Archive for August, 2009
Dear Ms. Michaels,
 When I was checking out the new offerings from Harlequin, I saw your name and popped the book in my ecart without looking too closely at it. So, when I opened it up on my reader, I was dismayed to see that this is obviously a novella. Now, novellas can work for me but too often something gets missed or rushed in the short word count race to the finish. Imagine my delight to discover one that gets it right.
Lady Emmaline Daughtry has resigned herself to spinsterhood. Her face doesn’t frighten horses but after three failed Seasons, she’s accepted this fact. Her (much) older brother, the Duke, and his two sons – also miserable specimens – make no attempt to stay with her to celebrate her twenty-eighth birthday, preferring to try out the yacht one of them won in a card game. When a handsome Naval captain arrives with bad news for Emmaline, neither of them know that – for them – it’s the start of something wonderful.
This is a little gem of a novella. It pays court to Regency romance conventions then uses the characterizations you’ve given the …
 Disney bought Marvel Comics for $4 billion. Disney will now own the rights to over 5,000 Marvel characters including Spider Man, X-men, Ironman, and the like. One key element of copyright law that people tend to forgot is that the longer copyrights benefit corporations like Disney more than any one else, even the individual copyright holder.
 Barnes & Noble will be distributing Smashword books via the BN ebook store. Authors who publish through Smashword receive 85% off the net. The partnership allows for greater visibility of Smashword books. I’m not sure if BN is accepting all the Smashword books or some selection as the press release mentions a “Premium Catalog.” Given that Smashwords is a self publishing tool, I would think that either BN or Smashwords would have to curate the content to some extent or risk degrading the useability of the BN ebook reading store.
 SF Guy has a spectacular list of Urban Fantasy, Paranormal, and SFF book releases for the month of September. You know, in case you were looking around …
 Welcome to the My First Sale series. Each Monday, Dear Author posts the first sale letter of bestselling authors, debut authors, and authors in between. Louisa Edwards’ debut book, Can’t Stand the Heat, is on shelves tomorrow. (It’s probably in the stores in right now, but it’s official release date is tomorrow. Go forth read, buy & get the urge to cook or eat). You can read an excerpt here. Comment to win a copy of the book & a Can’t Stand the Heat apron.
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Back when I worked in editorial at a major publishing house, all the assistants used to get together and discuss the elements of a surefire bestseller. For instance, I thought a vampire Navy SEAL romance couldn’t help but do well. Two hot trends for the price of one! It was a joke at the time, but when I got married and moved to Ohio, leaving the world of publishing behind, the idea stuck with me. I laboriously wrote, rewrote, and polished a paranormal romance that, while not purely vamps and SEALs, definitely had its roots in that joke.
The manuscript got me my wonderful …
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.
Welcome to Author Promo Night Open Thread. 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 August would be a Sept 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.
Those devoted to paper in publishing houses worry that digital publishing will lead to the loss of the art of publication. Â The sad fact is that the art of publication has been subsumed in mass production long ago. Â With increased paper costs, distribution costs, lowering margins, publishers have cheapened the physical book to the point that with a few exceptions, what is in stores today isn’t worth finding space on the shelf.
Like many regular readers, my shelves are bursting with books. Â The lack of shelf space is one reason I have embraced ebooks with such fervor. Â I simply can’t locate even one more space for my books. Â If I buy one in paper format, I will have to displace another book in its favor and once I am done with it, I must either sell or determine whether it is shelf worthy.
I don’t want to dismiss a person’s love for the feel of paper, the smell of paper, or even the look of a book. But for an avid reader of genre books, the mass market paperback is a disposable item. It’s print quality is fairly poor on thin paper housed behind lurid covers. The bindings are …
Author Talk features nudity and PC and Kristin Cast.
Roxanne St. Claire is at the Borders True Romance blog talking about her latest book (a recommended read by Robin) and giving away three free copies of Hunt Her Down.
Huffington Post writes about the efforts of DirecTV to put cable stations TNT and TBS online. More and more consumers want to have access to television shows on demand via the internet. Sounds familiar. One of the reasons I’ve advocated so heavily for ebooks is that the competition for a book is not another book but other forms of media. If books are the only media that isn’t easily accessible on demand, it will lose out to movies, tvs, music and gaming.
Our September recommended read list is available now for 20% off the list price at Books on Board. Go forth and buy.
Author Shannon Stacey (of the Devlin Group among other books) has …
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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July 7, 1777, Hubbardton,Vermont
“Where do you think we are, Blackthorne?”
Stephen maintained his rigid posture, his eyes slanting to the right the only indication he’d heard the muttered question. He could just make out Granger’s profile—and one of Granger’s dark eyes staring sideways at him.
“Somewhere between Fort Ticonderoga and the mouth of hell,” Stephen said through stiff lips.
“We passed the mouth of hell a few miles back.”
