Blythe Smith, Author at All About Romance

About Blythe Smith

I've been at AAR since dinosaurs roamed the Internet. I've been a Reviewer, Reviews Editor, Managing Editor, Publisher, and Blogger. Oh, and Advertising Corodinator. Right now I'm taking a step back to concentrate on kids, new husband, and new job in law...but I'll still keep my toe in the romance waters.

What’s Your Reading Journey?

If you’re an AAR old timer (I’ll let you define what that means), you may be wondering if I fell off the face of the earth. Short answer: Yes, yes I did. Short version for those who don’t avidly follow my life: I was a managing editor and then publisher of AAR for years (1998-2016-ish). In 2014 my marriage of 25 years ended, in 2015 I met the love of my life, in 2018 he died. Now it’s 2020, and even with a world that has had no bottom since 2018, I am still on the planet. The seismic shifts in my world have drastically affected my reading, though. […]

By Blythe Smith|2020-09-12T20:58:25-04:00September 13th, 2020|Categories: AAR Blythe, Reading, Real Life|Tags: reading journey|59 Comments

Storytime by Blythe Smith

Today, we’re publishing something unusual. It’s a story by Blythe Pulsipher Smith who’s been an integral part of AAR for many years. Earlier this fall, Blythe lost her husband, Mike, to cancer. This piece is, in part, about their love story. […]

By Blythe Smith|2018-10-14T15:13:53-04:00October 14th, 2018|Categories: AAR Blythe|Tags: GoFundMe|14 Comments

Falling in love in the used bookstore

When I was visiting my daughter in North Carolina, I fell in love with a book. My girls were both next door in a comic book store, so I was left to my own devices in a used bookstore, something that used to happen to me all the time but now rarely does.

At this point I am going to both digress and date myself (again), but I remember that heady days over twenty years ago when I had just discovered romance.The internet was still a baby, and few people used it to buy books. Virtually no one was reading digitally yet. I would go to the used bookstore with a big list in hand and come out with a bunch of romances. The whole genre was new and I’d hardly read anything yet, so I was like a kid in the candy store. Better yet, I always had […]

By Blythe Smith|2017-06-23T08:30:13-04:00January 30th, 2016|Categories: AAR Blythe, Bookstores, Reading|Tags: The Captain’s Lady Cookbook - Personal Journal|49 Comments

RWA – Thursday

The first full day of RWA is in the books. Lynn, Dabney, and I have been busy observing, reporting, tweeting, and okay…celebrating.

One change this year is that there are no luncheons; the sessions with featured speakers are breakfast sessions in the morning. Undoubtedly a cost-cutting measure, and I am not sure whether it is a permanent shift or if they are just trying it out. All of us missed it Thursday because we were invited to breakfast the the Simon & Schuster Offices – for booklovers, that was pretty cool and a major perk of having the conference in New York. Incidentally, there do seem to be a lot more men milling about at this conference than the one in say, San Antonio. Don’t get me wrong; this is a very female dominated industry and there are far more women than men – just more men than usual. We […]

By Blythe Smith|2017-06-23T08:30:19-04:00July 24th, 2015|Categories: AAR Blythe, All About Romance, Book news, Publishing, RWA|4 Comments

Romance in Real Life: Personality and Love

So I’m still not reading much (though I did manage a re-read of my favorite romance novel of all time, Mary Balogh’s Slightly Dangerous). I have, though, been paying a lot of attention to real life romance because that’s where I am at right now.

Believe it or not, I spend a decent amount of time bonding with my ex over how much better we work together as friends and how much happier we are with other people. And this despite the fact that he’s back to dealing with young children again (our youngest child is fifteen) and I am dealing with a significant other who is often away. Both of us have done a lot of thinking and analyzing of why we didn’t work as well together as we wanted to. Part of it, definitely, is that we married so young. I’m not sure anyone knows exactly what […]

By Blythe Smith|2017-06-23T08:30:19-04:00June 22nd, 2015|Categories: AAR Blythe, Book news, Relationships|14 Comments

The Mother of All Reading Slumps

I’ve heard of reading slumps before. I mean, I’ve been at this for awhile now. Others have written about them at length, both on our news blog and at LLB’s old At the Back Fence column. But until now, I’ve never had one. Really. I’ve gone stretches where I struggled to find time to read, but that isn’t really the same thing as not wanting to. And right now, I don’t want to.

