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

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***

Somewhere between ordering dinner and the arrival of the Italian salad, the conversation at Gio’s veered into “Have you ever…” territory.

Two sets of eyes turned in Carla’s direction as she sipped from a glass of house red. Where do they find all this great stuff, she wondered, absently contemplating the shelves of cans, bags and boxes in the grocery store cum restaurant. And what the heck is it for?

“Hey!” Mary’s fingers snapped twice, close by and loudly, startling Carla back to attention. “Don’t leave us hanging, lady. We want details.”

Details. “Well, you asked, ‘Have you ever met someone and felt an immediate physical –’”

“– sexual –”

“– ‘sexual — attraction to that person’ and I said that I have.”

A waitress began seating a party at the table to Carla’s left and the three women automatically moved in closer to each other.

“And,” Gretchen prompted, passing the wine bottle to Mary, who waved it away.

Carla leaned forward. “I met a colleague’s partner after work one day. He …

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***

“Nawlins ain’t nothing like what yer used to, McDunna. You may be a specialist where you come from, but here you ain’t shit.”

Dianna McDunna rubbed the center of her forehead, trying to chase away the voices of doubt which had nagged her since she’d left the police precinct. She’d been here a week and hadn’t managed to make much of an impression on her coworkers, at least not the kind of impression she wanted to make. Barry, at least, seemed willing to give her the benefit of the doubt and time, but Longstreet was a misogynistic dirtbag and already making arguments to get her assigned to a desk or busted back to patrol. She hadn’t worked patrol in almost eight years, the very thought was insulting.

The spires of the St Louis Cathedral rose closer and …

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***

McLean, Virginia October 1985

Claire Campbell winced at approaching headlight beams. As the station wagon passed, she sighed and focused on the curve ahead. Deadman’s Curve, they unimaginatively dubbed it as teens, which, in Claire’s case, proved nearly prophetic. Her right knee ached. She gripped the wheel, ignoring the pain, as she navigated this curve yet again. The pain was not memory, though memory played its part; Hat Trick took the curve too fast, too high, and Claire went through the VW van’s windshield, landing on the crumpled hood of a Cadillac. Now, exhausted, hurting, and afraid, Claire made the curve and eased off the accelerator. The semi-circular driveway was up ahead on the …

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***

Lannie Bryan panicked and slammed on the brakes as her Mini began to slide down the hill outside the hospital.

Big mistake.

Nine years of living in temperate North Carolina combined with the fatigue of the past twenty-four hours had caused her brain to short-circuit and she’d forgotten the first rule of winter driving. Never, ever brake in a skid.

As the car slid sideways down the drive, her lessons from Drivers Ed kicked in and Lannie managed to gain some control. Instead of rear-ending the car in front of her, she sideswiped it, bouncing almost gently off the rear bumper, jumping the curb and coming to rest half-on and half-off the tree lawn

I can’t deal with this now, Lannie thought as she stared at the car she’d hit. It was a Mustang like Joe Santoro’s old …

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***

“If size really matters, I’m in trouble.”

Riley set in place the last of the new shipment of fairy figurines she’d been shelving and turned to the customer who had spoken behind her, a practiced smile of welcome readied for him.

The smile froze on lips gone stiff. And for one insane moment Riley thought sure the fairies at her back were not the dainty bits of ceramic they appeared to be but evil sprites come to life. How else could she account for whatever nasty spell had materialized the blast from the past standing three feet away and grinning at her like he figured she’d find him irresistible, and, really, why not?

Bren Reynolds, as she lived and breathed. Come back to mock her.

He dangled before him one of her better sellers — a T-shirt with a caricature of Bigfoot she’d drawn herself, a caption beneath it stating: Size Matters. “I don’t think I can compete,” he said, jiggling the shirt at …

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***

The assassin began a silent countdown. Two hundred yards away, looking through the rifle’s scope, made the mark seem an arm’s length away.

