A Bookish Weekend in Milwaukee

My Experience at From Milwaukee With Love, a Romance Book Festival

After submitting my SmoochPit application, a romance writer mentorship with an agented author, I treated myself to some bookish fun.

This weekend was From Milwaukee with Love, a romance book festival where 85+ romance authors and vendors came to the area for an inclusive and financially accessible weekend to celebrate the romance genre, make new friends, and support romance authors.

This was the event’s second year. Last year I volunteered, and this year I wanted to experience it as a reader. I attended author panels, author book signings, and a book crawl. Below is a recap of my experience.

Author Panels

To kick off the weekend, I attended three author panels:

1. Taking a Book to Screen

2. Starting the Writing Process and Finding Community

3. Representation in Romance

During the second panel, Amy Buchanan, a volunteer organizer of SmoochPit, asked the audience if anyone had submitted to the program. I was the only one who raised my hand.

When I met her the following day at the book crawl, she asked what mentors I applied to. Unfortunately, I didn’t apply to her because she writes contemporary romance, and I write fantasy. But it was super cool to learn that she was a mentee in the first year of SmoochPit and that it changed her life.

When the founders had to step down, she loved the program so much that she volunteered to take over organizing it. It was just nice chatting with her, and she made me even more excited about potentially getting the mentorship.

I also loved the panel about representation. It got me thinking about what books I’m reading and what I’m not reading. I want to be more mindful about what books I add to my TBR.

Author Book Signing

I attended a book talk and signing with Amber Palmer at Thirst Bookstore. I hadn’t read her books before, but I was super intrigued by the premise.

Pinecrest Ridge is a series set in a small Tennessee town. When I got home last night, I started reading the series out of order because I was very excited to dig into the newest release, Make It a Double. It’s about a billionaire land developer who has a one-night stand with a local bartender, and she gets pregnant. He’s a green-flag MMC. There’s tons of fun, witty banter. It’s a heartfelt, character-driven story. One More Round and On the Rocks are the other two in the series.

I loved learning about Amber Palmer’s writing process. She’s a night owl and stays up late writing if the characters are talking to her. I love that she uses the Notes app to jot down ideas for her story and reviews them when she gets stuck. In her book contracts, she makes sure she has final say over audiobook narrators. I never really thought much about audiobooks, but it’s a serious business. I also loved learning that she wrote quite a few books in different genres, like fantasy and paranormal, before she found her sweet spot in contemporary romance.

It was a great night, and I’m so glad I went.

Romance Book Crawl

Meet Me on North Book Crawl, organized by the bookstore Well Red Damsel, featured 85+ vendors and authors at different local businesses on North Avenue in Wauwatosa.

My favorite part is checking which authors are attending and mapping out the different locations I had to visit.

My first stop was seeing Avery Flynn, an author whom I discovered last year. She has a new book out—Hexy Beast. It’s the third book in The Sherwood Sisters series about a werewolf and a witch who fall in love.

Avery Flynn plans to write five books for the series—one for each of the sisters in the Sherwood family. The next one is about a witch and a vampire, and it’s coming out for Valentine’s Day, which will be tons of fun. It also has a magical pug. I can’t wait.

I also found another billionaire book (I love that this is a new genre.) called Red Souls by A.M. Darling. It’s set in Paris and follows a journalist who wants to uncover a billionaire’s secret world, but falls in love. The author was super proud of her plot twist, which none of the readers saw coming. I was sold and want to see if I can guess the plot twist.

Book Talk

I love Kimberly Lemming. Unfortunately, she was not at the event. Maybe she’ll come next year…

Her Cosmic Chaos series is so great. I Punched an Alien and Now We’re in Couples Therapy is the second book in the series, but you don’t have to read them in order. There are a lot of funny books. But few actually made me laugh out loud like this one.

Blair, an aspiring rockstar, gets abducted by owl-like aliens, who think that she’s Osid, a warlord alien king’s mate. It’s zany, with talking lions, dinosaurs, aliens, and spicy romance. I love it so much. If you’re looking for something to make you laugh, check this one out.

Conclusion

It has been a super fun bookish weekend. I’m glad that I attended all the different events, even though it was a lot and challenging to coordinate. It was totally worth it. I can’t wait until next year. In the meantime, I have some serious reading to do!

Sending you lots of love,

Liza