****

The first of Harlequin’s Blogger Bundles are available. Dear Author compiled a group of books as did Wendy, the Superlibrarian. (Where is Volume II??) Keishon spotted them at Fictionwise with some significant micropay discounting. Jessica has some thoughts about her own bundles as does Keira Soleore.

I’m going to give away a copy of each bundle to 5 readers. These are digital copies and will be sent through Fictionwise. Leave a comment about the blogger bundle you would like to see.

****

In a super annoying website, LibreDigital has the top 10 things you should know about ebooks. Romance is the genre most often browsed online and Forrester Research predicts ebook sales in excess of $500 million in 2010.

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Peter Ginna of Bloomsbury Press makes the case for publishers or maybe it’s just publishing in general.

The book business looks from one perspective like publishers “buy” content from authors and then resell it. But from another perspective, we’re providing a service—enabling the author to reach readers (and collect money for his content). Around Bloomsbury we sometimes say “the author is our customer.” In a sense we are selling the services of editing, design, printing, marketing, distribution and so on. Could a group of authors do the same things themselves? Yes. Of course, then in effect they’d become….publishers. An authors’ co-op might produce more money for writers than a conventional publishing contract, but I don’t know if it would make either writing or publishing radically more lucrative.

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Christian Science Monitor has an interview with a Toronto student who has a school issued Sony Touch. Let’s just say he’s not going back to paper.

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Amazon has had a great year in profits despite a down economy and it has publishers engaging in bad publicity (you can’t have books you want until we are ready to give them to you) in an effort to tamp down Amazon’s competitive advantage. In an interview with Bezos, he is asked about the key to Amazon’s success. Bezos points to the fact that Amazon exists to serve its customers:

LYONS: Amazon started off as a retailer. Now you’re also selling computing services, and you’re in the consumer-electronics business with the Kindle. How do you define what Amazon is today?

BEZOS: We start with the customer and we work backward. We learn whatever skills we need to service the customer. We build whatever technology we need to service the customer.

Also? For every book that has a Kindle version, Amazon is selling nearly half in Kindle and half in print.

****

Elise Blackwell writes a thought provoking piece on curation and the future of curation and filtering in the new media age.

So my question is this: can we support a diversification of quality literary gatekeepers, distributors, and venues so that more of us will write books that reflect our freedom, rather than books we think we can get published and legitimized by a few editors who must answer to their marketing departments? How will such books find their readers?

****

I’m rabidly anti DRM because I think it hampers ebook adoption and cripples consumer choice. Eric Hellman argues that if you can make DRM provide value to the reader, the reader will gladly accept it. I would buy into that theory.

]]> http://dearauthor.com/test/2009/12/22/tuesday-midday-links-blogger-bundles-up-for-presale-giveaway/feed/ 1 http://dearauthor.com/test/2009/11/26/film-review-infernal-affairs-2002/ http://dearauthor.com/test/2009/11/26/film-review-infernal-affairs-2002/#comments Thu, 26 Nov 2009 19:35:48 +0000 admin http://dearauthor.com/test/?p=74 Dear Andy Lau and Alan Mak, [[test post]] The film opens with Hon Sam (Eric Tsang), an ambitious Triad (Chinese criminal organisation) leader, addressing a line of young male teenagers outside a Buddhist temple where they have just paid respects to their fallen comrades: “Five years ago, we started a business in a car park outside the [...]]]> Dear Andy Lau and Alan Mak, [[test post]]

The film opens with Hon Sam (Eric Tsang), an ambitious Triad (Chinese criminal organisation) leader, addressing a line of young male teenagers outside a Buddhist temple where they have just paid respects to their fallen comrades:

“Five years ago, we started a business in a car park outside the Palace Restaurant in Tun Men Da Xing. We were so driven with ambition, but in first six months the police busted us at least two, three, times per day. In that first year, six (Triad) brothers died. May the Buddha protect us; the success I have today is due to their sacrifices, which still hurts me. But I believe, really believe, that for gangsters like us, our lives depend on us taking fate into our hands.”

His idea of taking fate in hands is send these teenagers into a police academy where they will graduate and infiltrate various police departments. Once there, they will secretly gather and pass on intelligence to Hon Sam. This means a life commitment for these young men, but they are willing to sacrifice for their boss. Among those men is Lau Kin-Ming (Edison Chen).
Meanwhile, a few years later, Superintendent Wong Chi-Shing (Anthony Wong) meets a scruffy-looking man with his arm in plaster, Chen Wing-Yan (Tony Leung). We quickly learn Yan as a police cadet (Shawn Yue) was formally expelled from the police academy to go undercover as a Triad member. His undercover task was supposed to last three years, but it’s been almost ten years. And Yan’s tired. He’s already starting to have a long police record of assault. Wong promises Yan could have his police badge back once he finished one more task. Yan has heard it all before and ready to give up, but Wong coolly reminds him:

“Maybe I could just erase your real identity and leave you with the Triad for good.”

