My Pajama Party Blog Tour starts today! Why a pajama party? Because I will only be available for commenting after business hours, and I thought I’d make the most of it. I hereby swear that I will be wearing a pair of pajamas when I comment. I will not, however, post pictures of myself in said pajamas.

For my first stop, I’ll be heading to Jenny Schwartz’s Acquiring Magic blog, where I wax nostalgic on my early writing life. For an added bonus, there is a brief excerpt from The Sevenfold Spell, plus a giveaway. Did I say a giveaway? Yes, it’s my very first author giveaway!

So go on and head over to the first post. Which is up early! See ya there!

This week begins my blog tour, but Katie will be picking up the slack with two reviews, and I have a guest post scheduled for Thursday. Plus, I’ll leave little posts indicating where you might find my blog tour posts. There will be giveaways!

I made some subtle changes around here. I have a new Buzz page, which I’ll keep current with reviews, and a page that shows you where you can download various ereaders for you computer or phone. I also cleaned up the widgets on this page, and I must say it loads much faster. I loved the boxes of faces, but they made this page load way too slow. The Google FriendConnect widget seems pretty speedy, so it remained.

I have been toying with the idea of adding stars to my reviews. I have discovered their worth from an author’s standpoint, but this is a blog for readers, not authors, so I’m still undecided. Here’s my tentative system, which starts out fairly standard:

***** Excellent

**** Very good

*** Good

** Fair

* At least I finished it.

I will not mention books I did not finish, since in such cases I don’t think I’d be a good reviewer.

Additionally, I’d have an optional rating, “Keeper,” which I would apply to any book that I love enough to keep. There are many books where I would give it a high number of stars to acknowledge the excellence of the writing, but really was not for me. This system allows me to give 4 or 5 stars to such books. I can also think of other novels that maybe were not so masterfully executed, but which I loved anyway. This way, I could give such books 3 or so stars, but label it a keeper.

What do you think? Stars or no stars? Indicate your choice below!