Archive for November, 2008
Last week we talked about the dedicated ebook readers from the high end Sony Reader PRS700 to the Kindle. One thing that commenters addressed was the conversion issues. I.e., how difficult is it to convert content to be read on the Kindle, Sony, et al. I think that there should be a whole post on that sort of thing. Additionally, if you are worried about what device to purchase based on the non DRM books available from stores like Samhain and the like, then you should check out this format table.
On to the topic of the day: Multi function devices.
I started reading ebooks on a multi function device. My first portable device that I read ebooks on was my Palm m505. I moved on to the HP IPAQ 4700 with a 4″ screen. It was wonderful for me and really marked my wholesale embrace of ebooks.
When the Sony Reader was released, I was all over it. But I purchased an iPhone shortly after and found myself reading more and more on the iPhone because I could read the iPhone in bed without a booklight. Having a light for nightime reading …
 Loading ... I’m doing a two piece buying guide for ebook reading devices. Â What would be your preference? Â Mine is the iPhone. I’ve had both the Sony Reader and the iPhone and found myself reading the iPhone so much I sent my Sony Reader to Jayne. Â Everyone is different though.
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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The worm wind is the night wind. Cool and moist and bearing strange scents, it flows from the east, out of the dark lands, all the way to the steep flanks of Sunbreaker and her children. There it condenses into fog, a heavy, clinging fog that fills the throat and smothers all sound except for the plink of water dripping off eaves.
And the skittering noise following Alice Standish up Pickaxe Street.
Alice stopped, tightening her grip on her shopping basket, and peered uselessly into the whiteness that shrouded her. Finlochen was as safe as any city could be, now that Ned had driven the Usurper out, but a woman alone still needed to be alert, especially in such heavy fog. A murder could happen at your very feet, and you’d never know it.
Silence. Wondering if she’d just heard the trickle of water in a downspout, she climbed a few more steps and it happened again, almost under her feet. Skittering steps that stopped when …
Loading ... This poll comes to us via Jill Myles who twittered a new discovery from Lulu.com.  In a remarkably well put together copy is a collection of recipes featuring food made with semen.  After some twitter speculation, I wondered whether people would be more interested in the drinking water from urine that NASA has recently developed or cooked semen in a pastry.
Avon is promoting its books through an online feature called “Love Gives Back.”  Through December 23, 2008, you’ll be able to read 20% of every book online and various books in their entirety.  This is an online read only and you must have internet connection to read the books.  It’s not the easiest way to read online books but it is  free.  The current slate of books that are “full access” areÂ
- In Bed with the Devil by Lorraine Heath
- Keeping Kate by Sarah Gabriel
- The Bride Hunt by Margo Maguire
 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. Carrie Lofty’s debut work, What a Scoundrel Wants, featuring a historical within the Robin Hood ouvre is out in stores now.Â
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When my husband moved to Virginia in 2006 for a summer internship, I stayed with our daughters in Wisconsin and actively maintained my blog. What started as a journal in 2005 had ballooned into hundreds of entries on everything from pacifiers to Plato. Early that summer, I read about the RWA national conference in Atlanta and wanted to be there. I made Nationals a benchmark of success…but for what?
Sure, I’d written enough blog entries to complete an epic, so I couldn’t use a lack of free time as my excuse, but I had yet to finish a manuscript. For years, procrastination and perfectionism had thwarted my attempts. That summer marked a turning point. By finishing Serenade some 88 days later, a romance about a widowed violin prodigy and the dishonored composer she loves, I proved my dedication.
I was ready to begin another project when my …
 Unlaced, as you might have guessed by the number of authors in the title of the post, is an anthology. It is an erotic romance anthology of three contemporary stories and one paranormal contemporary story. I admit that I did not read the last story by Denise Rossetti. I just haven’t been in the mood from something otherwordly and thus I skipped it but since I did read 3/4 of the anthology, I felt it was sufficient to give a review.