In spite of that horrible threat, it’s clear Wong does care about Yan, a very isolated and lonely man who’s slowly being consumed by the darkness of leading a double life between keeping the sight of his job and working for the Triad. Wong orders him to visit a psychologist to deal with his problems.
Begrudgingly, Yan informs his boss that Sam Hon – who is Yan’s crime boss and has been two years – is meeting with the Thai drug merchants at a secret place in a week.
The police’s crackdown on organised crime seems to be dogged with bad luck while Sam Hon rises to be one of most powerful Triad bosses in the city. After being in Sam’s gang for two years, Yan is gaining Sam’s trust enough to be regarded as his right-hand man, which means the police will start to have ‘good luck’.
Meanwhile Lau Kin-Ming is enjoying his position as a shining star of the police, but Ming’s never forgot his crucial role: Hon Sam’s undercover mole. He constantly plays risky games, passing information to Sam while helping the police with the crackdown on the organized crime.
It’s not until the police’s tension-filled surveillance around the Thai drug deal with Sam that all key figures –Ming, Sam, Wong and Yan – realize simultaneously there’s a mole on each side. During a confrontation between Sam the Triad boss and Wong the police boss, they openly acknowledge they are aware there’s a mole on their side. As Wong says:

“Two idiots are waiting for their kidney transplants, but only one kidney is available. The two guys thus play a game. They each put a playing card into the other’s pocket. Whoever guesses the card in his pocket wins.”

For Yan the good guy on the bad side and Ming the bad guy on the good side, it’s time to enter a cat-and-mouse game that could end with one dying.

The summary above is just the first thirty minutes of Infernal Affairs. When I watched it in Hong Kong, where I lived and worked for a couple of years, I didn’t have high expectations. There were so many triad vs cop films as well as the so-called poetic bullet genre, popularised by John Woo and his favourite actor, Chow Yun-Fat. Infernal Affairs did have a fantastic cast, but they appeared in so many films, and often together, that it wasn’t that special.
However, Infernal Affairs blew me away. I strongly believe it was because of the timing of the cast, the crew and the script melding so well. We hadn’t seen this kind of cosmic marriage, not since either Johnnie To’s memorable film, Running Out of Time, with Andy Lau as a thief and Lau Ching-Wan as a detective.
In fact, Infernal Affairs raised the bar for HK and international crime films, paving a way for crime films around the world. There’s no doubt that Infernal Affairs is one of most influential films in history of world cinema. Some may disagree, probably because of Martin Scorcese’s The Departed, a “reimagined” version of Infernal Affairs. I didn’t quite enjoy The Departed because when comparing with Infernal Affairs, I felt it was – in spite of DiCaprio’s surprisingly good performance – slick, shallow, riddled with plot holes and a couple of unbelievable coincidences.
Of course, this may be a red flag to defenders of The Departed, but I do feel it’s fair to say that because Martin Scorcese and his defenders tried to belittle Infernal Affairs’s influence on the international crime film genre as well as trying to dismiss it as a “crappy little HK film” and that his version was much superior to the original. That’s his prerogative, but I still strongly disagree. I felt his denial reeked of disrespect.

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First off, I have a bone to pick with marketing. This anthology (featuring stories by Laurell K. Hamilton, Yasmine Galenorn, Marjorie M. Liu, and Sharon Shinn) is clearly marked on the spine as Urban Fantasy. And yet? Only one out of the four stories has an actual urban fantasy setting. All of the others are traditional fantasies. I mean like trolls, ogres, elves, and magician-type fantasies. MISLEADING.

The tagline on the cover reveals the common thread of all the stories: “All-new tales of magic revealed—and matrimony refused—from four of today’s most provocative authors”. Okay, so all the stories feature heroines who are trying to get out of unwanted betrothals. And yet this whole “four of today’s most provocative authors” thing? What do they mean by that? Are they implying these stories are super smexy and feature kink? Because they don’t. In fact, these stories would pretty much be comfortable on the shelf with inspirational romances. Barely any smooching to be found. So what’s so provocative about that? Honestly, out of these 4 authors, only Laurell K. Hamilton probably fits the provocative label, and only then if you mean “writes crazily complicated orgies in her other books”.

1. Can He Bake a Cherry Pie by Laurell K Hamilton

Anyway, on to the actual story critiques. Laurell K. Hamilton leads off the anthology with “Can He Bake a Cherry Pie?”

You guys.

This story is c-c-crazy. At it’s core, it is a pretty basic fairy tale featuring a heroine who wants to escape an unwanted betrothal. In order to do so, she announces that she is going to rescue Prince True — a sort of male Sleeping Beauty figure in their kingdom. True was captured by a sorceress 50-odd years ago after being a douche.

