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

So a couple of days ago, we had the torturous bra implant and today’s gadget news brings us the Fertility Phone. Samsung has applied for a patent for a phone “capable of tracking a woman’s fertile periods.” Despite the fact that the picture vaguely looks like you are supposed to stick the phone where phones are not to go (unless, I guess if they vibrate and then that’s a painful, but personal choice), the phone is supposed to take your temperature and then tell you if its a fertile or non fertile time.

I guess this brings a whole new dimension to phone sex. Aren’t you glad that I don’t just choose to blog about books all the time? (Rhetorical question).

Via Engadget.

Dear Ms. Thompson,

A Lover's Call, your Ellora's Cave BDSM “Quickie” (rated E-rotic) happens to be the first Ellora's Cave offering I've read. Yes, before your novella came along, I was an Ellora's Cave virgin.

The heroine of the story is Rachel, a librarian by day who works a phone sex line by night. We are told that Rachel daydreams of bringing a man to his knees with a smoldering glance, but her outward personality is described this way:
…Rachel was a sensible girl whose modesty was genuine and bordered on the insecure. She had chosen the career of librarian precisely to avoid situations in which smoldering glances might get her in trouble.
I liked Rachel, but you portray this aspect of her personality so well that it's difficult for me to understand why someone as modest and as initially sexually repressed as Rachel is (she hasn't dated very much, and in her limited experience, sex was disappointing) would be a telephone sex worker. I liked the explanation that Rachel feels sorry for lonely men because she was lonely herself, but I still couldn't completely reconcile her choice of moonlighting job with her personality.

One night …