Stephen nearly broke discipline and laughed. The idea comparison was an apt one. The scenes they’d passed on the road to this god-forsaken wilderness lacked only Lucifer to complete the picture. The carcasses of half-butchered cattle, the leavings of a retreating army with no time to do the job properly, festered along the way, bloated and fly-infested under a sweltering July sun. The stench of death, sticky and sweet, tainted the very air. The beasts had been part of some family’s livelihood once, but now they lay as a rotting sacrifice to the god of war.
The prostrating heat only …
Dear Ms. Dare:
 This is book two in your loosely connected trilogy that is being released Aug, Sept and October. Surrender of a Siren follows the character Sophia as she runs away from home and obligation to experience “adventure.” Sophia is a wealthy young woman who has been urged by her family to marry a nice titled man. But Sophia’s imagination is too big for England.
I’ll admit right off that I’m not much of a high seas, pirate kind of story. It’s a marked difference between my blogging partner Jayne and I.
Sophia, longing for adventure and romance, sets off to sail for Tortola, asserting that she is to become the governness to a relation. Â Sophia has no real intention of being a governness as she is an heiress but she has to have a reason to go to Tortola. She pretends to be a poor relation.
Benedict “Gray” Grayson is a former privateer trying to go straight. Â This trip is his first as a legitimate merchant vessel. Â The captain is his half brother, Josiah, who does not want Sophia, a gentlewoman with no guardian, on his ship. Â Gray capitulates to Sophia’s …
 Loading ... I’ll admit I’m a bit shallow. I like my heroes tall, at least 6′. Â I think other romance readers must as well because you rarely read about the short hero (even if the heroine is short, the hero must tower over her). Â Jayne Ann Krentz is about the only author I know who gets away with writing under 6′ heroes (all of hers hover around the 6′ mark). Â Wes, a hero in Suzanne Brockmann’s Tall, Dark, and Dangerous series underwent a height transformation. I believe he was around 5′ 9″ or 10″ and when he starred in his own book, he was 6′. Â (And no, he wasn’t a teen when he was first introduced). Â The ideal size for a special forces person is not the giant hulk but someone shorter, more wiry.
In the second story of Jasmine Haynes contribution to Twin Peaks, an anthology which included two stories of hers and one story of Susan Johnson (I don’t recommend this antho btw – the Johnson contribution was awful), the hero turned out to be short and bald. I never finished the story. Â In talking about this with another reader, it occurred to me that height was more important than …
Every Thursday the crew at Follow the Reader host a twitter chat about some publishing topic. Yesterday was about what readers would like publishers to know. Â (This discussion will be summarized and posted at the Follow the Reader blog in a week or so). Â One of the tweets was by someone who wanted publishers to do a guide for how to get into blogging. Â My instinctive reaction was to tweet back that it isn’t really the publishers role to do this.
I realized then that I have never really done a post about blogging and book reviewing and at the risk of sounding like a pretentious twat, it is something that I have knowledge of. Here are my tips about getting into the book reviewing circuit as a blogger.
Edited to add: NetGalley is a company that facilitates getting digital ARCs from a publisher to a reviewer. Â You can sign up for free and then request books for review. Â I believe that the publisher will have to approve your request.
1. Â Be professional. The people who have the ARCs that you want are professionals and they want to work with professionals. Â To me professionalism includes being polite, having knowledge of the …
Horatio Hornblower (1998-2003)
Genre: Adventure, War, Drama
Grade: series as a whole, B+
After my review of “Captain Blood,” there was a call for more swashbuckling films. I do plan to eventually do more of these but I thought I’d detour slightly in this direction. It is swashbuckling, it is war, it is the Navy and it’s set just before and during the Regency period which is so popular with romance readers.
The episodes are basically Hornblower and the British Navy vs Napoleon and his allies. The action begins in 1793 and carries through the short peace and into the beginning of the second phase of war. I’ve never read the CS Forester books on which the series is based so I can’t answer to how closely the TV episodes follow them (from what I gather, very loosely). But I enjoyed seeing some aspects of the era, such as the action in Santo Domingo and the Irish/French alliance, with which I’m less familiar.
Hornblower saves the day, often against impossible odds and, sometimes, by going against his expressed orders when he sees an opportunity to turn the tide of action in favor of the British. It’s this eye for the main chance and the …
Dear Ms. Sorenson:
 What I liked best about this book was the characters were unique. Often you find characters in romance books very recognizable: Â the mousy girl, the bluestocking, the raging alpha male. Here we have the youngish heroine who is a little forward, who likes to party from time to time, and is struggling to provide her brother a decent home life. The hero takes the job in Tenaja Falls because he thinks it will be a tame way to spend a few months trying to figure out where to go with his life.
Biggest complaint of the story was the emotional arc of the hero, Luke Meza. He went from “this is completely temporary and I’m not getting involved” to “I love you and I’m staying” in the matter of days and I could have used a bit of internal exposition to take me from point A to point B. (I know that sounds kind of contrary).
If I had one word to describe the story it would be gritty. Another would be modern.
The Shay Phillips is young (mid twenties). She has moved back to her hometown of Tenaja …
Popular Culture Association is putting out their annual call for papers:
We are considering proposals for individual papers, sessions organized around a theme, and special panels. Sessions are scheduled in one-hour slots, ideally with four papers or speakers per standard session.
