I’ve been feeling a bit out of sorts with the romance market recently, so I’ve kept to the authors I enjoy and lines like the Harlequin category romances that I tend to enjoy. I write and read paranormal romance, but more and more, the ones I’ve been reading have gone into action/adventure and that’s not what I read them for. Historical romances have turned into complete fairy tales, with very little history in them. It took me a while to work out what was going on, but I’m getting there.

A couple of years ago, every agent and editor was looking for something called High Concept. It’s such a nebulous idea that it’s easy to get it wrong, because it seems to be different according to who tells it, but, basically, it’s an idea that can be described in one sentence, such as “Godzilla meets Cinderella, and Godzilla wins” or “Mr. and Mrs. Smith in the Regency.” (I’m not making one of those up). That kind of stuff. It’s led to books that are high on ideas, low on character and execution, and I think that’s what my problem with the romance market boils down to.

I’m a romance reader. I love a bit of difference, of excitement, of external plot, but not to the exclusion of the romance. I want that romance to be the centre of the action, not something that happens somewhere along the way. And I’m missing that. The concept is all very well, but I want more. I want a story that makes sense, one that gives the characters a chance to exist, to be themselves. Not one where they’re forced into action, where we don’t see the development of the romance, where we can believe that they are falling in love. More and more, it’s a succession of hot sex scenes with an “I love you” tagged on at the end.

The ancient Greeks had it right. In their tragedies, the tragedy arises from a flaw in the main character’s psyche, something he doesn’t believe or does wrong. He lies, and a whole series of actions arise from that. All external actions happen offstage. In Oedipus Rex, Jocasta dies offstage, Oedipus blinds himself offstage, because the point isn’t that part of the story, it’s the characters and how they react that’s important. In modern storytelling, it’s often the other way about. I wouldn’t have cared about Jocasta had I not learned to like her beforehand. Similarly, Oedipus isn’t just a badass warrior and great king, he’s a badass warrior with deep internal flaws and concerns that haunt him throughout his life. That’s what makes him really interesting.

Subsequent storytellers followed that convention, and in a play like Hamlet, everything is about character flaws, a succession of wrong choices and failures until the final action leads to a tragedic triumph – that is, Hamlet eventually wins, but at the cost of his own life. His flaws interact with the others in the play. So Claudius isn’t a completely bad man, but he falls in love with the wrong woman and behaves with a Machiavellian deviousness that eventually leads to his own undoing. He is also a good king (it’s in the first scene, that he’s doing the job well) and a loving husband.

I want that back in romance. I want a Maddy (Flowers From the Storm) who is brave enough to step outside her community, but whose inner narrow-mindedness won’t allow her to accept Christian’s solution for his problem. I want events to come from the inside. It’s how Jane Austen made a story about a set of perfectly ordinary sisters come to life, and it’s why we remember Charles Dickens’ characters years after we’ve closed the books. We imagine them having a life outside the books.

This is why I’m looking forward to the next Cecilia Grant book.  A Lady Awakened didn’t entirely work for me, but it’s still the most interesting debut I’ve read for years. It isn’t the beauty of her writing or the accuracy of her history, it’s because the action springs from the characters and not from outside them. It didn’t work for me because I didn’t like the heroine, but that, in one way, is a triumph because she made me believe in the heroine and have an opinion on her.

A writer like Linnea Sinclair writes rocket ships and cool weaponry, but she never forgets the characters. You don’t want goodies to triumph over baddies, you want that hero to win because you care about him. Games of Command remains one of my favourite books and the characters stay with me.

So please, less of the high concept. It’s resulted in some truly awful books and some extremely average ones. Let’s get back to the happy sigh on the last page, as the reader is given something satisfactory and heartfelt. Give me the romance back.

I can’t say that 2011 was a classic reading year for me. So many train wrecks and meh books. But I read a lot, and even in a good year I’ll have something to celebrate.

Sooo, here we go.

The Good

Doukakis’s Apprentice by Sarah Morgan – a quirky heroine and a staid hero makes for an amusing book, but also a love story you can follow from start to marriage.

The Highest Price to Pay by Maisey Yates – an African hero and a scarred heroine. Lovely. The story wasn’t about his color. He was happy about that, and so was everyone around him. The heroine is a fashion designer with some bad burn scars. The story doesn’t make light of them, but a yummy hero and some good research made for an absorbing read.

Loose Ends by Tara Janzen – The wonderfully imperfect and implausible Steele Street boys end their series with this book. I have read them all, and loved every one, and this last book didn’t disappoint. I had such a good time with this series.

Too Proud to be Bought by Sharon Kendrick – I love that Kendrick takes risks. Not all her books work for me, but she works on a theme of sacrifice, and sometimes for my taste, the heroine gives up a bit too much. But this book was great, not least because the heroine doesn’t take all the crap the hero wants to shove her way. She fights back.

The Man She Loves to Hate by Kelly Hunter – a ski hut, a steaming affair between two people who really shouldn’t be together and a plot that just works.

The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton by Miranda Neville – my big historical discovery of the year. I hadn’t read Neville before, but I discovered a new-to-me author to love. I did enjoy this book, and I have a review copy of her next one, which I’m saving for when I’ve done something really good. It’s funny, accurate historically, and believable.

Silk is for Seduction by Loretta Chase – so good. Chase back on form. Her sassy and adult heroine is more than a match for her hero, who needs to grow up a bit before he’s worthy of her.

Inside by Brenda Novak – romance light, but an intriguing story about an insider working in a high-security prison and the deputy governor. Exciting, edge-of-your-seat stuff, and the other three in the series are great, too.

Shameless Playboy by Caitlin Crews – one of the Bad Blood books, notable for taking some chances with the Harlequin Presents usual fare. This one took typical tropes, the playboy and the southern belle with a past, and made it memorable, and a book I just dived into and didn’t stop until the end.

Front Page Affair by Mira Lyn Kelly – a traditional style Presents that does it right.

I just noticed – no paranormals this year, although I read a fair few. That’s a shame, because I love me some good paranormals.

The Bad

The Crown Affair by Lucy King – Such a shame, after a great debut this one read rushed and contrived, as if the characters were being crammed into a plot.

One Night in London by Caroline Linden – the strangest cover of the year, beating anything Harlequin put out, and characters I could never warm to.

Star Crossed Seduction by Jenny Brown – a diatribe about astrology masquerading as a historical novel. I have nothing against it, have even tried it myself a time or two, but I prefer my historicals without lectures. And without a brain-dead heroine.

