The Inaugural Racy Romance Questionnaire Extraordinaire

Wherein I subject willing participants to 13 dastardly questions about their blogs.

My first victims are The Book Smugglers, a.k.a. Ana and Thea, who, having no idea of my Evil Master Plan, walked into my Hidden Trap:

I will discover their secrets and crush them accordingly

1. What motivated you to start your blog?

Thea: Ana. Seriously. We both met as uber-geeks extraordinaire at a LOST forum, and had been PMing each other for a while about our shared book addiction. Ana then had discovered a few book review blogs and decided that she wanted to start one. She asked if I was down…and the rest, as they say, is history!

Ana: I read my first romance novel in August 2007 and started searching the Internet for recommendations. This is how I came across book blogs such as Ramblings on Romance and the Smart Bitches. I was enchanted with the idea of having people writing about the books they read. By then reading had become a veritable addiction and I decided it was time to start my own blog. I invited Thea on whim – I had no plan whatsoever – and here we are.

2. Are those still the reasons you blog?

Thea: Well, in addition to the burning passion for books which has been with me since I learned how to read. Now it’s like giving a heroine junkie an endless — sometimes FREE — supply. I love to write, I love to read, and this is why I blog, this is why I blog, this is why, this is why, this is why I blooooooog.

Ana: To write about books? To talk about books? Hell yes. But I have to say that now that we have people talking BACK to us, you know, we have blogging friends and it has become a discussion rather than a monologue or a dialogue , it’s even better.

3. How has your blog changed since you started it?

Thea: When we started the blog, Ana and I were very strong on making sure we each did one review a week. ONE REVIEW PER WEEK. *bursts into guffaws of laughter* Yeah, I don’t think that one review thing ever was in effect — from the time we started the blog, both of us really got into the swing of posting. From one review a week, we graduated to two reviews per person per week, then to posting only on every business day, to eventually our current goal: one or more posts per day. Other changes are our move from a blogspot address to a full blown website — which was no small task, believe me. I’ve also become pretty handy with html/css coding and formatting, which is both a gift (it’s very handy to be able to do these things for oneself), and a curse (how many times have I wanted to throw my computer monitor out the window when code errors continue to occur!). We’ve also grown from just the two of us posting book reviews to numerous interviews (which STILL make us giddy — authors want to talk to US?!), giveaways, and special weeklong geekfests about…well, anything really (westerns, manga, batman, zombies…we’re all over the place).

Ana: Yep, pretty much what Thea said. The idea of ONE REVIEW PER WEEK was really ludicrous given our obsessive natures. It was doomed to failure from the start. We also mentioned in the inaugural post that Thea would talk about sports and I would talk about cheesy 80’s songs but we hardly ever do that. But we keep having new ideas all the time: Dungeons, polls, Popgeekery posts, the Appreciation Weeks, etc. We have a new feature coming up called “Inspirations and Influences” where authors get to talk about well, what inspire and influence them. We also decided to read more Fantasy books and we want to read more across other genres as well. I don’t know, I guess we just have so much fun and we’ve been having so much fun from the start – that hasn’t changed at all.

4. If you had to describe your blog to someone with an incredibly short attention span, how would you do it? (One word or fewer, please).

Thea: Geektastic.

Ana: (gee, this is hard, I don’t know….) Smugglerific?

5. If you could only read one romance blog (other than your own, chica — I am one step ahead of your ego!) for a week on a desert island which would it be? [[I'll start this answer for you: "This is so hard. There are so many great blogs. Blah Blah Blah." Now SPILL!]

Thea: YOURS! Hehe. Or Katie’s (Babbling About Books, And More!) since you both have such awesome content.

Ana: (You are so MEAN! ) Kmont’s Lurv a La Mode.

6. Do you sometimes feel like blogging has taken over your life? And if not, what is the matter with you and why aren’t you more committed?

Thea: Um… NO. *looks around nervously* What? Take over my life? Yes it has, to be perfectly honest. But it’s a good thing, although sometimes it can be so time consuming and there are days when I don’t want to write a thing and just zone out and watch tv. But it’s all worth it — I wouldn’t trade that feeling of opening our email and getting a note from an author or a reader saying that they really like what Ana and I do, or the anticipation of getting up the apartment stairs to see how many books might be waiting on my doorstep, or even just that feeling of reading a damn good book and wanting to share it with the world. It’s an obsession, but it’s a good one.

Ana: Hell YES. Pretty much all of my free time is spent doing blog-related stuff be it reading, writing reviews, relying to emails(mostly Thea’s), organizing schedules, checking stats, obsessing about what to read next, etc. There are days I freak because I feel like I have a second (unpaid) job. We set ourselves pretty hard schedules (I even have a white board calendar for The Book Smugglers where I write our day-by-day schedule so I don’t get lost on what I need to read next) and sometimes I even read on the treadmill at the gym. BUT I wouldn’t have it any other way – I just think it is all so awesome, I have so much fun with Thea, we exchange about a thousand emails every day squeeing about fantastic books. Books and blogs are really a passion and the fact that we have people that come over and read lowly us, that we have the support of some amazing publishers big and small and that some wicked authors let us take a peek into their creativity process? An honor. Seriously, I am having the time of my life.

7. What are your long term goals for your blog?

Thea: World domination. Becoming a billionaire off of book reviews. World Domination.

Ana: THEA. *takes Thea aside and whispers: dude, what did we say about plans and making it public before it’s the right time?*

Excuse us folks, she really meant: World PEACE.

