My Book is in the Library!

I realized the other day that someone ordered (or requested) my book for our local library and the other day, it showed up on the New Teen Books display!

CRAZY!!!

 

Top Ten Tuesday: Indie Authors, Books and Bookstores!

Once upon a time I did Top Ten Tuesday posts all the time! It's how I started blogging and finding a place in the community. Awhile back, I had the great idea to do it again in order to find my blogger mojo again, but it didn't last long. Now I'm hoping to try again!

And when I looked up the topic for this week I was all... DANG... this is a sign! INDIE BOOKS and AUTHOR STUFF! LOL!

I promise, I saw the topic after I decided I want to do it this week!

Anyway, this is a meme that has been going for YEARS and is currently run by That Artsy Reader Girl (I'm so impressed at the longevity of this thing!) and like I said, today's topic is an Indie Freebie so a list of all things bookish indie. I'm going to go with a bunch of different things

Indie Authors

1. Cindy Steel: A new-to-me author so I've only read one book of hers (The One With the Kiss Cam) but loved it and want to write books just like this. I THINK she's indie... (I just tried to look it up to confirm, but I'm still not sure!) She writes really fun romcoms and currently has a book out that's in a series of a bunch of fall inspired books with a bunch of other indie (I think) authors. I want to read them all!

2. R. Lynn Hanks: She is an author I'm still getting to know, but so far so good. She markets her books as "flirty space fantasies", which sounds like the best thing ever, right? I'm currently reading her first book, Gamma Raids I. The characters have been best friends forever, and work and live on a space station but as drama unfolds regarding their work, they start to realize that maybe they are more than friends after all!

Previous Indie Authors that have moved to trad:

3.Teresa Richards: I met her at a conference awhile back and she is so much fun. She's published a bunch of indie books, but then this past year, she published her first trad book called Last to Leave and it's so much fun. You can check out  my full review here. It's an awesome mash up genres and is perfect for people who love gaming and reality shows.

4. Beth Brower: Of course she had to be mentioned. Her Emma M. Lion books are ALL THE CRAZE right now (if you haven't read them yet, seriously though, what are you waiting for!!??) and her story of starting indie is so inspiring. She now has an amazing global publishing deal and it's just the best thing ever. And yeah, go read these books now! (or listen... the audio is so much fun!)

Indie Books

5. Always Best Buds: Of course this is where I have to mention my own book! Always Best Buds was published this past May and is a cute YA (or upper MG) romance told through letters the two girls write to each other during their junior year of high school in 1982. Lots of fun '80s pop culture references and lots of light teenage angst and drama. You can watch a book trailer here... and check it out on Amazon here.

6. Still Mine by Elizabeth Vernon Taylor: This is a memoir my friend wrote about her experience with her still-born baby. The whole year leading up to the birth and all the excitement her family was feeling and then the circumstances of what happened. It's heart breaking but also very inspiring. You should totally read it!

Indie Bookstores

We have a lot of indie bookstores in the area, but here are my favorites, and the ones that put on a lot of great author events and/or have a huge presence in the area.

7. Folklore Bookstore

8. Poppy Books

9. The King's English

10. Pioneer Book

What a fun one to jump back into the Top Ten Tuesday routine with! And I truly hope to start connecting with some of you again. 

 

20 YA Books You Should Read!

(Cross posted from my Substack newsletter: Reading Through the Chaos.)


This past month I’ve participated in a BookTube event called YA’UGUST where we celebrate reading YA books. As part of that, I posted some videos highlighting a couple of awesome YA book lists.

First up was books that are currently getting a lot of buzz. The ones people are talking about and adding to their TBRs like crazy. And I get it because I want to add them to mine too. So yea, I haven’t read any of these books yet, but I hope to soon!


Have you read any and what did you think? Are they worth the hype?

Fake Skating by Lynn Painter
Release Me by Tahereh Mafi
If Only I Had Told Her by Laura Nowlin
The Escape Game by Marissa Meyer and Tamara Moss
Shadow Reaper by Lynette Noni
The Secret World of Briar Rose by Cindy Pham
Such a Lucky Girl by Wendy Heard
Behind Five Willows by June Hur
The Sun and the Star Maker by Rachel Griffin
I Could Give You the Moon by Ann Liang




To watch the video click here.

