1. You are creating a new area for certain types of books. How will readers access those books?

We’re currently in the [...]]]> All Romance eBooks emailed me to ask if I had any questions regarding their new policy regarding ebook categorization. Of course I did and they responded. The entirety is posted below with permission:

1. You are creating a new area for certain types of books. How will readers access those books?

We’re currently in the process of concluding a project that was initiated several months ago. What we are actually doing is splitting the current Erotica category into “Erotica” and “Erotica Romance” so that readers will be able to more easily find the types of books they most like to read. The goal is not to create a new area that will house a new type of book. We are not looking to expand into a new market. In fact, we are working to stay true to the original vision of our company.

As you know, All Romance eBooks was conceived to be a specialty store to cater to the digital romance market. “Gay” on our site has always meant “Gay Romance”. “Vampire/Werewolves” has always meant “Vampire/Werewolves Romance”. And, “Erotica” has until fairly recently meant “Erotic Romance”. In the past few months we’ve noted more and more Erotica without Romance elements appearing in that area. We know that there is a segment of our customer base that is interested in reading Erotica. There are others who wish to read Erotic Romance. Some prefer both and still others neither. We formed a task force to develop a long-term plan for improving the discoverability function that included conceiving of a way to separate the current “Erotica” category into “Erotica” and “Erotic Romance”.

Readers will be able to access these titles the way they currently do with one exception, Erotica titles will only appear to users who are logged in (which requires they be eighteen years of age or older).

2. Will the bestseller list include those books in the Erotica category?

At this time, no changes are occurring to the algorithm of our best-seller list. We’ve merely undertaken a project to split out our current Erotica category.

3. How will ARE be policing those books? By the author’s submission of metadata?

The procedures we’ve had in place since we opened on November of 2006 will continue, as will some new ones.

All publishers are vetted prior to acceptance. Part of the process is a review of their representative catalog of titles. When content we feel may be in violation is discovered upon review, we normally write to the Publisher and reiterate our restrictions and clarify the types of content we intend to sell. Often this results in a mutual decision not to proceed, sometimes a commitment to only a partial submission. In other cases, when the market goals are extremely divergent, we just deny the application.

We reserve the right to deny acceptance of any title for any reason. In the past several months, we’ve received more requests from publishers who wish to sell incest, pseudo-incest, and barely legal erotica and had to deny them. Those restrictions were recently added in an attempt to curtail those applicants. As many publishers and authors have pointed out to us, there is a market for those titles. We just don’t want to be in that market.

You ask about policing and we’ve had to do a considerable amount of that in recent weeks. We have responded to complaints very swiftly, but more importantly we have been pro-actively sweeping our database for tags, titles, and appropriateness of category placement. We’ve also been collecting data to help us size the issue and analyze possible ways of automating some of what we’ve been manually doing (as the manual review takes far longer).

We have approximately 400,000 titles in our inventory. Approximately %.05 are in the current Erotica category. We believe most of those are within acceptable guidelines and are working diligently to inactivate those that are not and contacting those publishers.

4. Is this in response to the Paypal crackdown on epublished books?

As indicated, we’ve been working on this for quite some time. We shelve titles based on a combination of BISAC and our own codes that we’ve created for sub-genres BISAC has yet to recognize. Because of some emails from our customer base wanting “warnings” about particular types of content, we created an enhancement in September that was added to the publisher panel that would alert readers to certain themes. We also clarified image content guidelines at that time and require publishers to provide information about cover content so we can determine if it’s appropriate for general viewing on the home page.

We receive feedback constantly from our customer base and our publishing partners and have an enhancement queue that we work through. These improvements, as well as the split of the Erotica category, are a result of that process.

We are aware of the recent Paypal crackdown and it did prompt another review of our policy on restrictions. At this point we feel that the action plan we have in place is sufficient to meet their guidelines. Our goal has been to complete the steps by March 2, 2012 and we appear to be on target for that date.

5. Will you be revising your policy as to what is placed in the new books section?

We’ve been working for several weeks on guidelines to assist publishers and readers in identifying the types of titles they can expect to find in the new Erotica and Erotic Romance sections. These have been circulated to publishers in advance so that they can begin planning. The guidelines were sent out to a dozen industry publishers and authors, both Erotica, Erotica Romance, Indie, and Big 6 for comment prior to finalization.

We have notified our publishers that those who have current Erotica titles will be asked to re-shelve using those guidelines and we’re testing a streamlined process we’ve created so that they may accomplish this quickly.

These guidelines will appear prominently in the publisher panel so they will easily be accessible and there for viewing every time a title is uploaded.

Here are our guidelines for the split:

Erotic romance is a Romance containing frequent, sexually explicit love scenes. The main plot centers around two or more people falling in love and struggling to make the relationship work. The love scenes are a natural part of the romance and described using graphic and frank language. Typically these stories have an HEA (happily ever after) or HFN (happy for now) ending.

Erotica is a sexually explicit story, which explores and focuses on a character’s sexual journey rather than an emphasis on a developing romantic relationship. While such an erotic story may have elements of romance, it is the sex that primarily drives the story.

Works that are restricted, as always, will continue to be deleted. We self-monitor these issues and monitor the various social spaces for comments. For the quickest response, offending titles can be reported to webmaster@allromanceebooks.com.

We also decided that you should pick the winner, so make your choice from the selection below and let us know what you think is the best entry. Please note: there were some late entries [...]]]> We’re back! And it’s podcast time – wherein we talk about what YOU think the misplaced hymen should be called.

We also decided that you should pick the winner, so make your choice from the selection below and let us know what you think is the best entry. Please note: there were some late entries (heh heh) to the contest that don’t appear in the podcast but do appear in the voting.

This week’s music was provided by Sassy Outwater, and this track is called “Dragons,” by a Parisian group called Caravan Palace. You can find their album, “Caravan Palace,” on iTunes, and you can find the band on MySpace and Facebook.

• http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/caravan-palace/id378402157
• http://www.myspace.com/caravanpalace
• http://www.facebook.com/CaravanPalace

If you like the Podcast, you can subscribe to our feed, or find us at iTunes.

You can also find us at PodcastPickle.

In our next episode, we’re talking about this year’s DABWAHA – get ready for March Madness™, Romance-novel style!

If you have content suggestions or have feedback, email us! The email address for the podcast is sbjpodcast@gmail.com. Thanks for listening!

OOPS! Forgot the list of books we discussed in this episode! Here you go:

After reading the very compelling Heat, I had to pick up another one of your books. While I mentioned that Olivia was not for me, you commented that I might enjoy The Scholomance. I purchased it and it was highly enjoyable, but not in a fuzzy, feel-good sort of way. I think [...]]]> Dear Ms. Smith,

After reading the very compelling Heat, I had to pick up another one of your books. While I mentioned that Olivia was not for me, you commented that I might enjoy The Scholomance. I purchased it and it was highly enjoyable, but not in a fuzzy, feel-good sort of way. I think this was more an admirable, fascinating book more than anything else. I’m not sure I loved it, but I enjoyed the read immensely. The Scholomance is, like your other books, a very multi-layered story. On one level, it’s about friendship in the face of adversity. On another level, it’s a discovery story, and all of this is set amongst a dark, grim, incredibly detailed world. Much like Heat, the blurb and cover of this book simply do not do it justice.

The book starts out with Mara. Mara is the caretaker to her mother, who is suffering from bouts of insanity. Her father, a womanizer, is long gone. Mara herself is different from most. She is very pale physically, almost colorless, and possesses extremely strong psychic powers. She can hear the thoughts of others from a very early age, and this has made her very jaded about human nature. She knows that people lie, cheat, and deceive because she can hear their every thought. It has also made Mara a rather proud woman, because she has these gifts and it sets her above others. It also makes her very, very lonely.

Despite being very strong and cold, Mara has one single friend, Connie. Connie is not spectacular in any way, but she adores Mara and wants to be just like her. Connie grows obsessed with the legends of the Scholomance – a school where demons teach others how to use magic. The cost of such a school is that one of every ten students does not make it out alive. Connie doesn’t care, and she goes to the school anyhow. Two long years pass, and then she sends Mara a note – to please come and get her. Mara goes to retrieve her friend, but entering the Scholomance means entering the school, and from there, Mara’s world is turned upside down. The Scholomance is full of a variety of demons who teach different arts. The school is also full of students who have become craven and aggressive in their pursuit of either escape or mastery of the dark arts. Mara must deal with both if she has any hopes of finding Connie. That is just the tip of the iceberg of the story. I feel as if any sort of summary will not do the book justice.

Mara is a hard heroine to relate to, in the beginning. She’s cold and unfeeling. She’s single-minded in her pursuit of Connie, while resenting Connie for sending her on this task. She’s haughty and thinks that others are beneath her. Above all, Mara is careless with others and deliberately ignores their desires if they conflict with her own. I likened Mara to a sociopath heroine, and I think it’s a good descriptor. Mara sees the emotions of others but doesn’t understand them. She uses them against people to get what she needs out of them. She’s not above using her body (and she does repeatedly) in a very clinical, unattached way, simply to get what she wants. It is a means to an end to her, and if that means seducing a man and then betraying him, she has no qualms about it. Sometimes hard, aggressive, self-reliant heroines are hard to find, but Mara is a superb example of a heroine who is not likable or admirable in the slightest, but utterly compelling. I really appreciated the nuances of Mara’s hard, brittle character even if I didn’t like her.

