Archive for August, 2008
The rules for Author Promo Night Open Thread are as follows:
- The book has to be released in that month (i.e., anything released during the last week of April would be a May release)
- You can post for yourself or you can have a friend post for you if the idea of posting about your book paralyzes you .
- No self published authors unless you write romance. No, I am not a POD hater, I am just thinking about the manageability of the thread.
- Think about the readership. I.e., does your non fiction book about psoriasis really fit?
- This one is more of a guideline than a rule, but be smart about your comment because if it is just a link to your website and the title of your book, I doubt you are going to get any interest.
- DA reserves the right to delete the post if it promotes objectionable content (i.e., no daddy/daughter incest recommends are going to be allowed. Sorry.)
That’s it. Post away.
Amazon is banking on the idea that dedicated eBook readers are what will drive paper book readers to the digital format. A recent article in September’s Searcher magazine argues that it is not. Nancy K. Herther, an anthropology and sociology librarian at the University of Minnesota Libraries, took a look at the history of ebooks, ebook readers and the current market devices and determined that for so many reasons, even the most perfect dedicated eBook reader won’t move the market forward. (Thank you so much, Jody, for bringing this article to my attention).
For anyone interested in ebook reading, this article is a must read. Herther has a two page, historical timeline of ebooks. The article is chock full of statistics, quotes by leaders in the industry, and most importantly, some great insights into the ebook market.
Herther isn’t saying anything an ebook reader herself hasn’t said. Essentially, there are so many issues that plague the publishing industry as it relates to ebooks that perfecting the hardware side will not solve the impediments to ebook reading for many individuals.
On one side of the ebook equation, we have the hardware or ebook reading device itself. …
Dear Ms. Janzen:
 I really liked the first Steele Street stories. One thing, in particular, is that they sounded very modern. Over time, however, because the books are similar to one another, I stopped being impresed by the fresh tone because, well, it wasn’t fresh anymore. And with extended exposure to anything, the flaws in the series began to stand out. This is particularly true when the flaws are consistent from book to book.
Loose and Easy is focused around a twenty four hour period that starts when Johnny Ramos, former street kid and gang member, turned superfly military guy spots a high school crush apparently turning tricks. Nicknamed Easy Alex due to the lock she had between her legs, Esmee Alden is the last person he thought would have gone from Valedictorian to well, insert your own tasteless “head” joke here.
Of course, Esme is not a hooker but rather a purported expert in art recovery. She’s doing a job in Denver to get her father, who loves to gamble, out of hock for the last time. The job is pretty complicated. Get a piece …
Welcome to First Page Saturday. Individual authors anonymously send a first page read and critiqued by the Dear Author community of authors, readers and industry others. Anyone is welcome to comment. You may comment anonymously.
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I glanced out at the Great Lawn as I sat alone on an iron park bench, trying to be inconspicuous as I waited for the Man, sure that I was sticking out like a sore thumb. I had some bad habits—modern habits—that are hard to break. Until he returned, I wasn’t free to slide Steamside, as my companions had christened our own slice of late Victorian hell.
The Punks love naming things, including calling themselves punks. It fits some of them. But you have to cut them a break. I mean, we’re stuck in 1890, at least half the time. I’m not sure when the other half is, or if it is a when.
I’m not even sure how many dimensions Steamside really has, but if I think too hard about that I get heart palpitations. The less I think, the better off I am. I think. Even the hardiest psyche sometimes has trouble adapting to the little …
 Last month we received an unusual request at Dear Author. We were asked to review something other than a book — a DVD set called “The Romance Collection: Special Edition.” The 14 DVD set, which can be found here, retails currently on sale for $49.98 and contains nearly 30 hours of programming (not including the special features) from A&E’s romantic films and miniseries.
The eight titles included in “The Romance Collection: Special Edition” are as follows: “Pride and Prejudice” starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle, “Victoria and Albert,” starring Victoria Hamilton, Nigel Hawthorne, Jonathan Pryce and Sir Peter Ustinov, “Emma,” starring Kate Beckinsale, “Jane Eyre,” starring Samantha Morton and Ciaran Hinds, “Lorna Doone,” starring Martin Clunes, Richard Coyle, Aidan Gillen and Amelia Warner, “The Scarlet Pimpernel,” starring Richard E. Grant and Elizabeth McGovern, “Tom Jones,” starring Max Beesley, Samantha Morton and Benjamin Whitrow, and “Ivanhoe,” starring Steven Waddington and Ciaran Hinds.
Directors: Metin HĂĽseyin
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
Language: English
Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only.)