The Ties That Bind by Jaci Burton. Dear Ms. Burton:
I’ve always enjoyed your anthologies and this entry is no exception. Lisa and Rick Mitchell were irresponsible high school sweethearts whose youthful love and lust led to Lisa getting pregnant at age 16. Lisa and Rick tried to get married but because of their youth, their marriage fell apart and they divorced when their daughter, Kayla, was three. They remained a tightly knit family with Rick providing what he could to Lisa and their daughter until Lisa got an education and began providing for herself. But now there daughter is graduating and Rick has met someone …
Dear Mrs. White,
 In a historical book world filled with Regency this, Norman knight that and followed by kilted Highlanders mangling brogue it’s nice to occasionally find a story with a different setting. There’s been a dearth of American set historicals recently. One which I hope this book will help remedy.
Camilla Beaumont has worked for the Underground Railroad for years beginning even before war divided the country. It’s something she keeps hidden from her family since they’re prominent citizens in Mobile, Alabama. While on one of her after midnight missions, she literally bumps into Gabriel Laniere one dark night but it’s not until the two meet socially that each puts two and two together. Getting cozy with Camilla’s family promises to provide Gabriel with perfect spying opportunities. Someone in this town knows about the secret underwater contraption the Confederate forces had to abandon when New Orleans fell and he means to find them – and it.
“Redeeming Gabriel” has enough gravitas for the subject (Underground Railroad and Civil War) but is told with a sly, subtle sense of humor that had …
Loading ... First, let me apologize for not putting up another poll for so long. I kept meaning to put up another one but kept putting it off because I couldn’t think of a good poll topic (if you have one, let me know – jane at dearauthor.com). Second, what do you think of series books? It seems that books today are never standalone and are always in some kind of series. As Sandy Coleman of the new AAR blog noted, we are going to be gifted or inundated, whichever way you look at it, with a new Mary Balogh series starting at the end of February.
We have open ended series like Kresley Cole’s Desires After Dark and nearly every cross over or paranormal fantasy. We have trilogies such as the Nora Roberts Pagan Stone series, the last of which was just recently released. Elizabeth Hoyt, one of Jayne’s favorite historical authors, is in the midst of The Legend of the Four Horsemen books. There are the seeming never ending books about the Cynsters by Stephanie Laurens. Some series I’ve given up on and some I don’t feel compelled to start but …
Dear Ms. Robb:
 I’m of two minds about this book. The mystery was excellent. This was no thriller with marauding serial killers, but a police procedure story in which the principal officers unpeeled the layers of a crime step by step to find the surprising and somewhat convoluted truth. These stories also move on emotion whether its Eve’s constant struggle with her past or her relationship with Roarke, master of the universe. The emotional aspect of this story was, at times, a bit crowded, a bit strange, and a bit forced.
First, the police procedure part of the story. During Mass, a priest keels over, killed from a dose of cyanide in the communion wine. During the autopsy, it was revealed that the priest may not have been who everyone thinks he is based on facial reconstruction surgery and the removal of a well known gang tattoo. Eve and Peabody pull at the threads of the priest’s life to uncover not only the “who” (as in the murderer) but the all important “why”. While much of the progress in the case is made through Eve’s intuition, …
John Updike was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award in the Bad Sex in Fiction Prize. Â The Bad Sex prize is given out each year by Literary Review magazine to the author who has the worst prose describing a sex scene. Â British author Rachel Johnson won for her description of oral sex in Shire Hill. Â Last year Norman Mailer was awarded the prize.
Johnson was singled out for her novel’s slew of animal metaphors, including comparing her male protagonist’s “light fingers” to “a moth caught inside a lampshade”, and his tongue to “a cat lapping up a dish of cream so as not to miss a single drop”. Literary Review deputy editor Tom Fleming was also disturbed by the heroine’s “grab, to put him, now angrily slapping against both our bellies, inside”.
I find Updike’s Lifetime Achievement award particularly humorous since our favorite startup epress has touted one its erotic fiction authors as an Updike protege.
