Last year, in late 2013 I made quite the extraordinary discovery, as I had found this wickedly delightful Indie Publisher for Romance Novels hailing from England called ‘ChocLitUK’! I started to host for them as a book reviewer, and quickly realised that I wanted to host their lovely authors as well, which is why I started to offer Guest Posts and Author Interviews! I had meant to keep the author features running in conjunction to each ChocLit novel I was reviewing, but due to different reasons I mostly posted the book reviews without the extras!

Then, in Spring 2014 in the middle of my weekly chats in the twitterverse, I had this scathingly wicked idea! Perhaps I should help promote my #ChocLitSaturdays book reviews & guest author features by hosting my own hour-length (an approx. time, we do like to chat past noon!) weekly chat! I will be forever grateful to the inspiring encouragement of the collective known as #StoryDam as they not only helped me realise what my idea involved but they were the ones who originally turnt me onto using Canva for creating my own blog banners, Twitter cards, and other badges you see throughout my tweets and bookish blog! (such as the main header’s on Twitter like the new one for #ChocLitSaturdays!)

The main idea behind creating #ChocLitSaturdays was explained previously, but what I wanted to explain today is why I am separating the two hashtags: #ChocLitSaturday vs #ChocLitSaturdays! The main hashtag I used from the beginning was #ChocLitSaturdays, as a way to encourage romance readers & romance writers to realise I was celebrating a genre I am truly passionate about on the weekends! However, when it comes to Twitter chats, the only way to safeguard your hashtag is to create a supporting account, hence why I created @ChocLitSaturday! You’ll notice the ‘s’ is missing? Apparently, the name ‘ChocLitSaturday’ is the full amount of available letters your allowed to use! Thereby, no one can ‘take’ the tag in theory as there is no way to create an account to lock it in! I was thankful to have this safeguard in place for both #ChocLitSaturdays and as a back-up #ChocLitSaturday!

One of the hiccups in hosting a chat on Twitter, is that due to the fact hashtags are public and able to be used by absolutely anyone who finds them, I started to notice a lot of non-kosher tweeting happening on the weekends for #ChocLitSaturdays, on interests outside the scope of where a book blogger like myself would like to see the tag promoted! I am not entirely sure why the weekends are a bit dicey at times for promoting “Romance Novels” as this has only been after the popularity of the chat #ChocLitSaturdays started to have more tweets & convos flying through the twitterverse! Laughs.

I have known about #Nurph (@Nurph) ever since I started chatting regularly with #LitChat (@LitChat) where readers & writers of fiction across the board (with a direct empathsis on literary fiction) meet-up to converse with each other on Wednesdays. Nurph is a pro-positive platform for tweet chats because if the host (such as myself) has any issues whatsoever, all I have to do is ‘tweet’ @Nurph and I have immediate assistance! Nurph also monitors the hashtag and tries to only keep the chatters in the visible stream! Chatters can RSVP through the “Upcoming Chats” section and I can alert those who attend #ChocLitSaturdays of when new chats will be hosted in quite an easier way than having to CC everyone on Twitter!

Nurph also allows a ‘replay’ option when chats have ended which help for archiving purposes, but I also know they are easier to find if I archive them myself, which is a bit of why all my archiving time has been lengthened for nearly half a year! In truth, there have been a lot of technical issues between Summer & Autumn; making it quite hard to archive the chats and I sort of fell behind to be honest! It is hard to archive a chat if you cannot even get a ‘tweet’ to stick inside a transcript! A few chats are still amiss, but I’m going to be releasing all the ones I have up to this point!

One of the hardest things to remember when tweeting in a weekly chat is to ‘add the hashtag’ and this is why I previously advocated for platforms such as Twubs, or tchat.io or even TweetDeck. However, in the months since I hosted my first #ChocLitSaturdays, I have discovered a few things:

• Twubs has (supposed) email support with a support team who never responds back!
• Twubs is easy to set-up but if a problem occurs your blocked from entering again!
• Twubs was simply abandoned due to never being able to login!
• tchat.io was brilliant until I realised my account was nearly hacked & compromised! ack!
• TweetDeck is quite lovely but has become unstable & unreliable in high volumes!

In regards to using Nurph, I have never experienced anything but a soothing chat, where you can easily click the “favour”, “re-tweet”, or “quote” options per tweet as the chat is happening! It is easy to login as you just click the link and authorise Nurph to be used. The hashtag is auto-added to your tweets and therefore it provides any easy streamlined experienced! The main reason I hadn’t used Nurph originally is due to not opening the supporting account on Twitter until late Autumn, early Winter 2014! I also wasn’t sure if I should change the hashtag or spilt the tag between the blog features & the weekly chats, until I realised it was getting difficult to separate the two from each other!

At long last, I feel the best way I can help promote my passion and love for ChocLitUK is simply to have two different channels of threaded conversations:

• #ChocLitSaturdays | tweeted mostly through @JLovesAStory will anchour my book reviews and author guest features (which are resuming in 2015!)
• #ChocLitSaturday | is the new hashtag for the weekly chat on Saturdays which is explained here:

JOIN US:

http://nurph.com/choclitsaturday

Full Archive of #ChocLitSaturday Chats via my blog

• To be added lateron today! Drop back when you see my updated tweet!

I look forward to hosting #ChocLitSaturday throughout the coming New Year, and seeing where the bookish conversations take all of us next! I am welcome to suggestions for topics of discussion which can be pitched to me in the comment threads below! Be sure to bookmark the new Nurph Channel for visiting & chatting with us on Saturdays! And, I will be tweeting out the book reviews via this account as well as a cross-promotion between my blog’s Twitter account and this one for the chats!

I have a special surprise for everyone who is enjoying my ChocLitUK book reviews! I am going to be posting my final three book reviews for ChocLit in 2014 between today and New Year’s Eve! The books you will be finding threaded through my @JLovesAStory tweets and my blog are as follows:

I am truly blessed with getting to know three authors I haven’t previously read, with the exception of Ms. James as I previously posted my book review on behalf of her time travelling series A Stitch in Time with the first novel “A Stitch in Time”! Her sequel published in December 2014, Cross Stitch!

I cannot think of a better way to close 2014 than by expressing my thoughts on these lovely novels! I am going to be reading through the library of Christina Courtenay throughout January & February as I have her full collection of historical novels set during the high sea epics I adore reading so very much! There is a lot to celebrate with ChocLit, including the lovely ‘ChocLit Treats’ or super short stories which you can receive by email direct from ChocLitUK! I have somehow managed to forget to blog my bliss with these lovelies, so if you want a bit of ‘ChocLit’ in your Inbox, be sure to sign up to receive their ‘ChocLit Treats’!

{Sources: #ChocLitSaturday header created by Jorie in Canva Photo Credit: Unsplash Public Domain Photographer Sebastian Boguszewicz. #ChocLitSaturday 2015 badge created by Jorie in Canva. Book covers for “Somewhere Beyond the Sea”, “Up Close”, and “Dance Until Dawn” were provided by ChocLitUK and used with permission. Twitter Header Banner for #ChocLitSaturday created by Jorie in Canva. Photo credit: Sebastian Boguszewicz (Public Domain Image via UnSplash).}

Copyright © Jorie Loves A Story, 2014