The Marriage Betrayal by Lynne Graham – the kind of Modern Romance you don’t get very often these days. Just as well, really.

The Bed and the Bachelor by Tracy Anne Warren – repeated date rape by the heroine on the clueless, supposedly brilliant hero. She gets the inexperienced man drunk and drugged and has sex with him. But the villain is holding her family to ransom until she steals a cipher from the hero. So that’s all right then.

Guarding a Notorious Lady by Olivia Parker - I didn’t believe in the premise of this book for a minute, and the heroine was beyond irritating.

His Unknown Heir by Chantelle Shaw – secret baby of the worse kind. The mother thinks she has the right to keep her pregnancy secret, because the hero has humiliated her. Then she’s surprised when the hero is angry.

Taken by Desire by Lavinia Kent – I never felt connected to the characters and by the end (it was a dnf for me) the heroine was annoying me no end.

Meddling with a Millionaire by Cat Schield – clunky storytelling and characters I really didn’t like. They were the entitled kind.

Unworldly Secretary, Untamed Greek by Kim Lawrence — secretary/boss romances are a guilty pleasure for me. I know I shouldn’t like them, but I still seek them out. This had a “take your glasses off, Miss Smith – my, you’re beautiful” heroine who I immediately hated, and head-hopping that hurt my neck.

The meh

So many. That was my problem this year. I read a lot of forgettable, average books. I want authors to take a chance, even if it ultimately fails, and I am so heartily tired of the “high concept” book that ignores everything – characterization, plot, historical accuracy, logical plot development – in favor of the god High Concept. Stop it, already. Tell me about people and the problems they have to face in finding true love. I don’t care if he’s a Regency duke or a CIA agent, I want the romance.

Here it is, my best read books in 2011.  Some of these still stand out in my mind and were easy to decide on, and others I really had to think about. Out of so many books, it was hard to decide, so I picked the ones which are worthy of the keeper shelf.

5. Touched by an Alien by Gini Koch – Not the type of book I usually read, though I always say I will read more of. I love both Kitty and Jeff. It’s one of those stories where you really need to suspend belief and just go along for the ride. It’s a fun break away from the real world and I loved that about it.

4. Bloodlust by Michelle Rowen -  One of the reasons this is one of my favorites is because it’s the last book and it just ends so well. I’m not left with any burning questions, I know I won’t have to wait through 5…10…15 more books to get answers. I am happy with it, and I like the fact that there could be more, but there doesn’t have to be. Declan is still one of my favorite characters.

3. Defiant by Kris Kennedy -  It has almost everything I could ask for in a historical, which I am picky about since it’s not my favorite genre.  I was hooked after the first sentence and that is a must for me. If more historicals had heroines like Eva, I would be reading them more.

2. Dragon Bound by Thea Harrison – I am so glad this didn’t sit on my TBR for any longer then it did. This book broke a really bad reading slump and Thea Harrison is now one of my favorite paranormal authors. Dragos is just awesome, and I wish there were more dragon books like this out there.

1. Kiss of Snow by Nalini Singh – One word…Hawke. Do I really need to say more? Just thinking about this book makes me feel warm and fuzzy. I can’t imagine this being topped any time soon, or at least until the next one…but maybe not then either.

It wasn’t hard at all to pick my worst books. I didn’t give many bad ratings last year, which is a good thing. These are the ones I wish I could go back and forget I ever read them.

5. Ascension by Caris Roane -  This book is just one giant eye roll. I had to stop myself from throwing it against the wall many times. I think of it as everything I never want to read in a paranormal.

4. Secrets to Seducing a Scot by Michelle Marcos – The problem here is I was bored. There was nothing exciting and the romance was lacking.

3. Finding Forgiveness by Dana Marie Bell – I disliked one of the main characters and I couldn’t get past it. There was nothing about him that said ‘hero’ to me. I was rooting for the other guy to leave him.

2. Ashes of Midnight by Lara Adrian – Great series, terrible book. I skimmed it just so I could move onto the next one. I disliked the characters and found them boring.

1. A Thread of Deepest Black by Finn Marlowe – I think this is the only book that got an F from me last year. I didn’t like a single thing about it.

This is the second year in a row I’ve not been able to decide which of two terrific books should be my No. 1. So I have a tie once again. Last year it was two fantasies that made the top spot. This year one of those authors has maintained her position, but she’s now sharing it with an historical author who never lets me down in story or character. And who rounds out the rest of my list? Think I can surprise you? Hmmmmm. Maybe not totally, but I think a few of my picks just might!

10. A Forever Kind of Love by Shiloh Walker – emotion is going to be the word of the day for this list. Combined with an alpha hero and a romance to die for, an author has a life-long fan in me if she can pull that off. Shiloh Walker is definitely one of those authors. This book is chockful of emotion, pulling on your heartstrings so much you’re sure they’ll definitely break. Just what I’ve come to expect from her.

9. Saddled and Spurred/Wrangled and Tangled & Chasin’ Eight/Cowboy Casanova by Lorelei James – I’m not sure how she does it, releasing these four books, plus others, in one year, but I’m sure glad Ms. James does. I couldn’t leave any of these books off the list over another, they’re all so good. My favorite, I think, is W&T – I love Renner and Tierney, they’re such fun. Her cowboys from both of her current series will keep you hot and bothered long after you’ve finished reading them!

8. Hidden Embers by Tessa Adams – sigh. Dragons. I love’em. And this edition of Tessa Adams’ Dragon’s Heat series is right on target for me with the emotion the hero goes through and all those alpha dragons breathing fire everywhere. The aerial fight scenes are as intense as the lovemaking, and with a mysterious disease that could end their clan, this is one all-consuming read. And how can you not lust over that cover, for heaven’s sake?

7. Touch of Crimson by Sylvia Day – I so enjoy an author who can write in more than one genre, and Sylvia Day is a master. I love her paranormals every bit as much as I love her historicals. This new series featuring angels is spectacular. ToC is the perfect opening, and I can’t wait for more, especially since next up is a werewolf hero. Shifters do it for me every time.

6. Pride and Pleasure by Sylvia Day – this is the first time an author has made my list in two different genres. Doesn’t surprise me it’s Ms. Day. Both hero and heroine in this book are fascinating characters, something this author excels at like no other. I can’t imagine anyone reading this list hasn’t read Sylvia Day before, but if so, you have to pick up one of her books like yesterday. Seriously.

