Archive for September, 2009
Dear Ms. Hart,
 I’ve enjoyed several of your books, and three of them, the novels Dirty and Broken, and the novella collection Pleasure and Purpose, are among the best books I’ve read in recent years. I was thrilled by Pleasure and Purpose and greatly looking forward to No Greater Pleasure, its sequel, so I’m genuinely sorry to report that I found the first half of the book unsatisfying enough to put the novel down unfinished. The following, then, will not be a full review but rather an attempt to articulate the reasons I stopped reading.
Like Pleasure and Purpose, No Greater Pleasure takes place in (to crib from my review of the earlier book) “a fantasy setting which resembles mid nineteenth century Europe in terms of its technological development.”
It is the prevailing religious belief that each time a soul finds perfect solace, even if only for a moment, an arrow appears in the god Sinder’s quiver. According to legend — and many people’s faith — when the quiver is full, Sinder, his wife and his son, The Holy Family, will reunite, bringing peace and harmony to mankind.
To that end, the Order of Solace
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I woke up and Twitter was alive with the news that Simon & Schuster was making a huge change to its organizational structure. Simon Spotlight Entertainment and Pocket Books will be reconfigured. All the hardcovers and trade books that were once Pocket Books or SSE will now be Gallery Books. Pocket Books will focus solely on mass market releases. Louise Burke will be the Executive Vice President and Publisher at Gallery. No further layoffs were announced. Via PublishersLunch (paid subscription).
BordersMedia tweeted that it would be supplying free WI FI to its customers by October via Verizon so you can buy your Sony eBooks in the store like you can buy Barnes and Noble ebooks from the new iRex reader. What you won’t be able to buy, though, is the new Sarah Palin memoir which the publisher won’t release in ebook format until 6 weeks later. Kassia has more to say about this decision at Booksquare.
Speaking of ebooks, the Kindle + University experiment = unhappy students. The student newspaper at Princeton quoted students and professors alike being frustrated with the Kindle’s lack of features. It’s clear that the …
Dear Ms. Thomas,
 This is the last book in a trilogy that doesn’t read that way. Which is a relief to me as I hate jumping into a series and feeling over my head with past characters and situations. After reading the middle book, The Cowboy’s Promise, I knew the book on the hero’s brain damaged sister would be up next and I knew I didn’t want to miss how you would handle this. As with the other books of yours I’ve read, it is with tact and believability.
Samantha Cartwright was once a no-nonsense tomboy who loved horses and wasn’t afraid of anything. Then she was kicked in the head by a rescue horse, spent time in a coma and then more time fighting her way back to as close to normal as she’ll ever get. Physically she looks fine but she copes by taking notes, making lists and trying to stay calm in the face of trying situations. Since the accident, her overprotective father, wealthy oil baron Dominick Cartwright, has tried to smooth her path but Sam knows she if she wants to obtain her dream, she’ll need …
Dear Ms. Edwards:
 Thank you for sending me this book. I confess I tried to read this book many times, never making it out of the first few chapters. The heroine, Miranda Wake, a food critic, gets drunk at a restauraent premiere and makes some very loud and rude remarks. She then insults the chef, accepts a dare to be in his kitchen for one month, and sells a tell all memoir based on her experiences, which she has not yet had.
But then the book was released and positive reviews popped by readers who had actually finished the book. Finally, Sarah convinced me that it was worth powering through. Yes, she told me, Miranda gets in her own way, repeatedly, but Adam Temple is a “happy alpha” and his motley crew of chefs make it all worthwhile. It’s true. In the end, I did like the book and was glad to have read it.
Miranda Wake is an esteemed food critic in New York. Her restaurant reviews can be scathing and she is followed avidly by the New York food cognoscenti. Unfortunately, Miranda’s quest to become a …
Dear Ms. St. Claire:
I read your new book, Make Her Pay, with a bittersweet sensibility, because while the end is still open for the series, it appears that this will be the last Bullet Catcher book for a while. Which made me want to love this book, even though we only met Constantine Xenakis in the wonderful Hunt Her Down. And as with all the books in this series, there is much to enjoy here: snappy dialogue between the protagonists, a nice balance of suspense and romance, an interesting backdrop, and sizzling hot attraction combined with good camaraderie between the leads. Although Make Her Pay did not completely wow me, I still found it a respectably entertaining read and a solid contribution to the series.
Constantine “Con” Xenakis is trying hard to switch sides. The former thief is determined to do a letter perfect job for Bullet Catcher CEO Lucy Sharpe, even though the job involves treasure – sunken treasure, to be precise. And someone is stealing these priceless objects, despite the supposedly airtight security treasure-hunting mogul Judd Paxton has in place. So Con must both identify the thief and protect the treasure, along the rest of the dive boat, from …
Maili is guesting over at Victoria Janssen’s blog home about her favorite category books. Sadly so many of them are out of print. I’ve read all but one of the stories recommended by Maili and they are worth hunting down and not just because Jane is the heroine in one of the books. Really.
You never really know what you may get when you pick up a category romance. Will it be another tale of cookie-cutter characters, much-peddled-and-tired old story line, and insane fillers that makes you want to bang your head against a wall, wondering why you spent money on something wasteful?
Or will it make you sit quietly after it ended, musing about how much you enjoy being a romance reader?
The Daily Beast, a blog run by Tina Brown, has inked a deal with Perseus Books to create “Beast Books”. Beast Books will release the titles in digital format first, followed by a print run, the quantity of the print run determined by the sale of the digital title. The books will be primarily political and cultural and about 45,000 words.
