Archive for May, 2008
Dear (Insert Name Here),
How is a man supposed to be a man when he’s trapped in the body of a wolf? And what is the woman who loves him supposed to do about this rather awkward situation?
GARWAF (Old French for “werewolf”) is a fantasy complete at 90,000 words which blends elements of Beauty and the Beast with Marie de France’s medieval lais “Bisclavret.”
Lady Isabeau has been packed off to the royal court to snare herself a rich husband so she can pay her father’s gaming debts. Bored by the petty intrigues of the nobility, her loneliness and frustration are eased when the king puts her in charge of the care and comfort of his new pet wolf. Isabeau quickly realizes the beast is more than he seems, for this “wolf” was once Gabriel, the king’s favorite knight. Resolving to do all in her power to restore him, Isabeau is sorely tested as the trials of court and confrontations with those who betrayed Gabriel lead him to stray ever further from his already dwindling humanity. Trapped in his wolf form by his unfaithful wife when she learned his secret, Gabriel struggles to return to the ways of his old life …
I received two publisher alerts and want to share them with the community. One relates to a Yaoi publisher closing shop and the second is Tokyo Pop’s Manga Pilot draconian contract.
Iris Print:
Iris Print is a Yaoi publisher who apparently closed up shop and failed to tell its authors. Giapet.Net first reported this on May 17:
Something I didn’t mention in my Yaoi Press report was that Yamila Abraham, when asked about publishing yaoi novels as well as comics, said that it tends not to work very well, and pointed to Iris Print as an example– saying that the company has actually closed up shop.
Emails to the owner of Iris Print have seemingly gone unanswered. From an Iris Print author:
Well isn’t that swell? Iris Print closes up shop and doesn’t bother to tell the creators they have under contract. Nice. So what about our books? What about our titles? :/ I don’t know what to say about this, except that I’m truly disappointed. I’m beyond pissed; I wonder though, where is Amazon getting their re-stock if Iris is out of business? What about all those people who paid pre-orders for Queer Magic? It would’ve been nice to know
…
Dear Ms. Hart,
 Your Spice Brief, Reason Enough continues the story of Elle and Dan from Dirty. Since I loved Dirty, I was really looking forward to Reason Enough and I am happy to say I enjoyed it.
Elle and Dan have been living in the first home they’ve owned together just a few months when Elle gets an infection and her doctor prescribes antibiotics that interfere with her birth control pills. So for a few days, rather than use a prophylactic, they satisfy each other in other ways. But the temporary ineffectiveness of Elle’s pills raises the possibility of having a baby in Dan’s mind, and he asks Elle if she would agree to have a child with him.
As Elle says in the book’s opening:
It wasn’t the sort of question I could answer at once, without hesitation. It took me hours to pick out which bath mats to put in our new bathroom. How on earth could I decide in one split moment if I should agree to have a baby?
It’s not an easy decision for Elle because, as readers of Dirty know, she comes from a dysfunctional …
This video answers the burning question of how to pronounce Sala. I won’t give it away. You must watch the video at least to the 4:18 mark. “Maybe that was Dinah.”
Click on the title to watch.
 Rachel Gibson’s first book was Simply Irresistible, a secret baby romance, which featured a “charm school graduate and Southern belle extraordinaire” who runs away from being a trophy wife, has a one night stand, and goes on to build an empire (a small one, but still). I knew then that Gibson marched to the beat of her own drummer. Gibson excels at her sports heroes, particularly the hockey books (See Jane Score is my fave although Simply Irresistible was huge fun), and brings back the sports in her latest book, Not Another Bad Date.
***
The day I got that first sale call is still very clear in my memory. It was the morning of February the 10th, 1996. Geraldo was on television, and I was wearing my pink sweats and getting reading for my three minute workout on my treadmill.
I had been writing and submitting my work for over six years. I’d completed four full manuscripts and a partial of three chapters and a synopsis. I’d racked up around twenty-five rejections from every major publisher in …
Updated to add, Brenda Novak’s auction for diabetes ends in just a few days.
Dear Ms. Novak:
 This is my first Novak book and I am happy to say it won’t be my last. I’ve been fortunate to read some good romantic suspense released this month and yours was right up there with the best of them.
Skye Kellerman is an attempted rape survivor who fought off her attacker and lived to testify against him. Oliver Burke was supposed to be sentenced to eight to ten years but is getting out in less than three. David Willis who worked the case and fell hard for Skye first hears the news and is caught between fear and elation. Fear, of course, for Skye’s safety but elation that he now has an excuse to see her again.
David and Skye haven’t seen each other in 10 months mostly because David has always been trying to get back together with his ex-wife. He has fallen out of love with his ex-wife but because she has MS and because of their son, he believes it is important to put aside his feelings and …
Ingram Digital is offering “to transition all participating Microsoft Live Search Books publishers into its Ingram Search and Discover platform at no cost, enabling publishers to continue making their content searchable and available to readers.”
Microsoft announced last week that it would be discontinuing its Live Search program. Microsoft scanned in, digitized, and indexed 750000 books and 80 million scholarly articles for its Live Search program which is similar to Google.
