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

If I was an author, I would probably want to get my hands on this arbitration decision1. Regnery was in litigation with author Richard Miniter. He had a two book contract with Regnery and delivered a book called Disinformation. Regnery believed that the book “did not live up to [Miniter's] two book contract”. Instead, Miniter took a book to Simon & Schuster that Regnery believed should have been its. (This sounded like shades of Dara Joy).

Miniter claims that he wanted to write a book about Abu Musab al-Zarqawi for his second book but that Regnery refused to pay an advance. The book fell apart when al-Zarqawi was killed in 2006.

The claims of Minter sound like Dara Joy. She took Ritual of Proof to HarperCollins instead of giving it to Dorchester claiming the Ritual of Proof was a science fiction not a romance. I am pretty sure that Dorchester won that round. Regnery says that they had a two book deal and that he kept the money for the advance and failed to deliver. Regnery sued Miniter, took it to arbitration per the contract, and Regnery won, …

I don’t know that I’ve seen criminal cases moved through the court system as fast as the JK Rowling case. The petition was filed in October and is set for trial at the end of March. Initially oral argument1 was to be held on the preliminary injunction motion on March 13 but now the Court wants to hold a full trial on the same date.

Rowling’s attorneys filed a letter arguing that they weren’t ready to present live testimony and hold a trial. The Court denied the application for more time saying “When the essential facts are not in dispute, the parties should be able to agree to rely on the affidavits and exhibits to be received in evidence and that only certain witnesses need to be examined by the parties.” (same link). The Court is willing to hear oral argument on why this isn’t the case.

It sounds like Judge Patterson doesn’t believe that there should be alot of extraneous live witnesses that some parties want to put forth that have no relevance to the case.

1. Oral argument is where the attorneys for the respective parties argue their positions …

Jerry Seinfled went on the attack to defend his wife’s book, Deceptively Delicious, and called author and chef Missy Lapine “another kind of nut” and implied that she was a “wacko and celebrity stalker”. His fervent defense of his wife might cost him a few dollars. The suit alleges Jessica Seinfeld copied Missy Lapine’s book, The Sneaky Chef, and Jerry Seinfeld engaged in defamation.

We blogged about the similarities a while back. The similarities between pre publication drawing of the Seinfled book and the published Sneaky Chef book always bothered me.

Via Yahoo News.