Archive for September, 2008
From the email: Fictionwise has always been proud to be the only eBook retailer to actively promote and support independent eBook Publishers. This week, we are featuring all Independent Publishers by offering big savings on nearly 20,000 MultiFormat eBooks! For a limited time, all MultiFormat eBooks are 25% off through October 5th. see below: http://www.fictionwise.com/Z133282T951/ebooks/multiformat.htmThe multi-format books do not have DRM and include books from Belgrave House, Samhain Publishing, and Amber Quill Press. Go forth and buy. Support your indie publisher.
Dear Ms. Abbot,
 This is an interesting mixture of contemporary and historical romance. Though I still have a hard time with the idea that stories set before the turn of the 21st century are considered “historical.” I also see this is where Harlequin’s “Everlasting Love” line has ended up.
“Because happily ever after is just the beginning.”
That certainly applies to Sam and Izzy and you drop us right into a crisis which will test their HEA. Izzy fondly imagines that Sam has always been faithful to her despite the ups and downs and separations of their married life. She’s rudely jerked out of her idyllic belief when a young man claiming to be Sam’s illegitimate son arrives on her doorstep. “WTF?” she thinks. Okay, maybe Izzy wouldn’t use that term but she’s definitely floored by what’s going on here. And she’s got some pointed questions to ask Sam when he gets home from their daughter’s house.
Except Sam stonewalls the discussion and announces he needs time to think. Yeah and he’s going to do that at a friend’s cabin in another state. I’m thinking Sam’s an asshole here. But then I’ve not …
more animals
Anne Mallory’s latest release, The Bride Price, involves the question of what is a true gentleman. The hero is a bastard and not considered a “gentleman” by society standards. The heroine’s sister at heart, Sarah, is a shy, retiring wall flower. Sarah’s father wants her to marry well and sets up a tournament for men in society to compete for her hand:
“…The King sees the whole competition as an incentive to make sure one of his godchildren is married well.”
She took a deep breath before continuing. “I saw him a few days past. He has signed a document promising the winner a viscountcy After the competition ends, he’ll have the letters-patent drawn up and—” She waved a hand in a fatalistic manner. “I tried to beg him to revoke his blessings, but you know how I freeze up so terribly. He just patted me on the head and said the games were designed to weed out the unworthy. Only a true gentleman could win.”
“A true gentleman.”
“Yes.” Sarah tugged at the bow on her dress, mangling it further.
A man who was good at shooting, boxing, gaming, and wenching could
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From the press release:
“Mercy Thompson: Homecoming” is a four-issue mini-series with issue #1 hitting comic book shelves in November 2008. The series will be collected in hardcover and distributed by Del Rey in 2009.
Dabel Brothers Publishing is excited to premiere the first eleven pages (DOWNLOAD HERE) of the much-anticipated Dabel Brothers project, “Mercy Thompson: Homecoming”. Artist Francis Tsai beautifully illustrates all the covers and interior pages to this series, with author Patricia Briggs herself penning the original story. Place your orders today before the first issue ships this November.
From me: looks beautiful and I can’t wait to see the full version.
Via Fantasy Book Critic.
Dear Ms. Anna,
 While I’ve heard of you before, this is the first story of yours I’ve read. I know some of my fellow Dear Author reviewers don’t care for shorter fiction. The compressed length doesn’t allow for as much development as you’d find in a full-length novel and as a result, something (plot, characterization, worldbuilding) has to give. But I find that I like short stories because they give me a sample of an untried author’s work and help me decide if I want to look up more of their work. In this way, I really enjoy the Silhouette Nocturne Bites program.
Werewolf Mahina Garner is also the tough captain of the Necropolis Police Department. Fiercely independent and self-reliant, at 37, she has yet to take a mate, something that irks her pack alpha and her father. During a drug bust, Mahina is nearly killed by a gunshot. The only reason why she didn’t die was because she was saved by Ren Calder, a police detective she’s worked with in the past, who pushed her out of the way and was scratched by the bullet himself.
A werewolf like Mahina, Ren has been attracted …
 Loading ... I have a not very well thought out irk that I wanted to throw out there. One issue I have with futuristics, particularly ones that depict the end of our current civilization due to various reasons whether it be war, natural resource depletion (which would likely lead to war), population overcrowding (probably linked to natural resource depletion), disease, etc., is the governmental formation of these future worlds.