The supporting cast of characters and the school themselves are just as compelling. The world that you built inside the mountain is dark and grim and magical, and the scope is impressive. Every teacher at the school is a unique demon that is completely different from the rest, and the way they deal with the students unique to their different talents. I thought you did a really great job with the demons in that they were never once anything but utterly demonic. They looked unnatural and inhuman. They acted inhuman. The students were there at their whim, and they used them as I imagined demonic tutors might.

The students were equally foul. They dubbed themselves as either ‘lions’ or ‘gazelles’ in how aggressive they were. The feeding tables were described in great, revolting detail, and yet ended up being so very telling of the plot. Mara’s disdain of her fellow students echoes the reader’s distaste for them, and it is not hard to see why each of these people has shown up in a school for black arts. They are not nice people, and they’re not just token awful. There are some truly terrible people in the Scholomance. But this is Mara’s story, and it’s very interesting to watch Mara learn to deal with the other students and interact with them.

Overall, a really fascinating book. It’s very dark and grim, though, so I feel the need to warn people yet again. There is sex in this book (though not as much as Heat) but nearly all of it is not in a loving capacity. As I mentioned earlier, Mara is not above using herself and others to get what she wants. Most of the sex is of questionable consent, and most of the people Mara has sex with are not all that human. There is also a lot of torture and murder in this book. On the other hand, it’s intricately detailed, filled with very different characters, and I found the entire thing hard to put down. You do feel for the characters. You want Mara to succeed in finding her friend, and finding herself in the process.

In short, it’s what I’ve come to expect from a R. Lee Smith book. There’s even a romance, though it’s not the driving focus of the plot. And the ending…I have to say that I teared up. You do endings really well.

Lest this be all glowing praise, this was not a perfect read. It’s very dark. It’s a very dark book about very dark people who do grim and nasty things to each other to further their own wishes. There was not one person in the story I could say I ‘liked’, though I appreciated all the characters and found them compulsively readable. The romance could have had a larger starring role, but because of Mara’s character, I thought it played out the way it had to. The book was also a little long. All your books are. This one is nearly 9000 locations on the kindle. And while I enjoyed the first 50% quite a bit, I felt a little impatience in the second half that things were not progressing faster. That’s not the way you write though. I think your books are more like the slow unfurling of a ribbon, and every page and plot nuance will be necessary down the road. I think it’s more reading fatigue more on my part than a flaw in the story. I’ve read 2.5 of your books in the past few weeks and it’ll probably be a month or two before I try the next, though I’m certainly game for it.

You make me think of Christopher Pike in a sense that I pick up the book expecting one thing and by the end of the journey, it’s a completely different, totally bizarre sort of book. I never know what to expect and I find that I enjoy that quite a bit. Not as romantically compelling as Heat, but just as crazily fascinating for many different reasons. I’m going to recommend this one for those that are looking for a different sort of read and aren’t afraid of darker stories. I have to say that I’m really enjoying your books. An easy B from me.

All Best,

January

PS – I still don’t like your covers but I don’t know that something lurid would fit it better. So perhaps a vague cover is best.

Goodreads | Amazon

When I read the blurb for Wars of the Heart, I was utterly confused. Let me explain; or better yet let me sum up the blurb, which goes something like this:

Katherine Morgan is a diplomat from Earth, she thinks that someone is out to destroy Earth’s Ozone Shield, and goes to [...]]]> Dear Ms. Gray,

When I read the blurb for Wars of the Heart, I was utterly confused. Let me explain; or better yet let me sum up the blurb, which goes something like this:

Katherine Morgan is a diplomat from Earth, she thinks that someone is out to destroy Earth’s Ozone Shield, and goes to the Peace Keeping Intergalactic Council (PKIC) for both assistance and an investigation. But the PKIC can only offer up someone else’s muscle. Of course, the muscle is King Ja-el Lamar, the guy whose heart Katherine broke a long, long time ago. So she’s told by the PKIC that she has to “force” an alliance with Ja-el or else he will lose his kingdom. Oh, and Ja-el has his own scheme.

Yep. There’s a powerless council that will force a king to do something, a diplomat that is apparently in charge of Earth’s environmental well-being, and a king that is described as impetuous and at the mercy of said diplomat. You may ask why I would bother to read this after such a strange and WTF-laden blurb. Well…it’s space + romance. Let’s face it, I just can’t get enough of space and romance combined, and I’ll try anything that’s billed as SciFi Romance once. And after reading the first five pages of the book I was in serious hope that things would get better.

They didn’t.

But before I delve into my issues with the book, let me sum up for realz:

Katherine Morgan is a diplomat for Earth, working hard at a job she’s always wanted. She’s discovered that there have been strategic attacks on Earth’s Ozone Shield, targeted at the most important loci to do the maximum amount of damage. Fearing that Earth is in danger of attack and will become a scarred wasteland, Katherine appeals to the elders of the PKIC for help. During a video conference with numerous representatives, they admit that they can offer technological assistance but the only planet that can offer true military backing is Salatiel, but it’s representative, King Ja-el Lamar, doesn’t bother to dial in to the meeting. In a twist (ok, not really), Tobias Laivir, the head of the Elder Council and Katherine’s ex-boyfriend, moves to send Katherine to Salatiel to tell Ja-el to “yield” or the PKIC will be forced to take action.

Katherine goes to Salatiel and Ja-el refuses to see her immediately. Katherine has conversations with her ex-mentor Laramie, who happens to be Ja-el’s political advisor, Ja-el’s military master and member of the PKIC Elder council, Neelam Reybak and her father who is an Elder member of the PKIC. Katherine delves into memories of her time on Salatiel for diplomat training, goes for long walks on the beach, and pretty much accomplishes nothing. There’s a lot of what is supposed to pass for political maneuvering; Ja-el makes Katherine wait to see him and Katherine makes noise to the PKIC, but it just reads as two kids sniping at each other. Ja-el is also…er…enjoying the benefits of a princess of a neighboring planet. She’s none to thrilled that Ja-el is unable to give her his heart, or any sort of emotion whatsoever. But apparently they are having some hawt sex.

The plot…er, I should say, the Ozone Shield plot, becomes more confusing with different twists added. There seems to be some weird things going on, but no one shares information with each other. As I read the book I realized that a lot of clues were thrown out, but nothing was tied together in a way that made complete sense. In addition, everyone on Salatiel is operating in their own little bubble, existing on bitter feelings and reliving glory days, none of which move the plot or the romance forward. The lack of communication between the characters means you have one giant clusterfuck of a who-did-what-to-whom-and-why storyline. On the romance side, the heat between Katherine and Ja-el is nonexistent. There seems to be more going on below the belt and mentally with Ja-el’s princess paramour. The Katherine/Ja-el romance is flat and uninspiring and there are times when it feels like I’m reading about to bratty teenagers rather than a king and a diplomat.

But my real issues with the book are Katherine and Ja-el. She met Ja-el and they fell in…something when she was sixteen. Oy. I couldn’t wrap my head around that, or the fact that yep…Ja-el “did” something to her to tie them together forever back when they were in “training”. Two: the writing was so…out there with descriptions that I had a hard time imagining what people were really thinking or feeling. Take a gander:

In the center of the screen, eyes brighter than glowing amethysts stared at her intently. Exasperation showed in the constricted brows that towered above them. Katherine looked at the man they belonged to, a vision of fairytale-like beauty with striking features and wispy sandy brown hair. Behind the mask of his attractiveness, his violet stare was cold as stone.

Is she looking at his constricted brows? What the hell is a constricted brow? But the weird descriptions go on:

Her tongue felt thick, too heavy to form coherent words. “I was just about to go find you.” He didn’t respond. He simply stared, deathly silent, unnerving. She fought the urge to recoil. His eyes pierced hers as though they saw a web of lies beneath the surface of her skin. Honesty, she reminded herself, though the urge to lie came more naturally. “There’s something I really wanted to discuss with you,” she said, when the silence stretched to an uncomfortable level.

I would have thought the piercing of her eyes was more uncomfortable than the silence.

Finally, Katherine neither acts nor thinks like a diplomat, a grown woman, or someone who is in a position of authority. Ja-el neither acts nor thinks like a king, a mature man (ok, that might be an oxymoron, but nonetheless…), or again, someone in a position of power. There’s zero strategy from Katherine and a bit more than a thimbleful from Ja-el. I plowed through this one, but unless you’ve got a hard on for space-based romance like I do, I wouldn’t bother. C-

~ Shuzluva

Since anything else might veer into spoiler territory, I’ll refrain from saying more about the plot.

