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

Evangeline Anderson’s books are my dirty little secret, my secret shame, my love that dare not speak its name. I don’t know WHY her writing makes me feel oh so fulfilled but in such a wonderful dirty way, but it does. They’re so full of *angst* and *melodrama* and *gay for you* and all the things that usually just make me roll my eyes. But they’re quick reads, hott! as anything, rollicking good fun, and you totally don’t notice the huge gaping plot holes until after you’re done and REreading the damn thing when you go, Hur? (like I just did). Her books are the one reading habit I’m ashamed of, but it’s the squidgy, yummy shame that you just want to share with people. So let me share…

Str8te Boys is pretty much dorm porn with extra-angst. It’s a short little story–under 70 pages–but so much fun. It’s told completely from the third-person perspective of Maverick (ORLY? I mean, that name? Really?!), an arrow-straight (uh-huh) jock at the end of his senior year of college, who happens to play “gay chicken” with even straighter, party animal roommate and …

Dear Ms. Mitchell.

This book reads like what I imagine being inside a guy’s head must be like. Lots of stonewalling, lots of mixed motivations, lots of confused emotions. This ability you have to get emotions perfectly right and to show how they are so very wrong-headed is both the beauty and the problem with this book.

Daniel Gardner is back at his childhood home in Easton, PA for Christmas and then to supervise the final packing for his mother’s move to Harrisburg. The story opens with a break-in at his mother’s house on Christmas Eve. In the aftermath, he meets Detective Trey Erikkson, his teenage crush and first-fumblings compatriot. They haven’t met in 15 years since Trey ran away to bootcamp and there’s hard feelings between them, as well as the mystery that encompasses the break-in, Trey’s mother’s murder and father’s imprisonment for it, and later criminal shenanigans.

It’s the suspense plot that made the book less than brilliant. While I could get behind the conspiracy theory of the final revelation and I enjoyed the slow reveal of Daniel and Trey figuring out the mystery, the plot itself was Swiss cheese. Why would Daniel’s …

Dear Ms. Dahl:

Anyone who has read your contemporary Romance, Talk Me Down, knows that its heroine, Molly, writes erotic fiction under the name Holly Summers, including a little work called The Wicked West, an homage to her very own hero, Ben. So what a clever promotion to actually publish this story under the pen name Holly Summers, because for those who have read Talk Me Down the tie ins are fun and illuminating, and for those who have not, they will simply be getting a fun and hot piece of erotic fiction (more on that in the second half of this review, penned by Joan/SarahF) in The Wicked West.

Lily Anders has come to Wyoming from England after inheriting a house from her brother, a young widow looking for a new start in what we now call the Old West. Her next store neighbor, Tom Hale, is the upright, slightly uptight sheriff of their little town, and he’s not at all sure about the tempting Mrs. Anders. Neither is Lily, for that matter, as she is only beginning to learn about herself beyond her unusual desires in the bedroom – her desire, specifically, to …

The International Association for the Study of Popular Romance is open for membership! Go to the website and click on the “Join Today!” link. Or just go straight to the membership page!

(Through the power of PayPal, they take all comers and all our various currencies all over the world. It is, after all, the International Association.)

POPULAR ROMANCE STUDIES
An International Conference
August 13-14, 2009
Brisbane, Australia

Sponsored by
The International Association for the Study of Popular Romance (IASPR)
University of Queensland
Queensland University of Technology
Romance Writers of America

For decades, scholars have studied popular romance, whether in romance novels, films, comics, or other media. They have studied its sexual politics and aesthetic structures, its audiences, its authors, and the industry that produces and distributes it world-wide. For the most part, however, they have done so in isolation, divided by boundaries of nation, genre, and academic discipline.

On August 13-14, 2009, the University of Queensland and Queensland University of Technology will host “Popular Romance Studies: an International Conference,” to be held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Romance Writers of Australia. Scholars from Australia, the United States, and elsewhere will convene for this event, which will take place on the QUT campus (Thursday) and at the University of Queensland’s Fryer Library, home to a remarkable archival collection of Australian romance materials.

We are interested in papers on romantic love in the popular media (print, film, music, etc.), now or in the past, anywhere in the world. Topics addressed might include:

• Romance on the World Stage (texts in

…

Dear James:

This was such a great book as I was reading it that I couldn’t put it down. Although there have been a few things niggling at my brain in retrospect, the actual reading experience was almost perfect.