Source: Press Release from Ingram.
276,649 new titles and editions were printed in 2007 which is a 1% increase over the previous year. Print on Demand books increased from 21,936 titles to 134,773 titles per year. It’s no wonder that Amazon is flexing its market power with requiring POD authors and publishers to use its own POD service, Booksurge, or face increased fees. POD is big money these days.
Among the traditional categories, the biggest gain in output occurred in literature, which rose 19%, to 9,796 titles, while fiction was close behind at a 17% increase to 50,071 titles; fiction is also the single largest category. Seventeen categories had a drop in output, with the largest decline in business with title output down 12%, to 7,651. Output in personal/financial titles fell 8%, while publication of religious text dropped 5%. Juvenile title output fell 1%, to 30,063.
Source Publishers’ Weekly.
In this political season, the candidates have received endorsements from people that they have had to “reject and denounce*”. The Good, The Bad, and the Unread, featured a promo for the September release of Double Enchantment by Kathleen Kennedy which is the second book in her Relics of Merlin series. Kennedy’s world is set in the Victorian era and has a unique way of assigning nobility according to the strength and type of magic one can perform. What I remember from the first book which I forgot to review, Enchanting the Lady, the shapeshifters were considered lower class individuals. (They are animals, after all).
Ms. MacGillivrey** showed up in the comments to provide this endorsement:
Kathryne’s books are indeed enchanting. She’s is one of the best new voices to debut in the past few years. I highly recommend her books.
This led Sybil, the blog owner, to ponder whether DAM was stupid or clueless and whether a recommendation by DAM was actually harmful to Ms. Kennedy. It’s unfortunate, but given DAM’s past behavior and the coterie of authors who assisted her in achieving her goals of review deletion***, a reader can …
For our UK readers, the 100 Years of Mills & Boon Centenary Exhibition opens on June 6th at the Manchester Central Library. According to the Manchester site,
The exhibition explores the evolution of 20th century social and sexual mores in Britain, alongside the development of the world’s leading romance publisher. You’ll also find a company history and centenary time line, a fascinating collection of books and cover art, writer biographies, manuscripts, original correspondence between authors and editors and associated memorabilia.
The website has a brief timeline. As of 2000,
Mills & Boon books are sold in 109 countries, translated into 26 languages. 130 million were sold last year, and a Mills & Boon book is bought every three seconds
.
Mills & Boon was purchased by Harlequin in October 1971 (according to Pamela Regis).
The Centenary Exhibition has increased literary news coverage of Mills & Boon and the latest is an interesting article out of The Independent which features quotes from Penny Jordan, author of over 100 romances. She gives the secret of a good romantic read:
What is secret of a good romantic read? “There is no secret. I still worry about each book I submit; you never know
…
Dear Ms. Coleman,
 When your publicist offered us the chance to review your latest novel, all that truly penetrated my brain was ‘women’s fiction’ and ‘western.’ Which is fine since I’ve enjoyed several books of this type and genre before. It wasn’t until I actually dove into the prologue that I realized it’s the story of Alvira “Allie” Sullivan Earp, third wife of Virgil Earp of those Earps. But it’s not just Allie’s viewpoint on what lead up to the famous gunfight in Tombstone, AZ. It’s also a view of the old west that even then was vanishing under the onslaught of settlers bringing ‘civilization’ with them.
Tumblweeds are a staple of images of The Old West even though, as I just discovered, they’re not native to the US at all. Those endlessly moving clumps of salsola blowing across the vast openness of the prairie symbolize the itchy feet both Allie and Virgil had. They both wanted to see what was beyond where they were, to be a part of the next big opportunity.
Family was important to both and often their traveling was to be with one or more of Virgil’s brothers. I found those …
update: this program is through DailyLit. You must sign up with Daily Lit to get the Harlequin book for free.
 Harlequin will be offering Kate Walker’s new June Presents title, Spanish Billionaire, Innocent Wife, to their subscribers for free. Beginning June 1st, people can sign up and receive the entire book in short installments via email/RSS installments.
Is this enough for you to give Harlequin your email address?
Dear Mr. Archer
 Thank you for sending your book to us to read. You may, however, regret this decision if you read the review. I suggest not reading it. Reviews are for readers and in this case, that maxim is doubly true.
Summary of the story is that Lloyd Vance, a detective from Alaska has moved to Lake Barri, Colorado. He meets Courtney Hudson, a widow of 3 years and middle grade author of middle grade bestselling books, at a bar. They hit it off but before a relationship can start, Courtney’s cousin, Pilar, is killed in a hit and run. Lloyd and Courtney must face several impediments to their fledling relationship such as Courtney’s widowhood, Lloyd’s deadbeat father, Courtney’s critical mother, and a slow resolution to the hit and run.
Sadly, the best thing about this book is that I got it for free. The writing simply didn’t suit my taste nor did the characters.
Lloyd and Courtney meet in a bar and after exchanging names, occupations and one spectacularly bad pick up line and decide to go home together and have sex.
