Archive for October, 2007
Dear Ms Bostwick,
 I’m so glad that your publisher offered us a chance to review your latest novel. “On Wings of the Morning” took me back to a simpler time in American history but one in which people loved as much, still made mistakes but had a common purpose. So much of it reflected what those interviewed for Ken Burns’ latest film, “The War” said about the era. It had to be done, it might not be what people wanted to do but they were in it until it was finished and willing to make any sacrifice to see it through.
The book has a great period feel and I can see you’ve done your homework. From Morgan’s childhood on a farm in rural Oklahoma to Georgia’s uprooted existence moving from backwater Florida to big city Chicago, I could see them and the people around them. I could feel living through a summer with only an oscillating fan, driving to see Charles Lindbergh — to actually see the Lone Eagle, the man who changed aviation history! — wanting to learn to fly so badly and sensing that it was your destiny that …
 Reader and Raelynx is the fourth novel in Sharon Shinn’s Twelve Houses series. Although published as fantasy, the books all contain romantic storylines that take center stage. The series is set in Gillengaria, a kingdom where mystics (those people who have magical abilities) are frequently persecuted by those who fear them, and the books follow the fortunes of a group of friends, five mystics and two elite soldiers belonging to the king’s personal guard, as they seek to help Gillengaria’s sympathetic King Baryn. Reader and Raelynx is the climactic book in this series. It brings together many threads from the three previous novels and the novella “When Winter Comes,” and for the most part, does this successfully. Recommended by Janine.
 All that I loved about the first three Crazy books was back in On the Loose. There was a super sexy heroine who was smart, capable, fiercely loyal to her family, and one who knows how to get what she wants matched with a super sexy hero who wants to forget the best night of his life but can't once she's standing …
Dear Ms. Janzen:
I admit that I had fallen off the Tara Janzen wagon. I loved the first three books in the Crazy series and then it all kind of fell apart for me and I didn’t even read the book about Red and the Angel imprinter or whatever he was. So I never asked for the ARC to On the Loose but the book showed up on my doorstep one day. I picked it to just see what it was all about and I found I couldn’t put it back down.
Honey York is a socialite who disguises her “advanced degree from Harvard” brain behind big sunglasses and a to die for body. Her “dating pool started on Madison Avenue in Manhattan and ended at the State Department in Washington, D.C.” Her sister is a trust fund baby turned sister of mercy serving the Lord in El Salvador. Sister Julia is in trouble according to a guerilla in the Morazan Province, El Salvador and the State Department sends Honey in with five huge Louis Vuitton suitcases, one briefcase, and one hired muscle in the form of C. Rydell Smith.
Smith …
RWA offered to serve as a Trustee and bid on the Triskelion Assets on behalf of the authors. The authors were requested to send $100 per contract to RWA and RWA would bid in the bankruptcy proceedings on their behalf, returning all of the unspent money to the authors. There appear to be over 200 contracts in question and which amounts to a bid of a little under $8 per contract to beat out the Loose Id bid of $1500.00
The Triskelion authors rejected this, apparently believing that the Loose Id bid is in their best interests.
I did see that there are some authors making the argument that the contracts are not the property of the estate and so it will be very interesting to see what the ruling will be on that issue.
The auction is currently slated for November 15, 2007, but I am not sure how the auction can take place when there is a challenge as to exactly what the Trustee is entitled to auction off.
Harper Lee published just one book but it was a classic. To Kill a Mockingbird is the biggest selling novel of all time according to Guinness Book of World Records and was awarded the Pulitizer Prize in 1961. It is the number one book that every adult should read before they die according to the World Book Day poll conducted in the UK last year.
According the Guardian article, Harper Lee is a famous recluse who is known only for her one novel and one interview in forty years. To Kill a Mockingbird is said to have sold over 30 million copies, helped in no small part I believe to the fact that it is on the required reading list in many junior high and high school curriculums. A book like Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” should be on everyone’s required reading list.
Via The Guardian.
Dear Ms. Stuart,
 The latest book in your Ice series, Ice Storm, opens with a bang. Literally. In a prologue set sometime in the past, we are introduced to nineteen-year-old the heroine this way:
Mary Isobel Curwen had never shot a man before. She stood there, numb, unmoving. She’d never fired a gun before, and the feel of it in her grasp was disturbing.
A paragraph down is there is some more terrific writing:
Had she blown a hole through his head? His chest? Was he dead or just wounded? She knew she ought to check… She’d had every reason to shoot him but you couldn’t very well let a man bleed to death, could you? she thought dazedly. Even if he’d been trying to kill you?
Or maybe you could. Maybe you could drop the gun, turn and run, as fast as possible, before he suddenly stood up and came after you, before one of his buddies came running to see where the noise had come from. Maybe you could take the gun with you, just in case.
I love the creative use of second person …
Gather.com has announced the winners of its First Chapters Romance Writing Competition (a contest sponsored by Simon & Schuster, Borders and Gather.com) and we are thrilled that the winner of the grand prize is a Dear Author regular. Meredith McGuire, a 28-year-old PhD University of Chicago student also known on Dear Author’s comment threads as “Emma,” has  won a publishing contract from Simon and Schuster and a $5000 advance.
