I am a fan of your work. It’s in my bio, over there, on the right hand side—-> But this book didn’t work so well for me because, primarily, I felt Lucy was a wallower.  This is a story about loss and everyone’s attempts to recover from loss.  For some, the loss is part of their identity or has been for so long that a person can’t be mentioned without the reference to the loss.

This is the case for Lucy Lang and the women in her life.  Lucy is a widow and virtually all the women who are connected to her are widows.  Lucy, her mother, and her aunts all work at the family bakery and collectively the women are known as the Black Widows because each woman lost her husband at a young age and none of them have remarried. Lucy’s sister, Corinne, is obsessed with her husband’s health because she is convinced that he will die soon, just like all the other spouses in the family.

Ethan Mirabelli is the younger brother of Lucy’s late husband, Jimmy.  Ethan and Lucy have had a friends with benefits relationship as Lucy terms it, unable to acknowledge the two of them as “lovers”.  Lucy has decided that she is going to “break ranks” from her family and try to remarry and have a family.  She tells Ethan that they have to stop sleeping together.

Ethan, though, has played the role of the spouse for longer than Lucy’s marriage.  He stood by her through her seemingly never ending grief (she still counts the days of her marriage); he found her a new apartment; bought her games; cooked for her; listened to her; talked with her; held her while she cried; and satisfied her emotional needs.  Despite all this, Lucy is determined to find herself a husband and Ethan is not it.

Basically everyone in this story is caught in this perpetual cycle of grief.  It’s almost as comforting as Linus’ blanket.  It provides identities and belonging for the women.  It justifies Ethan’s ongoing, but sick relationship with Lucy.  It helps Lucy cling to the past and ignore the good things in her life.  Lucy watches her wedding video over and over, reliving the joy of the wedding day (although not the marriage itself) and then the subsequent grief of her loss.  She can’t give up the piercing sadness her loss brings to her.  It’s like the Bruce Willis character in Sixth Sense.

Despite Lucy’s declaration that she cannot bring herself to love anyone like she loved Jimmy, she finds herself dating a man that could be Jimmy’s ringer; while still engaging in some kind of relationship with Ethan. So despite never wanting to love again, she finds she cannot help but want Jimmy’s ringer.

For some reason, in order for Lucy to move on and to love again, she had to find out that Jimmy wasn’t the saint that she had created him to be.  This did not indicate that she had healed from her loss, but rather suggested that Lucy did not have the right to move on unless Jimmy was somehow flawed.

The story is emotional, mostly due to the fact that everyone is chronically sad throughout the story but I felt overtly manipulated into finding a HEA for Lucy and Ethan.   By her actions, Lucy wallowed her in grief. She worked with the Black Widows. She watched her wedding DVD constantly. She talked to Jimmy in her mind, sometimes believing her talked back to her. She refused to close the door on her marriage by not visiting his grave. She slept with his brother and dated his dead ringer. When given the chance for happiness, she turns away. Lucy, I felt, was in love with her grief more than she was in love with any one else.

The most authentic relationship was that between Corinne and her husband.  Ironically, Corinne’s obsession with her husband’s health was actually causing him stress related illnesses. In order for him to survive and their relationship to survive, Corinne had to start to let go of the control that she perceived she had over death.  C

Best regards,

Jane

This book can be purchased at Amazon
(affiliate link), Kindle (non affiliate), eHarlequin.com in print (affiliate link), eHarlequin.com in ebook (affiliate link), Barnes & Noble (affiliate link), nook (affiliate link), or other etailers.

(Thanks for the heads up Nadia Lee)

Reader Elizabeth sends this article in over at Bookslut by Colleen Mondor on the issue of kids of color and publishing’s attempt to erase them on the covers and in the text. Mondor asks the big question of why publishing is engaged in whitewashing. Who has sold these marketing folks, the execs, etc., on the idea that a) caucasion kids are the only market and b) that caucasion kids won’t relate to the kid of color.

This industry runs very much with the knowledge that there are sixteen writers waiting to take your place, who are willing to shut up and be agreeable, so they openly treat writers with contempt.

Pearson is engaged in experimenting with different forms of digital books. First is the short book.

FT Press, a unit of Pearson, has introduced two series of short, digital-only titles for professionals who want quick snippets of advice for $2.99 or less.

The publisher, through a new imprint named FT Press Delivers, has quietly begun selling what it is calling Elements and Shorts through the Kindle electronic bookstore on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble’s e-bookstore. The Elements, which the publisher has priced at $1.99, are stripped-down, 1,000- to 2,000-word versions of already-published books, while the Shorts are newly written essays of about 5,000 words, priced at $2.99.

Second, it has released ebook apps for “the home and office and technical and professional communities.”

In addition to the fully-populated iPhone Developer’s Library App , Pearson also offers free reader Apps that contain one sample chapter from various best-selling Pearson books, and allow customers to purchase the remaining chapters through a convenient “in-app purchase” feature.

The CEO of Penguin had a rambling op ed piece in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. I couldn’t quite understand the gist of it but two other people take it on.

Marion Maneker of Big Money says:

For Penguin, which has a lot of its brand (if not revenue) tied up in publishing books that are in the public domain, there’s an important message here about the future of the company. It’s a shame that Makinson didn’t address those issues.

Bookseller sums it up as follows:

Makinson invoked Penguin’s past, calling the e-book a “direct descendent of the 1930s paperback” on the back of which Allen Lane began the publishing company in 1935.

I thought Bookseller was more closely aligned with my interpretation by Marion Maneker’s insight was interesting.

All About Romance rolls out its 2009 Reader Poll results. You would have thought the DA crew made it up, with all the Sherry Thomas and Meredith Duran mentions. Alas, I did not fill out a survey (can’t vouch for the other DA reviewers though).

Reader Merrian sends in this audio interview. I haven’t listened to it yet. I have a number of them that I am collecting and maybe I’ll listen to them on the way to New York in a couple of weeks.

Stephen Page heads the literary publishing house Faber and Faber which, perhaps surprisingly, is embracing the digital future of electronically published books. Stephen Page says the e-book will include all kinds of extra goodies – like author interviews and readings.

Online retailers are looking for Congress to overturn the Leegin decision which found that retail price maintenance (minimum prices with no discounting) were to be examined under the rule of reason. Under the new law, RPMs would not be legal which was the law for 97 years.

On some pages of e-commerce sites selling products like televisions, digital cameras and jewelry, a critical piece of information is conspicuously missing: the price tag….

The missing prices are part of a larger battle sweeping the world of e-commerce. Wary of the Internet’s tendency to relentlessly drive down prices, major brands and manufacturers — and now, book publishers — are striking back, deploying a variety of tactics and tools to control how their products are presented and priced online.

The House Bill has made it out of committee and is recommended to be considered by the entire House for a vote. The Senate version is still in committee.

Of course, even if Leegin is overturned, manufacturers can unilaterally refuse to do business with a dealer. This is known as a Colgate policy. See United States v. Colgate, 250 U.S. 300, 307 (1919). Under the Colgate rule, a manufacturer can set the retail prices, the retailer can discount and the manufacturer can terminate the dealer’s right to sell those products directly. (The dealer could buy those products from a secondary market and resell)

Courtney Milan makes a good argument that a hard price ceiling would reduce the availability of books that need to be priced over $9.99.

I’m not saying that Macmillan is right–far from it. I’m not saying that Amazon is wrong–far from it. I am saying that we need to avoid categorical statements. Some books really do need to be priced over $9.99, or it simply won’t be profitable to produce them. And if we drive those books out, publishing will adapt by not selling them.

It should be noted that there are literally thousands of books in Kindle format that sell in excess of $9.99 and I don’t really think that is what the fight is over.

In Linda Howard’s book All the Queen’s Men, Louis Ronsard plays the villian.  He’s a wealth arms dealer who is portrayed as completely amoral.  He is targeted as the middleman who sells stolen arms to terrorists.