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Number of discs: 2
Rating: Brief nudity, sexual situations, bawdy humor
Studio: A&E Home Video
DVD Release Date: March 26, 2002
Run Time: 300 minutes
People expecting a gentle …
Someone sent me twelve chapters of Stephenie Meyer’s Midnight Sun (the story of Bella and Edward told from Edward’s POV) a few days ago. There was a bit of speculation as to whether this was an authentic Meyer voice or whether it was fan ficced. I leaned toward the latter. But apparently the chapters circulating on the internet are authentic and Meyer has acknowledged that it is.
Whether she will “punish” the fans and the leaker by not finishing remains to be seen, but if you want to read chapters 1-12 of the Edward/Bella saga from Edward’s POV, it is online.
Starting October 1, Comcast will start capping its customers' Internet use. The cap will be set at 250 GB which is quite high. It's the equivalent of 124 standard definition movies. Comcast has, in the past, blocked traffic without informing consumbers by blocking peer to peer applications like BitTorrent. Time Warner and Comcast will look at usage billing, much like cell phone companies. It is a bit of irony that cell phone carriers are moving to all you can eat pricing while broadband companies are moving backward to consumption based billing. I can't help but wonder if this will move individuals toward buying broadband service from cell companies. My Sprint Wireless access is under $50 per month and has no caps and I can take it on the road with me.
Libraries are having two issues. First, patrons aren't returning books. Second, when the books are returned, they often come with a variety of junk inside them. An Arizona librarian reports everything from cash to toilet paper to muscle relaxants to a check for $10,000.00. Many libraries will keep the personal items to return to the patron but few patrons do return them. So if you've used a photograph for a bookmark and have since lost it, you may want to check with the library's lost and found.
 I read somewhere that Debbie Macomber has a mailing list of over 75,000 readers who receive postcard updates of her latest releases. Her first sale, HeartSong, was the first ever romance to be reviewed by Publishers Weekly.
It’s hard to imagine that someone like Ms. Macomber ever worried about being published. But Macomber, like every author and every aspiring author, began with one sale and the story that she tells for us is not that of the sale of her first novel, but rather a different kind of first sale. Her most recent book, 8 Sandpiper Way debuted on No. 8 on the New York Times.
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I’m sure all writers remember the sale of their first book. For me, that fateful phone call from New York came on September 29, 1982 (at 4:39 p.m.)–but what I want to tell you about is my very first official sale.
I’d been pounding away at the typewriter for nearly three years, and I’d completed two and a half manuscripts. They were returned so fast that I often tell people they hit me in the back of the head on the way home …
I’ve had the opportunity to purchase a gently used Kindle from a friend of mine but I’ve held off, thinking that there might be a new Kindle coming out in October. According to a report to the Times, though, Amazon says that there are no new Kindles slated for release in 2008.
Update to Add: I wanted to include a link to the Business Week article I had read (but misplaced the article until just now) that had “confirmations” of the new Kindle.
I can confirm what McAdams Wright Ragen analyst Tim Bueneman is saying — that Amazon.com plans to unveil a larger-screen model of its Kindle e-book player, aimed at students, in the coming months. And I’m also hearing some details, similar to TechCrunch in July (my apologies to TechCrunch for the use of “Kindle 2.0” in this headline; I somehow missed this post that uses the same phrase while writing this post), about an upgrade of the base model, that I’m told is coming in September (though Wright Ragen thinks it may be in October). My sources say the new version is significantly thinner, has a better screen, is more stylish and
…
Dear Ms. London:
 I can’t remember the last time I read a Julia London book. I thought that your books were more, well, flighty or frivolous. Maybe I got your name confused in my head with another author which happens not infrequently for me. In any event, I liked the plot of this story even though I thought the execution was wobbly in places.
Nathan Grey, Earl of Lindsey, and his wife, Evelyn, separated three years ago. He stayed at the Abbey, the Lindsey family estate for over 400 years, and Evelyn went to London. If you read the dedication, the reader gets a clue to why that is. Nathan and Evelyn lost their son and their marriage, already on shaky ground due to Evelyn’s youthfulness and Nathan’s desire that his pre marriage life not change, fell apart. Nathan turned the Abbey into a house of ill repute full of gaming and whoring. Evelyn became the Lady of the Bedchamber to Princess Mary and has lived a fairly virtuous life during the three year separation.
It is brought to Nathan’s attention that his wife …
CL Wilson, author of the NY Times bestselling high fantasy romance series, Tairen Soul, writes about winged shape shifting cats. Her latest book, King of Sword and Sky, is due out September 30. According to a news report, a winged cat has been found in China. Apparently, the wings developed as a defense mechanism because the cat was so desirable to the opposite sex (also a true feature of Tairen Souls):
One cat owner, identified only as Feng, claimed her pet’s wings were the result of stress from too many females desiring to mate with him, the Mail reported.