If you are involved in the creative industry of popular romance (romance author/editor, film director/producer, singer/songwriter, etc.) and are interested in speaking on your own work or on developments in the representations of popular romance, please contact us!
SXSW will take place on March 12-14 and is a breeding ground for discussion about technology and media. Â A number of people have proposed book panels for the conference. If you are interested in promoting these, vote for the panels. Â Â The deadline for voting is September 4th.
 Quartet Press is putting the call out for contract editors, both content and copy editors. Â You’ll have to take a test, at least for the copyediting position, based on the Chicago Manual of Style. Â It would be fun to do something like that at Dear Author.
Content editors’ compensation is per word as well as royalty-based pay on ebooks and print
…
Dear Ms. Van Diepen,
 I can’t remember exactly where I first stumbled across your work. I think it might have been through a string of random link hopping that originated from a list of future Harlequin Teen authors. While your first book from Harlequin Teen won’t be coming out until next year, it turns out that you’ve already published a couple young adult novels. This one, in particular, caught my eye because it featured breakdancers.
Nicole’s family life is in shambles. Her brilliant older brother crashed and burned during his first year of college and has taken to the streets as a meth addict. Despite knowing what has happened, their parents enable him — giving him money in order to keep a roof over his head even though it’s more likely he’ll use the funds to keep up his drug addiction.
To escape the turmoil that is her home life, Nicole has thrown herself into the life of a breakdancer. It wasn’t something she thought she’d ever do before her brother left. But one night, she saw a dancer named Zin at a club and it was love at first sight. …
Dear Ms. Parrish,
 “Pitch Black,” the second book in your new series has been getting rave reviews at various blog and review sites. After reading it, I can see why. You appear to have taken criticisms of the romantic suspense genre to heart and tried to avoid the ones which cause readers to groan and roll their eyes.
Alec Lambert was supposed to have helped the CAT with their first case months ago but instead he spent the time recovering from the physical wounds he got during a botched field investigation. His body is mainly healed but his psyche remains bruised and he’s still nursing the guilt that his actions helped to contribute to a fellow agent’s death. He knows this chance with the CAT is probably his one shot at redeeming himself and saving his FBI career.
His first day on the job he gets tossed into the deep end as the team begins to investigate the deaths of two teenagers. Combing through the computer of one of them, they find he had contacted Samantha Dalton who runs an internet site devoted to preaching against internet scams and helping people avoid being taken in …
So yesterday the article I read about Jane Friedman’s $3 million capital venture gave me the impression that she was looking to move books into movies. Today on Galley Cat, there is some suggestion that her new venture is a digital publishing one and that she is looking to bring out of print titles into the digital marketplace. Â Possibly she is talking to Kensington (Kensington had been in talks with Samhain at one time but that fell through). Â Jane Friedman’s future business ventures sound a lot like rumors about the Apple Tablet. Something is happening but no one is quite sure what. Â There are existing digital publishers doing what Friedman is purportedly investigating. Belgrave House specializes in republishing Regency titles. Â Rosetta has struck deals with authors like Terry Goodkind. Â New publisher Quartet Press is looking for more legacy titles to bring out in digital. Â In any event, if this is true it means that someone besides the rest of us thinks that romance + digital = win.
 Publishers Lunch had an interesting article (subscription link) regarding the rise of the author speaker’s bureau. …
Loading ... I asked this question of Sarah last week at Borders. My initial response was “the end, of course” because I love that feeling at the end of a good book. When I pondered this more, though, I came the realization that I am much more excited to start books than I am to finish them. When I start a book, I am hopeful that I am going to enjoy it. I haven’t yet been disappointed. It’s all new and shiny. So for all the great emotions that I feel at the end of a good book, generally, I like the beginning the best. How about you?
Dear Ms. Carroll:
 I picked this book up because I had the jones for a good romantic suspense and when I paged through it I discovered that the hero is a former football player. WIN! I love sports related books. Alas, it wasn’t a sports related book but I still liked it.
I’m not sure if this book is marketed as a romantic suspense or rather just suspense because the conflict is not an emotional one between a male and female protagonist. The conflict rests primarily on the heroine and is action driven by the plot. From your website, it appears you are calling this book a thriller and that’s exactly what I would peg it as.
Caroline Hughes married psychoanalyst Dr. Porter Moross when she was young and vulnerable. Having escaped a bad childhood and trying to find herself, Porter knew just how to reel Caroline in. He promised her constancy, affection, and a life of comparative ease – all of which were elements that Caroline had never had and lusted after.
Shortly before their marriage, Porter’s dark side began to show itself. He acted particularly difficult whenever it appeared that Caroline …
Dear Ms. St. Claire:
 Of all the Bullet Catcher books, Hunt Her Down is the one I most enjoyed reading. That is because I was pretty much glued to the book the whole way through, my internal critic entertained into submission. The protagonists were well-drawn and sympathetic, their attraction palpable, the suspense aspects of the book moved the plot forward effectively, and the voice felt confident and focused. It was one of the easiest and most fun reading experiences I’ve had in a while. And even once I closed the book and began to contemplate its particular elements, Hunt Her Down held up substantially well to my critical contemplation.