Goodreads | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo

The saying that truth is stranger than fiction certainly applies here. If I had not read the “Author’s Notes” at the end of the book, I would have finished the book thinking that you’d come up with a doozy of a plot that stretched credulity. A young man and woman who [...]]]> Dear Ms. Richman,

The saying that truth is stranger than fiction certainly applies here. If I had not read the “Author’s Notes” at the end of the book, I would have finished the book thinking that you’d come up with a doozy of a plot that stretched credulity. A young man and woman who find love in 1930s Prague only to be separated by the vicissitudes of war who then, believing the other dead, remarry only to find each other decades and an ocean away? This is something I would expect from a tear jerker Hollywood movie. There are enough RL people woven into the narrative to carry the part of the plot you’ve constructed and this is where the book does best. However, I found myself shortchanged in the romance department.

The early part of the book in pre-war Prague show the beauty of the city, the privileged world in which Lenka and Josef were born and how they might have lived and grown old if not for what was to come. I could see the spacious apartments, the elegance of their lives, the tight bonds of family which held them together. The growing menace slowly creeps up on them and their decision to marry due to their love and as a way to try and emigrate before it’s too late make sense. Thinking they still have time, Lenka decides to stay in Prague with her family and wait for Josef to try and get them all sponsored. Had I been Lenka’s parents, I would have wanted to shake her too. Things deteriorate and soon Lenka, her sister Marta and their parents are fighting to survive in the increasingly horrible conditions of the Terezin camp. Until worse befalls them. Meanwhile, Josef frantically tries to contact Lenka before and after the war, unaware that she thinks him dead.

“The Lost Wife” worked better for me as an account of how Lenka’s artistic talents kept her alive in the Terezin camp and how after the war, the survivors struggled emotionally with the loss of their loved ones as they built new lives. But I never felt truly drawn into the characters. The book reads more like a straight forward non-fiction recounting rather than grabbing me and plunging me into what’s going on. It’s more telling instead of showing, as one reviewer at Amazon says. The telling is interesting, as I learn yet more ways in which RL people did survive the camps, but that’s not what I want from a fiction book.

I also wanted to know more about Lenka’s life after the war. You show Josef building a new life and with his wife, who also lost family in Europe, learning to get through day by day in the new normal of long term grief. But Lenka’s post war marriage is basically zipped through with most of the emphasis on her relationship with her daughter. And then, when Josef and Lenka finally find each other again – the book ends. I closed it thinking, “That’s it? This is all I get after 60 years of separation, pain and numbing grief?”

What I liked about the book I could have learned from googling Terezin (or the German name of Theresienstadt). And the romance that I would like to have gotten never materializes. Instead I found it an emotionally unengaging tale with little payoff for the grief I watched Josef and Lenka endure. C

~Jayne

Goodreads | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo

In my quest to read more pack romance fiction, I requested this book from NetGalley.  You left a comment here in our February Open Thread for Authors about the book stating that it contained a nice alpha werewolf who had no interest in being a pack leader:

It does not have fated mates. [...]]]> Dear Ms. Wallace:

In my quest to read more pack romance fiction, I requested this book from NetGalley.  You left a comment here in our February Open Thread for Authors about the book stating that it contained a nice alpha werewolf who had no interest in being a pack leader:

It does not have fated mates.
The alpha male shifter hero has no interest in being the boss of anybody.
It is, in some respects, a May-December romance.
The heroine is not a virgin, or even close.
There are some funny parts. IMO.
There is also a car chase. And dog jokes. And a tea room.

I thought those were all great adjectives for a book and I agree with all of them. This is not a fated mate story. The heroine is not a virgin. It is a May-December romance with Harry, the hero, being the May part of the equation.  While I liked all those elements, there was a distance to the story that kept me from being full engaged throughout the course of the text.

I think it had to do with how the stakes weren’t sufficiently high enough, the situation never seemed impossible, as if June would just sprinkle some herbal magic dust and they’d both be safe again.

Harry Smith is a lone wolf who has tried to live separately from a pack ever since his mother fled with him when he was a child.  For years, the local pack has tried to recruit him but he has been able to resist their overtures but this all changes when the male co alpha is arrested.  This places the Millington pack in jeopardy because a pack bonding ceremony had been initiated which would need to be complete shortly or the bond would dissolve.  A pack gains and maintains power through the bond.  If the bond dissolved, the pack would essentially cease to exist.  The Millington pack required both a male and female alpha.  The female alpha, Bianca, decides that Henry is just the man for the pack.  Henry is happy being a lone wolf.  He thinks the way in which the packs are run are offensive and wants no part of it but a lone wolf is no match for a pack wolves if they decide to pursue him.

June Travis has cared for Harry for many years and she doesn’t want him to fall into the clutches of the Millington pack.  Unfortunately for June that means blowing her cover, expending huge personal resources, and placing her own position within the local coven in jeopardy.  June, as indicated by the title, is a witch.  There is an interesting concept in the world building here but I didn’t fully buy into it.  The witches’ power rests largely on their ability to manipulate herbs and other natural elements.  Conveniently, June is very powerful and is able to protect the two of them in various circumstances.  She has a spell for nearly everything from libido dampener to memory wipes.

Harry comes off as a reluctant character, kind of dragged into various circumstances, and while I was told he was alpha, I felt that it was a description of his power (power he never used) rather than an attitude. And I don’t mean that I wanted Harry to be a domineering asshole, dragging women around by their hair; but he never led, he rarely exerted any kind of power over others (this was explained away as something Harry wanted to avoid doing because of what happened to his mother), and he was almost always in the react v. the act mode.  Harry’s favorite thing to do is hang out in the teahouse with a bunch of grandmothers and play Bunco.  June, on the other hand, was resourceful, quick witted, and powerful.  She acted and sometimes it went badly for her, but at least she was doing.

Perhaps that was a product of her age, but there was a certain primness about June when she spoke:  ‘Good gravy,’ she said, sound exactly like her grandmother.  or “I’m June,” she said. “Gosh, you’re a very…genuine person, aren’t you?”  She chastises Harry when he curses (which he only does twice in the book).  Gosh is a favorite term of June’s. I guess it was consistent characterization.  The problem was that the inserted sexual tension didn’t fit with the overall tone of the book. I found the late sex scene to be rather jarring.

Harry and June are likable characters.  The idea behind the world building was not something I recall coming across in previous shapeshifter books which is kind of a remarkable feat.  It is, as you said in your comment, a book about a reluctant alpha who doesn’t want to be a pack leader with a non virginal heroine, a May-December romance complete with a car chase, dog jokes, and a tea room. C

Best regards,

Jane

Goodreads | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo |Carina Press

I’ve read much of what you’ve written in the past five years. I’ve found quite a few of your contemporaries irresistible: Animal Attraction and The Sweetest Thing were two of my favorite reads in 2011. I’ve been less enthralled with your Harlequin Blaze books; they seem to me to be more formulaic than your [...]]]> Dear Ms. Shalvis:

I’ve read much of what you’ve written in the past five years. I’ve found quite a few of your contemporaries irresistible: Animal Attraction and The Sweetest Thing were two of my favorite reads in 2011. I’ve been less enthralled with your Harlequin Blaze books; they seem to me to be more formulaic than your longer novels. But, then again, they should be, right? The Blaze series has a formula—I know this because I went and looked it up on the Blaze website.

The Blaze line of red-hot reads is changing the face of Harlequin and creating a continual buzz with readers. The series features sensuous, highly romantic, innovative stories that are sexy in premise and execution. The tone of the books can run from fun and flirtatious to dark and sensual. Writers can push the boundaries in terms of characterization, plot and explicitness. Submissions should have a very contemporary feel — what it’s like to be young and single today. Heroes and heroines should be in their early 20s and up. We want to see an emphasis on the physical relationship developing between the couple: fully described love scenes along with a high level of fantasy, playfulness and eroticism are needed. And don’t forget, secondary characters and subplots contribute to the richness of story and plot action we look for in a successful Blaze novel.

Are you a Cosmo girl at heart? A fan of Sex and the City or Red Shoe Diaries? Or maybe you just have an adventurous spirit. If so, then Blaze is the series for you!

I am not a Cosmo girl at heart—I’m more of a Slate.com adult—and I think that’s why your book, though well-executed and entertaining, left me feeling unsatisfied.

In Time Out, the very masculine, absolutely gorgeous hero with “silky, dark” attractively tousled hair is Mark Diego, the “youngest, baddest, sexiest” head coach in the NHL—he coaches a fictional team, the Sacramento Mammoths. Mark is a typical Harlequin leading man: wealthy, in superb physical shape, authoritative, and utterly self-assured. He’s the kind of guy who only needs to level “a long, hard look” at anyone who challenges him in order for the person to fall quavering back in fear. The Mammoths, who just lost the Stanley Cup finals on a controversial call to their archrivals the (real) Anaheim Ducks, are currently all over the news for a “seedy bar fight”–are there any other kinds of bar fights?–a few of their players instigated against the Ducks. The fight came to an abrupt end when Mark “strode up out of nowhere,” shoved his behaving badly boys out of the bar and into his big black SUV. Mark and the Ducks’ coach have managed to keep their players from being suspended by proposing “a solution that would involve giving back to the fans who’d supported the two teams”: the brawlers will spend their summer doing volunteer labor in their home communities. The Mammoth players will be working in Santa Rey, a working class town devastated by wildfires the previous summer. Mark grew up in Santa Rey and left it as soon as he could, determined to “do something big, something to lift him out of the poverty of his upbringing.”