“Maybe the stars aligned on this night, and
…
What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture by the third press secretary for George W. Bush will be released on June 2, 2008, but copies are popping up in stores. Politico bought a copy from a Washington bookstore and provided a review of it. Scott McClellan talks in his book about the pervasive lies that the administration told to the American people about the Iraq war and the propaganda machine the White House used to perpetuate those lies.
“I still like and admire President Bush,” McClellan writes. “But he and his advisers confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candor and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war. … In this regard, he was terribly ill-served by his top advisers, especially those involved directly in national security.”
He goes on to write about how the supposed left wing media failed to do its job in reporting.
“The collapse of the administration’s rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise. … In this case, the ‘liberal media’ didn’t live up to its reputation. If it had,
…
Dear Mrs. Quinn,
 Even after I failed to appreciate your last book, I was eagerly awaiting this one. I knew nothing about it until I started reading it and then read the review at AAR. I do agree that the plot, a young highwayman being abducted by his Dowager Duchess grandmother because she’s convinced he’s the son of her lost middle son and is determined that he take his rightful place as the current Duke thus displacing the grandson she – for some reason – can’t stand, is not to be taken seriously. But once I got involved with the story and began to become better acquainted with the characters, I was caught up in their emotions, the interplay of relationships and how it was all going to work out.
I will admit that I didn’t ever get over Jack’s casual feelings for his recently adopted career as a highwayman. Stealing just isn’t right, no matter if he’s only trying to survive, avoiding going back to his comfortable home in Ireland to a family which obviously still loves him despite what he might think they feel after he brought his younger cousin’s …
Dear Ms. Hunter:
 I know that you are a gifted writer and I certainly feel like I am supposed to understand the underlying dynamic of the characters’ motivations but I admit to being lost. I do think that you are challenging norms here and I appreciate that but somehow I could never quite connect with the heroine.
Roselyn Longworth is the sister of Timothy Longworth and the cousin of Alexia, heroine of Rules of Seduction. Timothy fleeced a bank of thousands of pounds and fled England when his perfidy was discovered. Rose retired to the countryside. Alone and scandal-ridden, she allowed herself to be seduced by Lord Norbury. She believed that she was his paramour and goes with him to a weekend party. Norbury humiliates her while there and offers her up for auction amongst other licentious nobles.
Kyle Bradwell, a man of affairs and part time architect, has a strange past with Norbury and is present at the party. He impulsively bids on Rose in a manner calculated to suppress the others and wins her even though he really can’t afford to …
Dear Mr. Battis,
 While it can be said we have a female author bias here at DearAuthor (and maybe that’s true to a certain extent), we have previously reviewed and enjoyed books written by male authors here. If a book interests me, it interests me regardless of who wrote it. So when your urban fantasy debut was described as Buffy meets CSI, I wanted to check it out. I was curious to see how forensic science would fit into the urban fantasy landscape. In fact, I was a little surprised this particular combination hadn’t been done before. But after finishing the novel, I think I might have a clue as to why that’s the case.
Tess Corday is a low-ranking occult special investigator with the ability to detect subtle alterations in an organism’s energy signature. It might not be flashy, but this talent comes in handy when you work for the Mystical Crime Lab unit, a group charged with solving paranormal violent crimes. Her latest case involves a dead vampire whose body was dumped in a back alleyway. …
Borders had initially partnered with Amazon to serve as its online retail vendor. A year or so ago, Borders severed that relationship and made plans to start its own e-tailing presence. The beta launch is over and customers can now buy from Borders.com direct.
Over the past couple of months I have read a handful of books in which the heroine resists a relationship with the hero. I’m not talking about the ‘Oh, I really shouldn’t’ women, or the ‘no means yes’ girls, the females who are just playing coy so as not to appear desperate, or even the heroines who are shy of love from some past trauma. I’m referring to heroines who truly don’t want to make a romantic commitment because of a desire to be independent or from a strong career focus. These are women who seem to be resisting the very structure of Romance, because they resist the narrative path to True Love, marriage, and children. The anti-Romance heroine, I have begun to call them.
Take Tessa Hart from Kathleen O’Reilly’s Shaken and Stirred, for example. She was the first heroine who really started me thinking along these lines, because I was moved by both admiration and frustration for her struggle. A woman who had been terribly hurt by a man she had given up a college education for, …
Dear Ms. Brand,
 I’ve been on a WWII kick the last few weeks which is what made me focus on the blurb for “Blind Instinct.” The heroine obtains a Nazi codebook that’s going to lead to all kinds of secrets and threats to her life. This is what brings her together with the hero as they race to solve the connection between the codebook, a killer and a Nazi criminal.
When I looked at “Blind Instinct” at the eharlequin site, I didn’t realize that it’s actually the third book in a series. Usually there is some icon on the front cover of series books but there wasn’t one here. So when I started it, there was a lot of information that I had to catch up on. You do a good job filling in the information from the past books but there were times I still had to stop then mentally flip through the many characters and their relationships and their pasts to get myself back on track. By the end of the book, everything made sense but newbies should be …
Of the three books reviewed below, two have that distinct HP feel to them replete with the high powered arrogant hero and the less empowered female. The two with the distinctive HP evoked more emotional response than the first one, His Mistress by Arrangement, but I gave higher marks to HMbA because it focused on more emotional development than the other two, primarily because the emotional response invoked by the other two were negative ones. However, if you are an HP lover, I would think that the second two books better provide that specific emotional fix.
