Happy Valentines Day

Review: The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore

Read 2/5/11 - 2/13/11

4 Stars - Strongly Recommended

Pgs:576

Well, there is one positive to calling out sick and feeling like death warmed over - and that is the ability to clock in uninterrupted "couch time", which allowed me to breeze through the final 150 pages of The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore today.

One of the more talked about novels back in May 2010 during the BEA's, I managed to somehow walk right by this hefty novel without adding it to my many bags of books. Huge thanks go out to it's publisher, Twelve, for making a review copy available.

Prepare to be schooled by an ape. Bruno Littlemore - "Bruno I was given, Littlemore I gave myself" - narrates the story of his life from a jail cell. Yes, that's right. The book is cleverly narrated by an ape. And not just any ape. Our ape, Bruno, is capable of human speech. A bi-pedal ape who loves, longs, and lies just like a human. And has apparently committed murder in a fit of rage like one too.

Taken from his home at the Lincoln Park Zoo at an early age, Bruno finds himself the subject of many scientific behavioral test at the Erman Biology Center of the University of Chicago. Demonstrating a severe preference for human contact, Bruno quickly falls in love with Lydia - one of the research center's female employees. Just as quickly, Lydia discovers Bruno's ability to think and rationalize like a human and begins spending all of her time, and much of the center's money, teaching and developing Bruno's ever-evolving mind.

Told through the childlike mind of a chimp who speaks more fluently and scholarly than most humans I know, we are exposed to the many raw, graphic moments of his life. This ape, who believes himself human, who begins to live his life as a human, also begins a love affair with a human. I had to repeatedly remind myself that what I was reading was taking place between a chimp and a human. Sometimes sweet and tender, other times creepy and beastly, Bruno spends much of the novel's 576 pages confessing his reciprocated love and obsession for Lydia. Fair warning - this book oozes taboo topics. Be prepared to read it with an open mind, or do not read it at all.

He also divulges his passion for painting, classical music, and theatre - all of which he spends some time dabbling in. An ape who wraps himself in human clothing, perfecting his brush strokes while listening to Bach, and rehearsing his lines for an upcoming presentation of Shakespeare's The Tempest, you ask? You really must read it to believe it!

Weighing in at such a heavy page count, the book reads much faster than you would expect it to. (Granted, I'm sure it's author, Benjamin Hale, could have cut some of Bruno's musings and self-indulgent, narcissistic ramblings without sacrificing any of the storyline.)

Bruno, who sometimes refers to himself in the third person, is a creature of human consciousness. That means he suffers a wide range of human emotion - such as curiosity, guilt, shame, love, lust, fear, and rage. Much of this novel finds Bruno reflecting on each one of these feelings, philosophizing about religion and evolution, questioning the differences between man and animal, and sometimes damning humankind for taking away something he can never get back - his naive animal consciousness. It also deals heavily with his ideas of acceptance and vanity, and his increasingly urgent need to fit in at all costs.

What he has learned, he cannot unlearn. As he passes from pre-linguistic thought to spoken language, Bruno struggles to maintain the balance between his primal urges and the more subtle, unspoken actions of man.

A very well written, thought-inspiring take on what it is to be human, what it was to be an ape, and what happens when one attempts to become the other.

Mrs. Cranky Pants

Yeah. You heard me. I'm wearing my cranky pants this week. What'cha gotta say about it?

I'm having one of those weeks where everything seems to go to pot all at the same time. Shopping for a new refrigerator has left me frustrated that my kitchen is not bigger. All the cool models are much too wide. The color we need is not available in most of the models that DO fit. Grrr.....

Work is not agreeing with me this week either. My boss and my office-mate are on vacation and while my boss left me the keys to his kingdom, he also left me with no one to vent to - and everyone who knows me knows that I must vent or I will explode!!!!

Perhaps my change of mood has been evident in my lack of posts this week too? I'm going on nearly a week.. that is totally unlike me. But my head just is not in the game at the moment.

The good news? There is a book blogger brunch for the greater NYC area bloggers hosted by Nicole of Linus's Blanket, and I am very much looking forward to attending and meeting some cool new people! But I will only attend if I can shake off this grouchy bug that has latched onto me. Anyone know a good surgeon, just in case?