Now he’s back, driving that big black SUV, and pretty pissed about the whole thing. He’s been working his ass off for the past seven months and really should be on vacation. But no, rather than lounging on a Caribbean beach, a scantily-clad babe on one arm and a drink in the other, he’s stuck babysitting his two youngest players in a low-rent town. There’s an upside, however. The minute he pulls into town, headed to the community center his brother Rick runs—his players are going to coach summer league ball there in the evenings—he runs into Rainey Saunders (she’s the junior sports coordinator of the center), she of the “perfect body,” with whom he shares—big surprise here—a past.

Rainey fell hard for Mark when she was in her teens; he was four years older and the brother of her friend Rick. The night of her 16^th birthday, Rainey, wearing a titillating teddy and some borrowed CFM heels, shows up uninvited at Mark’s apartment, determined to confess her love and unload her virginity. Unfortunately for all parties concerned, Mark’s not alone. He is, in fact, slouched in a beanbag chair getting a blowjob from a chick named Melody. (I felt sorry for Melody—Mark is so startled to see Rainey, he sits straight up so fast, “he nearly choked his date.” That can’t have been pleasant.) Rainey runs out—running smack into the door, spraining her ankle, and ends “with her pride and her confidence completely squashed.” The two have occasionally run into each over the past 14 years, but, Rainey, despite the chemistry that “crackles” between them, can’t get over her embarrassment about the past and, every time he expresses “interest in every hard line of his body,” runs away from him.

Now that’s he’s in town for a while and Rainey’s no longer jailbait, Mark’s thinking it’s finally time to nail her. “One look in her fierce blue eyes and he’d felt… something. Not even in the finals had his heart taken such a hard leap.” (I rolled my eyes at this—I saw the Stanley Cup final the year the Hurricanes beat the Oilers; I’ve never seen such crazed people in my life.) Plus, upon meeting her again, he’d pulled her into his arms, hugged her and—and I thought this was a bit forward—bit her ear. That “sexy little startled gasp she’d made” decided him. This time, he’s not letting her ignore him. Mark always plays to win and he’s got 21 days in Santa Rey to win Rainey out of her tight shorts and into his bed.

Mark’s and Rainey’s sex life certainly meets the Blaze criteria in this book. You’ve unquestionably written “fully described love scenes with a high level of fantasy, playfulness, and eroticism.” The first time Mark and Rainey start rounding the bases, they’re in a supply closet; it’s definitely a fantasy the tiny room would be a comfortable place to make out—he’s jamming her back against a “hard, cold steel” shelving unit. The two have lots of pre-consummation playful banter and, when they finally rip off each other’s clothes; the sex is hard and hot and up against a door. Your text is superbly sultry.

She threaded her hands into his hair as he thrust deep inside of her. He made a rough sound of sheer male pleasure, his fingers digging into her soft flesh as she rocked into him. Again he thrust, slowly at first, teasing until she was begging. It was glorious torment, hot and demanding, just like the man kissing her.

They moved together, her breasts brushing his chest, tightening her nipples. She could feel his muscles bunching and flexing with each thrust, sending shock waves of pleasure straight to her core. When she came again, it was with his name on her lips as she pulsed hard around him, over and over again, taking him with her.

A bit later, there’s a fervently ardent shower scene that made me want to find Dr. Feelgood and use up all our hot water. I give you total props for the blazing part of your book. It’s steamy, sweetened by honeyed hot trash talk, and seductive.

You also have appealing subplots about Mark and his father and about the kids at the community center. There’s a fine amount of humor in your tale. Your portrayal of Casey and James, the two Mammoth players doing public works penance, is really funny.  I loved the scene where Mark is first driving them to the dive of a motel the two will be staying in while in Santa Rey.

“So we’re not going to the Biltmore?” James asked. “Cuz there’s always plenty of hot babes there.”

“James,” Mark said, “What did I tell you about hot babes?”

James slumped in his seat. “That if I so much as look at one you’re going to kick my ass.”

“Do you doubt my ability to do so?”

James slouched even further. “No one in their right mind would doubt that, Coach.”

“And anyway, you’re not allowed back at the Biltmore,” Casey reminded James. “That’s where you got caught with that redhead by her husband. You had to jump out the window and sprained your knee and were out for three weeks.”

“Oh yeah,” James said on a fond sigh. “Madeline.”

So what let me down?

It was obvious Mark would seduce Rainey—she’d never really stopped loving him—and once he did, it was just a brief matter of time before he realized she was the one. I never felt the barriers their happily-ever-after faced were substantial. You establish at the beginning of the book she’s still crazy about him, he’s sexually and emotionally drawn to her, and the two are grown-ups.  (The latter, by the way, is a good thing.) Yeah, Mark thinks he’s not ready to settle down but from the moment he sees Rainey again, that’s all he does. It’s not a stunner that by the book’s end the two have professed their undying love to each other.

Mark and Rainey are excessively fictional characters—neither of them seemed as though they’d ever exist in real life. They also were overly familiar–I felt as though I’ve encountered the two countless times in contemporary romance. He’s the powerhouse of guy whom all women want and all men respect. She’s the incredibly sexually responsive, feisty, committed to her do-gooder job babe who, despite sleeping somewhat casually with Mark, is looking for the kind of relationship that leads to marriage and kids. She’s got a mom worried Rainey’s eggs are going to dry up; he’s got a dad who won’t take his charity. Even the debacle of Rainey’s Sweet Sixteen Seduction seemed pat. (And, the almost exact same “barging in on the blow-job” scene happens in Victoria Dahl’s Talk Me Down.)

Your novel’s plot is this: an extraordinarily handsome and magnetic player hero finds (monogamous) joy with a lively, modern heroine. The two have hot sex, but, the sex is a high-speed one way street to true love. And while you’ve done that trope well here, it’s a tired trope.

But, Time Out is a Blaze, not a more complex contemporary. It’s not interestingly innovative or especially enthralling, but it’s enjoyable and competent. And the sex is smoking. I give it my bathroom wall recommendation: for a good time, pick up Time Out.

~ Dabney

Goodreads | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo | HQN

Two of the largest technical publishing book conferences have just finished their sessions as of last week, Digital Book World in January and Tools of Change this past week. I attended neither but I paid attention to the articles and tweets that were written of and around the conferences. There did not appear to [...]]]>

Two of the largest technical publishing book conferences have just finished their sessions as of last week, Digital Book World in January and Tools of Change this past week. I attended neither but I paid attention to the articles and tweets that were written of and around the conferences. There did not appear to be much optimism nor was there much innovation. The one large question that loomed before publishers is how do they get readers to buy their books.

It used to be that publishers could essentially make a book popular by buying ads and placement in stores. Remember that everything in the store, even the bestseller lists in some retail places like grocery stores and Wal-Mart, were for sale. For a price, a publisher could position their book in the front of the store, face out, on an end cap, and so forth. It was through heightened in store placement that many books achieved success.

With the decline of in store placement due to the closure of Borders (which made up nearly a quarter of sales for some books), reduction of titles carried by Wal-mart, and retail space at Barnes & Noble replaced by nook promotions, in store book discovery is declining for many titles. There is simply less space that can be physically devoted to new books.

Further, with digital book sales increasing from 20-30% this year to likely over half by the end of the year, more customers will be discovering books in new ways. And that is the challenge for authors, publishers, and readers.

How to find a new, good book in the age of digital books.

It’s a question that we’ve addressed previously here at Dear Author. Many readers still go to the bookstore and browse the shelves. Others rely upon word of mouth which includes twitter, facebook, goodreads, and the plain old email service. Others sign up for newsletters, whether it is from authors, publishers or retailers. Still others belong to message boards at Amazon or B&N.

Finding a good book is a challenge. I’m constantly on the look out but I hate reading excerpts because excerpt reading can be time consuming. I recall one night, I spent about two hours downloading and then reading excerpts. That’s a hassle.

I try to go for recommendations from online friends, but sadly, they invariably recommend books I’ve already read. Lately I’ve been trying the recommendations suggested by Goodreads but without much success.

Mostly I try to read as many reviews as possible for a book I’m interested in and even then I’m only batting about 25% in the “decent read” game which is frustrating. I’d much rather bat 70% meaning 3 out of 4 books I purchase are decent reads. I think my low success rate, though, comes from being more adventurous in what I am trying to read. Back in the paper days, I bought primarily authors known to me and then by cover and blurb. But even back then I recall being overwhelmed by choice, with the covers all kind of running together in some big blur.