Dear Ms. Hoyt,
 I hate this title but suppose that few readers would buy a book called “She is a balm for his soul.” Nah, not catchy enough but so accurate for this book. In “To Taste Temptation,” you gave us the secondary character of Jasper Renshaw, Viscount Vale. Jasper’s a former Army Captain, current “hale fellow well met,” slightly unlucky at love and possessed of nightmares that would curdle the entire milk supply of the state of Wisconsin. The boy’s got a few issues.
What he doesn’t realize he has is one strong woman who loves him above all others. When Melisande Fleming sees that Jasper is being thrown over on his wedding day – and for a curate, if it can be believed – she seizes her chance with both hands and hangs on for dear life. She knows that Jasper has never taken much notice of her beyond what politeness demands but she stiffens her spine, sneaks off to the church vestry and proposes to him. Slightly stunned, first to have lost his second fiancee in mere months and then to be on the receiving end of a marriage …
Maybe Obama should designate someone from Powell's Books to be part of the energy counsel. Powell's has installed 540 solar panels on the top of its 60,000 square foot building. These panels will generate enough electricity to power a quarter of the building. In five years, the investment will pay for itself. Amazingly cool. Via ShelfAwareness .
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Every Thanksgiving, we have tried to post something positive, something to show our thanks for the community of readers here. Â This year, we are providing a self help guide, so to speak, for the community to respond to those around us who might question the reading choices we have brought with us on holiday. Â
We women always seem to be apologizing for something. Â We were birthed with the words “I’m sorry” on our lips. Â We are apologetic we were first born female. When we arrive at womanhood, we are apologetic for being too loose or conversely too prudish. Â We are sorry for staying at home or choosing to work and sending our kids to daycare. Â We are sorry that we put ambition before family or family before ambition. Â We are sorry for the fact that our stepping away from the partnership track hurts the chances of women behind us. Â We are sorry for criticizing those who do hurt the cause of female professionalism. Â We are sorry that we have kids and that we don’t have kids or that if we do have kids, we have too …
A proviso for my Buying Guide. I will be revising to add – buy the cheaper version and a good booklight. Sent to you by Jane via Google Reader: Sony PRS-700 Reader Review: Blinding Glare Kills All Improvements [Review] via Gizmodo by Wilson Rothman on 11/24/08 
Things you can do from here:
Dear Ms. Kery:
I read Wicked Burn, your first NY Published book coming out December 1 and it interested me enough to look at your backlist. Â I purchased two titles from Whiskey Creek Press: Tricked Truths and Gateway to Heaven. Â I’m glad that Tricked Truths wasn’t my introduction to your work because I wonder whether I would have read another.
Tricked Truths
 Tricked Truths has a Linda Howard-ish feel to the conflict but I don’t recall Howard’s heroines being so passive. Â Grace Jamison left Everly over twelve years ago with accusations of conspiring to murder her elderly husband, Evan Burnett, flapping at her back. Â For some reason, Grace returns and brings her 12 year old son with her, hoping that he won’t suffer the taint of past gossip. Â She moves into the Widow’s Cottage, a small house left to her by her husband, which is situated on the estate owned by Trick Burnett, her husband’s first son. Â Trick does not want Grace at the Widow’s Cottage, in part because he burns for her and doesn’t like his physical attraction toward her. Â He also believes that she cheated while married to his father and that she is …
AAR has launched a news and commentary blog off shoot of its main site. It's a wordpress based blog instead of the blog-city that After Hours uses so commenting there will be as simple as commenting at Dear Author or many of your other favorite blogs.
Random House (of the layoffs, pension freezing, and losing of big authors) has seen a digital light at the end of the economic tunnel. Apparently, ebook sales have increased by triple digit percentages in 2008 and thus Random House will be digitizing like mad to increase that part of the market. Currently, the publisher's ebook catalog is at 8,000 titles but in the next few months, it should be near 15,000. The growth comes from the digitization of backlist titles. The entire catalog will be available in the ePub standard where it joins Hachette and Harlequin (I think) in helping to confirm one standard format for the industry. (Now if they could only get their act together and have one uniform DRM for the industry). As a side benefit to the digitization will be the ability to view a portion of the title before purchase at Random House's website. HarperCollins unveiled a similar feature last week which allows readers to view up to 20% of a title for free, online. Via Galley Cat and Publishers Weekly .