Review: Scorch Atlas

Read 2/2/11 - 2/5/11

3 Stars - Recommended for readers familiar with genre

Pgs:152

Scorch Atlas is not your typical post apocalyptic book. Yes, it deals with catastrophic events that render the world nearly uninhabitable. And yes, it chronicles the morbid lives of the people who have survived and the things they must go through to continue living. It is in the way author Blake Butler tells these stories that makes it atypical of its genre.

This is a collection of a short stories of worlds where entire towns are soaked and squishy with flood waters, where people are covered in an ever-growing coat of mold, where children kidnap and abuse their parents because the static from the television set instructs them to, where a father is haunted by the swelling ghost of his drowned child, and where one man helplessly witnesses his entire family being swallowed up in a mudslide.

Shorter short stories appear, as a sort of commercial break to the main events, detailing a multitude of plaques that have been visited upon the damaged and dying orb - skies that rain ice, gravel, glass, fecal matter, blood and gristle, ink...

A dark and hopeless read, Butler puts his characters through endless hells and creates a world that is devoid of time, place, and God. They are suspended in a soggy, festering globe infested by insects and disease, surrounded by rancid water, and forced to ingest splinters, fabric, and their own hair and nails to avoid starvation.

I think it is the mark of a good writer when, while reading his tales of doom and destruction, I find myself peering out of the window the ensure all is still well within my own little world.

This is not a book for everyone. Those familiar with post apocalyptic novels will have a greater appreciation for Butler's gorgeously packaged short story collection. While his prose is breathtaking, at times it requires some personal interpretation and mental decoding. The further into the book you read, the less clear and defined the stories seem to become, almost unraveling to a near-incoherent stream of consciousness at the very end. This does not take away from the pleasure (if you can rightly call it that) and experience of reading, but merely adds an additional layer to it all. There is a reason his book has evoked such strong and destructive behavior from past readers. This is one of the more beautiful videos:

In addition to his personal website, Butler blogs at HTMLGiant, and will be releasing There is No Year April 2011. I want to thank Blake and his publisher Featherproof for making this review copy available for me!

Because I Just Can't Let it Lie

When something bothers me, I sometimes find it necessary to purge it out of my system multiple times.

The Best Damn Creative Writing Blog was kind enough to publish my article on the school's decision to remove cursive from their curriculum yesterday. The comments are interestingly split down the middle - as they were when I originally vented my disgust with the school districts here.

Am I feeling better about things yet? Not entirely. But I'm getting it out there. And that helps!

Review; Mercury Falls

Read 1/23/11 - 2/1/11

4 Stars -Strongly Recommended

Pgs:337

Leave it to a bunch of renegade fallen angels to muck up the Apocalypse!

Robert Kroese, master of his self titled website and developer of software, has put pen to paper to deliver a dark and humorous story about the end of the world as everyone knows it.

You don't have to be a religious scholar to figure out that God and the Devil don't get along. And apparently, you don't have to be a high ranking member of the Church to preach to your congregation about the coming Apocalypse, as our wearied heroine Christine is quickly finding out.

Journalist for a Christian news magazine, Christine has been covering End Times cults and their false prophecies for years. So by the time she meets up with a self proclaimed cherub by the name of Mercury, she has seen and heard everything. Skeptical and weary, she interviews Mercury on his Doomsday theory and soon finds herself smack in the middle of a war unlike any the world has known before.

After millennia of trickery and subliminal positioning, it would appear that the armies of Heaven and Hell are ready to engage in the battle to end all battles - The time for Armageddon has finally arrived! It will take the combined skills of Christine, Mercury, and various other fallen angels, to throw every allegorical wrench they can into the works in order to bring the end of the world to... well... an end.

A sucker for apocalyptic story lines, I find myself forever fascinated with the twisted and warped assumption that all is not well in the land of the Holy and Heavenly. I love dark films like Legion and satires like Dogma that feature fallen angels bucking the ancient hierarchies of Heaven. Novels like American Gods and The Good Omen, both written by Neil Gaiman, introduce God and angel-like beings with human-like personalities, perhaps due to their entirely obsessive and intrusive interaction with mankind. My own confused religious beliefs aside, films and novels like these never fail to scratch my agnostic itch.

Rob's novel cleverly contains bits and pieces of all of the above - AK47 wielding, badass angels; innocently clueless cherubs; tricky, two faced seraphs; interplanar portals; and yes, even a dickweed Antichrist whose only concern appears to be where the nearest Charlie's Grill is located.

