Those of you that have followed LDSWBR for a while know that Robison Wells holds a special place in our hearts as the first author to be interviewed on our podcast. Through our experiences with him as he launched the Whitney Awards, we have seen his dedication and hard work.

Rob and his wife have always been friendly and gracious toward us. They have sacrificed and been through a lot over the last few years, yet they have soldiered on despite health issues and employment struggles, taking what life has dealt and making the best of it. I have always had great respect for Rob and his wife.

Recently, life had settled a bit for them. Then, one year to the day of his last layoff, Rob was laid off again due to health issues.

If you haven’t read our Combined Review of Variant yet, go read it now. Then go buy it on Amazon today and help bring Variant up in the ranks. Buy a copy for you and another for your sons, daughters, nephews, nieces, friends, neighbors, and coworkers. Then buy another copy or two to donate to your county library and school library.

At only $10.98 for hardcover and eligible for Super Saver Shipping, you’ll be getting a good deal and an awesome book to read as well as helping out a talented author and his amazing family.

I bought a copy at the Variant launch party and plan to buy two more today after finishing this post. Help us spread the word about the Variant book bomb on Facebook, Twitter and anywhere else you can. Thank you!

**LDSWBR is not affiliated with Amazon in any way. The links to Amazon that we provide on the website are for the reader’s convenience. Other than the occasional free review copy of a book, LDSWBR receives no compensation of any kind.**

Okay, ONE of the best things. (Sorry, honey. )

I’ll tell you why.

This is THE BEST writing community anywhere.

When LDSWBR first came to be almost 6 years ago, we were unaware of the amazing talent we would find, the awesome writers that would become good friends, and the once-in-a-lifetime experiences that would be ours.

An early LDSWBR logo. Ugh, I know.

Our star-struck awe upon first meeting authors a few years ago has matured into warm friendships and admiration for people who have worked hard and pursued their dreams of being published. Camaraderie is instantly formed with other book bloggers at socials and signings based on our common love of the written word. Nowhere else in my life have I encountered such easy acceptance and friendly encouragement as I have in this writing/reading community. Okay, almost nowhere. (Again, sorry, honey.)

The two writing conferences I have attended each year, as well as the book launches and signings sprinkled in between, recharge my soul in ways not much else can. I look forward to LDS Storymakers Conference and the Book Academy almost as much as I do Christmas. Book launches and author signings are like mini reunions that get me through until the next conference.

Last Thursday, October 6, was packed full of bookish goodness. Not only was it my 2nd Book Academy, but I was also able to attend the book launch for Robison Wells‘ Variant at The King’s English.

The Book Academy

The Keynote was given by Dan Wells, author of the I Am Not a Serial Killer series, who was as brilliant and clever as ever. The Wells’ brothers have always amazed and entertained me with their quick-witted senses of humor, so a double dose of the Wells’ brothers guarantees a good day. Dan guided the audience through a brainstorming session before issuing the challenge to come up with five new story ideas every day until it becomes second nature to find inspiration everywhere.

SIDENOTE: If you want to hear a sample of the Wells’ brothers brainstorming in action, listen to their presentation from the Teen Writers’ Conference here.

The first session I attended was Gregg Luke’s class on “Character and Dialogue Development.” Gregg gave great advice on point-of-view, moving the story forward, knowing your antagonist as well as your protagonist, and how to include backstory without info dumping. He even gave examples of what he taught from each of his recent novels. I really needed this class.

Sarah M. Eden’s “Unfunny Class on Being Funny” was the second session I attended, mainly for the clips and funny stories about the hilarious comments her kids make. Okay, mainly because I need all the help I can get when it comes to funny, though the clips and comments from her kids were a definite bonus.

I was glad to see that for lunch they were serving the same chicken and salad from last year because it was really good. Also, what kind of cake was that? Yum.