Dear Ms. Callen:
 I read a book of yours for the first time almost a year ago. It was charming and light although not very memorable. I went on to read one more of your books before this one. I jumped at the chance to review Never Dare a Duke and anticipated another enjoyable reading experience. However, my intense dislike of the story and of the female protagonist, a dislike which I have rarely before felt for a romance heroine, left me wondering how this book could get published. To really discuss why I disliked this book so much, I’ve contained quite a few spoilers. Readers should beware.
You set the stage early on for Miss Abigail Shaw’s quest to ruin a man’s reputation. It seems that her father’s newspaper is losing some of its readership and may be in danger of shutting its doors. In a desperate attempt to sell more papers, Abigail decides to uncover some vague sort of scandal that occurred years ago involving Christopher Cabot, the duke of Madingley. Forget the fact that her father is an honorable man who refuses to publish gossip articles based upon speculation. Forget …
Edited to Add: Below I recommend buying the Sony PRS700 with the built in light. According to the guys at Gizmodo and Sunita below, this light actually degrades the quality of the screen. You may, instead, want to go the PRS505 route from Wal-mart who is selling them (including the red one) for $269.99. I highly recommend getting a light and the Sony light is a really elegant addition.
Last year, I posted a buying guide for those who are looking for ebook readers and I thought it would be kind of fun to do that again, given that technology keeps changing. Â I’ll give a list of pros and cons for each kind of device and my opinion as to why to buy a certain one. Â I hope those who own these devices will jump in and give their own opinions as well. Â Today’s article addresses dedicated ebook readers and next week’s article will address the multi-function devices.
Black Friday Tip: Â
While ebook readers aren’t part of the Black Friday sales, often times memory cards are. Â If you are …
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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Father Stephen Stokes saw a police jeep parked in front of the tackle shop and felt a guilty knot in his gut, remembering that his business here in Mexico was illegal. Only technically illegal, Mario had promised, but Mario’s disregard for earthly law was legendary.
The desert heat had built mightily by noon, and Stephen regretted sleeping so long. It was after two when he finally left behind the stuccos and candy pastels of the fishing village and began struggling up into the baking sierra.
Every couple of hairpin turns, a cool turquoise wedge of the Sea of Cortez came into view, smaller each time. When the water vanished from sight for good, it seemed as though he’d lost touch with the only friendly face around. He would not see another until he reached the crumbling Spanish mission at the heart of Mario’s rural parish. No official-looking vehicles followed his tiny rented Daihatsu, but still he felt watched.
“Get yourself to L.A.,” Mario had told him, …
Dear Ms. Potter,
This older book is certainly a different approach to the Late Hostilities. Readers tired of the standard plantation settings and who enjoy Westerns might like it as it’s set mainly in Colorado and Texas. Then it carries on a bit further into the months after the war.
Colonel Ben Morgan has been sent west on a mission he despises but one he will see to completion. The tough Union officer is to round up a group of Confederate soldiers who have been raiding Union supplies being sent to the western forts. A moment’s distraction lands him in deep trouble when his horse is spooked by two rattlesnakes. After being thrown, his leg breaks and he’s bitten twice. That’s when Ryan Mallory and her escort find him.
Ben wakes up to find himself a prisoner of the very men he is supposed to capture and hang as a warning to other Rebel raiders. But what’s even worse, the leader of the Second Texas Cavalry is his old room mate from West Point, Sean Mallory, a man once closer than a brother but now a bitter enemy from years before the war even started. Now the men have even more to fight …
If I read this in a book, I probably wouldn't have believed it to be possible but apparently there is technology that can copy a key based on a photo. I.e., you could have someone take a telephoto shot of a set of keys, duplicate those keys based on the photo without having to even come close to the victim. Source: Make
Last night, a troubled teen killed himself while livestreaming on Justin.tv. This teen had made threats of suicide before and, I guess, because of this, watchers of the video didn't believe this current one. They egged him on but once he had taken the drugs and appeared unmoving for a length of time, watchers became worried. At least one internet viewer from India called the police but felt like he wasn't taken seriously. An account can be read here .