Meredith’s historical romance, currently titled The Shadow’s Kiss, set in India during the Mutiny of 1857 and in England in 1860, and featuring an English heroine and a part-English, part-Indian hero, will be published by Pocket Books in the spring of 2008.
The runner-up in the contest, Starr Toth, a 56-year-old Michigan horse farmer, has also been awarded a publishing contract from Simon and Schuster, along with a $3500 advance. Starr’s contemporary romance, currently titled Trust Me will be published by Pocket Books in the fall of 2008.
Congratulations to both Starr and Meredith!
Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, is the immediate jewel of their souls: Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing; 'twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands; but he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him, and makes me poor indeed. William Shakespeare, Othello, Act III, scene iii.
When I started writing about defamation a couple of weeks ago, I quickly realized that it was much too complicated of a topic to stuff into one large blog post. It’s not just complicated but it is also confusing with technical issues that can make or break a case but are not easily understood.
One major element of a defamation case is determining if the defamation is "per se" or "per quod". The easiest case to prove is the defamation per se. The hardest, by contrast, is defamation per quod. Here’s the difference in pratical terms. The courts have decided that there is a certain set of words that is just so bad that just merely uttering the …
Dear Mrs. Stuart,
I should have known better. After all, I had problems with “Black Ice,” I wasn’t that thrilled with “Cold as Ice” and I wasn’t tempted to try “Ice Blue.” But when Jane sent me the arc for “Ice Storm” I just couldn’t resist hoping that I’d “get” this one better than the previous books in the series. No such luck and I’m left head-desking myself, as Maili used to say.
You’ve set up the heroine of this book, Madame Isobel Lambert, as the coldly efficient head of “the Committee” one of the super-secret, ruthless agencies-working-outside-of-government-control-who-take-out-
bad-guys-but-which-are-riddled-with-angst-filled characters which litter romance suspence novels. She’s the Ice Queen, as you so frequently tell us. Keep saying it and maybe someone will believe it. I don’t. I didn’t even before I started this book due to some things she’d done in “Cold as Ice.” But the back blurb was intriguing and I’d hoped that we’d get to see the transformation of young Isobel, or Mary Isobel as she was known then, into a woman picked to head this group after 12 years of service in the field. We do get to see how she was …
All Romance eBooks (ARe) is now accepting paypal payments for those readers who do not have credit cards or prefer not to use credit cards. I love Paypal and am thrilled that more businesses are moving toward accepting this form of payment.
Apple came out with a firmware upgrade a few weeks ago which disabled the “freeing” of the iPhone. Upgrading is currently optional. I decided to wait until the hacking community came up with way to break into the iPhone in a way that was easy for me to understand. Late last night, that option appeared in the form of a one click iPhone hack for all new iPhones and iTouch models that use the firmware 1.1.1.
There are conflicting reports on this, but it is generally recommended that you have wi fi access to do the jailbreak/unlock which means you might go to a Panera store (one of my favorite free wi fi hot spots) or some other place around town.
- Step 1: Go to a wi fi hot spot (preferably free).
- Step 2: Open the Safari application on your iPhone/iTouch.
- Step 3: Type in “http://jailbreakme.com”.
- Step 4: Click the “Install AppSnapp” at the bottom of the screen and be amazed.
The extra neat thing about this hack is it fixes same exploit the hackers use to “break free” the iPhone from the software locks. So your phone is even …
Boston Globe had an interesting piece a few weeks ago on issue of Canadian readers unhappy over the high cost of books now that the Canadian dollar has equal (and on some days higher) buying popwer the the declining US dollar.  US publishers have commonly marked the retail price of a book 40-50% higher for the Canadian purchasers. Part of this was due to the formerly high value of the US dollar against the Canadian dollar, but part was also due to the higher distribution costs. The Canadian bookstores can’t discount because if they do, they’ll take a loss on it.
The beauty of ebooks, of course, is that now that the dollars are close to equal, Canadian readers don’t have to pay a premium for books.
Via Boston.com
SourceBooks is a small publishing house located in Naperville, Illinois. This year marks the beginning of SourceBooks entry into the world of romance publishing. The new line is called “Casablanca” and will offer “15 to 20 titles per season, in a mixture of mass market and trade paperback formats.”
Deb Werksman is the executive editor for SourceBooks and the head of the Casablanca line. She’s offered up the vision behind SourceBooks and the future books about which we readers should be excited.
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Q: Can you share with us the vision of the new Sourcebooks Romance imprint? What are the types of books that are being published under that imprint?
Our vision is to publish single-title romance in all the subgenresâ€â€Âparanormal, romantic suspense, contemporary, historical and erotic romance. We're looking for new authors as well as established ones, books that have something unusual about them, or could transcend the genre, and we're out to create long, successful careers with our authors.