One thing I would like to see is a place where I could sign up for newsletters that would send me the author, title, blurb and link to an excerpt from specific publishers, authors, and/or tropes. Like I would love to receive an alert for every sports book, every friends to lovers romance released once a month in my inbox. There doesn’t seem to be anything like that. I’m keeping up a list of popular new releases but it is by no means exhaustive and it isn’t sorted by genre or trope.

Sometimes I’ve spent so much time trying to figure out what to read that by the time I’ve picked a book out, I’m too sleepy to read (much of my “discovery” is happening late at night after tot has been put to bed). Ned relies mainly on me and for him, I’m asking my fantasy reading friends what to read. Word of mouth is definitely the best and most reliable source of good reads. But beyond that, how does a book gain your attention and what are you doing to increase the “decent read” hit? Have your browsing and discovery habits changed from when you used to buy print books? What is one thing that authors, publishers could be doing better to bring books to your attention?

This book was originally reviewed by Jayne about four years ago, and I intended to read it after she wrote her review but then other books caught my attention and I forgot.  I ended up buying this book in January because it was included on a sports romance list at Goodreads.  It had [...]]]> Dear Ms. Laverentz:

This book was originally reviewed by Jayne about four years ago, and I intended to read it after she wrote her review but then other books caught my attention and I forgot.  I ended up buying this book in January because it was included on a sports romance list at Goodreads.  It had a great setup.  A formerly abused woman falls in love with a hockey player who happens to be the enforcer on a pro hockey team.  She has an intense and instinctive dislike for violence. When her first encounter with Eric Cameron is in the emergency room after a bar fight, he seems to fulfill all her preconceived notions about hockey players.

Jayne’s problems resided primarily in the multitude of conflicts that existed in the story and while that was problematic for me, my main dislikes were the lack of realism to the hockey and the portrayal of domestic abuse, the latter being used as a prop.

Emily Jordan is an emergency doctor raising her son in Minneapolis, struggling with student loan debt. Eric becomes interested in Emily immediately despite (or because of) her prickly responses to his mild overtures. He begins to pursue her in earnest and isn’t above taking advantage of her son’s hero interest in him to inveigle invitations to pizza and movies. Emily has to come to terms with Eric’s profession in order for them to have a life together.

Unfortunately, the book was all promise and little delivery. I never bought into Eric as a professional hockey player.  Jayne disagreed. She’s not familiar with sports and felt that there was enough to feel authentic for her.

Eric spent far too little time on the ice and far too much time pursuing Emily.  The amount of free time he had during the story which was set close to the start of the playoffs and then continued throughout until the end of the season was not believable.  But even more than that was his entire attitude toward actually playing the sport. At one point, Eric offers to pick her kid up and take him out to dinner so that Emily can get some much needed rest even though he had to be on a plane for an away game. He says “I’ll tell them I had an emergency. Catch a later flight.”

The gesture is gallant but what kind of professional hockey player or professional athlete would simply lie about his absence at an away game? Perhaps if the story included a storyline about Eric’s fading desire for the game (which might be believable after having previously won four championships), this would have made sense, but instead it just rang my inauthentic bell.  The reference to The Lord Stanley’s Cup, the positioning of Eric as an enforcerer and a lead scorer of the team and the repeated insinuation that he drove divisiveness within his own team by turning people against a co captain all contributed to a lack of believability.

I wasn’t convinced of why he would so ardently pursue Emily when she was constantly telling him no and, even beyond that, being rude and insulting to him.

The abuse angle could have been employed with a greater degree of believability as well. Emily’s ex husband was abusive, patterned behavior he learned from his father. Despite living in the same town as her ex and his very wealthy and prominent family, Emily somehow manages to conceal that she has a son. I found this one of the more bizarre coincidences in the book. The ex doesn’t become a danger to Emily until after she starts dating Eric, convenient for the story, but the ex’s rage induced actions seem almost cartoonish and paint by number, diminishing any tension or impact.  I think that this might have been, in part, what Jayne referred to as the ever building number of conflicts introduced in the story.

While I appreciate the storyline of the abused woman reclaiming herself, I felt like it was more of a contrivance, particularly when the former mother in law who was also abused explains that the new girlfriend of the abuser treated the abuser like a “lap dog” and that the abuser tolerated it because the new girlfriend had “power he craves, the status…the money.” I had a hard time believing that a man who was raised to beat women and went on to beat women would allow himself to be treated like a “lap dog.” Instead, I felt like the characters were manipulated in order to have these big dramatic moments. It was irritating rather than interesting.

Finally, I found the book rather slow until about 70% of the story was completed as Emily played a push/pull game with Eric. The last third of the story was fast paced and contained a lot of drama, even if some of it was manufactured.

This was not a self published book and thus I will take a moment to complain about the formatting and editing. There were several areas in which paragraphs ran together, particularly dialogue. There were numerous quotation errors where quotation marks were omitted either at the opening or close of dialogue. There was no table of contents either. It was an amateurish product that I paid for. D

Best regards,

Jane

Goodreads | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo | All Romance eBooks

During my Christmas holiday, I sped through a number of young adult stories either self published or published by smaller houses.  This is one of the better ones I picked up.  It’s novella length. According to my handy dandy Calibre word count plugin, the Kindle file clocks in at a little under [...]]]> Dear Ms. Fine:

During my Christmas holiday, I sped through a number of young adult stories either self published or published by smaller houses.  This is one of the better ones I picked up.  It’s novella length. According to my handy dandy Calibre word count plugin, the Kindle file clocks in at a little under 20,000 words.

The story is told in alternating first person and my  biggest complaint is that there is no real differentiation in voice between Sophie and Carter.  While the subject matter made it easy to distinguish who was the narrator, the actual tone did not differ.   They were the same person to some extent which diminished the storytelling. I also felt that the story was almost too short and that there was room for much more narrative and interaction of the characters.

Sophie and Carter live next door to each other.  Both have a difficult home life. Sophie’s mother is a prostitute who frequently forgets the obligations she has at home to her four children.  Sophie is trying to balance parenting her three younger siblings and going to school and running down her mother from time to time to get cash to pay bills and feed the family.  She has no time for dating or school activities. She cannot see farther than the next moment.

Carter’s father beat him and his mother.  The beatings for Carter’s mother were so severe that she became mentally disabled.  She is often hallucinating or cowering in the corner.  Carter has become the parent with his mother, the child.

Sophie and Carter look at each other through their home’s windows, Sophie sometimes seeing Carter help feed his mother and Carter seeing Sophie get the kids dinner and their homework.  They help each other out, with Carter coming over every morning to help get the crew off to school.  And each night they take a moment for themselves and sit on the porch to gain just enough courage to make it through the next day.

Even though the storyline seems morose, there is actually quite a bit of hope in the story. Seeing the two kids constantly helping each other out, supporting each other, hurting for the other’s situation was touching and uplifting.  There is a tender sweetness that emanates as the two come to realize that the feelings that they have for each other are stronger than friendship and that slow awakening is joyful for the two and the reader.  I know that some adults have a hard time believing that teens can have a forever after but in this case it is completely believable.  Sophie and Carter are bound together by their shared experiences.  They’re weathering storms more difficult than many adults will face and their troubles are manageable because they can lean on each other.  Short but priced at $2.99, I felt like this was worth my money and would recommend it to others. B

Best regards,

Jane

Goodreads | Amazon | BN

From Susannah to Paris

San Francisco, September 14 Dear Paris:

On this day of thunder and heavy [...]]]> Welcome to First Page Saturday. Individual authors anonymously send a first page read and critiqued by the Dear Author community of authors, readers and industry others. Anyone is welcome to comment. You may comment anonymously.

From Susannah to Paris

San Francisco, September 14
Dear Paris:

On this day of thunder and heavy storm over northern California I swear you are driving me mad. I can’t stop thinking about you. Still not to know what you look like sets all my senses racing. I imagine you at once as a smart-dressed man, in European styling, with a tilt to the chin and knowing eyes; or as a brash young thing with horse’s legs and trousers rather too tight for a woman’s eye. Sometimes you are a boy to me, too eager and overspilling with a desire to please, and in my mind I admonish you and readjust my clothing while you plot my disadvantage. At other times you are older, much older, aloof and stony-hearted, with a thinker’s brow and a heavy chin, turning your back on this small voice at this edge of North America.

But always, always, you are maddening to me, because you are elusive, and of superior fortitude, and I feel you look down on me. And a woman should not be looked down on.

I want you to swear to me that you will never reveal our secret. Nobody knows I write to you like this. Not my closest friend, Miranda; and certainly not my husband. Talbot would never understand the things I tell you. You are my only outlet. You are the Niagara Falls to my rivulet. For you I wear my heart, not on my sleeve, but as my grandmother Teshura did when she faced execution at Auschwitz-Birkenau: on my chest, like a yellow star, glowing in darkness, made of heat, defiant and indestructible.

Paris, my darling, just say the word, and I’ll throw everything over for you. I will tell my husband that I have heard the call, and must go. Tell me, Paris. Just say the word.

Forever and ever,

Susannah.