Seriously.

Actually, he basically announced that men were waaay more important than women and that women’s work was useless in comparison. That’s it? Why aren’t 75% of the men prisoners in her lair, then? So anyway, the sorceress, in a fit of girl power, challenged him, won, and has kept him prisoner in her lair, forever beautiful and ageless. According to legend only a girl well versed in the womanly arts can free him. All righty then.

So our guileless (and virtually brainless) heroine makes her way to the cave of the sorceress, fully anticipating her own death. But dying in the act of rescue is so much better than marrying an oaf. So whatevs. Heroine makes her way to the rope and board bridge stretching over the chasm leading the cave and is greeted by a rabid troll. She basically squeaks and closes her eyes waiting for the death blow, and BECAUSE SHE IS TOTALLY WEAK AND DOES NOT FIGHT BACK OR EVEN MAKE EYE CONTACT, she passes the first test.

The second test finds her facing an Ogre just inside the mouth of the cave. Said ogre threatens to chop her up into pieces and eat her and heroine agains squeaks in distress and closes her eyes. Because ew. Then the ogre NOTICES HER SHOES. Which are impractical party shoes. Because the heroine left in a hurry, yo. And she likes sparkly things? So the beauty and impracticality of her shoes lets her pass the second test.

The third test is the most bunk-ass sphinx you would ever hope to meet. This sphinx doesn’t even ask questions in the form of obscure riddles. WTF? This sphinx is interested in fabric dying techniques, dessert recipes, and gardening. The heroine’s housekeeping skills enable her to pass. Good thing, too, as she would have been eaten alive.

Ultimately, at the end of this gantlet, the sorceress is met, challenges are posed, and the asstacular Prince True is found. After a bit more craziness, involving — you guessed it — baking cherry pies, the heroine lives happily ever after.

I just. I mean. What is the message in this story? I know what the message is supposed to be. I.E. Womanly skills (aka cooking, gardening, and housekeeping) are important and have meaning — but that is really not what the story shows. The heroine is supremely stupid and wins the day by being cowardly, impractical, and good at trivia. GIRL POWER!

As an added bonus, this story is a mere 35 pages. I think the true miracle here is that I kept reading the anthology after I finished this story. I give this a D-.

2. The Shadow of Mist by Yasmine Galenorn

Next up is Yasmine Galenorn’s “The Shadow of Mist”. First off, kudos for being the lone urban fantasy story in this “urban fantasy anthology”. This novella is set in her “Otherworld” universe, and I have to be honest, I haven’t read any of the other books in the series. To be perfectly frank, plot-wise, this wasn’t a great introduction to it.

Siobhan, the heroine, is a selkie who has been on the run from her fiance for over 100 years. The last few decades, she’s relaxed her guard somewhat, and has found happiness and love in the Pacific Northwest with her boyfriend Mitch. The story opens with her long lost fiance Terry calling her on the phone to helpfully inform her that he knows where she is and is coming for her. Why? Because he will not be denied, yo! This is the equivalent of villain monologueing — he has no earthly reason to warn her of his arrival, and without his helpful information she would have been a sitting duck for his kidnapping attempt. Of course, that would have completely eliminated the plot as well.

IMO, this is a lazy plot device that serves no other purpose than to allow the heroine to call in ye olde cast of characters from many previous novels to assist her in her fight against the villain. To her credit, I must say that Galenorn does a great job with said characters. The problem is, I was more intrigued with them than I was with the heroine of the story, who was totally weak and wimpy in comparison. In fact, the heroine spends the entire story having events happen to her, rather than trying to become the master of her fate.

She refuses police assistance because she’s pretty sure her family will still force her to marry Terry. Even though she’s pregnant with Mitch’s baby and knows Terry will totally force her to miscarry if he catches her on her own. Oookay. She is repeatedly almost dragged off with Terry and his henchmen, and is repeatedly rescued by characters from previous books. And then? In the big showdown? (Which is totally not big at all and really sort of anticlimactic.) Siobhan saves the day by complete and total accident. It’s honestly the equivalent of someone tossing something out a high rise window and killing a wanted criminal who just happens to be walking by below.

Deus ex sucksalot.

For all my complaints, I will say that Galenorn succeeded in making me interested in her world and the characters that occupy it. I will most likely be picking up the first book in her Otherworld series, and hoping the plotting goes better in a full length novel. My grade for this story is a C-.

3. The Tangleroot Palace by Marjorie M. Liu

The third story in this anthology is Marjorie M. Liu’s “The Tangleroot Palace“. This was an ethereal, dreamy story with a strong fairy tale feel to it. It was also my favorite of the bunch. Sally, our intrepid heroine, is a princess who is being forced to wed a Warlord from a neighboring kingdom. Their mothers were childhood friends, and though they ended up in different countries, it was their dream that their children would meet and marry someday. But Sally ain’t havin’ it. Even though her father’s kingdom is being tormented on all sides by mercenaries and squabbling lords, Sally wants the right to choose her own destiny. This leads her to the stories titular location — the Tangleroot Forest.