I hope the Tairen Souls come and claim their poor lost offspring. After all the whole series is about the fact that the winged cat like creatures are dying off. (BTW, I like this series).
We have asked loonigrrl, who did the fabulous hosting of our inaugural “If You Like” series, to come and guest review for the blog. We hope you enjoy her contributions.
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Dear Ms. Kennedy:
 I was very pleasantly surprised by Enchanting the Lady, the first book in the Relics of Merlin series. I found the characters engaging and the story charming. I’m always a little nervous when picking up the second book by an author that is either new to me or newly published. Would I like it as much as the first? Or would it disappoint and leave me questioning whether I should continue to read the author in the future? Unfortunately, Double Enchantment is one of those books that falls into the latter category.
The book is set in 1848 England “where magic has never died.” Our heroine, Lady Jasmina, is a proper young lady. Raised by two very haughty parents, Lady Jasmina has lived her life trying to meet her parent’s high expectations and to uphold her family’s good name. Since she was ten years old, she’s been running the household for her aristocratic parents. Jasmina …
Update per commenter:
Black Lace is still going strong . . . the Black Lace site is being revamped now. Virgin’s erotica imprints are now owned by Random House, which might have something to do with the sites not being online at the moment.
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Superlibrarian Wendy noticed that the Black Lace website has been “Temporarily Unavailable” for over a week now. The Cheek site isn’t even a valid url anymore. Virgin has been making several changes lately including ending its Virgin Comics line that was established in 2006 and ceasing to accept new submissions for its Virgin Cheek Line.
I noticed that all of the releases for 2008 by Virgin Black Lace have been special anniversary editions to celebrate 15 years of publishing. I don’t know whether these books were reprints or whether they were new publications.
Dear Ms. Thomas:
 Your books remind me acutely how much of the relationship between reader and book depends on some chemical, perhaps even alchemical, reaction, indescribable yet potent in its effect. They also remind me of how possible it is, even now, for a compelling storyteller to make stock characters and situations come to life. Which is what I found to be the case in Passion and Pleasure in London, a book that once again blends romance and intrigue in a satisfying, albeit not thoroughly original way.
Winter Ashburn is a thief, a petty thief for the most part, but a thief nonetheless. She is also a lady by birth, granddaughter of a duke, her father long dead following a horrific accident, her mother suffering from some form of dementia, and her younger brother fully in her care. Winter’s uncle, Baron Richly, has given her a small cottage, leaving her to her own independence in the wake of an incident eight years ago that set in motion both her father’s death and Winter’s larcenous behavior. An in-between existence is what Winter leads, not destitute but hardly flush, not disrespectable but still …
 Leah Hultenschmidt*, an editor with Dorchester, has been listening to readers concerns about the poor state of publisher websites. In response, she’s started a blog/site of her own to feature Dorchester books she is editing or has edited in the past and books she’s bought and that are slated for publication in the future. She said she would also share, via the blog, as much insider information that she could without getting in trouble.
So if you are an aspiring writer, you might want to check out her thoughts on editing and if you are a reader, like me, you can check out the blog to see what’s new, what’s coming and what the heck goes on inside a publishing house.
*Leah edits Eve Kenin, which was, I think, how I came to know her.
Dear Ms. Godberson,
 I admit I passed on the first book in this series, The Luxe, when it came out earlier this year. The tagline of Gossip Girl does the Gilded Age turned me off. Young adult novels featuring catty, backstabbing characters do nothing for me. And while the Gossip Girl TV series is watchable, I find the novels they’re based on unreadable. But then I read a few reviews that piqued my interest so when I got the chance to review Rumors, the second book in the series, I jumped on it. I’m glad I did.
Although I haven’t read The Luxe, I didn’t find that a problem. I think you do an excellent job including enough details to clue in new readers without resorting to mindnumbing infodumps. At the same time, I think you left out enough details that I feel I can go back and read The Luxe without finding it boring or repetitive because I already have an idea of what happens.
Set in Manhatten at the end of the 19th century, The Luxe series follows multiple younger members of the upper society elite. When Rumors opens, it’s mid-December 1899 and society is …
Kassia Krozser of Booksquare examines Terry Goodkind’s ebook deal with Rosetta Books. Goodkind owned his ebook rights and instead of going e with Tor, his print publisher and one that doesn’t have an ebook presence, Goodkind went to Rosetta Books because Rosetta offered better terms. Obviously Goodkind is in a better position than many authors to negotiate his rights separately but wouldn’t it make sense to sell your ebook rights to say, Samhain, and get 35% of the e royalties?
What was even more interesting, though, is that Krozser showed how dangerous it is for authors who do not have an ebook version of their books. The refusal of an author to be in eformat doesn’t stop the eformats from being readily available.