Then I created this list of some diverse books… books with POC authors or characters. With this list, I have actually read them all and highly recommend.


Have you read any of these? Do you agree with me that they are all great ones?

Lunar New Year Love Story by Gene Luen Yang
All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir
The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon
Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
A Very Large Expanse of Sea by Tahereh Mafi
Gods and Comics by Kat Cho
Love Me Tomorrow by Emiko Jean
The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea by Axie Oh
Furia by Yamile Saied Méndez
Pride by Ibi Zoboi

To watch the video click here.




Let me know what you think about these lists! 

August 2026 Monthly Wrap Up!

 It was an awesome month of reading YA books for YA'UGUST!

Here's what I read:

The Women by Kristin Hannah: NOT for YA'UGUST, but for book club. I hurried and read it at the beginning of the month. And yes, it deserves all the hype it's been given. Such a powerful story about a girl's experience as a nurse in the Vietnam War and then her dealing with PTSD after she gets home. So emotional and heart wrenching. But ending with a feeling of hope. I loved that I didn't have to go away from it feeling terrible.⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon: The cute first book in a series of related stories about a girl and a guy who's parents have conspired to put them together (for a sort of arranged marriage situation) and they get angry at that, but fall in love anyway. They learn how a lot along the way, especially how to embrace their culture without sacrificing themselves.⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Secret Astronomers by Jessica Walker: A cool looking book with amazing illustrations (like a graphic novel) that I've been really looking forward to. It's about two girls who are communicating through writing notes to each other in this old astronomy textbook they find at their school library. The one girl is trying to solve a mystery surrounding her mom's time at the high school in the 80s and the other is trying to just be the good kid. The premise for it is great, but I felt like the story fell a little flat and got over powered by the agendas and messages.⭐⭐⭐

The Killing Rules by Bree Despain: I was able to go to the launch party for this one and buy the book on that day. So excited to get to it! It's a great story that includes romance, horror and suspense. Our girl is compelled to kill, so she has worked out a system where she only kills the bad guys. Our boy is the editor for the school newspaper and he is on a mission to figure out who is behind the killing spree in their town and finally, once and for all, who killed his father three years before. The two of them have had eyes for each for years, but had grown apart in recent years. Now they are pushed together again to accomplish their goals. It gets pretty intense! But so much fun at the same time. Great story and I'm so happy Bree is back to publishing again after some long years away. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

13 Days of Summer by Stephanie Kate Strohm: This was a fun road trip story where three girls who are massive Swifties get tickets to Taylor Swift, but they live in Maine and the concert is in LA... so they drive across the country to get there and have all sorts of adventures along the way. They pick up a boy at the first rest stop who has been abandoned by his ride and he is instantly meshed into the group and bonds with our main girl. It's a fun one! If you are a Swiftie you really NEED to read it! ⭐⭐⭐⭐

A Reaper at the Gates by Sabaa Tahir: This is the third in the Ember in the Ashes series and one I've been trying to finish up for a long time. It took me a minute to get into it and there were parts that moved slow, however, it picked up big time toward the end and it for sure as intense as the rest of the books. And there's a big reveal, oh my word! Now I have one more book to finish the series. Such a ride this story! ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Snow in Love by various authors: This one is a compilation of four short YA stories centered around Christmas. The authors are Kasie West, Nic Stone, Melissa de la Cruz and Aimee Freidman. They were all cute and fun, but of course I enjoyed Kasie West's the best, which actually happened to be a road trip story again! The characters are trying to drive home from Denver to California because the snow has grounded the planes. And the adventures happen! And love blooms! ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Always Jane by Jenn Bennett: I chose this one to be my last official YA'UGUST book because it filled in a square that gave me a Bingo! This one is about a girl who works for this big wig music industry dude, and she is hanging out with his family at the big resort at the lake for the summer, and his son is there and they clash, but then they don't. There's a back story that makes it hard for them to get over some stuff, but it's a pretty intense relationship in the end and I loved seeing the boy be so so SWOONY over the girl. Great stuff! And lots of music references in this book too. ⭐⭐⭐⭐

It's been a great reading month! And I have an amazing month planned for September! One week of reading on the Oregon coast and lots of audio books while traveling. Also... meeting Sabaa Tahir on the 30th. So excited!

