But she turned a corner about 10 years ago, and her writing abruptly went down hill. And then she switched to contemporaries, which made it even worse.

Unfortunately, I have similar feelings about Iris Johansen, Tami Hoag, Jane Feather, and Linda Howard. Maybe there’s a correlation between moving up (up?) into hardback, and losing your inspiration. Or maybe it’s more time presssure and money hungry editors?

Hoag was good in hardback for 3 or 4 books, but then started her decent; Johansen switched to contempoary in her first hardback and they’ve been bearly readable since then (although I did see an ad last month that she might be returning to historial fiction); Howard kept up her feisty heroines and clever dialogue for awhile but her last 4 or 5 books haven’t been up to par; and Jane Feather – well, I can hardly bear to think about how skiimpy her novels are, and she was an especial favorite. Heather, you may have it! They’re employing ghost writers, and incompetent ones at that!

When I remember Johansen’s lush historicals, with their sweeping, dramatic locales and exotic, dashing romantic heros (especiallly the Wind Dancer trilogy), it makes me want to weep. Feather’s “v” series titles (“Vows,” “Vice,” “Velvet”) were SO GOOD, sexy and interesting, with interesting moral issues framing some of the stories. And I loved Hoag’s playfulness with her contemp. novels – my favorite is Still Waters, when the town’s new smoking and drinking widow arrives in town to take over the newspaper she just bought. She’s immediately accused of murdering a leading citizen (and womanizer) because he accosted her on her way into town and tried to look down her dress. When she and the sheriff go to the widow’s house to pay their respects, the widow’s church society friends dump molded jello on her front! It was one of those scream with laughter moments you never forget.

If any of you has a working hypothesis as to why this phenomenon happens, I’d love to hear it. (I never saw it in Balogh or Cruise or Roberts), and Patricia Gafney (who always wrote well and with such grace) just keeps getting bettere and better.

Her Braddock/Black series was just wonderful, and for any of your who would like to try her older stuff, I’d say start there (Forbidden, Blaze, Silver Flame, and Brazen)…there was a final part to this series “Force of Nature”, but I’ve not read it yet.

I picked up this book a few months ago, and I have to say, I’m not planning on reading any more Susan Johnson. Although “any more” implies that I actually finished this book, which I did not. I found the writing thin, there were constant POV problems, and the characters seemed to me completely flat – cardboard cut-outs of “romance hero” and “romance heroine.”

Willing to give her another try, if someone can recommend a richly-drawn historical of hers with characters that actually come alive for the reader. Maybe the ones Growly mentioned?

Like you, I haven’t been as fond of the contemporaries…

I did pick up most of the contemps this last year, which are pretty chicklit-ty, but didn’t annoy me near as much as whichever one was the last historical I read. The contemps were fun, quick reads, that were forgotten as soon as I closed the books, which is not the most ringing endorsement I can think of…

I wish she’d write another one like Pure Sin or Forbidden. I love those two and I re-read them often.

she was visibly shaken.

One of my pet peeves in writing. If it’s the other person describing it, then of course it’s ‘visibly’. And if it’s the person themselves, then….

Better to leave the sex out, than put in scenes so distancing from the action.

I went on a total glom and bought just about her entire backlist.

And other than an absence of buttsex, I still think very few erotic writers have managed to outdo SJ for pure sexiness–and occasionally pure perviness.

That said, I haven’t read her in years. She just doesn’t write the same books she used to anymore.