Dear Ms. Kring,
 Jane often sends me packages of arcs and free books we receive at Dear Author. I think sometimes it’s just to get them out of her house as I’m sure she’s swimming in them. Many times I’ll read the back blurb and think, “Oh, no thank you Jane.” But every once in a while, Jane will send me a book that I might never have tried on my own but which proves to be one I’m glad I got a chance to read. “Carry Me Home” is such a book.
On the surface, it seems straightforward enough. A young man narrates his life in rural Wisconsin in the years before, during and after WWII. And as such, it’s a book that romance readers might not be interested in, though there are secondary romances for two of the characters. It wasn’t until I began reading that I discovered that Earl Hedwig Gunderman, Earwig for short, is a “sixteen -year-old, dumb-as-a-stump brother” who’s going to tell us about his life, his brother, his family and the small town he lives in. Though his eyes, we see how the war is going to …
 more animals
Do you remember the movie “Election,” with Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick? In the first scene Mr. McAllister asks his high school class about the difference between ethics and morals. Ironically, of course, the one student who eagerly attempts to answer the question is also the one who proceeds to make mincemeat of both ethics and morals during the course of the movie, her ambition a veritable engine for her imagination and willingness to do almost anything to secure her class presidency. Tracy Flick sees the future open before her, dependent on winning that race, completely indignant when someone dares run against her, amazingly unself-conscious about the levels to which she’ll â€stoop to conquer.’
In fact, Tracy continues to see herself as a good person, earnestly praying before bedtime for her “Dear Lord Jesus” to “go that one last mile and make sure to put me in office where I belong so that I may carry out your will on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.” In this Tracy exemplifies the difference between morals and ethics: morals relate to one’s personal value system, while ethics relate …
Get the Amazon Rewards Visa Card and Get $100 Off Kindle
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Dionne Galace restarted the serial novel, for me at least, with the series on her blog. Lilith Saintcrow, an author with Orbit who pens the Dante Valentine Series and the new Jill Kismet Series, is launching her own free serial novel: Selene.
From the press release:
Set in the world of the Dante Valentine series, Selene expands on the Saint City adventures of Selene and Nikolai. New chapters will be posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
The serial will be available on Lilith’s site at http://www.lilithsaintcrow.com/selene/ You can subscribe to the rss feed here: http://www.lilithsaintcrow.com/selene/feed/
Amazon continues its inexorable march to buy everything on the internet related to books. According to the Seattle Post Intelligencer, Amazon, an early investor in Shelfari, is now buying the book lover site outright. This might signal some kind of merging between Shelfari and LibraryThing.com as Amazon will soon own a stake in both. AbeBooks is a 40% shareholder in LibraryThing and Amazon is acquiring, or has acquired AbeBooks. One of the benefits to Amazon owning these social networking sites for book lovers is that all of the buy links for books will go directly to Amazon, whether it be new or its used market.
Dear Ms. Laurens:
 I’ve taking to reading a Laurens book every other release because I find that a year is a good buffer between books. There’s a certain, well, similarity between your novels and while your writing is quite good, sometime the stories seem to be copies (and not in the plagiaristic sense, but in the sense that the characters often seem interchangeable from book to book). The last Bastien Club novel I read was last year’s release, Beyond Seduction.
Christian Allardyce had left for on a mission and Lady Letitia Randall nee Vaux had promised to wait for him. But she hadn’t waited. Instead she married another man in a purported love match. Christian has always felt betrayed. The true and somewhat unhappy circumstances of Letitia’s marriage become apparent to the reader, although not to Christian when Letitia seeks help for her brother who is accused of murdering her husband. Christian agrees to help because the embers of his love have only been banked, not totally snuffed out.
I had some issues with the construct of the story and the actions of …
An enterprising author offers up his book for auction on eBay. The auction, entitled “Offering the Rights to My Book” starts with a bid of $5,000.00 and free shipping.
The book has apparently already been sold to a publisher and is set to be published this coming month (September), but the rights (unclear what exactly those rights are) are for sale. According to the auction, there will be no loss of investment because “50,000 MINIMUM COPIES ARE SOLD ON ON AN AVERAGE OF ANY PUBLISHED BOOKS. IT’S MORE THAN ENOUGH TO COVER YOUR MONEY AND NOT TO MENTION YOUR PROFIT!”
