Dear Author: Romance Novel Reviews, Industry News, and Commentary

Samhain announced a week or so ago that it was closed for submissions. When it re-opens, it will be accepting only romance oriented submissions. I would dearly love to see more urban fantasy romance. The full text of the new announcement follows:

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When we re-open for submissions, we will be refocusing the company's efforts. To that end, we will re-open to focus only on Romance and all the various subgenres such as romance/erotic romance/erotica as well as the following with romantic elements: fantasy/urban fantasy/science fiction/paranormal/etc…

We have learned a lot in the past year, as well as our two years of operation, and one of the things we've come to realize is that we don't have the resources to do it all, as much as we'd like to. We've discovered that most of the mainstream, non-romance genres don't do as well with us, and we've decided to refocus our efforts on romance. We're still a fairly new company, still discovering who we are, so to speak. We've realized that it's unfair to the authors to continue to contract non-romance genres when the sales aren't there for you at this time.

This …

Dear Readers,

“Beautiful Copper (it’s a nickname) Randal had come to the exotic Andaman Islands off the coast of India to visit her former school friend but before long she falls under the sultry spell of sun and ocean…and of handsome Nick Tarrent. But undercurrents of violence and betrayal run deep beneath the polite society of British colonists on this tropical isle…and now danger seems to stalk the night as Copper holds her breath in fearful anticipation. Then as storm clouds gather beyond the dawn horizon a plan of murder and revenge turns a romantic outing into a day of terror…in a paradise where love is mixed with suspicion and a killer is ready to strike again.”

Set in the exotic locale of the Andamans Islands just off the coast of India, Kaye does a great job using the “Characters cut off and isolated while a murderer is loose among them” plot. In the author’s note, she states that the idea came to her during a real life experience she had on the islands when she visited them before WWII. The timing of this story isn’t mentioned (she got the idea pre WWII but didn’t write the story …

Dear Ms. Garwood:

Your return to the historical genre has been the subject of romance readers discussions for months now. I would have loved to have written “welcome back” but I can see we have some growth pains here. While some of the classic Garwood moments have returned, there were also some painful speed bumps along the reading road.

Princess Gabrielle of St. Biel has been betrothed to Lord Monroe, a Scottish Highlander, in order for King John to pacify and shore up the borders to the North. Gabrielle is greatly desired. She hunts, shoots, and rides like a man. She has been trained in all the feminine arts and she is uber beautiful. But super nice. Because someone who is super rich, talented in everything, and gorgeous always has zero ego.

Despite being from a small country called St. Biel, formerly known as Monchanceux, which is somewhere in the Middle East, Gabrielle is pure anglo saxon with violet eyes and softly curling black hair and pure creamy skin. (Sounds Welsh to me). I just couldn’t figure out why a) St. Biel had a French origin, …

Harlequin is giving away one free ebook per day until January 1, 2007. These are full length ebooks from the most popular lines such as Harlequin Presents and Harlequin Blaze. I will confess to having gorged on Harlequin Presents this holiday season. My two favorite HP authors are currently Sara Craven and Helen Brooks (neither of which are being given away, but I thought I would just throw that out there).

For those who are wondering what an ebook looks like, here is your opportunity.

Via Ann Bruce.

Dear Ms. Ganter,

My blogging partner Jan reviewed this series earlier and I was so impressed by the review and by the artwork she included that I posted to her review. She graciously offered to loan me the volumes of “Sorcerers and Secretaries.” I’ll be honest and say that I’d never tried any manga and in fact hadn’t read any type of comic or graphic arts book since childhood. Yep, manga has swept the world but hadn’t swept me. That is until I read this book. Now I begin to understand the appeal. I might not be a convert but this is one novel I might just have to search out.

I’ve included ‘manga’ tags on this review so it will show up on our website along with Jan’s original review but I’m not reviewing it as manga. Since I don’t know the genre enough to speak with any authority on it, I’m talking about it as a romance. And a delightful romance it is. Nicole and Josh have to work through their problems as any romance couple I normally read about do. Nicole is one smart cookie. Though she initially likes …

Dear Jane,

I would not describe myself as a science fiction fan-and not because I haven’t tried it. Thanks to my college habit of taking only classes that met Tuesday-Thursday, I’ve read the whole SF canon, everything from Left Hand of Darkness to Snow Crash. And while I didn’t hate it all (Because, really, who could hate Dune?) literature about dystopian feminist/fascist/droid-ruled/war-mongering societies just doesn’t get my blood pumping. And, though I have nothing against space operas in theory, many “composers” seem so besotted with the nifty little worlds they’ve created they forget details like characterization and lucid plots. But last January, in a post about genre labels, you mentioned Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan books as a series often embraced by romance readers. I needed something to read, so I gave them a shot.

