All Manner of Links...

Theortetically, Mondays and Wednesdays are review days, so yesterday I should have posted a link.  But you know me well enough to know that deadlines like that are tricky for me, especially since yesterday I had a magazine interview here, and impromptu lunch with my in-laws, and bought enough sparkling wine for a serious celebration--the book release party, as it were. Wait, that makes it sound like I didn't post because I drank several bottles of sparkling wine.  Let's not get carried away. I didn't post because I was busy shopping for it, not because I was busy drinking it.  But it is sort of calling my name, all bubbly and yummy...

Focus, focus. So I decided to post the link today, and while I'm at it, a few other reviews and articles...and while I'm at it, a few of my favorite blogs. 

Here's Laura's review. She's hosting the first official Bittersweet event, in Menlo Park, CA, and I can't wait. I love her blog, I love her, I love her family. Her mom was a very important mentor in my life, and her dad officiated our wedding nine years ago this week. Laura is a smart, funny, honest friend--and an excellent editor. She read early drafts of Bittersweet and the Bread and Wine proposal, and the girl's got an eye. 

Neue  Little exceprt in there on p. 18. Also Publisher's Weekly did a sweet profile recently.

Nina's Review -- I've not met Nina, but what a lovely review, huh?

The interviewer yesterday asked me what blogs I check every day--here are a few:

Hollywood Housewife  My friend Laura (two Lauras, both in California...confusing, no?) This one's in Hollywood, and she's a dear friend from summer camp, one million years ago. My husband is a total super-fan of her husband's movies, and she and I love to talk books, marriage, ancient camp history, and absolutely everything else.

Wide Open Spaces  My friend Emily from Texas.  We were at Westmont together for exactly one semester, living in the same apartment building.  Her family lives outside Chicago, so she came for lunch last summer and brought peonies and prosecco. Needless to say, I love her.  And I love her blog--great style, great substance.

Groundswell  Sarah is one of my best friends from the Grand Rapids era of life, and it brings me so much joy to see her back in the West where she belongs, even though I miss her terribly.  Check out their adoption journey--love it.

Pen Carlson  I practically want to get married again just so they can do our wedding photos.  For the record, I'd like to get married to Aaron again, in that scenario. And I love our photos.  But I'm just wild about these two. They did my headshots and my website, and I'm a total fan of their style.

Aaron Niequist  My better, smarter, more serious half. :) His blog is about culture, politics, religion.  Mine is about what I eat, what I read, and my favorite shoes.  (Currently these.) Some of what makes us a good match is that sometimes I can lighten up his serious, deep-thinking perspective, and sometimes he can slow me down enough to see which end is up and what's really important.

Lynne Hybels  My mama. The smartest, most progressive grandma you ever met.  Seriously.

Comments

[Carmella Broome]

Hi Shauna, I just read the beginning of "Bittersweet" through the Zondervan Breakfast Club email book club. You're so right about how harder seasons are necessary. None of us look forward to them necessarily, but they make us so much more real as Christians. I know that, for myself, its the hard things that have made me so much more a person of grace, compassion, and mercy. I'm much more about understanding and not rushing to judgment. I much prefer my deeper more philosophical self to the me that may have been a little too willing to use the "chapter and verse" answers more flippantly when I was a little younger. This book seems very vulnerable in a different way than Tangerines (which I also love). I'm looking forward to reading the rest of it.

Best wishes,
Carmella Broome
Author of Carmella's Quest: Taking On College Sight Unseen (Red Letter Press 2009)
http://CarmellasQuest.LiveJournal.com

[Leah]

Is Bread and Wine your next one? I hope there's one in the works:)