Welcome to the YA Indie Blog Carnival!!!

Welcome to the carnival!  Here, every Friday you will find posts about all things YA Indie for authors, readers and reviewers. Every week we will be blogging about a different aspect of Indie publishing and our own experiences. (To check out a list of future topics, click here!) Soooo….binge on all the cotton candy and popcorn you want and get set for a thrilling ride!

 

 

Main attraction today?

 

Me.  It’s all about me.

 

Hi! I’m Dani. Wife to the hubs, himself a reader of all things history-related, and a mom to two rugrats, one of whom is just learning to read, and the other who gets through two pages of a touch-&-feel book before deciding he’d like to chomp on it instead. By occupation I am a wedding photographer, and by hobby an avid reader and, more recently, a book blogger. I don’t really have a pivotal moment where I can remember falling in love with losing myself in a good story, I just always have been in love with books. This might have something to do with my parent’s influence, both of whom are also readers by nature.  I fell out of reading novels during college and early marriage, due to the necessity of reading things a bit more dusty, musty and probably far more educational. lol  Then for my birthday two years ago, my hubs took a chance and randomly bought me “City of Bones” by Cassandra Clare.

 

I fell in love with that book.

 

Head over heels in ridiculous love.

 

Yeah, hubs got bonus brownie points for that one.  So I have Cassie Clare and my hubs to thank for driving me back to YA literature and for the past couple years I have been eating up every YA book I can get my hands on. A year ago, I discovered the exciting world of Indie publishing. As is true with many others I’m sure, Amanda Hocking’s “My Blood Approves” was my first ever Indie novel, and I’ve never looked back.  I’d say that these days I probably read about as much Indie as I do traditional publishing.

 

So what inspired me to start Refracted Light? Well, Goodreads, indirectly, I guess. I discovered the annual reading goal feature on there probably around March, and set myself a goal of 125 books for 2011. From January to May, I raced through book after book, and from time to time I’d write a review. Well, I found I liked taking the time to sit down and analyze my reads, it helped me think critically about them, figure out what I liked and pinpoint what I didn’t. I started doing it more often and it became a fun exercise.  In a moment of over-inflated self-importance, I decided to start a book blog as a central place where I could post the reviews I write and perhaps meet other book lovers who might care what I had to say.  It started off as just a fun outlet, but has morphed into something I’ve become really passionate about!

 

So that’s me in a nutshell.

 

Thanks for stopping by and make sure you visit the other blog carnies!

Fisher Amelie (Author of The Understorey)

Allie Burke (Author of The Enchanters series)

Courtney Cole (Author of The Bloodstone Saga, Princess & Guardian)

Rachel Coles (Author of Diary of a Duct Tape Zombie and other stories)

Laura Elliott (Author of Winnemucca)

Wren Emerson (Author of I Wish…)

T. R. Graves (Author of the Warrior series)

P.J. Hoover (Author of Solstice)

Amy Maurer Jones (Author of The Soul Quest Trilogy)

Tiffany King (Author of Meant To Be and its soon-to-be-released sequel Forgotten Souls)

Patti Larsen (Author of the short story, Henry)

Michelle Leighton (Author of the Blood Like Poison series, The Reaping, Wiccan, Caterpillar, and the upcoming Madly series)

Dani Snell (You are here. Book Blogger)

Cyndi Tefft (Author of Between)

Nicole Williams (Author of Eternal Eden and the much anticipated sequel, Fallen Eden)

 

 

Remember to sign up for the July New Release Giveaway Hop & BlogFest 2011 for the chance to win some awesome books!

 

Dani