Comments on: Celebrate Romance Report 2007

By: Celebrate Romance Report 2008 | Dear Author: Romance Book Reviews, Author Interviews, and Commentary

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 09:01:09 +0000

[...] of the review blog “What I’m Reading and Other Tales” agreed to let us post a report she wrote about “Celebrate Romance,” the convention she helps organize each year. We [...]

By: Dear Author.Com | Want Your Reader Voice to Be Heard?

Dear Author.Com | Want Your Reader Voice to Be Heard? — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 17:03:33 +0000

[...] is asking for Reader’s opinions.Â� It is clear from the comments here on the blog and at the Celebrate Romance event, that readers want the publishers to hear their voices.Â� So go make a difference and [...]

By: JulieLeto

JulieLeto — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 20:38:01 +0000

Gotta agree with Jo Leigh here…I was a launch author for Blaze and I wrote one of the 5th anniversary books this past August…no one has ever told me I needed a love scene in the first 50 pages or how many I had to have or anything. I’ve written Blazes were the love scenes come early and where they come very late. It’s all storyline dictated and character driven. Heat doesn’t necessarily come from the love scenes anyway.

I went to Celebrate Romance once and found it so enjoyable. Some day, I’ll go again.

BTW, on the historical heroine discussion…I don’t find strong heroines anachronistic at all. Every era of history has a kick-ass heroine of sorts–Cleopatra. Mata Hari. Annie Oakley. Molly Brown. Grace O’Malley. Catherine the Great. Those are just off the top of my head. For every woman who made it into the history books (no easy feat since men don’t really like this type of woman and therefore, is loathe to write too much about her or her contemporaries), there were probably hundreds if not more who had similar personalities, dreams and attitudes.

That said, has anyone read Elizabeth Thornton’s historical, ALMOST A PRINCESS? That heroine was very happy with her station in life, but was still incredibly strong. Very much the lady. Making a heroine historically accurate doesn’t mean making her a doormat, IMO. I’d take an anachronistic strong heroine over a supposedly historically accurate simp any day. I’m reading a Victorian by Betina Krahn right now and the heroine is very smart and adventurous and from what I know of this time period, very accurate. Rare? Maybe…but still accurate. Not every woman was spanning the globe in search of archealogical treasures, but some were and that’s good enough for me.

By: The Stalker on Sunday « Milady Insanity

The Stalker on Sunday « Milady Insanity — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 13:03:32 +0000

[...] One of the Celebrate Romance! organizers, Karen W, guestblogged at DearAuthor about their recent convention. [...]

By: Lydia

Lydia — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 00:18:19 +0000

>No one could say exactly why books are getting shorter, but Melody speculated that it started out due to higher paper costs, and then stayed because of younger readers with shorter attention spans.

Mine just got cut to 95k from 100k. I wrote one at 104k. My editor was more than a little concerned. In the actual book, it got compacted to 308 pages! I joke that production punishes me–the longer I write, the smaller print and the less the white space. :-P

By: Meljean

Meljean — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 23:26:34 +0000

One question, though: How do readers find out who is editing a particular author along with the info necessary to contact them?

One way might just be to e-mail the author; I can’t imagine that information would be protected in any way. I wouldn’t give out my editor’s e-mail address, but I would give snail mail contact (and the chance of an unsolicited e-mail being read would be iffy).

Another way would be to contact the publisher, and ask.

By: Robin

Robin — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 19:19:31 +0000

Fascinating post. I had no idea about the “young editor” syndrome, but it definitely seems to explain some things.

One question, though: How do readers find out who is editing a particular author along with the info necessary to contact them?

By: Michele Bardsley

Michele Bardsley — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 19:18:50 +0000

Thank you for calling me young. LOL. I had so much fun at Celebrate Romance. It’s just the best get-together for romance authors EVER. I appreciate being mentioned in the article!

By: DS

DS — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 13:41:06 +0000

I remember a few years ago being rather dismayed by the fact that a vampire dark fantasy novel had so many ideas and so much information stuffed into it that it could have easily been two novels were the ideas developed. I was told that it was a cinematic presentation with lots of short scenes and cut aways. But novels are not limited to what should be shown on a screen so I ended up feeling cheated and didn’t continue with the series.

By: Katherine Kingston

Katherine Kingston — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 17:48:26 +0000

The write-up on the conference is fascinating and it sounds like fun. I hope it continues and I hope I get to go one of these years.

I need to clear up one bit of misinformation, though. I’ve written more than a dozen stories for Ellora’s Cave, and in only one of them did I start with a sex scene. I did that only because the plot demanded it. In all the rest, it can take a while to get to the first sex scene. In one of my books the first sex scene doesn’t come until halfway through the book. (There is a lot of foreplay before it, though.)
Because the EC books are focused on sex, and its plots are usually built around the sexual relationship, it’s true you have to get it started fairly early. Who would read a suspense plot that didn’t have anything threatening happen until halfway into the book?