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

Not a lot going on in New York this week.

I’m on the fence about this one. They had me at futuristic and intergalactic war and lost me at ’sex slave hero’. We’ll see.

Jess Granger’s CHAINS OF HONOR, a sexy futuristic romance about a hardened soldier on her final mission who rescues the a former sex slave hero from a deadly fate and their escape from behind enemy lines of an intergalactic war, to Leis Pederson at Berkley Sensation, in a nice deal, for two books, by Laura Bradford at Bradford Literary Agency.

This blurb is super-vague and I can’t tell if there is an author in the story causing conflict, or if the author mentioned is Joanna Trollope.

Joanna Trollope’s THE PIANO MAN, the death of a twice-married singer causes the uneasy truce between families to turn to complicated onflict from the belowed author of many international bestsellers, to Trish Todd at Touchstone Fireside, in a very nice deal, for publication in Spring 2009, by Joy Harris (US).

Another duet anthology (there was one last week as well). A new trend?

Jaci Burton’s erotic novella, based on her Wild Riders …

Chick lit is a taboo term in publishing right now and even in its heyday, the sub genre took alot of heat for being substantiveless pap. Joanna Trollope blogged for the Guardian that the effortless entertainment of chick-lit is actually difficult to write.

The thing is, it’s hard to write good romantic fiction, and it’s much, much harder to write funny good romantic fiction. One of the criteria we judges were given was that if we hadn’t laughed, or been really beguiled by the end of chapter one, we should hurl the book away from us (and yes, a lot of books deserve hurling, but that’s the fault of their quality and not their genre).

Trollope is one of the judges for the new Melissa Nathan prize, an award for Comedy Romance. Thanks Rebecca for the tip.