5. Breaking Point by Pamela Clare – another author who writes alpha heroes and gives them the perfect heroine for our reading pleasure. And who can insert emotion that breaks your heart and then shows you action until you’re ready to collapse with exhaustion. You get everything in a Pamela Clare book. The hero in this story goes through hell, but his heroine, of course, helps pull him through.

4. Hidden Away by Maya Banks – If you’ve read my reviews of Ms. Banks’ KGI series books, you know I love these Kelly boys. They go through hell to find love, but that makes it all the more sweet and pleasurable in the end. It’s also the family aspect of these stories that I love. You mess with one Kelly, you mess with them all. The brothers tease and fight like boys do, but they back each other up no matter what. Heroes, every one of them.

3. The Many Sins of Lord Cameron by Jennifer Ashley – more brothers that have burrowed into my heart. This book is my second favorite so far, right behind The Madness of Lord Ian MacKenzie. We find out what drives Cam, how his past has shaped him. And what a past it is. I also like the father-son aspect of this book. I was hoping that would be a good part of it when we met Daniel in earlier stories, and Ms. Ashley gave me that hope in spades, and then some.

2. Kiss of Snow by Nalini Singh – there’s not a thing about Ms. Singh’s Psy-Changeling series that I don’t like. I like/love certain books over others, especially the ones that made me cry – but every one of them calls to and satisfies the paranormal/shifter fan in me. Hawke and Sienna live up to the expectations in my mind, I loved every single word.

1. Waking Up with the Duke by Lorraine Heath – all three books in this trilogy are wonderful, but this one, this one was the most emotional of all, and that’s saying something after the very talented Ms. Heath turned a not-so-nice character into a hero you couldn’t help but love on the very first page of his book. The untenable situation in WUwtD, the characters who live it, and the love they share is what puts this book in the No. 1 position for me.

1. Haunting Desire and Haunting Embrace by Erin Quinn – this series has been, well, haunting to read. Ms. Quinn has given this reader a whole new lo ok at Ireland and paranormal stories the like of which I’ve never read before. So beautifully written.

The series has ended with Haunting Embrace, so if you’re looking for something different, these books will hit the spot perfectly.

I always give a few honorable mentions, because it’s such a difficult time whittling down the list of all the great books I’ve read in a year’s time. So I want to share those with you too. Here they are in no particular order:

Second Chance at the Sugar Shack/Any Given Christmas by Candis Terry – what fun these books are! I’m glad I discovered Ms. Terry. She’s a joy to read. Great sense of humor and a mama ghost. You can’t go wrong!

A Light at Winter’s End by Julia London – I’m so glad this book was written. I was very upset at the ending of Summer of Two Wishes. The heroine picked the wrong man, as far as I’m concerned. And when he walked off into the sunset, so to speak, with no other information about where he went, what he did, how he coped, well, I wasn’t happy at all. Here we find out. And now I’m happy. (You should read SoTW first!)

The King’s Mistress by Sandy Blair – it’s nice to have a new book by Sandy Blair on the shelves. And she’s done one heck of a job weaving her hero and heroine into Scottish history to give readers a wonderful romance. No one does it better.

Making Waves by Tawna Fenske – I enjoy an author who can make me laugh out loud. There aren’t many out there who can. Tawna Fenske is a new voice on the scene, and she knows how to write humor. Her characters and storylines are just plain old fun! I still chuckle thinking about that black thong…

What I Did for a Duke by Julie Anne Long – this was my first Julie Anne Long book and I can certainly say I’m hooked. I really enjoyed these characters and just had fun with them. I look forward to reading a lot more of her books in the future. With all of the historicals on my list this year, this one didn’t miss the cut by much at all. So very close!

Well, now we go from my Best of the Year to my Worst of the Year reads. I’m teased by some of the reviewers here at the Pond that I like everything I read. Well, that’s not technically true, because there are those books that sometimes don’t do it even for me. So I have a few. One doesn’t surprise me, one does, and the others just surprised me as I read them. And the biggest surprise is they’re all Scottish historicals, which I love to read. Now you know really how painful these were for me!

~ Must Love Kilts by Allie Mackay – I always try to give an author a second chance when one of their books doesn’t work for me. I believe I’ve given Ms. MacKay a third and fourth chance. I doubt there will be another chance in the offing any time soon. So this one didn’t surprise me at all. And that’s really too bad, because I wouldn’t mind getting a look at the covers on her books. Those I love. You can see my review here, if you’d like.

~ In Bed with a Highlander by Maya Banks – needless to say, this one surprised the ever livin’ hell out of me, as much as I love Ms. Banks’ romantic suspense novels. Honestly, I’m still flabbergasted at my reaction to this book. I expected to love it, every last word. But something went horribly wrong for me. I didn’t grade it super low just because of who the author is – at least the characters worked for me – but I just couldn’t get past other things. I feel another tear coming on. My review is here.

~ Captured by the Highlander/Claimed by the Highlander by Julianne MacLean – I’ve not read Ms. MacLean before these books, and I now know I shouldn’t have started here. I have a lot of her books in the TBR mountain, so it definitely surprised me during reading that these books just don’t work for me on any level, except maybe her characters. Despite their sounding like modern-day people and the books being nearly mirror images of each other, I do like the heroes and heroines. It’s everything else that needs work. I have yet to try the third book, and I don’t know how soon, if at all, that’s going to happen. My reviews can be read here and here.

So how do your 2011 reads stack up to my list? Any you agree with? How about vehemently disagree with?

It’s that time of year, faithful reader – and let me pause to say how much I appreciate you…even if no one else reads my silliness, I take comfort in the fact that the two of us do – time to list my favorite reads of 2011. These are books I read and that were published in 2011, to clarify. My list ended up looking a little different this year – I had a four-way tie for favorite. Without further ado:

My Top Ten for 2011

1. What I Did for a Duke – There was so much buzz about this that I had to pick it up, even though I was behind in the series. I am so glad I did! I can’t even explain why it was SO good. But it was my favorite historical romance of the year.

1. Kiss of Snow – This was the story fans of the Psy/Changling series have been waiting for Hawke and Sienna’s story since they first met and I was very happy with their book. My favorite paranormal book of the year.

1. Yours to Keep – I love the Kowalskis! Read this book and you will never look at Post-its the same way again. My favorite contemporary romance of the year.

1. Dragon Bound – The first book of the best series I’ve read lately. I might have liked Serpent’s Kiss a bit more but this book established the world and set up everything that follows. Since I already listed a favorite paranormal book, this is my favorite fantasy book of the year.