How did your month go?

For a video version of this post, head on over to the channel!

Defending My Passion

(Cross posted from my Substack newsletter)

Last week YouTube made an announcement that hurt my heart and caused me some reflection. I wanted to rage-write my feelings but decided to wait until I calmed down a bit, so here’s hoping I have.

I’ve been uploading videos on YouTube for ten years now (not counting the for-fun family home movie style videos on my personal account) with varying degrees of success, where success equals views. (The definition of success really varies for everyone!)

When people become YouTubers, they often have the monetization moment as a goal in mind. But when I first started ten years ago with the K-pop channel, I had no idea that monetization was really even a possibility. And then SURPRISE, that channel popped off and we reached that milestone quickly and suddenly I was like, well, okay then, let’s get a little money for all the work this channel takes. Cool. (The money was very miniscule still, especially since the type of videos I posted were mostly copyrighted due to the whole music topic, and copyrighted videos earn you no money.)

Then I decided to start a book channel, to play off my success as a book blogger, and to use the experience I had gained as a K-pop YouTuber. It was something I’d thought about for a long time, but didn’t think my writing about books would translate well to talking about books (which it doesn’t really) but it seemed like it was the thing to do, so I jumped in.

I had a video go crazy right from the beginning and I thought, oh wow! I might actually be able to do this thing! Still, I didn’t think making money would happen, but again, it would be nice because the work it takes to do a channel is insane.

All this time, YouTube had parameters for becoming monetized: get 1000 subscribers, and 4000 watch time hours (or 10 million views on your Shorts.) I got to the 1000 subscribers after a year or two (I can’t remember when it actually happened) and the 4000 hours I would have had fairly quickly after that first year thanks to that one video. BUT, everything resets every day (to the 365 previous days) so when we rolled around a year past that popular video, my watch time hours dropped to less than 2000 and have been dropping ever since.

I can’t figure out how to get views and watch time to grow.

So I assumed I’d never ever get to the 4000 hours.

Which is fine, if monetization isn’t the goal. BUT, even if it isn’t the bottom line goal, it’s always NICE to think that getting a little money for all the work might be possible. Sigh. Everyone always wants to say they never want to monetize anyway, but I call that crap because most people would like the validation of money no matter what they say otherwise.

Which brings us to last week when YouTube said that those watch time hours will now be doubled and in order to get monetized, you need 8000 hours… or 20 million views on your Shorts (and that’s in 90 days I forgot to say.) The subs stay the same.

To me, this feels like a slap in the face to small struggling channels…. even if I feel like I’d never manage to reach the first goal post. It’s hard to explain. Think of a race and you’re struggling and trying and working and running and then someone takes that finish line and puts it TWICE as far away. It’s painful and so extremely frustration.

And for someone who wonders every day, what is the point, it makes me think maybe just throwing in the towel and being done is the answer, even though I hate to be a so-called quitter.

THEN, I see the discourse on online about this new thing, and many people snarkily saying things like: “Well, we’ll see who has the passion now!” and “Well, none of this matters if you are passionate about what you do!”

Tons of the passion word being thrown around. And UGH! I want to blow up with anger!

After struggling for nearly four years with this booktube channel, trying so hard to make videos that people will watch, to keep up with the “consistency” rule, to keep pep talking myself that low views don’t matter. . .and then to be told that I don’t have PASSION because I am frustrated by the goal post moving. . .makes me crazy.



To have been blogging about books for TWENTY years, to have gushed all that time about my love for books, to have built up the community, to have led events that saw some traction, to have made friends all over the world… and then be told that I don’t have PASSION… makes me crazy.

To have struggled with writing for TWENTY years, thinking about it, doing it, not doing it, doing it again, creating writing groups that fail, finally getting one going, writing draft after draft of many different stories, going over and over and over again to conferences, and then finally this year being brave enough to self-publish my first book, and then be told that I don’t have PASSION… makes me crazy.

