Today, I met for breakfast with a bunch of fellow romance lovers who also are big fans of blogging. When we could tear ourselves away from the eats, we each spoke about our love for the genre, how we came to know one another, and shared our dream for the next step in our careers. Authors present included mistress of the Highland novel, Hannah Howell, historical authors Anna Campbell, Jenna Petersen, Vanessa Kelly, Monica Burns,Miranda Neville and Delilah Marvelle. Newly pubbed Jessa Slade -- she of the hot debut cover -- and Debbie Mazzuca and Anna DeStefano also hung with us. .
In addition to authors and publicity guru LeeAnn Lessard, several women whom I think of as "blog celebrity super-readers" attended -- including PJ and Gannon. Super readers are women who've become well known to myself and other folks who write about romance online because these readers know a ton about romance, and take time to visit our blogs and site, and enjoy hanging with our communities, sharing their love of romance and just kinda "sharing the love.
Barbara Vey of Publisher's Weekly "Beyond Her Blog" was in the house as well, along with her blurb writer, Joyann. Babs is a great friend who's a fan of romance as well as all genre fiction -- an advocate of author and reader alike, and a chick who digs finding clever, positive ways to get folks to have fun while talking books. She declared generously that, while she is the "Princess of Nice," she concedes I am the Queen. Perhaps a swank tiara comes with that title. I'd like a tiara.
I'm off to lunch with author Gia Dawn, who 'won' the nosh with me in the awesome Brenda Novak Online Auction for Diabetes Research. This year the auction raised more than $250K! Later this afternoon Suz Brockmann and I will hook up, and I'll see if she'll dish some scoop.
What are you the "Princess" or "Queen" of? What online charity fund raisers do you like to participate in?
I'm looking forward to reading Gia's e-books. She was explaining the her Medieval heroes are very gritty, and, man, that does it for me! 