5. Serpent’s Kiss – Rune! Rune Rune Rune!! An excellent hero and an excellent book. Between Dragon Bound and this one, it was hard to decide which book I liked better and I thought Rune and Carling were a more even match than Dragos and Pia so I enjoyed reading about their relationship a bit more. Still, Dragon Bound was the first and a funner read (yeah, yeah…I used the word “funner”. So?!)

6. ShadowFever – Whether it ended the way you wanted or not, it was epic. EPIC!

7. Heart of Steel – Such a fun, swashbuckling read! So entertaining! Pirates! Zombies! Airships! If you haven’t read any of the Iron Seas books, you make me sad.

8. Winning the Wallflower – Even though this is a novella, I enjoyed it so much! More than the full-length book book that spun out of it, even.

9. To Love a Thief – If you like My Fair Lady-ish storylines, check this book out.

10. Silk is for Seduction – It was hard to round out my top ten but how could I go wrong with Loretta Chase?

11. A Lot Like Love – Honorary mention for this one. When I looked back at my list to find books I would recommend to anyone, this one popped out.

A bonus – biggest disappointment (no, I still haven’t let it go): Breaking the Rules. I know, I’m bitter…it’s my own fault for having high hopes.

So, there you go, my faves for last year. I already have read some good ones for this year – you’ll hear about those soon enough – and hear rumors of more coming soon. Yay!

What were some of your favorites of 2011? Do you agree with mine or are you sitting there shaking your head at your computer?

I have to start by wishing my US friends a happy Thanksgiving. I keep being asked if we celebrate it in the UK, and yes, in a way, we do – getting rid of a troublesome and difficult to administer colony with no obvious assets, other than somewhere to send the criminals and a nice source of cotton. Of course, when the oil came –

How wrong we were.

But without that split, the USA wouldn’t have become the vital, vibrant nation it is today, wouldn’t have developed in the same way.

But that apart, the original meaning of Thanksgiving is being overtaken by a new meaning – a way of joining with families and a time just to be thankful, for the things that we have and the things we don’t. I love that aspect. It’s so – American. And it’s wonderful.

Europeans tend not to celebrate, unless it’s a win at football, but even then, it’s as much to sneer at the opposition for losing than it is the favoured team for winning. It’s all about rivalry, not about the winning. Oh yes, we have this thing called sportsmanship, the gentlemanly (and gentlewomanly) side that means you have to smile and shake hands and not cause a fuss. That’s also a subtle way of saying, “Of course, it’s only a game, and it’s not important.” The French tend to spit and jeer when they lose, the Germans cry. The British hit people, or things, and then they get drunk, but they get drunk win or lose. (And Manchester United versus Bayern Munich is always a highlight of the sporting calendar, but then, so is Manchester United versus Manchester City.

But we don’t celebrate our national character, our military personnel, or our victories, and I’m not talking about in battle. We don’t have a day to reflect and to thank. My British friends would be squirming in their seats at the thought, and that’s a bit of a shame.

The British are ironic in the extreme. Every day we think or do something ironic or cynical, or both at the same time, and that comes naturally to us. Introducing our friends to other people, “Of course, he’s a right misery-guts” or “Be prepared for her dreadful fashion sense” comes naturally, and I’ve seen Americans balk at this, because they’d say, “She’s a great person,” or “you’ll love her.” That I really like. Cynicism can get a bit wearing sometimes. It feeds into the national psyche. We are quick to leap on mistakes, which in one way is good. In another way, we get Simon Cowell, who had gone so far from the reality he started with that he’s no longer interesting. He’s as scripted and rehearsed as any of his employees.

Mind you, on the subject of Simon Cowell and the X-Factor, Go, Josh Krajcik!

When I first started visiting the US, the friendliness and the welcome overwhelmed me. It still does. I’ve made friends who are as dear to me as some of the friends I have here at home, and that’s not to denigrate any party, it’s the truth. I’m not sure how much that is due to meeting other authors and not having to pretend anymore. I do care about what I write, and other writers understand, whatever their nationality. We can discuss fictional characters as passionately as w e like and know that the person we’re talking to will understand. But the hospitality is wonderful, the welcome delightful.

On the other hand, you kind of know that something is going on underneath. Brits tend to be honest, sometimes brutally so, and the “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all,” doesn’t work for us. It can work, but then the accusation of being a “bit of an American” creeps in. Saying “Have a nice day” with a sneer or an indifferent shrug, instead of leaving out the sentiment and just going with the sneer. Our diplomats excel at saying nothing while seeming to say something, but we have come a long way from the stiff upper lip of the nineteenth century. Or not. At least the hypocritical nationality and the jingoism is largely absent these days. I value honesty very highly, but I also value consideration. Don’t hit someone when they’re down.

Oh yes, and the British know how to party.

Having spent some time immersing myself in American TV and media, I can see a lot of differences. The news programs are more aggressive, the camera angles on the newsreaders a tiny bit closer, the cameras set a tiny bit higher. The colours are more vivid, the quality of the picture different. And the content is far more overly partisan than I’m used to. Or maybe I’m used to a certain partisanship that I don’t notice. I have no idea whether the media reflects the public psyche or creates it. I suspect it’s a bit of both, but since one major US network is run by a man who was originally Australian, and took nationality to suit his business interests, rather than in any sense of loyalty to a place, then it looks even more like a bit of both.

It’s subtle, but it’s there, and to be honest, I love it. I love the differences. That’s what keeps me coming back year after year, and why I love the friends I’ve made there. Why I love writing for the American market. That inner optimism, that Panglossian brightness that is so endearing and makes the Americans seem naïve to the average European. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. The average American just sees things differently. We Europeans might be the naïve ones.

I’ve been testing quite a few recently, so I thought I’d show you how I got on. These are the free ones, because a) I’m a cheapskate and b) Why pay for something when you can get it legitimately for free?

So you won’t find Mantano in this list, because I haven’t taken the plunge yet. And I haven’t included the apps like Wattpad, which are primarily to obtain and read online content, although this category has been growing recently and will be worth perusing in a while. I’ve included Nook and Kindle apps, because you can read books on your device as well as online, and it’s primarily as a reader of internal content that I’ve reviewed them here.

These readers are for my rooted Nook Color. Now I love the basic Nook reader dearly, but rooting it (I use the CM7 mod method – basically you are rooting through your SD card and leaving the nook firmware well alone. It’s superb, but this post isn’t about that) means I don’t get regular access to the Nook program. Still, getting Angry Birds, solitaire, Dolphin Browser and all the wonderful things you can get on the Android market makes rooting well worth it. If I lived in the US and I had access to the Barnes and Noble store, I might think differently.