A place of magic and legend, the forest draws people in, but rarely lets them out. On her journey to the forest, Sally meets a traveling circus trio whose members are more than meets the eye.

As I mentioned, this was my favorite of all the stories, and although the identity of the hero was easily guessed — heck, I wouldn’t even call it a guess, it was blatantly obvious — that wasn’t the true point of the story. The secret at the heart of Tanglewood is the true mystery to be solved here. My grade is a A-.

4. The Wrong Bridegroom by Sharon Shinn

Lastly, was the most lengthy of the stories, “The Wrong Bridegroom” by Sharon Shinn. I really wanted to love this story from the get-go. I love 90% of Sharon Shinn’s books, and while I ultimately ended up really liking this story, I found that I had to power through a big chunk of it to get to that point.

Told from the 1st person POV of the heroine, Princess Olivia, the story starts out with a royal challenge to find the person worthy of receiving her hand in marriage. Although there has long been an understanding between her and the oh so perfectly stuffy Sir Harwin Brenley, Olivia would rather die than marry that hugemongous boor. Because she is spoiled and stubborn and young and foolish and petty. And young. Young. YOUNG. So the King, a ruthless and selfish man, has arranged a series of challenges to find the Princess a husband.

I guess it is to Shinn’s credit that she writes the heroine so well. She perfectly encapsulates the spoiled attitude of a 21 year old princess with a horrible, neglectful father, a surprisingly wise stepmother she refuses to listen to, and a lifetime of getting her own way. And because she so perfectly captures her character, I spent 75% of the story wanting to kill Olivia. Or at least bitchslap her.

After a tie occurs between two competitors for her hand, Olivia makes the tie-breaking decision and immediately sets out on a trip with her new betrothed to visit his family. As they journey along at a snail’s pace, in a not-very-princess-like horse and cart, they add unexpected members to their party along the way and start to see people, places, and things that the sheltered Olivia has never experienced before. Not much time passes before Olivia begins questioning what makes a good husband, a good ruler, and a happy life.

Although this heroine was grating and immature (which I think may have been exacerbated by the 1st person narration), when it got good, it got reeeeal good. In fact, it made me miss my stop in the morning, necessitating a 5 block hike to work. For that reason, I have to give this story a solid B+.

So overall, though this anthology was seriously mislabeled, the bulk of the book was entertaining. The Liu story and the Shinn story comprise over 2/3ds of the length, thanks to the super short Hamilton tale. If you are a fan of romantic fantasy with a fairy tale feel, you’ll enjoy this. Weighing the letter grade in terms of story length, I would give this a B-.

LOVE,

NONNIE

This book can be purchased at Amazon or in ebook format from Sony or other etailers.

I picked up your book DEADLINE because my middle teenage daughter has a problem sitting still for long enough to read her required books for English, and when she does read them, she needs help absorbing them. She started your book, handed it to me and demanded to know “Is the main character really dying????”
As in she couldn’t believe her eyes. So I opened the book and read.

Yes, the main character is dying. Almost stopped reading right there because my kid-in-jeopardy tolerance is pretty low. But here’s the thing. I couldn’t. You sucked me right in with your easy, sardonic wit and devastating charm coated in a bluntness that as an author myself, I loved. Our hero is Ben Wolf, a pint-sized, eighteen year old who lives in a small town in Idaho. He has big things planned for his senior year, big things that don’t include a fatal blood disease.

But he takes the cards he’s dealt. Because he’s eighteen, he’s allowed to keep his terminal disease a secret from his crazy mother, distanced father and beloved brother. It’s a decision Ben claims to be positive about, but his inner id, whom he affectionately calls Hey-Soos, keeps poking at him with a stick to wake up and smell the roses, because by not telling, he’s living a lie, a lie that will devastate those who love him.

I loved how Ben sticks his head in the sand about this and goes about doing things that he’d never trusted himself to do before. A bucket list for the teenager set if you will. He decides to go out for football, all 123 pounds of him. He decides to try to get laid by the prettiest girl in school — Dallas. He decides to drive his closed-minded teacher crazy. And he decides to help the local drunk become sober.

And shock of all shocks, it turns out that he can play football more than decently, even with his diminutive statue. And the pretty girl, Dallas, is even prettier on the inside, and best of all, she likes him back. And his teacher isn’t so hard to drive crazy after all. And the town drunk appears to be a shockingly normal guy when he’s sober.

Except.