Conrad Andersen pulled a hooker over his lap and playfully spanked her ass. The middle-aged tramp shook her head and kicked her legs in false protest. She slithered against his portly belly, gave him an exaggerated kiss, and then vanished from the scope.

The john wiped his mouth and traces of the hooker’s lipstick smeared across his face. Frowning, he got up moving out of view.

Lucky used the free time to ease the tension built up after a two-hour stakeout. First, a stretch and twist sideways popped a few vertebrae. Flexing both hands and rotating both ankles brought the circulation back. Then Lucky wondered if military snipers did similar exercises when they watched a target.

Doubt any of them ever had to watch an Olympic, Viagra-induced, sexcapade.

Lucky eased back into position as Andersen appeared in the scope again. He was dressed in his …

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***

1941 – The Russian Front
The coldest winter in a hundred years…

It was madness. The noise all around, screams and garbled orders that no one understood anymore. The never-ending thunder of gunfire and shelling. Dodging, and ducking, slipping in the slush of mud and snow and blood. Friend or enemy, all looked alike in the swirling white of the cold.

And it was cold.

A soldier dodged behind the burnt-out carcass of a tank, and looked around. He was lost, disorientated by the foulness of the bloody Russian weather. There were bodies, some still moving, piled around the snow. Bodies of his countrymen and bodies of the enemy, turning blue beneath the weight of the winter. And what a winter! Never in his life had he seen such cold, such biting winds.
He gripped his gun harder, and glanced around again. Gott im Himmel, if he could only see something through the snow. It was just a swirling mass, with shadows moving behind it. His friends, or the …

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***

Once upon a time…Is that how all the stories used to start? After all this time, all this loneliness and solitude I’m not sure what I remember anymore…what is real? I was a man. I remember that much at least. Not just a man, but a knight. Remember that, wretched creature. Hold to that. A knight you were, cherished by the king himself. Respected. Renowned. The most beloved knight in all the land. A hero. And now….Now I am a beast, trapped forever as a rangy wolf, with only the boundaries of this forest as a buffer from the human world that has cast me off. All that was good, all that was noble and knightly in me is gone now.

No, not all.

A knight is more than his armor. Pennants flying. The banquets. The fine clothes. Honor is not just to be found in the outward signs of it. I have to believe that.

He’d had fine clothes once. A fine home. …

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***
Change had never done Belle Ravenna any favors. Moving from one coast to another last year had meant change: a new school, a new house, and no friends. But maybe this would be the year things would finally change for the better. The start of eighth grade would give Belle the chance to reinvent herself, finally become the person she wanted to be.
Someone knocked into Belle as she picked up a chocolate milk. Ashleigh. Belle’s corndog slid off her fries. The stick end landed in the ketchup.
“I hate it when the nobodies just stand there,” Ashleigh announced to the lunchroom in general. She paid for her salad, no dressing, and bottle of water.
“I hate it that you think you can just walk all over me,” Belle told her corndog.
So much for reinventing herself.  All that had changed since last year was her grade.
“$2.60.” The lunch lady didn’t look up as she held out her hand.
Belle handed her three dollars. “Have you ever wondered if …

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***

I was thinking of blood again so I went to practice my archery. That’s what I always did when I thought I was going to kill something. I hit the bulls-eye every time and nothing had died yet, so at least I had that going for me.

I don’t know any other sixteen-year-old girls, but the ones in my books don’t obsessively fire arrows because they feel the urge to bite someone. They worry about suitors and ribbons and things. Then again, a few get fed to dragons, so I seem to have it better than some.

The queendom of Amentia is one of the smallest, poorest, and coldest empires on the continent of Brivora. Our palace is a ramshackle old castle, cold as stone, and the grounds are a mess. The grass in the clearing where I stood was long and tangled. Tree branches stretched like desperate arms across the sky, blocking out the light, and the ivy increased its stranglehold with every passing year. …

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***

This time it was easy to spot the low space between two granite outcroppings. By pure luck, hunting for wild asparagus last week, Mal had discovered this opening on the other side of the first hill east of the settlement. It led to a clearing where a clump of scrub brush displayed a miracle in its spindly branches: a dense net of blackberry vines thick with fruit, still green and knock-you-back sour.

