About Marla

Hi, my name is Marla.  I am 31, a wife, mother to a 5 year old little girl (known here as "Owlet"), an aspiring author, avid reader, craft junky, and the founder of Starting the Next Chapter.  If you couldn't tell, I am a huge book junky.  If you could see my bookshelves, you would know exactly what I mean.

My relationship with books began at a very early age.  My mother was a huge believer in early literacy for me, so she set the groundwork for my education in reading at the tender age of 3.  She and my father taught me how to write the alphabet and my name at that age.  Even then I had a voracious appetite for books and my parents obliged by reading to me a lot.  We didn't have much money when I was growing up, but my parents made sure that I was able to visit the children's library (which, oddly enough, was a small kiosk at the local grocery store; it was a tiny town) as often as I wanted.  I read my first book on my own at age 4 and the rest, as they say, is history.

Meeting Julie Kagawa at Ash2Nash

I have gone through several reading phases in my life, but I do have several perennial favorites.  I enjoy a wide variety of authors, including Nora Roberts, P.C. Cast (I remember reading her first publication, then titled Goddess By Mistake, which I first discovered at a library book sale), Ruta Sepetys, J.K. Rowling, Lloyd Alexander, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Juliet Marillier, Julie Kagawa, Maggie Stiefvater, Victoria Schwab, Amy Plum, Kelley Armstrong, Maria V. Snyder, Gail Carriger, and so many others.  My list grows every week.  My favorite genres are paranormal fiction, fantasy (especially books with plots centered on faeries), historical fiction, horror, classic literature, and variations (I'm a sucker for Jane Austen variations).  I am also becoming more and more interested in steampunk fiction, so I've been keeping an eye out for books of that description as of late.

Hannah from The Book Vortex, Ruta Sepetys, & me

I started this blog thanks to inspiration from a poll found on Goodreads.  The question was along the lines of: "Do you have a book blog?"  I answered in the negative and then thought, "Why don't I have a book blog?"  There aren't very many people in my real life that I can have conversations about books with, so I decided to go for it.  As a result, Starting the Next Chapter was born in February 2011.

I don't profess to write professional, critical reviews.  I save that for my classes, though my English major tendencies do have the habit of leaking through from time to time.  This blog is dedicated to books I read for fun and, as such, I only write what I think while I'm reading them.  In any case, I hope you enjoy reading my blog as much as I enjoy writing it.  If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me via email, Facebook, Twitter, or Goodreads.  Happy reading!

Marla\ \(Starting\ the\ Next\ Chapter\)'s bookshelf: currently-reading



More of Marla (Starting the Next Chapter)'s books »