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

Dear Ms Johnson,

Since I love historical fiction, I checked out “The Tenth Gift” when I saw it listed at Fictionwise. The blurb intrigued me but not enough to immediately buy it. But I kept going back and looking at it. Something about it wouldn’t let me go and when Fictionwise offered a sale, I took the plunge. It was a little slow going at first. Then suddenly it took off and I couldn’t stop reading it. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And when I had finished it, I was so glad I’d taken the chance.

I used to do some simple embroidery myself though nothing on the scale of Catherine Anne Tregenna’s work. Cat sounds like a true artist; someone with a rare gift and talent few are blessed with. I had no idea that in the seventeenth century, women – who would have actually done the work – were not considered able to join an embroidery guild nor would they have drawn most of the patterns they used. Typical men – foist the work on the women then take the credit.

I can well understand her frustration with that …

Dear Ms. Stuart,

The latest book in your Ice series, Ice Storm, opens with a bang. Literally. In a prologue set sometime in the past, we are introduced to nineteen-year-old the heroine this way:

Mary Isobel Curwen had never shot a man before. She stood there, numb, unmoving. She’d never fired a gun before, and the feel of it in her grasp was disturbing.

A paragraph down is there is some more terrific writing:

Had she blown a hole through his head? His chest? Was he dead or just wounded? She knew she ought to check… She’d had every reason to shoot him but you couldn’t very well let a man bleed to death, could you? she thought dazedly. Even if he’d been trying to kill you?

Or maybe you could. Maybe you could drop the gun, turn and run, as fast as possible, before he suddenly stood up and came after you, before one of his buddies came running to see where the noise had come from. Maybe you could take the gun with you, just in case.

I love the creative use of second person …