Armchair BEA Intro!

Oh haayyyyy Armchair BEA-ers! Thanks for stopping by; I cannot wait to meet y'all and make all the actual BEA-ers jealous of the fabulous fun times we are having this week. For any of you who would like to join me I am going to do as much of this as I can PANTSLESS, just to prove the ways in which Armchair BEA can exceed the actual thing (though I do have a lunch date with some Random House editors on Tuesday, so I might consider putting on pants for that)....

Make sure to say hello here or on Twitter so we can get to know one another! But onto the good stuff, here's my five intro Q&As:

1 Who are you? How long have you been blogging? Why did you get into blogging?
Who am I? WHO AM I? I am the guardian of lost souls. I am the powerful, the pleasurable, the indestructible Slush Sleuth. I'm pretty hot, huh? (A little Mulan humor, for anyone who got that, and apologies ahead of time for anyone who didn't, because I tend to make a lot of non-sequitur pop culture references...)

But anyways, my name is Kelsey. I'm a recent college grad living in the big city. Bright eyed, big dreamer, travel lover, and apparently literate enough to keep some semblance of a book blog going. You can read more on my About Me page. Umm... I think *technically* I posted my first post sometime last August, but this blog didn't really come into being until the last month or so once I graduated college and didn't have so much thesis-izing to do. I interned in the editorial department at Random House Books for Young Readers last summer, and they were downsizing space from something like 40 floors to 17, so they had to get rid of a lohhtt o' books that wouldn't fit, and lemme tell you, despite the fact that I wasn't paid for my internship, I definitely got my money's worth from the box after box of books those lovely people bequeathed me. Sooo, short answer is I had a lot of new books to read and I missed writing coverage for manuscript submissions so I started Slush Sleuth (the title being a reference to the slush pile that I dutifully worked my way through while I was le intern fabulous).

2 What are you currently reading, or what is your favorite book you have read so far in 2012?
I just finished Gilt by Katherine Longshore on audio, and started my ARC of Rachel Hartman's Seraphina. If you look in my sidebar, you'll see my "List of Ten" which is the next ten books I challenged myself to read.

So far this year, I think my favorite new release was Catching Jordan by Miranda Keannelly or Hallowed by Cynthia Hand, my favorite audio The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith, and my favorite backlist the If I Stay series by Gayle Forman.

And yeah, yeah, I know I totally cheated on that answer by giving you five. Full disclosure: sometimes I cheat at Monopoly too.

3 Tell us one non-book-related thing that everyone reading your blog may not know about you.
Ummm... uhhh....

No, I promise I'm an interesting person! I just don't do well on the spot. I'm only witty when I forget to be.....

I have a weird love of pumpkins? I never owned a cardigan until last year and now I own probably 30? Last night I made out with a guy whose name I totally can't remember today? (No... on second thought I probably shouldn't tell you that...)

Oh! Oh! I know! So after high school I took a semester off and studied at the University of St. Andrews, then I hitched hiked across Europe and made what was likely a series of poor decisions with a very concerned ex-boyfriend in tow all in the name of charity. Lemme tell you something about hitchhiking: there are a lot of really dreadful people in the world. But there are also a lot of incredible, wonderful ones as well.

4 Where do you see your blog in five years?
Oh, you know, the ushe. With 6.8 billion followers and all kinds of sponsors and stuff. Or maybe just 6 billion followers since not everyone in the world has access to internet. I like to be practical about these things.

5 If you could eat dinner with any author or character, who would it be and why?
Ohmigosh I love this question! Ok. OK. So, obviously I would invite Richelle Mead, Rachel Hawkins, and Kiersten White AND they would be required to bring along their characters Rose, Sophie, and Evie and we would all go out to dinner and there would be SO MUCH SNARK and it would be FABULOUS and then afterwards we would go out for drinks where we would meet up with the wonderful, hilarious Tahereh Mafi and she would bring along Warner and he would obviously do something psychotic and then I would get to see the Snark-Trio that is Rose/Sophie/Evie lay down the law with bad-ass force/tasie/magic and show Warner who is boss. Then we would all do shots and maybe some karaoke for good measure, because all really sloppy fun drunk nights should involve some level of public embarrassment.