Every day since, she’d worried over that treasure ripening and vulnerable until she could get away again. But the fruit was untouched and black as a crow’s eye. She stifled a joyous yelp and swallowed a berry fat with juice. Her hunger, which never truly went away, had gotten worse since the bleeding started.

“Your Ma’s gonna beat you for eating before you bring those in,” Mikal ignored the thorns that tore at his bare arms and legs as he too shuttled more berries into his mouth than his …

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***

The first time Christopher cut me, it was as though the knife sliced his flesh as it did mine. His hands shook so much, the blade sunk deep into my back while nicking the side of his pinkie.

I healed within the hour. There was fey blood in me. His wound, however, was raw for a week.

It was one month later. With one experience under his belt, Chris was steady and poised. He drew lines as a guide to where he was to cut: the juncture just beneath and beside each shoulder blade, where buds was beginning to protrude.

At the first touch of the permanent marker on my skin, I shivered. “Maria,” Chris said worriedly. “Are you all right?”

“Of course,” I said steadily, but my breath came out in a shudder. “I’m fine. I’m fine.”

“You know I want to be a surgeon one day,” he said half-jokingly. “You have to be truthful with me, to improve my technique.”

“You’re doing fine,” I told him.

He kissed me …

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***

How did this happen?

How did I let this happen?

These are the two thoughts that are circling my mind as I sit hunched on my couch the night of my high school reunion. I stare at the carpet, overwhelmed by the realisation that has blind-sided me this evening.

Which is this: I am fat.

Not just overweight. Not chubby, or nicely rounded, or Rubenesque.

Fat. Obese. Big.

Australia’s answer to Kirstie Alley fat. Oprah on a bad day obese. Pavarotti without his girdle big.

I know what you’re thinking. How can being fat come as such a shock to me? It’s not as though it’s an instant process. I had to work diligently at over-eating and lying around on the couch for years to get to this size. …

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***

Crackle, crackle…Hannah squeezed her eyelids tight and covered her ears to shut out the static inside her head. Sometimes it worked. Tonight, the white noise intensified. The sheer strength of this spirit manifestation overwhelmed her. Nausea rolled high in her stomach.

Turning to her side, she gulped air and waited for her pulse to slow. The static grew softer. She braced herself for the ghost to speak. Last week it’d been a distraught parent who’d died without telling his son he loved him. Four days before that an executed criminal sought forgiveness for his horrendous acts against society.

If she didn’t get a reprieve from the haunting spirits, she’d end up in a padded cell.

Her breathing calmed when the noise quieted. “Mama, where are you?” A chill slid down Hannah’s arms. A little girl’s tremulous voice. “Please mama, papa needs you.”

Hannah opened herself to the strong force invading her body. …

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***

Lili and Jane stood, crushed between the doors of a downtown 2 train and tired commuters on their way home. Lili leaned against a door, rubbing her aching shoulders. She tilted her head back against the door’s glass window and drifted off to sleep a little bit, calmed by the rocking movement of the train. To a native New Yorker like her, it was as good as a lullaby. The train pulled up to a sudden stop mid-tunnel, sending the horde of commuters smashing into the two women. Jane looked up through the window, and dropped her magazine.

“Sweet minty Jesus!”

Lili jumped up, her eyes wide, and turned around to see what had made Jane yell out. She could see nothing in the tunnel but another train full of tired people, waiting to get into the next station. She poked her friend viciously in the shoulder.

“What the hell is wrong with you? Is there something out there in the tunnel?” Lili stared at Jane, whose …

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***

 Anwicke International wasn’t on a main thoroughfare after all. Nor was it the sleek skyscraper Reid expected. The pre-war building with its weathered cornices and grimy windows barely cleared the topmost branches of the creaking oaks huddled around it. That it still stood might be testament to a small town’s civic-mindedness. That it hadn’t been condemned years before was more likely testament to a small town’s lack of funds to raze the place.