If they are post Earth, what is the likelihood that these governments would be democractic in any way? Wouldn’t it be more likely that future worlds formed after the demise of “earth” would actually reject the way in which the First World countries ran things (i.e., some form of democracy) due to the belief, rightly or wrongly, that the “old” form of running things led to natural resource waste, failure of population control, and so forth?
I guess this should be some form of poll question, but it seems to me that the way in which the government/ruling class of futuristic, or even paranormal or high fantasy, should be addressed in regards to why/how it is different. Lois McMaster Bujold once called the SFF genre as being a political fantasy. Is …
 Welcome to our 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. This week, we are featuring Julia Quinn whose latest release, Mr. Cavendish, I Presume, is on sale September 30, 2008. Mr. Cavendish, I Presume and the earlier release, The Lost Duke of Wyndham, form the duology of The Two Dukes of Wyndham. In a creative writing feat, the two books have overlapping scenes and plot lines. Stephanie and Mary of A Place for Originals put this marvelous homage to Julia Quinn’s books together for us to read, appreciate, and use as a reference point in the future.
If you would like to host an “If You Like” post, please email me at Jane at dearauthor.com
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If You Like Julia Quinn…
 Once, in the far away land of Austin, Texas, there were two young romance readers. And by young, we’re talking before high …
I saw this interesting promotion on Book Binge this morning. Linda Wisdom, author of 50 Ways to Hex Your Lover, and the October 1 release, Hex Appeal, and her publisher Sourcebooks, Inc. is offering a prize package for the best fan fiction entry surrounding Wisdom's books. You can go to Book Binge for the details of the contest. I am thrilled that there are authors that are embracing fan fiction but I worry about whether this is embracing it too closely. Unless the fans are required to sign some kind of waiver when entering the contest, what is to prevent one of them from pursuing a copyright claim if Wisdom's subsequent books have any plot points that remotely relate to the fan ficcers' work? I don't want to detour authors and publishers from encouraging fan fiction but neither do I want such a fun publicity attempt to end badly either.
In no particular order, the following is a list that I would like to see all epublishers/etailers implement.
- Eternal Bookshelf. An eternal bookshelf means that every purchase you have bought can be downloaded at any time. Most of the larger etailers have this feature but not all.
- Mass Downloads. Along with the eternal bookshelf should be the ability to re-download all of your books. This is necessary in the case of a computer crash or some other computer related malfuction. Â Fictionwise is the only etailer/epublisher I know of that offers this.
- Buy a book for a friend. The only site that offers this feature is Fictionwise. Amazon does not even offer this for Kindle which makes no sense. When a reader wants to buy a book for a friend, she wants to buy a specific book. She doesn’t want to send a generic gift certificate and hope her friend uses it for said book. I was quite shocked when I went to buy Kristan Higgins’ Just One of the Guys for a couple of friends of mine who had a Kindle and found that there was no option to
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Loading ... I’ve disabled the ability to edit the comments because it was taking the individual pages alot of time to load. Would you rather endure a slower loading page so long as you can have the ability to edit your comments?
Dear Ms. Knight:
 I admit to rolling my eyes a bit over the beginning book because I kept thinking of the movie 300. The prologue is the set up for the entire series. 7 books involving 7 Spartan warriors who stood at the gap at Thermopylae to stave off the demonic forces overtaking Sparta. There 300 Spartan soldiers stood with their king, Leonidas, and fought until one by one, all had died. When 6 of the best soldiers and King Leonidas arrived in the afterlife and stood in front of the River Styx, they were confronted with the god of war, Ares, and offered a bargain. Immortality and the chance to be warriors fighting and defeating the demon hoard that killed them or move on to Elysium and the afterlife. The seven took up the banner of being mankind’s protectorate.
This first story, Red Fire, is about Ajax Petrakos, a captain in King Leonidas’ army. Ajax is a man who is at the end of his tether. He is weary of battle and sore at heart. He regrets his immortality at times and has separated himself from the seven. The problem is that Jax …
I saw the ticker on CNN this morning that Paul Newman passed away at the age of 83.
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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She turned around, saw him, and her world suddenly went still.
Iain was back!
Her heart began beating in triple time as she moved toward him through the crowd of six-year-olds. She met him in the middle of the room, supremely conscious of many things, not the least of which was the eighteen pairs of young eyes that surrounded them.