The last time Dan Gallagher saw Lena Smith, they were different people. In Dan’s case, that difference was literal: he was in disguise and undercover for the FBI as Michael Scott, infiltrating the Jimenez family drug business and collecting valuable intel from the son’s girlfriend, Maggie (Magdalena) Varcek, who is also Michael’s secret lover. When the FBI raids the operation, Michael Scott urges Maggie to run away, but before she disappears into the night, she looks back one last time to see Michael’s lifeless body wheeled out, the …
Sony announced that along with the PRS 300 (the 5″ screen at $199) and the PRS 600 (the 6″ touchscreen at $299) it will release Sony Daily Edition at $399. Â Sony Daily Edition comes equipped with 3G wireless capabilities, a 7″ touchscreen, and is powered by the ATT Network. Â You can see pictures of the weird looking device here. Â I’m tempted but would need to see one in person. Â I would want to be able to access my Calibre folder and if it is possible to do that, then I would be interested in the Sony 3G.
In other eReading news, iRex and Barnes and Noble have partnered to bring a touchscreen wireless device to the US (and possibly others). Â iRex has been in the eink business from the beginning and my guess is that the device that is coming out will be excellent given its long learning curve. Â It will be tethered to the BN store, however, and despite BN’s claims otherwise, it is still lacking in selection. Â I am guessing that the iRex device will be aimed toward the consumer reading crowd and the Plastic Logic device that will be directed at the business crowd.
NetGalley has announced …
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Janet: Reading through the comments on the Dear Author Golden Era poll, they seem to reflect the split in the voting between the 1990s and the 2000s. Those who chose the 1990s seem more like Historical Romance readers, while a number of those favoring the current decade have pointed to the online community and the way that has opened up awareness of many more books.
Jaili:Â Hm, when I think of the 1990s, I think of category romance novels – from authors such as Sandra Canfield, Anne Stuart, Judith Arnold, Marilyn Pappano, Linda Howard, Jennifer Cruise, Sharon Sala, and many more – and romantic suspense as well as speculative romance (vampire romances, futuristic romances, ghost romances and many more). Historical romances of the 1990s were different from the 2000s, too.
Janet: I’ve read Stuart, Howard, Crusie, and probably others, but most of my reading, I think, has been in historicals of the 90s. But now that I think about it, Howard is very much of the 90s, at least the books I’ve read of hers. Some Stuart books, too, like Ritual …
Dear Ms. Somerville:
 Remastering Jerna is a remarkable book that harkens back to the beginnings of the novel in the eighteenth century. It is a spiritual autobiography, a travel narrative, a psychological exploration of extreme stress, a prison story, the memoirs of a whore — all the stuff of the novel’s infancy and growth. Although Remastering Jerna is brilliantly constructed and a stunning tour de force, it is only a romance in its last third, perhaps its last half, which is going to make my review slightly schizophrenic.
Set in…an alternate world (?) that is very much like our own but with a different political system, different money, and a matriarchal religion, Remastering Jerna is the first-person narrative of Jerna Setiq, teacher, husband, father…and repressed masochist. He agrees to tutor Davim Korei, the apprentice of his former master, Kimis, the master he broke with when he fell in love with and married his beloved wife Tyrme, mother of his two young children. Davim is almost 17, underage in this society where the age of consent is 18 for everything, and when Jerna finds out that Davim is Kimis’s current sexual submissive, he forces Kimis to stop …
Dear Ms. Briggs,
 Even though I adored “Alpha and Omega” in the anthology On the Prowl, the story which introduced readers to the werewolves Charles and Anna, and also loved the first novel in the series which follows these characters, Cry Wolf, I’m not sure I’m the best person to review Hunting Ground, the latest entry in the Alpha and Omega series. That’s because I have a pattern of tending to lose interest in the second or third book of series which follow the same protagonists, and for this reason, I only rarely read them, and review them even more rarely.
I made an exception for Hunting Ground because when I first read “Alpha and Omega,” I fell in love with Charles and Anna. I felt that I could read about these characters forever and not tire of them. In fact by now I’ve read “Alpha and Omega” around seven times, and Cry Wolf around three.
For readers who are not familiar with them, let me introduce this endearing couple:
Charles is an over two hundred year old, half Native American werewolf. He is dominant enough to be an alpha, but his pack …
Welcome to the My First Sale series. Each Monday, Dear Author posts the first sale letter of bestselling authors, debut authors, and authors in between.  Jeane Westin began her writing life as a freelance journalist, then wrote a number  nonfiction books and finally came to her first and true love, historical novels.  She has a great website up (www.jeanewestin.com) where she updates regularly the “Fun Facts” section about life in England in the 1600’s.