Plus, by buying the rights, you’ll be engaging a “great humanitarian help” to the author’s family. “I CAN’T EFFORT TO PAY MY BILLS ANYMORE. I HAVE FIXED THE PRICE BASED ON THE AMOUNT TO COVER MY UNPAID BILLS, MORTGAGE (MY HOME WILL BE FORECLOSED ANYTIME) AND ENOUGH TO SURVIVE TILL END OCTOBER 2008. ”
The Synopsis is included:
What does a married man do when he is obsessed and seduced by another woman? This obsession and seduction cost the man’s normal life, his business and
…
Dear Ms. Meyer,
 While I didn’t think it was perfect, I did enjoy your first young adult novel, Twilight. So when my fellow blogger Jia was unable to get too far into The Host, a genre-bending speculative romantic thriller and your first book for adults, I agreed to give it a try. The premise of The Host, that of an “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” type story but told from the viewpoint of a body snatching alien, sounded interesting and different to me.
I must admit at the outset of this review that I almost never read books this long (600+ pages), because they can seem more like monumental tasks than like invitations for enjoyment. It took me around 120 pages to get caught up in The Host, and for those 120 I feared that a monumental task was what the book would turn out to be. Happily, The Host eventually revved up, and I enjoyed it more than I expected I would in the beginning.
The Host opens with a scene in which an alien known as Wanderer is inserted into the body of her host, a human woman named Melanie. …
 I mentioned last week that one of the devices at RWA that was being flaunted about by a certain blogger about whom I have already mentioned being jealous (she is smart, funny, has a book deal, and I swear knows everyone) and a certain ebook publisher of whom I am also jealous (she owns an eBookwise, a Kindle, a Sony Reader, an iPhone, and has spent the last three weeks in New Zealand and Australia), is the mini PC. SB Sarah and Angela James both brought their Asus EEE PC’s to the conference. These mini PCs are becoming popular because of their size (small) and price (cheap, relatively speaking). Because of their size and price, a mini PC is an option for the ebook reader.
Now, I know you are saying you don’t want to read on a laptop or any device with a LCD screen. I suggest that you take a hard look at the eink devices I profiled last week. If you want something that is more multi function, like the iPhone, but want something with a bit bigger of a screen, I …
Dear Ms. Lovering,
 What interested me in “Slightly Foxed?” The blurb.
They say you’ll know when you’re in love. What if you don’t?
Alys, a single parent and certified romantic disaster area, is always falling for unattainable men—the latest one being the dead author of a “borrowed” book of poetry. When she reluctantly returns the book to its rightful owner, she meets Leo. He’s very much alive, very much attracted to her and, well, it’s love at first sight.
Isn’t it?
After all, she’s a single mum with a boring job in a bookshop and, as her daughter puts it, gravity’s not going to hold off forever. Leo’s got the financial stability she’s been craving and he looks like an aftershave advert. So it must be love.
Mustn’t it?
Then there’s Piers, whose spontaneity draws her like a magnet. But is it love she feels, or just his infectious love of life? Before she can choose, an unexpected source threatens to lay bare the lie she has been living for the last sixteen years.
With happiness close to slipping out of her grasp, Alys is forced to ask herself whether she’s ever really been in love at all.
The …
Welcome to First Page Saturday. Individual authors anonymously send a first page read and critiqued by the Dear Author community of authors, readers and industry others. Anyone is welcome to comment. You may comment anonymously.
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Men do not go into heat. When faced with a line of willing women, frustrated refusal was not the correct reaction. Who the hell cares if they are the right woman? Men fuck the willing. The right woman is the one in his bed.
Alexander Francis Jozef VIII, King of Dracovia, Guardian of Kersonov, moved through the dark room in barefoot silence to the expanse of windows across from his mammoth bed. Harsh lines bracketed firm lips as he swung them open to breathe the night. Far past midnight but a long way from dawn, it was the predator’s hour and he wanted nothing more than to hunt. Hunt the witch screwing with his libido. Doing it bare assed wasn’t a problem but would probably upset the locals.
Until recently, being the crown prince of these two small kingdoms that no longer existed after the maps changed in World War I meant nothing to him or the world. His family had no illusions of regaining a …
Gawker noticed a legitimate ad on Craigslist seeking 14 people to forge the autographs of a two person bestselling writing team.
Requirements: You must be able to demonstrate your ability to precisely copy the authors’ signatures.
I’m sure that there are few people in prison who could help you out on that and you’d only have to pay them $0.40 per day. I can’t decide if the authors are that horribly lazy. Whether the publisher is opening itself up to legal ramifications from paying people to learn to forge other’s signatures. Or whether the authors hate their readers so much that they can’t bear to be within a table’s width of them. Or whether that many people really, really want a signed book that in order to save the authors’ from repetitive stress injury, these ghost signers are necessary.
Via the Guardian.
Dear Ms. Bunkley:
 I was really intrigued by how this story began. The heroine, Riana, and hero, Andre, met in an Small Business Administration class in Houston. Riana planned to return to San Antonio and didn’t want to continue a long distance relationship. Andre took her denials to be that she didn’t want to be with someone who was as poor as he was and that he couldn’t provide for her in the “way she deserved.”