A well paced, delightful read, Mercury Falls is populated with characters you are sure to love and hate, and love to hate, and hate that you love. Whether you are the type that roots for the good guys or the bad guys, I guarantee you will enjoy this debut novel. And beware - Rob has just completed the sequel - Mercury Rises - which he expects to drop into readers' laps sometime this summer!!

Tell Me A Story - Joshua Mohr

Welcome to TNBBC's brand new blog feature!

Tell Me a Story is a monthly series that will feature previously unpublished short stories from debut and Indie authors. The request was simple: Stories can be any format, any genre, and any length. And many amazing writers signed up for the challenge.

Our debut short story was written by Joshua Mohr. Joshua is the author of the incredibly twisted Termite Parade - a "next best book" 5 star read - and Some Things That Meant the World to Me. He will be releasing his third book "Damascus" with Two Dollar Radio this October. An adorable insomniac who find his inspiration between the hours of midnight and 5 a.m., Joshua has been wonderfully supportive of TNBBC these past few months, and I am truly honored to present to you his original, previously unpublished story:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

family

I ask myself questions. I do this thing where I go to payphones and leave messages on my answering machine. I call my apartment and ask obscure questions, questions that I know the answers to because I’ve taken the time to find things out. I call myself and say, “What’s a hexahydrate? What are teals? What’s a taurocholic acid?” and then when I go home, returning from another ruined day, there will be a pinprick of joy as I open the door and leave the lights off and press play on the answering machine and hear the sad timbre of my voice, testing me, and I’ll stand there in the dark and say, “It’s a chemical compound with six molecules of water. They’re small, short-necked dabblers from the genus Anas. It’s a deliquescent acid found in the bile of certain carnivores.”

Between these questions, though, I have to entertain myself. I’ve been watching eighteen, nineteen hours of TV a day, which it turns out is a good thing because it’s where I see it: where I see baseball players celebrating, pouring champagne over one another’s heads, guzzling the stuff, spanking the asses of every teammate within an arm’s length. I’m no baseball fan, didn’t even know the World Series was happening right now. I mean, how am I supposed to worship millionaires with low IQs who adjust their cocks and spit brown piles of tobacco in the grass that look like smashed tarantulas?

But right now I’m in awe of their ecstasy. Their huge smiles. The way they speak in tongues. The whirling way they move through the locker room, hugging and frolicking and howling, “We won. World champs, baby!” There is no other emotion in that room besides joy: the aching problems that exist in these men’s lives are temporarily asphyxiated—the drug addictions and infidelities and steroids and depression and the nights they beat their wives while wearing championship rings—the celebration silences these realities.

I need a celebration more than these arrogant millionaires. They never worry about finding the money to make child support payments. They don’t know what it’s like to miss your wife and daughter so much that you call them every night, but your wife doesn’t want to take your calls and tells you not to call and says stop calling. She says she needs to go on, and if you loved her, you’d help. You’d help by letting go. You’d help by getting help for your problem. You say, “Can I talk to her?” and she says, “No,” and you say, “Why?” and she says, “You know why!”

So I hop in the car and drive to Safeway, and while I’m in transit, I tune in the post-game radio coverage from the World Series. A man is being presented with an award. He’s the Most Valuable Player. He says, “These guys are my family. What can you do without your family?” and his grace makes me cry, his grace makes me angry, and I park the car, it’s about ten at night, the store still has customers, mostly bachelors, buying razors and toilet paper and pasta, no vegetables in any of their sad baskets, and I walk toward the wine aisle, and there’s an employee stocking merlot, and I say, “I’m going to need a case of champagne.”

We talk about prices, quality. He keeps staring at my eyes, and I wipe them, but he keeps staring, and I look away, but every time I look back he’s still staring so I say, “What?” and he asks, “Are you crying?” and I say, “Whales cry. Do you have a problem with whales?”
He says he needs to get the case of champagne from the storeroom.

I stand there, and even though I’m not on a payphone, I pretend to call myself. I whisper, “What’s a hegari?” and let another bachelor walk by while he ogles the varieties of domestic beer. Then I say, “It’s a Sudanese grain sorghum.” The employee is back with my champagne and I thank him and walk away, need to check-out, and there’s a young girl behind the counter. She looks at me and frowns. I swipe my credit card and wonder when I’ll reach my limit. But I’m okay tonight.