Ronsard was a shadowy Frenchman who gave his allegiance to no one group; he was the conduit, however, for many, and he had made an enormous fortune providing what was needed. He probably wasn’t behind the development of the explosive, but he would be the logical person to approach as a middle man, one to handle payments and shipments-for a fee, of course

He was, though, not without some standards:

The maniac who wanted to explode a bomb in a school as a protest for world peace was not going to purchase that bomb or the materials through him.

But he facilitated getting dangerous weapons into the hands of men who would do terrible things, like bring down an entire airplane to get one man.   Despite this, there are a number of Howard fans who have found Rosnard interesting and would like to see him star in his own book.  After all, Rosnard had an excuse.  His daughter is sick and he’s amassing this wealth to save her.  Or at least that is part of his justification.

I never saw the appeal of a Rosnard, a man who helped terrorists.  I found that to be irredeemable.  His was not a book I’d want to read.   While it is just fiction, there are lines I have drawn, particularly in romance about the type of person I want to spend time with and even with some of my favorite authors, there are paths I can’t, or won’t, travel with her.   I note that it is generally within romance than I have more of a black and white view of the main protagonists (although in fantasy, I’m looking for the good v. evil fix as well).

There are tropes that are acceptable outside of romance that I think romance readers have a hard time accepting within the genre.  Incest is one of those.  V.C. Andrews’ famed Flowers in the Attic features a love story between the two eldest children.  Locked up in the attic for years, the two teenagers begin to explore their burgeoning sexuality with each other, knowing that it is forbidden.   This story is a horror story and the children suffer tremendous emotional and physical abuse at the hands of their grandmother and mother.  Perhaps in light of all that the children have suffered, the love of each other is a minor sin.

Within the romance paradigm, however, I can’t help but think such a story would not be countenanced.  More than one blogger has been so outraged by even the advertisement of a book containing incest that I cannot imagine the uproar that would exist if a legitimate publisher put forth an incestual romance.

Having said that, there are plenty of brother and twin menage stories and there is the famed Men of August series by Lora Leigh wherein the brothers had to share their wives with each other in group sex acts to feel whole and loved due to the fact that the brothers were mercilessly tormented as children.  (Shades of Flowers in the Attic?)

One area I have a problem with is infidelity.  In Promise in a Kiss is the story of Devil Cynster’s mother and father.   The problem is that Devil’s father cheated on his wife with a Scottish woman and brought home the bastard to be raised by Devil’s mother.

 While Promise in a Kiss is written by an author who holds a strong grip on my reading emotions, the love story of the unfaithful Sebastien and Helena is one I simply couldn’t bring myself to read.

Yet, I’ve read books that feature infidelity within the genre trope that I’ve enjoyed.  I recently enjoyed a Michelle Reid glom and one of her backlist titles is The Ultimate Betrayal which features a husband who was unfaithful (to a certain point).  The infidelity happens off screen and before the start of the book.  Amy Garvey’s Pictures of Us is about a couple who had a picture perfect marriage only to find out that during a very difficult time in their relationship, before they were married, the heroine drifted away from the hero and the hero had a sexual relationship with another woman resulting in a pregnancy.  It wasn’t infidelity, technically, but the characters feel like they were being untrue to the other.

Then there is rape.  Forced seduction is an acceptable trope in the genre and some might even say that it is making a comeback.  I was surprised reading the March Sara Craven title, The Innocent’s Surrender.  I am a big Sara Craven fan but this one features a rape scene, or at least what I would term as a rape scene, in the beginning of the book.  Hero has heroine kidnapped and brought to his bedroom. His henchman lock the door and the heroine is not allowed to escape.  Hero tells heroine that she is not permitted to leave until she has sex with him. She begs him to allow her to leave, but he tells her that he has a letter indicating that she wants to engage in lascivious acts with him and that is what she will do until he tells her that she may go.

But what about Molly Sommerville in This Heart of Mine who raids Kevin Tucker’s shaving kit, climbs into bed with him, and while he is sleeping, proceeds to avail herself of his equipment and have sex with him while he is senseless.

The romance genre has con artists like the characters in Judith Ivory’s Untie My Heart, Jennifer Crusie’s Faking It, and Courtney Milan’s Proof of Seduction.   We’ve also had batterers, redeemed ones, in romance.  The Burning Point by Mary Jo Putney attempts to rekindle the marriage of a reformed batterer and his wife.

While I’d like to say a good author could make me accept anything, I know that is not true.  There are lines that I draw for characters and if they cross that line, it makes me hard to find them redeemable. I never enjoyed The Burning Point.  While I appreciated the writing in Ivory and Crusie’s books, I was never able to fully immerse myself in their stories.  In re-reading the Michelle Reid backlist, I’m not likely to revisit The Ultimate Betrayal.  I still have the willies after reading the first two Men of August books (could never make it to book 3) but I am able to read the twinsie/brother menages (because they aren’t touching!) although even that is losing its appeal the more that I contemplate it.

How about a bad mother? Could a mother who has abandoned her child, maybe even treated the child cruelly, be redeemed?  How about a pedophile?  A serial rapist?  An animal abuser?  Are there clear lines between the good guys and bad guys in your mind?   Are there lines that you draw in fiction?  Or is it all dependent on how good the author is?  Does it matter if it is romance or literary fiction? Why or why not?

I didn’t expect anything of this book except that the excerpt intrigued me, so to discover a gem like this was a wonderful surprise. I love how you played with both the Cinderella fairytale and the old skool Harlequin Presents tropes and came up with something so powerful and good.

Tom is an auto-mechanic. Or not even that? Tom works at a quickie lube joint (no, not that kind). He’s a year out of a relationship with Wells, a pampered scion of a rich family who seems to like slumming. Wells disappeared one day and Tom only found out later that he’d been left for a woman. The story opens when Well’s cousin Law pulls up in his Lamborghini Diablo and offers to take Tom to Well’s wedding reception. Law is huge, filthy rich, invincibly powerful — all the requirements for a Harlequin Presents dominant asshole male. Tom doesn’t know what Law’s motivation is, but Tom sees it as an opportunity for revenge, for final closure, and he agrees to go.

I love the descriptions of Law:

Law Castille was an impressive guy. Always had been. He had always intimidated Tom, damn him anyway.

His bold profile presented toward Tom with a high, solid cheekbone, heavy jaw, and rounded chin. His full lips were seductive, cruel. His dark hair was corporately trim, but it looked soft. Tom couldn’t see his eyes for his sunglasses, but knew they were striking, very dark with a hard, gemstone gleam.

He was bigger even than Tom remembered, sleek and massive as a prize bull. He had his shirtsleeves rolled up around his huge biceps. His muscles didn’t have that distorted, outsized, veins-popping steroidal look. To make sure, Tom glanced down at his crotch. Steroids shrank the testicles. Nope. There was nothing small down there.

The black fabric of Law’s trousers was drawn tight across his heavy thigh, showing the interwoven cabling of muscles underneath. Tom’s cock lifted.

He tore his glance away and sank back into the bucket seat. Last thing he ever wanted was to get caught getting hard for Law. He wasn’t sure where that had come from. Testosterone had reached critical mass in here. He didn’t dare look back or he would turn into a pillar of—okay, into a pillar. He stared straight ahead.

After the wedding, Law corners Tom in his apartment and you manage to write one of the best forced seduction scenes I’ve ever read. Tom is still convinced Law is straight and that he’s about to be raped by Law as a way to put him in his place. Tom has always been sure that he’s dominant, so to have Law threaten him and then penetrate him terrifies him . . . and remakes his world. You do an absolutely brilliant job of showing how very much Tom is both scared out of his mind and yet also desperately wants Law, and then showing how Tom remakes himself for the better in his new role and in his relationship with Law.

