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

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 …

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I’m doing a two piece buying guide for ebook reading devices.  What would be your preference?  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.  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 …

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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” are 

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. 
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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 …

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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, …