The Versatile Blogger

Check out what Literary Escapism received from Jess Haines – it’s the Versatile Blogger Award!  Sweetness….thank you Jess!

As with all of these awards, there’s a few things that need to be done:

1. Thank and link back to the person who gave you this award.
2. Share 7 things about yourself.
3. Pass the award along to 15 bloggers who you have recently discovered and who
4. you think are fantastic for whatever reason! (No particular order…)
5. Contact the bloggers you’ve picked and let them know about the award.

So, I need to come up with seven things about me?  Yeah, I don’t think so. *grin*  It’s not just me anymore so instead I’m going to mention seven things that have happened at LE this past year.  The site has gone through some pretty big changes and/or experiences, so why not mention them.

7 Random things that has changed or happened at LE this year:

1. LE was considered press!  Seriously. For the readers who were around early in the spring, I got to attend RT as press for a couple of days.  With a press pass and everything.  I was able to conduct interviews in the same press room as actual national press professionals.  It was sweet and totally had me flying.
2. LE expanded to include several new reviewers – 4 since the beginning of the year – and while we’ve already lost two, we’re going to be adding two more relatively soon.
3. The LE Chat Room became a reality.  Who doesn’t love talking about books and while Twitter/Facebook is a nice venue for it, a fully functioning chat room allows for discussion to flow a lot easier.  While the Chat Room is still fairly new and not used all that much, my hope is it will turn in to a place where people feel comfortable joining and just hanging out talking about books.  The room is always open, so hopefully in time it will get to that point.
4. Speaking of the Chat Room, LE had its first live author chat!  Chloe Neill was fabulous and agreed to be the first to break the champagne and test the waters.  I’ve been hearing nothing but good comments from the experience and I’m already setting up a new chat – just waiting on the confirmation before announcing.  If you want to see the transcript from Chloe’s chat, you can find it here.
5. I’m not really sure if this is a big deal or not, but it still shocks me. LE has over a 1000 fans on Facebook and Twitter individually.  Seriously, there are 1306 people on Facebook and 1010 people on Twitter who care enough to listen to my ramblings.  Granted, I’m fully expecting to find half of the Twitter peeps are bots, because seriously, the numbers just shock me.
6. The New Author Challenge did it’s first bimonthly mini challenge involving the League of Reluctant Adults and within 28 days, 52 bloggers discovered 21 new authors and read 43 different novels, which resulted in 126 reviews showing up on the web.  Since then, two more mini-challenges have occurred – Battle Royale and the Firsts – bringing a grand total to 69 new authors through 103 different novels, resulting in 206 reviews appearing on the web.
7. And finally, the LE Book Club will have its first discussion, involving Night’s Cold Kiss by Tracey O’Hara, on July 28th at 9pm EST.  You can discuss the book all month long via our GoodReads group, but anyone can join in for the discussion since it will be head in LE’s Chat Room.  Read the book and stop in to talk about it or don’t read the book and come find out what it’s all about (will be spoilers, obviously).

Now I get to share this with 15 wonderful blogs:

1. Darque Reviews
2. Babbling About Books
3. Dark Faerie Tales
4. Kindle Vixen
5. Paperback Dolls
6. Amberkatze Book Reviews
7. Tez Says
8. Patricia’s Vampire Notes
9. The Book Smugglers
10. Book Chick City
11. Naughty Editions
12. Angieville
13. Enchanted by Books
14. Vampire Wire
15. Ellz Readz