 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. Karen White’s latest release, House on Tradd Street, is one part suspense, one part supernatural and you can buy it in stores now. Â
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In mid-December, 2003 I finally received the call from my agent that I’d pretty much given up hope ever getting. She left a message on my answering machine saying that she had a two-book offer on the table from my dream publisher, Penguin Publishing Group.
I stood listening to the message about a dozen times, holding heavy bags of groceries, wanting to believe in her sincerity while the whole time picturing my long-suffering husband standing behind her while she made the phone call with a weapon pointed at her head.
Let’s back up three years to explain how I got to that point. Granted, it wasn’t technically my â€first sale’—but for me, it was the first sale that counted. Most people who know me know my story—how I entered the first book I ever wrote into a contest and it …
Celebs are getting paid million dollar advances on books that will likely never sell out their advance, but Random House has decided to freeze the pensions of current employees and totally eliminate pension for future hires. The current employees' pensions will no longer grow, however, the existing 401K matching plan of up to 6 percent will be maintained. Simone & Schuster CEO Carolyn Reidy suggested part of the problem is that people were buying fewer titles.
"What I think is happening is that you would have somebody who would go into a store and buy a front list title, and then … buy a second book. And now they aren't buying that second book," says Simon & Schuster CEO Carolyn Reidy.
Dear Ms. Monk:
 You are a new author edited by Anne Soward who happens to edit two of my favorite urban fantasy cross over writers, Patricia Briggs and Ilona Andrews. I’m always interested in new authors and their debut books. I do wonder if I would have enjoyed your book more had I read it at the beginning of my UF reading period.
Allie Beckstrom is a Hound, finder of magic makers who discovers that her father left a death spell on a young boy. She decides to confront him, and then, turn him into the police. When her father dies, Allie becomes the chief suspect. She must find out who killed her father, clear her name, and discover who set the death spell on the young boy, all while combatting memory loss, no money and few helpers.
Allie is a familiar UF character. She is a rebel, one who has forsook the easy lifestyle of her rich family to seek her own way because of what she perceived to be a lack of ethics on the part of her father. She is a loner, one whose best …
Dear Ms. Wiest,
 “Apache Eyes” is the second novella from you I’ve read. And it’s totally different from the first one. Not just because it’s a f/f historical but because it lacks the black humor that made “Practical Purposes” such a joy to read. But that’s okay, as it shows that you’re not just a one note author.
The novella starts strongly with intense descriptions that put me in the heart of the action. Jenny Barden is alone, in the heat of a blazing Arizona day, burying her slime of a husband who was killed during an Apache raid on the Barden homestead. Jenny, raised in the area, had been aware of the fact that an Apache band was watching the place and had hidden, thus escaping her husband’s fate. But she knows she’s still being watched and senses it’s a woman doing the watching.
Miakoda, daughter of Cochise, saves Jenny a second time by tending to her heatstroke before both yield to the intense attraction between them. But they have to overcome many barriers to their long-term future since there’s no love lost between the Apaches fighting to retain their homeland …
From Slashdot:
Developer 2D Boy has written that they are seeing an 82% piracy rate for everyone’s favorite DRM-free physics puzzler, World of Goo . . . The article also features a fascinating comparison with the piracy rate of another game that was shipped complete with DRM, at 92%.Â
Stanza is an ebook reading program for the iPhone.  It boasts over 500,000 downloads since it’s debut.  All Romance eBooks, an etailer that carries a number of small epublishers, has it’s own bookshelf whereby it lists the titles available for download.  You select the book you are interested in and an excerpt downloads to your Stanza program.  The excerpts have a link at the end in blue – www.allromanceebooks.com.  You touch just the link and it should take you to the allromanceebooks.com website where you can then purchase the book.