Q: What books are you looking for or is there a sub-genre you think that readers are hungry for that the market is not yet meeting to its …
Christmas shopping is right around the corner and I’ve noticed a number of commenters indicate that they are getting something for ebook reading for Christmas.  Because of the hated Digital Rights Management and nearly 10 different software platforms for ebooks, deciding which device to buy can be more traumatizing than braving the 5 am Walmart Black Friday crowd.
I’ve rounded up a list of ebook reading devices and some pros and cons and recommendations. There are two basic options for the reader who is looking to buy an ebook device. 1) dedicated reader and 2) multi-function device.
Dedicated Reading Devices
Dedicated Reader Pros:
Most dedicated readers have a larger screen size for less money than multi function devices. For example, the eBookwise has a screen size "about the size of a paperback" and costs $109.95. The Sony Reader has a 6" inch screen and runs $300.00. A comparable screen size in a multi function device would be found in an ultra portable and those devices run from $1200-$2500.00. Larger screen sizes can be had at similar price points like the Motion Computer slate tablet PC starting at $1699, but then you start sacrificing portability. …
Dear Ms. Frost:
 The back of your book reads “If Buffy and Angel had a daughter, she’d be just like Cat Crawfield.” What wasn’t included was that Buffy’s daughter would then end up dating and falling in love with Spike, her mother’s boyfriend.
Cat Crawfield is a half vampire/half human woman. She was created violently when her mother went out on date with a vampire and was raped (this is actually not what I remember about the Buffy/Angel pairing but admittedly I have not watched many episodes). Spurred on by her mother’s hate, Cat hunts vampires. Because of her part vampire blood, she has a few special skills that enable her to have killed a good number of them by the time she turns 22.
Unfortunately, being a self trained vampire killer has its drawbacks and that is apparent when she runs into Bones, a master vampire, and he snuffs out right away that she isn’t the easy lay she pretends to be. He initially plans to kill her because he too is a vampire hunter. Instead, she convinces him that she’s not a danger to him and he …
Dear Mrs Andrews,
You seem to really like to knock your heroines down at the beginning of your books then slowly let them pick themselves back up again. Keeley Murdock’s problems fit the pattern.  On the eve of her society wedding to a handsome young man from one of Madison, GA’s richest families, Keeley finds him and her BFF/maid of honor going at it like monkeys in the board room of the country club. Keeley’s subequent meldown and world class hissy fit cements her into town lore. But worse follows as the influential family of the “two-timing, lying, cheating son-of-a-bitch” try to use their financial influence to ruin the interior decorating business owned by Keeley and her aunt Gloria. Keeley becomes another version of your typical “Steel Magnolia” heroines as she pulls herself back from the brink of disaster and discovers just how strong she is. But while this book is a lot of things, it’s not really a romance.
As a “how to” redecorate a home in antiques, fine furnishings and luscious fabrics this book is to die for. I’d love to have Keeley’s job …
According to Publishers Weekly, Hachette Book Group USA (which includes Grand Central Publishing, the house of Elizabeth Hoyt and Karen Rose) will adopt the International Digital Publishing Forum’s new file format standard for ebooks. The format standard allows a publisher to create just one digital book file instead of the 6-10 previously required. This cuts down on the time to create digital files and it also cuts down on cost.
I have no idea how this actually works, i.e., whether the one ebook format can be read by all the proprietary software out there like Adobe, Mobipocket, MS Lit, EReader, Sony and so forth but any movement toward one standard can only be a good thing for readers. However, Digital Rights Management can be layered on top of the book file and according to the IDPF FAQ, the consumers ability to move content around depends solely on the content be “unencrypted” which would not be what the big publishers are selling us.
Via Publishers’ Weekly.
 Sharon Shinn is one of our favorite authors here at Dear Author. Given the diversity of our tastes, its amazing that we can come to any agreement but the consensus at Dear Author is that there is magic in Shinn’s pen. This month you can sample a young adult book, General Winston’s Daughter, an anthology piece in Elemental Magic and soon, the fourth book in her Twelve Houses series, Reader and Raelnyx. A reader can’t go wrong with a Sharon Shinn book.
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I wrote my first book when I was twenty; I sold my first book when I was thirty-six.  I had fairly well resigned myself to the notion that I would never be a published author, but I continued to write because there was no other way to get the stories out of my head.
Oh, I made submissions from time to time. One publisher lost a manuscript. Another publisher kept a book for two years before rejecting it. I had the name of the editor there, and every six months or so I would nerve myself to call …
Dear Ms. Ellison:
 November is a “new to me” month where I read about 10 authors that I had never read before. Yours was one of them. All the Pretty Girls is a romantic suspense book with a unique twist. The couple is already dating when the book starts. I think this is a great way for an author to manage the difficult balance of providing the suspense with a romance. Plus, it’s a different place in the courtship to which readers are ordinarily exposed.
Taylor Jackson is a Nashville Homicide lieutenant whose boring caseload is given a jolt by the appearance of a mutilated female corpse. She appears to take another knock on the chin when her lover, FBI profiler John Baldwin, informs her that he murders she is investigating are likely perpetrated by a serial killer dubbed “The Southern Strangler”.