This is what I’ve discovered about the apps. I would love it if you’d discovered more apps or more ways of using the apps, because I daresay I’ve missed something in my wander around the Market to discover the ideal reader.

What I’d like in an ideal reader –

The ability to:
1.    Set my own fonts. I prefer to read with serif fonts, and some of them look better than others on the Nook, so I like to be able to change them. I’m not including altering the size of the font, because I haven’t found a reader yet that doesn’t do this.
2.    Set my own margins – I like almost edge-to-edge reading. Why waste all that space?
3.    Make notes – I do a lot of reviewing, and it’s much easier to make notes on the NC, as I can on my Kindle, and then call up the list when I’m done.
4.    Open the reader and be right at the page where I left off.
5.    Flip animation. It’s fun, okay? But it’s not essential.
6.    A nice bookshelf. I like a book cover and a blurb to tell you what it is. It’s a nice way to browse.
7.    CSS reading. This means that the book is rendered as it is supposed to be by the publisher. While they then dictate fonts, it does mean that you get to see the italics, bolds and chapter headings, as well as scene breaks, etc. This is most important to me when there are italics. I read a fair amount of paranormals, and it’s much, much easier to see telepathic speech if it’s italicized. Italics can also be a part of an author’s voice, and when it’s missing, it can jar a bit. Failing the CSS thing, then the rendering of bolds, italics etc. I want my italics.
8.    A way of reordering the bookshelves by at least title and author. I’d prefer options to sort by tag, read or not read, date published and date added to the device, but, well, a girl can dream. And a way of creating bookshelves of my own and categorizing them, as I can in my Kindle.
9.    Reading books from the internal device of the NC, so you can read offline. I keep my books in the NC itself, not on the SD card, so porting to the SD card is a bit of a pain, and then you have to keep it up to date. Since I still occasionally read using the original Nook firmware and the lovely reader there, the books have to be in the internal memory.
10.    The ability to dim the screen in the dark, especially by swiping the left hand side of the screen vertically (means I don’t have to leave the book to do it).
11.    A progress bar that tells me how much I’ve read and how far I have to go.

What I don’t care about:

1.    Fancy backgrounds and day/night modes. I always read black on white and dim the screen for night reading. And I don’t want to pretend that my Nook Color is an ancient tome.
2.    Syncing between devices. I have a Blackberry phone, a Kindle, a Kobo and a Nook Color which I’ve rooted to full Android. I don’t own an ithing. Well I do, but iTunes is a nightmare on a PC, so I don’t use them. None of these devices sync particularly easily, apart from the Kindle, so I don’t bother. I keep a central library on my PC and then port to the devices as I need them. I use Calibre with an extra column added for books I’ve read. I have Calibre installed on every computer I own and port my settings across, then plug in the devices and add new books and take read ones off it. Works for me. But for some people, syncing is a big deal.

So here’s what I’ve tried so far:

Aldiko Reader -
It has – 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11
It renders really well, that is, the print is nice and clear. Its bookshelf is pretty, and I believe you can categorise it, though I’ve never worked out how. It’s fairly fast. The two big downsides for me are that you can’t make notes, although you can share, using Evernote or Facebook (but I don’t want to share, and I’m not always online. If it could link to an internal notetaking program, that would work for me). And you have to import all your books to the SD card if you want to see them on your bookshelves. That is a major inconvenience for me. However, it does render books properly, with italics and bolds, and I usually use it as a backup, if a book goes a bit daft on me in another program. Or if I just want to read for pleasure.

Amazon Kindle -
2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11
I use this solely to read my Amazon books on because it uses a proprietary format, and everything else I use is epub. Amazon uses a locked form of mobipocket so it doesn’t play with other devices. However, you can read from your device without connecting, and you can download from your Amazon store to read offline. What you can’t do is read your NetGalley ARCs, if you’re a reviewer, because NetGalley only sends to your first device (not Kindle’s fault). I haven’t found a way of reordering the bookshelves, but they are nice. You can’t choose your own font, but it’s actually a pretty nice font so I don’t mind that so much. It’s smooth and it works, and I wish it read epub.

Anyview -
Not a clue. The interface is nice, but I’ve never been able to open a book in it.

Nook (the android one)
2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11
Very much like the reader software, except it has flip animation, yay! The margins are too wide for me, and there’s no way I’ve discovered of making them narrower. And the cover art doesn’t show on my bookshelves, even if I do the Calibre thing (if you don’t now what I’m talking about, you re-convert within Calibre and that often solves the problem). Nook Color has to have the books in its own folder, which is irritating. The list of fonts you can use isn’t a full one, but it includes Georgia, so I’m good. But it renders really well, and I do use it sometimes. You can’t add shelves of your own, which is a pity.

Blio -
3, 5, 6, 7, 6, 9, 10, 11
This has some nice features and is worth considering. The shelf shows the book cover larger than most readers, so it’s very clear. I like the footer with the basic information and the extended footer, which you call up with a screen press. The options are limited, though, and you can’t set your own font and the default font is sans serif. And it leaves a space between paragraphs, which I really don’t like.

Bluefire reader -
I’ve just downloaded this one and I love the shelves on it, but I haven’t really played with it enough to comment significantly. I’d have to read a book or two on it before I can make up my mind.

Cool Reader -
1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
If it will take it, this is my reader of choice. It renders italics and bold properly. It has a reasonable, though not pretty, bookshelf that you can reorder by several things, including tags, and it reads books from the internal memory of the Nook, so I don’t have to faff about importing. It can be temperamental with one or two books, I have no idea why, and that’s when I read on another app. It’s fast and smooth and it has so many options you could spend all your time playing with them. If you put a few ttf (true type fonts) on the SD card, it will let you choose the font you want. It renders well. It even has a battery indicator in the top bar.
I’d like a nicer bookshelf, the opportunity to create shelves of my own (so that I could, for instance, put the books I’ve read there, put the ARCs I really should be reading soon on their own shelf, etc.) and a real flip animation would be nice, too. But I’m sure they’ll come in time.

DNL reader -
I’ve only just started playing with this one, so I really don’t know what it can do yet. Anyone?

FBReader -
1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10,11
One of the oldest apps, and still a good one. Its big downfall, to me, is the inability to read italics and bolds. It really makes a difference. But the interface is smooth, it reads off your internal memory and you can at least make bookmarks. Some readers love this one because you can sort any which way, and that is pretty awesome. I would love it if it would just render the italics and get the note taking sorted out. The flip animation is the most fun you’ll have with a book without actually reading it. The way you can set different taps on different areas to do different things is cool, too.