From Susannah to Paris
Atherton, September 14

Dear Paris:

In the South, or more precisely in the French Louisiana Cajun South where I was born, we have a saying: fais do-do: (“fay doe-doe.”) The nearest translation to that I think is make sleep.

Tradition has it that mothers wished sleep upon their little ones at the early Cajun dance halls, so the mothers could get up and do what they’d come to do: dance. I wish, dear Paris, to fais do-do with you. I want to make sleep with you. I want to open a room on tippy-toe and cross the floor and close the shutters and lay down along the bed and take your hand and place it on that lower part of me which rises like a little hill when I lie down, but which is flat and smooth when I stand up. I want for you to make do-do with me. I want for you to fold me in your arms and sing sweet and low in my ear so the sound trickles all the way, deep down, to where I fais do-do.

It’s a big wild night in Atherton, California, tonight. My new neighbour is having a party. That would be Gracia Santa Ana from Valparaiso. Some say that the mayor is there. If he is, he must be one of the long white frogs I can see from my bedroom balcony skinny-dipping in my neighbour’s pool. My neighbour is a strumpet. But she’s a multi-millionaire strumpet. She made her money selling weddings to South American girls who wanted to marry rich in the USA. By all accounts she has broken state and federal law more than a thousand times. But tonight she’s the emerald hostess, with diamond eyes and a heart of rubies, and she will retire at dawn with four strong lovers.

Forever and ever,

Susannah.

Sometimes authors and readers have some kind of strange sychronicity where everything that author writes hits all the buttons of the reader and everyone else on the outside looks on in befuddled wonderment.  Objectively I can see that there are things that don’t work very well in this book. There is the [...]]]> Dear Ms. Rice:

Sometimes authors and readers have some kind of strange sychronicity where everything that author writes hits all the buttons of the reader and everyone else on the outside looks on in befuddled wonderment.  Objectively I can see that there are things that don’t work very well in this book. There is the excessive use of the unsexy word vagina.  It is often clenching.  There is the ever constant reminder that the previous couples in this Protector series are blissed out on happiness as if they are mainlining pixie dust every morning. There is the fact that monetarily everyone in this book is so rich and so talented and so beautiful that I was momentarily blinded by the bright shining light emitting from the ARC.  But my response is to run around with my fingers in my ears and repeating “la la la la I can’t hear you.”

I received an arc of this book and gobbled it down the same night.  And the truth is, those issues aside, there is some great stuff going on in this book. Like the hero acknowledging being a manslut is actual NOT a thing of honor.  How many times is the manslut held up like some diety because he’s slept around so much that his dick has logged more miles the transatlantic frequent flyer?

Like scenes that are filled with real tension and suspense and enough armory that they could have been ripped from a Michael Bay movie.  And that’s a good thing because there is nothing worse than an action scene that is limper than a overripe head of lettuce laid out in the sun for three days.

Like the heroine being bad at everything from cooking to singing to keeping a house but being awesome in her own right in direct contrast to the previous two heroines (one of whom is amazing translator and so beautiful angels sing and the other who is an amazing singer and an amazing bookkeeper).

This is a story that is told in essentially three simple parts.  The first part is Mike and Chloe meeting and falling for each other.  This takes a day.  The second part is Mike and Chloe ripped apart because of something Mike does.  Kind of.  The third part is Chloe in danger and Mike riding to the rescue.  Cue sunset.

Mike Keillor is a manslut. He goes out to those bars where women go specifically for one night stands.   Even his friends refer to him as “ Mike, the man-slut. Mike, the man who’d nail anything that moved.”  This is recognized by everyone as a character flaw, something which results from Mike being broken.  While being a manslut doesn’t always arise from wanting to erase some terrible past, I really appreciated this type of portrayal which is unusual in the genre which generally elevates the man whores.

Mike’s most recent pick up is a mistake and in the midst of coitus, Mike realizes this. He is screwing a cokehead who wants him, no begs him, to beat the crap out of her.  His erection deflates and he can’t get out of the random apartment afterward.  A day later, he meets what will be the love of his life, Chloe.  All his mania subsides when he is near Chloe. Oh, except for his penis.

She rested against him and he wanted to keep her there forever, but when he felt himself harden, he moved away subtly, mentally rolling his eyes.

Goddamn. His dick had never known how to behave itself.

Oh man, way to turn this moment into something that belonged in the dives he frequented when he got his black moments.

He couldn’t really blame his dick, though. His dick was right to move. He felt it wasn’t getting erect so much as trying to get closer to her, close to all that silk and gold.

Chloe has a special connection to Mike’s foster brother, Harry, and because of that Harry exerts pressure on Mike to not sully Chloe with his brokenness.  I was a little surprised that Harry acted in this fashion because Harry himself had been broken but I also liked it because I felt like it added some grittiness to what had been a fairly sweet, maybe even saccharine, beginnning.  Even though Mike, Harry and Sam were close as brothers, Harry wasn’t going to stand with Mike, not this time.  I wasn’t sure whether Mike deserved it and thus the ambiguity of the situation added spice.

I also appreciated the soliloquy of Mike’s when he pushes Chloe away.  He tells himself it is because he is afraid he will hurt her but then recognizes that his refusal to extend himself emotionally isn’t because he is afraid that Chloe will be hurt, but really because he is afraid of being hurt. I loved this scene:

Right now he was sending her to his room without even a hug. And why? Because he was a coward.The whole hurting her thing was true but was also bullshit of the highest order.

He didn’t flail around while fucking. He didn’t bite or twist limbs. He could control himself enough not to physically hurt her. That was all a line of crap.

The truth was he was scared shitless. There was nothing here he even remotely recognized as familiar, except his hard-on. And even that felt somehow different. It wasn’t a normal hard-on, the kind he had when an available woman was around. No, it was a Chloe woodie, through and through. Impossible to deal with, impossible to get rid of.

Chloe Mason hadn’t had a great upbringing, something she lays out in great detail in chapter two of the book.  Abandoned and then adopted, raised by indifferent parents, then nearly raped by her adopted father, sent off to boarding school, and left alone in the world when her parents died, she comes to Mike Keillor’s business seeking out a connection.  When the connection is affirmed, Chloe finds herself drawn into the cocoon of protectiveness that is the RBK family – Mike, his brothers, their wives, and their daughters.

When Chloe inadvertently places the Russian mafia on her tail, Mike does everything he can to protect her, and this serves as the catalyst to finally bring them together.

The tension in the story is primarily external but much of the emotional drama comes from Mike’s point of view, particularly his own feelings of worth and sex.  Chloe’s position in the book is more static and less dramatic but that has often been true in LMR books.  And frankly, I read these books for the portrayal of the guys.  It’s not that the women are doormats and uninteresting but through the lens of the awestruck male, these women are perfect. What you are selling here, though, isn’t that the women are perfect but for this one man, this one woman is divine.  For Mike, Chloe is everything good and right in the world and luckily for him, the feeling is reciprocated.  The emotions of the characters are writ large.  Every feeling is the most heightened feeling. Every orgasm the most amazing ever felt.

Every sense she had was heightened, her entire body turning into one huge receptor. Absolutely every sensation her body was receiving was delectable, particularly the desire.

Oh my. She’d read about it, endlessly. Listened to friends talk about it, thought about it, but never understood it.

The entire book is written in this fashion such that while you are immersed within the story it all makes perfect sense.  Stepping back, it seems over the top, extreme, and flawed but inside the story, inside the world with Chloe and Mike and its oversized, exaggerated fun house mirrors?  It’s just right.  Grading this book is like an exercise in futility for me. I think from a technical aspect it is likely a C to a C+.  There were pacing problems, particularly at the beginning.  It seemed like it took 100 pages to get to any real conflict.  There was the love that blossomed, nearly knocking me off my metaphorical reading feet in its immediacy.   I wished I had seen more development of Chloe.  She was surprisingly well adjusted for all of her past traumas and her emotional movement could have been played up for greater conflict.  But I gobbled this book up like it was the first thing I had to eat after a four day fast.  We’ll compromise at the B-.

Best regards,

Jane

Goodreads | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo

Easy Rawlins: A man once told me that you step out of your door in the morning, and you are already in trouble. The only question is are you on top of that trouble or not?

I hesitated a bit about reviewing this [...]]]> Devil in a Blue Dress (1995)
Genre: Noir Mystery
Grade: B

Easy Rawlins: A man once told me that you step out of your door in the morning, and you are already in trouble. The only question is are you on top of that trouble or not?

I hesitated a bit about reviewing this movie for the sole reason that it has no romance in it for the lead character – not even a bromance as the friend of the hero is a bit more on the psychotic side than anything. But it’s so well done, lovely to look at and evocative of the age that I can’t resist. I watched it recently and then immediately watched it again with the director’s commentary – something I’d recommend in order to catch small nuances of the time and characters. The mystery might not be that hard to figure out but the journey to solving it worth the trip.