Perseus is paying The Daily Beast a five-figure management advance to cover the costs of editing
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see more Lolcats and funny pictures
Last week, I posted an “If You Like” query looking for good werewolf romances. I commented that the Urban Fantasy genre is replete with werewolves but that the werewolf is much rarer in mass market romances. Indeed, in the comments, many a reader referenced popular urban fantasy series like those from Patricia Briggs and Carrie Vaughn were mentioned, but there really weren’t many romance authors mentioned. Given that there are hundreds of published romance authors and paranormal romances are one of the more popular sub genres, I figured that there were dozens of series devoted to werewolves. Alas there is not. There are the odd scattering of werewolves amongst larger paranormal groups but few series devoted solely to the werewolf.
There is even a debate about the wolf shifter v the werewolf:
IMO, a werewolf is a person who has no ability to shift into the wolf mode at will. A person involuntarily shifts into the wolf mode because of, say, the moon or an extreme emotion, which means he or she has no control over his or her ability to
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Dear Ms. Pearce,
 I wasn’t sure what to expect when I began your latest book, Simply Wicked, not having read you before and having only the vague idea that you write erotic romance, a term that has come to be applied a bit too broadly to provide much useful information for me as a reader. The fourth line from the opening was thus both a bit startling and edifying:
He licked his lips, tasting dried blood, brandy and the acrid tang of another man’s cum.
Ok-ay, then, that clears up the erotic romance part, I guess.
Anthony Sokorvsky is the 25-year-old younger son of an aristocratic family. Marguerite is a widow whose husband, Lord Lockwood, was killed in a duel under scandalous circumstances two years previously. They are brought together when her younger siblings decide that Marguerite needs to get out and circulate and choose Anthony to squire her (he seems an odd choice given that they know him from his frequent appearances at their mother’s brothel).
I felt rather at sea in the early chapters of Simply Wicked – though it is ostensibly set in 1819 London, at times it almost seems like an …
Kate Duffy was the backbone of romance at Kensington. As editorial director, she created the Brava line and discovered a multitude of authors. A no nonsense, tell it like it is, sort of person, Kate was so devoted to her job that illness took no place. Unfortunately, Kate succumbed to a difficult battle she had been having with her health. Kate was a tireless supporter of the genre and we will all be poorer because of her death.
CBS Evening News carried a piece on digital books which apparently means that it’s gaining some traction in the public consciousness. I expect that it will be a big gift this year. After all, how many iPods/iThings can you buy a kid?
It’s Banned Book week and there are several blog posts around the web:
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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. Kylie Brant has a trilogy of Romantic Suspense books out from Berkley. The first release, Waking Nightmare, was out in September. Waking Evil, the next in the series, will be on the shelves next Tuesday.
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 Usually it takes very strong margaritas to get me to tell my first sale story. After all these years it still makes me wince at my ignorance. But I started writing before the Internet made it so easy to network with other writers. I didn’t belong to any writing groups or know anyone else who was writing. I just decided one summer I was going to write a book.
After a few months, I deemed it â€ready’ and opened up the cover of my favorite books (Silhouette Intimate Moments) to see where to send it. I got the phone number for the company in New York and called to tell the receptionist I had a book I wanted to send in and asked …
Dear Ms. Seidel,
 Your 1983 category, The Same Last Name, begins when three cars arrive at New York State’s Frank Lake State Park. One of the park’s forest rangers, twenty-five year old April Ramsey, greets the man who registers this group of six visitors. April directs the tourist to the best campsites for a group that size, and he gives her a list of the six visitors’ names and the telephone number of the law firm where all six work.
After the man leaves, April passes the list to a co-worker, Faith, and Faith calls April’s attention to the fact that one of the other lawyers shares April’s last name. April freezes in her tracks, because she and Christopher D. Ramsey III have more than their last name in common. The two used to be married.
At age eighteen, April was a bubbly, popular cheerleader from a small Virginia town. But she had never held a job, cooked, cleaned, or kept abreast of the news. April’s mother wanted her daughter to be popular and happy, and she did not prepare her daughter to cope with hardship.
When April began …
Dear Ms. Roux.
 I opened this file when I got it because it wasn’t paranormal (no world building…I’m so sick of world building) and because you wrote it and I adore your Caught Running with Madeleine Urban. That said…meh. So many holes, such annoying characters, unbelievable timeline, so much potential angst wasted, wasted I tell you!
Vic the lawyer loves Owen the sheriff and part-time bailiff. Owen uses Vic as a fuck buddy and has done so for five years, which is tearing Vic apart. Or at least, so I’m told. Shane the judge is Vic’s best friend and convinces Vic, on 12 hours’ notice, to go on a month’s vacation. Apparently, public prosecutors in North Carolina don’t have to clear their schedule to go on a MONTH’S LONG vacation. I think I need to go to law school. As we learn…eventually…Shane loves Vic and has done so for…yes, you guessed it, five years. But as the entire story is told from Vic’s not-quite-first-person perspective, Shane’s emotions pretty much get lost and ignored in Vic’s angst and general cluelessness. Which is a shame. Vic, of course, comes to realize the relationship potential in …
  
These images are the covers to ebooks from Random House, Pocket, and Berkley.
I’m a big champion of ebooks, obviously, but there are all kinds of problems with ebooks from the expensive hardware to the ridiculous number of formats and DRM encryption schemes. Â Those are issues that publishers may not be willing to address right now because of certain business decisions but there are quality issues with the books themselves that publishers should start addressing.
