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

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Do you remember the movie “Election,” with Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick? In the first scene Mr. McAllister asks his high school class about the difference between ethics and morals. Ironically, of course, the one student who eagerly attempts to answer the question is also the one who proceeds to make mincemeat of both ethics and morals during the course of the movie, her ambition a veritable engine for her imagination and willingness to do almost anything to secure her class presidency. Tracy Flick sees the future open before her, dependent on winning that race, completely indignant when someone dares run against her, amazingly unself-conscious about the levels to which she’ll ‘stoop to conquer.’

In fact, Tracy continues to see herself as a good person, earnestly praying before bedtime for her “Dear Lord Jesus” to “go that one last mile and make sure to put me in office where I belong so that I may carry out your will on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.” In this Tracy exemplifies the difference between morals and ethics: morals relate to one’s personal value system, while ethics relate …

Usually when Amazon reviews are penned by the family members, it is done so with the intent to bolster star rankings but maybe the most effective Amazon reviews are ones that generate controversy which in turns stir booksales.

According to GalleyCat, Rachel Sontag wrote a memoir, House Rules, about growing up with an emotionally abusive father and her attempts to escape. Sontag’s father wrote a scathing two part response. Well done Mr. Sontag, because there’s nothing like this little online drama to give readers a taste of what a drama filled party the memoir will be. It’s viral marketing at its best. (trying to see the silver lining here folks).

In this political season, the candidates have received endorsements from people that they have had to “reject and denounce*”. The Good, The Bad, and the Unread, featured a promo for the September release of Double Enchantment by Kathleen Kennedy which is the second book in her Relics of Merlin series. Kennedy’s world is set in the Victorian era and has a unique way of assigning nobility according to the strength and type of magic one can perform. What I remember from the first book which I forgot to review, Enchanting the Lady, the shapeshifters were considered lower class individuals. (They are animals, after all).

Ms. MacGillivrey** showed up in the comments to provide this endorsement:
Kathryne’s books are indeed enchanting. She’s is one of the best new voices to debut in the past few years. I highly recommend her books.
This led Sybil, the blog owner, to ponder whether DAM was stupid or clueless and whether a recommendation by DAM was actually harmful to Ms. Kennedy. It’s unfortunate, but given DAM’s past behavior and the coterie of authors who assisted her in achieving her goals of review deletion***, a reader can …

SB Sarah got a heads up from a Janet Evanovich fan that early reviews were disappearing from the Barnes and Noble site. Of course, the only deleted reviews were the negative ones. Google cache which preserves snapshots of past versions of a webpage showed at least two negative reviews that are nowhere to be found on the Barnes and Noble site.

It really does damage to consumer confidence when the reviews are so easily gamed at these corporate sites. While no reader is being stalked here, it still seems wrong and violative.