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

Each year, RWA recognizes excellence in romance writing through the RITAs, considered the top honor in the genre.  Though awards are presented in a dozen categories, a writer has just one shot in her career to win the Best First Book award.  This interview series focuses on the debut authors nominated in that category.

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From a reader at Information Week, Barnes and Noble’s eBookstore aka Fictionwise + eReader will match the prices offered at Amazon.  Now if Fictionwise could only get its act in gear and offer the books that are released this week in a timely fashion.  Hard to get excited about good prices when significant books are missing from the ebookstore.

Here is the info I got from them in their weekly email yesterday.

• All new eBooks are $9.95 or less.
• No eBook over $12.95. They aren’t moving all ebooks to $9.95 or less, only newly published ones. Cutting to $12.95 is a substantial cut for many older books though.
• All books on the New York Times Bestseller list are $9.95, whether it is new or has been there a while.
• 15% rewards on each purchase.

Via Publishers’ Weekly.

Buy 2 or more Harlequin eBooks from Sony Store on Wednesdays & you’ll receive a code for a free ebook.

Orbit’s $1.00 title is Hidden Empire by Kevin J. Anderson

The following are Forever $1.99 titles from Grand Central.  Grand Central makes these deals available to all etailers who carry the Forever ebooks but not all etailers take advantage of them. I know, WTF.  The following are links to the Sony store as that is one place I know that is currently carrying the promotion.

• One Scream Away by Brady, Kate (I’ll be picking this one up)
• Border Moonlight by  Scott, Amanda
• Knight of Desire by Mallory, Margaret
• Seducing a Scottish Bride by Welfonder, Sue-Ellen
• Love Is in the Heir by Caskie, Kathryn

Then there are the free deals for the Kindle and Kindle App users:

• Mary Jo Putney’s Loving a Lost Lord (a return to straight historicals)
• Dee Tenorio’s Kiss Me Again
• Lara Adrian’s Kiss of Midnight (first in the Breed series) (and it is also available for free on the Sony thanks, ChristineFlynn, for the tip)

Dear Ms. Dahl:

Now that I’ve read three of your novels, I see a pattern in your heroines: they are extremely jealous of their independence, convinced that no man can be depended on, and afraid of showing themselves completely to the world.  I appreciate these qualities in a genre that too often holds its heroines to unreasonable standards of nobility, gentility, and congeniality.  All of which is another way of saying that I enjoyed Lori Love, the heroine of Start Me Up, and her difficult path toward the kind of happiness she had more or less given up on the moment she had to leave college and move back home to take care of her father and his car repair business.  I did not find the book to be as strong as last year’s Talk Me Down, but it was still very readable.

In Talk Me Down, we meet Lori as Molly Jennings’s childhood friend, a woman whose tomboy wardrobe, no-nonsense mien, and skills as a mechanic earn her a reputation as the town lesbian.  Lori has no real interest in changing anyone’s opinion of her, as the label gives her a certain amount of freedom from …

Dear Ms. Palmer

I admit that I read this because I had heard, early on, that this book had similarities to the JR Ward brotherhood series. I can’t help but think that pre publicity buzz was intentional. Ward’s Brotherhood series is hot, hot, hot, and anything that sounds like/looks like The Black Dagger Brotherhood is going to get some attention.

It wasn’t the similarities to the Ward series (and there are a few) that made the story drag for me, it was actually the lack of emulation.  Ward series excels, in part, because it is completely over the top. If you are going to have silly names and a somewhat silly storyline, you really have to bring it as an author. Instead, first installment of the Feral Warrior series came in with an emo sigh instead of a roar.

The Feral Warrior series is based on a band of shapeshifters who protect a Radiant, a woman through whom the power of nature is funneled (this imagery tends to remind me of the Angel of Death in the Raiders of the Lost Ark movie). The Radiant ascends and then through living and sexual energy derived through congress …

Dear Ms. Chase:

After I read last year’s book, Your Scandalous Ways, I knew my expectations were going to be set incredibly high for anything that came after.  And thankfully, Don’t Tempt Me is not a book in the same vein, but instead hearkens back to the Carsington series, especially Miss Wonderful and Mr. Impossible.  A hero who has suffered a great loss and who copes by putting on a distracting outward display and a heroine who lives on the margins of polite society’s rules and whose innocence does not equate to naïveté. And while Don’t Tempt Me possessed a number of charms of its own, somewhere between my high expectations and the echoes of other books, I was not as tempted to love it as I hoped I would be.

From the beginning, little Zoe Octavia Lexham, aka “The Bolter,” was a pain in Lucien de Gray’s young neck.  Although when Lucien came under the guardianship of Lord Lexham, following a tragic series of illnesses and accidents claiming both his parents and older brother, Zoe was also a “bright, bright spot in his life.”  He was the only one she seemed to listen to, and she …

I thought this might be of interest to DA’s readership. The PC-compatible writing software, Liquid Story Binder, is on sale for 50% off today (June 30) only.

http://daily-deals.iconico.com/software/liquid-story-binder/

The response for this contest was so overwhelming that I decided to chip in and buy a second giveway book. Yep, that’s right – we’re going to have two lucky winners and both books will be autographed by Jennifer! And the winners are…drumroll….

Ladies please contact Jennifer (cjmueller @ windomnet.com) so she can get your addresses to mail out the books.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Earlier I sat here at desk, looking out to a window, thinking that it was great the vast expanse of the world is out there with its rich and varied cultures and peoples. If I had the money and the time again, I would travel for as long as possible to enjoy the sights—some may be memorable and some upsetting—and to gain insights—deep and shallow—from the surroundings and the encounters with strangers. I think many of us were born for such an existance.

Adventuring is part of my family’s lifestyle; almost a way of life. I left home at sixteen because it was expected of me. All my relatives, at least once in their lives, have travelled abroad and some lived there for months and even years. They have returned home when they have felt ready to hang up their travelling bags.  Some of us remain transplanted. I haven’t yet to return home because I feel like I still have much of my journey left.

As it stands, I don’t have the money or, more importantly, time or opportunity.  I’m deskbound these …

Authors Alice Hoffman and Alain de Botton compete for author douchebag of the day. Hoffman tweets the phone number and email address of the awful reviewer and de Botton essentially curses the career of the NYTBR critic. See more here.

In better news, publishers are just giving away the farm on Kindle which is great for Kindle users (and also those who have iPhones or iTouches) but not so great for everyone else. What’s free?

• Mary Jo Putney’s Loving a Lost Lord (a return to straight historicals)
• Dee Tenorio’s Kiss Me Again
• Lara Adrian’s Kiss of Midnight (first in the Breed series)

Quartet Press, a new romance epublisher, is open for submissions.

Joe Wickert looks at Fast Company’s cover story of Amazon and Jeff Bezos.  Kindle numbers are eyebrow raising.

Recently, Bezos claimed that Kindle e-books add 35% to a physical book’s sales on Amazon whenever Kindle editions are available. Put another way, for every three print copies of, say, Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Outliers” the site sells, it also sells one Kindle e-book — or about 25% of total sales.

Barnes and Noble released an iPhone app.  It allows …