For some reason, many print publishers have this belief that readers of ebooks don’t want the color cover that print readers get. Â Not only do readers of ebooks get shafted on the color cover, they don’t get back cover copy or a stepback picture. Â Digital consumers like pictures too.
I’ve heard that the reason that publishers aren’t including the color cover copy is because the digital readers are black and white. Given that 50% of consumers of digital books are reading from a laptop and a significant portion are using the iPhone or iTouch, that excuse simply doesn’t fly. Â When I first started buying ebooks, there were no commercial readers …
In today’s First Page, Laura Kinsale brought up a question in the comments regarding unfamiliar terms in a story.
I have a question, as a writer, about one of the comments. This isn’t a loaded question, or any sort of commentary on this excerpt itself, it’s input for me.
DS said
I had to look up “drafts on collection” to find out what he entrusted with,
As a reader–and I think I mean a romance reader here, vs say an SF/fantasy reader where world-building is more common in the genre–when you come across a term you don’t understand, do you tend to feel uncomfortable until you look it up? Are you willing to trust the author to define it for you in context?
I tend to do the latter as a writer, try to define the term in context without spelling it out in a dictionary sort of way. But having lost my ability to read as a non-writer many moons ago, I was intrigued by DS’s comment.
Which would you prefer, for an unfamiliar technical term like “drafts on collection?”
To try to figure out the meaning from the context? To stop and look it up? To avoid the term entirely? For the author to
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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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Jonah was late.
Three minutes late, by the somber reckoning of the Trinity Church clock. Two, by his reliable old Waltham, which had kept him apace for twelve years while the rest of New York hurried to keep up. It was only on this morning, twisted into disorder by weeks of expectation and anxiety, that he had failed the Waltham and himself.
Braced for the wind, he jumped from the streetcar the instant it stopped, and navigated a path through the muddy slush to the sidewalk. There he stepped into the crowd and, with a tip of his bowler as he passed the churchyard, proceeded down Wall Street fueled by stomach-churning anticipation—twelve years’ worth.
He had been barely nineteen when Bennet Grandborough had first entrusted him with drafts for collection. It seemed a lifetime ago. From runner to clerk to teller, he had lived up to Mr. Grandborough’s faith in him. Even so, a promotion to ranking bank official had seemed as unattainable as the stars. …
A British betting firm has set the odds for the Nobel prize for literature. A.S. Byatt, author of Possession (which is essentially a romance book), is on the list at 50 to 1 odds.
Washington Post tells the woeful tale of a newbie author who had almost no publisher support. Publishers are basically executing the Poor Law and driving authors from their books to the promotional table. (Yes, I am being sarcastic here). The tale has a happy ending, though. In the face of Dickensian oppression, the author is able to make a video and fund her own book tour which led to the sale of many books for herself. Lesson: Promo is your friend dear author because your publisher is not going to do it for you particularly when yours is just one of 560,000 books published in one year.
Poor Kelly Corrigan, first-time author, didn’t get invited to this weekend’s National Book Festival on the Mall to plug her 2008 memoir, “The Middle Place.” She won’t be rubbing shoulders with heavyweight authors such as Sue Monk Kidd, John Grisham or Pulitzer winner Junot D?az. No major newspaper bothered to review the
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How to Steal a Million (1966)
Genre: Romance, Comedy
Grade: B+
I first saw this movie years ago and fell in love with it. In the many times I’ve watched it since, I’ve picked up on some details which make little sense or which are glossed over to carry the plot but it still amuses and enchants me whenever I pull out my DVD copy. From the opening scene during the high price art auction, we know we’re going to be in a world of smart sophistication.
Nicole Bonnet (Audrey Hepburn) despairs of ever getting her beloved, and art forging, father (Hugh Griffith) to stop pulling fast ones on the art world. His latest plan involves loaning a family owned statue to a Parisian museum for an exhibition. But instead of having been carved by the famous Renaissance sculptor Cellini, it was actually made by Bonnet’s father and posed for by his mother.
On the opening night of the show, Nicole catches a man who she thinks is a burgler in the Bonnet house. Simon Dermott (Peter O’Toole) is actually someone quite different from a burgler but he lets her believe that he is one while he charms her into not only letting him …
Dear Ms. Kleypas:
 Tempt Me at Twilight brings readers closer to the end of the Hathaway family romances. We have only Leo and Beatrix left. Poppy and her family are staying at the Rutledge Hotel for the London season. Poppy is convinced that she is in love with Lord Michael Bayning, the heir to a viscountancy. Despite the fact that she is the sister of a viscount, Poppy does not have the bloodlines to be considered a good match for Bayning. He promises her a letter to broach the subject of their romance with his father, but begs her to keep it private. Poppy agrees happily.
Problems arise when Beatrix’s ferret runs off with this scandalous letter and Poppy gives chase. She ends up in a secret tunnel where a mysterious man finds her, lifts the letter, and settles in for a nice chat with Poppy. The mystery man is Harry Rutledge, the powerful owner of the hotel. Poppy’s natural intelligence and her unconventional education pique Harry’s interest. A collector of fine and curious objects, Harry decides immediately that the beautiful Poppy is a must have acquisition for his collection. …
Welcome to a new feature at Dear Author: the Intro Interview. Alyson H. will bring us occasional interviews with newly-published authors. If you are an author with your first (or perhaps second) novel coming out, and you’d like to be considered for an interview, send your name, web information, and release date to DAintrointerview at gmail dot com.
