Guest post: Endangered Places in the New Digital World by Elizabeth Means + Giveaway

We welcome to BLI today Elizabeth Means, author of Dangerous Charade a unique combination of historical romance and Victorian detective novel. Please give a warm welcome to Elizabeth and read on, you could win a copy of her book!

Another bookstore in my area closed up shop earlier this month. It would appear the closing of Borders was only the beginning of a very disturbing trend. In the same week my local library announced they will soon be offering e-books for checkout and unveiled a nifty self-checkout scanner at the front desk.

Speaking as a writer who finds great inspiration in places where I’m surrounded by gobs and gobs of books and by the people who love them as much as I do…I am troubled by this news.

I understand the digital winds of change are blowing strong, and with them new opportunities for everyone. But …

The First Winner Post in Our New Home!

Hey Everyone!

We have been here for almost 2 weeks now but this is our first winner announcement post in our new blog. So tell me, how do you like the new, improved, shiny festive BLI? I loove the snowflakes 😀

This weekend couldn’t have come earlier: I had to work through the whole weekend last week, and if that wasn’t enough I was sick as a dog, and there was so much work to be done I couldn’t stay home on sick leave 🙁 Feeling better, but could use a bit more rest. But the fact that it is already December and Christmas is fast approaching gives me strength (if you couldn’t tell I am a biiig fan of Christmas :-D)

But since so much time has gone by since our last winner post I have quite a few lucky fellas to announce. Let’s start, shall we?

This week congratulations are in …

Romance and Me: The Small Town Romance Subgenre

Hey Everyone! Welcome to another Romance and Me discussion, this time on our shiny new and very festive site! 🙂 (don’t you just love the snowflakes? They are a favourite of mine!)
 
Are you wondering what we’ll be talking about today? A sub-genre of contemporary romances that I particularly like, namely: small town romances!
 
But what are small town romances? A lot of contemporary romances feature a trendy hero or heroine who has a hip job in the big city returning for whatever reason to their small hometown, and hating the small town life at the beginning. Then chapter by chapter the big city big shot character starts to see and value the advantages of small town life: how people are friendly and nice, noone is ever in a hurry, and all in all life seems sweeter and saner. And usually at the end of the novel we see the big city guy/girl …

The We-Are-Moving Winner Post

Hey Everyone!

This is our last winner post here on Blogger. Yes, you might have heard the rumour that we are moving, yes we are to move to WordPress next week! Our bags are packed, the blog is saved but we are still a bit scared and hoping that it will be a smooth transition, so from next Thursday until Sunday there will be no new posts on BLI as we’ll be busy hauling (at least virtually) all our content to the new place, but come Monday November 28th, we’ll be back with some more shiny and exciting changes, so make sure to stop by our virtual house warming party! 😀

ps. This also means that there will be no Winner Post next week, all our remaining giveaways have been extended by 1 week, they will end on December 3rd, so make sure to enter before that!

So in our last Blogger winner …

Review: Cruising Toward Love by Christi Barth

Format read: ebook
Release Date: 30 August 2011
Number of pages: 312 pages
Publisher: Bookstrand
Formats available: ebook, paperback
Purchasing Info: Goodreads, Author’s Website, Amazon

Blurb:

Can an unexplained breakup and ten years of heartache be cured by the romance – and endless buffets – of a tropical cruise? When her sister is left at the altar, small town librarian Zoe Balis jumps at the chance to take the bride’s unused ticket for the honeymoon cruise. But she didn’t count on sharing a cabin with the man who broke her heart ten years ago!

Army medic Nate Hyatt never told Zoe goodbye when he enlisted – or the real reason why he dumped her on prom night after a year as high school sweethearts. And he never stopped dreaming about the girl he left behind. Could this voyage be his chance to fix the worst …

Author Interview with Christi Barth + Giveaway

I am happy to introduce to you Christi Barth who stops by BLI today to celebrate the recent release of her third novel Cruising Toward Love. I discovered Christi this year when I stumbled upon Act Like We’re In Love and fell for the story, the characters and Christi’s writing. (You can read my review of Act Like We’re in Love here.) So please give her a warm welcome and if you like your contemporary romances to be equally funny, witty and steamy, you are at the right place! 😉

Stella: Hi Christi, welcome to Book Lovers Inc! Can you please tell us a bit about yourself?Christi: I spent years performing in musicals, singing about love and giving people a happy ending in every performance. Then as a wedding planner I spent every day immersed in romance. Now, I write it! Cruising …

Romance and Me: The Enemies to Lovers Trope

I thought we could once again talk about the frequently revisited tropes in romance stories.

If you remember I have already told you how much I love the Friends to Lovers trope in romance novels, today I would like to talk to you about another favourite trope of mine: the just as popular and beloved Enemies to Lovers one! 🙂

I think the reason for my enthusiasm and preference for this trope is quite obvious: when an author chooses to create an enemies-to-lovers story the hero and heroine are expected to have a lot of fights, banters, teasing, which are the perfect opportunity for the author to shine their writing talent and creativity and portray some interesting and vivid characters and the best sparkling and explosive dialogue there can be. I just love when the hero/heroine get in each other’s face and their discussion (=quarrel) becomes …

Guest Post: Five Simons: The Many Faces of One Hero by Monique Martin + Giveaway

I am very happy to welcome to BLI and introduce to you today  Monique Martin, author of the Out of Time series: a highly original and fantastic series which combines time travel, romance, and even has paranormal elements. I loooved Out of Time, the first book in the series and am extremely excited that its sequel was released recently! So please give a warm welcome to Monique and read on to discover this amazing series!

(You can read my review of Out of Time here.)

When I started writing “Out of Time” I had a mishmoshed picture of what Simon Cross (the hero) looked like. He’s not the sort of romance hero you see on covers, shirtless and shiny. (And hooray for them because – hubba-hubba). He’s a forty-year old British professor of the occult who is …

Review: Karma Girl by Jennifer Estep

Format read: ebook
Series: Book #1 in the Bigtime series
Release Date: 1 May 2007 (reissued as ebook on 12 July 2011)
Number of pages: 360 pages
Publisher: Berkley
Formats available: ebook, paperback
Purchasing Info: Goodreads, Author’s Website, Amazon

Blurb:

Bigtime, New York, is not big enough for both Carmen Cole and the superheroes and ubervillains who stalk its streets. An intrepid reporter, Carmen’s dedicated her life to unmasking the spandexwearers, all because her fiancé turned out to be a superhero, and a cheating one at that-sleeping with none other than his nubile nemesis.

Exposing the true identities of the nation’s caped crusaders and their archenemies has catapulted Carmen from her sleepy southern hometown to the front pages of the country’s biggest newspaper, The Exposé. Hobnobbing with millionaires and famished fashionistas is all in a day’s work for a woman on the trail of the Fearless Five and Terrible Triad. But when Carmen …

BLI Holiday Reading Challenge 2011: Holiday Read Recommendations

By now you have signed up for the Holiday Reading Challenge and are in the mood to start reading those holiday themed novels but you just realized that *gasp* you have no idea what to read as you don’t know any holiday themed books.

No need to worry, we are here to help you out with our selection post where we tried to list as many holiday themed books you could read for the challenge as we could think of.

Check them out, there are quite a lot I have on my TBR/wishlist, and if you know of more that should be added to the list please let me know in a comment.

So which ones will you be reading for the Holiday Challenge? 

Genre-specific recommendation lists:

Contemporary Romances
Historical Romances
Paranormal Romances
Free Kindle Reads

and some holiday novels we read in the past years (click on …