The conflict is very Old Skool Harlequin Presents: what does Law feel for Tom? Tom admits to himself very early that he loves Law and although the reader can see Law caring for Tom, his ruthlessness and his granite demeanor mean that Tom has very little idea of his role in Law’s life. The doormat to asshole ration that’s Jane’s way of measuring a good Presents is almost even. While Law’s an asshole, he’s a fun one without apologies or angst, and Tom is no one’s doormat. And the ending is pure Old Skool Harlequin Presents, too, with a full declaration of love at first sight and ruthless drive to the goal of stamping himself on Tom’s life and truly memorable grovel. Utterly, brilliantly perfect.

And I love your humor:

He flipped open the phone. “Hi.”

Law didn’t waste time with hello. “We’re on the ninth hole, fishing Aquaman out of the water hazard.”

Golf. What fun. “And what are you learning about your business partner?”

“He can’t swim,” Law said for starters. “And I really need to rethink my position with his company.”

Tom grinned. “What’s he learning about you?”

“If he were paying attention to this phone call—and he’s not—he would know that I can be led around by my dick.”

“I’m not leading you, Law.”

“But you could.”

I also love that the difference between Tom as a mechanic and Law as a billionaire is never an issue between them. Jessica at Racy Romance Reviews posted about this recently in her review of Victoria Dahl’s Lead Me On. But unlike in Pretty Woman — which this book is obviously modeled on, down to the polo game — the class difference between Tom and Law is never an issue. And whether that’s realistic or not in real life, it’s completely refreshing in my reading. The conflict in this book is pure romance-angst about what Law feels, rather than Tom wondering whether he deserves Law or will be able to live up to Law’s lifestyle or whatever else he might think as a mechanic going out with a billionaire.

There is one completely shocking scene toward the end of the book that I don’t want to give away. But you’d written Law so well up until then that I could not only believe that he’d done what Tom thought he’d done, but could forgive him for it too, as Tom did. Perfectly done. I haven’t been on the edge of my seat reading a book in a long time the way I was with that scene and the aftermath of it.

The story is told almost entirely from Tom’s deep third person perspective. And while I always miss seeing the relationship from both sides when this happens, I think adding Law’s perspective as you do, late in the book, is actually unnecessary. The scene where Law receives a blackmail threat can be cut and explained when Law discusses it with Tom, and Law’s thoughts about his conversation with his mother could also be part of the denouement with Tom, rather than told from Law’s perspective. It just seemed a curious choice to add his perspective more than three quarters of the way through the novel when it’s not totally necessary to our understanding of the plot.

That aside, this book is, as I said, a complete gem. It took me back to my days of reading Harlequin Presents when I was thirteen, but with the twist of it being a wonderful, sweet m/m romance instead, told with humor and obvious caring. Thank you!

Grade: B+

Best regards,
-Joan/Sarah F.

This book can be purchased in ebook format at Torquere Books.

This book was provided to the reviewer by either the author or publisher. The reviewer did not pay for this book but received it free. We do not earn an affiliate fee from Torquere Books through the book link.

I kind of lost track of this book earlier in the year when it was released in hardback. Now, I can make up for that at the trade paperback release. Since it’s been almost two years since I read book 4 (Crimson Rose), it took me a little while to get back into the swing of things but things finally “clicked” again at roughly the 1/3 mark and after that, I was finally involved with it.

By now, aficionados of the series know the drill. The story will switch back and forth from the modern day back to the golden age of floral spying – the early nineteenth century when England and France battled to see who would rule Europe. Eloise Kelly is still delving into the memoirs, letters and other papers in the hands of the Selwick family who, two centuries before, were part of an elaborate spy ring. Grad student Eloise is nowhere ready to being writing her dissertation on the subject but she is moving ahead in her romance with the current owner of Selwick Hall, Colin Selwick. As she starts to read the letters of Lady Charlotte Lansdowne, Eloise begins to uncover a plot that threatened England in a way that would have rocked the country. And which was foiled by the pluck and daring of Charlotte and her long lost cousin, Robert the Duke of Dovedale. But once they save the country, can these two save their romance?

Honestly, the first 1/3 of the novel didn’t impress me much. The modern sections come off as too chick-lit-y. The relationship between Colin and Eloise is awkward – which does make sense as they’re still settling into it – but that doesn’t help me get involved in their relationship. I was cringing more at Eloise’s overly overt PDAs then cheering her on.

When Charlotte and Robert show up, at first they interested me but very quickly, I began to wonder what Robert saw in Charlotte. Later, their relationship changes – thank goodness – but in the early stages, little about them grabbed me. As well, there is a lot of extraneous nothing that gets described in detail and which I found myself skimming. The dialogue seemed to me to be headed in the direction of a Julia Quinn novel where the characters talk at and around each other in a circular motion that didn’t seem to want to end. Around and around and around to say the same thing again until I feared I would lose all interest in continuing. There is also a fair share of ‘too modern’ parlance in the historical section. Charlotte has “had it up to here.” Miles states “what he said.”

I actually think the spy stuff is a cool plot and neatly folded into what were probably real concerns at the time. Had something like this really been carried out, the upheaval to the government would have been immense and long lasting. Points to Robert and Tommy for calling for help when they realized the breadth of the plot was beyond their scope to deal with. I also like that Charlotte and Henrietta take part in saving the day, and not just to make suggestions that others act on but in being there, on the spot to lend a hand.

As for the overall arc of characters, Charlotte changes the most, going from someone who lived in books and saw Robert as a storybook hero to a (more disillusioned) young woman who sees the real person he is. She also begins to stand up for herself both against her intimidating grandmother and against Robert. First when he tries to warn her off of one of the villains then when he tries to end-run her into marriage. Robert changes some but not as much as Charlotte.

Where the book excels for me is in how Robert and Charlotte’s views of each other change. Both initially saw the other as their idealized person. Robert was a knight in shining armor -complete with trumpets blaring in Charlotte’s head – while she was his vision of sweet womanhood – gentle, ladylike, butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. She showed him she had a backbone of iron and the will to match while she learned that he could save the day and triumph over evil – yet both also see that the other is merely human, subject to weakness, foibles and feet of clay

She did have her doubts and initially was devastated that he might leave her but she stood her ground, stuck to her guns and got the kind of relationship she wanted with no linger doubts about it. But this ended up being another sticking point for me. Charlotte sticks up for herself and what she wants but what does Robert do – beyond not going back to India? Hauls in the unicorn scenario again and leaves jam tarts all over the garden? What does this truly prove? That he’s given in before Charlotte does?

But while the historical parts of the story eventually pick up speed for me, the modern parts just never jelled. Eloise moans about how cold it is in Selwick Hall and they disagree on movies. There’s a red herring tossed at us about what Colin does that is too quickly cleared up. Then – with almost nothing that really happens, this part of the story is over. When it’s all said and done, I’m left with the feeling of a tiny ripple in a teacup. Maybe Great Events will happen to them in the next installment.

I wonder what is in store, if anything, for Tommy. I also like that, even though I had to puzzle through who some of the characters were – initially – you didn’t feel the need to haul everyone and his maiden aunt out as proof of love, fidelity and fecundity.

This is definitely not a starting place for newbies to the series and I would advise long standing series readers to brush up on past characters before diving into the book. I just wish that it had lived up to the two previous “Pink Carnation” books I’ve read. C+

~Jayne

This book can be purchased at Amazon (affiliate link), Kindle (non affiliate), Barnes and Noble (affiliate link), nook“>nook (affiliate link), or other etailers.

***

First sale, huh?  It was a looong time ago.  But one doesn’t forget that sort of thing.  I can still remember the large manila envelope with my own handwriting on it, addressed to me, lying on the dining room table.

I’d sent out about ten of these, a synopsis and three chapters, and all of them had come back just like this–the manuscript stuffed into my SASE, with a brief cover letter or card saying, “We’re sorry to inform you…”  Sometimes there was one line scribbled on the page, a note from the editor saying the idea was too overdone, or some other reason for the rejection.  (In hindsight, I know that these short personal notes were a positive sign, but at the time they didn’t mean much to me beyond “No”.)

