Weekly wrap-up:

Brooklyn Borough Hall, site of the Brooklyn Book Festival (photo from last spring, taken by yours truly)

1. Brooklyn Book Festival Come check it out if you’re in the NYC area. It’s happening a week from Sunday (on 9/23). It looks like a really awesome event and the English major in me is swooning at some of the panels. I personally will be signing at the Romance Writers of America table from 12–2pm. It’ll be in the marketplace in front of the court house, table #170, which is at the very north end of the plaza according to the map I have. There’s even an app for that! (We’ll have lots of swag, too, and there’s going to be a drawing for a bag full of books and goodies.)

2. Partying Well, sort of. Last night, I went to my local RWA chapter’s awards night, and it was a really great event, lots of friends and industry people were in attendance. I’m still buzzing from it. I won’t bore you with the inside baseball stuff, but yeah, I think next year is going to be a great one for m/m romance.

3. Reading I’m joining the romance book club at the Jefferson Market Library, so I’m currently reading The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie for my first meeting next week. (More info if you live in the area and are curious). I’m, like, halfway through it and like it so far. Then I will be returning to the Black Dagger Brotherhood series for moar well-endowed vampires. (Vhampires?) (I wrote out some thoughts on the series on Goodreads.)

I haven’t read much m/m at all in the last few months. It’s… kind of weird. It’s good to shake things up, I guess. (Not reading it has not prevented me from buying books, however. My Kindle backlog is an epic thing.)

3. Purchasing! Speaking of reading devices, I went and bought myself an iPad last weekend. It’s so pretty! I haven’t done much with it besides install apps and play games, because I haven’t had occasion to use it for the purposes for which I bought it. (Namely, to have a small computer to travel with and/or watch movies when I am in places without televisions.) I’m thinking about buying a wireless keyboard because I do not have enough of a knack for the touchpad keyboard for it to be a viable machine to use for writing. (I’m looking ahead to NaNoWriMo, basically. I’ll probably still use my MacBook this year, or until the rumored Scrivener app becomes a reality. Have I ever mentioned how much I love Scrivener? So much. I hate writing in Word.) (In other news, Apple probably owns part of my soul now.)

Any app recs?

4. Writing! I almost forgot my big news! This week, I contracted my 7th novel! I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this book before; I have no idea how to categorize it, but I’m calling it “contemporary with fantasy elements.” The plot circles around an antique shop in NYC that is also featured on a Pawn Stars-style reality show. There are reincarnated gods and magical objects. I love this book, I’m glad it found a home. For now, it’s called Show and Tell and it’ll be out sometime in 2013.

5. Traveling! So, October is like this. The first weekend, I’m going to New England for a baby shower. The second weekend, I’m going to the New Jersey Romance Writers convention and possibly also the last day of NY Comic Con. The third weekend is GayRomLit. I’m looking forward to it, but man, that is a lot of stuff in a very short amount of time.

So that’s what I got right now. Until next week!