To have jumped into a fandom that many people look down on, that many people make fun off, that many people say “aren’t you a little old” and “isn’t that a little weird” but instead of listening to them, I embraced the fandom, created the channel, gained views and followers, was a special guest twice at a huge convention in LA, have taken three days to travel countless times to go to concerts… and then be told that I don’t have PASSION… makes me crazy.


If there’s anything I DO have, it’s PASSION.

And if there’s anything I am NOT, it’s a quitter.

But that doesn’t mean that moving around milestones and making it harder for the small people, isn’t frustrating and doesn’t hurt. So yeah, I am sad, passion or no passion.

On Reading YA for YA'UGUST!

The following is cross posted from my Substack newsletter page!

On Reading YA

One of my favorite things to read is YA books. I know it was a trend a few years ago, and people might be thinking it’s not that cool anymore for an old reader to still be reading YA, but I jumped on that wagon way back then and have yet to get off.

I truly think YA books are some of the best reading out there. It’s something I like to champion and gush about to this day.

That’s why every August, I celebrate YA books on my BookTube channel (and wherever else I’m talking about reading, like here and Instragram/Threads) with my friend Mariandrea (@books_and_bocadillos) We call this celebration YA’UGUST… the month of reading YA!

Of course I’m reading YA all year long but during August I love to hype it up a bit more. Here are my talking points:

Even if they are written for a younger audience, older people can still read them and get a TON out of them.


Even if they are written for a younger audience, the actual writing is still amazing and deep and lush and beautiful. (All the talk about YA books being “lesser than” makes me so crazy!)


Sometimes, though, it’s true that YA books are lighter and “easier” to read, which can be a balm in this world of hard things.


YA books have the breadth and range of genres, just like adult books. (YA is a category, not a genre.)


It is true that in recent years some YA books (and their authors) might be targeted to an older audience, thanks to the trend mentioned above. But there are still a TON of books out there with the aim to attract younger readers.


Bottom line: YA books are just so much fun!

Mariandrea has come up with a fun image bingo board to help get your creative book choosing juices flowing for YA reading in YA’UGUST. To participate, you just have to read one book, but if you want to go above and beyond, try to get a bingo!

Here are just some of the YA books I’d love to read this month:

Mariandrea and I also thought it would be fun to recommend a YA book to each other, so that book is actually my first YA read this month! 

I’m loving it so far!




What are some of your favorite YA books? Let me know in comments!

(I’ll have more on some YA lists to share further on into the month. Stay tuned!)

July 2026 Reading Check In

 Here's what I read (and listened to) this month:

My Next Breath by Jeremy Renner: A memoir about his terrible Snocat accident three years ago. He describes in graphic detail what happened, and then how he found the strength to recover. It's quite the story and he tells it in a very unforgettable way. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Seeking Persephone by Sarah M. Eden: I listened to this on our road trip... I book I've heard about for years but never managed to fit in. It was perfect for road trip listening! A lovely regency romance that has now been turned into a TV series. Have you watched or read it?⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow: Lots and lots of buzz around this one with the new TV series and all. So I listened to it on they way home from the road trip. It was fun to see all these familiar events from Mary's POV, but it did tend to drag for me in the end. Still I gave it ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Emerald Shadow Golden Whisper by J. A. Bennett: A really fun re-imagining of Robin Hood... a Robin Hood romantasy as it's being marketing. Robin Hood and Marian with magic. So good! ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Every Beat After by Sara B. Larson: The first adult book for this author. A sweet romance that is both heart warming and heart breaking. Set in a Swedish bakery about a girl who is struggling with the aftermath of getting a heart transplant. She meets the cousin of her roommate and sparks fly, in all the ways both good and bad. I loved it! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

That's what I read! How about you! This month of August is YA reading for me... YA'GUST! (More on that in another post.) I can't wait to get to a bunch of books I've been neglecting.

Here's a few pictures of what I've been up to this past month.

Three years old!

Wedding number 2 of the month!

The finale of our trip... sunset on the beach while flying kites. So perfect!

Wedding number 1 of the month, which turned out to be a sibling trip!

Lots of grandkid tending!