Jane
 is a long time romance reader whose passion is, you guessed it, reading. She's currently loving contemporary authors like Sarah Mayberry and Kristan Higgins but her first love will always be the historical. Some of her old time favorites are Amanda Quick and Johanna Lindsey and some of the new favorites are Sherry Thomas, Joanna Bourne and Claudia Dain.
This month, the recommendations shelf was quite bare. Â We actually considered not recommending any books but recognizing that Books on Board would give a small discount to ones that we did, we came up with the following short list.
Skin Game by Ava Gray (Ann Aguirre)
Someone reminded me that I enjoyed Skin Game by Ava Gray (Ann Aguirre). One of the hazards of reading books early is that sometimes you forget when they are coming out. Skin Game features two morally ambiguous characters who fall in love while evading the law, exacting revenge, and learning how to trust each other. Â The best part, in my opinion, is that these characters don’t become defanged when they do find their happy ever after.
Home for the Holidays by Sarah Mayberry
Joe Lawson has a thing for his new neighbor Hannah Napier. As a single dad, he shouldn’t be thinking what he is about her. Still, that doesn’t stop them from getting close. And the way she connects with his kids, it’s as if they’re a family. (I’m not a big fan of kids in books but this worked for me. Hannah is a prickly tomboy who is regaining …
 Updated: We are extending the promotion until Friday (today) at 11:59 pm EST.
Avon put together this really lovely giveaway to celebrate the start of the new Stephanie Laurens‘ series, The Black Cobra Quartet. Â The premise of the Black Cobra Quartet is that there is a British traitor who is the head of the Black Cobra cult, an organization that is terrorizing villages and setting up a reign of fear in Bombay. Â Evidence has been gathered to deliver to the England but given the scope of the Black Cobra influence, it is determined that the four British officers who have this information will split up and make their way back to England separately in hopes that at least one of them will be able to deliver the incriminating evidence and put a stop to the Black Cobra.
You can read the prelude to the series here and the first 20 % of the launch title,
Untamed Bride, here.
The winner of this contest will be sent this gorgeous Vera Bradley bag stuffed full of the entire Laurens backlist (almost 30 titles). Â Â To enter, simply …
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. Sabrina Darby introduces her own brand of erotic romance with her single author collection, On These Silken Sheets (link to excerpt), available in stores now.
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 I remember getting The Call really well because I was sitting with my dad in front of my computer, watching CNN.com as John McCain introduced Sarah Palin as his running mate. I hadn’t thought too much about where or when it would happen––if it would happen––but I never would have imagined my father being the first person to know simply from the way I said hello on the phone. It was August of 2008 and it had been three months since I’d emailed the complete version of my book to Avon Red.
And I say complete, because they had already seen two of the novellas of the single author anthology I had submitted.
In January of ‘08, I had the idea for a short erotic story, which started with this one vivid interlude. From those …
Welcome to the November Promotional Thread for Authors. What’s this you say? I read quite a few blogs outside the romance blogosphere and many of the big ones have a daily open thread where the commenters drive the bus.
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 October would be a November 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.  (Please …
JMC posted last week about having problems with con artist protagonists. I’ve enjoyed the occasional assassin book such as Kelley Armstrong’s Nadia Stafford series or Barry Eisler’s John Rain series. Jenny Crusie seems to love the morally ambiguous protagonist with books like Welcome to Temptation, Faking It, and Agnes and the Hitman.
I voted in the poll that I sometimes like the con artist or criminal protagonist, but you know, I prefer the non criminal heroes and heroines. What about you?
Dear Ms. Campbell:
 I read your controversial debut and while I appreciated the chances you took, it didn’t inspire me to read your other books. When Captive of Sin arrived on my doorstep, I thought I would give the book a chance.