This proposal was the last one to be returned.  It was from Avon.  I opened it a crack, pulled out the letter and saw those words in the first paragraph:  “I’m sorry…”

I was so depressed that I just shoved it all back in the envelope and didn’t even bother to read the whole letter.  It sat there on the table for several weeks.  Eventually I had to clear the table (does this suggest anything about my housekeeping?) and pulled out the manuscript in preparation to toss it.

I realized then that it was rather a long letter, for a rejection.  A whole page long.  I don’t remember the name of the editor who wrote it, I’m sorry to say.  But it gave some commentary on the proposal, suggested some changes and asked me to revise and resubmit.

Whoa.  And I’d let it sit there for weeks!  The delay may have worked for me, though, because meanwhile a change had taken place at Avon.  The editor who’d written me had left, and Ellen Edwards had come on board.

As is common with editors newly arrived at a publisher, Ellen was looking for some unknown writers to develop for her own stable.  Lucky for me, my revision arrived at just the right time to catch her eye.

She called and asked me for the rest of the manuscript.

Oops.

This is where my first sale story becomes a bit unusual.  I had a bad habit of starting books, writing about seven chapters, and then deciding some other story sounded more interesting.  I never wrote a synopsis.  I knew enough to know this was a bad habit.  So I’d decided, as an exercise, to put together a proposal–3 chapters and a synopsis.  Once I’d done that, I figured (naively) why not send it out?

There was no “rest of the manuscript.”  I had already sent them most of what I had.

At this point, Ellen would have been forgiven by every editor in New York for hanging up on me.  But instead of telling me to finish and submit again, which is what I frankly deserved to be told, she asked if I could write a love/sex scene as an example of what I could do.

Oh sure!  Absolutely!  Whatever you want!  Squee!

For the first and only time, I had to go forward in a book and a story I had no idea about, and write a scene.  So I wrote a scene on a tropical island, but it was in a tent, and rain was pouring down.  I sent it back to Ellen, and they offered me a contract, and a deadline, for the book which became THE HIDDEN HEART.

I’m looking at that contact now.  It was signed in early April, so I probably got the offer in March.  The deadline for 120,000 words was June 1.  Two months.

I guess I did it.  I must have!   I can remember writing toward that scene on the island, as if it were a lighthouse in the dark.  I’d never finished a book before.  The subsequent plot has often been observed to be “globe-trotting,” if not a bit wonky, to put it politely.

But I have Ellen Edwards and her faith in me to thank for becoming a writer.  I’m not sure I ever would have finished a book if I hadn’t had that scene and that contract to propel me past Chapter Seven.

Funnily enough, I’ve never been able to do that again: write a scene way ahead in a book and fill in the middle.  I wish I could, as it worked pretty well that time.

LESSONS IN FRENCH BY LAURA KINSALE—IN STORES JANUARY 26, 2010

Laura Kinsale’s unique and powerfully written love stories transcend the romance genre. In this, her first new book in five years, she delivers a poignant, funny, sexy, Regency romance sure to delight her many fans and attract a whole new readership.

Trevelyan and Callie are childhood sweethearts with a taste for adventure, until the fateful day her father discovers them embracing in the carriage house and, in a furious frenzy, drives Trevelyan away in disgrace. Nine long, lonely years later, Trevelyan returns. Callie discovers that he can still make her blood race and fill her life with excitement, but he can’t give her the one thing she wants more than anything—himself.

For Trevelyan, Callie is a spark of light in a world of darkness and deceit. Before he can bear to say his last goodbyes, he’s determined to sweep her into one last, fateful adventure, just for the two of them.

About the Author

Laura Kinsale, a former geologist, is the New York Times bestselling author of Flowers from the Storm, The Prince of Midnight, and Seize the Fire. She and her husband divide their time between Santa Fe and Dallas. For more information, please visit www.laurakinsale.com or follow her on Twitter, @LauraKinsale

If you already have micropay, just use it to purchase the books and the micropay will replenish after your purchase.  I’ve “bought” all the Evanovich titles and will be moving on to Lora Leigh and then Grafton.  It helps to have a healthy micropay account because then you can buy five or so at a time.  Happy buying folks.

Via Books on the Knob.

Back in December of 2008, I wrote about the ebook tax or the surcharge that Macmillan and other publishers were placing on ebooks by charging more for the digital version of the print book. At the time I said this:

The more that I look at ebook pricing and the way that NY runs their ebook business, the more convinced I am of three things.

• They don’t actually want to encourage the sales of ebooks
• They don’t know what ebook readers want
• They think that we are a group of readers that they can screw around with

Times obviously haven’t changed, and my suppositions back in 2008 were correct.  Publishers are working hard to sustain physical retail markets at the expense of ebook growth, that they don’t know what ebook readers want, and they think that ebook readers are a group that do not need to be cultivated.   (Read this article entitled “Why eBooks Must Fail” along with this comment by Teresa Nielsen Hayden for why ebooks are viewed with disfavor by legacy publishers).

In all the press statements made by Hachette and Macmillan, neither seem  interested in talking to the reader despite the fact that under the agency model, the reader is their direct customer.  The agency model is how publishers perceive that they will be able to control their content by disallowing discounting by retailers and driving up the price of ebooks to such a point that it is more attractive to buy the hardcover. Thus the ebook tax.

Truly, would you rather buy a $14.99 book in ebook format that you cannot share or sell; that is in a proprietary format which has limited use or buy the $16.99 physical version from Costco or Wal-mart or even Amazon?

If publishers would decouple ebooks from print books in pricing and truly meet the market, the move to agency model might not be so disconcerting for readers.  When ebook pricing is set by companies who have no experience in pricing but want to discourage ebook purchases, an ebook reader can’t help be view those publishers with a great deal of mistrust.

Dynamic pricing (which some people read as lower prices post hardcover) is really the new form of price discrimination.  Airlines utilize price discrimination the best by charging each person a different ticket for a seat on the same flight.  Dynamic pricing, however, depends on having a lot of knowledge about the consumer which the publishers are completely lacking.

Publishers will likely price higher for popular authors and less high for new authors and midlist authors.  I anticipate that pricing will not depend on whether titles are backlist but will be dependent on the author with the expectation that the backlist titles of very popular authors are worth more than midlist new releases.   Of course, with dynamic pricing, authors are totally dependent on what the publisher deems their digital books are worth.  The playing field will be quite disparate. (I was thinking if I was an author I would want to negotiate a per unit royalty rather than have it be dependent on the crazy pricing experiments of publishers).

So what’s a reader to do with the publishers and their pricing plans?  This is my plan.

I plan to not pay higher the physical prices and I refuse to pay over $9.99 for the digital equivalent of a hardcover.  While the costs of production (editing, cover art, etc)* are no different for print books and digital books, with print books, readers have rights such as resale and the ability to share and trade; thus they value the books less.

When new fiction books that are released are in excess of the comparable print price or higher than the $10.00, I will not buy new. I will get the book either from the used market, use my library (my library has an express service where you can pay $1.00 to read a new popular release without waiting your turn), participate in Paperbackswap or other like services. I will not buy new.

What I will do, if I really want to help the author, is buy a digital copy of the backlist titles, if reasonable, or a print mass market and gift this book to a friend.  In this way, I will be sending the author a royalty and seeding the love of that author with another reader.  What I won’t be doing is giving the publishers the satisfaction of moving me away from buying digital.

Do you expect ebook prices to increase?  What do you anticipate dynamic pricing will mean for publishers and readers?  Do you plan to make any changes in your buying plans?  Will you keep a log like liz m?

*I’d argue that ebooks have lower costs because manufacturing is less and there is no physical warehousing, warehouse tax, returns from resellers, and no secondary market.

