May 14 2012
Dear Ms. Belleau and Ms. Vane. I found this story by clickingclickingclicking through the various posted responses to our post about M/M romance and Fan Fiction. Heidi gives good blog and then I was intrigued, as I always am with prison stories, by the short she wrote with Violetta Vane. This story is fabulous, I’m [...]
May 10 2012
The Starving Years by Jordan Castillo Price This is a dystopian story set in the near past (1960) in New York. A new type of genetically engineered food, Manna, has ended starvation by providing basic nutrition to people all over the world. But something has gone wrong, leading to riots in Manhattan and implicating the [...]
May 7 2012
Dear Ms. McMurray. I picked up your book because of a recommendation by someone whose taste I trust and because I liked the excerpt. The story was cute, but the flaws outweighed the cuteness for me. This is a book about Being a Gay Athlete. This was NOT a romance. Oh, it had a love [...]
Apr 11 2012
Dear Ms. Allen, This review is long overdue. I loved this book when I read it last year, so much that I put it on my Best of 2011 list. But I didn’t get the review written in proper time, and then the Dreamspinner Press debacle happened and Sarah and I stopped reviewing DSP’s [...]
Apr 10 2012
(This one is addressed to readers, not the author) Dear Readers: As we all know, it’s impossible to be objective about a review. And this is fine, as long as we can be honest about the sources of our lack of objectivity, if we know them. This book has flaws, even major flaws that have [...]
Mar 28 2012
Dear Ms. Tenino. I loved this book. Just loved it. I read it in one sitting, finally going to sleep at 3am on Friday night, damn you. In retrospect, it has flaws, but I didn’t notice them as I was reading. Brad is a football player and in a frat. I really REALLY love the [...]
Mar 19 2012
Sarah: My experience with fanfiction comes from two different directions: as a Jane Austen scholar and as a reader of m/m romance. I have to say from the start that I don’t willingly read fan fiction. I know that it can be a wonderful thing for writers and readers and fan communities, as Jan and [...]
Mar 14 2012
I’ve been reading genre fiction (romance, mystery, SFF) for a very long time, but I didn’t become aware of fan fiction as a category of writing, much less its role in creating community, until I found internet blogs about fiction writing. Back when I was reading mystery blogs regularly, I ran across a ranting post [...]
Mar 6 2012
Dear Ms. Witt. I really enjoyed the main characters in this book. I’m…ambivalent enough about the other characters and some of the plot that it affected my enjoyment of the book as a whole. Jesse is running for Governor of California. He has no experience whatsoever in pretty much anything. He comes from acting royalty [...]
Mar 5 2012
January was kind of a bust for me, but I caught up in February. I’ve been trying to read further afield, going past the usual m/m and category and trying more historical romance. They didn’t all work perfectly, but I’ve no regrets in this batch. Twice Fallen: Ladies in Waiting by Emma Wildes. I discovered [...]
Feb 9 2012
Dear Ms. Haimowitz. I’ve been remiss in not reviewing these books. I recommended them in November, but then the end of the semester and the holidays and then the beginning of the semester and and and…caught up with me. But I’ve been dipping into them again and again through the last few months when I needed [...]
Jan 6 2012
Dear Ms. Dare. You have a knack for writing characters who are all different, no matter how many times you seem to write them into similar situations or how similar they seem at the start. And your conflicts are entirely character-based, so the conflicts are all different. I find your construction of BDSM sometimes requires [...]
Dec 27 2011
Dear Sean. I like your voice. I really do. After all, it’s why I keep trying your books. I’ve even enjoyed some of your Hammer Club series (Kinky Klub of Kinkiness, ahoy! in which Sarah learns about sexual sounding. O.O ). I just wish you believed in plot a little more strongly. I think I’ve [...]
Dec 12 2011
Dear Ms. Mitchell. You’ve done it again. While Bad Boyfriend is perhaps not as perfect (to my mind) as No Souvenirs, I much prefer it to Bad Company. The book focuses on two fascinating men and their relationship with each other and with those that surround them. There’s no intrigue, no mystery. There’s just people trying to [...]
Dec 8 2011
Dear Ms. Dare. I’ve been intrigued by your writing for a while. Your tagline is “Kink, love, and a happy ending. Do you Dare?” which I think is incredibly cute. Honestly, though, I’ve been put off by your publishers (Total-e-Bound and Resplendence Publishing…who?) and by the fact that your series are quite so long (TWELVE [...]
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