It’s Day Three of the Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association’s Trade Show (GLiBA), and I’ve given away quite a few business cards. Because Jen and I are still meeting people, attending book signings and learning about fabulous new books, I thought I would take some time to welcome any visitors from GLiBA and share a little about myself.

I’m Michelle, a thirty-something mother of two living halfway between Cincinnati and Dayton, Ohio. By day, I am a pricing manager/ business analyst at a food ingredient company. By night, well, I’m a mother of two very active children and have fully embraced the soccer mom mentality of rushing around to practices and games, squeezing in meals and homework and everything else associated with motherhood.

My love of books predates kindergarten, teaching myself to read thanks to Sweet Pickles books and later, Laura Ingalls Wilder. Other childhood favorites include Little Women, Dracula and the Anne of Green Gable series. Once in high school, I was always the odd man out because I enjoyed everything we had to read as part of the English curriculum. In fact, my first introduction to one of my all-time favorite books, Crime and Punishment, happened my sophomore year. I remained an avid reader of classics until I started blogging last January.

Since I started blogging, my tastes definitely run towards the eclectic, reading everything from middle grade to literary fiction and back again; case in point, I just started reading Charlotte Bronte’s Villette while also reading Guillermo del Toro’s The Fall and listening to Diana Gabaldon’s Voyager all after finishing the third book in Heather Brewster’s The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod. Through blogging, I have been exposed to an entire range of amazing novels and feel fortunate to share my feelings about such books.

I consider myself extremely lucky to have a truly supportive family. My husband, while not as avid a reader as I am, does like to read and frequently piggybacks on books I’ve finished and recommend to him for his reading pleasure. My ten-year-old son, Connor, IS just as avid as I am and breezes through books faster than I can bring them into the house. He has started to write reviews for me and can be seen in his own feature called Connor’s Corner. My six-year-old daughter, Holly, is still learning to read but has recently decided that she is too old for picture books and has filled her bookshelves with her brother’s discarded Magic Treehouse and other early reader chapter books. They both participated in the April readathon with me and think nothing of snuggling up next to me to read.

Reading has been and will remain as vital to me as breathing. I am happiest and most content with a book in hand. I view blogging in a similar vein. I have always liked to write, and I have very strong opinions about things. Blogging affords me the opportunity to not only share my thoughts on my beloved books but also to hone my writing skills in case I ever want to put them to financial use. It remains a dream of mine to get paid to write, and I am slowly working to build my portfolio to showcase my writing skills with this in mind.

I continue to be somewhat giddy about the idea of working with authors, publishers and publicists. They are my rock stars. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have found an avenue that so neatly ties together my passions. So, please, take some time to look around, check out my review policy and say hi. I hope you like what you see!