Dear Ms. Culver,
I’m a big fan of fairy tale retellings. It doesn’t matter how often it gets done. I will never grow tired of them. So when I realized Manderley Prep was a Cinderella retelling, my interest was piqued. But even my love of fairy tales was not enough to make [...]

Science Fiction Writers Association came under scrutiny when its e-piracy committee chair, Andrew Burt, undertook to issue thousands of copyright violation notices. When others stepped forward to take Burt to task, the e-piracy committee was disbanded and a new interim committee was formed to determine what would take its place. [...]

A lawsuit was originally brought and decided in 2001 over the digital reproduction of work by freelance writers. The Supreme Court found in favor of the writers and the publishers began to remove the work from the archives. There remained, however, the issue of damages. A [...]

Kresley Cole is one of my favorite authors because her emphasis is on strong heroines. In both her historical series, the McCarrick Brothers Trilogy, and her paranormals, The Immortal After Dark series, the stories revolve around strong, independent heroines matching wits and sometimes, swords, with the heroes.
I had the opportunity to meet Ms. Cole [...]

Dear Ms Sinclair,
You really love Star Trek, don’t you? Not that I hold that against you. I love it too, including the original series (TOS) with Kirk where men were men and women were, well, sometimes they were clouds of energy that sucked the very life from you, but at some point they [...]

Dear Ms. Gabriel:

In the 90s there was a small collection of historical romances that mixed in characters having some magic to them. they were sweet romances and the heroines were almost always of that fey, faerie nature. This book evoked some of that same sweet romance with an otherwordly touch. It’s nicely [...]

I’ve been critical of the Amazon’s intention to spy on its Kindle customers, but it is nice to hear that whatever information it is gathering, it will try to keep it private. An investigation was undertaken by the federal government of Robert B. D’Angelo, culminating in a grand jury indictment against him for not [...]

The representation of romance on the list is sparse this week. The top fifteen is full of non fiction books and male penned mysteries. There are a few Harlequin books that have appeared on the list, a week before their official release date, although those books are readily found in advance at drugstores [...]

Dear Ms. Sinclair,
Janine loved a book of yours she read a few months ago and that plus the posts asking us to try and review more RSF books is what got me to try “Down Home Zombie Blues.” Like Jane, I’m still not too sure of the title but as a relative newcomer to the [...]

Dear Ms. Forrest,
I don’t think it’s inaccurate to say that there are a lot of vampire series to be found in the paranormal subgenre. While there seems to be growing weariness about their prevalence, vampires have many loyal readers and as long as that continues, vampire books will continue getting published. But I also think [...]

Harlequin Presents is moving up its production schedule to 12 books a month. Mind boggling, no? In order to meet the apparently increased demand, HP is looking for new authors. Presents is inviting unpublished authors to submit a first chapter. The submissions must be made on-line from January 1st to February [...]

Yesterday, Normal Mailer was the winner of the 14th annual Bad Sex writing award, announced by Literary Review magazine. His winning entry was:
So Klara turned head to foot, and put her most unmentionable part down on his hard-breathing nose and mouth, and took his old battering ram into her lips. Uncle was now as [...]

Dear Ms. Adrian:
I finished your book at 12:28 a.m. on November 11. I know the exact time because when I was done reading the book, I ran to my computer to type out my thoughts - to try to capture the emotional high I was on when I finished reading the book. I [...]

Dear Mrs Gabaldon,
I put pen to paper to tell you how much I have enjoyed the latest batch of short stories about Lord John Gray. I think he is, by far, my favorite character you’ve invented and I dare to hope that you have several more stories in mind for him beyond the one [...]

What might be one of the most important copyright decisions since Sony v. Universal Studios is the case against Google for scanning books. I’m guessing that Google is operating under the belief that the scanning of the books and then offering portions of it in digital format for searchers is transformative enough to escape [...]

Dear Ms. Ashworth:
Thank you for the prank you pulled on AAR this past holiday weekend which just last year was a place you vowed never to read again or post at again. At first, I was all worried that you were serious when you went after a reader complaining about your books being wallpaper [...]