The best part of lunch, though, was sitting at the cool table: Krista Jensen, Sarah Eden, Angela Eschler, Julie Coulter Bellon, a girl named Cammie that I didn’t know but looked pretty cool, and ME. Yep, I was sitting with all of those oh-so-cool people. It was awesome.

My third class was Angela Eschler’s “Self-Editing to Woo an Agent or Editor.” I’m not anywhere near wooing an agent or editor, but as a book reviewer and aspiring author I found the information in Angela’s class invaluable. This woman is brilliant. Others have heard me say this before but I’ll say it again: I want to be Angela when I grow up.

My last session of the day was “Chemistry 101: Turning up the Heat in Romance without Crossing into the Fire Zone” by Michele Paige Holmes. I was delighted to discover at least four men attending this class. I’ve read a lot of good romances and I’ve read almost as many bad ones. Romance is hard to write. If you don’t believe that, do what romance authors say and go ahead and write one. I dare you.

I am always a little sad when a writing conference is over, but that is tempered by the excitement and inspiration I feel about starting back in on my work-in-progress. All seven pages of it. So far. All in all, it was a great conference.

Variant Book Launch

After the Book Academy I drove back to Salt Lake to The King’s English for the launch party for Robison Wells’ Variant.

Rob was the first author I approached about LDSWBR. He was also the first author we ever had on the podcast. I had read and loved his book Wake Me When It’s Over and found out he was signing books at a nearby book store. I decided to go introduce myself and let him know we had reviewed his book on the podcast.

Oh, man, was I nervous.

July 7, 2006

I didn’t need to be. Both Rob and his wife were friendly and gracious. He signed my book and the rest is history. Thanks to our association with Rob, we have been able to podcast at each Whitney Award Gala, and when he asked us to present an award for the first time you’d have thought we just won a million dollars. Though, after all his hard work with the Whitney Awards and everything else, it’s Rob who deserves a million dollars.

We couldn’t be happier for Rob and his family with the release of Variant and the news of his three book deal with HarperCollins.

Congratulations, Rob! October 6, 2011: Variant launch party.

Here are more pictures from the Variant launch party, including one I stole from Krista Jensen’s blog:

Ally Condie, Nichole Giles, Elana Johnson, Brodi Ashton, and me with our copies of Variant.

Annette Lyon, me, and Michele Paige Holmes. Love these ladies.

Sarah Eden, Margot Hovley, Krista Jensen, and... me. Love these ladies, too!

Heather (H.B.) Moore, me again, and Crystal Liechty. Great to see both of them again!

Jessica Day George, Mindy, Mindy's oldest daughter, and you-know-who. Seeing Jessica always makes me happy. (Seeing Mindy makes me happy, too, of course!)

The pilfered photo of Jeff (J. Scott) Savage, me, and Krista Jensen, taken by Jeff's sweet wife.

There were so many people there to support Rob and his new book.

Support, friendship, fun, acceptance and a whole lot of book love.

This really is the best writing community anywhere.

Wouldn’t you agree?

In honor of the Sept. 27 release of SLAYERS by CJ Hill, Janette Rallison is giving away a book a day until it’s released. Visit http://cjhillbooks.blogspot.com/ for your chance to win!

I’m not just talking about the official “First Day of Summer” that we’ve been counting down to on the LDSWBR blog. I’m talking about the sun! I think I saw the number 90 on the forecast for this week, too.

Speaking (reading?) of the Countdown to Summer 2011- there are less than three days left to enter to win one of 14 great summer reads as well as the $50 Amazon Gift Card up for grabs.

The fastest and easiest way to get the most entries is to comment on each Countdown to Summer 2011 author post. We have really great authors presenting really great books so go check it out, leave a comment and who knows- maybe you’ll be one of our lucky winners!

And speaking (ok, reading) of great books, The Golden Spiral by Lisa Mangum is now available in paperback!

That’s right. Book 2 in Lisa’s highly-enjoyable The Hourglass Door series has been released in paperback and is available for purchase from Deseret Book, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.

