New Blog

Amie
who shall always be cece in my mind

Raine

Denise McDonald

Michelle Miles

Go visit… I still don’t get the myspace thing…

oops…

…as I was putting the label on the ebuzz stuff I came across this post. Which greatly amused me since jane is a fan of hers.

hee shows what I know

No tell us what you really think…

Chick lit is a genre with a formulaic plot that most of us can see coming from 300 pages away: pretty, flawed girl makes her way around the big city in fabulous Jimmy Choos, regularly pausing between frappuccinos to fret about her diet, shop, dodge her rant-prone boss, sip mimosas with her classy and complicated girlfriends, and maintain a stalwart search for the dashing, debonair Prince Charming. “Chick lit,” Merrick states in her introduction, “is the daughter of the romance novel and the stepsister to the fashion magazine. Details about race and class are almost always absent except, of course, for the protagonist’s relentless pursuit of Money, a Makeover, and Mr. Right.

full review here

It seems to me we should be able to give a book a good review without feeling the need to tear down another genre. The thing I find odd about This IS Not Chick-Lit and This IS Chick-Lit would be their timing.

Chick-lit is slowing down, as I am sure paranormal and erotica will, as we will prolly see the return of sweeter regency type stories at some point…

The Blame Game

As readers, if a book sucks who do you think is responsible?

Is it the author? Because the book first, last and always is their creation…

Is it the editor? Because they bought it (at least with ebooks right?) and their job is to prepare the book for publication.

Is it the reader? Because we all have different tastes and just because one person thinks a book sucks rocks, there is someone else to think it is the book evah.

Is it the publisher? Because you know there are more than a few people that think Avon killed the historical star.

Or none of the above and bad books just happen…

This is something I started to give thought to while blog hopping last night. I think it was on angiew blog that one of her author’s said something along the lines of if something is bad it is their fault (the author) but good reviews reflect on both the author and editor.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am sure kissing your editors ass is a good thing at times, although I would hope not a must *g*. But that sort of stopped me … because to me… if you except the positive you also except the negative. And isn’t it the job of the editor to correct, revise, and keep an author from killing his/her book?

How much control does an editor have over the final product? If you buy a book, love the book, work with the author on a book and then for whatever reason do not feel the final product is a good book - can an editor kill the book? Does an author HAVE to make changes suggested by the editor, or does that depend on the line and editor?

The book I ended up thinking about is Lord Ruin by Caroline Jewel. I LOVE this book. But have always thought of it as… this book would have seriously rocked if it had a better editor. Now this is without ever discussing this with the author so my thoughts are nothing more than mine. But the book reads like it had many things added, taken away and then added. And the flow comes across as choppy in parts and like certain ideas may have been added or story lines cut without removing all of the references to them.

But the writing, plot and characters are for the most part grand. Caroline Jewel has a great style I really want to see what she can do next. And still hope The Rake (or whatever the title is now) gets published some day.

So my thoughts on this… combined with lurking through a handful of editor blogs last night lead me to wonder if I was being fair. Unlike many I don’t (didn’t… jury is still out right now on this one) think Avon is to blame for killing many a good writer. Because regardless of whatever rules they do or don’t have - each author has the right to print with them or not.

So if you take your grand novel, sell it to Avon, and they tell you ‘love it but you must do this to it’ and then your grand novel turns into grand suckage - well you did it. It is your name on the book as the writer. Or not? Once you sell that grand novel, do you as a writer lose control over the book? I am not really clear on this.

And lets say you have no choice, lets say you have another book due with them, well what do you do? Become Dara Joy?!? I mean you can’t really come out and say Publisher X sucks ass and fucked up my book. Because then you would never eat lunch in this town again. Or can you?

Although at the end of the day, regardless of who would really be at fault or not, it seems to me the person who will take the most hits from the booksuckage will always be the writer.