The chatter and play of the children melted away, and for just a moment, nothing existed except the two of them.
“I didn’t know you were back!” she heard herself say.
“I just got back today,” he replied with the same wonderful smile that had made her heart skip beats since the first time she saw it, so long ago.
She nodded and willed her heart to return to normal and her voice to remain steady. Now was not the time to go off into dreamland over Iain’s smile. She had eighteen kids waiting for a birthday cake that was still too frozen to cut, and the …
Back in June or so, some bloggers formed a group blog called DIKladiesrule. It’s a fun place that features interviews with authors and alot of book chat about the bloggers’ favorite books. About late June, Dear Author started a feature called “If You Like” based upon the shelftalkers at bookstores. It came to my attention last week that Laurie Gold was unhappy about the use of both phrases because we did not give proper attribution to her site, All About Romance. But, really, I thought nothing of it. It did not seem like a big deal to me.
On Thursday, Laurie put up a post on her personal blog frustrated that she and AAR were not getting the proper attribution for the term DIK. If You Like was left out. Feeling like she hadn’t gotten enough responses, she then posted at the AAR board. She did not gain universal support there either. Not leaving enough alone, she is now asking for a web campaign to drive other bloggers and sites to dun the DIK ladies into . . . something. This is my response, since Laurie …
Dear Ms. Britton,
 I’d heard that Harlequin has a NASCAR themed series but had not ever tried any of them. To be honest, despite living in the heart of NASCAR country, the area where the original drivers had souped up their cars to evade the ATF agents and run their moonshine, I don’t follow the sport. When faced with watching a race, I’d rather scrub my baseboards with a toothbrush. Be that as it may, the sport is closely followed by gazillions, the drivers are fiercely followed and the faithful happily trek out each weekend to cheer them on.
I state the above about my interest in NASCAR to tell potential readers that I’m not going to be able to tell them whether or not you do a good job portraying the racing aspects of the sport or not. It all sounds good when you describe haulers, spotters, race stalls, hot passes and such but since I don’t know jack about it in the first place, you could be selling a load of bull. Or not. So, on to the rest of the book.
Vickie Bradford, lawyer from an uber rich family and wanna be …
 Welcome to the My First Sale series. Each Friday, Dear Author posts the first sale letter of bestselling authors, debut authors, and authors in between. Ann Christopher writes contemporar romances for Kensington and Harlequin. Her most recent book, Tender Secrets, is officially released on October 1 but may be in stores now.
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Dear Jane—
Here’s my first sale story:
On Monday, I wrote “the end” on the manuscript, stamped it, and sent it off to New York. By Thursday, I had to disconnect the phone because of all the calls from desperate editors begging me to sell the book to them. Some even sent roses, which I thought was a nice touch. On Friday I sold the book, at auction, for six figures. By the end of that first year, the book was on the NYT, displacing Nora Roberts. As a Christmas present to myself for all my hard work, I bought a vacation villa in St. Maarten. It’s been smooth sailing ever since.
Just kidding.
Here’s what really happened:
 In July my prospective agent told me the excruciating news that the manuscript for …
Shannon Stacey pointed out a new epublisher launching on April Fool’s Day 2009. As the publisher came to defend herself in the comments, I assume that this is not some elaborate joke.
Given this blurb on the submissions page of Cherry Lane Press, my new metric for choosing epublishers is any publisher whose submission page contains three grammatical/spelling errors or less. Anything less than three is acceptable otherwise, clearly, we are holding epublishers to too high a standard because, as the epublisher says in Stacey’s comments “Please keep in mind though that you can’t judge a book by its cover or a site by its typos.”
Of course not. Why would readers or authors care about a publishing site having “typos”. Is “exceptable” really a typo? Look, if you, as an epublisher, really care about the business, don’t embarass the rest of the epublishers, eauthors, and ebook readers but putting this crap up.
Dear Ms. Kohler:
 I’m going to address a few of my concerns about this book in chronological fashion.
Prologue. Ad 70: The scene is an apocolyptic event. The fortress is on fire; the people are fleeing. A witch is bringing down a powerful curse on the Marshan family. Cristophe, the last of his line, is running from the conflagration that was once his home, his mother urging him to move faster and then . . .