Cordelia’s Honor is the first installment in the Vorkosigan series, but it reads like a stand-alone novel. It also reads like one of the best damn books I’ve ever owned. It’s primarily SF, but the relationship thread is very strong and the book ends with a HEA, so it more than …

Last week I made a few statements that conflated fetish fiction publishing with shady fly-by-night publishing. As Emily Veinglory pointed out on her blog, this really isn’t an appropriate charge. The conflation of unsucrupulous publishing and the content of the publishing matter was wrong and I apologize for that. A house that does publish what I term fetish fiction can still be an ethical place of business.

I do wonder, though, what the next five years of e-publishing will hold. Will epublishing be about the margins of erotica and erotic romance? Will it be about niches that fill gaps in mainstream publishing? Will houses like Samhain, Loose ID, Amber Quill Press become major players in the publishing market because of the rise of ebooks? I think that e publishing is at a crossroads.

It was about eight years ago that Tina Engler started Ellora’s Cave. It started to take off in 2003 with a reported $1.2 million in revenues. With seemingly no start up revenue, Engler turned an e publishing business into a multi-millionaire dollar concern. There was no …

Dear Ms. Janzen:

This is the 8th book in the Steele Street series featuring fast cars and the military operatives who love them. While Cutting Loose has your trademark features such a special vehicle with a cute nickname: Charlotte, the Harlot, a Shelby Mustang Cobra GT500KR. It has the special agent/Steele Street chop shop boy, Zachary Prade, who has been deep undercover with the CIA for years. It has a surprisingly resilient and likeable heroine, teacher and rancher’s daughter, Lily Robbins. And finally, it has a fast paced, action packed plot. All those things combined make this an above average book. The problem is because you have done it so many times before and more effectively, it makes it only a slightly above average book.

Cutting Loose picks up where On the Loose leaves off. When Lily Robbins was in Morazan Province, El Salvador, she witnessed the beating of an American soldier. When the beating was concluded and she attempted to assist him, the soldier passed her a macrame bracelet and died. Unbeknowst to Lily, intertwined into the threads of the bracelet was a polymer strand …

Borders and Sony will launch a co-branded eBookstore with 25,000 titles which sounds about right if the plan is to stock mostly fiction books. It sounds like you will have to have a special eBook Library software in order to purchase the titles or access the new bookstore front. Only those who purchase a Sony Reader will have this access. Borders will allow T-Mobile customers to wirelessly access the new eBookstore and purchase an ebook if you are inside a Borders store.
It sounds like a great idea made innumerably complicated by the restrictions. Why does there need to be special software? Is it going to be yet another super proprietary ebook format? Don’t you have pay for T-Mobile access at Borders? So you have to pay to get wireless connectivity and then you pay for the book? It’s like charging a cover charge to get into Borders to buy a book. This is not my idea of making ebooks easier to obtain by the reading public.

Via Publishers Weekly.

Dear Ms. Campbell:

I realized reading your new release Untouched that for me your books are fundamentally a revisiting of older Romance motifs, with both retro and current elements. At your best, your work brings out the best of both past and present Romances, because you are often examining some of the more provocative elements in the genre, making them both larger than life and relatable at the same time. And because of that, perhaps, when something in your book misses, it really misses. Claiming the Courtesan is a book that hit much more often than it missed for me, while Untouched is a book with more misses than hits.

Impoverished in widowhood and banished from her wealthy and titled family, Grace Paget is kidnapped on her way to meet her uncle, mistaken for a common prostitute and nabbed for the pleasure of Matthew Lansdowne, the reclusive Marquess of Sheene. Having lost his parents as a child, and not seen in society since he was fourteen, Matthew is a prisoner of his greedy and conniving uncle, Lord John, who uses a fever Matthew contracted at fourteen to have …