Except . . . living with a secret sucks. Especially when his brother wants and needs Ben to go to college with him and continue to interpret his football plays to make him look like a superstar. And Dallas. God, Dallas. Ben falls for her, and falls hard, but even more of a miracle, she falls for him. Which means she’s not the throwaway adventure he’d thought. And he’s leaving. There’s no getting around that. He’s out of here. Off Planet Earth in less than six months. As he begins to understand what his dying is going to do to those who love him, his resolve to keep his secret starts to crumble. Even more unsettling, he’s not the only one with secrets. Big secrets. Life destroying, soul crushing secrets that I’m not going to reveal here and ruin the plot because this is a book worth reading, more than once, if only for the gut wrenching realization that we should live every damn day the best that we can.

Suffice it to say, Mr. Crutcher, you hooked me. You hooked me with how real the teens were depicted, including profanity, fear, sex, everything. You made me care about these characters, about their relationships, and the tangled web they wove. You shocked me, more than once, and that was good. My daughter actually read a whole book, and that in itself is probably the biggest compliment I can pay you. I loved this book, I was both destroyed and enlightened by this book, and look forward to more from you.

Jill Shalvis
When she’s not reading, USA Today bestselling romance author Jill Shalvis is at work on her next novel. INSTANT ATTRACTION is in stores now. See her daily blog for more details, her crazy mountain adventures, and contests.

This book can be purchased in hardcover from Borders.com.

***

I don’t have a blog and I don’t write books, but I love to read and I love to talk about what I read.

I have been reading since I first learned how in school. My Dad used to take me to the library once a week and it was a magical place. All those books and I could only choose a few each time. In time, I had read all the books at my reading level and started on the next level.

Then we moved and we had a library nearby that I could walk to all by myself. What a treat. This wonderful library not only had more books than the previous library, but they had a marvelous doll’s house that I spent hours looking at.

Then we moved again and there was no library nearby. I was devastated and started stealing my mother’s paperbacks to read. Some were romances, but most were mysteries. My mother loved Perry Mason stories and I just never cared for them. She also liked the Agatha Christie mysteries which I loved. This started me on a life-long love of Ms. Christie (or Dame Agatha).

Our next two moves brought us to towns that had decent public libraries and I was in heaven again. The last town was finally where my parents settled and my sister still lives in their house.

As you can see, I have had a good grounding in the printed word that started a long journey to where I am today. I read because I can’t imagine a life without books. I can do without television and I could even do without my computer (gulp!), but I could never do without a book.

***

If you would like to contribute a guest essay on why you read, why you write or why you blog, please send an email to Jane at dearauthor.com with “Essay” in the subject line.

***

I love to read. No, I looooove to read. And I read fast. I read about 300 books a year (counting re-reads). So when I saw the Ja(y)nes offer to post essays on reading, writing and the love thereof, I got to thinking—WHY do I love reading and writing so much.

It’s the stories. My cousin Diane taught me to read when I was just four, and from that moment, I’ve been caught up in the worlds opened up to me by books. But I think my addiction to story must go earlier than that, because my mother likes to talk about taking me to see Bambi with my multitude of cousins when I was three. (Mama is the youngest of four sisters, each of whom had four kids, except for Aunt Bettye, who had six…The family Thanksgiving is massive.) For weeks afterward, my invisible friend Bambi went everywhere with me. Hey, at least Bambi was a deer and didn’t require his own plate at the dinner table, like the fella’s invisible friend Mister. (Mister got on a plane one day and flew to Chicago, never to be seen again.)

Stories fire my imagination and, for a little while, let me live in That world, instead of this—often boring—one. In the world of story, ANYTHING can happen.

Which is why I write. I still have invisible friends. No, really. TIME magazine quoted researchers who discovered that fiction writers’ relationships with their characters is virtually identical with a child’s relationship with his invisible friends. We know they’re not real. Honest. We do know. But we still have no control over them. They go off and do stuff just because they want to, and we have no way to stop them.

Back to the topic. I don’t write just because I get to hang out with invisible friends. I write because I get to tell stories. And in those stories, ANYTHING can happen. Dragons are real. Soul mates can find their destiny. People can recover from tragedy. Even all of the above. And, despite the fact that characters can go their own way, I can still tell the story I want to tell. (The characters usually know better than I do.)

I started wanting to tell stories MY way back in—junior high, I think. That’s when I inherited a bunch of my dad’s old books. Copies of Robin Hood in archaic English. The originalTarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I literally read the cover off Tarzan. The only problem I saw was that Tarzan didn’t have a sister. Jane really didn’t cut it as a place-holder for the role I wanted to play in the book. I wanted to live in the jungle too. So I made up one.

I graduated from fan fiction sometime in college, eventually learned to finish a book, and here I am. I still love to read, and I still love to write (even though these days it sometimes can feel like work). Because it’s all about the story.

***

If you would like to contribute a guest essay on why you read, why you write or why you blog, please send an email to Jane at dearauthor.com with “Essay” in the subject line.