In May of this year, The Golden Spiral was awarded the Silver Medal for the Benjamin Franklin Award and is currently a finalist for the ForeWord Review’s 2010 YA Book of the Year Award.

Congratulations, Lisa!

Lisa also donated a hardcover copy of Book 3 in The Hourglass Door trilogy, The Forgotten Locket, as a prize in our Countdown to Summer 2011 contest. Thanks, Lisa!

So go comment right now. The LDSWBR Countdown to Summer 2011 contest ends Friday, June 24, 2011 at Midnight MDT!

Sheila, Mindy and I had a blast hanging with book people we knew as well as meeting new book friends. Part of me can’t believe I’m posting so many photos with me in them, but I’m over it. It was way too much fun not to share these photos with you.

Shanda, Mindy, Sheralyn Pratt, Lisa Mangum, Sheila, and Natasha (@mawbooks - she started this whole thing)

Shanda, LT Elliot, Jenn Johansson, and Nichole Giles

Shanda & Margot Hovley (aka @the_damsel)

Shanda & beautiful Penelope from @ReadingFever

Kim from Good Clean Reads, Heather (@FireIcePhotos) & me. Again.

Nichole Giles, Sheralyn Pratt, Sheila, Christy (@dearestdreams), Shanda & Mindy

Bree Despain, Debbie (@cranberryfries), Sheila, Shanda & Mindy

See what I mean? Too fun! Thanks to everyone who organized the social. We had a great time & we’re looking forward to the next one.

Well, guess what came today!

Woohoo! Check it out- courtesy of my good friend, Sarah M. Eden in honor of her latest book release, The Kiss of a Stranger, which I bought last week in anticipation of completing my Whitney judging.

On this frigid day I plan on settling by the fire with my new book and my new mug full of hot chocolate. Sigh. I’m in my own little corner of reader heaven.

Thank you, Sarah!

Since it was Bloggiesta these past three days, it was the perfect time to hunker down and completely redo the entire podcast blog. After hours, and hours, and hours, the new place looks AWESOME. Don’t you think? It’s just my opinion of course. Kind of like how every mom thinks her baby’s the cutest – because it is.

By the way, if you subscribed to LDSWBR through blogger/blogspot (ldswbr.blogspot.com) please update your reader feed to: http://feeds.feedburner.com/LDSWomensBookReview

If you get the LDSWBR blogspot posts in email, please re-subscribe here on this blog so you won’t miss a thing.

Now for a quick list of the extreme blog makeover to-dos that we crossed off our list:

• Created a new logo using original creative work and free commercial-use fonts. I spent about 6 hours taking photos, manipulating them in Photoshop, and formatting it for the new theme. Add another 1-2 hours for the blog button, since by the time I made the button I wasn’t tracking my time anymore.

• Tweaked the new theme on the test site for 12-15+ hours, learning what did what and alternately getting confused and frustrated followed by exclamations of amazement and awe every time we discovered something cool. We did a lot of experimenting as well as finalizing the settings because apparently once we decided how we wanted it to look we could just export the settings to the live site and BAM- done! It wasn’t a perfectly smooth transition but it was SO much easier than redoing all the settings on the live blog.

• Once I finalized how I wanted the blog to look, I spent another 12+ hours deciding what content I wanted, where I wanted it and, sometimes, researching how to get it there. It’s kind of funny what content seemed so necessary when I first set up my blogs. It was nice to slim the side bars down a bit and move some things up to the nav bar. I did tweak some post and page content here and there as well.

• Visited #bloggiesta on Twitter. I probably spent a good 2-4 hours skimming through tweets and following links to some really great information. There was so much going on with #bloggiesta that it was at times hard to both follow the hashtag and work on the blog, but hey, everyone deserves to take a break once in a while, right?

• Organizing and updating blogroll links took another 4-5 hours as I was combining blogs I follow on both the podcast site and blogger. I also split the blogroll links into categories instead of one long list.

