Bibliomama

I met Lesley briefly at Blissdom 2013 - I apologized for getting between her and someone taking her picture at the outside party and she hollered at me to get in the picture with her. Afterwards, we became Twitter friends and I started reading her blog, Real Women Drive Stick (so according to Lesley I'm a fake woman, but it's okay, I'm coping). When I learned some of the details of her son's birth, I was sort of struck by the strangeness of the fact that people can endure the most cataclysmic of events and walk around without the effects permanently stamped on their faces. Lesley is an emergency nurse and special-needs parent, and Blissdom completely lit an author fire under her, leading her to reduce her nursing hours and write and self-publish a book about her son Torran, who was a micro-preemie, born at just 26 weeks and 6 days gestation, due to oligohydramnios, a lack of amniotic fluid. Lesley and her husband Bruce were asked on more than one occasion if they wis

I freely admit that I attended Blissdom under somewhat fraudulent circumstances. I did the same thing with BlogHer last summer, because Marilyn said it was legit to just go to hang out with your girlfriends in New York AND she offered to room with me, but I thought that would be my first and last blogging conference. I went to Blissdom because when were Nicole and Hannah ever going to scoot their little butts from Calgary and Halifax, respectively, to Toronto at the same time ever again? When you have a chance to catch lightning in a jar - or awesomeness on a hotel room couch - you take it, right? My preciouses I had thought that my biggest takeaway from BlogHer (along with the fact that I kind of hate the term 'takeaway' and yet I'm still using it, WHY?) was that I am a personal blogger and that 'branding' or 'monetizing' my blog just wasn't going to happen. I tried one giveaway when I was sent a product that I did really like, and it w