Fast forward four years and Andre is an up and coming architect/builder and Riana owns her own up and coming head hunter firm. Riana is contracted to find an architect for a major developer who has a contract to build a concept federal prison for women and juveniles. Riana presents several candidates to the developer the developer picks Andre. Riana has to deliver Andre or lose the biggest contract of her business.
One thing that was frustrating was that the build up of the first few chapters pointed to a different type of conflict than was presented. In fact, there was little conflict until the last third of the story …
 For anyone who is a long time reader of Dear Author, you’ll know that Julie Kenner is one of Jayne’s favorite authors. Ironically, Kenner’s books are ones that we rarely receive review copies of. Many of the Kenner books that Jayne has reviewed she has purchased herself. What’s even more amazing is Jayne is off paranormals but one of her favorite series is Kenner’s Demon Hunting Soccer Mom series. Kenner must have some magic in her pen. Her latest release, Deja Demon, is Book 4 in the Demon Hunting series and on shelves right now.
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My first sale came in June of 1999, and although I kinda-sorta-maybe-please-please-please knew that it was coming, it was still a shout from the rooftops, dance around naked kind of experience. (Except for the naked part, since I was at work, and attorneys tend to frown on that; and the rooftop part since there was no public rooftop access in my office building. But you get the idea.)
It all started in a small mountaintop village … oh, wait. That’s not me. It …
Dear Ms Hughes,
 It won’t take people long to realize that this book is something different. It’s not just that it isn’t a Regency or that it’s not about vampires and that it doesn’t have any Navy SEALS littering the narrative. It’s a Georgian English historical, and I don’t think there can be too many of those, that features an experienced heroine, and IMO, a hero who might not be as quite strong as she. Yes, what I said. Something different.
I can understand Ivo’s initial anger at George. Six years ago he challenged a man to a duel for her honor and he’s been made to pay for what he did, even if she never asked it of him. Now he wants some kind of payback and he’s pissed that his efforts to keep her name unsullied are, in his viewpoint, being thrown away by her as she saunters around prizefights and takes lovers. How dare she! Mrs. Georgianna Exley, on the other hand, is totally unaware of his feelings and astounded when he reveals them to her. Shows how the same event can be seen in totally different ways.
When …
Dear Ms. Cullen:
 This book opens really well. The heroine, Kate McAuley, finds a man at her door, begging to come in. We soon find out it is her ex-lover, Lucas Barone, who disappeared 18 months* ago. He just walked out the door one day and never came back. However, he’s beaten, bleeding and passing out on her doorstep. As much as he broke her heart, she can’t turn him away. Luke, a covert op, has very powerful enemies though and he brings them straight to Kate’s door. Kate and Luke end up on the road, trying to avoid Luke’s enemies, stay alive and solve the mystery of why Luke and Kate must die. There seems to be no place that Luke and Kate can hid from their high powered enemy.
The setup – that Kate and Luke must be in close contact with each other requiring Kate to trust Luke poses an interesting dilemma.
I don’t want to give too much away, but the journey of Kate and Luke finding a haven is pretty interesting. The enemy is powerful enough to …
A small print publisher is putting out a pro Obama book called, Obama’s Challenge by Robert Kuttner. It’s initial print run is available only via Amazon. This exclusivity angered other booksellers including Barnes and Noble who had originally ordered 10,000 copies and now will sell the book via special order and on its website with no retail copies immediately available. B&N said that the exclusive sales arrangement was “unprecedented.” Other independent bookstores are cancelling their orders. Via Shelfawareness.
Amazon is attempting to lure new readers (and perhaps existing ebook readers) to the Kindle by offering exclusive fiction. Samhain Publishing has had three free book giveaways for the Kindle only. There was another Kindle exclusive announced a few weeks back (the name of the book I cannot remember). Now, the first novel of Terry Goodkind, Wizard’s First Rule, is being released as an ebook for the Kindle only.
Via PublishersMarketplace.
Jessica Faust, agent, put together a short little publishing dictionary with definitions for everything from “advance” and “auction” to “slush pile” and “world rights”. It’s a great little list to provide some insight to those who aren’t on the inside.
Dear Mr. Bohjalian:
 When I first got a copy of this and read the dust jacket, I thought “A story of the end of WWII. A book about a family’s flight through the horror that was the collapse of the thousand year Reich. I bet that’ll be uplifting.” And though I didn’t immediately put this in my “why did Jane send me this because I’m never gonna read it” pile of books, it lingered on the “I’ll get to it sometime. Maybe.” stack until something made me pull it out. Why? I really don’t know but once I got started, the pages flew.