This is a very recognizable storyline within the Harlequin Presents line. The hero, Kain Gerard, believes that the heroine, Sable Martin, is a no good gold digger out to seduce his cousin’s fortune away. Kain is summoned by his aunt to check out this woman for whom the cousin, Brent, has bought a thirty thousand dollar ring and installed in his apartment.  Brent has an unfortunate history of falling “violently in lust with the most unsuitable female in sight”, dumping said woman who then runs to the press to wail about how poorly he treated her.

Brent’s mother is unusually concerned because Sable is older and not his usual type.  For one thing, Kain’s aunt notes “she isn’t hanging onto him or gazing worshipfully–or seductively–into his eyes.”  I find that hysterical.  Brent’s family is convinced that Sable is evil because she’s aloof instead of an appendage of Brent’s.  At first Kain is unconvinced.  Maybe she’s normal, he posits for Brent’s mother.  But Brent’s mother brings up Sable’s sketchy upbringing (Sable’s dad was the town drunk) and given her past, Sable must also be up to no good.

Of course, Kain and his aunt are completely wrong about Sable. She is a beautiful woman who has a relationship with Kain’s cousin, but it is just a friendship. Sable even tries to explain this to Kain but because Kain is so attracted to Sable, he cannot believe any man would have just a friendship with Sable.  Further, Kain’s investigation into her background brought some unsavory facts to light which cements his poor opinion of her. Of course, despite the fact that she is this supposedly an amoral creature, Kain burns for her. (classic)

Kain asks Sable if she is in love with Brent and she denies that she is.  Brent is merely lending his flat to her while he is out of the country.  Kain suggests that the two of them pretend to be lovers and Brent will then back off.   Kain is pretty heartless with his cousin by preparing to steal his woman, but Kain figures Brent will be better off in the end (maybe Ruthless Rich Man should have been the title).

Sable is attracted to Kain against her better judgment and he makes a concerted effort to woo her, albeit under false pretenses.  As Kain is seducing Sable, however, he falls in love himself and his jealousy and desire to possess leads him to act unkindly.   We are treated to a good grovel from Kain which I never get tired of.  

If the reader is not an HP reader, I can see being irritated at Kain’s constant highhandedness and how the value placed on Sable’s sexual innocence (although she is not a virgin) could be trying. However, Sable is not a doormat and for most of the book, Kain is not an asshole so the asshole doormat ratio is fairly low and the sometimes unintentionally funny scenes along with the strong emotional pull makes this a fun, entertaining way to while away the afternoon. . B

Best regards,

Jane

This book can be purchased at Amazon
(affiliate link), eharlequin in print (non affiliate link), eharlequin in ebook (non affiliate link), Kindle (non affiliate link), nook (non affiliate link), Books on Board (non affiliate link) or other etailers.

***

Prologue

1810 – Scotland

The stone was hard and cold. Light in the church came from flickering candles next to the altar and fading sunlight breaching the tiny windows and door. Dara rested her head on the rough floor, tears mixing with dirt tracked in by decades of worshippers. “Is this Your dictate? They did nothing…”

The old priest had tried to comfort her, but his words were empty platitudes, meaningless despite good intentions. Her beautiful brothers were dead, burned with their nurse. The fire, some said, had been unnatural, lighting up the sky for miles around. Father Garrick had told of wild tales of magical beasts taking flight, cackling witches and demons spreading through town.  In the end, she didn’t give a damn. Edward and Jeremiah were gone.

The comfort of her sister, Caila, was slight. Two years Dara had stayed with Anthony out of selfishness, and lost a fifth of the boys’ brief lifetime. I came back too late. I failed them when they needed me, she thought. I saved them just to let them die ten years later. Forcing herself onto her knees, she wiped grimy hands over her cheeks. The gown she’d worn, one that he’d picked out for her, was filthy after three days ride in the back of a wagon.

A sound from the entrance of the church brought her attention from sorrow. Father Garrick had gone to comfort wee Caila, letting Dara cry in solitude. They were the tears she couldn’t have freed in front of the one person who still needed her. She couldn’t let Caila down too. Brushing dark red strands of hair out of her eyes, she glanced back toward the heavy planked door and her breath caught in her throat. It was a vision, had to be. He was there. Had God sent an apology for taking the little ones by bringing him to her now?

“Your gr…Anthony…” Even after two years, she stumbled over the words. She despised herself for the misstep.

Slow Heat is the first book by you that I’ve read, and hoo-boy, I’ve been missing out. Slow Heat is captivating from page one, and I might have even gotten a little teary-eyed near the end of the story—it is exactly what a romance story should be: believable characters with challenges in their lives who work to find a satisfying path forward. Slow Heat deftly weaves a complex web of four wounded people into a whole that allows each one of them to find hope and the start of a happier future.

The story opens with Samantha, a publicist for a professional baseball expansion team, and Wade, the all-star catcher for the same team, reluctantly thrust into pretending to be a couple to help playboy-Wade’s image in the wake of a PR scandal.

Both have key roles in the success of a fledgling professional baseball team in southern California, and over the course of the book readers experience a little slice of the day-to-day of a baseball season.

As Samantha and Wade navigate their way through their “fake” relationship, they can’t keep their hands off each other, and each of them—wary of relationships—wants their PR stunt of a relationship to become something real.

Wade is sexy, funny, and vulnerable. He is also an emotional loner with a fear of abandonment who is thrust into turmoil when his alcoholic father comes back into his life. He has a public image of carefree love-‘em-and-leave-‘em playboy, but there is real substance behind that public image that comes out when he is with Samantha.

Samantha—who comes from a selfish, power-hungry family–suddenly finds herself playing mother to her ten-year-old nephew who is thrust without any advance notice into her care. Samantha is strong and smart and takes to becoming the de facto mom to a lonely kid with aplomb.

Their mutual family challenges draw Wade and Sam closer together even as their family problems and their mutual fear of trying to be a couple for real create tension and conflict between them.

The chemistry between Wade and Sam is explosive and scorching, and makes for some hot and steamy encounters throughout the book—in a women’s bathroom, on the beach, in a car, on a couch, in the shower…did they ever make it to a bed?

What makes this book so very satisfying is the emotional relationship that develops between Sam and Wade as they slowly and reluctantly begin to trust each other. The dialogue between these two is by turns funny and poignant. Whether they are laughing together, crying, arguing, or just talking about day-to-day life, the mutual affection between Sam and Wade shines through every word.

But Ms. Shalvis, there is one part of the book that I absolutely cannot believe. When Samantha is in the clubhouse with the players, she is oblivious to all the yummy nakedness around her (except for Wade, of course). I just don’t believe that any normal woman could really ignore all that naked hotness. But maybe it’s just me. ;)

I’ve read Slow Heat three times; I suspect I’ll read it a few more times before baseball season is over. Slow Heat is a sexy, hot keeper. *fans face* A.

Best Regards,

Jaclyn

This book can be purchased at Amazon (affiliate link), Kindle (non affiliate link), Books on Board (non affiliate link), or other etailers.

• Archangel’s Kiss by Nalini Singh recommended by Jane (but Janine didn’t like it as much)
• Ecstasy Unveiled by Larissa Ione recommended by Jane
• Eyton by Lynne Connolly recommended by Jayne
• Twice as Hot by Gena Showalter (100% micropay rebate at Fictionwise) recommended by Shuzluva
• My Darling Caroline by Adele Ashworth (it should be noted that this book is the subject to some dispute between Jane who really enjoyed it and Jayne who loathed it)
• Bachelor Cop by Carolyn McSparren recommended by Jane
• The Rich Man’s Blackmailed Mistress by Robyn Donald recommended by Jane
• Pride/Prejudice by Ann Henreedon recommended by Joan aka Dr. Sarah
• Lessons in French by Laura Kinsale recommended by Dr. Sarah and Janet/Robin
• Slow Heat by Jill Shalvis by new reviewer Jaclyn and Janet/Robin (review coming today)

Macmillan ratchets it up the debate by putting a full page ad in the NYTimes for Atul Gawande’s latest book and placing the text “Available everywhere but Amazon.”