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 This month, we’re meeting Leanna Renee Heiber, whose Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker leads off a series that’s part fantasy, part historical-paranormal romance. In Heiber’s Victorian London, Jack the Ripper is no mere elusive criminal—supernatural forces are at work, an apocalyptic unrest threatening the city. The title character is also a refreshing mix: people keep describing her as timid, but Percy Parker’s heart “is fortified with passions.” She keeps rising to—and above—the occasion, and the blushing, crushing schoolgirl becomes the dauntless heroine.
Leanna is also a playwright and actor, and her novella Dark Nest won the Prism Award. She and fellow writers Maya Rodale and Hope Tarr founded Lady Jane’s …
Dear Ms. Smith,
 Your regencies novels have been among my favorites for years. I’d heard conflicting things about your contemporary mysteries but decided to take the plunge and try one that seemed, from the blurb, to also include some regency stuff.
Belle Savage, American romance writer, rents a cottage in England for inspiration. And she finds her Regency hero. Only he’s a ghost, who entangles her in the past, where Arabella Comstock’s tragic story pours from Belle’s pen. When the Lord Raventhorpe of Regency days finally learns the truth, will the contemporary lord also find his destiny?
I’m going to attempt to avoid spoilers but honestly I think my chances of doing this are piss poor.
There are two sides to the book – the modern part wherein Belle goes to England, settles into her cottage, learns about the tragic past of Alexander and Arabella and decides to write about this. And the part during which Belle seems to be possessed by Arabella who tells her story through Belle’s writing. It has a very gothic feel – especially towards end when All is Revealed and Belle tries to join Alexander. …
Dear Ms. Kittredge,
 I have a very hard time explaining why I keep reading this series. As I’ve mentioned in the past, the main character, Luna Wilder, can be really off-putting at times. On the other hand, it’s very nice to see her maturing and evolving over the course of the series. The Luna Wilder we meet in Witch Craft, the fourth installment of your Nocturne City series, is certainly not the same Luna Wilder we met at the beginning in Night Life. Well, in some ways, at any rate. I still question her taste in men.
When Witch Craft opens, Luna is now the head of the Supernatural Crimes Squad (SCS), a new division in Nocturne City’s police force created to look into cases not quite on the mundane side of things. Problem is they want the SCS to start bringing results ASAP. If not, then they’ll be disbanded and Luna and her co-workers will be out of a job.
Luna sees their chance to prove themselves with a new case. Mysterious fires are being set all over the city, killing some unsavory people who deal with Nocturne City’s supernatural side. What’s more, …
In non shocking news, while first day sales of the Kindle version of The Lost Symbol were strong, digital sales represents only about 5% of the 2 million copies sold so far which was in line with what I thought last week:
Over time, obviously, the digital version cannot outsell the print version because of the limited number of digital readers (even assuming 50% of the digital consumers read on their laptops). What it does show, however, is that digital readers are important consumers.
Shelf Awareness had a nice piece about paper goods and how digital isn’t quite overcoming the desire for people to write with a pen in a nice journal. I personally love my moleskin notebooks (I use them to take notes in about my reviews) and I can’t wait for the paper products from Harlequin to show up somewhere…
Whether it’s a practical matter like ease of use or something more intangible, journals, day planners and the like continue to hold their appeal. “There are people who find it important to write things down,” said Whitelines’s Walters. “We can do digital artwork, but we still paint, we still draw, we still sculpt. The sense of expression in
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Dear Ms. Carlyle:
 I have read you since your debut in 1999 with My False Heart. My False Heart remains high of my favorite romances of all time and it is the book against which I measure all of your other titles. The story was so fresh at the time. The heroine, Evie Artevalde, was not a virgin. The hero, Eliot, the Marquess of Rannoch, was a surly, disreputable lord. He lies to her. She turns him off but ultimately they have a memorable happy ever after. Wicked All Day tells the story of of Eliot’s illegitimate daughter, ZoĂ«. ZoĂ«’s mother was an opera dancer whom Eliot paid off. Eliott was not a good father. He had good intentions, but up until his marriage to Evie, he had left ZoĂ« in the hands of a succession of governesses.
ZoĂ« was incredibly spoiled because Eliott didn’t know how to be a good parent. His response to a governness that treated ZoĂ« badly was to cast her out without a reference and order his servants to make sure that ZoĂ« never had another unhappy day. ZoĂ« grew …
Dear Ms. Daniels,
 I haven’t read a book from the “Intrigue” line in a long time and decided to check out the latest offerings. While I usually try to avoid stepping into a series midway through, this time it didn’t affect my overall enjoyment of the book. Plus the mention in the blurb about the hero on something other than a horse was too good to pass up.
Russell Corbett was all cowboy and wasn’t about to let a lady lasso him! But Dulcie Hughes had him tied up in knots from the moment she nearly collided with his combine. She rode into town with her fancy rental car and city clothes to claim her secret inheritance. And neither tall tale nor handsome rancher would deter her from exposing a years-old cover-up at the Beaumont property. She expected to find answers, not fall in love. But like the threatening thunderhead on the horizon, the truth would come fast and fierce, and there would be no escaping the consequences.
You toss the reader straight into the mystery. Why has Dulcie inherited this piece of land in rural Montana and why did …
The good news is that I didn’t have to have a root canal. Instead my tooth is cracked and needs a cap. The bad news is that if the temporary crown doesn’t alleviate my problems, I’ll have to have that root canal.
