Hello, lovely readers!
I hope you haven’t forgotten me; I’ve been a little busy the past several weeks. But I’m trying to build in the space to talk about myself. A lot. Excessively.
The year 2022 has been relatively good to me in the world of books. I am still not reading and finishing books at the speed I’d like to, but there’s lots of other stuff going on that I’m excited to share!
Book Riot
You might recall that I am a Contributing Editor for Book Riot, where I co-host the When In Romance podcast. Here’s what I’ve been doing over there:
- For some reason, I really love reality show romances! I don’t watch very many of them (mostly competition shows where they do some kind of art-type deal, thanks Project Runway), but for some reason I love the setting in books. Maybe it has something to do with the easy ability to throw normal people into the spotlight, because y’all know I love romances featuring famous people. (I don’t know what the deal is with that, either!)
- I also came to the realization that I’m not going to read everything in my TBR. But it’s a nice catalog of my interests, right?
- I’ve been making more of an effort to read and shout out mass markets, because we are just so inundated with trade paperbacks and missing out on mass markets and category romances!
- I have a lot of feelings about interracial romance (which you can check out in my book, more on that further down) and I addressed some of it in an essay that starts out with Single All the Way. Totally didn’t start out that way but it sure shaped my thoughts.
- I also wrote two different library-focused articles: one about what libraries were and should be doing for Black History Month and another about working behind the scenes at a library. There are a lot of jobs!
- Have I talked about my immense adoration for Househusband?
- Just last week, I shared some great queer Black romances. Black. Not IR. Black.
- And we celebrated our 100th episode of When In Romance! I lost to myself in a fun quiz and we gave the floor to our listeners. It was great. (There have been four episodes of WIR since the last time you heard from me, but you don’t need a breakdown of all that.)
I’m going to be doing a little less writing for the Book Riot site proper, just to give myself a bit of a break, but I’ll still be doing the podcast (and the Read Harder podcast if you’re BR Insider) and occasionally writing stuff. But definitely not at the pace at which I used to write. My brain just can’t take it right now.
My Book
Which brings us to the release of Black Love Matters: Real Talk on Romance, Being Seen, and Happily Ever Afters! It’s out, and we’ve gotten an amazing response, and people have been interested in all the events I’ve appeared at. (Virtually.) (Mostly.) I got to do a program with my library and have learned a lot about Instagram Live and all the various platforms that folks use to present virtual stuff. It’s been a heckuva ride, and I can’t wait to keep meeting people who have discovered it!
One thing that I did, since I knew I’d be doing a lot of virtual events and interviews, was create an appearances page. Now you can see where I’ll be next and watch recordings of things I’ve already done (once they show up anyway).
Other People’s Books
There are almost fifty lines filled in on my 2022 spreadsheet and I couldn’t tell you a think about any of them.
Okay, that’s not true. I remember some of some of them. But my brain is book fried, and it’s not completely because of all the work I’ve been doing for the book release! No, I actually blame most of this mental fry on Nikole Hannah-Jones.
Let me ‘splain.
I coordinate two book clubs for my library: one focused on LGBTQ+ books (Rainbow Reads) and one focused on Black books (Read Black). Well, for February, we decided to discuss The 1619 Project for Read Black. It took me a full month to read it, because I couldn’t do more than a section at a time most days. The book is thick, the pages are thin, and only fifty pages of that is notes and index. There was a lot of focus and intent I had to put into reading it. As one should. But even as I kept reading that one to within the parameters of work time (mostly) and tried to read more joyful stuff otherwise, I didn’t get through very much. So I’m going to list the books (mostly things from the library that I had to read and get back) that I read beyond 1619 as an actual list.
- Skye Falling by Mia McKenzie
- Prisoner of Love by Beverly Jenkins
- If You Love Something by Jayce Ellis
- Ash by Malinda Lo (for the Read Harder podcast)
- The Summer of Everything by Julian Winters (for the Read Harder podcast)
- Faded by Lisa B. Trinidad
- Sweet Talk by Cara Bastone
- Under One Roof by Ali Hazelwood (audio)
- The Soulmate Equation by Christina Lauren
- Someone Seeking Someone Else by Nicole Falls
- A Deadly Inside Scoop by Abby Colette (for Read Black)
- If She Says Yes by Tasha L. Harrison
- A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow (audio)
- Unwritten Rules by KD Casey
- Something Like Love by Christina C. Jones
- Running Away with the Bride by Sophia Singh Sasson
- Boys Run the Riot (Vols 1-3) by Keito Gaku
- The Way of the Househusband (Vols 4-6) by Kousuke Oono
Okay so that’s more than I thought. But considering the number of books I’ve started this year, the number could have been better. And I can’t even blame it on fanfiction because I’ve only read 24 of those so far; fewer than 500K words in all.
But I’m going to somehow make that time for me. Q2 is for reading, baby!
The Ubiquitous Other
So I’ve made some headway in a few projects and started some others. The stacks of books on my floor are much smaller, but I’ve only sold one book on Pango Books so far. I did finally give in and pull a bunch of graphic novels and trades to take to the used bookstore, though, so I could shift my romances over to that bookshelf. That’s how I got so many stacks off the floor!
I’ve also started using TikTok. Okay, I was a casual viewer for most of 2021; it helped a lot on those days when I hardly wanted to even watch tv, let alone read a book. But I decided that this year was when I’d start making content, and I did! I don’t do very much and none of it is particularly elaborate, but everyone’s gotta start somewhere, right?
And finally, some of that time I intend to not spend writing on Book Riot is still going to be me writing, because I decided I missed writing long form book reviews. And while there is definitely a good corner of the world where folks are specifically writing about Black romance, I decided to throw my voice into the mix. So I decided to use my much neglected Medium page (where I mostly write about sad non-book things) to store those! It would mean a lot to me if you followed me on Medium (if you have an account) so you can be the first to hear about those reviews, when I post them. I won’t be doing many; maybe one a month to start with, unless I get really excited. But I like the idea of using the platform I built with Black Love Matters The Book to move into celebrating that Black love on a different medium.
This has already gotten hella long, but thanks for making it this far, and here’s to your reading 2022 being everything you want it to be!