Paranormals everywhere…

Jayne interviews Berkley Editor Cindy Hwang

No not that jayne as in dear author… jayne as in Jayne Ann Krentz

cool… my favorite part is this answer:

Cindy: Never fear, historical and contemporary romances are alive and well! Not everyone loves paranormal, of course, and in this age of diversity, I think it’s more important than ever to give readers a choice. So publishers are still committed to buying and publishing historical romance and contemporary romance (romantic suspense, romantic comedy and contemporary romance). The problem comes when we can’t find the quality we’re looking for, because writers have decided that these subgenres won’t sell and thus are no longer writing in these areas. It is true that for the most part, the historical and contemporary romance market isn’t as strong right now as paranormal, but I think we (editors, publishers and readers) have been reading romance long enough to know that everything cycles around, and that as long as good books are being published in these subgenres, there will always be markets for them.

Dear Author goes 20/20

From Dear Author:

The week of October 2nd through October 8th we will be featuring an interview and several reviews of an author that the Two Ja(y)nes and Janine love. Today marks the first of a three part series on Romance Publishers Promises to Romance Readers. Today’s articles addresses Advertising (the delivery of the promise), next week will feature an article on Branding (the promise), and finally we’ll end with What to Do When a Good Author Goes Bad (or when the promises are broken).

First up: Advertising (the delivery of the promise)

go forth and read…

I could be wrong, but I don’t think this is about the never ending debate of ‘What makes a Happy Every After’. Is it marriage and a baby makes three? Can a Happy for Now be a HEA? Can a couple end HEA without a ring? So forth and so on… I *think* we are going with:

Romance = HEA (YMMV on what that means )
Erotic Romance = HEA with steamy, throw the door wide open sex
Romantica = same as ER but trademarked to EC which some people ‘get’ and know and some choose to ignore
Erotica = Fiction story where the plot is driven by sex
Porn = sex, sex, sex, and sex no rhyme or reason, plot? what plot?

Personally I think all of the above are peachy and all have their fans. What I think the dear ja(y)ne’s are addressing is, well, what they say they are addressing…

Advertising and the way publishers choose to market their books.

Jane please correct me if I am wrong.

ssssssooooooooo

Am I the only one who reads Samhain or the only one who reads the AAR Reader to Reader mb?

rec people! rec!

Heartbreaker by Diana Palmer

Le sigh…

Why?

Do I keep reading her?

Smelly Socks

Smelly Socks

Just a note… I am not the blog police. And just because I think you are behaving like a dumbass and doing something amazingly stupid doesn’t make it my place to ‘out’ anyone.I have tons of respect for HelenKay Dimon. Like her or hate her, read her or not - she is a grown up and if she says it she owns up to it.

MDJ could be a bitch from hell you think hates her readers or not - either way she owned up to her words like a big girl.

I often don’t agree with the way Angiew censors herself or the extremes she does it to but again I respect if she can’t say it as herself she doesn’t.

I HATE socks. I understand why authors feel the need to do it but I don’t agree with the action. It is dishonest and one of the quickest ways I will lose respect for you. It is worse to do it and stupidly paint a big fucking star on your forehead and say I. AM. HERE.

The anon’s, mice, BIG NAME AUTHOR, anotherscaredauthor so forth and so on bullshit that plays out on blogs and message boards means jack to me. Because I very rarely believe you ARE a big name author or anyone I should give a shit about. So that opinion of yours that you are so scared to say as you but must get off your chest has little or no value because you don’t exist. So whatever is clever.

I do wonder, am I the only person this annoys? I mean lets face it, this is the internet. I post under redwyne, you might guess that isn’t my name *g*. But I am always redwyne and for good or for ill it is no secret my name is sybil.

Even if I had never shared my name, redwyne identifies me. But you only know what I tell you to be true. So you can make the argument we are all socks puppets used to hide behind to voice our opinions on the internet. Well unless I was posting under Sybil and Redwyne - trying to pass them off as different people. Just think… you could have TWO or me *g*.

See why I think that is such a bad idea?

What about authors? If you write under the name susieq and post under that name, then have an account luvs2read you never link to susieq - is that okay?

Is it only kosher if luvs2read isn’t susieq’s biggest fan evah?

Would you as a reader feel lied to if you formed an online friendship with luvs2read and later found out she was susieq?

No matter what… if you are going to do it… I have ten things you should keep in mind because nothing is worse than a smelly sock.

New to me Blog

The Berkley Babes

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