The modus operandi for the Southern Strangler is to cut off the hands of these pretty young victims and carry them to the next murder site. Because the serial killer’s work involves multiple states and hence, multiple jurisdictions, the heavy investigatory work is done …
A number of non fiction, biographies, and more “serious” books fill up the top fifteen slots with Quill Book of the Year winner, Nora Roberts, making the first romance book showing with The Gift at 20. Next week looks to be the same with no new book releases until October 30.
C.L. Wilson’s debut novel, Lord of the Fading Lands, is still in the top 150, albeit at the extended part of the list. The JR Ward book fell another 30+ places out of the print USA Bestseller list to number 74. The lack of sustained sales post release may be the biggest fallout from the failure to enforce a strict street date.
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The Gift: Home For Christmas\All I Want For Christmas\Gabriel’s Angel, Nora Roberts (Silhouette Special Releases), $7.99, No. 20 (Peak 7).
Free Fall, Fern Michaels (Zebra), $6.99, No. 26 (Peak 8).
Mine Till Midnight, Lisa Kleypas (St. Martin’s Paperbacks), $7.99, No. 31 (Peak 5).
Bloodfever, Karen Marie Moning (Delacorte), $22.00, No. 41 (debut). This is the second in her new series.
74 Seaside Avenue, Debbie Macomber (Mira), $7.99, No. 68 (Peak …
Dear Ms French,
 Once again we’re back on the secluded Chesapeake island of Tawes where they have their own way of doing things. Island Justice, they call it. And once again the heroine is told from almost the beginning of the book that evil lurks on the island. Well, the locals sure aren’t kidding about that as similarly to the first book, the body count is high and the descriptions of them are gruesome.
People have lived on Tawes Island for centuries and few outsiders ever move there so it’s not surprising that most of the town are cousins, second cousins, kissing cousins or some variant. So when archaeologists Abbie Night Horse and her mother Karen Knight (I still never really got why the name difference) arrive to do a preliminary excavation of what could be an ancient Indian burial site, they don’t catch all the nuances of life there. I like how you show how the possible sale of some property to mainland developers was beginning to divide the people of the island. Some want change and the jobs that would come and some are ready to defend Tawes any way they can. …
Warning this may be spoilerish.
Dear Ms. Warren:
 This is my first book of yours and while I didn’t love this book, I do like your voice so it won’t be my last. In fact, the book was really a B read for me until Page 108 when the heroine does something inexplicable. At one point, I thought you were going to right the ship for me, but it all was lost at the page 256 mark.
I like the world you have filled with shapeshifters, demons, and other magical creatures but I just didn’t like how the story played out. I was never sold that the hero deserved any kind of emotional justice (except maybe the bad kind). I thought that the primary characters acted in contravention with their belief system for no reason.
Samantha Carstairs is the personal assistant of the Alpha of the Silverback Clan. As most assistants, she knows everything that goes on in the Pack and more. Obviously, the Alpha trusts her implicitly. She’s also best friends with Dr. Annie Cryer, a scientist studying the lupine genome. Sam’s position in the …
The New York Times has a really interesting article about German bookselling. In Germany, there are hundreds of small bookstores that populate the business landscape. The reason for the thriving independent bookstore business is because Germany requires all bookstores to sell books at the same price, without discount.
This anti-freemarket idea is netting positive results: book prices have actually dropped 0.5% in the last year and flourishing independent presses.
The culture, reports the Times, supports this phenomenon in part because Germans place such an importance on books.
If you're a skeptic, you might associate fixed pricing with a German impulse toward conformity and an aversion to traditional haggling cultures. A German will stare blankly at you if you even suggest such a thought. Instead they will stress the special place books have in society.
Via NY Times.
Dear Readers,
Here are some suggestions for slightly spooky romantic manga for Halloween.
 Vampire Knight by Matsuri Hino: I enjoy this one even though in many ways it’s a very typical shoujo (girls) romance series. The very polished artwork raises it a notch above many series, and there’s something about the main characters’ love triangle that won’t let me stop reading: The pureblood vampire prince manipulating everyone within reach to bring a peace between vampires and humans for the sake of the young woman he loves; the vampire hunter, bitten and in the process of turning into a mad vampire, who can only control it by drinking the blood of his rival or his love; the young girl with the missing past, family killed by one vampire even while she was saved by another, loving both the one who saved her, and the one she has to save. There are many typical things about it, but because of the characters I cannot stop reading it. B, 15+
 Beyond My …
Dear Ms Harris,
 I’d seen your books available in a few other catalogues but it took one of the 100% rebates from Fictionwise to spur me into action. As Jane says, what’s to lose? Watching the new Ken Burns PBS series on WWII had me in the mood so I took the plunge. The book starts a little slowly but I was soon lost in the wealth of visual details about life in the countryside of France during the German occupation of WWII and how this impacted the family of Framboise, her widowed mother and two siblings. Memories of the event that shattered their small town still linger in the modern day village but some spark of the defiance and stubborness that filled her youth has made Boise return as an older widow herself.
