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

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It’s hard to believe that election day is finally here.  For months, nothing has been more prominent in my mind and my reading than this election.  I feel so blessed to not only  have the opportunity to vote, but to have cast my ballot for Obama via mail two weeks ago.  I hope that if you have the right to vote, you exercise it no matter who your candidate is.  Don’t stand on the sidelines this time.  It’s too important.  Please drop a comment below and tell us about your voting experience.  I’ve loved reading those anecdotes on other sites, particularly if you had to wait in line.

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We are running a “save the contemporary” campaign (see sidebar for more information) because authors say they are having a hard time selling the big contemporary to agents and agents say its because they can’t sell it to editors and editors say its because the readers aren’t buying them. How do we stop the circle jerk of failure for the contemporaries? What is really holding you back from buying/reading a contemporary?

Maybe this has always been true, but as I was reading Romance Writers Report, the RWA monthly publication, I noticed that Avon is seeking new authors and accepts unagented queries. According to its new submission guidelines, any romance or women’s fiction author can submit a query by e-mail to avonromance@harpercollins.com.

The word “QUERY” should be put in the subject line and the query should be brief, no more than a two-page description of the book. No chapters or synopsis at this time. A response is promised in one or two weeks! Zoinks that is a quick turn around.

I have been debating for a month or so about starting a new Saturday feature for DearAuthor. At Fangs, Fur, & Fey, a large (almost too large in my opinion as it is hard to keep track of everyone now) fantasy author community, the members posted their queries, pointing out what worked and what didn’t work. It was very interesting reading. I thought it might be fun for authors with new books coming out to share their queries, to show what caught an agent/editor’s eye, and …

The lads at Gearlog and Teleblog are great believers of multi function devices. Multi function devices do it all: it’s a cell phone, camera, calendar, contact, ebook reader all in one. Gearlog opines that the reason that women tend to buy a cell phone separate from a PDA is the ubiquitous purse. Of course, the only purse that Gearlog could find was a laptop bag (not a real purse guys). Teleblog did a llittle better but not by much. No self respecting chick lit heroine would carry either bag.

I chose to go the two device route when buying an ebook reader for a variety of reasons. I didn’t want my phone to be with me in the bedroom while I read. The Smartphones were either way to big to hold up to my ear or the smaller, sleeker Smartphones had too small of a viewscreen for reading books. I went PDA over a dedicated device (like the Ebookwise) because I wanted to use the PDA for ebook reading but I still wanted to be able to surf the internet. …