It’s Author Spotlight time! If you want to know more about how the series got started, go check out the introduction post. Today the spotlight…
Author Spotlight: Amy M. Ward
Posted in Book Blogger
My ADHD brain in blog form.
Posted in Book Blogger
Welcome back to another installment of my Friday Reads series, setting you up for a great weekend of reading. If you haven’t already, take a…
Posted in Pen Shows
Alright, this is it, the final installment in my 2017 DC Pen Show series. I can’t believe that when I set out to write my overview, I thought it was all going to fit in one post. Silly me.
Allow me a moment to geek out over Brian Goulet commenting on and tweeting about yesterday’s post (W-O-W!) and Brian Gray commenting on — and Edison Pen Co retweeting — my post about getting a pen from them. That felt pretty awesome.
Ok, enough fangirling. Yesterday’s post ended with heading off to check out the rest of the large room after my epic meeting with Brian Goulet.
First stop was the Modern Chocolatier booth. Because chocolate. They had little sample pieces cut for people to try (unfortunately, without signs, so you didn’t know what you were tasting). The piece I tried was really tasty, with an intense chocolate flavor. If they were local, I’d probably check them out. But my money for the day was earmarked for pens and ink, so I gave them a pass.
Welcome back for the third installment of my experience at the 2017 DC Pen Show. I finished yesterday with spotting Brian Goulet of The Goulet Pen Company. Allow me a few moments for some backstory here.
I was really getting into fountain pens, mostly because you have such a rainbow of inks to choose from. Hooray for color! If I recall correctly (it’s been a VERY busy year), I discovered Goulet Pens when I was looking for pen subscription boxes. I found some posts about their Ink Drop ink subscription box. Unfortunately, it had been discontinued a few months prior, but there was a silver lining. Goulet Pens sells ink samples! So I could test out any ink I wanted for a couple bucks. Needless to say, I quickly placed an order.
It was soon after that I discovered their YouTube channel. If you have any interest whatsoever in fountain pens and haven’t seen their channel, do yourself a favor and check it out. If you have seen their videos, I’m sure you can understand why I was hoping to meet Mr. Goulet. He’s so personable. But it goes beyond that.
On June 21, I ordered the super limited edition Stipula Etruria Rainbow Prisma 88 from Goulet Pens. It was an impulse buy, but after seeing the photo of it on Instagram, I just fell in love. And I have no regrets. After I placed my order, it occurred to me to ask for pen #19. After all, I’d spent so much money, I might as well ask for my favorite number. Not only did I get a quick reply assuring me that it wasn’t a silly request, a few days later, I got pen #19!
Posted in Pen Shows
Welcome back for the second installment of my experience at the 2017 DC Pen Show. I left off yesterday with finishing my perusal of the small room. I met up with one of my friends in the lobby. He hadn’t been able to find us, and assumed we’d made our way to the large room. A couple of texts took care of that. Ah, technology, you are amazing…when there is signal.
Even the hallway between the small room and the first entrance to the large room was absolutely packed. There were a few booths, the table to sign up for a subscription to Pen World magazine, and a smallish table with a metric butt-ton of flyers and brochures that I didn’t stop to look at because they weren’t pens or ink. What can I say, I had my priorities in order.
I did stop and ooh and ahh over the ARTUS pens. They are beautiful. If you love one of a kind, hand-painted pens, even if you don’t, do yourself a favor and take a look at them. As I mentioned to my friend, it’s a good thing they didn’t have a Queen Elizabeth I pen, or I would have been in BIG trouble.
Posted in Pen Shows
This weekend was the 2017 DC Pen Show. I’ve been waiting to go since I learned about it in fall of last year. My fiancé, Jim, and I are moving soon, so we’re busy doing all the pre-moving stuff chores and errands. That means we didn’t have a full weekend to devote to the show, as it deserved. We were only able to go for part of the day on Saturday.
I didn’t think I had any real expectations before the show. When we got there, though, I realized that I had formed expectations because they were blown completely out of the water. The show was much bigger, and MUCH better attended than I could have possibly imagined. There was so much to see that I’ll be dividing my overview of the show into three pieces. Stay tuned for the other two!
We met three friends there, all of whom happened to arrive early (while we were just on time). The show was already packed, despite officially starting at 10am (when we arrived). They’d already run out of the “official” swag bags several minutes earlier. But it was ok, I’d come prepared with my bag of holding.
The admissions procedure confused me as, once you paid, you weren’t given anything to prove it. So anyone could just walk right in. But perhaps that was just a result of being in a new location this year. “Growing pains”, as it were.
It’s Friday, which means it’s time for another installment of my Friday Reads series; setting you up for a great weekend of reading. This week’s…
It’s Friday again! Time for Friday Reads. Love you Forever by Robert Munsch is one of the first books I remember my mom reading to…
Posted in Book Blogger
For the foreseeable future, Fridays here will be the Friday Reads series (to go with the hashtag). What better way to start the weekend than…
Posted in Miscellaneous Information
Everyone knows “hashtag”. It’s a fairly young word, but it has completely saturated the world. According to Merriam-Webster, it’s first known use was in 2007…
Posted in Exalted Bloodlines
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Posted in Personal
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Posted in Miscellaneous Information, and Personal
Writing. The childish fascination of ink flowing unimpeded from the tip of a pen. Forming lines. Curves. Joining together to form letters, words, stories. Color…
Posted in News
After some deliberation, I’ve decided to start an Instagram account for the Exalted Bloodlines Series. I haven’t quite figured out a schedule just yet, but that…
Posted in News
We’ve all heard about how important social media is for promotion. I’ll admit, I didn’t pay much attention to that when I self-published The Most…
Next up on the re-branding front: a new Exalted Bloodlines logo. As much as I love the old sun and moon logo, I have to admit…
Posted in Exalted Bloodlines
Several years ago, when I self-published The Most Special Chosen, I commissioned my very talented friend Kyle McGill to draw my main characters — Elysabeth, Damien, and Shawn —…