Letters of Opinion

PRIDE WEEK: Book Awards and GLBT Books

PRIDE WEEK: Book Awards and GLBT Books

In 2009, the Lambda Literary Fund changed the criteria for entries to their literary awards. Rather than reward great books with LGBT content, the Lammies now require LGBT authorship as well: “it should be noted that the Lambda Literary Awards are based principally on the LGBT content, the sexual orientation of the author, and the literary(…)

Readers’ Rights to Buy When, Where, and in What Format They Want

Readers’ Rights to Buy When, Where, and in What Format They Want

Last month, Sunita sent me a link to a book inspired by a schoolteacher in Paris named Daniel Pennac. Pennac had created a readers’ list of rights to encourage young people to read. This list was combined with illustrations by Quentin Blake and then published. The U.S. version has only black and white illustrations, but(…)

Infidelity and the Romance Genre

Infidelity and the Romance Genre

  WARNING THERE WILL BE SOME SPOILERS FOR SHADOWFLAME by Diann Sylvan, a July 2011, release. I recommended her 2010 release but this book was the inspiration for this piece.  In February, we posted a guest piece by author Julia Spencer-Fleming entitled Julia Spencer Fleming on Infidelity: Adulterer. Cheater. Unfaithful. Home-wrecker. Other woman. In romance,(…)

Theories on Kaleb Krychek.  The Man, The Mystery, The Romance

Theories on Kaleb Krychek. The Man, The Mystery, The Romance

After I read Kiss of Snow, I started to re-read the entire Psy series. I did so because in reading Kiss of Snow, I began to form a picture of Kaleb Krychek in my mind and I had to go back and figure out if the previous mentions of him fit the crystallizing image. This(…)

Courtney Milan on Self Publishing

Courtney Milan on Self Publishing

Publishing is undergoing a real seismic change. Agents are publishing, authors are banding together to form publishing houses, publishing houses are buying deals direct from the author (and thereby cutting out the agent), Amazon is changing the formulation from the Big 6 to the Big 7 and paying hefty sums to sign marquee authors, and(…)

All m/m fiction is not created equal

All m/m fiction is not created equal

A while back I was tweeting about m/m novels with a couple of m/m writers. I mentioned that my least favorite explanations for why women read m/m romance was “If one man is good, two men are even better!” Both of the writers agreed, and we moved on to other topics. I went back to(…)

Reading Outside Your Comfort Zone

Reading Outside Your Comfort Zone

  With the RT awards handed out and the RITA awards coming up, I’m struck by the omission of romances that don’t hew to the one man-one woman formula. Two years ago, I wouldn’t have noticed, let alone felt annoyed. While I’ve read erotic and BDSM novels for at least a couple of decades, I(…)

Unpacking the Navy SEAL hero in romance or the magic in “Let me take care of you”

Unpacking the Navy SEAL hero in romance or the magic in “Let me take care of you”

Since last week, there has been an increased interest in romances featuring Navy SEALs. The Washington Post and Glamour magazine both took a stab at what makes these archetypes popular with readers but they only skim the surface. “They have all of these abilities that the average guy doesn’t even have,” White said. “They appeal(…)

What about those cliffhangers?

What about those cliffhangers?

see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz! I think my distaste for cliffhanger endings were born and fostered over the past ten years of reading.  Much of reader response can be measured by the expectations the reader has when embarking on her reader journey.  When one is a(…)

Is there Such a Thing as Feminist Sex?

[Fleur] thought about Jake. His erotic pull on her grew stronger every time she saw him. She didn’t trust him, but she wanted him. And why couldn’t she have him? She turned the idea over in her mind. No emotional commitment. Just good, dirty sex. That’s all her attraction to him had ever been about.(…)

Of Rape and Rape Fantasies

Note: This reader emailed me yesterday and wanted to share this story with me. I didn’t think it belonged in the comments even though the topic of this piece is on point.  I also thought we should post it today rather than allow another week to pass because of its relevance. Without further ado, from(…)

The Vigilante Fantasy (or why sex is more wrong than violence)

The Vigilante Fantasy (or why sex is more wrong than violence)

Notice: the comments below discuss rape and rape fantasies. In Lisa Kleypas’ “Blue Eyed Devil”, Haven is brutalized by her husband.  He rapes her, beats her, and throws her out of the home.  When Haven confesses of her past to her new love, Hardy, he responds that he’d go after her ex and “when I(…)

How to Do “Exotic” Right: Eileen Dreyer’s <i>Never A Gentleman</i>

How to Do “Exotic” Right: Eileen Dreyer’s Never A Gentleman

People who know me know I’m hyper-sensitive to the portrayal of India and Indians in romance novels, especially British India in European historicals. Eileen Dreyer has a new trilogy, the second volume of which features an English heroine who accompanied her military officer father around the world, including campaigns in India in the early 1800s.(…)

The Bittered Heroine

The Bittered Heroine

As I was reading the latest Susan Elizabeth Phillips book, Call Me Irresistible, I was struck hard by how many of SEP's heroines suffer seemingly endless humiliation and degradation over the course of our acquaintance with them. And because of this, they have been bittered to a certain degree. Rachel, in Dream A Little Dream,(…)

What is the right price of a book, print or digital, part two

Last week I blogged about value as differentiated between price.   Many other readers chimed in with their own value scale.   What I read in the comments to last week’s post and that of Nadia Lee’s post is that a) readers will pay a lot for authors that they love and b) readers are reluctant to(…)