This is absolutely unheard of in my life. The only thing that even comes close would be my college years, when I was so busy reading history that I had very little time to read for pleasure. Even then, I read like a fiend during my breaks. This? Well, it’s different. I haven’t finished a book since November. I haven’t started a book since then either. I’m not sure how to change that or when it will change.

Why, you […]

By Blythe Smith|2017-06-23T08:30:20-04:00April 27th, 2015|Categories: AAR Blythe, Book news|Tags: reading slump|19 Comments

Fifty Shades the Movie: Blythe’s Take

Okay, everyone and their dog has weighed in on this one, whether it’s because they saw it, didn’t see it and didn’t think anyone should see it either, or are waiting until it comes out on DVD so they can save their hard earned money. I for one, was looking forward to this for weeks. Maybe months. I knew precisely how I wanted to see it: In a theater full of women, with my girlfriends. A theater where you could drink. That’s precisely what I did, and it was awesome.

Most of us have have HDTV and we’re all busy with work, school, kids, and life. I genuinely like going to the movies for its own sake and always have. However, I go much less frequently than I used to. But with something like Fifty Shades, there are compelling reasons to experience a movie socially. There are ways it can add […]

By Blythe Smith|2017-06-23T08:30:21-04:00February 17th, 2015|Categories: AAR Blythe, Movies|17 Comments

Writing a New Love Story

How good are you at reading in between the lines? If you’re better than me, maybe you saw my impending divorce coming before I did. When I blog, I tend to take inspiration from what’s going on in my own reading and in my life. A few months ago I wrote about the romances that mirror your own romance, and in a roundabout way discussed my newfound disenchantment with heroines who marry too young. […]

By Blythe Smith|2017-06-23T08:30:24-04:00November 21st, 2014|Categories: AAR Blythe, Relationships, Romance, Romance reading|36 Comments

RWA 2014 – My Wrap Up

I think I’ll think of RWA 2014 as the “Can’t we all just get along?” conference (subtitled, “of course we can!”). Or, to paraphrase a Zora Neale Hurston quote, there are conferences that ask questions and conferences that answer. This one answered.

In what way? Well, Carolyn Crane’s self-published Off the Edge won a RITA, and that’s significant. I talked to authors who love self-publishing, and authors who love their publishers. I talked to authors who self-publish and traditionally publish simultaneously. The general consensus is that writing and publishing is still a challenging business, but the challenges have changed over the years; now one of the biggest challenges is finding what’s right for you in a world of so many choices. But there was also a general feeling that whatever your choices are, they’re okay. Self-publishing or digital only publishing are not the romance ghetto; for many they are the […]

By Blythe Smith|2017-06-23T08:30:28-04:00July 30th, 2014|Categories: AAR Blythe, Publishing, RWA|3 Comments

News from San Antonio

I I had to hit the ground running At RWA this year, leaving a family reunion in just enough time to make it to the Literacy Signing. Not the most relaxing way to start off a conference, but then you haven’t really lived until you’ve heard an adorable almiost-three year old call you Aunt “Life”. Nonetheless, I made it just in time and got to catch up with some great authors and hear about their work. Here’s what’s new (at least with authors A-L…sorry, by the time I got to the M’s everything was wrapping up).

Zoe Archer Zoe Archer wrote one of my favorite books last year (Sweet Revenge). She’s going in a new direction next year, and will be publishing Regency set historicals with Avon. They’ll center around women writers, and will be written under a new name to match the new direction – Eva Leigh.

Jo Beverley has been concentrating on her Malloren books recently, but is moving […]

By Blythe Smith|2017-06-23T08:30:28-04:00July 24th, 2014|Categories: AAR Blythe, Authors, Book Signing News, Publishing, Romance, RWA|5 Comments

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