Drive home and carry the case of champagne in my house and I’ve stopped crying, and I turn off all the lights, but leave the TV on, the baseball players are done with their soiree, probably showering, shaving, gelling their hair, sporting platinum jewelry and suits made from Italian silk, before they begin new celebrations with their wives and daughters. The television station replays the highlights from the game, and every time the Most Valuable Player is on the screen I remember his words: “What can you do without your family?”

Now I’m sitting naked on the couch. Now I shake the first bottle of bubbly, jostle it with all my might and fear and regret, and I launch its cork across the room, watch French foam ooze from of the tip. I empty the first bottle on my head, saying, “World champs, baby! We won! We won!” and I empty the next and scream, “What can you do without your family?” and empty another and whisper, “What can you do without your family?” and I won’t stop until I’ve drained every last one of them. (c) Joshua Mohr

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I want to thank Joshua for participating in TNBBC's Tell Me a Story. If you like what you've read, please support Joshua by checking out his website and books. Help spread the word by sharing this post through your blog, tumblr page, twitter and facebook accounts. Every link counts! And be sure to check back with us next month for the next installment....

What The Fuck... Theatre #3

And some more fucked up topics to discuss:

• Twitter Blocked in Egypt: and all twitter-related apps as well. All because of some big headed, all powerful, master manipulating returning president. Egyptian citizens were outraged when they were informed that their ex authoritarian president won the election by a (rigged?) 90% landslide. Before taking to the streets, they took to their cellphones, texting and tweeting their protests. Can you imagine living in a country where your freedoms were taken from you for speaking your mind? What absolute bullshit! That shit is fucked up!

• Please Print Your Name Here: Why am I just now hearing that 41 states have adopted a new core standard for English that does not include teaching our children how to write in cursive? Here's the argument: Teaching cursive is more time consuming and not as useful as keyboard skills! What the Fucking Fuck?! It is also one skill that is not assessed when testing for the No Child Left Behind law. Oh pah-lease. Are we really that obsessed with the internet age that handwriting no longer matters? What ever happened the weight of a signature? How will children sign their checks, or the deed to their homes? Have we really gotten so lazy?

And that concludes the third installment of What The Fuck...Theatre!

Review: Forecast

Read 1/13/11 - 1/22/11

3.5 Stars - Strongly Recommended for readers familiar with genre

Pgs:269

Housewives paid to watch television ads? Weather forecasts that differ from house to house? Electricity that is generated by negative human emotions? Wearing special masks when you go outside to block the Citizen Surveillance team's ability to "watch" you? This is the world into which author Shya Scanlon thrusts his readers when they crack the cover of his novel Forecast.

Released nearly a month ago by FlatManCrooked, Forecast is an "actionable narrative" set in 2212, written by Lead Citizen Surveillant Maxwell Point, who is currently serving a 6 month probation after his Watchjob mysteriously disappears.

Ok, in plain terms - This is a futurist novel about a woman named Helen who, unbeknownst to her, has been the target of a surveillance organization, and her sudden disappearance after leaving her cheating husband in search of her old boyfriend.

Our narrator, Maxwell, has been observing Helen's every move for the past few years. Floating between chapters, we slowly come to understand why. In a world that is no longer running on electricity, everyone has learned the essential process of Emotion Transfer (aka Buzz). Buzz, the transferal of negative human emotions to inanimate objects, fuels everything from batteries and lamps to blenders and cars. Helen, it appears, has the unique inability to create Buzz - she cannot generate her own electricity - and when she was younger had taught her old boyfriend how to withhold his own.

Currently married to a famous weatherman who is cheating on her with her best friend Joan, Helen finally decides to pick up and leave, kidnapping Joan's dog Rocket, and heads back to her old town in search of her ex-boyfriend. On the way, the focus of the novel shifts from whacky futuristic technology to a dirty underworld of voyeurism and REMO-addicts, as Maxwell watches Helen meet up with a shady actor by the name of Busy, where she hides out in an underworld amusement park, and ultimately vanishes.

While not an easy book to categorize, fans of futuristic, 'big brother', science fiction novels will find lots to love with this one! With twists and turns around every corner, this novel will keep lovers of detective noir guessing right up until the end.

It was interesting to watch Maxwell battle his unhealthy voyeuristic obsession with Helen. He struggled to keep himself emotionally removed from his subject yet continued to find himself feeling a strong attachment to her that mirrored a fatherly sense of responsibility for what happened, or may happen, to her.

