Dear Author: Romance Book Reviews, Author Interviews, and Commentary

This week is an eclectic mix - some old-school type stuff, some already-played-out stuff, and zombies.

I loved the movie Lost In Translation, and this sounds like a literary parallel. I’d buy it.

Malena Watrous’s REPEAT AFTER ME, in an effort to outpace her grief, a young American woman moves to rural Japan shortly after her father’s suicide and finds work as an English teacher as well as unexpected solace with her Japanese supervisor and seemingly different neighbors, to Jeanette Perez at Harper Perennial, by Lisa Bankoff at ICM (World).

This sounds like all those 1980s ‘science fiction’ romances crossed with a harem fantasy. I should be disgusted, but who are we kidding? I’d buy this on release day.
Shelli Stevens’s CAPTURED ROSE, on a planet where females are on the endangered species list, a woman who has spent her life in erotic servitude to the three wealthy and powerful men who own her finds freedom and passion in the arms of her abductor, a man who should be her fiercest enemy, to Peter Sentfleben at Kensington Aphrodisia, in a nice deal, in a two-book deal, by Laura Bradford at Bradford Literary Agency.

Yay! She writes …

Dear Readers:

This is the book that cemented my love for the urban fantasy genre and, in particular, my love for Charles de Lint. This man is a master storyteller, who infuses his stories with lifelike characters, evocative settings, and a sense of wonder that I think is sometimes too often missing in a lot of fantasy.

We first meet Janey Little, a Celtic musician who has returned to Mousewhole (pronounced Mouzel) in Cornwall to spend some time with her grandfather, known to everyone as the Gaffer, who practically raised her. Janey’s career is going fairly well, except she needs a new side man as her last one hasn’t worked out, but she’s not going to worry about that. Instead, she goes up to the Gaffer’s attic and starts looking through old papers, and finds what seems to be a new novel by a friend of the Gaffer’s, an eccentric writer named William Dunthorn. This novel, however, was only published in an edition of one copy. Delighted, Janey starts to read, and we, the readers, are brought along with her for the story …