In other publishing news, Ballantine has bought Jenny Sanford’s memoir. Â As much as I have sympathy for a woman whose bastard of a husband humiliates her non stop on the national stage, I wish these politicians would just stop spilling their guts about their private lives. Â I’ve had enough of the John Edwards’s story too.
Jessica of Racy Romance Reads guest blogs at Romancing the Blog about how art should not be judged on the relative morality of the artist.
Visual artists, musicians, film directors, and writers throughout history have been some of our most wretched human beings: liars, cheats, egomaniacs, thieves, heartbreakers, sellouts, and all purpose scumbags. A favorite example among philosophers is the painter Gauguin, who left his wife and family destitute so he could go to Tahiti and paint nudes.
Has, from the bookpushers blog, had a wonderful post about disabilities in romance at the Borders True Romance blog:
Reading â€Lie with Me’ made me
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Lambda Literary Awards have redefined its focus:
The Lambda Literary Foundation (LLF) seeks to elevate the status of openly gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans (LGBT) people throughout society by rewarding and promoting excellence among LGBT writers who use their work to explore LGBT lives.
As such, it should be noted that the Lambda Literary Awards are based principally on the LGBT content, the gender orientation/identity of the author, and the literary merit of the work.
Essentially Lambda Literary is requiring that only GLBT authors will qualify for the LGBT awards. Â I thought that this might be a good opportunity to discuss the issue of LLA and the concept of m/m fiction as a whole. I invited Dr. Sarah (aka Joan) to discuss the issue with me.
Jane: I think this is a direct response to the rise of straight women writing m/m fiction.  We review m/m romances here at Dear Author without thought to the gender of the author.  I did bring up the issue regarding gender of an author in a post I did regarding authenticity.  The comments exploded. At least one person accused me of being a zipper sniffer.
It’s obvious that the gender of an author, as well as his or her sexuality, is a …
WARNING: this review may not be work safe as it includes profanities and sexual situations. Carry on.
Dear Ms. Byrne:
 I hadn’t even realized that this book, the third in the Faustin brothers trilogy, was set for release until I received the Samhain reviewer email. I jumped on the chance to obtain a review copy because I had enjoyed Bound by Blood quite a bit.
I thought this was a great, fresh vampire romance. It wasn’t fresh because the vampire myth held anything new. The freshness was totally based on the characters themselves. Mikhail is the eldest of the Faustin brothers. He and his family rule over the East. His mother calls him home to tell him of a prophecy of his mate. It is Alya Adad. I’ll just let the book do the talking:
Helena’s shrill whistle cut through the sludge of noise. Mikhail lifted his head and looked around the room with fresh eyes. In just a few seconds his world had collapsed and been rebuilt in a terrible new form. Helena threw out her arms in frustration. “Excuse me. I’m new here. Could somebody please tell me who this Alya Adad is?”
His father said, “The eldest child of Prince Zouhair Adad of Morocco.”
His mother said, “Mikhail’s first love.”
Gregor said, “She’s the fucking queen of the damned.”
Mikhail stood. That surprised them all, he could tell, and he hated their worried glances. He cast a long, slow gaze around his family circle, warning them against pity. “You should know her name, Helena. She rules the entire West coast. And we’re at war with her.”
Google announced a deal last week with Espresso Book Machine wherein the full panoply of out of copyright books Google has scanned and digitized can be available through the POD machines. Â The books can be printed in less than five minutes. The suggested retail price for such a book is $8.00. Â Maybe publishers want to consider my idea for customized print on demand books?
An enterprising coffee shop owner in London’s Soho has created a Mills & Boon reading club where authors are invited to come and participate in a reading and conversation with readers. Â In other Harlequin conglomerate news, Harlequin has partnered with Softbank to bring digital adaptations of Harlequin manga to South Korea with cooperation of Teruten Incorporated.
Barnes and Noble has announced that the downloads for both the BN App and the BN eReader App have surpassed 1,000,000 mark.
Speaking of ebooks, Dystel & Goderich has posted a response to the ComputerWorld article by Mike Elgan on ebooks. Â The ComputerWorld article suggests that innovation needs to happen in publishing but all the change is focused on the retailing and reading experience in the digital market. Â Dystel & Goderich agent, Michael, agrees and disagrees. Â Both …
It has come to my attention via a reader in email that I’ve never done an “If You Like Werewolves” post (and frankly, I need to start up the series on a regular basis. The fact is that there aren’t a ton of werewolf stories in paranormal romance. Werewolves are prolific in the Urban Fantasy subgenre but in PNR, the wolf is more rare.
Nalini Singh’s Pys/Changeling series has focused more on the cat shifter than the wolf shifter although the Snow Dancers will likely play a bigger role in future books. Caressed by Ice features a she-wolf/Psy pairing but it didn’t delve into the shifter culture as much as it was focused on the emotional trauma suffered by Brenna and the thawing of Judd, the Psy Arrow.
 I fell in love with the wolf shifter myth with Kelley Armstrong’s Bitten and Stolen which are told from the point of view of Elena who became a werewolf when Clay bit her. Armstrong’s latest work, Frostbitten, is a return to the world of Clay and Elena.
Kinsey Holley’s Kiss and Kin is a sexy werewolf shifter story but it’s …
 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 are featuring two first sale letters. The first is by New York Times Bestselling Author, Kat Martin, whose latest romance, The Christmas Clock, features two people who really need a second chance.
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I never wanted to be a writer. Or at least I never knew I did until I sort of stumbled into it. But I always had stories rolling around in my head and when my husband started writing a Western novel, I thought…hummm…maybe I could do that.
