The idea for this essay started with a question: what is it about Twilight and its derivations, especially Fifty Shades of Grey and Transcendence, that allow these variations to represent “fresh” and “new” in the retelling? I’m not interested in whether these books are good or bad, nor am I ... more >
ALL THE TRIGGER WARNINGS Janine: I asked Sunita, who read this book in its entirety, to join me for this discussion. As one whose relatives died in Auschwitz, I could only bring myself to read 35% of Breslin’s novel, the first 145 pages. So there are questions I can’t answer, ... more >
Note to readers: This column was originally posted at my small personal blog. We thought it might interest DA’s readers too. Reading diverse books and diverse authors (in terms of non-white and non-straight authors) has been a goal of quite a few online readers, in romanceland, SFF, and mainstream fiction more ... more >
Do you know that it’s only been five years and change since Harlequin announced that it was going to start offering self-publishing services? By comparison, digital-first publishing seems downright ancient. I don’t know if you remember how that Harlequin announcement blew up the internet, or how contentious the discussion ... more >
I don’t know if familiarity breeds content, but it definitely breeds myopia, and nothing crystallized this for me better than Amazon’s recent announcement that they would begin paying Kindle Select authors who participate in Amazon’s subscription service, Kindle Unlimited, by the number of pages read, rather than by the number ... more >
This past weekend I was involved in a great email discussion about the question of whether Romance fiction faced a unique challenge that other types of fiction, including other genres don’t. Namely, does Romance reflect contemporary issues and culture in a way that makes it easy to identify the genre’s most ... more >