Barry Eisler analyzes publisher position v. digital tides. Don’t be deceived by the narratives, he says, as they are all self serving. The digital tide, however, cannot be stemmed and publishers need to go on the offense

Earthworks are a static defense. Publishers can do a few things to make the walls marginally higher and thicker, but that’s about it. Meanwhile, the force of the digital tide is always increasing. Eventually, a kinetic and ever stronger offense will overwhelm a static, finite defense

Hachette moves to the agency business model and in a letter to agents:

It’s important to note that we are not looking to the agency model as a way to make more money on e-books. In fact, we make less on each e-book sale under the new model; the author will continue to be fairly compensated and our e-book agents will make money on every digital sale. We’re willing to accept lower return for e-book sales as we control the value of our product–books, and content in general. We’re taking the long view on e-book pricing, and this new model helps protect the long term viability of the book marketplace.

This article suggests that the increased ebook prices will result in a boon to readers:

The economics of the agency model mean that everyone—readers, authors, publishers, and Amazon—will gain if trade paperbacks are sold at $9.99.

That would still leave room for front list e-books at $12.99 or $14.99, a great discount over the physical book price.

The article also says:

We also know that there is a very vocal faction of putative Kindle owners—one suspects many are not actual owners of e-readers but simply Internet entitlement zealots—who believe e-books must be significantly cheaper than physical books to garner sales.

Really? Only Internet entitlement zealots believe ebooks must be cheaper to get sales?

Washington Post says that Apple won in this battle between Amazon and Macmillan and I think they are right.

The Apple iPad isn’t even available yet, but already it is forcing Amazon to respond in a variety of ways to protect its competing Kindle eBook business….
Amazon cannot afford to lose this war. Not so much because of the potential revenue impact this year, but because as digital books become more popular they will become a bigger part of Amazon’s business than of Apple’s.

Bob Lefsetz, a famous music business consultant, wrote:

And if you think physical books are the way of the future, then you’re unaware of the towns that no longer sport a bookstore, like Laredo, TX, you’re unaware that library hours are shortening, that Borders is on the bring of bankruptcy and Barnes & Noble might soon be taken over. The publishers are too ignorant to even see what’s going on. They’re running into the arms of Apple to avoid Amazon.

The Wrap suggests the battle for higher ebook prices is already lost:

“I think Amazon has quite successfully burned the $9.99 price point into the brains of digital readers,” said Jason Boog, editor of mediabistro.com’s book industry blog, GalleyCat. “If people are actively organizing boycotts against a certain price point, for better or for worse, Amazon has already won the price war.”

and

“Amazon has done a great job of marketing the illusion that an e-book should be $9.99,” [Sarah] Weinman [of Daily Finance] said. “So how can publishers tell consumers, in clear terms, why $9.99 is bad and convince them that discount culture shouldn’t screw over the authors they profess to love?”

Australia’s federal court has issued a ruling that negates the responsibility for ISPs to engage in enforcement.

In a definitive defeat for film studios—and in a first case of its kind worldwide—Australia’s Federal Court has ruled that ISPs have no obligation to act on copyright infringement notices or to disconnect subscribers after receiving multiple letters. If copyright holders want justice for illegal file-sharing, they need to start by targeting the right people: those who committed the infringement.

Computerworld AU analyizes this further:

iiNet’s win in its civil case against the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) in the Federal Court of Australia is just the start of a potentially long legal war, according to a Melbourne University copyright law expert.

D Packman, former CEO of eMusic says that publishers pricing ebooks higher are in for a sad reality:

Remembering your Econ class, you also know that most goods are elastic; as price lowers, demand increases. An optimum point exist that maximizes profit. I am pretty sure that the book industry, like the music industry before it, has not maximized profit by finding the optimum price. This is generally because the book publishers are not retailers — they have never forged a relationship directly with a customer. To optimize pricing (particularly on a per title basis), you need to conduct lots of tests and analyze lots of data. Amazon does this in near-real time and, I am told, is constantly optimizing pricing, page layout, merchandising, bundling, shopping cart path, and many other ecommerce variables.

Sidenote: Is this all a crazy ploy to get us readers to be happy about windowing (the delayed release of ebooks?)

Steve Axelrod who reps bigtime authors like Julia Quinn, Suzanne Brockmann, Susan Elizabeth Phillips (you know, big trade authors important to publishers) isn’t thrilled with the whole agency model because he, like Macintosh of Random House, isn’t convinced publishers know what they are doing in regards to pricing. He lays out 6 reasons why moving to the Agency model sounds like a mistake.

Kobo books has a post up about price elasticity at its blog.

Publishers have never done pricing without the safety net of retailers making adjustments to optimize consumer demand. Retailers spend a great deal of time on price analysis/optimization. As we work with publishers on agency, continuous review of price/purchase behaviour is going to be essential. Daily/weekly, not monthly/quarterly.

Books price $11 and on face a sad downward decline in sales numbers until it sort of flatlines. Kobo calls this “The Barren, Rocky Plain of Publisher Wishful Thinking.”

I think this is Kobo’s “Danger, Will Robinson” call.

Dorchester Publishing has launched a new publicity campaign called the Publisher’s Pledge program.

“Publisher’s Pledge is a reaffirmation of the business model Dorchester has always prided itself on,” stated Brooke Borneman, Director of Sales and Marketing. “Our strength has been identifying emerging voices and trends in the industry rather than chasing bestsellers. Our intent is to reestablish ourselves in the market as the publisher authors and agents turn to first to introduce new talent.

I thought the press release was a bit ironic given that it pointed to the names that they discovered and then sold recently to Avon. The books in the Publisher’s Pledge will be sold with a “money back guarantee”.

The first Publisher’s Pledge title will be Barbara Monajem’s Sunrise in a Garden of Love & Evil (April 2010), an erotically charged urban fantasy in the same vein as Charlaine Harris. Additional titles include Elisabeth Naughton’s Marked (May 2010), a darkly sensual paranormal romance inspired by Greek mythology that will appeal to fans of Sherrilyn Kenyon; Christie Craig’s Shut Up and Kiss Me (June 2010), a delightfully quirky romantic mystery that will appeal to fans of Janet Evanovich; and Erin Kellison’s back-to-back debuts Shadow Bound (July 2010) and Shadow Fall (August 2010), the first two releases in a riveting post-apocalyptic series that fuses dark fantasy, science fiction, horror and romantic suspense.

I first saw this movie shortly after it was made in 1991 and immediately went out and bought the book upon which it was based. Louis L’Amour was better known as a writer of traditional westerns but here he includes a bit of romance along with punching cows and riding the range.

After Evie Teale (Katherine Ross) and her family arrive at their new home in Arizona, her husband rides off almost immediately to buy what they plan to be the start of their cattle herd. Shortly after that a stage drives through the area and the manager makes Evie a deal to be a stopping place for food and rest until the stage line builds its own station. It’s extra money the family can use as it’s been too long now without word for Mr. Teale to be anything but dead.

When the stage cowboys drive in some horses, Evie meets Con Conagher (Sam Elliott), a tough older cowpuncher who admires her from afar. But what does he have to offer such a fine woman? So he hires on to the Tay (Ken Curtis) outfit and along with one other man, fights off the rustlers who plan to kill the old man and take over his cows.

But he, like several other cowboys, is chasing after sagebrush and the notes which some lonely woman is writing and trying to them to drift across the wide open spaces of the county. Will he admit what Evie already knows, that he does have something to offer her?

Conagher is a straight up and honest man. When he takes a man’s pay, he rides for the brand. It’s all he knows and his honor is bone deep. He thinks that killing a man when there’s another way to settle the problem is crazy and we see several instances of that. We also see that in the end, it saves his life after a final run in with the rustlers who actually admire him as a man. Elliott has a lived in, weathered face such as I would expect to see on a middle aged cowboy and his gravely voice is one I could listen to all day.

