Bev's Books

Ze-whoa…

Bev(BB) — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 23:47:49 +0000

I knew I was going to have both my new class during the week and a advanced weather workshop tomorrow afternoon so I decided not to sweat it and do some housecleaning on the site as I got the chance. The upside is that as I was tweaking some stuff behind the scenes I ran across what appears to be a phenomenal blogging plug-in for both web browsers and WordPress called Zemanta that will help find related images, articles, or whatever – as you’re writing! The truly neat thing is that you can use your favorite sources as well as the greater web to search for stuff. Seriously, I’ve seen a lot of things pitched over the years as being great for this or that in terms of blogging – some of them work, some of them don’t and others are simply plug-in nightmares that make your site up and decide ...

I can identify with the fish

Bev(BB) — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 16:33:04 +0000

I surely can. see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz! Because that’s the way my life’s been this last week or so. Seems like every time I take two steps forward, I end up two steps back. Or something else distracts me. Oooo, see the pretty light over there. Let’s go follow it. But it’s not all bad. Actually, none of it’s really bad, just, you know, normal life stuff, if you know what I mean. Anyway, when I started posting again at the first of the year, I committed to getting something up at least once a week and I still feel that way. Life, however, has other ideas so I’m attempting to adapt the game plan somewhat. Put it this way, I literally have lists of ideas to write about as well as boxes and boxes of books to go through (which is a post all on ...

She’s writing about the grandkids now?

Bev(BB) — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 17:00:46 +0000

A funny thing happens when one takes a break from reading for a period of time. A favorite author’s backlist can multiply like rabbits, especially when we’re talking about the romance genre. At least nowadays. Case in point, a couple of weeks ago, I go out to eat with my children and on the way home we stop do some shopping. Oddly enough, or not, we all three end up in the book aisle at about the same time and start jokingly picking out books for each other. Then things took a turn into the very funny when I pick up a new book by Stephanie Laurens, take one look at the back description and realize it’s a Cynster spin-off but I have no idea who the heck the main character is. So I turn to the family tree at the beginning of the book for help and promptly squawk “She’s ...

alpha heroines

Bev(BB) — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 03:00:00 +0000

(Editing note: I’ve been going through old posts and files doing some housekeeping to categorize and tag them and decided that it would be fun to periodically – probably every 5th Wednesday – pull one forward for a second look. The criteria I use to pick them could be research for a current topics of interest or a whim of something that catches my attention while browsing the bowels of the site. Heck, I may even dig up something I posted elsewhere and no one’s ever seen. Who knows. Today’s recycled post was originally posted here on Feb 2, 2006 and got picked because I was checked to see what I’d already said about Stephanie Laurens.I’ll explain why she’s on my mind in more detail very soon.) Sandy’s post yesterday on Romancing the Blog about The Alpha Male’s Heroine really got my brain to working overtime, not so much with new ...

It’s a dog’s life ;-)

Bev(BB) — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 23:06:56 +0000

Okay, here’s the deal. I was going to post something thoroughly insightful today but that didn’t pan out. No, seriously, I was but I’ve been feeling like crap for the last two days. Nothing specific, just yuck. If I didn’t know better I’d swear it was the weather, which has actually been rather great but I think that’s a big part of the problem. It’s like we’re already having spring when we should still be having winter and my sinuses are acting up like it’s the middle of summer. I hate feeling this way because I can’t concentrate at all and certainly not on writing posts when I’d rather be outside instead of inside where I’m hot one minute then cold the next. That’s when I’m not feeling like burying my head under the bed the rest of the time. Oye. So, anyway, while I was debating about whether to cobble something ...

Information – where do you look?

Bev(BB) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 19:57:54 +0000

I need some feedback before I share some of my all-time favorite reference books. Or to put it another way, I’m nosy and downright curious as to what everyone else uses. To set the stage, though, I’m currently in the middle of researching how to create and/or layout a small kitchen garden at the back of the house. I’ve wanted one for years but never quite had the inclination to go for it. Still not sure this is the year it’s going to happen but I’ve been digging into some of my old gardening books for inspiration and ideas. At the same time I’ve been looking things up online here and there and that’s when I remembered a list I’d made months ago about the types of reference books I have on my personal & family reference shelf (or shelves as the case may be). You know the type of ...

Happy Valentine’s Day

Bev(BB) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 18:00:46 +0000

As many years as I’ve been reading romances I’ve never taken the time to look up the history of Valentine’s Day. So, this year I did some reading online and found it fascinating but one reference in particular caught my eye because I suddenly realized I might’ve stumbled across the origin of “scrapbooks” in a rather unexpected place. Check out this quote and see if you catch what I did: Americans probably began exchanging hand-made valentines in the early 1700s. In the 1840s, Esther A. Howland began selling the first mass-produced valentines in America. Howland, known as the “Mother of the Valentine,” made elaborate creations with real lace, ribbons and colorful pictures known as “scrap.” Today, according to the Greeting Card Association, an estimated 1 billion Valentine’s Day cards are sent each year, making Valentine’s Day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year. (An estimated 2.6 billion cards are ...

How… odd

Bev(BB) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:00:40 +0000

I decided I would make a list of all the Valentine romances that I have to share for today’s post. Only thing is that when I dug around my shelves, my book database, my e-book files and, well, just about anywhere I could think of I came up with only one Harlequin paperback and 2 e-books that even just mention Valentine’s Day much less have that as a theme. (And the two e-books are basically erotic romances, too.) o.O Like I said. Odd. I mean think about this. Longtime romance reader. Huge collection of romance novels. Only 3 Valentine themed romances. Shouldn’t there be more? At least in the paperbacks? Or am I looking at this backwards? Or something. Okay, at this point I became curious and went digging for how many Christmas and Halloween themed romances, well, books, period, I have. Yeah, there are other “holidays” but those two also stand out as ...

How’s the weather your way?

Bev(BB) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 18:00:42 +0000

I could care less whether or not Phil sees his shadow on Groundhog Day tomorrow, however, it did get me to thinking about the weather and reminded me to mention something else that has become very dear to my heart. A couple of years ago, I became a volunteer Weather Spotter. What most people think when they hear “weather spotter” is someone running around in a car chasing storms, i.e. what’s commonly called a storm chaser, but that’s not what I do or have even been trained for. Oh, it’s true that the Weather Service does offer elite training for what they call mobile spotters and there certainly are people crazy enough to get out there and chase storms, but here’s the thing – mobile spotting is only truly useful in areas that have a lot of very flat land because otherwise it’s difficult to see over distances far enough to ...

Run for your life – no really

Bev(BB) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 18:00:24 +0000

I love cozy mysteries. Watching them. Sometimes reading them, too. But don’t think it’s because they have a “lighter” tone than other mysteries do. Cozies tend to be more quirky, sure, but the one thing that cozy mysteries have that most other mysteries don’t is a very large body count. Don’t believe me? Well, check out this quote: Why would anyone be down on cozies in particular? When you think about it, just how cozy are they? How cozy would you feel tucked away in your pristine English country village, at your church potluck supper or your Tuesday evening quilting circle, with neighbors dropping dead all around you? Honestly, if they’d stopped to consider the body count she leaves in her wake, the people of St. Mary Mead would have locked Miss Marple in her house and never let her out. via Back Away From My Cozies and No One Gets Hurt. Nowadays this is ...