GIVEAWAY: This Duchess of Mine, Fairy Tale Sampler (plus After Midnight) by Eloisa James

Eloisa James and Julia (plus T-Rex) at the signing

June 21st is a big day for us here at The Broke and the Bookish. Three years ago our first review went up! And recently, after it seems like I have been involved in the book world forever, I was able to go to an author event and book signing and was able to cross off someone from my half of the Top Ten Bookish People We'd Like to Meet list.

I was so excited when I saw that not one, but two historical romance authors that I had read and loved were coming to Ohio for an event literally 15 minutes from my house! On the Level of Excitement meter, this fell just around the "Call People to Share Happiness" level which is nestled between "Post or Tweet Happiness" and "Dance Around Singing Made Up Songs About Happiness." Unfortunately due to some crazy airport shenanigans (O'Hare *shakes fist*), Tessa Dare was unable to attend, but Eloisa James did make it and boy was it a good time.

Eloisa is a wonderful speaker! She did a brilliant job telling us about her new book, Once Upon a Tower, and answering a wide variety of questions from the audience. Not only did she play herself, but she told us about Tessa's book as well, at times switching personas by moving to lean on the opposite side of the podium.

The topics discussed ranged from her creative writing process, to "leaving behind" secondary characters, to being a successful woman with a full time job in a field not super populated with women (tenured Shakespeare professor, not romance novelist. That has a hell of a lot of women), working and motherhood, how she came up with the ideas for Once Upon a Tower, etc. My question was about her perception regarding the current shift of as an author having the be involved in the social media/internet blog circuit. It's not an option any more. It's required. All of the Q&A was all really interesting to me, and I took away more than just information about the books. It was an awesome event that I hope CLE has more of soon!

So now what you all care about right? The GIVEAWAY!

A Fairy Tale Sampler + After Midnight Novella & Signed This Duchess of Mine paperback

I have a signed copy of This Duchess of Mine, book 5 in the Desperate Duchesses series, all of which I really enjoyed. This book is awesome, and I had happened to have another copy of it, new and unread. My excess is your benefit!

BUT WAIT! I will also hook you up with Eloisa's A Fairy Tale Sampler which has it's own unique novella and essays introducing snippets of all her fairy tale themed books. These books, by the way are a set of books loosely connected with the fairy tale theme, so you can read them in any order and not miss information. So if you are new to Eloisa James and want to see if she may interest you, this sampler is perfect! The essays in front of each are really interesting as well!

TL;DR:

What: Signed Copy of This Duchess of Mine & A Fairy Tale Sampler booklet with bonus After Midnight novella by Eloisa James

Who: Open internationally to people with an address I can ship to.

How to Enter: Use the Rafflecopter below. If for some reason it will not load for you or is blocked where you live, please email Julia ( bambbles{at}gmail{dot}com) with your name within the span of the giveaway to be entered.

Everyone gets one free entry and if you leave a comment on some entry in this blog, you get one extra :) If your comment doesn't show up right away, no worries. We have moderation on because spam is all over the place.

Have you all been to any great book signings lately? Who was your favorite author that you've ever heard speak? Or, if you were like me, who is the author that you'd most like to hear speak/sign your book/meet?

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Paula gets to see John Green!

GUYS! So this past Saturday was pretty exciting for me, as some of you may or may not know, John Green recently released his new book "The Fault in Our Stars". And as a part of its promotion, he's been touring the US. Thankfully I was lucky enough to live in a city that his tour stopped in and got to see him (and his (vlog)brother Hank Green joined him as a special guest.

I got to the event pretty early (thankfully- because it was sold out and I managed to snag a fairly close spot) and spent my hour people watching and finishing "The Fault in Our Stars".

The first thing we were greeted with was Hanksock (a puppet from vlogbrothers) who did a little act and told people to take as many pictures as they wanted etc etc, and then introduced John. John came out on the stage and read an excerpt from the book (most of Chapter 2). I found this super exciting because as I was reading the book, I imagined it as John reading it, and it was awesome hearing how he placed emphasis on certain things that I didn't. It was also amusing hearing him talk as a 16 year old girl. He also talked about his inspiration for the book, which was working as a hospital chaplain over a decade ago. He explained that he's been working on this novel since then, and it kept getting put off because he didn't know what the story actually was about. He then explained that he finally knew how to write it after he met his friend Esther Earl (who the book is dedicated too), who has since lost the battle to cancer.