BooksonBoard is offering the entire Samhain library through its site. Â You go to BooksonBoard and then purchase the books to download. Â Apparently these books are then downloaded to your iPhone and viewable via Stanza. Â
Like Fictionwise.com, neither AllRomance eBooks nor BooksonBoard have an iPhone optimized site. Â Half the time, the BooksonBoard special iPhone landing site has a 404 error for me. Â No idea why. Â For my druthers, the AllRomance Ebook has an easier interface since it works directly through Stanza for browsing. Â I’ve not been able to get the “buy link” to work. Maybe they could make it bigger (I think I must have inept fingers).
But …
Even though publishing is facing dire economic times, it is still spending furiously for celeb books. Â Galley Cat points out that these rarely earn out for the publisher so why the overspending? Â Dan Stone, agent for many of these celeb authors, argues that publishers must know where the market is otherwise why spend the cash? Â I can’t remember the last celeb book I bought unless you call The Audacity of Hope a celeb book.
Dear Ms. Miller:
 I confess that the last book I read of yours was Never Look Back published in 2004. I really liked that book (the heroine sounded like a real lawyer) but for some reason, I never read the two sequels. I think it had something to do with the fact that between 2004 and the sequel’s release in 2006, I kind of forgot about the series. Â I did think about picking another one of your books, Deadly Gamble, but the heroine’s name “Mojo Sheepshanks” was a bit too quirky for me (plus she talked to dead people). Â Over the years, I’ve seen how successful your McKettrick series has been and I kept telling myself to pick up one of those books but was afraid for some reason. Â No longer, though, because after the Rustler, I’m definitely thinking I have to read more Miller. Â Maybe even some stories about Mojo Sheepshanks.
The Rustler is not a perfect book for me but what appealed to me was the old fashioned sensibility. Wyatt Yarbro almost dies in a cattle rustling endeavor and decides to take up his brother’s offer to come to Stone Creek. Â It’s not …
Dear Ladies,
 Georgian set historical books make my heart pitter patter. When I find a book description that mentions it’s set then, much of the work of making me want to read it is already done. Throw in some daring do and a little swashbuckling and I drool in anticipation. Mix in a little pathos of a lost cause and I’m set. But with all this going for it, I’ll be honest and say some books just make you want to keep read them regardless of any problems you might encounter along the reading way. This is one of them.
“So much has happened to us both in these few short months! We are very far indeed, from those days of idyllic innocence in Oxfordshire.”
Tell me about it. The two cousins, Fraser and Catherine, both young, well born Englishwomen – though Fraser’s mother was from the wilds of Highland Scotland – will go from sweet, carefree innocence to the horrible task of combing through a battlefield in search of dead relatives in less than a year. Catherine will be forced from the pampered existence as a rich …
Sadly it appears that "more than 80% of multimillionaires who had extra-marital lovers planned to cut back on their gifts and allowances." What can this mean for the venerable line of Harlequin Present's Forced Mistress' Secret Babies stories? Will they survive? The whole blog post is a hoot and I loved the part about the wage inequality. It seems that the female multimillionaire's bought lover earns more than the male millionaire's mistress. Via TNR .
My first introduction to Sarah Mayberry was Anything for You which was a huge success. Marg, a commenter, said that it was one of the best friends to lovers iteration she’s read. “I loved how the story was not about Sam finally ‘noticing how hot his friend is’ but rather realizing the depth of their relationship. ”
I went on to purchase the additional books available at Fictionwise. There is a trilogy of books devoted to individuals who work on Ocean’s Boulevard, a soap opera shot in LA. The series is: Take on Me, All Over You, and finally Hot for Him. Reading them in order does provide nice continuity but it’s not absolutely essential (I read Hot for Him first). Mayberry’s men have that “male sound” in that they often think about their smaller head (I think I remember one of the heroes commenting about how the little guy is in charge of the social activities). Her women are bold and once they figure out what they want, they aren’t adverse to dragging the men with them. Mayberry also has a slight wit that makes me grin …
From Gawker : 2) "This female best selling author got into some serious debt because she is addicted to gambling. With casinos hounding her for payment, she turned to a "friend" to help her out. The friend gladly paid off the entire debt to the casinos, but in return got our author to sign over any and all future rights from her books. This author has always been reluctant to have her books appear as films because of some bad previous experiences, but now, she really has no choice because she gave up all the rights. I would predict a flood of made for tv type fare over the next few years all based on her books. Oh, and she is still gambling." [CDaN] Any guesses?