As with any novel that deals with one form of surveillance or another (Orwell's 1984 comes immediately to mind) every author must ask himself "how much is too much" when divulging just what is being observed. Shya takes the high road and sticks only to the information that is needed to tell his story. I won't lie... I was waiting for the novel to share a little nose or wedgie picking here and there. You know, those things that people do when they think they are alone and no one can see them. Come on, you guys... you know what I'm talking about. Hell, I've seen some of you doing it... But I digress. The question is simply, what portions of the surveillance should be kept in, and what should be cut out? What makes it just realistic enough, and at what point does it become too much? And is it possible to not put in enough?

This also calls into question the morals and ethics of the "Citizen Surveillant" (or C.S.). I can only imagine how God-like Maxwell must have felt, sitting there observing every single thing Helen was doing, from heating up her morning cup of coffee to taking a shower to clipping her toenails. Did he ever give her some privacy? Does looking away even count as privacy, when you can choose to observe someone at any moment? Towards the end of the novel Maxwell found himself in a position, after years of being the one who "watched', to being on the other end of the camera, or whatever it was that they were able to observe through. So how do things change when one goes from watcher to watched? How does knowing that you are being watched change the way you behave? What does it feel like to be under the microscope like that? And can you ever go back to watching someone again, after knowing what it felt like to be watched?

This novel (which shares moments of similarity to The Truman Show, in which Jim Carrey's character unknowingly lives his entire life in a reality television show) contains people who live their lives somewhat aware that "someone" - as in the big eye in sky - is watching, but never quite knowing if they are the "target" of a specific C.S. They think that the AS-Mask is protecting them, when in reality they are not. Does Helen ever find out that she was targeted by Maxwell's group? Would she have lived a different life, had she known?

Sound like something you might be interested in reading? If you are still on the fence, check out the book trailer:

Also check out Shya reading some of the poems from his book In This Alone Impulse on his goodreads page!!

Don't You EVA Interrupt Me While I'm Reading a Book

This video speaks for itself:

Look! I Haz Button!

Sometimes I amaze myself. No, really truly, guys! I mean, I am no computer whiz. But I just created a blog button all on my own (with a little help from Oikology, who wrote out the process step by step) - and I did it even better than them, because they instructed you to create TWO gadget boxes when really, you can simply add all the code into one nice neat little box!

Here's my button, which appears at the top of my blogs sidebar to the right:

<a border="0" href="http://thenextbestbookblog.blogspot.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1108.photobucket.com/albums/h416/TNBBC/addict2o.jpg" /></a>

Isn't it awesome? I love the button design - which was originally created by a super cool, super TNBBC fan by the name of Philip. What a talented guy, huh? Please share the TNBBC love by adding my button to your blog's sidebar, and I promise to do the same!!! Just link me to your blog here in the comments section letting me know you grabbed my button so I can grab yours!

And even though I am not officially taking part in Bloggiesta this year, I wanted to give all of you Bloggiesta participants a shout-out by attempting to add something new to my blog in honor of all of your hard work!

Down With Verizon: A Customer's Story

Many of you know that I am the owner of two brand new Motorola Droid 2 phones. Smart phones are something totally new to me, and before my hubby and I purchased them, I asked loads of questions in the Verizon Store.

Originially, we were only going to buy mine, even though Verizon was having a "buy one get one free" deal on the Droid's. I explained to the sales associate that one Unlimited Data Package at $30 was all I was willing to pay at the time. I couldn't justify adding the additional package to my bill - $60 was just too much.

With a great big smile, the sales associate informed me that the $30 Unlimited Data Package was the cost for the Primary line on the Family Plan. The two phone lines that were being upgraded were secondaries, and she told us that those Data Packages would only cost $20 each... so really, I would only be adding $40 to my overall Verizon bill, only $10 more than I originally anticipated.

Well, when she put it that way, I mean - I had assumed it was going to cost me $30 just for my phone, what was $10 more, right? So we went ahead and purchased the extra Droid, and had them both activated by Christmas time.

My son and I LOVE our new phones! We use them constantly and are incredibly attached to them. That's why this next part pisses me off so much:

Yesterday, I logged into verizonwireless.com to check my upcoming bill, and was shocked to see that I am being charged Data Packages that are pro-rated against $30 AND $30 Data Packages for a month in advance on both phone lines!!!