“Sprawled on the hard, frozen earth, Christophe could not stop himself. He had to see. Had to look. Throat tight, he looked over his shoulder, feeling like Lot’s wife turning for a final glimpse of the damned Sodom.”
So then I’m scratching my head, wondering about when the Bible was penned; whether in AD 70 Cristophe would have known about the story of Lot and Sodom since the original old testament was all in Hebrew and wasn’t translated into English until AD 1100s or something like that and whether this was set in what is now known as the Middle East; whether Judeo-Christianity fits into the Lycan mythology; whether this book is going to be …
An account of the infamous Levy bus tour by author Sherry Thomas who penned the fabulous historicals, Private Arrangements and Delicious. We, here, at Dear Author find Sherry’s books to be delicious themselves. You can check out excerpts at the links previously provided or read our reviews here.
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Six months ago I received an e-mail from my editor telling me that Bantam Books, my publisher, would like to send me on the Levy bus tour  and was I interested? (Note, the entire tour list can be seen here with a list of their recent releases. Excluded from the list are Victoria Rowell and Brenda Novak).
Was I interested? Heck, ever since I read Jacquie D’Alessandro’s account of her tour experience, I’d had it on my list of good things that I want to happen to me. I said yes right away.
A Little Background
For readers who are unfamiliar with the distribution end of the publishing business, Levy Home Entertainment is one of the largest book distributors in the U.S. and specializes in supplying books and book-related services to nontraditional outlets such as Target, Kmart, Meijer, …
There have been alot of articles of late about whether publishing needs to re invent itself as an industry (yes, I say) rather than rely on the big book theory of financial success. The big book theory was articulated most recently by Elberse in a Harvard publication (go look at my Sunday article if you want the link now or come back when I edit the post) as publishers focusing on bestsellers to drive the bus. One example of this going very wrong is Scholastic who, without Harry Potter, posted a revenue loss of 46% in the first quarter ending August 31 and a net loss of $44.7 million. Looks like Scholastic needs a bailout. <blockquote> Scholastic continues to keep its focus on cutting costs and has implemented a hiring freeze and voluntary retirement program.</blockquote>
In a decision that will have far reaching effects into the publishing world if upheld, Judge Davis in the RIAA case versus Thomas found that RIAA’s verdict of $222,000, was improperly given. The jury instruction did not properly state the law. The decision (pdf) came down to the meaning of distribution:
Each party asserts that the Court should adopt the plain meaning of the term “distribution;” however, they disagree on what that plain meaning is. Thomas and her supporters argue that the plain meaning of the statute compels the conclusion that merely making a work available to the public does not constitute a distribution. Instead, a distribution only occurs when a defendant actually transfers to the public the possession or ownership of copies or phonorecords of a work. Plaintiffs and their supporters assert that making a work available for distribution is sufficient.
In this case, Thomas made copies of music available for distribution by placing them in a folder on her computer where others on the internet could access them. The court ultimately found that distribution requires some affirmative act of dissemination. The judge carefully considers every possible angle including comparable criminal statutes, other language within …
Dear Ms. Wilson:
 I’ll admit to being a little foolish. Ok, maybe more than a little. After finishing Lady of Light and Shadows and closing the book with a contented sigh, I thought to myself: “What could she possibly do next? Where could she go from here? How could this get any better?” What I found out was that the series, with King of Sword and Sky, actually got a lot better. The book begins a little slowly, allowing the reader to ease back into the story. From there, it starts to build, and then it builds some more until your heart is racing, your pulse is pounding and you’re turning the pages as fast as you can. It was, in a word, fantastic.
The book opens with Rain and Ellie traveling to the Fading Lands. Ellie, still grief stricken over the events in the last book, is not ready to leave her remaining family members behind. I was a little concerned now that Ellie’s fey nature had awakened that she would become this entirely confident, self-assured and bold Tairen Soul. I was worried that we would see this complete transformation and the shy, sweet …
Loading ... File this under what I would do if I ran publishing. There are quite a few books that are decent or even good where the epilogues drive me absolutely batty. It’s as if the author isn’t quite sure we readers have been sold on how awesome the happy ever after is going to be. My own awesome idea is that we no longer include epilogues in the books themselves. Instead, the publishers include a note that says the author has written a special epilogue and it is available at the author’s site. This makes readers who are interested, go to the author’s site where they can read about all her other awesome books in addition to reading the epilogue. For those readers who find epilogues generally stomach turning, we don’t have to read them. Additionally, it save the publishers money on printing costs. It’s a win all the way around.