A: Â Sarah Palin’s biography/political memoir. Â Rumor is that Palin is going to get $7 million for her biography/memoir/collection of stump speeches about that terrorist loving President-Elect of ours, the Bridge to Nowhere, Joe the Plumber, Tito the Builder, Earmarks for Eskimos. Â The problem for Palin is that she is generally disliked by the broad spectrum of literary folks and by those on the internet. I predict her book will be out on the internet, possibly even before publication, as everyone rushes to read it while not wanting to pay for it.
Dear Ms. Steel:
 It was with avid curiosity that I read your February release, Honor Thyself, feeling quite out of the loop for not having read any of your previous work. After finishing the book, I was less curious but a bit confused, and so I went to Amazon to see what other readers thought of the book. For probably the first time, ever, I found myself in agreement with the vast majority of the 20-something reviews there (with the exception of Harriet Klausner and one or two others): in short, the book was a real disappointment.
At 50, American movie star Carole Barber is finally starting to come out of the grieving fog her husband’s untimely death gathered around her, but she still can’t get past the writer’s block that threatens her first book-writing effort. Unsettled and unfocused, Carole ventures back to Paris, a city she loves but has not visited since she broke off with her married lover 15 years ago, to see if she can find that big idea that continues to elude her. She tells her conscientious assistant not to worry about her – that she plans to do some traveling …
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This is the third in a three part series of what part the author plays in the marketing of a book. In the beginning of Crystal Hubbard’s book, Mr. Fix It, Hubbard’s heroine suffers a crisis of confidence. She is a romance writer but has stopped believing in love, let alone romance. Because of this, she doesn’t know that she can be a writer of romance books anymore. She feels that she is a fraud, writing about love and togetherness and happy ever after when she doesn’t believe in those concepts anymore.
The question is a great one. Does an author have to be in love to write romance? Extrapolating this a little further, does an author who writes from a male point of view be a man to have an authentic voice; does an author have to be gay to write the m/m books for the stories to be authentically homosexual; does an author have to be married, wildly in love and a parent in order to write romance; does an author have to experience the out of the mainstream lifestyle in order …
Everyone needs a new look from time to time and I felt like Dear Author was due. Frauke from Croco Designs stepped in to update our look. Feel free to add your thoughts.
Loading ... We had a previous post and poll regarding our favorite tropes and now I wonder what your least favorite tropes are.
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Warning: no way to avoid some spoilers
Dear Ms. Thompson,
 The plot of “Beauty Shop Tales” could be taken directly from the description of this Harlequin line of books. “Through old friendships, new relationships and newfound personal strength, the heroines in these novels discover that an unexpected fork in the road can be exactly what you need.” The description of the actual book does it a disservice by making it sound a lot more light hearted than it is.
Avril Carson had to try. Because the hairdresser-turned-actress (turned hairdresser) had left little Sago Beach, Florida, with her whole life in front of her and the man she’d loved by her side. Now she’d come back, with his ashes in an urn, and not even the chance of a child in her future. But she had a sneaking suspicion there was one in her late husband’s not too-distant past…
And as for romance — well, those days were behind her. Or were they? For Max Wright was pursuing her with a vengeance that made her feel things she thought she’d never feel again.
Maybe it was time to practice some beauty shop magic on herself…
“Beauty Shop Tales” …
If I had money, I would have totally been on this auction. My favorite thing is the detail (the gun has silver bullets). Sarah’s fascination was with the garlic.
Via Antiques and the Arts Online by way of SmartBitches.
Dear Ms. Mancusi,
 While I’ve read a few of your adult books, I’ve never tried your YA works. I’m not sure why that is because I’ve always gotten the impression your voice would do well with a younger audience. In my opinion, Gamer Girl proved my hypothesis correct. Maybe a little too well, in fact.
