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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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. [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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: [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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. [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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“. [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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. [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]