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After a career as a journalist writing articles for magazines and newspapers and several non-fiction books, I decided to leap off a literary cliff and write a novel. My agent at the time wasn’t thrilled. She’d had other clients infected with “novelitis” (her word) and she’d lost sure non-fiction sales. Still, I had to follow my muse and she recognized I wanted a new challenge.
In the mid 1980s, multi-viewpoint women’s novels were popular and I had a great idea for one…Love and Glory, about four of the first women to enlist in the military during WWII. As a very young woman, I had joined the army as a way to get to college on …
Shauna Summers, Senior Editor at Random House, gave us a sneak peak at upcoming Bantam/Dell/Ballantine books. Random House also sponsored a giveaway of 27 copies of different books and I threw in 9 ecopies of books for a total of 35 books. Stephanie Tyler scrounged up two ARCs of her fall release, Hard to Hold. We have a total of 38 books and we said we would give two books to each winner. By my math, we should have 19 winners. Congrats folk!
- Sharon M
- Julie
- Melissa
- Catherine Gayle
- blodeuedd
- Pearl
- Sandy James
- Marty
- Kathy
- Heather
- Amber E.
- Kimberly B.
- Collette
- Ammarylis
- Sam DG
- Eva
- Ashley V
- Debbie F
- Aly
 Some of the commenters had questions about where to start with Jo Goodman and we’re putting together an “If You Like” sort of post that will run down Goodman’s backlist and her style of writing. Until then, hope you enjoy Never Love a Lawman. Here are the 10 winners.
- Billie Davis
- GrowlyCub
- Mara
- Lou
- Jenny
- Keira Soleore
- lorenet
- Carrie
- charm
- Marial
Loading ... Reading slumps are a bad, bad thing. You start thinking that the genre sucks or that maybe you’ve changed so that the genre no longer appeals to you. You pick up ten books in your to be read pile and they all look horrible. The mere mention of a bookstore makes your lip curl in disdain. Even talking with other readers becomes tiresome. What to do?
Today I’m over at Borders True Romance blog with Sarah talking about books. Later today we’ll have a poll and a review. Cheers!
Dear Ms Jones,
 First off, kudos to whoever chose the title of the book. It’s cute, inspired and totally fits the subject matter of the story.
Heather Waters has made a life for herself running a Christian charity after that disastrous day ten years ago when she discovered two things. One that her father wasn’t her real father. And two that the man she was going to marry didn’t love her enough to commit to their relationship. It didn’t help her pride any to find out the first truth from the information dug up by the private investigator hired by her fiance’s family. Or to learn the truth about John Parker when he didn’t show up for the ceremony.
Sure that their mutual best friend, Michael Garrison, had known all along yet let her walk down the church aisle without trying to stop her, she hurled some harsh accusations at him, along with her bouquet, and stormed out of town. But the town needs her help after suffering a devastating tornado. Home is home and the pull is strong so Heather answers the call. Will she and Michael, who’s now a minister there, to be …
Barnes and Noble’s retail sales have slipped 5% because of low retail traffic while the web sales are up a tiny fraction from 8.2 to 8.9%. Â I’ve just scrambled to recover from one of my busiest weeks in a long time and I think that web sales are up because who has time for shopping inside the store? Â It’s Saturday and I think that I might get some time to browse today but in store book buying seems like such a luxury.
Gena Showalter and Harlequin are offering a $10,000.00 cash prize to some random entrant to promote her first YA release, Intertwined.
Rupert Murdoch has declared his intention to make everyone pay for Newscorp news. Â A recent article at American Journalism Review suggests that if newspapers would remove themselves from the internet entirely, the industry could be saved. Â I think that publishing houses sometimes think in this manner, wanting to sustain the print environment by delaying ebook releases, pricing the ebooks at a huge premium, and not releasing ebooks at all. Â Is it …
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 misty grey corner of nowhere and no place, Bloomsbury, London—late Friday night at the pub. Another long, dreary week of suffering in the trenches had passed quietly into the oblivion of raucous laughter, dizzying clouds of smoke, and rounds of drinks for all.
Just the five of them. “Out on the piss,” they would all say, and as Laleana glanced around the table, she came to realise that it had always been this way, for as long as she cared to remember.
Lit cigarette dangling precariously from his lips, Julian presided over them, antagonizing everyone as he flung his glass of whiskey back and forth through the air, punctuating his sentences with cast off drops of drink.
“So,” he said as if already demanding an answer, “We all still headin’ out to the ole family plot for holiday? I have confirmed…we’ve got the run of the place. We can paint the walls chartreuse should we feel so inclined. Hell, we can douse the place with petrol …
Dear Ms. Stacey:
 I confess that I haven’t ever read you before. Â I thought I had and just decided that while you were a great gun, your books were just not for me. Â Then, after seeing two recent releses, Becoming Becky and No Surrender, I thought I ought to give you a try. Â I tried Becoming Becky but couldn’t get into it at the time. But then I saw that Keishon, a very picky suspense reader, mentioned she was excited about your Devlin series book, No Surrender.
No Surrender is a fast paced action story that is sort of split in two. While I was reading it, I was instantly reminded of Suzanne Brockmann back in her earlier days when she was writing more romance actions stories than simply action stories.