After her parents’ divorce, Maddy Starr leaves Boston to live with her grandmother in the suburbs. Starting over at a new school is always tough when you’re fifteen. It’s harder when your new school is full of poster children for Abercrombie and Fitch and your outfit of choice comes from Hot Topic. To make matters worse, Maddy’s first day at her new school is marred by having to wear a unicorn sweatshirt, her grandmother escorting her to the front office, and that same grandmother embarrassing the school’s quarterback by recounting an embarrassing childhood incident. Branded “Freak Girl” by the in-crowd, resulting in becoming a social pariah, Maddy loses herself in the online gaming world, Fields of Fantasy. Too bad her real life can’t be as perfect.
The best comparison for this book is …
Too many posts to handle? If you missed out on a great post from last month, here’s a quick digest of the top five posts (based on number of comments) that you may want to check out:
- Author PhotographsPosted on Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 in Letters of Opinion – Comments: (109)more animalsThis is the second in a three part series about the author as a consumable part of the book. It’s a look at how readers respond to current marketing tecniques and why. Â This series is more a reflection of the reader and the reader’s mindset and not meant to be a criticism of the authors themselves. Â (As an aside, I find it interesting that no matter how many times I say this, some authors still take this as a personal attack.
- Favorite TropesPosted on Thursday, November 13th, 2008 in Poll – Comments: (54)
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Loading ... It seems only yesterday we were reading about various “traditionalist” attacks on Erotic Romance. Remember the graphical standards debacle? Or how about the accusations that GBLT and polyamorous Romance weren’t real Romance? But the intervening years have shown that Erotic Romance is not only a viable subgenre, but is, in fact, as much real Romance as any other “respectable” subgenre. Oh, I know not everyone is thrilled with some of the more explicit directions the genre has taken, but the Romance community and genre is large enough that the diversity can be pretty easily accommodated.
One of the reasons I think Erotic Romance has faced so much controversy is the way it can sometimes blur into straight erotica or even pornography – that is, away from the emotional journey of lovers and into the sexual odysseys we generally associate with pure erotic narrative. And indeed, depending on how a reader connects to a book in question, arguments about how to label specific works are not uncommon. Yet structurally speaking, the boundaries of Erotic Romance are clear, or at least as clear as the formal boundaries for …
Sayuri commented in my Harlequin (not so) Lightning Reviews last week that she enjoyed Sarah Mayberry. I bought three of her books at Fictionwise: Amorous Liaisons, Island Heat, and Anything For You.
The thing I like most about Mayberry’s characters is their self honesty and the sense that these individuals could be real people. They aren’t fantasy creatures but instead, like Borrill’s characters, there’s a sense of normalcy about them (even if they are artists, chefs, or business people). Their interactions rarely are over the top and it’s like Mayberry is simply serving as the narrator of a real life couple which is really one of the best fairy tales of all. I recommend starting with Anything For You, which was my favorite.
Amorous Liasons
 Maddy Green is a dancer who has been told that she hasn’t been able to recover to the tear to her ACL and that she must “hang up her slippers.” Max Laurent left dancing to care for his father. His father has just passed away and Max is ready to start his life anew (not going to say what, it’s …
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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Serena was pacing around her hotel room for the second time when her cell phone rang. She picked up on the third ring.
“Miss Chirk?”
“Yes.” What a stupid question. Only Jones knew where to find her. But if she didn’t answer, he might send someone to this faceless hotel to check on her.
“Not good enough,” the male voice snapped. “Ms, not Miss. Remember your persona. Young, sassy, independent. Get it right every time, you hear me?”
She sighed. “Sure.”
Jones continued to harass her, as he always did, treating her like a child. “You can speak freely if you wish, but only on this phone. You understand?”
“Yes.” She was new to this business, not stupid. But she knew if she tried to tell him that, he’d only repeat what he’d told her a thousand times before and make her recite it back to him so she didn’t think it …
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