New Blogger Alert: Meet Kristina!

Remember a few months ago when we posted a want ad for a new blogger?  Well we had a TON of amazingly enthusiastic paranormal lovers apply which meant Julia and I had a terrible time trying to pick just one.  It took much longer than we’d thought to finally choose, but we are thrilled with how it’s turned out. 

We’ve been putting our new blogger through ATUF boot camp over the past month which included a crash course in Windows Live Writer, review structure, Rafflecopter, guest author posts, giveaways,  Amazon & Book Depository affiliates, ATUF Goodreads account, and about a million other things…and she didn’t run screaming from us.  We’re still in shock over that.  But it’s a good shock, because we really, really want to keep her

Our new blogger will be reviewing a couple books a month, but initially she’ll be working on non-review posts (giveaways, guest posts, and the Hot Off the Press monthly posts—I’ll still be writing my TBR Pile conversations with those), and lending her oh-so-skilled hands to whatever needs handling. 

Are you read to meet…………

Kristina!

We’ll let Kristina tell you a little bit about herself:

Wherever I go, I always have a book on hand just in case I need to wait somewhere for awhile.  I have even been known to pull a book out of nowhere and start reading during lulls in activity at movie and game nights with friends.  Even in high school a fiction book of some sort was always somewhere in my ‘50-pound’ book bag.  Eventually that book bag became a purse that must always be big enough to fit a book…or two.  Now that technology has advanced, my purse tends to hold my trusty Nook.  E-books are wonderful but I still love haunting the local library and bookstores for physical books as there is always something special or even nostalgic about taking a solid book home with me to spend the evening with.

My reading habit (or ‘addiction’ as I call it) started with mystery novels, most of which to be honest, consisted of Nancy Drew books.  Eventually I discovered more intricate mystery novels and other genres of literature.  My foray into the fantasy section of the library started out with Tolkien and eventually I sought out other books in the same vein as Lord of the Rings.  I came to the urban fantasy/paranormal romance genres through constant recommendations of these types of books by various friends. I never really moved toward this genre on my own as I’d never heard of the genre before and I was hesitant on whether I’d even like the general concepts set in urban fantasy.  Eventually I caved to peer pressure and picked up my first urban fantasy book; Kelley Armstrong’s BITTEN.  I fell in love with it and reassessed my thinking on urban fantasy placing it on par with my love for the mystery genre. 

Some authors that end up with permanent positions on my ‘to be read whenever their next book comes out’ pile are Patricia Briggs, Kelley Armstrong, Ilona Andrews, and Carrie Vaughn.  I love discovering new authors and new worlds and I am excited to be joining All Things Urban Fantasy.