Tag Archives: Robert Petkoff

Uncategorized

Comfort Reads

Leave a comment

We all have comfort reads. Those books that we read again and again when we either love so much we want to live in those books or we can’t find anything else and those are a good place to revisit.

I have a couple. And by “a couple”-I mean a couple books AND a couple of series. There are categories, because of course there are. I love books! There are too many to love only one.

Physical Books

First and always is Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. i can’t even tell you how many times I’ve read this book. I have several copies with pretty bindings/covers but that’s not the one I go to. I always go to my original hard back copy that I bought in 1998 from Barnes and Noble. It smells wonderful and the pages are all yellowed from age. Part of my comfort read is the story but it’s also the book itself. The feel and smell of the book brings me back to the first time I read it and makes it fun all over again. This is the only book I actually reread in the physical form.

Audiobooks

This for me is Lead by Kylie Scott. This is the third in the Stage Dive series. There are four books in this series and a few spin offs. this one though, does it for me. I’m not even sure what it is that does it for me but this combination of self-loathing in the hero, the less than picture-perfect heroine who is underestimated. I’ve never actually read this book but I’ve listened to it about a thousand times. Every time I go in, I just let my friends know that I’m visiting Jimmy and those who know . . . know.

Series

Kate Daniels by Ilona Andrews. I have both read the physical books, ebooks, put tab markers in my favorite parts to reread, and listened to these MULITPLE times. They’re just delightful. The characters are so well developed and the world buliding is amazing and so rich. I’m 43 . . . going on 44 and as a writer, I want to be like them when I grow up. The Long and short of this, buy all of these books (including the spin offs).

Immortals After Dark by Kresley Cole. This is a series that I have both in physical book format and audiobook. i have a few on ebook but not all of them. I prefer physical books to ebooks. Okay, to be fair, these books are like crack. I, of course, have my favorites: Lothaire, Shadow’s Claim, Pleasures of a Dark Prince, and Dark Desires After Dusk; but there are like 20 of these things and I’ve listened to them more than once. I think Lothaire and Nix might be my favorite characters EVER. Plus, the audiobooks have the added benefit of being read by Robert Petkoff and he’s just amazing.

Buy all these books!

What are your comfort reads?

Uncategorized

Fates Mates and Podcasts

Leave a comment

I’ve started listening to the Fated Mates podcast on Audible with Sarah MacLean and Jen Prokop which is a romance oriented podcast that started out discussing Kresley Cole IAD books and branched out. This is why i started listening . . . I love Kresley Cole. She is a must purchase in multiple formats whenever a new book comes out. Don’t judge me. I need them in physical form for my bookshelf, cause I do. AND I need the audio because Robert Petkoff is a GOD. Here’s a sample.

These books are like crack because once you stop, you won’t be able to stop. I stumbled upon this podcast by accident and was between books. Actually, I wasn’t ready to start the 49 hour sludge through Diana Gabaldon‘s Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone…especially when I know that nothing exciting happens. So, I figured why not.

But GOD DAMMIT, I’ve gone down a rabbit hole and haven’t been able to come out. This is precisely the reason I don’t listen to Podcasts when there are thousands of books out there that I would love to listen to.

Side note: I am fully aware that if I go down the true crime podcast road, I may never come out. I’m fucked up that way, perferring murder to a lot of other things. Those podcasts, I don’t date touch. Also, i get super judgy about murder; like – man that guys an incompetant murderer. Or that’s not enough trauma to justify those actions, dude.

Now I’m involved in the shenanigans of these two hilarious women and I can’t get out. I’m just glad that I was alone when one of them referred to a succubus being poisoned by the sex she was having as “suffering from the dick flu” because I cackled like a fiend.

Another side note: I relayed this story to Ross and when I started explaining the context of the succubus being poisoned by the sex she was having, he literally rolled his eyes back in his head.

Sarah and Jen (I use their first names like I know them…I don’t) talk about feminism, sex, writing as a craft but also as fans, and take a deep dive into each book or topic.

There are several books that I’ve gone back into after their podcasts to relisten to, because again, Robert Petkoff. They loved Dark Needs at Night’s Edge which is Conrad and Neomi’s story. It was never one of my favorites. After listening, I decided to give it another try. Nope, even with all that deconstruction, still not one of my favorites. But that’s okay and the great things about books, we can all love different things. I’m revisiting The Master right now and its just as delightful as I remembered. It might also be my fifth or sixth time through. I have zero guilt about this.

As an author, it makes me a little widgy to think that people might be dissecting my books on that level. They’re not. I’m not nearly as popular or as widely read as Kresley Cole or Sarah MacLean. But weird to think about just the same.