Certain that this was some sort of mistake, I call customer service. I explain what I see, and ask them to rectify the bill before I make my payment, only to find out that there was never any $20 option on an Unlimited Data Package, and that with any newly added feature to a phone, Verizon automatically charges one month in advance. So no dice - I have to pay what I see.

I am beginning to lose my cool at this point. I tell the woman from Customer Service that I would never have purchased the second phone if I hadn't been told, specifically, by the sales woman in the store that the secondary lines were only $20 each - and there had been NO mention of a month-in-advance charge. Customer Service basically tells me there is nothing they can do about it. I am stuck with the bill.

As a long term Verizon customer, I am growing increasingly more frustrated with the way they do business. What ever happened to "the customer is always right"? What ever happened to "customer loyality" and "in good faith"? Most companies I know will not allow a customer to hang up until that customer is 100% happy with their service. Most companies I know will throw you a bone as a peace offering, and knock off a portion of the first bill, to ensure you are content. Hell, most companies I know will charge you what you were promised and take the heat for the sales associate who quoted you the wrong price.

But Not Verizon! Their Customer Service team did not care that my family and I have chosen their products and service over their competitors for more than a decade. Their Customer Service team did not give a shit about the fact that I was misquoted and am now looking at a two year commitment to pay a bill THAT I WAS TALKED INTO BY ONE OF THEIR SALES ASSOCIATES that is much higher than originally promised! Their Customer Service team could care less that I was upset and unhappy with the way they do business. And believe me - I gave that poor girl a piece of my mind.

Verizon can kiss my "good word of mouth" goodbye. I will pay my cell phone bills, on time, and at the misquoted rates. I will continue to use our phones and take advantage of the unlimited internet and email access I am paying for. But I will never, ever, recommend their services or products to anyone, ever again. I will go out of my way to let people know that this is how Verizon treats their customers.

Customer Loyalty? Ha! They don't value that.

Customer Happiness? Ha! They don't believe in that.

Huge organizations, like Verizon, should never lose sight of the people who made them what they are - because we are also the people who can bring them to their knees.

If you have been wronged by Verizon - or had an interaction with them that left a bad taste in your mouth - please share it here. Perhaps by standing together, we can help them take Customer Service more seriously!!

TNBBC Merchandise

Are you a TNBBC addict? Do you hang out with us on Goodreads, Twitter, Facebook, and the blog? Are you sitting there wondering how you can get your hands on some TNBBC merchandise?

Look no further! You can now be a walking TNBBC billboard by simply whipping out your credit card and clicking here.

TNBBC merchandise can be purchased at our Cafepress.com page - everything from Tshirts to hoodies, mugs to stickers, baseball caps, and kiddie clothes. There are even three designs to choose from!

Not only am I the creator of TNBBC, I am a customer as well! Take a peek at me sporting my white TNBBC ringer Tshirt on the sidebar to the right (wayyy at the bottom) in a photo with author Teddy Wayne and again in a photo with Harper Perennial's Erica and fellow blogger friend Jamie. Not only is it a cool looking Tshirt, it's great quality and still looks brand new after tons of trips through the washer!!

For every item you purchase, $2 to $5 dollars will be refunded to me to be placed into a TNBBC fund that I will put towards book/gift card giveaways throughout the year. There's a catch, though... Cafepress only releases the refund once TNBBC's account has accumulated $25 or more.

Help support TNBBC as it continues to bring you book reviews, author interviews, author/reader book discussions and fun blog features while offering you bigger and better giveaways! And look pretty fucking rad while doing it!!

My name is Lori, and I approve this blog-post :)

(Photo Credit goes to Philip)

Indie Book Event

Jaime, from The Broke and the Bookish, pointed me towards this today. It's the Indie Book Event, and it's taking place on July 30th at The New Yorker Hotel in NYC. I am absolutely going to attend this - Cost for a blogger is a super low $3.00 (it comes with a badge).

Not much information out there yet as far as which authors and publishers will be attending this day long event, but it appears that there will be panels and just about every genre and reading format to keep us entertained! Are you going to attend?

**EDIT: never mind. I just got an email kickback when I attempted to register that told me the event was cancelled and rescheduled for the summer of 2012... (insert very sad pouty face here)

**EDIT to the EDIT: It's back on Biatches! And I'm going to be a presenter!!!!!