And, no, if the epilogue is in the book, I cannot skip it because I feel like something important must be in there for it to be included in the book. 9.99999999 times out of 10, though, the epilogue is so …
Dear Ms. Butcher:
 Jayne’s review of No Control got me interested in reading your books. Jayne isn’t the biggest fan of romantic suspense so her B- review of your book is a golden recommendation to me. But many of the things that bothered Jayne in her review of No Control bothered me in No Escape and with one scene in the middle of the book, the entire story went down the drain for me.
The basic plot of the story is this: The hero, Grant Kent, a former special forces guy going to work for a private investigative agency/protection agency/security firm, stops by a girl he once knew in foster care. He killed a man for her and he’s never forgotten how in the short amount of time that they were together he grew to care for her. (Killing a guy for a girl kind of imprints that girl on a guy’s mind, I would imagine).
Isabel Carson has recovered from her nightmarish childhood where she shared a foster home for a brief time with Grant Kent. Even though she has not seen him in 14 years, …
I read about the death of David Foster Wallace last week and was struck by the remarks he made at Kenyon College, just a few years before he took his own life.
Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.
This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.
It was then revealed that LM Montgomery also had committed suicide in her 60s. I had forgotten to blog about it, but SuperLibrarian twittered it and it prompted by recollection. There really are no words to describe the horror that you feel when someone you know takes their own life. You just know it was a tragedy.
Dear Mr. Capella,
 Whereas “The Wedding Officer” was a mix of historical and romance, “The Various Flavors of Coffee” is more historical with some romance and that not very satisfying to me. Yes, yes I should be reviewing what’s actually there and not what I wanted to be there but….
Robert Wallis changes as he matures and just as the initial chapter of the book promises us. There was much about him in his youth that I didn’t particularly care for. He drank, he took drugs, he visited prostitutes, he didn’t want to work and frankly was looking for the easy way out. Yet as he says, none of this was illegal then and much was treated as normal for him as a man and as an artiste. Strange that as the restraints of the Victorian Age were cast aside for the bawdiness of the Edwardian Age, Robert becomes more circumspect. The various flavors of coffee can be likened to the various flavors of love. Robert loves three women – three very different women. One used him, one stayed his friend and one became his lifelong love.
The construction of the Wallis-Pinker …
Ginn Hale had issues with her print publisher and promised that if the publisher failed to meet it second publication date, she would put out her short story for free. You can find it here.
Loading ... Google has released a “Book Search” widget wherein anyone with tech knowledge can “emembed a Google-hosted preview of up to 20% of any book that has been included in the Google Book Search database.” Books-A-Million, Blackwell Bookshop, Borders and Powells will offer this Google Preview service. This is similar to the “search inside” feature at Amazon.com.
I’m not really sure I get widgets. Some publishers offer countdown clocks. Others offer “buy” link widgets. I find myself unmoved by widgets. Often they are ugly and take too long to load. What’re your thoughts?
Dear Ms. Holquist:
 I almost didn’t write this review because it was such a struggle for me to pinpoint why I didn’t respond well to it given that I liked The Sexiest Man Alive so much. Ultimately, I think I failed to connect to the hero and heroine in a “it’s not you, it’s me” manner.
Amy Burns is a psychic who went on to Oprah to reveal Oprah’s one true love. Unfortunately, Amy and her psychic voice Maddie have had some communication problems of late and just when Amy needs her (in front a live Oprah audience), Maddie decides to stop talking to Amy altogether. Amy’s goal, notwithstanding her humiliation in front of Oprah, is to find Maddie.
Amy tracks Maddie to a gypsy named Roni to a restaurant in Philly called Les Fleurs. There she finds the hot chef/owner James LaChance but no Roni. Amy expends a huge amount of effort to find Roni which is extraordinary in that Amy’s only other huge expenditure of effort in the past is related to doing nothing, being a ne’er do well.
James LaChance’s claim to fame, other than his …
Loading ... Here’s the blurb:
Mortal Enemy, Immortal Lover, Throne of Judar and The Castaldini Crown author Olivia Gates’s A NOCTURNE BITE, featuring a half-vampire, half-demon hero and a heroine who belongs to a group of super-powered humans pledged to eradicate all inhuman monsters and the explosive encounter when they discover they’ve fallen in love with their hereditary enemy, to Natashya Wilson at Silhouette Nocturne, for publication in December 2008.