I hadn’t read any other books in the Devlin Group series and never once felt lost. Â I do, however, have the urge to read the entire series now (and plan to buy them this weekend). Â The primary focus of the Devlin Group is of Gallagher and Carmen Oliveria. Â Gallagher is the number two man at Devlin Group who is primarily responsible for …
Ninotchka (1939)
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Grade:B-
I’ve now seen 4 Ernst Lubitsch films. I know there are plenty more I need to try but for now, I’m batting average with him. I did not care, at all, for “The Shop Around the Corner” while Ninotchka earns a somewhat lukewarm B-grade.
It’s 1939 and the Soviet Union’s glorious new people’s republic needs cold, hard cash. To that end, delegates are traveling the globe, hawking treasures confiscated during the Revolution. Three delegates are in Paris to sell the jewels of the Grand Duchess (or former Grand Duchess, as the Soviets call her) Swana. They quickly fall prey to the delights of the City of Lights. So much so that another delegate is sent to check up on them and the job they’re doing.
Comrade Nina Yakushova ‘Ninotchka’ Ivanoff (Greta Garbo) is all business and no fun. She views Paris as just another city which she will study to learn it’s technical secrets and has no interest in flirting with charming Count LĂ©on d’Algout (Melvyn Douglas) who tries his best to win her over to the decadent West.
Just when he thinks he’s won, Ninotchka, along with Iranoff, Buljanoff and Kopalski suddenly depart for Moscow. LĂ©on doesn’t know …
Dear St. Martin’s Press:
 I am writing this letter to you because I have a serious beef with this book and I don’t think its appropriate to direct my ire toward her, but rather you. You are the company that purchased this book and then released it at a cost of $13.99 on the unsuspecting public. I say unsuspecting because there is not an excerpt to be found on the web.
I have suspicions that the lack of excerpt is due to the fact that if one were provided, it would deter sales. One + One = Three is written as if it were a primary school handbook. The story is told in short three to five page chapters written in a dry biographical manner (which is kind of insulting to biographies). Former supermodel Munro opens a bar/lounge, has sex with two super hot, rich guys, and gets threatened in her bar by someone who has it in for Munro.
This ultimately leads to a) the most boring book written, b) the most conflictless book ever written, c) the most shallow characters ever profiled and d) the most unengaging sex I’ve read in a …
Loading ... This coming year will see a lot of re issues of older books. It’s financially convenient for publishers as they’ve already paid the advance on that book. Sometimes, though, our old favorites simply don’t hold up over time. Keishon, Avidbookreader, blogged about her recent re-reading of Sandra Brown’s Tiger Prince. Dated, Keishon wrote, but still good.
For me, I have a mix. I recently went on a re-reading binge of old Linda Howard books. Her Kell Sabin series is one of my favorite series of all time (definitely worth tracking them down on the used bookstore circuit). But I couldn’t re-read Whitney, My Love, without ruining all my electronics from the wall banging that would ensure. I’m convinced that my unholy love for Whitney My Love came from the fact that I was emotionally at the same level of Whitney when I read it in my early teens.
What about you? Old favorites that you can’t bear to re-read?
It’s the last call for the week giveaways. I’m going to close the threads today:
Go forth and comment. We’ll be hosting another one of those ACE/BERKLEY ARC giveaways the first week of September.
Dear Ms. Thornton,
 I’m not quite sure how to classify this book. It has a romance in it but when a couple doesn’t meet face to face until two-thirds of the way through the story, and then only for a few hours, it makes me debate whether or not to call the book a romance. But, regardless of that, it’s a book I enjoyed reading for a number of reasons.
Peter and Mina first “meet” when Peter calls in a car insurance claim after swerving to avoid his neighbor’s cat. It could have been worse, you see, but since his neighbor had just recently cut down the tree and all Peter hit was the stump the claim shouldn’t be bad. Should it?
Mina is amused at this almost hesitant Cambridge professor’s way of reporting the accident and his gentle, wry sense of humor. When he calls in the second accident, which occurs when he’s playing charades with his twin daughters while driving, he remembers Mina’s name and specifically asks for her, which is against all call center policy. It’s then that Mina takes it upon herself to check into his policy at bit and calls him at …
So yes, it seems like everyday is a giveaway but it just kind of happened that way. Â I don’t want Jo Goodman’s Never Love a Lawman get lost in the shuffle. We have 10 ARCs to give away to 10 random commenters. One of the books is the copy I read but I wanted to give it away because if even one more person becomes exposed to Goodman, all the better.
I do not envision Wyatt looking like this. ——>
Robin facilitated getting us these ARCs and I hope, come September, she shares her thoughts about the book as well. Â I knew this was a good book because the minute I finished the book, I started paging through it to re-read passages and ended up reading the entire book twice in the space of 24 hours. Â Now, this isn’t a perfect book. I had some issue with the villain and how that part of the story wrapped up, but for the pure joy of reading a romance, this book comes close to being some kind of perfection.