Easy Rawlins (Denzel Washington) is a black man in 1948 Los Angeles who’s just lost his factory job and has mortgage payments to make. As he’s reading the want ads in a bar owned by a friend from back home in Houston, that man introduces Easy to a possible source of quick money. DeWitt Albright (Tom Sizemore) says he works for a man named Todd Carter – who just recently dropped out of the mayoral race – who is looking to find his estranged fiancee Daphne Monet (Jennifer Beals) and who will pay well for information as to her whereabouts. The $100 (remember this is 1948 and that’s a shitload of money) proves too much of a temptation to a man behind on his mortgage despite the fact that Easy has a decidedly uneasy feeling about all this.

He begins to inquire in the hidden bars and night spots where he meets up with another friend from home and that man’s girlfriend who drops hints that she knows something about Daphne. Easy yields to another temptation and has a one night stand with the woman Coretta (Lisa Nicole Carsen), leaving early the next morning with a bit of information he then passes on to Albright that evening. Arriving home, he’s confronted by detectives from the LAPD who question him – while beating him up – about the murder of Coretta. Eventually released from custody, Easy is picked up and questioned – yet again – on his way home, this time by the other man running for mayor who claims to be concerned about the murder of Coretta, who worked for him.

By this point, it’s dawning on me and Easy that all these important people must want Daphne pretty badly for some nefarious reason and not just to kiss and make up. When the woman herself appears and contacts Easy, the mystery and danger only deepen as still another body is found. After a tense confrontation proves to Easy that he can’t trust anyone and that he’d better start moving fast or be set up for murders he didn’t commit, he calls in reinforcements from Houston in the person of Mouse (Don Cheadle) who’s the fastest draw in Texas but also one of the most unbalanced. With Mouse watching his back, can Easy dig to the bottom of this nasty brew of blackmail, death and worse?

I haven’t read the book this film is based on but I understand that some major changes were made. Since I didn’t know any better while initially watching it, those didn’t bother me and once explained they make sense in the context of condensing a book into the confined time frame of a movie. There are places where the film drags a touch but to have eliminated certain scenes would have removed some of the evocative atmosphere of the age. There are definite moments of light vs dark as Easy moves from his normal environment of a bright, two bedroom bungalow in a neighborhood filled with children, pets and black families just trying to get their slice of the post war American pie and into the dark world of crime and corruption. But then his character is being shown transitioning from a 9-5 factory worker only concerned with his lawn to that of a man who’s gone through a cesspool, lived to tell the story, and who has made the decision to see where his new skills could lead him.

His P.I. persona has to develop and we, the viewers, need a window into the world he has to move through – where racism is rampant, the LAPD is to be feared and black people don’t go to certain areas of the city or certain parts of buildings. Merely replying to the random conversational overtures of a white woman can quickly land Easy into a ton of trouble and driving through a white neighborhood, with a white woman in his car could lead to disaster. Yet there are other sides to his life as seen in the homey scenes of him planting trees and tending to his landscaping, talking to his neighbors and dealing with a strange older man obsessed with chopping down trees. Washington effortlessly conveys all this and his performance is one of the chief reasons to see the film. Another is Don Cheadle who is riveting to watch as the childhood friend from Houston who shoots first – with a smile on his face – and doesn’t even think to ask questions later. There is one chilling line he utters which reminds me of the various fables of the scorpion and the frog or the snake and the woman. Easy knew Mouse’s nature and thus shouldn’t be surprised at something Mouse did. Cheadle makes me believe in this man who is cheerfully amoral as he’s willing to threaten people, shoot them and even kill them without a second thought – all in the name of friendship for Easy.

As I said, the mystery begins to reveal itself fairly early on and I guessed a lot of what is the driving force behind these powerful men who have money to throw around, henchmen on hire, power to gain and yet who are in certain ways as hampered as Easy by the times and social mores. Beals is a nice mixture of naivete and sultriness while Sizemore provides an almost casual, thoughtless menace. The other actors are well cast and good in their roles but many of them have little screen time in which to develop those. The real strength of the film is in the fabulous sets, music, costumes and cars. In the way it takes the viewer into another world and time. It is violent, it is disturbing with its blatant racism but it also manages to end on an optimistic note as Easy and we see that friends and a place to call home are just fine.

~Jayne

Last weekend I picked up your new book, Celtic Storms, from Amazon because it was free, and the cover, designed by the talented Kim Killion, was slick and very pretty. The setting also intrigued me since it was set in late medieval Ireland. Granted, I can be picky about Irish-set novels, as [...]]]> Dear Delaney Rhodes,

Last weekend I picked up your new book, Celtic Storms, from Amazon because it was free, and the cover, designed by the talented Kim Killion, was slick and very pretty. The setting also intrigued me since it was set in late medieval Ireland. Granted, I can be picky about Irish-set novels, as I used to attend the University of Ulster in Belfast. However, even though I wasn’t expecting Laura Kinsale, I was hoping for something at least entertainingly silly, like the cracktastic fun of Sasha Lord’s books.

But no. It was disappointing in just about every way. The characters were flat, the plot was incoherent, and the setting was such a ridiculous historical mishmash it called to mind the trainwreck that was Spoil of War. There were iron age roundhouses next to Italian domed palaces… not to mention an Indian rug merchant named Sanjay… and kudzu! All in 1450s Ireland!

The plot, as far as I could make out, was about some guy named Patrick from Northern Ireland (a country which didn’t exist until Partition in 1921) who is betrothed to a rich chick in an unspecified county in “the west of Ireland” named Darina O’Malley. An evil satanic witch named Odetta has cursed the O’Malley clan with the inability to bear sons, so Darina and her sisters– Dervila, Daenal, Darcy, and Dareca— are taught to fight and work on ships while wearing tunics and trousers. (Actually even Irishmen did not wear trousers or hose in this period, as can be seen in this Durer engraving.) So Patrick leaves Northern Ireland to go to the west coast to meet Darina and get married. Oh, and he finds out one of his younger brothers is actually an O’Malley.

Literally two thirds of the book goes by, and Patrick is still traveling to Darina’s home. There’s a ton of characters here— besides Odetta and her coven and attendant clerics, there’s Kyra, a warrior chick, Lucian, a druid/scribe, and most interestingly, a tortured priest named Father MacArtrey— but there’s surprisingly little that happens. Most books in a romance series also work as standalones. But Storms reads like an extended prologue for the rest of the Celtic Steel series—and it seems that there will be four upcoming books. It’s all buildup and backstory; but worse of all, there is absolutely no resolution in the end. After a lot of blather and milling about, we’re rushed through the wedding and an obligatory sex scene (which is described, incredibly enough, in flashback). Then, with a couple of chapters to go, there’s the Big Misunderstanding, and… the novel just ends in a cliffhanger. There’s no Happily Ever After, no nothing. I was left wondering— what on earth did I just read?

I got the impression that the author doesn’t read a lot of romances, since the relationship between the hero and heroine is practically non-existent. Most romances immediately introduce our romantic leads, and show the readers how their feelings for each other grow and develop— but there’s none of that here. Patrick and Darina are pretty much non-entities with minimal screen time. We are told how independent and brave Darina is: she’s even an atheist who only worships herself! But she doesn’t actually do anything. She goes looking for her pet falcon, dreams about Patrick and later gets married to him, but other than that, she is a blank slate. I can’t even go far to call her unlikable. She’s just… not really there.

The hero, Patrick, also does not make much of an impression either— he stutters, which I initially thought was really cool, because I’d never seen a hero who stuttered before. But this is dealt with in the most cursory way, as during the big love scene, Patrick communicates telepathically with Darina, so his speech impediment isn’t even an issue. And his amazing psychic powers come from out of the blue as well, to add to the whole WTF of it all. Lame.

The conflict, such as it is, comes from Odetta scheming, slutting around and sacrificing children to Gallic deities, but… even this character was banal. Here is an example of some of the ineptly written (and ungrammatical) dialogue in the book:

“Stop it!” shouted Odetta and threw her fist against the altar. “Hear me now, my brother. You do not wish to cross me. If it were not for me, you would not be Laird of Burke lands. As it stands, I have more respect from the people and more power than you ever will. Do not tempt me to replace you too,” she smiled as she gestured a glance towards Easal.

“Easal would make a fine husband and if I marry, my husband would no doubt be Laird in your absence. That is – if you should meet some unfortunate occurrence. Lest you forget what happened to our sister,” said Odetta.

“Odetta! Enough already!” shouted Cynbel. “What is it you want from me?”

“Laird O’Malley has passed and his wife as well.” stated Odetta.

“How do you know this?” asked Easal.

“I have my ways Easal. I know of all of the goings on in the O’Malley clan. What we need to concentrate on now. is how to overtake the clan and make O’Malley port a part of the Burke lands.”

“And just why would I want to do that?” asked Cynbel. “Because you are just as opportunistic as I am; because you want to expand your reach and because it will bring us great wealth. Combining what’s left of the O’Malley clan with the Burkes would make us the most significant power in all of Ireland.”

“Because – we would be unstoppable,” chimed in Easal.

“Tell me what you are thinking. What is going on in the beautiful head of yours Odetta?” asked Easal as he approached Odetta and laid a hand on either side of her cheeks.