(I could not have written this post without the help of Maili aka McVane and her near encyclopedic knowledge of the history of internet community on romance)

One thing that does not get enough acknowledgment is how past communities on the internet have blazed new trials in romance criticism and readership involvement in books. Michelle Buonfiglio’s piece about good communities and bad communities wasn’t just a swipe at Smart Bitch Sarah but it was an indictment of all communities that foster robust discussion. It raised old and tired arguments and worse dismisses or refuses to acknowledge the communities that formed the foundation of internet communities that we have today. The main reason why internet is good for romance? Because the community keeps us loyal to and passionate about the romance genre and that results in greater sales. The basis for my post today is threefold:

1. to honor and give due to those who went before us.
2. to recognize that critical discourse leads to strengthening of the community.
3. to enforce that romance needs an internet community of vibrant, contrary, smart readers.

My earliest memories of criticism of the romance genre came in the form of reviews at The Romance Reader. (Founded by Leslie McClain.) According to its current owner, Dede, Leslie started the site in 1995. There was no TRR domain but it could be found searching for romance reviews. In 1996, Leslie turned the site over to Dede and TRR still puts out quality reviews today. One of my favorite reviewers of romances was Susan Scribner who introduced me to more than one awesome five heart review during her turn as a reviewer.

Romantic Times had message boards as far back as 1998 although the archives of those conversations do not readily exist. From 1998 to approximately 2002, there were only four main threads but as more readers began to populate the message boards, the more that they wanted to talk about both the good AND the bad of the books they were reading. A month-long debate on the ‘Favourite Books and Authors’ threads gave birth to two to three additional threads to allow ‘critical posts’ of novels. One of those is the still in existence ‘Readers’ Roundtable.’

Laurie Gold, formerly of All About Romance, founded a Prodigy Romance Listserv for fans to engage each other about the genre. When Prodigy died, the list was moved to ONElist and it was renamed AARList. This ultimately morphed into the yahoo group, AARlist. Some time after this, a new yahoo group was announced called “canwetalk”. The list was open to readers only; no authors allowed. It was to be a place for readers to discuss books openly without dealing with or fearing the reactions from defensive authors. This caused a massive uproar.

However, the anonymous poster made a response to a criticism and accidentally revealed herself to be no other than LLB herself. LLB owned up and explained she was fed up with authors not allowing to give readers the freedom to discussion books with freedom and thus tried to create a haven for readers. Authors were suspicious of ‘canwetalk’ enough to go undercover and “spy” on discussions. One author subscribed under her own name and announced that her “fans” had passed on critical comments from the list to her and so, she entered the list because she wanted to “tell y’all I am okay with negative reviews and anti-romance readers”.

RRA-List is another long running entity, possibly the oldest in existence. Dubbed the RRA-L (Romance Readers Anonymous List), it was founded in 1992 by Leslie Haas and Kara Robinson, two librarians. RRA-L gave out awards at the end of the year which are often cited by authors. Readers and authors alike mingled on this listserv and it was from this listserv that commonplace terms such as TSTL wallbanger, comfort read, and the like were coined. Preeti Singh lovingly maintained that awards list and fostered the listserv along with all the other inhabitants and contributors. The busiest period seemed to be between 1995 and 1997. 1997 was the inception of AAR and it’s possible that many on the list migrated to the open forum that AAR offered. RRA-L still exists although as a Yahoo group now.

Since early 1990s, Romance readers learned HTML from each other or books to create a web site or CGI for a message board. Romance-focused web sites then began to spring up all over the internet. Online databases of romance novels were formed. Book swapping sites for romance readers developed. Sites that devoted to galleries of romance book covers. Sites that specialised in certain sub-genres. BYRON (Books You Read Old & New) was the result of a passionate romance reader who, with her brother, created a software program as a comprensative book database for romance readers. Although many were author-friendly, review web sites were a common sight. Serious discussions among readers began.

For nearly as long as there has been an internet, there have been readers coming together to talk about books, both the good and the bad. There wasn’t a typical reader nor discussion. There were discussions of identifying and defining themes (friends-turn-lovers; revenge; beauty and the beast), types (tearjerker, epic, dark), then-unofficial sub-genres (western, pirate, regency, adventure, office), archetypes (Alpha/Beta/Gamma heroes, antihero/ines, experienced heroines), common plots, and pet peeves. There were also many discussions about definitions of terms, types of romance novel, historical fiction, reader types, ethics and the future of the genre.

Readers were quick to embrace or reject a new sub-genre or trend. When Chick Lit became popular, there were discussions in the romance community whether it should be part of the Romance genre, Women’s Fiction or Comedy. Discussions regarding placement of books within the genre applied to novels such as Robin Schone’s books Awaken My Love (1995) and The Lady’s Tutor (1998) that sparked many an online war over the definition of ‘erotic romance’. Some believe that she (and Susan Johnson to some extent with Bertrice Small) created the sub-genre of erotic romance.