Amazon’s pricing for mass market books has suddenly gone full retail, no discount since the release of the Kindle. When questioned in Newsweek about the low pricing, Bezos said “low-margin and high-volume sale—you just have to make sure the mix [between discounted and higher-priced items] works." It looks like Bezos is hoping to [...]

What do you think?

Dear Ms. James:
An Affair Before Christmas is the first book of yours I read, and I did so without knowing where it is in your canon or how it relates to any other books (now I know that is it second in your Desperate Duchesses series). The title of the series reflects a heroine-centric [...]

Before I give the names of the winners of our 2nd Annual Thanksgiving giveaway, I just want to say how grateful we all are here at Dear Author for the wonderful community of readers, commenters, and bloggers that make up this small slice of the romance reading community. We all were gratified by [...]

New York Times posted its Notable 100 books for 2007. The print version is released on Sunday. I have nothing to say since I’ve not read a one of them, not even JK Rowling’s 7th Harry Potter book.

David Pogue, the technology reviewer for the New York Times, thinks that the Kindle might catch on once the design is sleeker and the price is lower. The negatives are the

Design
Huge previous/next buttons are so big that they are easy to hit by mistake

The positives:

The web browser
The easy downloading of books
Automatic back up [...]

Dear Jane,
You (or maybe Jayne or Janine) asked awhile back for category recommendations. Et voila, I have one for you.
Sometimes you fall in love with a book that you ought to despise. Big Mis, Big Secret, Secret Baby, Marriage of Convenience. Normally, I can deal with one or two of these romance [...]

Amazon advertised itself as having a large digital catalogue of books available at 88,000 plus. This was one point that really worried me. I wrote in one email to a digital director of a major publisher earlier this week, “Are you going to be publishing Kindle only ebooks because that would really suck [...]

Dear Ms. Pharaoh Francis:
There’s a lot of discontent in the romance community over the use of shortcuts. Essentially, an author relies on certain words or phrases to depict an entire emotional or psychological backstory for a character. Long time romance readers understand intuitively what the author is trying to convey, but newcomers [...]

Dear Mrs. Landon,
After my great experience with “The Warlord’s Mistress” I was in a quandary. I wanted to go out and read every thing of yours I could get my hands on and at the same time, I was worried that nothing would match up to that first book. I’ve been burned by the [...]

Happy Thanksgiving Dear Author Readers. I came across a special tribute by one Patricia Cornwell to all her fans and had to share it.
I saw on David J. Montgomery’s website a message from Patricia Cornwell making a call to her fans to contact everyone they know and strong arm them into leaving her positive [...]

Dear Ms. Kessler:
I think The Road to Hell suffers from a mistaken identity. It is a book that would be better as a straight urban fantasy rather than trying to shoehorn into the romance genre. The ostensible conflict in this story is the female protagonist trying to maintain her relationship with her boyfriend [...]

Definitely a buy for me.
Joyce Lebra’s THE SCENT OF SAKE, about a 19th century Japanese woman who overcomes tremendous obstacles to build a sake empire and a family dynasty at a time when women were forbidden to do business, to Carrie Feron at William Morrow, at auction, by Natasha Kern at Natasha Kern Literary [...]

Borders Group had an increase of 5.3% in revenues at same store sales for the third quarter. Barnes and Noble had comparable revenue increase of 5.7%.
Book sales were up 3.1% but music sales had a 13.1% decline at Borders. The gains were said to be as a result of increase in store traffic [...]

Dear Ms. Apodaca,
I’m not sure where to begin with this letter. Just moments ago I finished your newest release from the Brava line, Extremely Hot. I should mention that I’m a fan of Brava books. I find that I’ll forgive those that are a little light on plot if they make up for it with [...]

Dear Ms. Nelson Douglas,
The thing I like about the Juno imprint is that it offers a wide variety of fantasy novels featuring strong female protagonists. The titles have run the gamut from sword and sorcery to fantasy romance. So when Dancing with Werewolves arrived on my doorstep, I looked forward to reading this urban fantasy. [...]

Over at Gizmodo, I saw that the Palm TX is on sale from Palm for $199 with free wireless keyboard. The Palm TX has a screen size of 3.8″ and can read eReader, Mobipocket, Adobe and HTML files. It also has wi fi capabilities.
It was one of Dear Author’s recommended [...]