It’s hard to like almost every main character in the book at some point or another during the story, yet I still had sympathy for almost all of them. Boise, fighting against her rapacious nephew and his wife now and against her mother’s seeming stone heart then. Mirabelle, trying to keep a roof over her childrens’ heads …
The Writer’s Guild of America is the union that represents television and movie writers. The members of the WGA have authorized a strike at the end of the month meaning that there would be no more writers writing Chuck (what a bad episode last night was), Heroes, or Lost. The big issue is that residual money earned off of broadcast on cell phones and the Internet is not being paid to writers. According to the WGA, residual income makes up 20 to 50 percent of a screenwriter’s income.
The New York Times says that the immediate impact would be on daily shows like Letterman, Leno, the Daily Show, and soap operas. Movie productions would be delayed. Animated shows like The Simpsons are produced up to a year in advance and would not likely be affected by a strike but shows like Lost would be since the network runs those without repeats. The Time reports that the next season of “Lost” is only half finished.
Ultimately, reality tv which does not rely on scripted performances and union writers will be able to forge ahead with …
If you didn’t heart Nora Roberts before for her writing, you have to love her for the speech she gave last night at the 3d Annual Quill Awards. Publisher’s Weekly and NBC teamed up to create the Quill Awards a few years ago with the intention of bringing “glamour and red carpet extravagance to the world of publishing.”
Roberts’ book, Angels Fall, was the voted as the best romance of the year, but last night it also took the book of the year. The freaking book of the year, folks. She beat out 18 other winners including Nobel Peace Prize winner, former Vice President Al Gore.
In her acceptance speech, Roberts said “Romance rocks.” So do you, Ms. Roberts.
Via MSNBC and Meri via my email box.
As I was waiting for a meeting yesterday, I saw CNN reporting on the issue of libraries and scanning. Some well known research libraries are turning down Microsoft and Google’s offers to scan the contents of the libraries for free. Of course, nothing is really free, and the libraries do not want to bind themselves to the terms of Google and Microsoft’s “free deal”. If a library or organization commits to Google or Microsoft, it agrees that it will not make the scanned material available to any other commercial search service.
Boston Public Library and the Smithsonian Institution have signed with Open Content Alliance, a non profit, that will scan and make the information available to any search service. The Times says that this signals “that many in the academic and nonprofit world are intent on pursuing a vision of the Web as a global repository of knowledge that is free of business interests or restrictions.” I love the idea of the Web as a “global repository of knowledge.”
Via New York Times and CNN.
This is the second part in How to Fling About Legal Insults Like a Lawyer. One of the questions last week wondered whether free speech was simply unfettered. Absolutely not and I don’t mean for this series to imply that, but I do know that over the space of a year and a half, I’ve had more than one person threaten legal action. I always take those threats seriously because they implicate not only me, but also my dear blogging partners. Further, these threats can intimidate others who are less familiar with the law into taking down posts, apologizing for perceived wrongdoing, and so forth.
The First Amendment is not intended to protect every utterance. Instead, what the court, any court, has to do is weigh the balance between the right of a person to be free of something injurious and harmful or, in other words, to be free of defamation, and the right of the press and the public to engage in critical discourse. As one legal scholar has said, hurt feelings are not to be redressed in the court of law: “Although scathing characterizations can be …
Dear Jayne:
My dear blogging partner, you may not be aware of this, since you are not a Garwood lover like me, but her first historical in approximately 7 years is to be released in just a couple of months. It has prompted me to do a bit of re-reading of some older Garwood releases.
 I started with The Secret and I tried to look at it with a critical eye. I know that the complaint some level toward her books is that they lack a certain historical realism. It reads authentically to me. They wear plaids which I didn’t realize until lately wasn’t recorded as Highlander attire until about 1560. This book is set in 1181. But I swear that there isn’t any faux Highlander dialect. Okay, maybe a lass or five here and there, but no dinnae’s and couldnae’s.
Fortunately for me, though, I can overlook the historical missteps and appreciate “The Secret” for the story.
Lady Judith Hampton, an English girl, and Frances Catherine Kirkcaldy, a Lowlander Scottish girl, met when they were four and began a lifelong friendship that withstood …
A Cheltenham man was arrested last week for linking to infringing television material on a website called “TV-links”. The charges were purportedly for “offences relating to the facilitation of copyright infringement on the Internet” and began with an investigation by the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT). TV-links was a website where users could post links to content hosted elsewhere around the ‘net.
The idea that linkage could somehow be infringing is pretty disturbing. No actual law has been cited as having been violated other than the idea that the website and poster were encouraging a culture of infringement.
Via Channel Register.
One step forward and two steps back can describe Penguin’s path toward digital media. Last month, eMusic launched a DRM free audiobook program. Penguin Audio was participating to the tune of 150 titles. This month, its withdrawn from the program due to “concerns about digital piracy.” Penguin doesn’t state that there has been piracy only concerns.