There were even discussions about the conduct and ethics of authors’ online behaviour. There were different types and depths of discussions but all discussions have included both the negative and the positive. You simply CANNOT eliminate negative or contrary voices. These voices will rise up in different formats and attract readers because we are not solely about sunshine and light. We want to talk about every aspect of romance from the very great to the very ugly. Debate, even heated debate, is part of what makes the communities endure.

During this period, established authors and long-time readers, some who saw authors as celebrities, did not appreciate a growing number of new-generation readers voicing their less-than-complimentary opinions about romance novels and the flaws of the genre. Some called on their loyal readers to battle with these “anti-romance” readers, which caused tension and flame wars. It took years of several reader-author discussions to create a quiet agreement on how they should conduct their online relationships and revised the ethics of reviews. 2000 brought in a new generation of authors, formerly readers and familiar with the history of the online community, that made it easier for readers and authors to have book discussions and issues.

Even the Princeton conference wasn’t the first academic discussion of its kind. In 2000, Bowling Green State University held a symposium regarding romance. The featured speakers were Jayne Ann Krentz, Jenny Crusie, and Kay Mussell, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at American University, where she served as Professor of Literature and American Studies.

Dear Author is but a microcosm in the universe of romance communities that have come and gone and that have endured. (We, of course, want to be one of those that endure). Dear Author would not be here if it weren’t for those listservs. If it weren’t for TRR and AAR. If it weren’t for Mrs. Giggles. Or bloggers like Rosario, who started blogging in August of 2002! and Wendy, the Superlibrarian, whose archives stem back to 2003, Maili who helped so many of us (including Dear Author) get our start, and launched a whole new era of reader blogs. Readers have never viewed each other as competitors. Instead, we share information. We riff off each others ideas. It is this proliferation of strong voices on the internet that has helped, in some small ways, in creating the idea in others’ minds that romance is a legitimate genre; wholly different than porn and worthy of literary recognition.

One of the strengths of the Beyond Heaving Bosoms book is that there are bad works of fiction published under the romance umbrella. Owning that gives us credibility when we say that there are great books in the genre. But even beyond the embrace of criticism of the genre is the creation of community. Communities full of readers (of which authors are a subset) help to foster devotion and loyalty to the genre as well as ensuring the improvements and further developments of the genre with a critical eye.

Through these communities we find new authors but even better new reasons why we love the genre, it empowers us to talk to other people, helps shed some of the shame associated with reading romance. It makes us prouder, more articulate, and better ambassadors of the genre.

I would love to hear about what brought you into the romance community. What your earliest memory of it was. What you like most and what you like least about internet romance communities. How you believe it will evolve. These are my memories (spurred by Maili). What are yours?

All fiction readers will enjoy this book. Look for BED OF ROSES on sale in November.”

Thanks for your contribution, A Romance Reviewer. We’ll be sending you an ARC of Nora’s follow up _________.

A week ago I pounded out an article that I was going to offer up as my guest blog post for the Love of Reading Book Fair. It was all about how tension between print reviewers and bloggers is unnecessary because blogging fills the niches that print reviewers don’t have the space or inclination to service.

Yesterday I pulled it up to polish a bit and realized it that it was dullness personified. I figured that if there were new readers from the Book Fair, I didn’t want them to get the idea that romance was full of sex and boring. What kind of representative would I be? I put away the article to bore you with another day because I’m all about treating the regulars right.

To those who might not be familiar with Dear Author, we love romance books. We love the stories that end happily. We love the stories with the pink covers. We love the stories that have, wait for it, sex.

I decided to write about my affection for reading love, sex, vampires and the escapist factor of paranormal/fantasy books that are purportedly dominating the market today. (This seems to be debunked a bit in the recent Business of Consumer Publishing 2006 which suggested that only 9% of the romance books being published are paranormals).

This past weekend, I read two upcoming books: Lara Adrian’s Midnight Awakening (December 2007) and Meljean Brook’s Demon Night (February 2008). Both paranormals. Both feature vampires. Both were compelling emotionally. Both were smoking hot because you can’t separate the blood from the sex. However, to say that these stories are the same would be like saying that cities from Boston to Seattle are the same.

There is one thing that I can point to and one reason (among many) why I think that paranormal and fantasy books are hitting the high notes with readers. The paranormal allows for an amplification of loss and sorrow which makes the emotional conflict more compelling. The best I can do to explain this is provide examples from each book.

Lara Adrian, Midnight Awakening.

