Unfortunately here is another year that I couldn’t make it to BEA 🙁 Living in Texas and going to NYC is a bit too far for me. Especially going by myself. I just couldn’t make the leap to do it. Next year tho I am MAKING my mom go. She’ll be retired by then so it’ll be ok lol But ANYWAYS, since I can’t go, I will be bringing BEA to me…. And my armchair lol
EXPANDING BLOGGING HORIZONS
I’m not super huge on designing, so my backgrounds are usually premade. I’m more creative and try to strive to have new innovative bloggy type things. For instance, here’s a feature that I began last year: Beyond the Book!
I mentioned this feature in my first Armchair BEA post. It basically features some of my favorite books, but me doing something to go beyond just reading it’s pages. Sometimes it’s personal, other times its just something fun! My favorite personal ones are the ones I did one about my real life womances after reading Maybe One Day by Melissa Kantor, one that shows what my happy looks like after I read This is What Happy Looks Like by Jennifer E. Smith, and another that shows y’all how big of a nerd I am after I read The Summer I Became a Nerd by Leah Rae Miller! Some of my faorite fun ones where I told yall about what would be in my fear landscape from Divergent by Veronica Roth, how to change a tire after reading about Rachel in Crash Into You by Katie McGarry, and bookish things that make me panic after reading Panic by Lauren Oliver! When I go to signings and things, I find myself putting the recaps in this category as well as pairing books with other things.
It may be based off books, but it keeps my creative juices flowing and it serves as a way for my followers to know a little more about me. Even if it is only small tidbits. I run my Beyond the Book posts on Mondays! If you can think of a way to go beyond the book or just want to see what I have thought of for the next week, come by and see!
NOVELLAS AND SHORT STORIES
My favorite type of novels are companion series. I like them because I love for each charcter to have their own story, but I also want to see what other characters are doing in the future or have been doing in the past. Which is why I love novellas. They usually center on one character and talk about their past or into their future. But unfortunately, there are only a few that I have read. I can’t stand spoilers or even just to be teased and I don’t want to know what happened before I read the book.
The ones I’ve read and enjoyed are: No Place Like Oz by Danielle Paige, Glitches by Marissa Meyer, and The Queen’s Army by Marissa Meyer.
Some that I still want to read are: The Little Android by Marissa Meyer, The Blue-Haired Boy by Courtney C. Stevens, and Percy Jackson and the Sword of Hades.
The ones I’ve read I had to read EXACTLY in order, or else I never get to it. The ones I haven’t read I read the first real book in the series first and I just never got to it. I promise I will one day. I refuse to miss ANYTHING written by Marissa Meyer!
What have you done to expand your blogging horizons?
What novellas and short stories have you read?
Which ones should I read?!
Join me tomorrow to see my GIVEAWAY and me stepping out of my reading comfort zone!
I'm meeting so many Texas bloggers this week which makes me really happy! I'm just northeast of Dallas and up until now I've only known a handful of us. Nice to meet you! And happy Armchair BEA!
I love your Beyond the Book feature! Such a creative and fun idea! That's my hardest thing to come up with – something new and fun to add to my blog.
Holly @ Words Fueled by Love
I like what you do for extras. Things like that make posts more fun than just reading a review! I'm also from Texas!
–Brenda @DailyMayo
oooo I definitely want to check out The Little Android by Marissa Meyer. I just love the Lunar Chronicles and desperately need something to tide me over until Winter. I'm like you in that I like to read short stories/novellas that are a part of a series I love. Nice Post!
I love your background! It's adorable.
I like the idea of doing a fear landscape, now I really want to see a discussion about this! There are a lot of books you could take something like that from, but it's something I never really thought of. I love the idea, it's so unique and creative!
Still working on expanding the blogging horizons, but can I just say your idea "Beyond the Book" is BRILLIANT! Thanks for the list of book recommendations…my TBR is growing in leaps and bounds, lol.
Hallo, Hallo! 🙂
*waving from the #cheerREADERS!* Team4 of #ArmChairBEA! 🙂 I loved how you knit pieces of yourself into your blog features, as I always lament that there are pieces of me inside every post that I write! Even in the book reviews, I get a bit lost in the story & how I can directly relate to it on occasion and there are little tidbits about 'me' threaded into my observations of the novel! 🙂 I think it is only a given that we want to share a bit of ourselves with our readership & I champion you for having the forethought to turning it into such a dynamic feature where you have full flexibility!
I am still establishing my regular blog features (my big project for JUNE), but each time I find myself going in the right direction I celebrate! 🙂 I liked how I am not the only person who talks about one book or a book's theme, and then it walks into its own conversation!
The shorts that I enjoy reading are listed under my "Story Vault" as Fantasy Anthologies. I stand by each collection that is represented, (there are only a handful thus far!) but what captured me the most about the shorts is the ability to pull my heart into the text! Twice I felt so moved I nearly could not turn a page:
"Time out of Mind" by Michael Cross ("Moments in Millennia")
& “Sanae’s Garden” by Chantal Boudreau ("A Chimerical World: Tales of the Seelie Court")
I have noticed that a lot of the authors I appreciate reading in serial fiction are starting to release novellas in-between their next releases. Originally I was a bit vexed by this practice as that would take out a lot of readers like myself who only read print books — however, thankfully a few of the authors I love dearly are releasing their shorts in next editions or publishing them separately. I still remember waiting a full year before knowing if a novella ahead of a trilogy would be released into print! I ached for that one!
Thanks for sharing & I hope I have inspired you to check out the anthologies! 🙂
Jorie's #ArmChairBEA Intro
Yay! I am too! I wish I could meet some closer than 3 hours away tho 🙁 I'd love to meet some of yall at signings in Houston!
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Thank you! I try to come up with fun ones, but its kind of hard sometimes!
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Thank you! I try to put myself inside the story!
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I'm too scared to get back in the Lunar Chronicles world. I don't want to get stuck there and get upset because I don't have Winter lol
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Aww thank you! I love the letters! It makes me think of pages! #WordNerd lol
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Thank you! I keep trying to think of different things to do, but sometimes its hard!
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Aww thank you! It's much appreciated! And anytime! Recommending books is one of the reasons I love blogging!
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I love the idea of the "Beyond the book" meme. It sounds like so much fun, and it's cool to relate books you read to other things. I've never gone to BEA either – it'll happen someday!
– Kritika @ Snowflakes & Spider Silk
The covers for the Marissa Meyer short stories are gorgeous! The only companion short stories I've read were for James S.A. Corey's Expanse series. It's a wonderful way to expand on the worlds that these authors created without necessarily having to churn out a whole new novel, which is great (not to mention a nice break between the big books!) 🙂
My Day 3 of Armchair BEA