So, is the half-vamp, half-demon hero the hereditary enemy of the heroine? Is the heroine a hereditary enemy of the hero? What half of the hero is the hereditary enemy? Or is it both? Or is there a third and this is a Nocturne Bites meets Spice Bites?
 more animals
“There’s an infantilising of women in these programmes – they fall off their high heels or are still obsessed with handbags in their thirties,” agrees Geraghty. “And there’s an acceptance of a completely feminine persona, while many women do not see themselves as pink and fluffy.
“If you go back to the 1930s screwball comedies, the women never stopped talking and they never gave into the men – they had that femininity and glamour but without the infantilisation.”
The likes of Carole Lombard or Bette Davis wouldn’t have stood for the vacillations of Mr Big, it’s true: they’d have socked him in the jaw.
Source: The Scotsman
Readers talk about the likeability of a character but I think that term is misnomer. I think what we are talking about is the favorability rating because you can dislike a heroine or her ethics and still find the character intriguing; still view her character in a favorable light. What happens in our romances far too often is what the article refers to as the “infantilising of women” or the dumbing down of female characters in order to achieve a certain effect.
Too often heroines place themselves …
 I emailed Jane a couple of days ago, wondering if she’d be interested in reviews of BDSM romances (BDSM is a combination acronym of the sexual practices/identities of Bondage/Discipline, Domination/Submission, and Sadist/Masochism and covers under its umbrella many sexual paraphilia and fetishes). While I’m a contributing blogger at Teach Me Tonight and at Romancing the Blog, the reviews I want to do are not appropriate for either forum. I don’t want to analyze these books, I just want to pimp them. I want to show the world how brilliant these books are as romances despite the fact that a large portion of the population might find their subject matter repellent. I want to pimp the books that get BDSM relationships, that understand how they can be just a loving and supportive as vanilla relationships. So while I might be “blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd” when it comes to these books, at least I’m aware of it, right? And I’m still writing a review—showing the bad with the good, trying to be at least slightly impartial (is that like being a little bit pregnant?).
I found …
 Anne Douglas emailed me her Etsy link which I had requested. She's crafting up Sony Reader covers for the women (and perhaps the men) who find the current ones beyond bland. Anne intends to offer Kindle covers as well. The red Sony Reader is out in the wild now too so you can pair a red one up with a new quilted cover.
Note: This is a two for one. Janine read the book as well and her review follows Jayne’s.
Dear Ms. Higgins,
 Jane has done a wonderful review of this book which I will link to so I don’t have to recap the plot. Love it when I can do that ’cause I’m really lazy.
Though I enjoyed it, I think I read it too closely after “Catch of the Day.” So many things were similar – not conventionally pretty “30 some year old” heroine who is (desperately) trying to find Mr. Right right now and who goes through a series of unsuitable men before finding her perfect hero who is right under her nose. A family with long time married parents who are having marital trouble. Siblings who are happy and (usually) married. Small town New England setting. Heroine has a dog. Blue collar workers except for one sibling. Heroine mooning over her nieces and nephews. I felt like I was reading a slightly different version of the same book but would have reacted the same way had I read the books in reverse.
The firefighter, paramedic family Chastity comes from is great. This is a nice change …
Photo by takomabibelot
Kassia Kroszer of Booksquare fame posted on Friday an article addressing the publishing industry’s failure to recognize its own money making potential. Publishing views itself on the decline. Print newspaper book review sections have gone the way of the dinosaur. According to the article in NY Magazine, “serious readers” numbered around 120,000 fifteen years ago and have dropped by half nearly every decade which means that we are a nation of about 45,000 serious readers. Serious readers are defined by those who read every night. (It’s not clear whether “read every night” means reads a book every night or merely “reads” every night).
Kroszer points out that the decline in publishing is really a decline in the literary fiction arm of the publishing industry or the one that interests those at the National Books Critic Circle. This is likely true. Literary fiction is suffering. For example, while Oprah has revived interest in serious fiction, interest is not sustainable. Oprah does not sustain reading in general, but reading of the books that she recommends.
Change is slow for publishing.
Publishing is at a …
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.