• While I was doing all of this my hubby was moving content from our old Mambo site and blogger into our WordPress blog. Ah, those old comments from 5 years ago- should we keep you or let you go? Ultimately we kept some, but not all. Took about 4 hours.

• Hubby took down the site for maintenance and then 4 hours later put it back up all shiny and new.

• I added pages and categories and parent categories and edited the latest posts that were originally on Blogger because they didn’t format well and the HTML badly needed to be cleaned up. Still have hundreds of posts to clean up, but it’s a start. This took 2+ hours.

• I wrote a “We’ve moved!” post on the old blog, then hubby added the automatic redirection to the new site as well as a few more behind-the-scenes plug-ins like Google Analytics, etc. That took maybe an hour or so.

• We accomplished this while nursing a sick 3 year-old. There is still plenty of work to be done. While this might seem like a fairly short list, each bulleted task consisted of anywhere from a dozen to innumerable smaller tasks.

• Some of the things left on the to-do list: make a google form for review requests; update the About Us information; add an Our Favorite Books page in the nav bar; upload photos used in blogger posts to the Media Library and replace the photos that still link to blogger; change/update links in old blogger posts; finish cleaning up HTML in old blogger posts so they will render correctly in WordPress; update tags and categories on the imported blog posts so they are easier to find and sort; upload all of our LDSWBR related photos to Flickr and add a widget to the blog so everyone can enjoy them.

• Oh, one more thing I need to do: Write a post with all the details for our huge “5th Podcast-iversary” contest. We want to give a lot of stuff away, so watch for details.

So in all, we technically spent at least 55-60 hours on blog improvements, but it sure felt like longer than that. I’m so glad it’s done. I’m pleased with the results and I think the hard work and long hours were worth it. The Bloggiesta helped keep me motivated to stick to it and get it done, especially when things became difficult or I got tired. I am looking forward to the next Bloggiesta, though I’m thinking I might have to have my own personal Bloggiesta soon to tackle the last of the to-dos.

It was a Fiesta! The Bloggiesta! Now it’s time for…a siesta…I’m going to go to bed now that the sun is up. Enjoy the newly-refurbished LDS Women’s Book Review blog and thanks for hanging with me this far!

From

I’m so excited to be a part of Bloggiesta. This is the perfect time for some big changes that have needed to happen on the LDSWBR blog and podcast website.

LDS Women’s Book Review podcast is celebrating its 5 year anniversary this month, and to celebrate we are doing some major tweaking. Change can be scary, but don’t worry, the end result is going to be awesome.

I’ll be tracking the time I spent on the changes and challenges on this post. Check back later to see how I did.

If you have any suggestions (or encouragement) for me, please comment below. Any and all feedback is welcome! Just be polite.

If your blog has been in need of some tidying, or maybe even an extreme makeover, visit Maw Books to sign up for the Bloggiesta.

**BLOGGIESTA UPDATE – JAN 23

With the help of my tech genius hubby, we have been checking new blog To-Dos off the list like crazy. I’ll post a list of all the things we were able to do on Monday, after we get everything changed over. I can’t wait for you to see all we’ve done!

An announcement was just made on the Whitney Awards site: it is now possible for a book to win in multiple categories.

Personally, I’m very excited about this change. It has been a lot of fun watching great books written by talented LDS authors being honored every year at the Whitney Awards. The level of excellence in writing that is published by LDS authors each year just keeps getting better and better. Allowing a book to win in multiple categories, if the large Whitney Academy indeed casts their votes to bring such a result, is another way of recognizing an excellent work of fiction.

Read the press release here: Whitney Awards Rule Change.

Joyce found a quote that defines the group she said, “I just found the perfect quote for our Clean Romance Group! Of course, the fact that it’s from a medieval poet in no way prejudiced me to choose it. “

“Through their kisses and caresses they experienced a joy and wonder the equal of which has never been known or heard of. But I shall be silent…; for the rarest and most delectable pleasures are those which are hinted at, but never told.” Chrétien de Troyes

The announcement came out early this morning around 7:15. Here is the official press release….