Also, until June 1, 2008, the following books are only for sale at the eharlequin website in eformat.
***
 His Mistress by Arrangement by Natalie Anderson. Emma is a hotel manager whose co workers think she is all work no play and a very dull girl. An old friend shows up at her local hotel and gives her an opportunity to show her co workers that she’s actually quite adventurous. Jake Rendel is a little miffed at first but then sees an opportunity to unwind Emma during his five weeks …
SB Sarah wrote me and asked if I would think bad thoughts about her if she bought a Kindle. I said yes but if she agreed to write a review for me, I would think less bad thoughts. Here it is.
***
 My introduction to eBooks came largely when I started reviewing romance novels, because damn holy crap there’s a lot of ebookin’ romances out there. Suddenly I was receiving PDFs and PRCs and some other thing with letters and whoa, nelly!
Then Jane started writing about ebook readers in such a seductive fashion that I had to pay attention because I am a complete gadget freak. It says something about the relative competition between the Ja(y)ne(t)(ia)(Jesus(Jehosephat))s and the Bitches that while our sites do all kinds of team building exercises to the point where we’d probably be better served forming some kind of task force or at least doing trust exercises where Jane jumps off a bed and we have to catch her with our toes or something, the ranting, raving, seething, hair pulling, eyes-blazing jealousy comes in when I know that Jane has ebook readers and iPhones and fondles them within my viewing. …
Microsoft scanned in, digitized, and indexed 750,000 books and 80 million scholarly articles for its “Live Search” program which is similar to Google Booksearch. Microsoft decided to terminate the program and provide the digital copies of books scanned to the publishers. Microsoft will now rely on crawling the content repositories of other sites (I wonder if that includes Google Booksearch) in order to provide search results to those who might use its search portal.
Whether Microsoft discontinued this effort as a result of the resistance the traditional publishing houses are putting forth or whether it decided to cede this ground to Google, it is unclear.
Via CNET
I received my RWR this month and the news that jumped out at me was the Virgin Cheek line is no longer accepting submissions. The words are “The Virgin/Cheek line is suspended after February 2009.” Michelle Pillow, a recommended read by Jayne, is a Cheek author (I think she also has published with some reputable epublishers). While the Cheek site is still active, there are no new updates since 2007. I hope Pillow finds a new home for her books if Cheek is going to be eliminated altogether.
SB Sarah got a heads up from a Janet Evanovich fan that early reviews were disappearing from the Barnes and Noble site. Of course, the only deleted reviews were the negative ones. Google cache which preserves snapshots of past versions of a webpage showed at least two negative reviews that are nowhere to be found on the Barnes and Noble site.
It really does damage to consumer confidence when the reviews are so easily gamed at these corporate sites. While no reader is being stalked here, it still seems wrong and violative.
Dear Ms McCabe,
 Happy days, it’s something different. Tudor England with a French heroine and Russian hero. Definitely not the same old Regency we get offered everyday. Thank you Harlequin Historical.
Sinful Alliance starts out wonderfully with a Venetian brothel scene showdown between two spies. One of them knows what’s up but the other hasn’t a clue until it’s almost too late. And then only his deep blue eyes save the day. Marguerite knows it’s a calculated risk to get so close to her enemy but it’s the only way to slip her emerald accented dagger into his heart. When she loses the initiative, it’s almost insulting to her to be trussed up and left alive.
Almost two years later, she’s wondering if her espionage talents ever be used again when finally! she gets the summons that frees her from her boring Court cover as the royal princess’s lady in waiting. Intrigue, danger and excitement await her at the court of the English King Henry VIII. Henry is potentially open to shifting English alliance from Spain, the homeland of his increasingly estranged Queen, to …
Welcome to Query Saturday. Individual authors anonymously send a query to be read and critiqued by the Dear Author community of authors, readers and industry others. Anyone is welcome to comment. Published authors may do so under their own name or anonymously.
Readers, though, the way that I look at it is this: Would the hook itself interest you in reading the book. If yes, what interests you and if not, what would you change to make it more appealing?
***
(Agent Name)
(Agent Address)
Dear (name):
This is a fiction Running from your Past fifty-one chapter’s and about two hundred pages. The book follows Samantha in her search for peace an escape from the sister she lost and the torment of her own mind in dealing with what she has become.
Her life fell apart in a single moment and five years later she is still running from the truth. Somehow the past always seems to catch up with you and now it seems to have caught up to her and the illusion she has built around herself and falling to pieces.