Added note: Last week, our comment thread moved quite astray from the original point which is to provide critique on the first page offered here. Any comments about the critiquers do not add value. It is up to the author to decide what commentary is useful and what is not. That said, I do hope that everyone watches the line between blunt honest criticism (which is absolutely welcome) and insulting (which you can be but I think your message gets lost and the purpose of posting is negated, unless the purpose of posting is to be, well, not helpful).
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The Anatta left her alone to watch Bren die. Cyri Naadhira, caretaker of the young Lourvain prince, stood by his bedside, her legs barely keeping her upright. A trembling hand brushed across Bren’s hot cheek, her fingertips smoothing the damp, copper strands. He moaned under her touch, his head moving from side to side. Agony etched deep lines into …
Dear Ms. Higgins,
 This isn’t quite a straight contemporary and yet is not all the way to Chick Lit. I was firmly in Maggie’s corner as she searches for Mr. Right but I gotta say, it’s sad when two priests join your family in trying to find blind dates for you. Yet Maggie stays upbeat during the search. She isn’t too picky, demanding Mr. Rich-and Handsome, nor does she sink to accepting Mr. Merely Breathing. It’s also the second story set in Maine I’ve read in the past month. Is this the new Idaho?
Thank you for not trying to catch the local accent in the writing. One character is portrayed with only the Maine accent but you didn’t pepper the rest of the book with more than an occasional “ayuh” thereby avoiding a major peeve of mine – the Faux Highland Brogue Syndrome.
Yet there’s a lot of local color and habits – “jeezum” and stuff about lobstermen, and the fact that they think 55 degrees is weather for short sleeves and suntanning. Really? And May is the beginning of warm weather – oh burrrr says the Southern Girl in me. …
 Welcome to the My First Sale series. Each Friday, Dear Author posts the first sale letter of bestselling authors, debut authors, and authors in between. Douglas Carlton Abrams writes historical fiction for Atria. His debut book, The Lost Diary of Don Juan, is in stores now.
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I have been writing fiction and actively pursuing the dream of being a novelist since I was eleven, so from that perspective, my first sale was a long time coming.
From a publishing viewpoint, I expected that it would take a while. I actually went to work in publishing because I loved books, and I wanted to understand what it was like from the inside. Perhaps you could say I was a spy for authors in the world of publishing. But as I worked, I saw the incredible obstacles that editors face publishing quiet books in the noisy world of today’s media. I experienced the excruciating pain of writing rejection letters and putting books out of print.
 Later, as a writer, I received rejection letters for some of my non-fiction books (I wrote kinder ones as …
I’m not a big fan of collaborations, but when done right like the Cohn/Levithan book, it’s great. This collaboration between designer Vivienne Tam and HP is also great. I’m in lust already. Can’t wait for January 2009. Why not, though, before Christmas?
Thanks Bev QB!
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Dear Ms. Webb:
 I read this book directly after finishing Nameless that I liked quite a bit. As I said in the Nameless review, the characters generally make or break a romantic suspense book which means the suspense can be awesome but if the romance doesn’t fit, I’m not likely to read that RS author again. The biggest issue I had with this book was how I thought you wanted readers to perceive the characters and how they actually came off.
Carson Tanner’s family was brutally murdered almost fifteen years ago. A serial killer finally confessed to killing Carson’s family but in a face to face meeting that the killer demanded as part of his confession, he manages to leave Carson with uncertainty. Carson, the star assistant DA, wants to close that painful part of his past. His idyllic life was torn apart when he was fifteen due, in part, that he got drunk and woke up bathed in blood. While he was a suspect for only a short time, he lost mainstays of his life, including Elizabeth , the daughter of a current Georgia Senator. …
So apparently Annie Proulx gets a lot of manuscripts sexxing up Brokeback Mountain and she's annoyed. According to "Bill Tancer–an online intelligence agent", Galley Cat got the following quote:
There's no way to stop people from interacting with your content. You can ignore or embrace it … to complain about it isn't going to make it better. Fan fiction makes up 33 percent of all content revolving around books."
I don't know what an online intelligence agent is or what "content revolving around books" exactly means, but I think the message is that fan fiction isn't going away no matter how much it irritates the author.
Dear Ms. Foley,
 Sometimes I’m in the mood for a short, hot story and when I am, I usually turn to Harlequin Blaze books. Most are straight contemporaries, feature believable heroes and heroines and cut to the chase since there isn’t much space for authors to tack on additional subplots. “Overnight Sensation” looked like it had a good plot, one featuring an actress heroine on location to shoot a movie about the special ops hero’s adventures in the jungle. So far, so good.
