Birthday wishes and more fangirl squees

I wrote pretty extensively last spring about meeting Janelle Taylor at RT and everything that meant to me.

She sent me a birthday wish on Facebook for her "KC  Book Fair buddy." Of the hundreds of birthday wishes I got yesterday, and I got many, that's the one that made me tingle in excitement. You see, Ariel the author wouldn't exist if it hadn't been for one of Janelle Taylor's books. I was bored with YA books because 30 years ago, YA books romances didn't even have a kiss half the time, and they certainly never went beyond a kiss, and that kiss had no description surrounding it. Just the simple statement that they kissed. Imagine my delight, then, when I opened Destiny's Temptress and found not just kissing but descriptions of kissing and sex! I knew the mechanics of sex all fifth graders learn in sex ed, but that was hardly the same.

I read that book until it fell apart. I studied it. I wanted to see how to build tension, how to develop a relationship, how to write sex. And then I turned around and practiced all the things I'd (hopefully) learned by studying a master. 

And now that master is my KC Book Fair buddy.

Yeah, I'm doing a happy dance all over the house once more.