Kobo -
I’ve only just downloaded this one. Anyone have any comments?

Moon+ Reader -
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
You can get this in a free version or a paid version, which has text to speech. This one is immensely frustrating, because it doesn’t render italics and bolds. The notetaking is great, the shelves really nice, and it reads from your internal memory. However, in the latest version, you can opt to go to publisher defaults, and voila, there are your italics and bolds! But the font is mandatory, and it’s hideous. And on publisher defaults it scrolls rather than page turns. It will read from internal memory, although if you want to see your books on the pretty bookshelves, covers and all, you have to import them to Moon’s shelves. This one is so close. Importing the books isn’t too bad, because once you’ve done it to the internal memory, there’s an import button on the shelf page, and it will update. Get that CSS rendering right, and this is the one for me. As it stands, Cool Reader does it better right now. Oh yes, and it loads each chapter separately, which means you have to wait for a second when you turn the page for it to load the chapter. Irritating, unless you have a device with limited memory, in which case it would be a positive asset. Another irritation is the touch screen. It’s not as accurate as other readers, at least not on the Nook Color it isn’t, and attempts to go back to the author file, for instance, will find you turning back a page or a chapter. I don’t use a stylus and I don’t particularly want to.

In conclusion – right now, Cool Reader does most of what I want in an ebook reader, but I’m always looking for something better!

More and more I’m seeing authors who are confronted with readers saying “this is wrong,” reply, “it’s only fiction,” which they seem to think means they can make up anything they want to.

Of course, the most egregious offenders are some historical romance writers, who can’t even get titles right. “The Viscount Smith” or addressing a duke as “my lord” or an earl who decides where his title goes. Of course, the writer is creating her own vision of history, but that doesn’t mean she can ignore the facts of the period.

Jane over at Dear Author has written a column about why she avoids lawyers in fiction. That’s why I’m starting to avoid historical romances. They hurt. They are an insult to the people who actually lived. And it’s why I’d love to see a new genre of historical fantasy. I’m not stuck on the name, call it what you like, but the idea of people who live in an alternative Regency where dukes become spies and titles are gifted by the holder rather than inherited has some merit. It means historians like me know what to expect, and it means that authors who bother to do research and write as near as they can to the truth can get their druthers. Like the Highland romance which usually has very little resemblance to the real thing, the alternative could be amusing and a good read.

Conversely, there are stories that are meticulous in their research. So much so that you can almost hear the author thinking, “I’ve got to shove it down because I researched it, and if it doesn’t go into the book, that’s a waste of time.” So not true. The stuff that doesn’t go in is in the author’s head and informs her. So she knows her heroine uses a chamber pot not a flush toilet, and that’s how her heroine thinks and behaves. It helps to create a richer, fuller picture, rather than a prom queen in a vague pre-computer era story.

Contemporary-set romances have many of the same problems that historical romances do – stories set in London where the streets don’t meet where they should or where a car runs along a street that is actually pedestrianized, cars that run both ways up or down Madison Avenue, professional sports teams that only have one uniform to wear in a match, doctors who have affairs with their patients without consequences.

It’s even more important when the plot hinges on something that can’t actually happen. For instance, when a book depends on a lawsuit that isn’t valid, like those romances that say that the property can’t be inherited unless Joy marries Dirk, once the reader realizes that the will can be set aside as it’s invalid, the whole plot, and therefore the whole story, falls apart. The “oh we can marry and then get an annulment” plot in historical romance is another one. No, they couldn’t. So none of the story could have happened. It’s infuriating when a story falls apart like that.

It can be argued that a reader’s expectations come into play. Georgette Heyer set up a lot of conventions that weren’t actually real. Not facts, she was meticulous in her facts, but expectations, like everyone was in London for the Season and in the country the rest of the time. Or that ladies had dance cards in the Regency. These have since been shown not to be the case, but it can be difficult for a writer to face these rules down, especially against avid readers who expect those conventions.

Forbidden relationships of an employer/employee nature or a doctor/patient, lawyer/client, teacher/pupil can be delicious, but they can also be horrendous. If the story doesn’t deal with all the problems of that kind of relationship, then it can fall flat. The whole point of writing about such a relationship is the forbidden aspect, so ramp it up and deal with it, even if it means the employer, doctor or whatever loses his or her job in the process. Without the discussion, the story can be icky, (sorry to get so technical there, folks!) and downright abusive.

These days, with the bigger publishers taking less interest in content and more in marketability, as if a book is the same as a magazine or even a can of beans it’s more important, not less, that an author takes responsibility for the content of the book.

The argument “it’s only fiction” shows several things. It shows that the author doesn’t understand what fiction is. It doesn’t mean “you can make everything up, it doesn’t have to reflect reality.” It doesn’t mean “it’s not important because the reader doesn’t care.” We do care. Very much.

It also means that the author is losing a big chunk of her readership. Sports fans who would normally be a sitting audience for a football book will turn away in droves if the author gets her basic facts wrong. Historians who would love a well-written romance about the period they specialize in are forced away because it isn’t the period they know and love, just a vague recollection of it. Lawyers who might enjoy a story about lawyers working on rival cases who fall in love but can’t believe the way events turn out. They’re gone, and they won’t come back, because it hurts too much to read about something they love and maybe earn their living doing travestied beyond indulgent laughter.

“Just fiction” means the author can insert characters into a situation that already exists, not that everything has to be made up that doesn’t fit into what the author wants to happen. And eventually it leads to “same old, same old” romances that read like rehashes of the last book. So the author could write herself out of a career.

Doing the research in whatever field it happens to be leads to rich, believable and original situations and characters, books a reader will keep on the keeper shelf and return to time after time. I’ve recently been enjoying Victoria Dahl’s books set in a micro-brewery. Now what I know about that business is strictly from the customer side of the bar, but the details are so good that they add to the texture and the richness of the stories. I don’t have to know about micro-breweries to know that Dahl did a fair bit of research, to add a nicely detailed background that adds fun and believability to her romance.

When books are written that are clearly parodies of the setting rather than well researched recreations of it, it gives more fuel to the knockers, the people who love to denigrate the whole genre on the basis of a few books. When standards are low, that is what the reader will get.

