport, slept until 10-ish, got up and did some stuff (including a bit of writing) and took a nap from 2:30 to 5. I think I got more sleep staying up all night last night than I normally get. That amuses me.

I also read a book.
Book #278 - Katie's Hellion (Rhyn Trilogy #1) by Lizzy Ford - I was honestly surprised by how much I liked this book. I went into with no expectations and thought it was oodles of fun. OODLES!

I decided that I am going to the book signing tomorrow. After rereading the synopsis for book 1 of The Parasol Protectorate I really wanted to read the book. So, I'm going. I won't even mention how shitty I think it is to tell someone what type of books that can or can't buy.

Okay. I'm done.
later.

And now it's time for my 1:30-ish check in.

I've edited 4 more pages (which doesn't sound like a lot) but it's all new material since I cut out a huge chunk of one chapter.

The numbers stand thusly:


Edited: 83 of 265 pages.

I'm still going strong!