I was completely blown away by the number of people who applied for the reviewer position on All Things Urban Fantasy. I was hoping for maybe ten applicants to choose from, I ended up with 35! Which in turn made my choice all the more difficult because everyone who applied was not only qualified, but truly passionate about about books (specifically paranormal fiction).
I ended up with four who:
- Lived in the US (due shipping costs)
- Had eReaders or were willing to read ebooks
- Were veterans when it came to paranormal fiction
- Had review experience
- Also had blogging experience
So I asked myself a series of questions:
- Whose reviews helped me decide if I wanted to buy a book or not?
- Whose review style had the clearest voice that was engaging and invited trust?
- Who best understood the difference between reviewing a book and summarizing a book?
- Who would compliment my taste/style but not clone it?
- Who would bring new authors/titles to the blog?
After all that…I had a clear choice and I think she’s going to be a great addition to All Things Urban Fantasy:
So now you know how I chose Julia, but to give you a better idea of her personality that ultimately tipped the scales in her favor, I asked Julia to introduce herself to everyone before her first review, which is going to be for WILD LIGHT by Marjorie M. Liu (I can’t wait to hear what she thought):
Meet Julia
I'm closer to thirty-something than twenty-something, but specificity isn't everything (obviously, or I wouldn't equivocating with "-something"). Despite wandering across genres, it's apparent I have a definite book "type": a strong female voice, whether it's urban fantasy, romance, elves and unicorns or murder and mystery. On the paranormal side of things, Patricia Briggs, Kim Harrison, Ilona Andrews, Charlaine Harris, and Nalini Singh are all on my "insta-buy" list. One of my favorite past times is to ask people what books they’ve enjoyed in the past and try to predict something new they might like; kind of a home grown, Netflix-esque “You may also like…” game. All of these things combine to make me very excited to join the All Things Urban Fantasy team!
From a personal library management perspective, I've spent my whole life reading under school desks, in grocery store lines, and on a few guilty occasions, at red lights. This all-terrain, guerilla style reading has led to my current book management m.o.: buy the eBook first, for easy, opportunistic reading and the thrill of instant gratification (*click*, *click*, is it here yet?). The books I love I also buy in hardback, the better to hoard them, er… I mean, “share with friends”. My double dip approach to book buying means I don’t have to pay any attention to the climbing numbers on my Delicious Library screen and I can tell the book police with complete honesty, “I have no idea how many books I own.”
Most of my favorite memories revolve around books, to the point where I met my husband, got engaged, and took wedding pictures at our local library. As my older sister pointed out, any man can catch my attention in a building filled with books must be the love of my life. I’d say the years since our marriage support her logic, as our house is filled our books, his pets, my loud laughter, and an earnest Border Collie mix that works hard to keep us all safe and sound.
