So! Here: have a PDF chart! EXTRA – What Romance Are You (PDF 52k). Please right click and download.

But wait, there’s more! I know that charts can render oddly for the devices that visually impaired – which probably explains why when I’ve researched opportunities to volunteer and read books aloud, so many list describing scientific charts and diagrams as the most pressing need.

So I’ve recorded myself reading the chart – not very well, but I did what I could. It’s very much Not Professional. But, here’s the mp3: mp3 Audio Chart Explanation (2MB).

It’s just me describing the chart, but if there’s visually impaired readers out there who wanted to know what I was going on about, well, enjoy.

Sorry about the chart and the eInk, y’all. I really, really like charts. I’ll try to break up with them. Soon.

USA Today also has a fantastic new romance blog headed up by author Joyce Lamb that features interviews, reviews and news about new romance novels, and content from fantastic romance bloggers including Mandi from SmexyBooks and other romance writers. SO AWESOME.

Way to go, USA Today. Thanks for helping us spread the word about how powerful and positive romance can be!

“Having a website is a lot like having a child,” Wendell suggested, and one of her first bits of advice came from a parenting guide, Wendy Mogel’s The Blessing of a Skinned Knee: keep two pieces of paper in your pocket at all times; one says, “I am but a grain of sand,” while the other reads, “The world was created for me.” Along with that balance of humility and self-esteem, Wendell identified three other traits–authenticity, consistency and generosity–as crucial to any successful blog, and also noted that while praise from online reviewers might be viewed with skepticism, criticism can catch readers’ attention: “If I say something smells bad,” she quipped, “you’re totally going to sniff it!” When readers discover a shared breaking point for what constitutes bad writing, she explained, it helps bolster the reviewer’s credibility.

Giving that speech was a terrible amount of fun, and I’m honored that I was asked to do it.

I believe that people genuinely want to help, but not always monetarily. If I could generate a list of specific items that were needed, and locations to which to mail those items, I thought that folks who read my site would feel the same way I did: motivated by the need to do something specific and immediate to help, even from far far away. As one author said to me (and I don’t know if I can quote her so I’m leaving her name out): Money can’t make these organizations mobilize faster.

So I prepared a list of items and coordinated volunteers to accept mail drops of packages that they could then deliver to local relief distribution centers in urban and rural Alabama. I had three maildrop volunteers and over 100 email messages asking for an address. People bought stuff on Amazon and Prime shipped it down to Alabama. Others cleaned out their closets of gently used clothing, and a few folks went shopping at the CVS and then walked over to the post office to mail it all down. Duct tape, bug spray, bras and underwear – from places like Maine and Minnesota, packages arrived. Have a look at one day’s delivery at one of the maildrops.

Seriously, I am so proud and pleased and happy we could do something concrete and immediate to help out. I know the media moved on covering other stories while Alabama was still hurting, but I know I felt horrible about how much they were struggling. Glamour.com picked up the story, as did others on Twitter, and now the UPS delivery team in Alabama is bringing our donations where they are needed. That is so awesome. Thank you.

“The era of Fabio is long, long, past,” said Sarah Wendell, a romance novel fan who runs the extensive blog Smart Bitches Trashy Books….

“It’s more of the guy next door look, rather than the Fabio beefcake look,” said Green.

Many publishers feature a headless man or couple, showcasing just their lusty bodies. “Readers don’t want to be told what the hero or heroine looks like,” said Wendell. “They want to control that with their imaginations.”

It’s true- the covers have moved away from beefcake to images of women of unquestionable strength. Next up: I hope we can move away from the clinch cover featuring hair styling via absolutely bizarre wind patterns.

As Media Bistro’s GalleyCat wrote up today, I started a Twitter hashtag of #jerseylibrarians based on my knowledge that when potential library-budget-cutting amendments are proposed and then withdrawn, it’s likely because librarians, particularly JERSEY librarians, are fearsome.

And would make a MUCH better reality show than any of the other Jersey-based entertainment currently on television. Which is your favorite? I think my favorite of the #jerseylibrarians tweets are this one from @eanicol: “Starring Bookie and The Circulation? #Sorry #couldnthelpmyself” and this one from Julia Spencer-Fleming: “The Friends of the Library promise their undying friendship if you would do them a small favor.”

I’m so happy with this article, not just because I’m in it, but because romance is on the front page in a positive article with a collection of quotes and comments from booksellers, publishers, and, anchored on either end of the article, romance readers.

Sarah Wendell, blogger and co-author of “Beyond Heaving Bosoms,” is passionate about romance novels.

Except for the covers, with their images of sinewy limbs, flowing, Fabio-esque locks or, as she put it, “the mullets and the man chests.”

“They are not always something that you are comfortable holding in your hand in public,” Ms. Wendell said.

So she began reading e-books, escaping the glances and the imagined snickers from strangers on the subway, and joining the many readers who have traded the racy covers of romance novels for the discretion of digital books.

If the e-reader is the digital equivalent of the brown-paper wrapper, the romance reader is a little like the Asian carp: insatiable and unstoppable. Together, it turns out, they are a perfect couple. Romance is now the fastest-growing segment of the e-reading market, ahead of general fiction, mystery and science fiction, according to data from Bowker, a research organization for the publishing industry.

Hooray for romance!

“It’s a lifestyle for me, but I give all the credit to my mom for making [me] this way,” he says, with a humility befitting one of his romance Romeos. But if his workout regimen could make many a fitness freak swoon, it’s his fantasy-inducing face that has romance readers’ loins quivering.

“This guy’s very special,” says Sarah Wendell, co-founder of the romance review site Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. “There are only a handful of people you see over and over again that become an icon in the romance-novel cover world.”

Wendell notes that publishers usually put Adams’ entire head on covers, a rarity in the “decapitated-male-model central of the romance novel aisle.” And with romance fiction sales totaling $1.36 billion in 2009, according to the Romance Writers of America, the choice of cover stud is crucial.

“The cover is a very big draw, especially for impulse shoppers,” says Wendell. “If you’re very lucky, you’ll get pectoral muscles that could shelter you under a rainstorm.”

I wish the caption hadn’t labeled him a “professional beefcake,” as clearly Adams works very hard at his job and at staying in shape.

What floored me? This man is 43 years old! He can climb 183 flights of stairs in a single hour and leap tall bicycles in a single bound and he is 43? I need to go work out. That is awesome – way to go, sir.