HAPPY BLOGIVERSARY TO US!!!!! And we're giving YOU gifts!

That's right! As of August 30th we've turned 1!!! We are kinda running behind in celebrating (like one month O_O), but we have been some VERY busy ladies and there is not enough coffee in the world to catch us up right now! Not only has fictional boys been keeping us, er.... tied up, but for those of you who don't know, we both started new jobs, we're both moving, one of us is a mama of two kiddos' (that's me, Kim) and we are both just naturally crazy anyway. You know, in a good way (Kim is busting out the donkey butt dance as you are reading this and Britney is flipping cartwheels). Anyway, better late than never!

(And I, Kimberly, would like to send a special shout out to my co-blogger, Britney for keeping up the blog solely during her busy schedule, while I've been trying to adjust to my new, busy schedule. THANK YOU BRITNEY- LUVS n' HUGS!)
(Aww.... *blushes*. Loves you Kimmie! - Brit)

"CRACKLE, POP, BOOM!" Yay! Fireworks!  So, shall we celebrate? Well hell yeah we are going to celebrate! FOR THE WHOLE MONTH OF OCTOBER! Well spank my fannie and call me Annie! That's right! This Blogiversary is going to give YOU a month load of gifts! Since it took us a month to start celebrating, then we should celebrate for a month! That's fair, right? And you have all of October to get entered. And in many different ways. But first... we thought we would re-introduce ourselves for all of our new followers... and old followers. :)

That's Britney on the left and Kim on the right- and we sparkle! This picture was taken the VERY FIRST TIME WE MET IN PERSON! Yep, when we began this grand blog adventure we had never met in person. We are straight up #cyberBFFs. Twitter brought us together and we bonded over our love of the Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare, and then we went fictional boy crazy together over all kinds of YA and Adult books (including ALL of Jeri Smith-Ready's wonderful characters and stories and Gayle Forman, and Jeaniene Frost's Night Huntress series and many more past and present!). The weekend of November 3rd, we will meet again for the Southern Magic Romance Readers Luncheon in Birmingham, AL. We can't wait for all the hugs and laughs and fan girly crush talk over authors and books. Hmmmmm, maybe we'll even post a live blog post. That would be fun! (Kim has grand ideas... we have trouble posting non-live blog posts! LOL! But I (Britney)promise to TRY to post a live post. Lol!!)

Before we kick off the giveaway festivities, we should discuss our five top reading recommendations to date- you know, the ones that will have you drooling over the story and the characters forever! It's hard to only pick 5 since there are so many wonderful books. But these (for us) are the ones that'll stick with us like white on rice, baby!

Kimberly's Top 5
1.  Aspect of Crow trilogy by Jeri Smith-Ready (these books will be in my possession forever, a story burned into my soul - plus, I'm all things Jeri.)
2.  Shade trilogy by Jeri Smith-Ready (these characters have my heart. they are real. they ARE.)
3.  The Sky Is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson (An emotional read that will have you batting your eyelashes like crazy!)
4.  Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer (This series started my reading frenzy. I owe a lot to Stephanie Meyer!)
5.  The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare (Yes, it's very commercialized, very good, my favorite color is black, and it brought Britney and I together)

Britney's Top 5 (In no particular order)(Also, I completely love the above mentioned books as well)
1.  If I Stay and Where She Went by Gayle Forman (I love, love, love Mia and Adam)
2.  Delirium and Pandimonium by Lauren Oliver (So fabulous! I loved Alex, and cried... and I won't say anymore.)
3.  Divergent and Insurgent by Veronica Roth (Creative! The best dystopian series since the Hunger Games!)
4.  Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire (OMG! I'm in love with the crazy Travis Maddox! Can't wait for Walking Disaster to come. Read this one twice back-to-back and it is now my go to read!)
5. WVMP series by Jeri Smith-Ready (Hehe, DJ vampires, a con artist, and a whole lotta fun!)

And now, on to the...

To celebrate Living Fictitiously's one year blogiversary, we have arcs, swag, ebooks, and gift certificates from The Book Depository to give away! (Gift Certificates and Ebooks open internationally. Arcs and swag will be U.S. only (sorry). We'll be hosting a giveaway each week for the month of October. It's simple, just click on the Rafflecopter form below to enter and be sure to come back the following week to see which giveaway is next!!

As you may know, October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I (Britney) am participating in the American Cancer Society's Making Strides event here in my hometown of Chattanooga, TN (well, current hometown). So, while we are celebrating a very happy event, I wanted to also have a charity component. For each giveaway, there will be extra entries that may be earned by making a donation (there is no minimum) to the Making Strides event. You can view the post about the event here. It is by no means required, simply encouraged. Your donation will be helping in so many ways! And if each follower donated just $1, we would raise over $200 to benefit the American Cancer Society. So, thank you ahead of time. If you can't donate, simply spreading the word about the event would also be MUCH appreciated.
***UPDATE: We have made changes to the giveaway! We will have 5 winners for the US giveaway. Winner 1 will have his/her choice of 3 prizes from the list. The remaining 4 winners will each get to choose 2 prizes from the remaining items in the order the winner was drawn.
***We will have 3 winners for the INT giveaway. Each winner will get his/her choice of prize from the INT list in the order the winner was drawn.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thanks to all of our followers and visitors for hanging with us on the blog. We enjoy posting about books, whether its reviews or title/cover reveals, or interviews, or contest/giveaways... or anything books- and it means bunches to us that you stop by and read what we have to say. Keep rocking those reads y'all!!! May a book be forever in your hands.

Much Love,
Britney and Kimberly