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

Dear Ms. Hancock,

If I recall correctly from the email Harlequin/Silhouette sent Dear Author, you’re a new author they discovered via email submission.  I always look forward to reading new authors in the hope of finding someone I’ll love.  And at these short fiction lengths, it’s a minimal time commitment, which means less risk for me.  (For the readers out there, I call Nocturne eBites novellas but they’re actually novelettes by SFWA standards.)

When a pandemic swept across the world, supernaturals (werewolves, psychics, etc.) were inadvertantly outed.  Because their immune systems were stronger than the average human, their continued health drew suspicion, which led to the government later capturing them for study and experimentation.  Ever since, supernaturals have fled into hiding and organizations like Humans Against the Exploitation of Supernaturals (HAES) have come into being.

Tess Haverty suffers from survivor’s guilt.  Her twin sister, Lily, was a powerful psychic who was kidnapped by the government.  Although Lily was freed, the experience proved too much for her and she committed suicide.  Because their parents died when they were teenagers, Tess is lost without the presence of her stronger, vivacious sister.  The only reason Tess escaped …

From the press release:

“Mercy Thompson: Homecoming” is a four-issue mini-series with issue #1 hitting comic book shelves in November 2008. The series will be collected in hardcover and distributed by Del Rey in 2009.

Dabel Brothers Publishing is excited to premiere the first eleven pages (DOWNLOAD HERE) of the much-anticipated Dabel Brothers project, “Mercy Thompson: Homecoming”. Artist Francis Tsai beautifully illustrates all the covers and interior pages to this series, with author Patricia Briggs herself penning the original story. Place your orders today before the first issue ships this November.

From me: looks beautiful and I can’t wait to see the full version.

Via Fantasy Book Critic.

Dear Ms. Anna,

While I’ve heard of you before, this is the first story of yours I’ve read.  I know some of my fellow Dear Author reviewers don’t care for shorter fiction.  The compressed length doesn’t allow for as much development as you’d find in a full-length novel and as a result, something (plot, characterization, worldbuilding) has to give.  But I find that I like short stories because they give me a sample of an untried author’s work and help me decide if I want to look up more of their work.  In this way, I really enjoy the Silhouette Nocturne Bites program.

Werewolf Mahina Garner is also the tough captain of the Necropolis Police Department.  Fiercely independent and self-reliant, at 37, she has yet to take a mate, something that irks her pack alpha and her father.  During a drug bust, Mahina is nearly killed by a gunshot.  The only reason why she didn’t die was because she was saved by Ren Calder, a police detective she’s worked with in the past, who pushed her out of the way and was scratched by the bullet himself.

A werewolf like Mahina, Ren has been attracted …

Dear Ms. Briggs,

Once in a while there comes a book that sweeps you off your feet, a book you fall in love with so completely that it is hard to do justice to that love in a review. Alpha and Omega and Cry Wolf made me feel that way.

Because of the way I read them — first Alpha and Omega (from the anthology On the Prowl), then Alpha and Omega again, and then again Alpha and Omega, then Cry Wolf, and then more bits and pieces of Alpha and Omega and favorite parts (which means a good portion of the book) of Cry Wolf — and because they follow the same main characters and the same romantic relationship, it is hard for me to separate the two. I am, I think, going to have to review both together.

Here I sit, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, trying to explain the euphoric grin I’m wearing. If someone had given me a bare bones description of Alpha and Omega — “Alpha werewolf hero, sexually traumatized heroine who possesses special abilities she is unaware of, and instant attraction between mates” — I might have …

Dear Ms. Kittredge,

I was introduced to your writing by your short story, “Newlydeads”, in My Big Fat Supernatural Honeymoon. While that story didn’t work as well for me as I’d hoped, I still looked forward to your first novel. Sometimes short stories aren’t the best indicators of good novelists and since Night Life was set in a different world from that of your Black London stories, I hoped I’d enjoy it more.

Night Life takes place in Nocturne City, a dark and gritty place where magic and the supernatural co-exist with the mundane. Luna Wilder works as a detective — with one difference. In addition to being a woman in a male-dominated field, she’s a werewolf. Made into one against her will when she was just fifteen, Luna fled the man who changed her and now lives as an Insoli: a werewolf with no pack, no rank, and no respect. Luna has kept the fact she’s a werewolf a secret from her human co-workers but she finds it more difficult to control her shapeshifting as the full moon approaches.