"At this moment we're not going to have our titles on eMusic or with anyone else who sells non-DRM until the landscape shakes out and we feel very comfortable and confident that our titles will not be pirated," said Dick Heffernan, publisher of Penguin Audio.
Random House publishing hasn’t found any pirated eMusic and has found the eMusic sales “really encouraging.”
According to the Times article, eMusic is selling more than 500 audiobooks per day which is double its forecasted sales.
The fact is that there will always be pirates and no amount of DRM is going to stop it. It might stall sales though.
Via NY Times.
Whether it was JK Rowling coming clean or creating a media firestorm to whip up the Christian Conservative, in New York she revealed to a reading group that Dumbledore is gay.
Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald [a bad wizard he defeated long ago], and that added to his horror when Grindelwald showed himself to be what he was. To an extent, do we say it excused Dumbledore a little more because falling in love can blind us to an extent, but he met someone as brilliant as he was and, rather like Bellatrix, he was very drawn to this brilliant person and horribly, terribly let down by him
Via Guardian.
Anne Sowards is a senior editor at Penguin Group (USA) Inc. She has worked on Ace science fiction & fantasy since 1996, and on Roc science fiction & fantasy since December 2003. She edits a number of great authors, including (but not limited to) Jim Butcher, Patricia Briggs, Anne Bishop, and Karen Chance. When she’s not reading, she listens to Chinese rap and spends way too much time playing video games.
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Q: Anne, can you share with us the vision of the ACE imprint? What are the types of books that are being published under that imprint? Maybe you could explain the difference between Ace and Roc and whether the imprints signify a certain type of book?
A: At Penguin, we have two science fiction & fantasy imprints, Ace and Roc. To explain the difference, such as it is, I’m going to need to go into some boring publishing history, so bear with me! Around nine years ago, the publisher Putnam Berkley was acquired by Penguin’s parent company and the two publishers were merged. Ace was Berkley’s SF/F imprint, while Roc was the SF/F imprint of Penguin’s NAL …
Source: Karen Scott’s blog
Mrs. Giggles emailed me a snark of the Ellora’s Cave writing guidelines (scroll to the end of the document). We both agreed that the guidelines fall into the ridiculous realm at various points, particularly when Tina Engler proclaims: “Don't worry excessively about grammar usage to the point where you are stifling creativity in the name of technicality.” It’s a writing guide that deserves snarking. It’s full of ridiculous generalizations.
I will be the first to admit that snark is not in my natural repertoire such as it is in some bloggers. If I ever come across as humorous, it is largely by accident and hardly ever by design. I might have a few inspired moments but generally being funny is not my thing; unless of course, you witness my oft clumsy attempts to maneuver my body around on the physical plane. For example, if you attended RWA National, you would have seen me trip on the stairs to the lounge nearly every single time. See: Unintentional (and embarrassing) physical humor.
I throw out this proviso because I am about to be critical …
Dear Mrs. Admirand,
 One of the first true “romance” novels I ever read was the granddaddy of all Saxon/Norman pairings, the groundbreaking “The Wolf and the Dove” by Kathleen Woodiwiss. Since then, I’ve read my share of (usually bastard) Norman knight x (usually a healer) nubile Saxon maid. At this point in my reading life, it takes something different to interest me in this tired old chestnut of a plot. I don’t want to read about any more illegitimate men with hidden angst who end up taming the fiery, foot stamping, half dressed young thang pictured on the book cover. That’s why when I read the description of your novel “The Saxon Bride,” the fact that the heroine is an older woman with grown sons who forces the marriage with an (also older) Norman knight made me sit up and take notice. Wow, I thought, something different. Let’s see how this plays out.
So, okay the setting is nothing unusual: 1072 England, filled with knights in chain mail but right off the bat things looked good since you set it in Northumbria. Thank you, there are English counties north of Yorkshire. …
And you thought we would never finish (me too frankly). I actually had a post in draft that said “I’m sorry but we’ve come to the conclusion that three parts is enough for any video review.” But last night we dragged ourselves into the dungeon and finished our project.
You can read the text review here of The Courtesan’s Daughter which can be purchased in trade paperback. Or just watch the interpretive Lego video. Will there be another Lego video review? Not bloody likely.
We’re no strangers to plagiarism here at Dear Author. While out and out copying is easy to spot, strong similarities is a more murky area. The number 2 book on the USA Today bestseller list and the Number 1 hardcover on the Advice, How-To and Misc NYT list is Jessica Seinfeld’s “Deceptively Delicious“.