Evie is a woman of nerve and grit. It’s never made plain if the move west was as much her idea as Mr. Teale’s but when she’s left on her own with her stepchildren, she buckles down and gets the job done all while trying to do right by Laban and Ruthie. Hers is a dignified beauty and strength which Ross shows throughout the story. I love how her dresses are obviously meant to look homemade unlike so many worn by actresses in those old 1960s westerns.

In truth this is more a western than a romance. Conagher and Evie share little actual screen time but when they do, the quiet connection between them is obvious. Shoot, Con spends more time with his horse than he does with Evie but the fact that he’s willing to chase after sagebrush shows that he’s got a romantic streak.

There are several secondary actors who are probably known more by face than name including Ken Curtis and Buck Taylor (both of Gunsmoke fame) and Buck’s father Dub Taylor (in decades worth of westerns) as well as James Gammon and Barry Corbin (Brenda Leigh Johnson’s father on “The Closer”). All of them turn in great performances and are a pleasure to watch.

And then there are the great open spaces of the West where you can hear the wind in the grass and cedars. I love that everything is a little rough and slightly ragged around the edges here. That scenes are shot by firelight and we get a real sense of how jostling a wagon ride was and how hard it was to keep clean when you were a cowboy trailing through the dust after cattle.

The western payoff is all through the movie and considering it was originally done for television, I think they did a fine job. The romance payoff takes the whole film but the first, and final, kiss is well worth waiting for. B

~Jayne

The excerpt of this book on Loose Id really intrigued me. I liked the writing, I even liked the space opera set up. I was excited to read it. But the book itself is a book of missed opportunities. As I read it, all I could see was the idea struggling desperately but fruitlessly under the execution and that made me sad.

Pasha is a slave who can’t remember anything of his life and is alternately content as a slave and whore but also constantly trying to escape, to what he knows not. His reptilian owner (literally, not metaphorically) takes him to a space port to pimp him out and he sees a man he knows he has to connect with. Pasha’s owner plays cards with him while Pasha gives him a blowjob, and the man wins Pasha’s services for a night. The man, Griffin, reveals that Pasha is actually Helios Dayspring, the priest king of their displaced and war-ravaged people. Griffin, of course, has been looking for Helios for five years, ever since their people were exiled from their planet and Helios went missing. Now that Griffin has found Helios — and of course they are former lovers, too, and immediately restart that relationship — they do a little roaming around the galaxy for various reasons, including finding a way for Helios to get his memory back from under the control of the implanted slave microchip in his brain. They eventually make their way back to their new planet, where Helios takes his rightful place as king.

The plot is fine. The plot is all there. The plot is a little naive when it comes to interplanetary politics and the probable actions of vast mining corporations. The new planet on which Helios and Griffin’s people settled has vast resources of a crystal that can power cities. I find it very difficult to believe that this wouldn’t have been noted when the planet was first discovered. I also find it very difficult to believe that once this IS discovered by the rest of the galaxy, that the pastoral, idyllic vision of the future at the end of the book is at all believable. But the plot is…solid, with a few tweaks.

And the characters are great. Helios and Griffin have to get to know each other again, and have to negotiate the power dynamics of their relationship together. Helios has been changed by his slavery, but he also knows that he can survive pretty much anything. He knows that there is power in submitting (although this book is NOT a BDSM book at all), and power in companionship and he brings his new understandings to his new relationship with Griffin. I do NOT like, as I never do, that their exchange of “I love you” comes early, leaving little emotional conflict for the rest of the book, but their relationship dynamics are still interesting and well-thought-out.

In fact, everything’s well thought-out. It’s the execution that…is just boring, ordinary, meh. The idea is amazing! OMG, so interesting and brimming with possibilities. You could say incredible things about issues of slavery and power and companionship and loyalty. You could delve deeply into the minds of these men. They’ve suffered some truly awful things and have come out stronger and better and more realistic. But the execution is…throwing words on the page to tell the bare bones of the story. This book should be about 400 pages. Instead, it’s 122. This book should be an epic space opera with huge responsibilities. Instead it’s an erotic romance with a nifty premise. You could even KEEP the erotic stuff in. In fact, the erotic aspect of the story is perfect and integral to the plot and it would be a deep disservice to the story to get rid of it. But….oh, it’s like you’ve got this phantasmagorical image of a beautiful woman. It sparkles and shines in its beauty and depth and complexity, but it’s completely see-through, just air and dreams. And in front of you, all that is “real” of the woman’s beauty is a skull, bare bones and foundation, with no indication of the true beauty of the woman except for a haunting melancholy of loss and regret. That’s what I feel when I read this story, because it could be so brilliant but really, your writing is just not up to the task.

I love these characters. I love this idea and the possibilities of their story. But I’m so disappointed with this book.

Grade: C-

Best regards,
-Joan/Sarah F.

This book can be purchased at Loose Id.

She prefers not to lose a potential sale because an ebook version is not available and also does not want to “create an adversarial relationship” with ebook readers or “train those readers that instead the best way to get that digital copy is to download it for free.”

But she also sees the need to maintain control over pricing but admits that publishers have very little pricing knowledge, primarily because they don’t have a relationship with the end user.  Interestingly, the article suggests that publishers will vary price according to perceived demand which means that authors with lesser demand will be priced lower than those with higher demand.  This could work to benefit and hurt the author. It will be interesting to see how ebook royalties will be structured given that the list price (usually the basis for the royalty) may fluctuate a good deal.  In any event, this was a great article and I know it’s a paid subscription but it’s worth it.

In the comments to that article, Robert Gottlieb of Trident Agency, argued that windowing was important and that maybe agents should sell erights first and then print rights. For big name authors, it’s possible that they would have the power to decouple the digital from the print. After all, would Macmillan really want to lose an author like Janet Evanovich over that issue? For most authors, though, this might not be realistic. Of course, the entire battle is over the big name frontlist sales so it may not matter what “most” authors would be able to negotiate.

Under Amazon’s Kindle publishing platform, Gottlieb could garner his author 70% of the royalty off a $9.99 priced ebook. Or he could go through Rosetta Stone and perhaps have a 50/50 profit sharing deal for the ebook alone. One question is whether the ebook would be windowed before or after the print publication. If it is before, then I would think agents would be contacting NYTimes and USAToday to get all pre-print sales counted toward the bestseller list.

Authors are probably more sensitive to demand and pricing than the publishers are due to the direct contact authors have with readers.

Simon & Schuster has been quietly laying off people for the last few weeks. PW reports that Beth Wareham, director of bookbook and lifestyle, is the latest casualty. Wonder if Amazon is hiring editorial staff yet.

A word about Amazon. This has been a very difficult time. Many of you are wondering what has taken so long for Amazon and Macmillan to reach a conclusion. I want to assure you that Amazon has been working very, very hard and always in good faith to find a way forward with us. Though we do not always agree, I remain full of admiration and respect for them. Both of us look forward to being back in business as usual.

“We don’t like the Amazon model of selling everything at $9.99,” Murdoch said. “They pay us the wholesale price of $14 or whatever we charge,” he said. “But I think it really devalues books, and it hurts all the retailers of the hardcover books.”

Touchco uses a technology called interpolating force-sensitive resistance, which it puts into displays that can be completely transparent and could cost as little as $10 a square foot. The capacitive touch screens used in the iPad and iPhone are considerably more expensive. Unlike those screens, the Touchco screens can also detect an unlimited number of simultaneous touch points.

This is pretty interesting. I would not have guessed that Amazon was going to invest heavily in the hardware, but this move signals a serious intent to compete, not only on a platform basis, but an entire delivery system. I think it also signals that Amazon is not likely to open its doors to epub books or go DRM free. AllThingsD says that this might be the end of Amazon as a dominant force in book retailing.