I did worry that I would lose track of the various protagonists and characters. Because let’s face it, there are a lot. The Emmerich family – those five who start the journey and the brother fighting on the eastern front, the Scottish POW who got placed on their Prussian sugar beet farm as a laborer, the Jew who decided he wasn’t going to stay on the train to Auschwitz and who’s spent the past two years shifting like a chameleon based on which soldier’s papers he can find, the work …
Dear Editor:
I read today on your author, Victoria Laurie’s, website that you have been in discussions with her about a voice mail message that you have received from a blogger called NovelReads about a statement Ms. Laurie made on her website. I felt that Ms. Laurie’s accusations of this reader being a “psycho” and a “cyber stalker” should not go unchallenged. The timeline of events occurs as follows:
1. In July Ms. Laurie takes exception to a review left at Amazon by a reviewer with the handle Butterscotch.
2. In July Ms. Laurie blogs about this reviewer and says these things in a blog post has since been deleted by can be read here via Google Cache). The blog post, in case you do not care to read it, includes the following comments:
And you should never pick a fight with an author….well….because, honey, we know how to get even. ;)
and
And so, come September…my little “fan” and some of her close friends and family will likely read about a character with a very similar name, (i.e. nearly identical but not enough to get me sued) depicted in one of the most comical and fabulously
…
Dear Ms. Salvatore,
 I don’t think it’s unfair to say there are a lot of vampire books out there. Sometimes I feel like they should get their own category separate from paranormal books in general. But even so, I think your debut injected some light humor into a subgenre dominated by brooding, testosterone-laden men and butt-kicking, leather-clad women.
Gia Felice is a top publicist for a science fiction and fantasy publishing house. What sets this house apart, however, is that their authors embody the old saying, “Write what you know.” Aliens write alien books. Werewolves write werewolf books. And, of course, vampires write vampire books.
It’s the last group that’s the source of her troubles. Gia’s top client is a bestselling vampire author named Belladonna Nightshade whose long-running series about a vampire family has collected a legion of loyal, devoted fans. Gee, I wonder which real life author served as the inspiration for this character? Against Gia’s better judgment and the advice of her best friend (and werewolf client) Lola, she’s fallen in love with Bella’s manager, Johnny.
Gia’s life is further complicated by Bella. Bella wants …
Dear Ms. Laurie:
I understand that you have had a lawyer send out a cease and desist and takedown letter to a romance blogger based on two things. First, you argue that the comments that the blogger excerpted from your own website (which you subsequently deleted but Google preserved for all time) are somehow unacceptable infringement.
In this posting you excerpt from a website that is copyright protected, thus violating federal copyright law. There is and has been an existing disclaimer on Ms. Laurie’s website, (www.victorialaurie.com), which states that; “No part of this website may be directly copied or duplicated and all of the content herein is copyright protected.” These quotes you have posted to your blog should be immediately removed or Ms. Laurie will be forced to take appropriate action.
I’m sure your lawyer explained to you the concept of “fair use” and you simply choose to ignore such advice and told the lawyer to go ahead and make the accusation of infringement. Fair use, as your lawyer must know since she references federal copyright law, allows for copyrighted content to be used without permission according to Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright …
Dear Ms. Smith:
 This was an interesting departure from the historical paranormals you’ve written and I think the setting and characters are a good fit for you. The voice sounds very natural. Before I Wake is more of an urban fantasy with a dash of romance than a true romance. It features Dawn Riley, a Nightmare. She is able traverse between the corporeal world and the dream world. She is an anomaly, one that both frightens and attracts those that inhabit the Dreaming.
Dawn can affect the dreams of others and did so once with terrible consequences. Since then she has hidden from her talents and rejected her Dreaming abilities. She doesn’t totally get away from dreams, though and is currently neuropsychologist studying under a top researcher in the field of sleep research.
One of Dawn’s clients, Noah, is an artist. She finds him attractive, but the client/patient relationship prevents any type of consummation of her feelings. Noah and Dawn flirt, though, and when his dreams and her dreams begin to overlap, the client/patient relationship walls fall down.
Dawn is being stalked in her dreams, as is Noah …
Dear Ms. Moore,
 Having enjoyed one of your medieval Harlequin books a few years ago, I decided to take a chance on this late Regency era story when I read the blurb and discovered the heroine is French. I’m still looking for books featuring French heroes but at least this one wouldn’t have a simpering English miss.
Juliette Bergerine is no shrinking violet. She’s made her own way to a foreign, and until recently, enemy country in search of her last living relative. She’s found a job, is supporting herself, even if she has to live almost in the slums, and is practical enough to think about ignoring the single man being menaced by four thugs until she hears him call out in French. That she can’t ignore. After all, one must stick up for a fellow countryman while in London. And so, practical again, she uses what she has, which is her week’s supply of food to pelt them from her window.