Samantha is a cold-blooded killer paid to hit her mark but after five years she is still unable to let go of her sister. …
Dear Ms. Gibson,
Though I have read all of your books, in all honesty I’m not sure why. I liked your first book, Simply Irresistible, quite a bit, and loved your second, Truly, Madly Yours. Since then, your books have ranged from mediocre (I show five B- grades in my book log, which goes back to 2002) to something less than mediocre (Daisy’s Back in Town and last year’s Tangled Up in You barely eked out C range grades from me).
Your latest book is the last in a quartet about four female friends finding love. The series is based on a rather contrived conceit: each of the women writes in a different genre: mystery, romance, true crime, fantasy (the heroine of Not Another Bad Date, Adele Harris, is the fantasy writer). It’s not actually the conceit itself that has felt contrived in the series, but the way that each author mirrors rather stereotypical views of the genre she writes in. This was particularly aggravating in Tangled Up in You, with the true crime-writing heroine; she constantly wanted to pepper-spray everyone. That may explain in part why I disliked that book so much. Thankfully, Adele in …
SB Sarah posted about the new antitrust lawsuit filed by publisher Booklocker against Amazon. Booklocker is asking for class action status. The suit alleges an unlawful tying arrangement between Amazon’s bookstore and Amazon’s printing arm (Booksurge).
We discussed a tying suit briefly in the comments when the news of Amazon’s requirement to use its POD service or suffer a financial penalty first surfaced.
The Advantage Program requires POD publishers to give Amazon 55% of the list price, pay them $29.95/year, and pay the shipping costs for books going to Amazon.
There are great resources on the internet that explain tying and one of them is a paper before the Federal Trade Commission that addresses the illegal tying of intellectual property rights. While the IP arguments don’t necessarily pertain, the prefatory material on this link is helpful in understanding the basics of a tying suit.
Probably the most famous recent tying cases have been against Microsoft. States across the country challenged Microsoft’s tying of its browser, Internet Explorer, to its operating system. Microsoft had built up a monopoly on personal computers. While this is not illegal in the United States, there are constraints on monopoly power. …
 Tor started giving away a free ebook version of one of its print publications every week. This week’s book is Touch of Evil by C.T. Adams and Cathy Clamp. (Direct link). This is one of the books in Tor’s paranormal romance line.
You have to sign up for their newsletter to get the email. In the email will be a direct link to a PDF, HTML or Mobi version of the book. It is DRM free so you can read it on any device without restrictions.
 I’m reposting this because I stupidly miscommunicated with someone about this date and the first sale series and so I’ve got nothing. But given the fact that I think Loretta Chase’s Your Scandalous Ways is one of the best romances I’ll read this year, I thought I’d pull it up again and pimp her book. It’s on sale next Tuesday. In the meantime, you can read the first three chapters of Julia Quinn’s The Lost Duke of Wyndham for free online and the entirety of The Duke and I, one of my favorite Quinn books.
***
 When I wrote to Ms. Chase, it was on a whim. I never thought she would email me back and agree to share her “first sale” letter. Chase is like, well, a minor god to me. Lord of Scoundrels is one of the seminal romances in my thousand book reading history. This novel was originally published in 1995 and remained in print since that time, over ten years and counting. I suspect its a book that my daughter will enjoy when …
Fiction DB, a one stop resource of authors, titles, publication dates, and even purchasing, is free. FictionDB used to cost money to see entire backlists of authors and take advantage of its 200,000+ book database. As of Tuesday, May 20, 2008, the entire database is free. This site contains a comprehensive backlist of over 50,000 authors. It tracks upcoming releases.
There is still a subscription service that offers the following services:
- Advertising Free
- Organizing tools such as a bookshelf, wishlist, archive and bookstore
- Ratings for the books
- Advanced search
- Tagging
- Mobile access
- Improved layout (faster access)
You can sign up for a free three day trial. Annual subscriptions cost $29.99.
Dear Ms. Shearin:
 This may have been a case of mismatched expectations. The cover quotes and inside the book endorsements said that it was “fall out-of-your-chair funny” and that you had “mastered writing with humor.” I confess my reading experience was quite different. This is not to say that I didn’t find the narration pleasant, but I didn’t find the humor referenced and lauded. Given that humor is quite subjective, I suspect everyone’s response to this would be quite different.
Raine Benares is an elf and a seeker with a tie to a big bad magical stone that can give her immense power but can also swallow her whole like it did to her daddy. She goes to the Isle of Mid, a place of sorcery training, to figure out how to excise the stone’s hold over her. She’s not quite a prisoner, not quite a guest. Mychael Eiliesor is paladin and commander of the Guardians who watch over Raine. Raine and Mychael are attracted to each other but her tie to the dark rock and his sense of duty to the Guardians prevent them from moving closer together. Complicating …
Steve Riggio, CEO of Barnes and Noble, stated today during BN’s first quarter conference call that Barnes and Noble is open to alternative solutions to deal with unsold books. Currently mass markets are stripped and thrown away with the covers being sent back to the publisher for credit. I’m not sure how trade and hardcover book returns are managed. Riggio says that the current return policy is expensive and that a new solution could be obtained in a year or so.
I think its important to note that Riggio is not advocating the end of returns as the Publishers’ Weekly title might suggest but an end to the traditional practice.