Reid glanced at the envelope in his hand and up at the street numbers carved in granite. The numbers stubbornly continued to match.

“Damn.” He’d never again take another job out-of-state without first staking out the business and getting an eyeful of the amenities. This eyeful was discouraging, but as he made his way up the Mayanesque steps to the entrance, he doggedly reassured himself that this job would be better than the job he’d left in Colorado. Not to mention the ones in Arizona, Nevada, and California.

Well, maybe not California. At least—not …

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***

Daphnis stopped just inside the tavern door and waited for her eyes to adjust to the dim interior. She’d learned the band of mercenaries called the Tychantes had already reached this Arcadian village of Pheneus when she enquired at the blacksmith’s and he told her about the group of five strangers who entered the tavern not long before her arrival. Now, after inspecting the handful of patrons in the small room, she decided the man at the far corner table most closely matched the spare description of the band leader provided by the smithy. For some reason, she had anticipated someone older and far less comely, so she wasn’t prepared for how the sight of him affected her. With a pang of regret she must be disguised as a man to accomplish her mission, she crossed the room in bold, confident strides until she reached the table.

Deepening her voice, she asked, “Are you Leucos?”

While waiting for him to acknowledge her presence and …

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***
Vermont was a wasteland.

Trees stripped of leaves, their branches curved upwards to the sky as if pleading for salvation. But there was none to be found in the dark night sky. White, crystallized snow covered pastures, meadows, and hills. The stark nakedness of the state showed all its flaws, none of its beauty.

Welcome to hell.

Aubry Riley tightened his hands around the steering wheel. The car wound through the roads in the direction of the highway. According to the GPS system, it was seconds away. He could barely contain his excitement. The bad weather forced his private plane to land at a smaller airport, a couple hours away from Burlington. He was supposed to be at the lake house by dinner, but he’d be lucky if he got there by midnight.

Normally, he wouldn’t care how late he arrived except he …

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***

I always knew there were different worlds alongside my own:  places of angels or demons.  But this feeling went away over time.  It had long gone by the time I turned twenty and struggled home from work on the bus – with two tote bags of groceries and a pair of platform sandals rubbing blisters on my heels – only to find an intruder in my apartment.

My keys jingled in the lock.  I nudged the door open with my knee.  The tote bags slipped from my hands and thudded to the threadbare carpet.  The smell of bruised celery wafted up.  My stuff lay strewn all over the place:  paperbacks, clothes, cosmetics, jewelry, shoes, dolls, shot-glasses from my state-by-state collection, and glossy fashion magazines.  Someone had overturned the crappy couch I’d bought for five bucks at a yard sale.  I let out a little scream and groped for my cell phone clipped to my belt.

Then I saw the symbols glowing everywhere.  They looked like runes …

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***

I managed to shoulder my way inside the last Boneyard transport just before its deeply scarred doors slid shut. Breathless and relieved, I snagged a cracked strap and did my best to ignore the dull ache of a cramp throbbing under my ribcage. Then the crowded car pulled from the station with a lurch that sent me stumbling.

“Watch it, bitch!” someone snarled. A hard shove connected with my shoulder blades.

Cue face plant into greasy trench. Nice. I grimaced at the men in apology, backing away and trying hard not to gag while the vinegar of old booze and recycled sweat burned through my nose. Well, tonight certainly got off to a less-than-spectacular start. And it’s headed nowhere but downhill, Lane. You expected otherwise? I thought. I turned my head to watch Capitol City flash past the graffiti-coated windows.

The sun had just dipped below the crumbling skyline in a florid display of gauzy pinks and reds and oranges by the time my date had staggered …

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***

Golden light streamed through the glass dome that covered the Hall of Lunatium, the capital of Lunatia, the Empire of the Silver Crescent. Granite pillars lined the walls of the oval Hall, and its marble floor gleamed with the rays of the morning sun. A pair of Imperial Guards stood at each of the doors positioned at the four points of the compass, their red uniforms stark against the white walls.