I’d be miffed too if I’d risked my life and used up all my potatoes to try to help a man who turns out 1) not to be French 2) be miserly with …
more cat pictures
Last week we saw yet another author/reviewer contretemps in which an author, upset over a review, engages the reviewer in a comically bad mannered way. When we’ve witnessed this in the past, it almost always seems to be over a C review. An average review. A review that says this book is competent but it’s not for me. Often these reviews articulate carefully exactly the reason a book does not work for the reader.
After some head scratching, I’ve come to the conclusion that a C grade means a failure to many authors. I remember that Jamie Sobrato once wrote that she would rather evoke some strong reaction than a lukewarm reaction, even if the strong reaction was not positive. It might be stating the obvious since I am referencing a post written over two years ago, but Sobrato’s comments really stuck with me. I’ve never really understood it. I might be conflating lukewarm with average, but I don’t think so. Maybe the C review signals to an author that she’s failed to move the reader emotionally and thus is a failure overall.
While …
Dear Ms. James:
 It is tempting to compare Duchess By Night with those Shakespearean cross-dressing comedies, and indeed, there are some superficial similarities among the novel, Twelfth Night, and As You Like It. But it is not fair to push the comparison too far, because Duchess By Night is a different type of romantic tale. However, I’m not sure, in the end, what the novel is really supposed to be, which made it a disappointing read for me.
Harriet, the young, widowed Duchess of Berrow, is tired of feeling insignificant. Despite the active role she plays at the local court, presiding when the judge is too deep in his cups to do anything but mutter sentences of hard labor for the pettiest offenses, Harriet feels mostly invisible. Her husband committed suicide out of despair over a loss at chess, her nephew will one day grow old enough to take over the duchy’s responsibilities, and she has just shown up at Jemma, Duchess of Beaumont’s extravagant costume party dressed as a dowdy Mother Goose. So when her friend Isidore, a duchess who cannot remember meeting the man to whom she is married, decides that she needs …
This is a new series called “If You Like” which will be hosted by various readers, authors and bloggers of Dear Author. The purpose of the post and the comments is to explore what we like about a particular iconic author and what other authors have books like the iconic author. If you would like to host an “If You Like” post, please email Jane at dearauthor.com.
Please be aware that the post below may contain some spoilers.
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Laura Kinsale
 My first experience of Laura Kinsale was the riveting Seize the Fire. The story of the cynical, out-for-himself Sheridan Drake and the idealistic dreamer Princess Olympia of Oriens was so gut-wrenching that I was afraid to finish it. It was clear that Olympia’s idealism and Sheridan’s cynicism were on a collision course, and that things would get worse for them before they got better.
Yet, though I dreaded what might happen to Sheridan and Olympia with the turn of each page, I also could not put the book down. The ultimate shattering of Olympia’s innocence was painful — but it was one of the most powerful things I have read in any book, in any …
Blogger M has launched a blog plea for help. She wants to be married and not because she can’t handle a drill or open her own doors or that she is afraid of being independent. It sounds like she wants someone to share her life with her. Isn’t the what romances are about? The best ones, in my opinion, are two adults who want to share their life with someone else, not because their lives are empty without another.
Her description of what she wants (and isn’t that hard to articulate) is really wonderful:
I no longer want someone just to be there; I want someone to lead when I start to forget where I’m going and to make me laugh when I’m taking life too seriously. I want someone who isn’t afraid to tell the truth, even if it makes me cry. I want someone who can admit when he’s wrong so that he and we will always be able to grow. I want someone to sit in the dark with- no words necessary. I want someone who isn’t afraid to drop everything and go anywhere. I want someone who will not settle for mediocre, for almost, for halfway. I
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Got a book you want to talk about? Frustrated with a book or series? In love with a new one? Found a buried treasure? An issue that keeps popping up in the books you are reading? Just want to chat about stuff in general? Post away.
 When I was at RWA, I had the opportunity to see the Kindle and the new Sony Reader with booklight and the Asus EEE PC. These are all viable ebook readers that you can purchase today, along with my personal favorite, the iTouch/iPhone.
Neither the Kindle nor the Reader is a perfect device and frankly, I don’t know if there is a perfect device in the near future. The perfect device has the instantaneous purchase ability of the Kindle with the versality and look of the Reader. The keyboard of the Kindle is quite nice as is the ability to highlight and annotate. The Reader’s lightwedge style booklight accessory provided two levels of brightness for the light flooding the surface of the screen. It’s a perfect look and fit that the Kindle doesn’t have.
Last week, though, I said that if you were interested in eBook readers you should wait until October. The reason for this is that there are fairly credible rumors that Amazon is going to release an updated Kindle. I find the report a bit odd given that the Kindle was released in mid November of 2007. …
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