 A number of readers at mommy forums, Amazon.com and Oprah.com have begun pointing out the similarities between “Deceptively Delicious” and “The Sneaky Chef“. Seinfeld says that the idea to puree vegetables and add them to recipes sprouted sui generis a couple of years ago
but in 2006, a chef and cookbook author of “The Sneaky Chef” submitted a 42 recipe proposal with the same ideas to Seinfeld’s eventual publisher HarperCollins. The New York Times found the following similarities:
- parents purée healthy foods like spinach and sweet potatoes and hide them in childhood favorites like macaroni and cheese or brownies
- spinach in brownies, avocado in chocolate pudding and sweet potato in grilled cheese sandwiches appear in both Lupina and Seinfeld’s cookbooks
- an early publicity brochure for "Deceptively Delicious" showed an illustration with the same drawing
…
 The Man Booker Prize organization is in negotiations with publishers to make the six shortlisted titles available on the internet for FREE. Jonathan Taylor, chairman of The Booker Prize Foundation, said that the details need to be hammered out but the intent is to digitize each book and make them available for anyone in the world to download and to read.
- Nicola Barker (Darkmans)
- Anne Enright (The Gathering) – Winner
- Mohsin Hamid (The Reluctant Fundamentalist)
- Lloyd Jones (Mister Pip)
- Ian McEwan (On Chesil Beach)
- Indra Sinha (Animal's People)
The publisher of Anne Enright’s winning novel would prefer a partial reproduction rather than full, but from the sounds of the article, the Booker Foundation is pretty confident in its deal making ability. It makes sense because the article suggests that the free content might seed paid content, much as Cory Doctorow, a science fiction author argues.
Nielson Bookscan numbers of Anne Enright’s novel show that only “3,306 copies have been sold in hardback, with a further 381 in paperback. Enright's publisher said that the actual figure was 35,000, including sales in Europe.”
Times
Update:
Sadly, it appears that the Times was incorrect. According to PublishersLunch:
Times Story
…
 Tony Romo, quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys, was rumored to be dating Carrie Underwood at one time. Romo was her arm candy at the Country Music Awards and they flew to each other’s birthday bash. Since the football season started up, Romo and Underwood have been apart and in a recent interview, Underwood reveals that Romo was not able to pay attention to both her and football at the same time.
At one point it seemed like that’s where it was headed,” [Underwood] says, ”but point blank, he is about football. I don’t know if it’s that I’m not quite his type or whatever, but I don’t think he’s at the point in his life where he would be willing to sacrifice football. He hated so much that people thought that he was paying more attention to me and that was causing him to not do well.”
I remember last season when the Cowboys played the Eagles and Underwood and Romo were caught by the cameras exchanging a pregame hug. Romo played abysmally and the sports guys were merciless the next day suggesting that if he spent less time playing with …
 Sandra Hill’s first time traveling romance book was published over 13 years ago before paranormal was even a sub genre. She is a bestselling author of over twenty novels and four anthologies in various genres, including historical, time-travel and contemporary. Hill’s trademark is her humor and you can see it in her titles, Sweeter Savage Love, and in her interview below. Her latest book, Down and Dirty, is out November 2007.
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I sold my first book as the result of a contest in which I wasn’t even a finalist.
But before I tell you that story, I must say that I feel a little bit like the girl who arrived at the ball in jeans, instead of a gown. A big faux pas.
When Jane asked me to write a first sale letter, I went to her website to check out what other authors had written about their first sales. Good grief! Is everyone else in the world living an exciting life while I’m out here in the boonies just doing everyday normal things?
It reminds me of the time a few years back when I …
I had great news in my inbox today.  Penguin is lowering its retail price for eBooks to match the print retail price. The price decrease is already in effect or going to be in effect soon. This means that instead of Lover Unbound selling for a retail price of $9.99, it should be listed at $7.99 and the bookstore discounts should be based off the new lower retail price. I think this is great for us e-readers and I am happy to see Penguin listening to its customers.
Dear Ms. Kleypas:
 This was a much anticipated book from Cam’s first appearance in the Wallflower series. While many readers believed Cam to be destined for a romance with Daisy, Daisy was paired off with someone else and Cam was left for his own book. While the story contains a romance, it is much more a story of Cam’s life and Amelia’s life and their intersections rather than a union of the two.
Cam Rohan is a gypsy who has forsaken his heritage to work as the majordomo of St. Vincent’s gambling clubs. He suffers a good luck curse. Every endeavor which he undertakes result in more good things happening to him. Conveniently, loaded with all the money that a man could possibly need, Cam feels smothered by his good fortune.
Cam’s character is set up as one that is feeling some kind of “life crisis.” His friends, what few he has, are married and starting families. Cam begins to think of his past and his lost “tribe” and finds the constraint of the society life almost more than a Rom should bear.
Amelia Hathaway is the figurative head …
C.L. Wilson’s debut novel, Lord of the Fading Lands, is still in the top 150, albeit at the extended part of the list. The JR Ward book fell another 30+ places out of the print USA Bestseller list to number 74. The lack of sustained sales post release may be the biggest fallout from the failure to enforce a strict street date.
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The Gift: Home For Christmas\All I Want For Christmas\Gabriel’s Angel, Nora Roberts (Silhouette Special Releases), $7.99, No. 17 (Peak 7).
Mine Till Midnight, Lisa Kleypas (St. Martin’s Paperbacks), $7.99, No. 20 (Peak 5).
Free Fall, Fern Michaels (Zebra), $6.99, No. 21 (Peak 8).
