Less Than Three Press' Way To Your Heart Birthday Blog hop
Happy 4th birthday to Less Than Three Press! To celebrate, they're giving away some delightful prizes (see master post here), and they've invited their authors to participate in a blog hop based on their slogan, "The Way To Your Heart." (Lots of those authors are giving things away too, so by all means go around and visit! Links can, once again, be found in the master post.)
So what is the way to my heart? What do I really love?
Oh, what an enormous list this could be...
Family. Food. Stories. Words. Etymology. Linguistics. History. Music. Trivia. Teaching. My students. Learning new things. Getting my hair cut. Shall I go on?
The list of things I don't love is significantly shorter, and perhaps more surprising. Although some of the surprise may lie in what's not on the "don't like" list (e.g., I honestly really enjoy going to the dentist--dental cleanings are like pedicures for my mouth), most of the unexpected lies in what is on the list. In light of what LT3 publishes, here are a few things you might be surprised to learn:
1. I don't generally like fantasy, except maybe children's lit or YA. Unless it's Neil Gaiman, I usually steer clear.
2. I don't often like to read sci-fi. A cheesy SyFy Original Movie on a Saturday afternoon? Yes please. A little Star Trek: TNG? Absolutely. It has Patrick Stewart in it. But reading sci-fi? Yawn + skepticism about the sci part of the fi = not going to be replacing brown paper packages tied up with string on the list of my favorite things.
3. I don't like paranormal at all. Just the words "vampire" and "shifter" makes me cringe and involuntarily wrinkle my nose.
While I'm making my confessions, I might as well admit that I've never read any manga, I can count the number of hours I've spent playing any kind of video game on about 3 fingers, and I've never seen so much as a single episode of Doctor Who, Sherlock, Merlin, or Teen Wolf.
So what on earth am I doing buying books from, copy editing for, and occasionally writing for a press like LT3? Quite simply, the answer is that they've made me enjoy things I thought I didn't like.
The first ebook I ever bought was Sasha L. Miller's Living Words, which is about a mage and his apprentice(s). It's most definitely fantasy, and yet every time I'm sick, I grab my copy along with a giant mug of tea and a box of kleenex, and I hunker down on the couch to enjoy my favorite medicine. I read Megan Derr's Poison, the fourth book in the Lost Gods series, as soon as it came out despite a cornea so severely abraded I couldn't open that eye for almost a week despite the steroid drops and antibiotic drops I had to put in every four hours. Again, clearly fantasy, but a series I devoured and look forward to reading again from beginning to end. And although I could make excuses for how those books don't fall into the type of fantasy I generally dislike, there's no excuse for Bound, which contains several of the things that drive me crazy and bore me about typical mainstream fantasy: complicated, made up sociopolitical geography; cast of thousands; backdrop of war, blah blah blah... And yet I love it. The creativity of the premise of magic as a drug, and oh, the characters! Excuse me for a moment while I remember how much I love them all, one by one. As for sci-fi, the same principle applies. Kidnapped, Meant to Be, and Signal to Noise are just hanging out permanently on my ereader for ease of rereading whenever the urge strikes. My blanket hatred for vampires, werewolves, and the paranormal? Torn to shreds by a serial called Dance in the Dark that I put off reading until it was almost over because, seriously, the blurb contains everything I'm not interested in at all... and then I stayed up until 3 am, unable to stop until I was caught up. Since then, I've realized I need to modify my list to say "I don't much care for paranormals--except those put out by LT3." I didn't think I liked detective stories either (mystery and I are not friends; suspense makes me physically ill) until I read Regarding the Detective's Companion and the rest of the Private Dicks collection.
Now I've not only read but written a fantasy, a short paranormal, and even a medium-sized story about a shifter of sorts. I'm working on a little sci-fi story, and I've got the opening of a vampire fairy tale sitting in the wings. Apparently, one of the surest ways to my heart is showing me that I can enjoy even those things I didn't think I liked. <3
So, giveaway! Any title from my backlist is up for grabs (you can check them out here). If you ask nicely, I might even mail you a print copy. ;-) To enter, leave a comment (with a way to contact you) and a mention of something you were surprised to find you liked. I'll use Random.org to pick a winner when the blog hop is done. The more comments, the more books I'll give away. So leave a comment, visit the other posts, and enjoy the blog hop!