Sir Gideon Trevithick finds a woman cowering in the stable where his horse is quartered.  She has clearly been beaten and when he extends his mantle of protection, she would rather be alone and in pain that accept his help.  Gideon will not be gainsayed and sweeps the woman into his carriage and away from the perceived danger.  He vows that he will not only protect her but he will not harm her himself.
Lady Charis Weston is one of the wealthiest women in England. Her stepbrothers are trying to force her into marriage with another man to pay off their debts. Â Charis refuses. Â She is only a few months away from gaining control over her fortune. Â Her stepbrothers engage in a series of small punishments which crescendo into threats of rape and of actual physical abuse. Â She runs away with no clear picture or plan, just an instinctive need to …
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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Fate had painted a bull’s-eye on my back. The ironic thing, I didn’t believe in fate or karma before my brother left a message on my office’s answering machine that was the equivalent to Armageddon dropping a line just to say hey. Being the self- designated, birdie-flipper of fate I had to know if listening to the message would be like Darth Vader—Phoenix, I am your brother.
After six years of silence, only one reason would have made Samuel call me. Earlier this week the family had been going through the family bible, and would I mind if they whiteout my name?
But, no, instead of letting the call stay a mystery I helped fate change my course, and pushed that stupid button to listen to the message. At least to my credit, I braced myself to hear what my brother had to say.
“I really don’t want to leave this message, but I don’t think you would call me back.†He paused, and it felt like …
Dear Ms. Andre:
 I admit that the one and only book I read by you was one about football and I had a fairly negative reaction to it given that so little of the football aspect was portrayed with accuracy.  I was  hoping that this would be different.  While Hot as Sin is readable, it suffers from the same problem as the football book.  The story is paramount and little details don’t matter so long as the story proceeds in the fashion that you want.  Accuracy, authenticity take second fiddle to the emotional arcs of the characters.
Sam and Dianna were the epitome of young love (or at least that is the set up that you want us to buy initially). Â Â Sam was 20 and I think Dianna was 18. Â Dianna, for reasons revealed later, leaves Sam at the tender age of 20 and Sam has never, ever gotten over it. Â He’s so connected to her that when he is told she was in a car accident in Colorado, he immediately flies (from the Lake Tahoe area) to be by her side. Â Sam is a forest firefighter, a “hotshot”.
The story that you tell about …
Amazon filed for and was recently granted a patent to change words in a book in order to track down the source of pirating. John Scalzi called this a stupid idea because it violates his creative control over the work.
I think Amazon has the right idea. A change to the html css stylesheet, for example, could randomly create some kind of near invisible change that would allow the source of the pirated material to be tracked down. Courtney Milan suggested something like an italized period as that would be virtually unnoticeable. You could place the substitutive words in the Author’s Note or in the ordering of the metadata tags.
This type of social DRM could create an impediment to that “casual piracy” that content creators fear. I.e., how many people are you going to share a book with if that file contains something that can be tracked back to the original user. While the Amazon concept might seem like an anathema to some authors, I do think it’s a step in the right direction. I hope publishers and vendors can work together to create something like this that would remove the impediment to legitimate …
Dear Ms. Enoch:
 After finishing the previous trilogy which I believe to contain some of the best work of your career, I was delighted when The Care and Taming of the Rogue arrived on my doorstep, ridiculous title notwithstanding. With the adventurer hero, I thought we might be getting something unique again.
While prose in The Care is a well written, the book lacked the emotional appeal of the previous three. In fact, in writing this review, I found my memory to be totally devoid of this book even though I read it only a week ago. Even the notes that I took failed to jog any emotional response.
Bennett Wolfe is a former adventurer in the Congo. He was thought dead and his journals were stolen by one of his fellow travelers. While he was presumed dead, said fellow traveler, Captain David Langley, published a memoir using Wolfe’s journals and notes and took the opportunity to paint Wolfe in a very unflattering light. Bennett’s uncle, the Marquess of Fennington, has Bennett declared dead so as to take part in the profits of the memoir. Bennett is not …
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