Via PW.
Barnes and Noble reported a loss for the first quarter of $2.2 million which is a greater loss than last year’s first quarter returns which were down $1.67 million. Interestingly, part of the loss was from settlement monies paid as a result of a dispute regarding collection of taxes on online sales. Same store sales were down 1.5 percent. The article stated that BN was still thinking of purchasing Borders.
Report on Business via Ann B.
Church thinkers like Saint Jerome announced that carnal relations were “filthy” even within the bounds of holy matrimony: “The wise man should love his wife with cool discretion,” Jerome opined, “not with hot desire… Nothing is nastier than to love your own wife as if she were your mistress.”
So writes Tony Perrottet in the introduction to his interesting, funny and informative piece on appropriate coitus in the Middle Ages. The Church was so obssessed with sex that it actually took to writing policies on appropriate positions and punishments for sinful positions. Only one position, of course, was appropriate. Positions not appropriate (with accompanying punishment):
Dorsal sex (woman on top): three years
Lateral, seated, standing: 40 days
Coitus retro — rear entry: 40 days
Mutual masturbation: 30 days
Inter-femural sex — ejaculation between the legs: 40 days
Coitus in terga — anal sex: three years (with an adult); two years (with a boy); seven years (habitual); 10 years (with a cleric)
Wow. Having sex with a woman on top is as bad as having anal sex with a woman but not as bad as having anal sex with a boy.
Sarah of SmartBitches wondered if you can follow an editor like you would an author, or maybe I can take that a bit further, and ask whether you can follow an editor like another reader who you trust. I initially thought that there was no correlation between an editor’s output and reader taste, but I have noticed that Anne Sowards edits several of my favorite urban fantasy cross over authors (Patricia Briggs, Ilona Andrews and Ann Aguirre, to name a few).
So I asked her what ACE/ROC had in the hopper that might appeal to those readers, like me, who were urban fantasy junkies. Her response was so fulsome and interesting I asked if I could post it to the blog. She provided me with the following list of authors and books she has edited from the ACE, ROC, Berkley lines.
March 2008
GRIMSPACE by Ann Aguirre (Ace) – I loved this one and am looking forward to the sequel.
MADHOUSE by Rob Thurman (Roc) – Jia read and reviewed this book. It features a male protag and his brother and I admit that it is keeping me from reading the series. It’s interesting that in the …
Dear Ms. Dawson,
 My goodness it’s been years since I read one of your westerns though I do have them piled up somewhere on one of my TBR mountains. Now if I had them as ebooks, as I do this one, they’d be easy to locate. I love ebooks. And I started out loving this book. I read another review of it in which the reviewer said it reminded her of cheesy westerns. And it it does but I got into the swing of it and just let it ride. Great characters, funny, witty dialogue, good period feel…I was cruising along and having a wonderful time. Until the last section that is. But let’s hold off on that just now.
Gap Tooth and the woman followed Logan out of the lobby into the office hallway. He’d take them to the president’s office. On a previous visit he’d noted a large vent cover on the far interior wall. Unless a better idea occurred to him in the next thirty seconds, he’d try to lure Gap Tooth there and tell him it was the tunnel entrance. If he could get the outlaw
…
Vampires are becoming mainstream just as they are losing steam within the romance genre. Last week, Candy blogged about a “certain notorious biology professor from Minnesota” who “notices the massive wall o’ befanged man-titty” at his local Wal-mart. This week sees Guardian book blogger, Will Davis, consider the allure of the vampire.
Davis sees Anne Rice’s “Interview with the Vampire” as the sire of the modern vampire novel which turns Dracula from the villain into the dark hero. Davis believes that the vampire has a James Dean-like allure, particularly for teens.
Not only are vamps portrayed as sophisticated loners, reviled by their peers and tormented by their bloodlust, but for some reason they like to hang about in schools.
It seems to me that vampires are less popular amongst romance readers with more and more emphasis on the shapeshifters. The question, I suppose, is whether the paranormal trend will swing back toward increased vampire stories. I’m ready to move on. How about you?
Thanks RebeccaJ for the link.
Dear Mr. Lanyon:
 I don’t ordinarily look for gay fiction but in at the urging of Teddy Pig I picked up the Adrien English Mysteries which is a two novella* collection featuring the titular character, Adrien English, a gay bookstore owner and mystery writer with a bad heart, whose situation forces him into sleuthing.
These stories are told in the first person and English is a great narrator. He’s self deprecating with a dry sense of humor, a good sense of self, and a general appreciation for his particular lot in life. Like many titular characters, his personal relationships have been unsuccessful.
The first novella is Fatal Shadows which introduces Adrien to the reading audience. An employee and old acquaintance of his is murdered and Adrien looks to be the prime suspect. The Los Angeles detectives, Chan and Riordan, seem to be closing in on Adrien. To prevent going to prison, Adrien is forced to do some investigating of his own and in doing so, puts his own life in danger.
The best part of this book is Adrien’s narration. He’s observations are concise, yet descriptive.