I had characters and a plot in mind right away, a western romance because I loved reading them, and coming from a western background (my great grandmother came out in a covered wagon), I was comfortable in that time frame.
But how to actually write?
I needed to learn the basics so I went to the first writers’ conference I could find, which happened to be in Santa Barbara, California, and turned out to be one of the best in the country. I went …
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 are featuring two first sale letters. Lori Brighton is a debut author with her first historical, Wild Heart, due out in November. Don’t forget to read the bottom of the first sale story to learn how to win one of 3 $10 gift certificates.
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When is it time to give up on a dream? After a year? Three years? Six? I’ve often pondered that question on my road to publication.
 I wasn’t one of those writers who was reading at three and journaling at five. Honestly, English class and all the grammar rules that came with bored me to tears. But I did read a lot, and my imagination was insatiable. To escape those angst-ridden teenage years, I’d make up stories. By the time I was an adult, I had so many tales clambering around in my head that for my own peace of mind I decided to put one to paper.
I didn’t start writing until about seven years ago. I’d heard those Cinderella …
Reading will hurt my eyes. eInk technology is designed to alleviate eyestrain. Because it refreshes only when the page is turned, there is no constant motion as there is with a computer screen to cause eye strain. It can be easier on the eyes than a paper book, particularly the thin pages of the mass market.
It’s too expensive. It doesn’t have to be. With the arrival of digital libraries, one can have the freedom of the ebooks without the cost. There are other, hidden costs with paper books. First, there is the storage issue, a bookcase that runs around $200 can store a few hundred books. An ebook reader can store 1,000s. One reader mentioned that she had to downsize her book collection with each move. It was the ame for me. One of the driving factors for buying ebooks was the fact I had culled my paper book collection ruthlessly to prepare for a big move. Over time, I’ve rebought many books that I had purged and frankly spent more money replenishing my book collection than the cost of an ebook reader. I’ll never have to do that with ebooks.
Further, you can read on …
Dear Authors:
 I opened THIS anthology because I liked Sindustry I. But this volume is so obviously all the leftover stories from the Sindustry I anthology that didn’t quite make it into the first volume. And most of these stories should NOT have been included. This anthology had very few redeeming stories and some that make me want to puke, which kinda dampens any enthusiasm I might have for the whole. Mostly it’s filled with stories with awful, weak, boring, TSTL characters who couldn’t characterize their way out of a paper bag, and their ridiculously over-protective and unrealistic saviors. I have never really understood what m/m readers are complaining about when they say that that one of the characters doesn’t have to be the woman, but I do now. In this volume, one half of the relationship was invariably the damsel in distress who needed saving, the other the knight in shining armor who knew just how to take care of things, pretty lady…uh, I mean lad. Yech.
As in Sindustry I, the premise is that these are all stories about people in the sex industry, either strippers, prostitutes, or porn actors. This volume does a …
Welcome to First Page Saturday. Individual authors anonymously send a first page read and critiqued by the Dear Author community of authors, readers and industry others. Anyone is welcome to comment. You may comment anonymously.
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Warning: Graphic Content
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The lamb’s blood was splattered against the wall. Its bleating shrieks of pain and surprise drowned out the crowd noise around them. The woman covered her ears to the animal’s pitiful cries. In a circle, the seven of them stood around the dying creature.
“Ladies first,” the black-haired man said, smiling at their guest. He held the lamb by the ears, pulling back its head to expose the cut throat.
She hesitated, then overcame her disgust and dove on the animal, drinking deeply of its warm blood, satiating her thirst. Only for a while. She could feel the lamb’s heartbeat fading as the blood pulsed out of its body. Not wanting to be an ungracious guest, she released her grip on the animal and stepped back.
“Thank you,” she said to the man who’d offered her a brief feast, blood dripping from the lower half of her face. He motioned to a nearby water pump.
The woman …
Dear Ms. Stiefvater,
This is the first novel of yours that I’ve completed. I attempted to read your debut, Lament, but I’m afraid my general disinterest in faeries got the better of me. Shiver, on the other hand, is about werewolves, which remain my favorite of the supernatural bestiary. Add to that the fact that I first heard about this book pitched as The Time Traveler’s Wife meets Blood and Chocolate, and my interest was definitely piqued. That said, while Blood and Chocolate is one of my favorite novels ever (please don’t talk to me about the movie; it doesn’t exist in my head), I have to add the caveat that I’m one of the five people in the entire world who didn’t care for The Time Traveler’s Wife. So I was curious to see on which end of the spectrum Shiver would fall.
When she was a child, Grace was attacked by wolves. She’d been playing in the backyard, when wolves pulled her off the swing and mauled her. But mysteriously, one of the wolves — a grey with striking yellow eyes — stopped the rest of his …
First up, the good news. Kresley Cole is releasing the first story (PDF link) in her Immortals After Dark series titled “Warlord Wants Forever.” It’s one of my favorite works of hers so if you’ve been wondering what kind of writer she is, you can download this FREE PDF copy of the book that ordinarily you would have to pay through the nose to get (and suffer through some really awful stories).
Flush with the news of the big sales for digital copies of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, the ebook community is slapped around with the latest news that etailers like Fictionwise and WH Smith are being forced to remove access to books that people have already bought because of geographical restrictions. I know you can’t see it but I’m shaking my fist right now. (okay, not right now because I am typing but I was before.) I don’t think a simple refund is going to make people happy. This sort of thing results in two actions: 1) piracy and 2) decline in adoption of ebook reading. Way to go!