Dear Mrs. Harris,
When I got my hands on the hardcover edition of the third book in this mystery series, it was another moment when I wished I’d already read the other books in the series. But since, and especially with a mystery series, I try to read sequels in order I knew I’d better haul [...]

Thanksgiving is just two days away and during this time at DearAuthor, we take time to contemplate the things we are thankful for. One of the benefits of reviewing is that we receive free books. Because we receive so many free books, my book buying has dwindled. Of course, I don’t think [...]

I was worried this morning that Kindle would be getting exclusive ebook rights from some publishers so I began emailing around. It didn’t make sense that publishers would refuse consumers the right to purchase a book. Harlequin emailed back right away to say that all frontlist and backlist ebooks would be available in [...]

Dear Ms. Sala:
You are another “new to me” author. I may have read you in your category iteration, but not in a long, long time. Cut Throat is apparently the second of in a series of books featuring Cat Dupree, a bounty hunter. The story was at its strongest during the action [...]

The Wall Street Journal reported on the blogosphere reaction to the Kindle. Apparently my quotable words were “same fugly hot mess we’ve been seeing for months”.
One of the blogosphere’s question is why Amazon is charging for blog content. I suspect it is because Amazon is not charging for the EVDO access [...]

With the sniggering title “Textually Promiscuous”, Publishers Weekly takes an inside look at romances and the romance community. While the title is rude, the contents are mostly positive with a focus on the diversity (not ethnic but theme) of the genre. While paranormal or otherworldly romances are popular, it appears that the historical [...]

Kindletalk.com is a new website for Kindle users. It’s an Amazon owned site per the whois data. The first question posted by an “admin” is “The Sony readers are everywhere but have not had much success. The Kindle is more expensive but has many more feautures[sic], the most important one being wireless access [...]

The Amazon Kindle is available for order. The price is $399 with free shipping. There are some author testimonials from people like James Patterson, Michael Lewis and Neil Gaiman who all extol the marvelous screen which you would think that Amazon invented. It did not. It’s eink technology and the Sony Reader [...]

Dear Jane:
There's certain comfort in the familiar read. My husband can't understand why, with a stack of new books piling up on my night stand, I can often be found with a book I've read hundreds of times before in my hands. I love new books, but sometimes you just want something safe that you [...]

Despite the fact that the PR gathering tomorrow was supposedly a secret, everyone on the internet knows that Amazon invited a number of publishing representatives and technology folks to New York for a PR event to take place on November 19. No details were given, but based on the people that were contacted and [...]

Ladies,
This is the second book I’ve read in your series set in the minuscule west Texas town of Salt Lick featuring the dynamic duo of hair stylists Debbie Sue Overstreet and Edwina Perkins-Martin. And while I still love all the titles of the books, this one fell far short of book one in the [...]

Dear Mr. Cook,
I’ve always thought the Juno covers were lovely and eye-catching, and the cover for this book is no exception. Timothy Lantz did an excellent job capturing the dark and moody tone of a story that is one-half sword and sorcery tale and one-half grim horror. From what I understand, Blood Magic was Juno’s [...]

Jennifer Apodaca writes murder mysteries with a romantic twist. Her current offering, Extremely Hot, is in bookstores now. Apodaca claims that the traffic in Southern California “affords her plenty of time to plot murder and hot romance.”
***
My brother and sister sometimes call me a bulldog. Flattering, huh? I’m hoping they don’t mean that [...]

Summer Brooks, one of the doyennes of Dragon Page, let me know that they are featuring some romance authors on its site this week. DragonPage is running a contest to giveaway Jennifer Estep’s books. It’s nice to see the fantasy world take notice of the romance world. It can really be one [...]

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 [...]

Dear Ladies:
At the urging of Dionne Galace, a blogger whom I consider a friend, I purchased this book from LiquidSilver. It languished in my to be read pile because, like other readers, anthologies are often not my cup of tea. Because Dionne is a friend, though, I read it a few days ago [...]

Brava Short Story Contest Finalists were announced today. Ann Bruce and Annette McCleave were the winners and the entries can be read at the Brava Authors forum. The finalists are read by editor Kate Duffy of Kensington and has led to publication in the past.
I’ve only read the Ann Bruce one but it’s [...]