The Finches are writing partners,
…
Dear Mrs Ford,
 It’s hard to read the blurb for “Road to Love” without mentally comparing it to the Mother of All Depression Era-Widow-Marries-Ex-Con-Hero novels but I think your book will stand on its own merits. Initially upon reading the blurb I thought, “I’ve read this before. I’ve seen it done excellently
before. What else is there to write about this plot?” The answer is: a lot.
It has great period details (at least from what my mother has told me about growing up in that era) and a realistic view of what women alone faced then. The patronizing attitude as Kate tried to discover the truth about the robbery, the patronizing attitude of Doyle feeling he knows what’s best for Kate and her children and that she’d give in and let him run her life, her fears of revealing too much about her widowhood to any passing man. And of course the same problems that still face today’s women such as balancing work and home life, child raising, and being both mother and father to their children.
This is life before antibiotics, before baby formula, before drip dry clothes, before …
Teresa Jacobs, aka Teresa Wayne, formerly dba Mardi Gras Publishing, appears to still be selling books under the Mardi Gras Publishing banner at Ebooksabouteverything.com. The rights of all these books have reverted back to the authors yet the books are still for sale and no sales apparently are being reported to authors.
As of September 1, 2007, your title, ___________________ has been officially released from contract with Mardi Gras Publishing.
With this said, I wish you all the best in the epublishing industry and many sales…
Sincerely,
Teresa Jacobs
Publisher / Mardi Gras Publishing, LLC
I can’t help but think that eBooksabouteverything should not be selling these books unless given specific permission by the author. For example, at Fictionwise, there are no books listed under the Mardi Gras Publishing page. The only email I could find for ebooksabouteverything is info at ebooksabouteverything.com.
Dear Ms. Cole:
 As soon as I finished Dark Desires After Dusk, I went back to track rage demon Cadeon Woede’s character in Wicked Deeds on a Winter Night and Dark Needs at Night’s Edge (am I the only one who’s starting to feel these titles are blending into one long tongue twister?), curious to see if I would regard him differently now that I’ve read his whole story. Happily, the answer is no: Cade is still the swaggering, demon brew-swilling rage demon who loves his big old truck and his pay per view porn almost as much as he regrets the youthful decision that lost his brother crown and kingdom. Cade is no suave intellectual, no ethically upstanding Lore citizen. He is a blunt instrument, and one sexy demon, with, as Nix likes to point out, seriously “lickable horns.”
Holly Ashwin is one great heroine, too, a mathematics genius with serious (medicated) OCD, who remains in complete emotional and physical control through punishing rituals of cleaning, counting, swimming, and designing computer code. She possesses one of the most original excuses for remaining a virgin I think I’ve ever seen in Romance: …
Dear Mrs. Reinhardt,
 I started out thinking this book would be one thing – your attempts at cooking told in a humorous style – and ended up with something much different. Instead we get annecdotes of Southern life that involve cooking or attempted cooking or dodging cooking that do bring to mind the gentle style of humor I remember from Erma Bombeck books.
The chapter titles are funny in and of themselves – “Dude Food,” “When Roadkill Meets Mikasa,” “If Your Kids Like School Lunches You Suck as a Cook,” “My Alcoholic Cat” – but the stories told in them are even funnier. How you strove to stave off labor pains while cooking an Easter meal for the family, the horrible meals single men will make for themselves (I think I’ll skip all those recipes), “Drive-by-Dave’s” sake assisted cashew chicken recipe, shaving collards, your sister’s Holloween tricks, the image of your Aunt Betty in her full length mink coat picking up dinner, your stint on the cafeteria line, and pussafish.
The stories also made me nod and think of my own relatives or similar instances such as cutthroat food arranging at the October church Homecoming, my …
It has been said by many an author that their sales at Amazon account for only a small (mostly single digit percentage) of overall sales. Yet, it’s growing sales is causing concern amongst publishers. Amazon’s sales have grown each quarter by leaps and bounds. The first quarter of ‘08 say a 22% increase.
A real worry is the possibility Amazon will combine its content creation with its sales and distribution arm. For example, it would be much easier for a company like Amazon to set up an advance-free scenario with an author and provide monthly royalties based on its online sales. The infrastructure already exists and if Amazon had a large enough market share this set up might be very attractive to authors.
One publisher at London’s Book Fair said “It’s only a matter of time before they approach a major author to sign directly with them.’” Janet Evanovich decided to forego having a professional agent in favor of having her son handle this matter for her. Someone like Evanovich, with a huge and loyal following, could decide that cutting out one more step in the publishing to shelf process would increase …
Hastings Entertainment’s sale of books has increased 5.6% in the last quarter, bettering the increases in movies and music sales. The problem for publishers is part of the increase is due to the rise in used book sales.
Hastings said sales of new trade paperbacks, including Eckhart Tolle’s New Earth, as well as higher sales of used trade paper and hardcover titles, lead the gain in the period.
I would expect to see more used book store sales relative to new given the tightening economy.