As an author, I’ve always tried to remember the motto, “I do the research so you don’t have to,” and I’ve always tried hard to keep to that. If I say that some people keep private speedboats in private docks on the Thames, then you can be sure that I’ve done the necessary work to make sure that’s possible. I’ve made mistakes, but not for want of trying to get it right.

It’s not up to the reader to do the research for you.

New Kindles have been announced.

In brief, they’re the Fire tablet, at $199, the Touch 3G at £139, the Touch at $99 and the basic Kindle at $89. The last three will all have advertisements as screensavers. There will be advertisement-free versions for a little extra.

The Fire is a tablet to rival the Nook Color, and since Barnes and Noble is about to announce a new generation of Nook Colors, the situation there will probably remain the same. If you want the details and the specs, they’re on the main pages at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
The UK is only getting the basic ad-free model at the moment, and this will cost £89, which is a big hike on the $79 US version, even if that is the all-in price.

They look good, and the range is pretty impressive. But the companies who will be really worried, IMO, is the Android tablet companies. HP recently inadvertently revealed the selling price point when they reduced the price of their now defunct tablet, but the others cost $300 and up.
The Ipad is probably safe, at the top end.

It’s the content that counts. The Fire tablet will come packed with Amazon goodness. It won’t be a fully functional Android tablet, but will have an Android base, probably 1.1, which is pretty much outdated by others, but as long as it does what it says, I don’t think many buyers will be bothered. Of course, it will be rooted the day after release, but that’s for the geeks. I recently had a lot of problems with my rooted Nook Color and decided to revert to stock. I’m pretty happy with it as it is. I bet the Fire users will like that. But it might be worth waiting, because there are rumours of a ten-inch model and an additional model later on with some improvements.

Will I be racing out to get one? Well, apart from the fact that I’m in the UK, and so only the basic model is available, not so much. I love my Kindle 3, and the screen looks to be the same one. The new model is lighter, but the one I have is light enough for me. They are keeping the current Kindle in the same range and renaming it the Kindle Keyboard, and I really like that keyboard, because it means I can make notes on the books I review.

But the price points mean that the reader is a game changer. This is now the era of the below-$100 ereader, and that will see lots of new entrants. The savings (free out of copyright books, free offers) will pay for the device. This is an almost disposable price, one where the content really does matter more than the device. Ereaders have matured, and are now easy to use and comfortable to read on. I wonder if the airlines will still make us switch off on take-off and landing?

I fully expect Barnes and Noble to follow suit, and so fulfill the usual market model of leader, second brand and, well, they are themselves generics. Sony and the other makers of readers that don’t have a considerable store or extra content will suffer, there’s no doubt about that.

I’m beginning to think that tablets are a bit  of a frill, and the new Amazon Fire price does reflect that. Recently my trusty netbook bit the dust, and I had the choice between buying a tablet or an ultra-light laptop for my travels. I picked the ultra light. It has a proper keyboard, it has Windows, I can tilt it to watch films on and read books, surfing the Web is no problem. It’s just more useful to me. If I’d bought a tablet, I’d have had to invest in a keyboard, case, etc. And be stuck with an Apple interface with my PC, which I didn’t like.

So what do you think? Will you be supplementing your paper library with a reader? Are you tempted?

It was 9 a.m. and I’d just got back from the school run. I booted up my computer – the house computer – which was in the hall and logged on. Because of the time difference, my friend Kathy was online and I contacted her via yahoo messenger. Kathy lives in Florida. I had the radio on in the front room, and they broke in to the regular program with a bulletin. I took a minute to switch on the TV.

Then I got back to Kathy and said, “Turn on your TV. Now.”

“Eh?” she shot back, bemused, because I’m here in Britain and she’s there, and well, we don’t get the same programs. But that day, we did. She put on her TV and when we tuned in, the commentators were all saying they thought it was a tragic accident, because what else could it be? But not long later, ten, twenty minutes – I forget – it became clear that this was no accident.

We watched the attacks unfold, holding hands across the ocean, neither of us wanting to be alone. I kept dashing from the living room to the computer, and eventually I turned up the font size and took the keyboard, backing up so I could see the TV through the door and still see what Kathy was saying.

Then someone else came online, someone I knew from an online writing group. “I’m in the Pentagon,” he said. He was a civilian techie working there. “They got us too. We’re okay, but all the phone lines are down and we’ve been isolated. Can somebody get hold of my aunt on (he gave us an email addy and a phone number) and tell her I’m okay?” Because the computer cables were deep below the ground, they’d survived the attack intact, but the phones were down. The civilians were given permission to contact their relatives, but they weren’t allowed their cellphones at work. So we contacted his aunt. Kathy called her, I emailed her. She was a frail, old lady and very relieved to know that her nephew was okay.

We carried on watching. More people came online, and at that time, of course, the main reaction was shock. Some of my countrymen were bitter, because it was well known that Noraid, an American organisation, was funding the IRA which at the time was still bombing the mainland, or had just stopped. “Now they know what it’s like,” they said, a reaction I thought was despicable. There is no excuse, there is no reason, and the people who set these bombs are the ones at fault. Nobody else. There was also fear that this kind of attack might derail the fragile peace set up in Northern Ireland, when the factions had cautiously agreed to set aside their differences and talk. All the horror, all the dead people’s families agreed to put it behind them. Not forget—you should never forget—but try to go forward, into something new where children and adults didn’t die so often.

A few years later, all the terror and angst came back. It was the 7^th of July and I was travelling to London on a coach bus to my first RNA conference at the Royal Holloway College just south of London. But the driver got a message on the road and pulled into the nearest service station. They’d set a widescreen TV in the foyer, and people sat around watching as terrorists tried to take London apart. They’d targeted the Underground, but one of their number hadn’t made it in time, and, instead, a bus went up. So again, I watched a screen as people’s worlds fell apart. But this was a bit different. There’s a road that surrounds London, the M25. It soon became clear that constructing this road was more than a transport solution. The authorities cut London off from traffic, in or out. It was amazingly effective. They caught the perpetrators in a few days. And I went to my conference a day late. With the help of the emergency services, and ordinary people who brought out blankets and cups of tea for the victims, the mess was cleared up very quickly and the authorities set to discovering who had done this.

London was full of people determined to go about their everyday lives, because what the terrorists want above all else is to disrupt ordinary life, to make people scared, to unnerve them and so disturb the structure of society and sow doubt about the competency of the people who lead us (as if they need any help!) So the best defiance is to carry on, which was what I did. The Conference wasn’t that important. It happened every year, after all. But I was determined to go down. The bus company had given us all rain checks, although they didn’t have to, because bombs count as “acts of God” in insurance terms, so they weren’t liable. But they did. So I went down the next day, and only missed a few hours of the first lectures. So did others. I think six people in all failed to turn up. People walked miles to get to work, not because they enjoyed their jobs, but because, like me, they saw that if they panicked and lost a day’s work, the other side won.