Sophia Nash’s Widows Club – SECRETS OF A SCANDALOUS BRIDE – is one of Michelle Buonfiglio’s Top 10 New Year reads and Avon is celebrating this pick by offering five Dear Author readers a chance to win an ARC. To win, leave a comment below with the answer to this question: Where does the first scene of Secrets of a Scandalous Bride open? (Get a hint at http://www.sophianash.com/books/scandalous.htm.)

This contest is open to US residents only and will be closed on Tuesday, February 9, at 10:00 pm CST.

TO ENTER: EMAIL ME THE ANSWER: jane @ dearauthor.com (without the spaces)

Our presentation is what readers want and it is based on conversations we’ve had with ebook readers for over four years on our blogs, in email and on message boards. But folks like hard numbers along with anecdotes so we’ve put together a survey and would love for you to fill it out. If you do fill it out, you’ll be entered to win $250.00 toward books or an ebook reader of your choice.

Survey Link Here

It’s an opportunity for your voice to be heard.

Please feel to repost this entire thing anywhere you think it would be useful. I can provide you with the html code if you like.

When I start reading this book I was pleased to see that it was a billionaire from some other region than Italy, Greece, London or Spain. Instead we are treated to a Russian billionaire. I have fond memories of Russian billionaires. One of my favorite Lindsay books is Secret Fire. I know I probably shouldn’t confess that given that Secret Fire is about a Russian prince who kidnaps an Englishwoman, whom his loyal servants subsequently drug with a powerful aphrodisiac forcing her to suffer the sexual attention of said Russian prince until said drug wears off. But, I digress.

While Sergei Antonovich is just as arrogant Dimitri Alexandrov, the story doesn’t have quite the same charismatic pull. Sergei loves only one woman in his life and that is his grandmother. She is getting older and longs for Sergei to to bring her grandchild.

Wanting to grant her this wish and desirous of having an heir, Sergei employs his vast network of employees to find a woman of suitable intelligence, background, and morality who will, for a sum of money, bear him a child and then leave. Alexa poses as her twin sister Alissa and applies to be Sergei’s surrogate and fake wife for a year. Only for some reason, Alexa decides she would rather marry a different man named Henry and tells Alissa that Alissa must fulfill the contract because Alexa has spent all the money.

This is quite the ridiculous setup. Alexa is cartoonishly villainous. She lacked only the long handled mustache to complete the picture although I could hear the vaudeville music in the backgrond. Alexa is vain, spendthrift, and dishonest. She lies about everything and Alissa, the fatter twin, has to pick up the pieces of Alexa’s messes. Yes, I said fatter because Alissa is less beautiful than her identical twin because she dresses poorly and is slightly heavier. ::cue the rolling of eyes::

Sergei is so talented. He could tell by a picture that Alexa wouldn’t have been an appropriate person to carry out the contract and decides on the eve of the wedding to abandon his scheme. However, when warm, kind Alexa shows up in Alissa’s place, Sergei changes his mind. He’s enraged, however, to find out Alexa and Alissa have switched places. Alissa must fulfill the terms of the contract or he’ll sue them both for fraud.

In this story, Alexa is really the alpha asshole to Alissa’s doormat heroine position. Alexa is constantly so awful that you really have to wonder at what kind of person Alissa is to allow herself to constantly be used in such a horrible fashion. At some point the character goes beyond doormat into masochism. Even after she discovers that she has to bear a child to the stranger and leave the child with him, she is still too weak to stand up to her sister.

Alissa is everything that is good and pure and right in the world. She doesn’t want fancy clothes or expensive jewelry. She only wants to support her dear mother. I guess the Bible is right. The meek will inherit the earth. Sergei’s not a terrible guy but he’s not got much depth. Probably he and Alissa belong together.

I’m still wondering why Alexa wanted old Henry when she loved the lucre that Sergei had. D

Best regards,

Jane

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Our multicultural post got me digging into the older ebooks on offer at Harlequin. Readers searching for different settings and nationalities ought to look at this series (Mediterranean Nights). Our heroine is Chinese, our hero is from Israel, the ship travels across the Mediterranean and has Irish, Somali, Russian and Greek crew members. Though in all honesty, we get to see few of these people beyond brief glimpses, it’s nice to even see them at all.

When Mei Lin Wang met young radical social activist Wei Chan she knew it was fate. She didn’t know that less than three years later she would be left widowed with a newborn son after a suspicious illness claimed Wei’s life. Now, still convinced of their shared destiny, Lin is determined to avenge Wei and continue his work, but she must also protect her son from those responsible for her husband’s death.

For months Lin has secreted her son below deck on the cruise ship Alexandra’s Dream, under cover of her job. It’s turned into a game of hide-and-seek with the ship’s security officer, Gideon Dayan, whose interest is piqued by the mystery that surrounds her. But through his attraction, Gideon sees his own haunted past when he looks at Lin…and she can’t let her past go. Will they finally be able to face the future…together?

I do have a question. Would Gideon, a current member of Mossad, be on leave and working as security director of a cruise ship? My mind is boggling a bit here. Several references are made to how attentive Gideon is to small details and how thoroughly he follows up on things yet when any reference is made to the missing Ariana (whose book follows this) he almost seems to shrug it off as if to say “oh well, we can’t follow up on everything.” It struck me as odd.

It’s a pleasant surprise that at first Lin is not attracted to Gideon. I’m not made to endure drool sessions while she moons over how gorgeous and ripped his is. Gideon is attracted to Lin but tries to maintain his professional boundaries. I like that he knows a little about Lin’s culture including Ng Mui. But hey, they both love books. I have to love that!

Lin might not be a trained Mossad agent but Gideon finds strength in her through her ability to endure for herself and later for her son. And what is the deal with Lin’s shipmate, Dima? Did he have any reason from Lin’s actions in a previous book to expect more from her than friendship? He certainly turns into a supercharged asshole in a hurry.

The conflict between Gideon and Lin is real and heartfelt. Gideon has spent a professional lifetime working to contain martyrs and people inflamed by causes while on the other side of the world Lin fell in love with a man devoted to them to the point of death at the hands of authorities. By the end of the book, Lin has changed her POV of what is expected of her for her dead husband’s cause but I’m not sure that, for me, her change of heart works. It seems too sudden given that she’s spent over a year grieving for her husband and planning her future actions and that only a week before, she still wanted to carry out this course. She and Gideon discuss this at length and Lin raises some important points. Can Gideon apply his experiences to those of another country fighting another fight? Can he impose his views on someone else? I guess love is supposed to be what opens her eyes and finally changes her mind.

On the other hand, I could totally believe in Gideon’s feelings. He’s a man exhausted by his 15 years of work – mentally, physically and emotionally. I appreciate that you show us this and don’t make him a superman. It’s not just the loss of his lover that has drawn on the last of his resources, it’s the whole scenario. Now he wants to relax some, enjoy life without constantly being on edge and alert.

When the attraction hits Lin and Gideon, it isn’t just physical – which I like. They are attracted to each other’s minds and intellect as well. Yet the sexual heat between them is hot. Lin is bold enough to act on this and makes the first move. Brava. Gideon declines to just be a sex toy though and demands more than just bodies banging together. Good for him.

Lin did take her son and flee China but when threatened by her past and her present, in the form of Dima, she takes control as much as she can and stands up for herself. She has the intelligence to go to a man she trusts and who she knows can help her. No foolish heroics or TSTL moves from her. And Gideon, when presented with the situation, acts as I would expect. First he’s honorable enough to go to the captain and confess his own failure – to have detected a baby being brought on board ship and for the child to have been secreted on the Alexandra’s Dream for so long. Secondly, he uses his intelligence contacts to gain some leverage against those threatening Lin. I wouldn’t expect him to go in with guns literally blazing and he doesn’t. He uses smarts instead.

Obviously this book is part of a series but there wasn’t that much from a previous book and only bits and pieces of the one to come. Still, I’m not invested enough to want to seek out the book which follows this one as the heroine is the type who I think would drive me nuts. But overall, given how tightly this series seems to be linked, a good job was done to focus on Lin and Gideon.

~Jayne

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