Dear Author Test Site

Dear Ms. Kery:

I had really been down on erotic romance as a sub genre for the past few months.  So much of what I had attempted to read was sex without emotion.  That type of story gets tired quickly and with many of the mainstream romances heating up, it seemed that erotic romance might be a sub genre that no longer fit my reading tastes. 

When I started Wicked Burn, despite the well written sex scenes that nearly singed my eyebrows, I thought that it was going to be just one of those erotic romances because of the unrelenting sex scenes during the first third of the story, but serious relationship issues arise leading to believable conflict, character growth, and a very strong romance. This is a straight relationship driven contemporary erotic romance.

Niall Chandler and Vic Savian live next door to one another in a high end apartment complex in Chicago.  They’ve been…

The Black Wednesday reports of layoffs and consolidtations is a bit depressing.

As part of the 12 days of Christmas, Harlequin is offering a half off sale for all eBooks.  Just use the coupon code "HALFOFF" at the Checkout.   It's a coupon good for only today.

Edited to add some suggestions:

• I like Helen Brooks, Sara Craven and Susan Napier of the HP line although the December Brooks and Craven disappointed me.
• I love Sarah Mayberry with Crusie Control and Anything For You being my top two ebooks (her first Mills and Boon book which is not digitized is my all time favorite. Will review later this week).
• Other Blaze authors I like: Jill Monroe, Jo Leigh, Katheen O’Reilly and Lori Borrell.
• I just read a HP last night that was good! (no asshole hero) and featured an Asian heroine!!!!!!!!!! It was Anne McAllister’s Antonides’ Forbidden Wife.

A friend of mine emailed me and said she was scared to go to Publishers Marketplace for fear of hearing about more layoffs.  Simon & Schuster is cutting 35 positions including "publishing divisions and international, operations and sales).  One of the S&S staff we know that is "resigning" is the head of the S&S Children's arm, Rick Richter who has been with S&S since 1999.

http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com SB Sarah emailed this breaking news release to me.  Stanza has partnered with Fictionwise to provide DRM content via the Fictionwise store. It's brilliant and I really applaud Fictionwise for allowing its store to be partnered with Stanza because Fictionwise could have easily said, no thanks, we've got ereader.  Stanza has licensed the ebook Reader platform so the books that you buy are in eReader format.

Roxanne St. Claire, author of the BulletCatcher series and RITA winner, is offering her RITA-nominated novella,  You Can Count on Me, for a free download. It is the first story to feature a female Bullet Catcher and it can stand alone so if you are interested in the BulletCatcher series, but have been reluctant to dive in, you can give this freebie a try.

Download link here.  (Right click and save as.  This is a large file - 5.2MB so if you are on a dialup, be prepared for a wait).

I've honestly never understood the huge number of imprints at publishing houses.  It is hard for even the editors to articulate why there are two or more divisions that essentially publish the same type genre of book.  Today, Random House is announcing that it's going to consolidate publishing houses while hoping to maintain imprint identity.  

• Random House will absorb Bantam Dell, Dial Press, and Doubleday Spiegel& Grau.  This will be led by Gina Centrello.
• Knopf Publishing will absorb Doubleday and Nan A Talese (originally from Doubleday).  This will be led by Sonny Mehta.
• Crown Publishing will absorb Broadway, Doubleday Business, Doubleday Religion and WaterBrook Multnomah.  This will be led by Jenny Frost.

• I forgot to mention the good news and that is Hachette is giving or gave all its employees a bonus equal to one week salary in addition to normally scheduled bonuses.  Wonder if that has anything to do with the success of Twilight.  I saw a gift box set of the Bella/Edward series in the Costco Magazine.
• The bad news is that Thomas Nelson publishers, a Christian publishing house that bought Lynn Spears' parenting book (talk about bad decision making), is laying off 10% of its workforce  (55 people).  I wonder how much money TN put into  the making of the film, FireProof.  My mall had a ton of advertisements for it.  
• Since HMH appears to be on the selling block , one wonders what will become of its efforts to create individual apps for the iPhone containing one book each (which I think is about the worst idea ever).

…

I found this ShelfAwareness quote of the day to be bizarre:

I think bedrooms, bathrooms, and buses are exactly the type of place where electronic formats are the easiest to use.  Bedrooms are great because the isolated backlight or nightlight lit devices don't bother your partner. Plus, hardcovers are hard to hold in the bed, laying on one side or completely reposed.  Bathrooms and buses are great for ereading because the ebook is a lightweight, go anywhere device.   Beaches are the one place that I do think ereading can be dangerous because sand in your electronic device is no fun.  Having said that, I've read…

Dear Ms. Giusti,

I’ve got to say that this is one of the most original romantic suspense plots I’ve encountered in a long time. In a subgenre overflowing with serial killers, secret government operations, ex-SEALs, and other sometimes hard to believe plot elements, you’ve given us something different. Double value coupon points for that!

Allison Stewart works in research at Magnolia Medical in Atlanta, Ga. Specifically she’s trying to develop a lab test for units of blood collected for transfusion to patients. As if hepatitis and HIV aren’t enough to worry about, now there are too many units being lost due to worry about prions - the proteins responsible for scrapie in sheep, bovine spongiform encephalopathy in cows and, most importantly, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. She hasn’t perfected the test yet leading to the board of directors questioning whether or not they want to keep funding her research.

If that wasn’t…