Jo Goodman’s books are not quick category reads to be devoured in an hour. Her stories are more …
Dear Mrs. Moore,
 After I had read “A Lover’s Kiss,” I fell in love with the secondary character of Lord “Buggy” Bromwell, friend to the hero of that book and the ones that preceded it. So when I checked out the August Harlequin Historical releases and realized that this was Buggy’s book, I pounced.
Justinian “Buggy” Bromwell never expected to meet the love of his life in a mail coach traveling from London to Bath. Just as Nell Springely didn’t expect to find her heart’s delight with a man who adores spiders. Still that’s what happens among other things including impersonation of a noblewoman, standing up to one’s parents, fending off nasty, brutish noblemen and traveling around the world in the name of scientific exploration.
Oh, this book started off so well. Buggy and Nell meet and have instant feelings for each other though neither one intends that these feeling should go any further. Nell plays her role of being Lady Eleanor, daughter of a Duke, though she eventually fesses up to Buggy and his mother instead of letting things continue until the end of the book. Buggy’s father eventually comes around and tells his son …
 Harlequin is going to allow us to purchase the vintage cover paper goods. Woot. I am ordering some of those matchbook notepads and some of those little paper booklets and postcards and WHERE IS MY COFFEE MUG??? Seriously, Harlequin heard our voices, you guys!
It’s Western Week in blogland. Kristie J started it off.
First off, I’ll start with why a Western. I’ve always been more a fan of “blue collar” type heroes then the “white collar” type. I just love a hero who works with his hands and isn’t afraid to work up a bit of sweat now and then. I love a hero who is willing to labour for everything he has rather then just inheriting it. And no one works harder then many a Western hero, whether it’s being a marshal, a cowboy, a gambler, a gunslinger or even a reformed outlaw.
And a Western heroine is one I can identify with so much easier. I don’t know if it’s my age or ’cause I’m more average myself, but while the girly girl in me likes reading about all the fabulous balls and dresses and things in Historicals
…
Dear Ms. Shalvis:
 I like the blurb for this book. A search and rescue member of the National Guard having served umpteen tours of duty is finally home. He can barely think of what he should do tomorrow. All he wants is to rest, relax and recoup. But even that is a challenge because his family is pressuring him to settle down, the government wants him back, and Jason Mauer can’t catch his breath long enough to process even one demand. The situation isn’t helped when a terrible storm sweeps through his small beach town of Santa Rey, California, and Jason’s skills are marshaled to help an old flame.
Lizzy Mann is a nurse whose sister seems to have gotten herself in a pickle. Her sister is 9 months pregnant in an area of Santa Rey that needs to be evacuated. Lizzy needs to get to the evacuation site and get her sister out there. Lizzy’s sister is congenitally irresponsible and thus cannot be trusted to remove her pregnant self even in these dire circumstances.
Lizzy and Jason have a small past which appears to be the basis of the romance, told in small …
Shauna Summers, Senior Editor  for Bantam/Ballantine, wanted to share with the Dear Author readers a bit about their fall line up. We thought it would be fun to give away a copy of the book that preceded the upcoming release. For every paper book giveaway, I’m going to giveaway an ecopy of the book via Fictionwise (because they are the only store that allows me to gift a particular book). Just drop a note in the comments to let us know what two books you would like. Every winner will receive two copies of a book. Go forth and comment.
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 DREAMFEVER by Karen Marie Moning (on sale 8/18). This is the fourth book in the Fever series following FAEFEVER, which just went on sale. That book ended with a big cliffhanger, so I think (and when I say I think, I mean I know) Karen’s fans will be clamoring for this next installment. And boy does it deliver! It’s been such a satisfying experience working with Karen on this series, especially since the books are so great and are performing so …
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Dear Romancelandia,
There is a sinister power afoot, an evil influence that is threatening to steal our enjoyment and satisfaction, a darkness that dims our reading joy. What is this evil, you may ask?
Someone is stealing words from the genre!
Although books have been getting shorter for a while now, readers are catching on more substantially now, and they are not happy. In her recent review of Loretta Chase’s new novel, Don’t Tempt Me, Smart Bitch Candy lamented that
…Chase does a lot with the decreased wordcount she’s working under. (I was anal-retentive enough to do a quick-and-dirty comparison: Lord of Scoundrels was 375 pages and 37 lines per page; Don’t Tempt Me runs 355 pages and 32 lines per page. Hmmmm.)
And in the comments of my review for Victoria Dahl’s One Week As Lovers, Growly Cub indicated that
Most importantly, this is yet another book I’ve read lately that absolutely suffered from word count constraints. Don’t know if they are self-imposed (aka considered â€tight plotting’) or publisher-imposed, but there were at least 4-5 books so far this year that really needed
…
First up is the news that Angela James, former executive editor of Samhain, is joining the Quartet Press folks. I think QP means business, no? In other QP news, Anne Frasier aka Teresa Weir is going to be releasing Bad Karma in ebook form through Quartet. Under the penname of Teresa Weir, Frasier wrote some fabulous romances with unexpected depth and emotion. I can’t wait to enjoy a re-reading binge of Weir books.