8. What unique contribution to Romanceland does your blog make (can be a negative contribution if you’re feeling self-esteem challenged today)?

Thea: Well, as the non-romance contributor to the blog, I’ll say that I think our unique contribution to Romancelandia is that we are so eclectic and willing to try ANYTHING. Horror, historical romance, contemporaries, zombie haikus, science fiction love stories, urban fantasy, you name it — we’ll do it.

Ana: as the romance reader of the duo, I’d like to think I take romance reading and reviewing seriously (in a literary way) – I don’t let things pass because it’s romance. I try to focus my reviews on the writing, the style. I try to mention historical research, or if it seems the author went out of her way to write something in detail. I think it’s important to distance ourselves from this idea that romance necessarily = trash. I also hardly ever mention sex in my reviews – unless it’s something extraordinary, different or an important plot point. Or really, really HOT. (I am human too.)

9. What’s one thing another blogger or bloggers do that you admire?

Thea: I admire bloggers that post multiple posts per day (I am in flat out AWE of the folks that run Fantasy Book Critic, or solo bloggers like Katiebabs who come up with all this content on their own. If I didn’t have Ana, I probably wouldn’t be half as good about blogging). I admire the long term bloggers that have been around for ages and are still going strong. I admire all of us for devoting so much time and energy to a shared passion for books, movies, television shows, etc.

Ana: what Thea said.

10. Name a blog you enjoy that deserves way more readers:

Thea: Fantasy Cafe — Kristin writes awesome, in-depth reviews of some very interesting books. I’m a huge fan! What Kate’s Reading — Kate is freaking awesome, and incredibly smart. I love her blog.

Ana: The Discriminating Fangirl – a fellow geek, with some pretty good recs as well.

11. How hot is your blog’s look? Choose your scale [Readers: note that the Book Smugglers chose all three scales.]

Vegetarian Rating Scale: Scorching, Smoking, Glowing, Tingling, hot coffee, cup of tea (caffeinated), cup of tea (herbal), milk (tepid), O’Doul’s, ice water.

Both: Oh, we are hot. We Scorching Hot.

Carnivore Rating Scale: Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Denzel Washington, Nathan Fillion, Simon Baker, Zac Efron, Jonas Bros (all three), Jonas Bros (any one), Paul Giametti

Both: Hugh Jackman…because Hughverine is hotter than Bale.

Omnivore Rating Scale: Christian Bale, Halle Berry, Hellboy, Charlize Theron, Doctor Manhattan, Daniel Radcliffe, Lady GaGa, Alf, iCarly, E.T.

Thea: Hellboy — because he kicks ass. AND is hot. Literally.

Ana: Doctor Manhattan; Hello, Big Blue Penis x 3. *is a perv*

12. Kindly enter the Blog Stat Slut Box (you can’t see it, but you now have a truth telling digital lasso around your computer and cannot lie) (although there is a loophole for exaggeration, hyperbole, and false modesty)

a. Number of times a day you check your stats (readers, multiply by 3 to get a more accurate number):

Thea: I really only check twice a day on average (some days I don’t check at all, but some days I’ll be lurking for linkers). Ana is the stats slut!

Ana: Thea is totally telling the truth. It drives me nuts that she doesn’t care about it, whereas I check it too many times to be able to give you a number.

b. Give it up. How many subscribers do you have? Hits per day?

Ana: OK . According to Feedburner we have about 270 subscribers right now. We used to have more than 300 but we lost loads when we moved to WordPress and then feedburner moved to Google. It was very disheartening to see the number drop that first week to about 45. Now we are slowly picking it up again.

Hits: *rolls sleeves* That depends on the counter, the day of the week, and if we have a special event, of course. And if you mean unique hits or page views. We have four different counters: Bravenet, Sitemeter, Google Analytics and WordPress’ own. It DRIVES ME MENTAL that all four gives us completely different numbers. Generally speaking, in unique hits terms anything from 200 – 350. If it’s page views it’s twice as much. Again, we saw a drop of daily visitors since we moved to our new site. Google search won’t find us and our Google rank went from 4 to 0. But we are getting there again!

c. Are you happy with those numbers? And if so, why don’t you have any ambition?

Thea: We lost a lot of readers when we switched over to the .com address (since folks were subscribing not to our feedburner feed, but to our craptastic blogger feed), but most of them have since returned. We won’t settle until we are in the thousands….and that probably won’t be enough either. Seriously. World Domination.

Ana: NOES, We wants more, my preciouuuuuuuussssssss.

13. What’s one bit of advice you could offer to anyone thinking about buying a piece of real estate in Romanceland?

Thea: Don’t do it unless you know you are seriously dedicated — free platforms like WordPress.com and Blogger are fantastic and much less of a headache. If you want to make the switch, be prepared to lose readers and for a massive headache. Ultimately it’s worth it, but do not begin the purchasing process unless you are 100% committed to sorting out bugs, getting designs to work right, and endless nights of trying to set up successful redirects (which takes hours if you switch from blogger to a private host on WordPress).

Ana: whatever you do, make sure you are having fun. I know Thea and I sound like we are obsessive geeks (ok , who are we kidding, we ARE obsessive geeks), but for everything that we do, all the hours we dedicate to blogging, we only do it because we are having 100% fun.

Welp, that’s all folks.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Ana and Thea for taking time away from your attempt at securing world domination peace to answer these questions, and, more importantly, thank you for running such a terrific blog.  May you do it everlong.

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for the next installment!