The Parting, Beverly Lewis, Bethany House, $13.99, No. 58 (Peak 39). This is an inspirational romance.
74 Seaside Avenue, Debbie Macomber (Mira), $7.99, No. 65 (Peak 1).
Lover Unbound, J.R. Ward (Signet), $7.99, No. 71 (Peak 10).
The Seance, Heather Graham (Mira), $7.99, No. 75 (Peak 18).
Secrets of a Proper Lady, Victoria Alexander (Avon), $7.99, No. 80 (Peak 27).
The Other Boleyn Girl, Philippa Gregory (Pocket Star), $7.99, No. 94 (Peak 94). This …
Commenter Anji was the first to bring this to my attention but I did see it in the inbox (thanks guys for feeding my iPhone addiction) and all over the news when I got home from my business trip yesterday. Apple will be releasing a software development kit (SDK) so that developers will find out how to write programs authorized to be used with Apple iPhone and the iTouch. As I replied in my email to one person last night, half of me was “yeah” and the other half was “ohnoes, February 2008?”
I admit to being a bit spoiled now because the hacked iPhone third party application system is a breeze. There is one installation program that is used to install all the programs. These programs can be installed via the iPhone with no connection to a computer. Plus, all the great applications are free. Almost all the developers allow you to give donations and I have given one to the awesome developer of the Books.app but what will the SDK do to those developers? I.e., once the big names start developing third party software …
Borders and Gathers have narrowed down the thousands of aspiring romance writers to five entries. The manuscripts of the five hopefuls are in the hands of the judging panel. The winner will be announced on October 30, 2007, and then one more author will join the ranks of the swollen genre.
I think there should be a reality tv contest in which romance novel contestants have to not only write, but do it surrounded by rats and snakes with the prize to be rescued by a Michael Douglas, in his thirties, look alike and a Kathleen Turner makeover.
 Steve Almond is using the Huffington Post to air his current grievance instead of waiting for the publication of his next book. Gawker, a popular New York literature gossip and opinion blog, has written some favorable and some unfavorable items about Almond. In return, Almond chooses to compare Gawker readers to aggrieved Republican voters.
“It’s driven by the same compulsion as the GOP: the need to shame others, rather than facing up to your own shame.” and “Gawker readers remind me of all those aggrieved citizens who continue to fall for the GOP’s hate campaigns — and to vote against their own economic interests.”
Given Almond’s renowned wit and writing, I am just a little disappointed at his flailing about at the Huffington Post and attributing the downfall of morality in the US to the New York literati’s addiction to Gawker and the country’s “culture of grievance.”
“If this country ever hopes to rouse itself from the moral torpor marked by the Bush years, we are going to have to end our addiction to Gawking, and face up to the common crises of state.”
I’m pretty sure …
Dear Readers,
 I’ll admit that it was the gorgeous cover of this book that enticed me to buy it. The back cover blurb promised me a “fast-paced, witty, and lighthearted tale of adventure, romance, and the pursuit of impossible dreams” plus some action set in the Orient in 1814 so despite my dislike of historical novels which feature sword wielding maidens, I headed to the counter with it. There were a couple of things I didn’t realize at the time namely 1) that Revell Books is a Christian themed publisher and 2) that Jane Orcutt wrote Christian themed books. Now, I’m not going to bash these books as being mean to fellow readers is not something I like to do, but this isn’t a genre I usually pick though I did enjoy one previous book published by Bethany House. When I closed this book, I felt I had been preached too just a teensy tiny bit but as with the Cathy Marie Hake book, since the setting was a historical, I could go with it. I also felt saddened to learn that Mrs. Orcutt died a few months ago at an early age …
Dear Ms. Ranney:
 Here's a problem I have. Sometimes I get authors mixed up in my head. I got you mixed up with another author named Karen and I thought you and she were the same person so I haven't picked up any books of yours since 2005. After reading the Scottish Companion, though, I clearly need to go through your backlist. I'll probably end up buying the other Karen too since I am sure that my imperfect memory will fail me again when I am actually at the bookstore
Grant Roberson had abdicated his role as Earl of Straithern in favor of studying science in Italy for the past five years. The death of his brother, Andrew hastens him home. Shortly after his arrival, his second brother, James, falls ill and dies within 6 months of Andrew's death. Grant is suddenly confronted with his own mortality. It is suggested that his family might be suffering from a hereditary disease. With no immediate heirs, Grant requires a wife and an heir to preserve the earldom for his family. He offers a bargain with his doctor who has three daughters and extracts a promise for one of …
Two of the most notable book awards have gone to female authors.
 Doris Lessing, 82 year old novelist whose writing scope is so broad that she cannot be categorized in any fashion, won the Nobel Prize for Literature. The following is a video in which Lessing is told of her award to which she responds with disgust “Oh Christ.”
 Anne Enright was awarded England's Man Booker Prize for Fiction for The Gathering in a surprise victory over favorites: Mister Pip, by Lloyd Jones and On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan. She looks pretty pleased with her prize.
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