Linda Howard will be at the Borders True Romance blog tomorrow. She blogs, among other things, why she hasn’t written about Nick, the daughter of Zane and Barrie McKenzie. I spent the last two weeks re-reading many of my favorite Linda Howard books. I wish that Harlequin would re-release her Kell Sabin series because that remains one of my all time favorite series. I didn’t love White Lies like Midnight Rainbow, Diamond Bay and Heartbreaker. Of the three, I think Midnight Rainbow is my favorite and not because the heroine’s name is Jane.
Filed under “Why I Would Be …
Dear Ms. Cote,
 After enjoying your novel “Her Captain’s Heart,” I was psyched when your publicist sent me an advanced copy of “Her Inheritance Forever.” And even more excited when I realized that it would tell part of the story of Texas independence that isn’t usually seen in romance novels – what happened after the Alamo.
The story jumps straight into the action with Alandra Sandoval being rescued by her guardian Quinn and one of his ranch hands, Scully Falconer. Someone has paid renegade Comanches to kidnap her not knowing that Quinn would never rest until she was recovered. Alandra lived with Quinn and his wife for years after her elder brother died but now that she’s old enough to run her own vast rancho, it seems that there’s someone who wants to wrest it from her.
Alandra Sandoval is the child of parents who were forced by her grandfather to flee from Mexico City. Their son’s marriage to a mestizo was a disgrace the proud creole family would not endure. But before the married couple left, Alandra’s father was forced to sign a will giving the rancho back to his family should he die without …
At the Popular Romance Studies: International Conference, organised by the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance (IASPR), there was a brief discussion to explore this question: Are older under-represented in the romance genre? If so, why? Good questions.
The average age of heroine in U.S. romance novels is between 24-26 (and possibly younger in historical romance). And yet according to the Romance Writers of America RWA), the biggest slice of romance reader demographics is “women aged 31–49 who are currently in a romantic relationship.”  (http://www.rwanational.org/cs/readership_stats#Readers**).
Could it be the same reason why the majority of readers prefer their heroines to be virgins or virginal: reclaim the innocence?
**The Age of Romance Readers
The mean and median age of romance novel readers is very close to that of the general population.
- Mean: 44.6 years
- Median: 44.9 years
Those aged 31 to 49 are more likely to read romance and comprise 44 percent of the readership.
 Welcome to the My First Sale series. Each Monday, Dear Author posts the first sale letter of bestselling authors, debut authors, and authors in between. Today we welcome Randy Sue Coburn, author of A Better View of Paradise, in stores now.
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My first novel, Remembering Jody, sold a little over ten years ago, and the peculiar path that book took to publication might resonate for others who have hit the wall and don’t know where to turn. Which was exactly how I felt when the agent representing Jody gave up after six rejections.
Damn! Not only had I been abandoned by someone whom I’d embraced as a collaborator in launching a high-flying literary career, my book was no longer a virgin; what other agent would take Jody on, tainted as it was by rejection? Never mind that this is a situation that happens all the time in publishing—I was too naïve to know.
I’d been working on this book for years, and since it was more than a little autobiographical, about growing up Jewish in the South and a long friendship imperiled by mental illness, I took …
For the past several months, Sarah and I have had the distinct pleasure of working on the launch of the Borders True Romance blog hosted by Sue Grimshaw, the buyer of romances for Borders books. Â Today the blog is finally officially debuting and we, Sarah and I, are Sue’s”Romance Experts” at the Borders:True Romance Blog.
As I wrote for the introductory piece to be posted later today at the BTR Blog, we aren’t really experts in anything except for what our own likes and dislikes but they needed a name for us and that’s our label. We know the true experts are the collective voices of the community. Â I am always so amazed by the depth of people’s memories regarding the genre and the strength of their opinions.
I know that we want to foster that community spirit at BTR Blog even if your preferred retail place is somewhere else. Â Because in the end, romance community is defined NOT by the place where we shop but what we buy and what we keep and what we can’t stop talking about.
So what exactly is the Borders: True Romance Blog and who is this …
If you are a reader with over a couple hundred books in Calibre, it is fairly difficult to navigate, particularly if you are using Stanza. To make Calibre’s library more accessible via the internet (and thus via Stanza), a wonderful programmer shared this script on MobileRead. Essentially, the script looks at the database of Calibre and creates catalogs based on the database. The first screen includes the choice to browse your library by Recent Additions, Author, Series, Title, or Category.
From there, your authors, titles, series are divided by letter or by category (which is based on your tags).
Essentially Calibre2Web creates your own little webstore or catalog that you can access anywhere and at anytime. The problem is that this isn’t easy to set up but it can be done. I’m going to try to explain it step by step.
Port Forwarding.
Already I can see some of you freeze up. Port forwarding, you cry, what the hell is that? Most people who have internet have modems or routers. These devices block outgoing …
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Open Threads at Dear Author. Want to know what new releases are out this month and what readers are excited about reading? Check out the threads below. 
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