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

Those of you who loved the novel can now enjoy the upcoming movie The Other Boleyn Girl on February 29th. The book was originally reviewed by Jayne and received high marks. I believe three or four of the Oscars this year were adaptations of books. Lets hope this movie is as good.

And who doesn’t love movies good or bad. It’s a chance to gorge yourself on a large tub of buttered popcorn while chasing it with a 48 oz drink. By the time the trailers are finished you feel sick. At least its my modus operandi.

Dear Ms. Gregory,

Once again we get to see the adroit tight-rope walking that it took to live in the Tudor court. While it’s more history than romance, the story of Anne Boleyn’s sister (the first Boleyn girl in Henry’s bed) is definitely fascinating. It could also be titled “Life in the Snake and Scorpion Pit.” Those courtiers would have sold their souls to advance at court. It makes me goggle at the amount of energy, creativeness and effort a whole group of people expended to keep one man amused.

You take the bare facts that are known about Mary’s life and use them to tell the family’s hard slog to the top of the food chain of Tudor England. And it’s equally sharp drop from favor when Anne couldn’t give the king what he craved most in life, a son to succeed him.

Mary comes across as a sometimes not too bright, sometimes selfish, sometimes devoted sister who was willing to do what her family told her in order to advance their power. I got frustrated with her for allowing herself to be kept from her children but then who knows what she really felt? She …

Hope this isn’t the Running with Scissors type of book where the story is based on a real family who didn’t authorize such a story.
Canadian magazine editor and journalist Elizabeth Kelly’s APOLOGIZE, APOLOGIZE!, about a wild, brilliant, wealthy, crazy Massachusetts family, to Jonathan Karp at Twelve in a pre-empt, and to Diane Martin at Knopf Canada in a pre-empt, for publication in March 2009, by Molly Friedrich at the Friedrich Agency.

I love these titles, particularly the “On the Divinity of Second Chances.”
Kaya McLaren’s HOW I CAME TO SPARKLE AGAIN, to Kendra Harpster at Viking, for publication in summer 2009, plus reprint rights to Church of the Dog and On the Divinity of Second Chances, by Meg Ruley at the Jane Rotrosen Agency (NA).

This is a middle grade book and I hope that the tone is not too youthful as the plot sounds quite interesting.
Heather Mackey’s THE WOLVES AND THE WOOD, set in an alternate reality of the Pacific Northwest of the 1900’s, in which a girl must navigate her cousin’s world of frontier settlers as they clash with the indigenous people, the Lupine; and she must discover the mystery surrounding deadly attacks that appear to be the work of five …

Dear Mrs. Gregory,

Having read and loved “The Other Boleyn Girl,” I hurried out and bought “The Queen’s Fool” when it was first released three years ago. Then….life happened and despite the fact that it sat on a table right in front of me for that long, it’s taken me until now to pick it up and start reading it. And despite the fact that I had to take my cat to the vet and then my car died on me today and I had to spend a few hours getting towed, borrowing another car, then driving out to pick mine up when (thank God) it only turned out to be a minor problem, I managed to get all 500 pages of it read in only two days. I was glued to it. I devoured it. I once again wondered why I have only read two of your many books. I must remedy that.

A young woman caught in the rivalry between Queen Mary and her half sister, Elizabeth, must find her true destiny amid treason, poisonous rivalries, loss of faith, and unrequited love.

It is winter, 1553. Pursued by the Inquisition, Hannah …