Odetta smiled. She smiled because she knew she could make Easal do whatever she wanted; because she knew her brother didn’t stand a chance at denying her what she wanted. It hadn’t worked for her sister and it wouldn’t work for Cynbel.

Soon it would all be hers.

(Delaney Rhodes, Celtic Storms [Kindle Locations 862-865]. DR Publishing. Kindle Edition.)

If Odetta had been given more to do, and given some evil sex scenes a la an old Bertrice Small bodice-ripper, Storms might have been more entertaining, but her scenes are constantly intercut with people traveling or discussing the upcoming wedding. It doesn’t help that she’s really not very threatening. She threatens, she cackles, she shakes her booty, but she feels like a reject from a Hammer horror film.

The most interesting character by far is the conflicted priest, Father MacArtrey. He helps the sick and the poor, but is hated by the pagan O’Malleys; he is also the unwilling servant of the evil Odetta who destroyed the monastery where he formerly lived; yet he does his best to thwart her evil schemes, and is in the end thrown into a dungeon for his efforts. Even though he is the most dynamic character, we’re not supposed to like him. Instead, we’re told repeatedly how awful and interfering he is, because he’s involved with the lives of his parishioners, and he’s tried to put a stop to the “Lunar Bacchanals” on the so-called “Island of Women.” We’re also told how horrid Catholicism is, because Catholicism was brought from England to enslave the Irish. Wait, what?

Patrick’s last experience with a priest had been a bitter reminder that England’s influence on Ireland had brought with it a type of bondage unfamiliar to most. The infiltration of the Catholic Church had nearly driven out all but a few who worshiped the old gods and practiced the old ways. Even then, of the ones left who worshiped the old gods; many were terrified of being found out or being persecuted by the others.

(Delaney Rhodes, Celtic Storms [Kindle Locations 1913-1916]. DR Publishing. Kindle Edition.)

I don’t know if Ms. Rhodes is aware of this, but Ireland was Christianized quite early, in late Roman times. In fact, after the invasion of Britain by the Angles and the Saxons, missionaries from Ireland helped Christianize the pagan Saxon population. The Irish monk St. Aidan established the monastery of Lindisfarne off the coast of Northumbria, which quickly became a training center for Irish and English missionaries who went on evangelize among the Mercians, Angles and Saxons. And further north, Irish monks from Iona off the coast of Scotland played a crucial role in converting the Scots, and were in fact so wildly successful that churches were established all up and down the west coast of Scotland and England. This is not obscure history— it’s all covered in such well-known books as Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization. It could be argued that England wouldn’t be the same today, if it weren’t for the colonizing and civilizing efforts of the Irish in late antiquity and the early middle ages.

But in Celtic Storms, there are no saints, scholars or poets— there’s even no reference to the famous epics and legends, like the Táin, or the Fenian Cycle, or Deirdre of the Sorrows, or anything. Ireland is instead a lawless pit of orgies and child sacrifice. No doubt the author means this book to be a love letter to the Emerald Isle, but honestly the depiction of Ireland in this story is— I’m sure unintentionally— more in line with the virulently anti-Irish propaganda coming out of England in the 1640s.

And thus we come to the most inexplicable part about this book. I’m used to many American-authored books about historical Ireland depicting a sentimental love for “the old ways” (aka druidism or Celtic polytheism) but Storms takes the cake for pure absurdity. In 1450s Ireland— a thousand years after St. Patrick— apparently almost everyone in Ireland is still a pagan, even our hero Patrick. (Yes, a pagan- the son of a “druid priestess” even– whose name is Patrick.) Everyone, and I mean everyone, swears “by the stars” or “by the gods” or “by the goddess!” Yet you also occasionally get an occasional “Jaysus” and “Mary Mother of God.” But then you have off-screen “Lunar Bacchanals” (aka orgies) in honor of the goddess Morrigan, and public sacrifices to the Gallic god Teutates (aka Toutatis from the Asterix comic). We’re told Father MacArtrey was taken in by the O’Malleys because they felt sorry for him, even though they’re not Catholic; but then they have a spare chapel for him, and he presides over “weddings and baptisms.” What? Huh? How does this make any sense?

This book might have been passable as a fantasy, but as a historical, it’s a complete failure. The O’Malleys live in a domed, palatial Italian Renaissance style castle with stained glass windows, “settee lounge chairs” and rugs imported from India— courtesy of Darina’s friend Sanjay— but the Island of Women across the bay has a village of iron age roundhouses. Odetta uses the Japanese vine kudzu— which even today does not grow in Ireland, or most anywhere in Europe— as a hangover cure. Almost eight hundred years after the great illuminated manuscript the Book of Kells was created, Lucian the druidic scribe only reads from scrolls. Most of the names are not remotely Irish: we have Victorian names like Mavis, contemporary names like Gemma, Darcy, and Payton, and World of Warcraft-type fantasy names like Naelyn, Monae and Vynae.

The mindset of the characters is also completely modern. Not only does Dallin the O’Malley chieftain scoff at the “guilt of religion,” but here’s our self-worshipping heroine Darina thinking about how she lost her virginity at a “Lunar Bacchanal”:

Tis just as well. At least my betrothed won’t see me as a prudish virgin. After all, times have changed. And the clan’s women had been celebrating the Lunar Bacchanals for years. Just what else is a woman to do? There are no men to be had around here.

(Delaney Rhodes, Celtic Storms [Kindle Locations 954-956]. DR Publishing. Kindle Edition.)

Yet for all this supposed lack of men, we are then told that the Lunar Bacchanals are some of the biggest tourist attractions around:

Tales of the O’Malley lands Lunar Bacchanal had traveled throughout all of Ireland. Many a man had come seeking admittance to the festival only to be turned away. In fact, many of the hired soldiers had arrived in O’Malley territory specifically to seek out the Festival.

But – over the years it had become more than a routine gathering for a sensual escape. Several fine matches had been made between the invited guests and women of the island. Several marriages had resulted and the clan grew bigger. Gemma had maintained the religious origins of the Festival and kept the rites as they had been handed down; much to the chagrin of Father MacArtrey.

Since the day he had become the clan’s priest, Father MacArtrey had made every plausible attempt to stop the monthly festivals. Denouncing it as “evil imbibing’s” and “the devil’s doorway” he had received little support from the local men in changing the tradition. Even Laird O’Malley was hard pressed to change the custom as he had met his beloved Anya at one such festival.

(Delaney Rhodes, Celtic Storms [Kindle Locations 985-993]. DR Publishing. Kindle Edition.)

So, if all these men are coming to town for the orgies— and marriages are often made there— why is it that the lord’s daughters haven’t been married off yet? And why is Darina’s betrothal such a shock to her? This is just one of the many inconsistencies in the story. I was also left wondering why evil Odetta was left to run amuck, taking over monasteries and later stabbing her brother the chieftain without anyone blinking an eye: but that’s life in a heathen backwater, I guess.

In addition to the unpromising plot, the book was so badly edited that I found it hard to read. What’s even more surprising (and dismaying) is that it seems Ms. Rhodes actually did hire an editor to edit her book— an “A. O’Connell”— but there’s no signs in this story that an editor worked on it at all. Not only are there are many misspellings— lightning is often spelled “lightening” and the character name Dervila is also spelled “Dervilla,” to name a few—but multiple lines of dialogue are grouped in one paragraph, and apostrophes, commas and quotation marks are abused on almost every page. The writing is pretty confusing too. Not only are there constant POV shifts, with information constantly repeated over and over, but the pacing is some of the worst I have ever seen. A silly, badly researched story can be made enjoyable if there’s lots of sex and action, but there wasn’t even that. (As I mentioned earlier, the one and only sex scene happened at the end of the book, in a flashback.) There wasn’t even any kind of ending, which is so lazy as to be unforgivable.

This book, unfortunately, in many ways exemplifies the worst excesses of self-published books; I have read many bad books from various publishers, but none (it seems to me) quite up to this level of incompetence. On the other hand, there are many talented, experienced authors self-publishing great stories. Two other self-published books I read recently were Jackie Barbosa’s The Lesson Plan and Christine Pope’s Heart of Gold, and both of them were excellent. They were smart, romantic, and satisfying reads with polished, tightly edited prose. Self-publishing, I strongly believe, is a viable way of publishing: it’s a way of getting fresh, different stories out there. But the author can’t just stop at providing a professional cover for her book—she needs to make sure her story is also up to professional standards. I’m just happy that I got my copy of Celtic Storms for free—I can’t imagine how I’d feel if I’d actually paid for it.

In the end, I think self-publishing is a great outlet for professional authors with proven track records. But if you’re a new author with the bad luck to have hired an incompetent editor— as Ms. Rhodes seems to be— I wouldn’t recommend it.

I wish I could have enjoyed Celtic Storms, but I couldn’t. It is confusing, unsatisfying, ineptly written, poorly researched, and it has one of the worst endings I’ve ever seen in a romance. For all these reasons, I give it an F.

~ Joanne Renaud