Luna’s latest case involves …

Dear Ms Cassidy,

My bio states that I’m currently sort of paranormaled out but I will make an exception for authors known to me. After reading and enjoying your werewolf series last year, I was happy to try “The Accidental Werewolf” and delighted it gently skewed a few of the standards of the genre.

Some readers might not like Marty Andrews. At first she kind of comes across as, well let’s not beat around the bush, a dumb blonde who’s way to interested in makeup and selling of makeup. Her sarcasm might grate as well. But as I was reading her, I wasn’t bothered by that. I could see the initial denial and sarcasm as her way of coping. What she is told, from out of the blue, is a life altering change plus not something you hear every day and this is Marty’s way of dealing with it.

Once she got used to and accepted the idea that the chance encounter while getting her teacup poodle away from the large dog in the alley had made her a werewolf, she handled it fairly well. She didn’t get snippy with the …

Warning this may be spoilerish.

Dear Ms. Warren:
This is my first book of yours and while I didn’t love this book, I do like your voice so it won’t be my last. In fact, the book was really a B read for me until Page 108 when the heroine does something inexplicable. At one point, I thought you were going to right the ship for me, but it all was lost at the page 256 mark.

I like the world you have filled with shapeshifters, demons, and other magical creatures but I just didn’t like how the story played out. I was never sold that the hero deserved any kind of emotional justice (except maybe the bad kind). I thought that the primary characters acted in contravention with their belief system for no reason.

Samantha Carstairs is the personal assistant of the Alpha of the Silverback Clan. As most assistants, she knows everything that goes on in the Pack and more. Obviously, the Alpha trusts her implicitly. She’s also best friends with Dr. Annie Cryer, a scientist studying the lupine genome. Sam’s position in the …

Dear Ms Handeland,

I think I’ve figured it out. With each location change, I find the books in the Nighcreatures series get fresh and interesting again. Then as the series continues in that location, things get stale, you have to pull out more tricks to keep things interesting and I lose interest. With the geographical move to Lake Bluffs, GA, I get to perk up again. But then what next? Will Grace have a book? Something to do with Cherokee legends? And will my grade go down until you move to something new? We’ll see but for right now, I’m glad I am still sticking with this series and that I asked Jane to get me an arc.

Claire is a heroine I can like. She’s a small town girl who tried the big city and who discovered that maybe her own backyard isn’t so bad after all. She’s usually levelheaded, not prone to hysteria and neither immediately believes all the supernatural stuff with which she’s confronted during the town’s annual Moon Festival nor holds out in disbelief way past when it’s obvious that …

Dear Ms Cassidy,

Finally, I finished reading this series. Though it’s not your fault, the final grade for this one ends up being affected by the fact that at this point, I’m tired of the same old same old in the paranormals I’ve been reading lately. I won’t list specifics to avoid spoilers for this novella.

In the first three Wolfmates books, we meet the Adams family. No, not “that” Adams family. This one is a pack of unusual, to say the least, werewolves. The alpha marries a human, his younger brother marries a domestic house cat, their sister hooks up with a lion and their cousin is a vegetarian. And their grandmother can cook up some mean chicken soup which she claims will fix just about anything. It’s no wonder that Emerson Palmer, a female werewolf with “issues,” feels like she’s finally found a family with them. Her own pack is far too straight-laced and she never really felt at home with them. But the Adams took her in and accepted her and for that, she’ll fight for them with all she’s got.

Who’s she fighting? Lassiter Adams that’s who. The despicable man intent on …

Dear Ms. Vaughn:

I understand that this is the second in a series which started last year. I am happy to report that it stood alone without any need to read the first book (although I am sure that it adds something). Kitty Norville is a werewolf who has a radio show called The Midnight Hour. It’s a call in show wherein the paranormal folk (werefolk and vampires) and curious folk can call in and chat about topics related to being paranormal. Kitty used to be based in Denver, but her pack expelled her so she has been traveling all over the country, broadcasting her show and trying to rebuild her life.

Her lawyer, Ben, calls and tells her that she has been summoned to testify before a Senate hearing on paranormals, specifically about whether the Center for the Study of Paranatural Biology is entitled to more funding. Upon arriving in Washington, she is welcomed by Alette, the master of the city, and introduced to a group of werefolk. She quickly engages in a relationship with a hot Brazilian werejaguar but soon she is embroiled in vampire issues, …