Interviews

Interview with Carrie Feron, Editorial Director at Avon

Interview with Carrie Feron, Editorial Director at Avon

Carrie Feron is the Editorial Director at Avon.  Avon publishes approximately eight original print romances and four digital-first titles each month .  Morrow Trade is a companion line that publishes a mix of women’s fiction and romance.  Avon Impulse is the digital first arm of Avon.  The same team that works on Avon books, including(…)

Interview with Victoria Griffith, Publisher, Amazon Publishing

Interview with Victoria Griffith, Publisher, Amazon Publishing

I asked to interview someone at Amazon Montlake and was invited to send in questions. These are the answers I received.  Some answers are vague corporate answers but others were more substantive. How many releases does Amazon Montlake plan to publish in a month and how frequently? I.e., will it follow a traditional publishing schedule(…)

Interview with Cindy Hwang, Executive Editor with Berkley/Jove

Cindy Hwang is the executive editor of Berkley/Jove. She is pretty well known to the DA crowd because she pens the quarterly giveaways for Berkley/Jove here. She also edits Christine Feehan, Nalini Singh, and Meljean Brook to name a few. One of her authors, Karen White, writes southern women’s fiction with a romance thread. When(…)

Interview with Courtney Milan, #6 on the NYT

Interview with Courtney Milan, #6 on the NYT

On Wednesday evenings, the New York Times Bestseller list is emailed to editors and agents. On this past Wednesday, RWA was abuzz because Courtney Milan’s self published novella “Unlocked” made it to number 6 on the NYT ebook list and number 19 on the combined print and ebook list and 36 on the USA Today(…)

Interview with Sourcebooks

Interview with Sourcebooks

Deb Werksman met Grace Burrowes at the Washington Writers’ Retreat. Werksman had a few minutes between appointments and said “tell me about your books” as she does to every author she meets. Grace shared that she had written 19 unpublished manuscripts, all regency romances. The stories were written about the Duke of Moreland and his(…)

Interview with Heather Osborn, Samhain Editorial Director

Heather Osborn is the current Editorial Director for Samhain. The current romance Samhain publishing schedule is 4 to 6 a week. They don’t anticipate changing this release schedule as more books flooding the market would likely canabalize their existing sales. They will be launching their Retro Romance line in December. A few of the authors(…)

Interview with Shauna Summers, Executive Editor for Ballantine Bantom Dell

Shauna Summers is the executive editor for the Ballantine, Bantom, Dell imprint. She edits authors such as Suzanne Brockmann, Shana Abe, and Lara Adrian. Two debuts that she is excited about include Cecilia Grant’s “A Lady Awakened” (hhttp://www.ceciliagrant.com/) that will release in January 2012 and Molly O’Keefe’s contemporary series that will be released in the(…)

DA Intro Interview: RITA Best First Book Nominees, Part 2

Welcome to part two of  Dear Author’s interview series with the debut authors who are up for Best First Book in the RITAs, the annual awards presented by the Romance Writers of America.  Three historicals received nominations: Kaki Warner’s Western Pieces of Sky, Kieran Kramer’s Regency When Harry Met Molly, and Karen Witemeyer’s inspirational A(…)

Interview with Bella Andre, Self Publishing Success

Interview with Bella Andre, Self Publishing Success

In January 15, 2011, Bella Andre (http://www.bellaandre.com/) launched a new title under the name Lucy Kevin. Lucy Kevin had no cross pollination with Bella Andre name and was unknown before the release. “Falling Fast” shot up to #4 on the BN Bestseller list and Andre sold 25,000 copies of the title in one month. Her(…)

DA Intro Interview & Giveaway: RITA Best First Book Nominees, Part 1

This week Romance Writers of America hands out the RITAs, its highest awards in eleven romance sub-genres, plus a special category for debut authors.  As an occasional contributor to Dear Author, I’m delighted to host again the nominees for Best First Book as part of the Intro Interview series. And we’re giving away books!  For(…)

Harlequin’s Response to Royalty Concerns & Contract Issues

I asked Harlequin about a couple of things regarding the new royalty rate as well as whether Bob Mayer’s claims that Harlequin was inserting a non compete clause in its new contracts to prevent authors from self publishing. Here is their response (from Donna Hayes, CEO of Harlequin) Concern: These new rates aren’t actually better(…)

Meeting with Megan Records Kensington

Megan Records is an Associate Editor at Kensington. She is the editor for the RITA nominated Rebel by Zoe Archer. She also edits Mary Jo Putney and Cynthia Eden among others. Zoe Archer’s new series is called the Hellraisers. The main characters have literally sold their soul to the devil in exchange for various powers.(…)

Meeting with Alicia Condon, Editorial Director of Kensington

Alicia Condon, is the editorial director of Kensington, but has been in publishing and romance publishing specifically for almost 30 years. One of the first authors Alicia bought was Jayne Ann Krentz for a tiny magazine called Romantique. They bought possibly JAK’s very first book and Diana Palmer’s first book. In those days, there was(…)

PRIDE WEEK INTERVIEW: On Character Authenticity

PRIDE WEEK INTERVIEW: On Character Authenticity

For Gay Pride week here at DA, I decided to interview a group of my favorite authors and bloggers about creating authentic LGBT characters. Laura Goode, Radclyffe, Georgia Beers, Kirsten Saell, Mfred, and Leah all agreed to answer my questions.   Welcome, ladies! Please introduce yourselves. Mfred: I’m Mfred, a queer librarian living and working(…)

The Dear Author Intro Interview & Giveaway:  Faye L. Booth, author of Trades of the Flesh

The Dear Author Intro Interview & Giveaway: Faye L. Booth, author of Trades of the Flesh

Faye Booth’s title aptly captures several aspects of her novel: there’s Lydia, the newest hire in a London brothel; Henry, a doctor who must break laws to obtain cadavers for his medical students; and then there’s the Victorian pornography angle. Warning to HEA purists? this is probably not your book. But if you like your(…)