At the northern end of the hall, a shrouded dais protected the future Empress, Syndra-Kai, from curious eyes. The law forbade any but personal maids, tutors, or family to look upon the face or form of the young Princess, until after her Initiation. The fabric of her shelter had been designed so that the Princess might view the Hall with little obstruction, yet was completely shielded from view. Only a dim outline of the Princess was visible through its folds.

Syndra-Kai sighed with impatience, twirling a strand of her gleaming black hair, pulled back into …

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***
“And eyes without speaking confess the secrets of the heart.”

–Saint Jerome

Prologue

Saturday, December 29th

As Nicolas Siegfried expected, she was entering the party looking more prisoner than guest of honor. Two bodyguards gripped her arms while they shoved aside the frenzied crowd to force a path down the red carpet delivered just that morning. The media and gawkers had been camped for hours along the narrow entrance of the Luxembourg embassy where this circus of a debut had been thrown together.

Staring out through the recently flung open doors, Nicolas glared into the darkness filled with bright flashes from the cameras of the paparazzi. He had only seen her in photographs, but recognized her immediately despite her face being cast down. At each step she was quickly ushered up, her head bobbed side to side …

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***

Something drove her scrambling for consciousness like a drowning man clawing towards the surface of the ocean. Gasping, floundering and disoriented, pulse pounding in her ears, blood so thick with adrenaline it felt as if her heart and head were warring over the privilege of being the first to erupt.

That she hadn’t roused from sleep with a headache proved only a minor consolation. Jess wanted to sit up and scream, pound her mattress with her fists, throw her pillows across the room.

A temper tantrum wouldn’t cure the insomnia.

With a grimace pulling at her mouth, Jess kicked off her bed linens and fumbled in the moonlit darkness for a pair of breeches and shirt. After easing into the well-worn leather of her riding boots, she pushed away from the bed. It was never too early to start cleaning stalls and mixing mash for the broodmares, after all. And the routine chores would soothe nerves frayed from … whatever had startled her awake.

Moving through the rancher …

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***

Background: Late Victorian England: an avaricious, impoverished widow makes her way through high society, and low society, encountering militant suffragettes, grumpy pornographers, and villainous foreigners attempting to overthrow the government, in search of a sugar daddy (all the while trying to ignore the charms of a stuffy and staid secretary).

The first blow was the death of her husband.

This in itself was no tragedy. For Lady Rosamund Archer was not overly fond of the departed Earl whose death at the age of seventy-two had been, she felt, unfashionably overdue.

The blow came upon the reading of his will.

Her husband – forty years her senior and fourteen years her companion in matrimony – left his entire fortune in the hands of his oldest son, her detested step-son Claude. Claude had no redeeming features; he was brutishly ugly, with a personality as uncharming as his soul was corrupt. Rosamund was not the least bit surprised when he made a measly annual stipend dependent upon the frequent use of …

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***

“Tell me you’re kidding.” Drew Stevens dropped his forehead onto his crossed arms on the counter, exhausted and in no mood for this.

The pretty blonde’s eyes were sympathetic. “I’m sorry, sir. I can look again…”

Drew shook his head, raking his fingers through his chin-length blond hair. “No. Unless by some miracle you think you’ve made a horrible mistake?” Hope lingered in his voice, but it died at the pitying shake of the girl’s head. He exhaled heavily, pushing away from the front desk and glanced around the hotel lobby.

Unbelievable. He could get reservations at any five star restaurant in L.A., but the Silver Nugget in Nowhere, Arizona couldn’t find him a room. He was going to kill his editor. When he got his hands on Harry Mather’s scrawny ass, Drew was going to rip him a new asshole.

With a tight smile at the desk clerk, Drew snatched up his suitcases and stalked towards the front …