That pleasure came mostly from Joe: Deputy Joe Paterson, devout Mormon, Sheriff’s deputy in a small county in Utah, and a deeply closeted, although self-accepting gay man. The novel is told from Joe’s first person perspective, which I usually don’t like, but his voice was so strong and so comfortable and so real, that I just couldn’t put him down. I imagine having him in your head as you were writing was both incredibly uncomfortable and deeply satisfying.

Kabe Varghese is the trouble that Joe can’t refuse. He’s a rock-hound, a high adrenaline climber, on federal parole for “[f]ree-climbing a federally-owned dam with enough E in [his] pack to fly a football team” and is trying to keep his citified nose clean by staying with his family, who asks Joe to keep an eye on him. Joe can’t help but keep an eye on him, because he’s totally attracted to him. When a Search …

Dear Ms. Wendell and Ms. Tan.

I spent Wednesday through Saturday last week at the Popular Culture Association Conference in New Orleans attending all the Romance Area panels. There were papers about domesticity as it constructs Eve’s character in JD Robb’s novels, and the moral construction of Sookie Stackhouse and the vampires she interacts with (from Jessica of Racy Romance Reviews, whom we have seduced to the dark side!), and how Milton’s Paradise Lost informs and creates the themes of Laura Kinsale’s Flowers from the Storm, and how sadomasochism is constructed and subverted by BDSM romances. An excerpt from this book would have fit right in at the conference, because it’s that insightful and well-researched. And a few “cuntmonkey”s and “fuck”s would certainly be no less inappropriate at an academic conference than me reading out loud “fisting his own cock desperately and sucking on his fingers like a whore sucking cock for a fix.”

You ladies need no introduction to the romance world, of course. You are the Smart Bitches, romance reviewers, fans, and advocates. (And Google-bombers extraordinaire.) Now, I consider Sarah a …

Dear Ms. Beecroft:

Rarely, oh so rarely, I’ll read a book that is so sublime, so transcendent, I actually come away from it a little melancholy, because it’s over and I can never read it for the first time ever again, because I know I’ll never be able to do justice to it in my review or analysis, and because I know I won’t meet its equal for many a year. But the process of devouring the book, of eking out its layered, textured meaning, of savoring its descriptions, and the emotions–oh, the emotions!–leaves me flying for days and the melancholy only makes it all the sweeter.

This is one of those books.  It ravished me. It scoured my insides. I feel like I’m stuck in it and I don’t ever want to get out.

False Colors is one of two debut releases (April 12) for Running Press’ new M/M Romance line that is being shelved in Romance in bookstores (and my mother, who works in Barnes & Noble [30% off all the time, baby!], checked for me–yes, it will be shelved in romance, at least in B&Ns across the country, and her store …

Dear Ms. King.

Although brilliantly written, with stunningly well-drawn characters, and a very compelling plot, this book was difficult to read. It wasn’t a happy-go-lucky, care-free, lift-you-up read. It was difficult and depressing. So while I couldn’t put it down, and I thought about it for days and weeks after I read it, I would find it very difficult to read again (which is why this review took me months–I had to read it again! So I read it during Drill for the National Guard :).

Brett Derwent has his life planned out. He’s going to make some money teaching skiing and working at a store in his hometown in Montana, and then he’s going to go to Washington for a pre-med degree, where he’s going to explore his sexuality in the freedom of a college campus far away from home. His happy, solidly middle-class life is thrown into wonderful disarray when he meets Tommy Hawks at the local ski shop. Tommy is the oldest son of an abusive father and a seriously codependent mother. Everything he does, he does to keep peace at home, or to take the worst of his …

The website for “Love as the Practice of Freedom? Romance Fiction and American Culture” is finally live!

This conference is on April 23-24, at Princeton University, and FREE! to the public.

There are some pretty illustrious names presenting at the conference. Rather than repeat them all here (Eloisa James, Jenny Crusie, Beverly Jenkins, SB Sarah, Michelle Buonfiglio), go to Teach Me Tonight for the link-filled goodness of the presenter line-up. Or go poke around the conference website itself!

So, if you’re in the vicinity, we’d love to see you there in just about a month from now!