Speaking of things encouraging piracy, songwriters, musicians, and composers are lobbying to get a …
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My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997)
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Grade B+
Let me be honest and say that Julia Roberts is not my favorite actress. I like her in “Steel Magnolias,” loved her in “Erin Brockovich” but beyond that, not so much. And make it a double if it’s a chick flick. So when “My Best Friend’s Wedding” was released, I didn’t see it. Nor did I make any effort to in the years that followed. That is until I started doing these reviews and checked out a few “Top romances” and “best romances” lists. This film kept making the lists. Finally I caved and clicked on it at Netflix and it was here that I read the Roger Ebert review that changed my mind about watching it.
Julianne Potter (Julia Roberts) and Michael O’Neal (Dermot Mulroney) are two people who’ve been best friends since college. He’s always been her standby, the man she thought she could fall back on if, and when, her romantic relationships failed. But one night he stuns her with a phone call and tells her he’s fallen in love and is getting married to Kimmy Wallace (Cameron Diaz). He wants Julianne to be there at the wedding, hence the …
To celebrate the release of my non existent Were Gerbil, I solicited reviews from the Dear Author community. Â The winner gets a copy of Jill Myles’ Gentlemen Prefer Succubi. Â The winning entry is as follows:
Dear Ms. _l:
 At first I was greatly enjoying your book, The Multi Billionaire’s Virgin Rodent Wrangler Bride. Yes, I had to hide the cover on the bus, but I was fascinated by Ho-Lotta and Chee’s developing relationship. I also greatly enjoyed the subplot with Harvey and Reynold the hamster jugglers; in fact, sometimes I rooted for their successful romance even more than I did the main characters’. Your setting was perfect; I could hear the squeak of the wheel and smell the cedar.
But as I read, something about your text nagged at me. In several places, your writing style abruptly changed. For example, this passage where Ho-Lotta sees the shifted Chee for the first time:
He broke away from her, panting. The moonlight struck his face, and suddenly the handsome man was gone.
In his place….
It was ratlike, looking like it belonged to the same family as the globally widespread brown rat,
…
Dear Ms. Roberts:
 I am trying to climb onto the futuristic bandwagon so I was excited when I saw this book released from Samhain this week. While the story had potential and I found it readable, I ultimately came away disappointed.
Blademir, the Crown Heir to the throne of Barian, was sent on a diplomatic mission to Zona, a matriarchal society that had closed itself off to the rest of the planet. Zona grew out of a pleasure slave to Barin (how she grew to have her own culture I never really understood). Zona refused to advance technologically causing people living in its outer sphere to conduct raids into Barian land. Blade has been sent to Zona to convince the Matriarch that a little cooperation and trade could increase the standard of living for all Zonans.
Taryn Penthes is a Zonan Silvergard Commander. The Silvergard are the elite fighting squad charged with defending the Zonan. She is to escort the Bariani diplomatic team to the Lady Palace. The team gets ambushed and two members of the diplomatic team are killed and so is the Crown Prince’s Prime. Taryn …
Just to keep you updated on my tooth situation, apparently I will have to have a root canal. I said to my dentist “with all the advanced technology, this procedure will be totally painless, right?” He looked at me seriously and nodded his head in agreement. While I laughed semi hysterically, he tried to tell me that root canals have gotten a bad rap. That’s news, right? That root canals are totally painless and have gotten a bad rap?
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Google is claiming that it’s gotten a bad rap and it’s CEO is complaining that all the critics just want to preserve the status quo. No, I think the critics don’t want private companies to engage in a complete revision of the copyright law …
Dear Ms. Richards,
 It was the description of this novel which piqued my interest. I mean, how many books are there out there that take place in the prairie province of Saskatchewan? And feature farmers? Not too many, I’m thinking.
Widow Hannah Kramer has decided that turning her house into a bed and breakfast is the way to try and salvage not only the farm she inherited from her late husband but also the one from her parents. Times are hard and agriculture just isn’t paying the bills the way it used to. Hannah despairs that so many of her neighbors are being forced by high debts to sell their land and move so when she, and everyone else, hear that the Golden Oak company is buying up land, she sees red instead of seeing what the company is really trying to do.
Quinn Anderson is immediately attracted to the young widow he helps overcome her fear of heights. Knowing he’s going to be in the area for the summer negotiating farm buyouts, he decides to stay at her B&B and even agrees to help around the place each day. …
Dear Authors:
 I only opened this volume when Dreamspinner sent it to us because Madeleine Urban had a co-written story in it. I adore her longer co-written stories with Abigail Roux, and the volume started off with “Reluctant,” so I thought I’d have a great little story and then skim through the rest. Instead, “Reluctant” was truly awful and the rest of the stories saved me from chucking the volume off my computer.
At 332 pages, this is a seriously hefty volume (electronic, of course). And with only 12 stories, that’s between 25-30 pages a story, much longer than the usual short stories crammed into an anthology. This gives enough time to actually flesh out the characters, plots, and themes. Or time for the story to move from blah to boring and awful.
The theme for the volume is sex industry workers: both low- and high-end prostitutes and strippers, mainly. What was fascinating to me more than anything was how each story used the sex industry angle—as a meet-cute, as conflict, as a moral failing, as a perfectly legitimate profession, with or without comment. I’m strangely fascinated by this particular profession and by how …
 Loading ... There is so much I could write about in terms of names in books (and maybe that will be an upcoming Tuesday post) but for today, we have a poll inspired by author Christina Dodd who tweeted today:
“For you as a reader, is it important that you can pronounce character names?”