The new book, Mormon Mishaps and Mischief by Nichole (N.D.) Giles & Cindy (C.L.) Beck, is being released Wednesday, December 9, 2009. The launch party will be at the Orem, UT Barnes & Noble (330 E. 1300 S./University Pkwy) from 6 PM to 9 PM. They’ll have treats, prizes and readings by contributors, so much fun will be had. They are authors of a humor book, after all!

If you’re looking for a great neighbor gift or stocking stuffer, Mormon Mishaps and Mischief, with a price tag of only $9.99, is a great choice.

More of Nichole & Cindy’s book signings:

• December 12 – 11 AM to 1 PM – Barnes & Noble Gateway – SLC, UT
• December 16 – 6 PM to 8 PM – Borders – Provo, UT
• December 19 – 11 AM to 1 PM – Barnes & Noble – Sandy, UT

Learn more about Mormon Mishaps and Mischief on the website: www.mormonmishaps.com and on the blog: LDS HUMOR

Janette Rallison is holding a teen writing workshop on Oct. 8. For more information, visit her BLOG.

Josi Kilpack and Julie Wright will be on the road in November, taking a book tour road trip through the western states. To find out when they’ll be in your area and where you can see them, visit Josi’s website.

Traci Hunter Abramson‘s upcoming novel, Crossfire, has a cover! Click HERE to take a peek!

The first book in James Dashner‘s The 13th Reality series, The Journal of Curious Letters, is being released in paperback. Visit James’ BLOG to see the cover!

Trapped author, Ronda Hinrichsen, posted the new cover of her next book, Missing, HERE.

Jennie Hansen reviewed five novels for Meridian Magazine, including Clair Poulson‘s Dead Wrong, on Meridian’s website.

Speaking of Jennie Hansen, author Michele Ashman Bell interviewed Jennie on her BLOG, where you can also see the cover and read a summary of Jennie’s new novel, Shudder.

When LDS Women’s Book Review came into being in December of 2005, I never could have imagined what the following four years would bring. What started out as a simple book discussion with friends turned into a wonderful collection of amazing reads, author interviews & Whitney Award experiences.

During the last four years, Sheila, Hillary & I have also been through a variety of life adventures: three baby births- two of which were mine, going back to school- both to learn & to teach, an unexpected divorce, a variety of church callings, traveling spouses and general mommy craziness. Through it all, we’ve done our best to keep the podcast going. Reading is our “thing.” It’s our passion & our escape.

We hope you’ll enjoy this new format for the LDSWBR website. One of the many things I’ve learned along the way is how much I appreciate my tech-savvy hubby. He has done most of the website work in the past. This time, though, I expressed a desire to try to do most of the website setup & design myself. Except for a few technical difficulties where hubby needed to step in (what is php anyway???), he sat beside me showing his support and giving direction while I stumbled & eventually succeeded in figuring out what worked. Thanks, honey!

Past podcasts will be available both here & on the old website. I won’t be moving all the old content & comments to the new site, so if you’re new here, please go explore the old website (it won’t take long) as there’s some good stuff over there, especially in the comments.

Thank you for visiting LDSWBR! And thanks to all of our podcast listeners- we love you!

Happy Reading!

Shanda

PS- While you’re at it, you might want to re-bookmark the LDSWBR home page.

Tristi is in charge of the Story Makers Conference next year and she discussed with us some of what they have planned. There will be a few changes and improvements in anticipation for even more attendees than years past. I’m not an author, but even I want to go after hearing how much fun Sheila had at the Conference this year.

Watch for the release of Episode 34 to listen to the full interview. Thanks again, Tristi!

P.S. Visit Tristi’s blog: tristipinkston.blogspot.com and check this out while you’re at it!