Via Publishers’ Weekly.
more cat pictures
During the past couple of weeks, the Smart Bitches and Karen Scott’s blog hosted heated debates regarding the state of African American romance fiction. For the most part and with few exceptions, romance books written by African Americans are shelved with African American books. To some authors, this is a regressive trait in what we like to pretend is a post racial culture. There has been a request by some authors that readers take a stand since the majority of romance dollars are spent by white females. The problem is that there are several ways in which romance readers can address this issue but I don’t know which is the one we should take.
There was one commenter at the SB’s who said she needed an ally. I find that to be true. If an author or a group of authors stepped up and said this is the direction we would like you to go, then I would take up the standard and run with them. But right now, I am stalled at the starting line, wondering which fork in …
Dear Ms. Bourne,
 It’s taken me a while to get around to reading your debut, The Spymaster’s Lady. Back in the winter, Robin asked me if I would review it in a conversational review with her before your next book came out, and I promised that I would. When I got to reading it last week, my repsonse to The Spymaster’s Lady was far from Robin’s own experience of the book and she suggested that I convert the notes I had prepared for a conversational review into this letter instead, so that the review could stand on its own.
Readers who have not yet done so can find a plot summary for The Spymaster’s Lady in Jane’s A- review. Another opinion can be found in Jayne’s A- review. And readers should also be aware that this review will contain spoilers.
The writing in The Spymaster’s Lady is crystalline in its beauty and sharpness. The prose is just gorgeous, scintillating, and as others have noted, the French dialogue and Annique’s POV thoughts in French are absolutely spot on in capturing the cadences of the French tongue. You are a brilliant stylist, a …
Gena Showalter is on the New York Times list for the third week. With the release of the second in the Nora Roberts’ paranormal/horror trilogy, The Hollow, her first book, Blood Brothers, reappeared on both the USA Today and NY Times list. Stephenie Meyer got the top spot for The Host, her first adult offering.
***
Book Title
Author
Publisher
Price
Rank
Peak
NYT
The Hollow
Nora Roberts
Jove
$7.99
2
2
1
The Devil Who Tamed Her
Johanna Lindsey
Pocket
$7.99
14
7
8
Twenty Wishes
Debbie Macomber
Mira
$24.95
17
10
3*
From Dead to Worse
Charlaine Harris
Ace
$24.95
24
24
6*
A Wanted Man: A Stone Creek Novel
Linda Lael Miller
HQN
$7.99
28
12
21
Up Close and Dangerous
Linda Howard
Ballantine
$7.99
13
13
18
Natural Born Charmer
Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Avon
$7.99
31
19
9
Innocent as Sin
Elizabeth Lowell
Avon
$7.99
34
18
11
The Lawman
Diana Palmer
HQN
$7.99
45
22
34
Promises
Fern Michaels
HQN
$7.99
46
32
27
Comanche Moon
Catherine Anderson
Signet
$7.99
50
50
24
Playing with Fire
Katie MacAlister
Signet
$7.99
53
53
10
The Other Boleyn Girl
Philipa Gregory
Touchstone
$16.00
58
3
14**
The Darkest Kiss
Keri Arthur
Dell
$6.99
60
29
15
The Charm School
Susan Wiggs
Mira
$7.99
65
43
Duke Most Wanted
Celeste Bradley
St. Martin’s Press
$6.99
68
47
17
Back on Blossom Street
Debbie Macomber
Mira
$7.99
72
24
26
The Darkest Night: Lords of the Underworld
Gena Showalter
HQN
$6.99
79
42
14
Dark Deeds at Night’s Edge
Kresley Cole
Pocket
$6.99
83
38
25
One Foot in the Grave
Jeaniene Frost
Avon
$6.99
89
45
20
The Forbidden: The Courtship of Nellie Fisher
Bevarly Lewis
Bethany House
$13.99
93
73
Lover’s Bite
Maggie Shayne
Mira
$7.99
105
70
22
Silver Flame
Hannah Howell
Zebra
$6.99
113
103
Dying Breath
Wendy Corsi Staub
Zebra
$6.99
120
100
A Notorious Proposition
Adele Ashworth
Avon
$6.99
131
112
Dark Magic
Christine Feehan
Dorchester Publishing
$7.99
134
78
Blood Brothers
Nora Roberts
Jove
$7.99
135
1
30
Hokus Pokus
Fern Michaels
Zebra
$6.99
139
26
Creation …
Hunting Love is a series of novellas offered by Samhain which feature shapeshifters of Felidae. Like all Samhain themed novellas, the books share a very similar look so that the reader can easily identify the connection. I read three of the four. * These books are related only by the topic and not the characters or settings. The stories vary quite a bit both in setting and myth. Samhain doesn’t link these books together on its site so if you want to read/buy them all, you have to look for the covers.
 The Wallflower by Dana Marie Bell. Max Cannon returns to his hometown to take up the leadership of his Pride. Emma Carter, his old classmate, has always yearned for Max but believes that she is not attractive enough for a stud like Max. I like late bloomers and the old friends to lover story, but this story relied too heavily on shortcuts and stereotypes. First, Emma is supposed to be a wallflower on one hand but is referred to by Max’s second, his beta, as ‘The Little General’.
The construct …
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