So it has been a wild ride to say the least!!! Our family spent three weeks helping us get to opening day, and we have been off to the races ever since! So a shout out to all of the Backlins and Johnsons who helped (you know who you are). Our journey to opening was eye opening, busy and fun. We have had our first Author Mix and Mingle it was awesome!, we have our first book club this Saturday with the one and only Jenreadsromance, come on out the 13th at noon if you can!

We have our very first release party the 20th of July with Nadia Diaments Bloodsucking Lawyer! Books and prizes are still available. And on July 24 we are having a Take Care of yourself night. July 25 our first Craft night! Come to all or as many as you can make!

Oh its 8;00 and time to close the store, talk to you soon

Roseann

Yesterday we put in our Letter of Intent for the store we want, and now we wait! As soon as we know, you will all know! We have started a Patreon, info is linked on our Web Page, please consider helping us:).
Marissa and I are hard at work, going through Publishing Houses Romance Authors, and trying to make sure all of the favorites (and hopefully your new favorites) will be represented! ttfn
Roseann

Its happening! Our kickstarter is chugging along! And we just wanted to let everyone know who is following, that we have our eyes on the prize! We are keeping all of our options open, and some plans may be tweaked, but the store is happening! If you haven’t given to our kickstarter and can, please do! If you are cheering us from the sidelines, Thank you. And if you are helping us come up with ideas to shake things up, thank for that too! It has been and continues to be a team effort, and we appreciate the whole team!

We are slowly getting there! We are going out and about to get the word out, hitting businesses and libraries, and even Starbucks! And not going to lie, I pick up a cup of coffee when I am there. We continue to research authors and I am designing the bookmark, its looking great! And Marissa is on her last blanket, a couple of more weeks and it will be done! I can’t wait to see it. If anyone has any helpful tips, please share them! Talk to you all soon.

This has been a whirlwind weekend! We launched our kickstart on Friday January 8th, and the excitement hasn’t stopped!!! Marissa and I flew to Phoenix for the weekend to go to the VNSA used book sale and found enough used books to fill couple of book cases! And the truly great part of that is one of the groups they used the proceeds for is to give foster kids a helping hand when they age out! What a great mission!
We are close to 3000 in pledges and hoping to end today on a positive note!
Thank you for everything!!!
Roseann

The video has been edited, and some background music added! Thanks to Ethan and Gene for all of your hard work!! We are finishing up some loose ends, getting all of our helpers lined up, and getting really pumped up about the upcoming week. We are launching our kickstarter on Thursday!!! So the next part of the journey begins! Thanks for all of the positivity from all of you!
Roseann

On Sunday Ethan brought some video equipment to Marissa’s, and after a couple of run throughs, we made our video!!! Marissa has one more funny scene to tape this weekend then Ethan will work his editing magic and Voila we will have our video! Cant wait to see the finished product, and to show all of you! Now I am off to get some samples of our rewards to entice people to help! Have a great day

I am deep in my kickstarter research and planning. We have decided on our rewards and levels!! Now comes the outreach, we are spreading the news far and wide trying to reach as many people as we can. So if you are reading this, will you help? First by donating, second by sharing the info about who we are and why we would love to have our book store. Please contact Marissa or me if you have any questions or helpful suggestions. Thanks and have a great day!

So I had an interesting conversation with someone the other day. This person could not understand why some early learning classes used repetitious songs over and over to teach certain rote skills like counting and the alphabet. This person also felt like it was a waste of time. I could not really explain in a short time the purpose of those activities, but it made me think about tropes in romance and how you could have the same trope in two completely different stories and it’s almost unrecognizable.

There are so many different counting songs by different groups of people, even with just counting to ten. And there are so many wonderful iterations of enemies to lovers (for example) that are all amazingly different. Repetition doesn’t necessarily mean bad and there is a huge comfort in familiarity and routine. Even as an adult, when my schedule is changed spur of the moment, I am thrown off and can get a little cranky. I’m sure all of can relate one way or another. We should embrace the repetition and trope and celebrate that comfort in familiarity, rather than throw it away just for being ‘the same’.

Til next time!

Marissa

Busy week! ever closer to making the bookstore a reality :)! We are making contact with Romance Authors who are independently published, to carry them in our store. If you have any suggestions for us that would be great! Send us who you want us to carry, and we will do our best to make it work.