Yes is my reply. I will stop reading a book just because of the character’s name.
I have to go to the dentist today for an aching tooth. Yes, my hardliving consisting of peanut m&ms and Mountain Dew is catching up with me. That’s some real news I know you all were dying to read.
DNAML, a company with more consonants than sense, is selling a PDF to ePub converter. This would be great if we knew how well it worked but alas, DNAML doesn’t believe in trial versions of its software. It’s $99 if you want to take the chance.
Laura Benedict explores the advantages and dangers of the free giveaway.
Technology gives us the ultimate democracy. Ultimate freedom. Anyone can be an artist. Put the work out there and you, too, can be judged in the marketplace of ideas. As long as you don’t plan on making a living at it.
Rupert Murdoch has begun to charge for the Wall Street Journal’s mobile content. In an interview, Murdoch sounds positive about the future of journalism.
Almost in every property at the moment [there is] a slight lift,” Mr Murdoch said. “It’s very much better than it was a couple of months ago. It’s everywhere,” he added, highlighting an 8 per cent fall in
…
Dear Ms. Sagara,
 You are easily one of my favorite authors. These days it’s very rare for me to follow a series past a certain point, but I find myself doing that for the novels you write under both the Michelle Sagara and Michelle West names. It also helps that thus far, they haven’t disappointed me which goes a long way to keeping this reader’s loyalty.
Cast in Silence is the fifth book in your Elantra series published by Luna. The Cast books follow Kaylin Neya, a private in the Hawks, the police force that helps protect the city of Elantra. Kaylin is stubborn, hot-headed, and at times immature, traits which prove unsurprising given her background. Still, she’s a useful member of the force despite her flaws.
Unfortunately for Kaylin, she’s also gifted with an unusual magical talent of alarming proportions, the signs of which are evident in the black marks that cover her skin and have, in fact, continued to spread across her body. The only thing she finds useful from this talent is her ability to heal, which she exercises often at the expense of her health. Other people, however, …
Dear Ms. Green:
  This worked for me on most levels although I know that a non fan of Harlequin Presents would probably be turned off by the manufacturered angst and the constant barrage of distrust and misplaced accusations from the hero. Kate Lancaster, a beautiful young woman, has been unable to get over a kiss she shared with Tiarnan Quinn when she was eighteen. To combat her feelings, she has always acted with hostility toward Tiarnan, treating him with icy disdain but at the christening of her best friend’s baby, Tiarnan’s sister, Kate let down her guard for one moment and he saw it.
…And right then Kate knew that all her flimsy attempts to defend herself against him for years were for naught. He’d just seen through it all in an instant. Seen through her. Her humiliation was now complete.
Tiarnan not only sees it but it provides him an excuse to pursue her. Tiarnan, unlike other HP heroes, suffers some anxiety at being rejected by Kate. He’s always found her to be very cold toward him and at times …
Dear Ms. McAllister,
Click here to go to eHarlequin.com
 Recently a friend of mine recommended you as a “Presents” author whose heroes aren’t assholes. She said something like, “They don’t suck.” Telling me something is different from the normal is like baiting a juicy worm on a hook for a hungry fish. So yeah, I bit. And guess what? She’s right. Flynn doesn’t suck.
What Flynn does, actually, is try and take the entire weight of the Earldom of Dunmorey on his shoulders after his disapproving father, the eighth Earl, drops from a heart attack. Flynn was never supposed to be the next in line, that would have been his brother Will who died coming to fetch Flynn at the airport from one of Flynn’s many overseas adventures as a journalist.
And one of those adventures was a brief stay in a small town in Montana. Almost six years later, a beat up letter finally catches up with Flynn in Ireland and informs him that the woman he flung with for three days got preggers. Knowing his son is almost six now and frantic for having missed this much of his life, Flynn heads across …
A short piece in Publisher’s Weekly notes that  July booksales fell 0.5% and down 2.5% for the year.  The good thing for bookstores is that the new Dan Brown book is out.  Increased foot traffic in stores will hopefully lead to an increase in book sales over all.  M.J. Rose jump started a twitter campaign yesterday to get people to make recommendations of what book to buy with the Dan Brown purchase: #buyplusbrown.
Via reader GrowlyCub is this article on CNN regarding the rise of ebook readers. Â At least one author sees this as a positive because of the lower costs of digital publishing can lead to more diversity in publishing:
That raises the question: What will happen to printed books?
“E-books will gain, especially in the indie publishing market, making it far easier for a company or individual to sell a quirky, unique book for little money and see profits almost immediately,” said Jessup, the Pennsylvania author and e-book reader.
Smashwords is helping authors provide books to soldiers. Â Through Operation eBook Drop, authors …
see more Lolcats and funny pictures
Courtney Milan’s first published work will be her novella contribution to the “In the Heart of Christmas” anthology headlined by Mary Balogh. I had the opportunity to read this story and I was struck immediately by the fact that the characters were of the lower class. William is a clerk earning not very much money and Lavinia tends the bookstore owned by her family that also generates very little money. William feels like he could never get married because he doesn’t have sufficient income to support a wife, particularly in a lifestyle he believes someone like Lavinia deserves.
Few books really deal with the issue of poverty. If poverty is an issue, it is almost always resolved because one of the main protagonists is rich or at least very well off (usually the man). There was one Stef Ann Holm book I read years ago where the heroine was beyond broke to the point that she constantly wondered how she would feed her family or keep a roof over her daughters’ head. The incessant …
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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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