After that Hank played some songs. One was about the book (and also from the character's perspective, so we got to hear Hank be a 16 year old girl also). After that he sang some of his original songs - some of which were about Harry Potter. All of which were wonderfully nerdy.



Next up was Q&A. John did part of it on his own specifically about "The Fault in Our Stars" (or his other books). There was a mix of thoughtful and silly questions. Unfortunately the thoughtful answers have slipped my mind, but some of the other questions were "Why do all of your female characters have green eyes" or "Why do all of your female characters wear blue nail polish?" Both of which he said were coincidence. After his time was up Hank joined him and they had a vlogbrothers Q&A. Which as an added bonus (so neither one would hog the time and lots of people were able to get questions answered) - whoever was talking when the buzzer went off (Hank) got shocked. They talked a lot about various projects they are working on and answered questions about Hankgames and how Vlogbrothers got started.

Then sadly the event was over and the line for signing began. Thankfully I was able to switch my letter (originally had S, switched for an M) with someone else and I only had to wait about 45 minutes. Since they only had 30 seconds of interaction time per person, I had to plan what I was going to ask carefully.... I finally settled with "Is it your intention to make me sob in public every time I read your books in a coffee shop?" He replied that it was his intention to make me laugh, and hopefully my tears were from laughter. I told him they were tears of joy because his writing is wonderful.

My spoils of war:


It was a pretty good night, Huzzah! and DFTBA nerdfighters!

Jamie's recap of PAYA

I gave a recap on my personal blog of my day at PAYA when I got home that night. I decided I should probably share with you all about my day.  This year was the first year of PAYA-- a literary event to bring YA book lovers together and to raise money for the Pennsylvania libraries so that they can build strong YA sections.

I was a little apprehensive about going to this event by myself. I didn't really want to be hanging out by myself all day. Luckily, Christina contacted me and let
me know that she and a bunch of other book bloggers were going to meet up for brunch before the event started. I was definitely excited to go now that I was going to meet up with other book bloggers!

I made the 50 minute drive to West Chester and met up with the group of bloggers and authors for brunch. We went to a really cute restaurant in downtown West Chester and got to chat. It was so much fun meeting everyone and talking about books and blogging.  It was so much fun getting to meet these awesome bloggers and authors. I met-Katelyn from The Bookshelf Sophisticate, Anne from Potter, Percy, And I (and her really sweet mom Veronica), Laura & Michelle from Borders Express in Exton, Cyn Balog, Jennifer Murgia, and Shelena Shorts!

After brunch we went headed back to the PAYA event! We did some major damage to our wallets before the signings started.  I bought The Pace (Shelena Shorts), Angel Star ( Jennifer Murgia), The Secret Year (Jennifer R. Hubbard), and Sleepless (Cyn Balog). We had so much fun meeting all the authors--despite the fact that we were sweating our butts off in that room. They are some really awesome people! Afterwards we browsed around the used book sale and checked out the bake sale and the raffles that had a ton of really great prizes!

Anne, myself, Katelyn, Cyn

Myself, Steph, James, Jenn, Anne, Kristi, Christina

We then got a chance to mingle with some other book bloggers who were there. We got to chat with Kristi from The Story Siren, Steph from Steph Su Reads, James from Book Chic, Jenn from Book Crazy, and Caitlin from Scarrlet Reader. They are honestly all such wonderful and fun people. It was such a great time being able to chat with fellow bibliophiles about the crazy world of blogging, our passion for reading and all about how our significant others put up with our sometimes insane bookish ways.

 I hope to get a chance to meet up with them all again sometime! I'm excited for other literary events. I'm planning on going to the Brooklyn Book Festival and the National Book Festival in September. I hope I'll get a chance to meet up with other bloggers!