Tegan is a centuries old vampire who is engaged in an epic, but heretofore semi secret battle against vampires who have lost control and gone rogue. In order to preserve the safety of the existing vampires, Tegan, and a number of others, work to eradicate these Rogue vampires. The war is not without casualties. Tegan’s mate was stolen from him, raped, drained to the point she became a Minion, or servant, of one of these Rogue vampires. She is returned to Tegan, physically alive but emotionally and mentally gone.

The merciful thing to do is for Tegan to kill her but he cannot kill his beloved. Instead, Tegan attempts to keep her alive by feeding her more and more blood which makes his own demands even greater until his control is eroded. His band of brothers lock him away and the leader puts Tegan’s beloved out of her misery. Tegan realizes that her death was the fault of the Rogues and he re-dedicates his life to the war but cuts himself off emotionally.

As the heroine comments, Tegan’s cavalier treatment of her is not cruel, because cruelty would require him to feel.

“The best place for you is in the Darkhavens, Elise. Out here, like you are, you’re a liability–to yourself especially. I’m not saying it to be cruel.”

“No, of course you aren’t,” she agreed softly. “Because even cruelty would imply some kind of feeling, wouldn’t it?”

The story that unfolds is how Tegan begins to realize that the greatest loss of the past centuries wasn’t his beloved, but cutting himself off from everyone. First desire and uncomfortable lust begins to rise to the surface, desire for blood and sex, and then, finally, love.

Meljean Brooks, Demon Night

Charlie Newcombe was an opera singer whose voice rivaled the angels (real ones who know what angelic voices sound like). Her love for the bottle was greater than her love for music. A car accident that she caused while drunk stole her voice. She picked up the broken pieces and decided to make a new life for herself. She’s in the midst of studying for a degree that will enable her to get a job besides serving up drinks. Just when it seems like Charlie is on the verge of making something good of herself, she becomes a pawn in the fight between vampires, nosferatu, demons and guardians. Long lived beings view humans with some disdain and while demons and Guardians cannot affect a human’s free will, someone like Charlie is easy prey for the vampires and when one human could tip the scales in an overall battle, her value is nothing.

Ethan McCabe sacrificed his life to save his brother’s and lived over a century without knowing that his sacrifice was for nothing. The evil that haunted him years ago took his brother’s life and challenges his position as a Guardian.

But Ethan would be damned if his brother’s death meant his sacrifice was nothing, if it meant the demon had won.

Caleb had always claimed there were two things worth living for: good drink, and a pretty woman. Ethan figured he could have one for his brother, and keep on protecting the other.

When Ethan meets Charlie, he thinks he knows who she is and because of his loss, says she cannot rely on him and worse, that he does not want her to rely on him because she is just too danged needy. Ethan’s own view of himself, his weaknesses magnified decade after decade, only served to provide a barrier between the one person that existed who could be his equal.

Of course, the obvious reason that readers love the paranormal/fantasy is that it is about super hot nookie with supernatural boys. However, underneath all the super nookie and super boys is the layering of strong emotional elements.

His gaze followed the movement of her fingers as she wiped away the smoky flavor of the whiskey before she could begin to want more. His voice roughened. “I apologize, Charlie. That was awful forward of me.”

She should have been enraged, or upset, or—something. But she only said, “I stole a kiss from someone tonight, too.”

“I doubt he thought it was thievery.” He looked at her for a long moment. “And I’m hardpressed to feel true shame for stealing one from you. That was also for my brother—I’d have died for him to have something so sweet.” He glanced over her shoulder. His face hardened, his eyes cooled to emerald again. “I’d have killed to give it to him, too.”

With the losses amplified, the assauging of loss is all the more meaningful. Without a strong emotional conflict, all the lust in the world for undead hotties would crumble like a vampire in the sun. Emotional conflict is the bailiwick of romances and paranormals/fantasies with the centuries old loss magnify the emotional conflict. It also presents a challenge because without an interweaving of the worldbuilding with the emotional, the paranormal can easily fall flat. One of the more poignant moments in Midnight Awakening is the first blood exchange between Tegan and the heroine, Elise:

“You’re overdressed,” he said, his warm breath tickling the side of her bare neck.

His presence so close to her was almost as startling as his words. Elise turned an anxious glance on him. “You mean for me to disrobe? I don’t see why I sh–”

“You will,” he said, leaving no room for argument. “If I were a cultured Darkhaven male and not the crude warrior that I am, I doubt you’d expect me to receive you fully clothed.”

It was true. Respect for the act of blood-bonding between vampire and Breedmate demanded that both parties come to each other without concealment, coercion, or reservation. Naked in body, commitment, and intent.

It’s a difficult balance but when the two are done well, the impact is outstanding as can be evidenced by the paranormal/fantasy subgenres that are flying off the shelves. This is just my opinion and the comments section is for everyone else’s. Fire away. Tell me I’m wrong, I’m half right, or that you can’t believe I love the books with the pink covers.

The First Sale story will be available at noon today.