I loved the first section which seemed straight out of the beginning of “Romancing the Stone.” It also reminded me of a book I’d read once about exotic travel that went bust (”I Should Have Stayed Home: The Worst Trips of the Great Writers.”). Though honestly, how could anyone think traveling in a linen suit makes sense.
On a more serious note, a friend of mine is in the military working in the hospital in Landstuhl, Germany and says that, like the heroine’s brother, the injured come in there from Iraq, are patched up for the journey home and sent out before the medical people feel they can really have much of …
Forbes gives five* tips on how to maintain your reading habit in a tight economy.
- Swap through online sites like paperbackswap.com.
- Compare prices online.
- Sell your old books.
- Try sites like Dailylit.com (I didn't really get this tip)
- Buy at the library.
*The headlines says six but the article says "five".
Harlequin has dabbled in the non fiction market in the past , but is launching a new imprint specifically for non fiction.  It’s launch title is Love Matters: Remarkable Stories that Touch the Heart and Nourish the Soul by a nighttime radio host called Delilah. Â
The publication date for this book is end of this month.  The line will include “memoirs, health, diet, fitness, self-help, motivational and relationship books that cater to women, as well as nonfiction books by its bestselling fiction authors, and nonfiction companion pieces to its bestselling novels.”  Some of the 2009 lineup can be read here .
Dear Ms. Goodman:
 Starting with the Compass Club series, your books have been getting increasingly darker, and The Price of Desire is the darkest by far, darker, I think, than any other book of yours that I have read. It was also an emotionally cathartic read, a book that hearkens back to the Compass Club series, effects emotional and narrative closure to one of its loose ends, and showcases the interconnected themes of healing and interdependence consistent in your Regency-set historicals.
Olivia Cole lives a quiet and thrifty existence, but despite her circumspect modesty she is at the edge of despair. Her brother, Alistair, has managed to gamble away enough of his allowance to place their small household in jeopardy, and now he has disappeared. Olivia is too far out of favor with her and Alistair’s father to expect any other family assistance. So when two strangers show up at the house to escort Olivia to some unknown location, she assumes that they are Bow Street runners delivering Alistair’s fate. Instead, they have come to escort her to a gaming hell, where she will serve as a marker for her brother’s immense gambling debt, promised by …
 One of the groundbreaker writers of urban fantasy is Emma Bull’s War for the Oaks. Â After I read Laurell K Hamilton, I was jonesing for more UF reads and everywhere I turned, someone told me I had to read War for the Oaks. It might be the seminal Urban Fantasy read. Â It’s set in Minneapolis and has a romance underthread with a very unlikely hero, but the strength of the story lies with the female protagonist who gets swept into a dangerous world between the Dark Court and the Light Court of the fae. Â If you haven’t read it before, I strongly urge you to take advantage of this free giveaway (meaning don’t make me crawl through the internets and hold your TBR pile hostage until you download it).
Here is the entire press release from Tor:
Free Ebooks from World Fantasy Award Finalists
Â
Last week we announced the return of free ebooks from Tor.com. We’re kicking things off this week with backlist titles from two of the authors who are finalists for this year’s World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. To download these and upcoming freebies, all you have to …
We had some technical issues regarding Dear Author’s iPhone Shelfserver but Zac Bedell, the developer of my favorite ebook iPhone reading application Bookshelf, has graciously agreed to host the DearAuthor Shelf. Â As you can see by the above picture, the DearAuthor Shelf is automatically included with each install of the Bookshelf. Â
Reading on the iPhone is growing daily. Â Fictionwise has invested alot of developing time in growing that market. Â There are over 8 million iPhone owners in 2008. Â Â This bookshelf contains original fiction and excerpts. Â Anyone can contribute. Â Send the works to me at jane at dearauthor.com.
Some things to keep in mind:
- Make sure your document is proofread and as error free as possible and is a good example of your writing.
- Include a title pge with the book title and your name with identifying information at the end such as your web address, other books in the series, where the books can be purchased and so forth.
- Name your file Author Last Name, Author First Name – Name of Work
- The books can be any genre, any heat—or non-heat–level (any genre—of romance, or not romance, fantasy, mystery,
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