These acts bring people together for a while. In London the underground was closed, but the buses were running. And people were talking. In London, people don’t talk. In Manchester, where I lived at the time, not chatting was the exception, but in London it’s the opposite. You can be more alone in London than in the middle of the Sahara desert. But the day I went down, people were talking about the Blitz, about the various IRA bombs and the other isolated attacks.

I’ve been in the middle of three bomb attacks. The Warrington bomb, which was an IRA attack. The Docklands bomb, another IRA attack. And what came to be known as 7/7, an Al-Quaeda attack. When you’re involved, you don’t give a damn who started it. People die, innocent people, people who might sympathise with whatever the cause du jour is. It doesn’t matter. On the ground, you don’t care. Just that someone has tried to rip your life apart. And you get angry, or at least, I do. How dare they presume to do this? What gives them the right?

All my thoughts and sympathies are with the people affected by the attack on 9/11, or as we Brits have it, 11/9. That’s the ordinary citizen and the tourists who saw it and can’t stop dreaming about it, the people in the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, the emergency services, the military and the people on the planes that were forced to take the fatal diversion. With courage and determination, we will win through against these extremists. Oh yes, and tea.

Does an ARC guarantee a review?

I get a lot of the books I review from Netgalley. Others I buy myself. Very occasionally, I might get one from the author, but that doesn’t happen often.

If I buy the book myself, I choose whether to review it or not. When I get the ARC for free, I feel more obliged to do the review. But I won’t give an unfairly good review, because it’s not fair to the readers or to the authors whose books I loved, for that matter.

For better or worse, I try to be honest. That’s why I restrict the books I’ll review. Friends and publishers I write for, I won’t review, because, frankly, my writing comes first, and the people I work with are an important part of that. I would hope that most of the writers whose books I give not-so-good reviews to accept that I’m not criticising them, I’m not even criticising their book. I’m saying why I didn’t like it. And I never, ever criticise an author. Just that particular book. There are authors whose books I have both hated and loved, and I try to be fair and give them the grade I think they deserve for that particular book. The happy-sigh book gets the highest grade, regardless of author, genre, or publisher. And there are books by friends that I adore. Sometimes that’s why they’ve become friends, but if I’m ever moved to praise them, I’ll always state upfront that we’re friends. Just so you know and you can take that into consideration.

Like all reviewers, I bring my own expectations and even my background to my appreciation of a book. I’m particularly hard on historicals. I can’t help it. If there’s a vague, wishy-washy background or if the author has taken vast liberties with history, the book will get marked down or DNF’d. I have found that in the “wallpaper” history books, the characters are often as thin as the background, and no amount of hot sex scenes will make up for that.

That’s why histories don’t always work for me, even though I love, love, love a well-written, absorbing historical romance. But if I ever read a wishy-washy history book with vivid, believable characters that I care about, I’ll say so, because that is the point of reading a romance. To share in the experience of the main characters and to care about them. To be taken away for a while.

I sometimes write books set in modern-day America, so I have the same problems in reverse – trying to understand the American psyche and writing in the correct idiom. If I wrote that cars went down Fifth Avenue instead of up, if I had two-way flow at the Central Park end, I could guarantee lots of scathing letters. Something that seems trivial to me detracts from someone else’s enjoyment of the book. But I have two huge advantages over people trying to get into British history to write their romances. First, I can visit the places I write about, and I do. I love my visits, make copious notes, and take hundreds of photos. I travel alone so I can sit in restaurants and museums or on a park bench and just listen. Get the cadence of the area, hear the patterns of speech. Love it to bits. Now while a writer of historical romance can visit the UK, they can’t go back in time. None of us can. But visiting helps. The second advantage? I have American editors, usually two or more per book. That is invaluable, so much that I wouldn’t like to try to write a book with an American character without them. They point out things I’d never have dreamed of researching. To take a simple example, I had “car park” changed to “car lot.” Sure, I’d heard the expression, but I naturally write “car park.” Those editors are so, so important to what I do.

So why not get British readers for the historicals set in the UK by US authors? That would ensure that at least the language used is right. And if history buffs were recruited, even better. That’s not to say that there aren’t some American authors who get it right. Miranda Neville, Laura Kinsale, Loretta Chase, for instance, write fantastic books about vivid, believable characters who I remember for a long time after I’ve closed the book. So it can be done. And some of my compadres, Nicola Cornick, Sarah Mallory, Jo Beverley, write wonderful books that sell well both sides of the Atlantic. Long may they flourish.

I never read American romances before around 2000, so I missed out on the rape-into-love books (I read one Catherine Coulter, and it horrified me, but I did love the old Susan Johnson American historicals). I was used to books that respected the history they set the stories in and editors who were knowledgeable enough about history to critique them. I’m still trying, but these days a lot of the books I receive are ARCS.

Which brings me to the point. When I get an ARC, I feel more obliged to review the book. Recently I’m learning to decline. For instance, the Linden book I read recently didn’t work for me, so when I was sent another, I couldn’t see the point of reviewing it. Why should I start a witch hunt or upset the people who enjoy her books? So I declined to review it. But when I buy a book and it’s so-so or meh, then I’ll probably not review it, because I won’t be saying anything new or making a point. But if I’ve received the book as an ARC, then I’ll probably review it.

Raves—I get so excited about those that I almost always do a review. That’s why I read and why I review. I want people to know about this great book. If you ask most reviewers, they’ll say the same thing. It’s the raves that are so exciting. The D, F and DNFs I write with a heavy heart because I really, really want to like the book. I never pick up a book thinking, “I’m going to hate this.” I want to love it, to buy in to the romance, to have a good time. If I read a book and hate it, I don’t always do a review, because it might be a personal dislike (like my dislike of big misunderstanding books), and I’m not adding anything to the debate. But if it’s an ARC? I kind of think I ought to say something.

I’ve been good. I’ve been really, really good because some of the people I know and care about are involved in this. But here we go, foot in mouth. Again.

The publishing industry is stumbling from crisis to crisis, but in a way, that’s always been so. Throughout history, things tend to happen despite people, who then look around with a bewildered air and scratch their heads, as if nobody warned them.

Because they didn’t. They weren’t listening. They weren’t looking in the right places. “Let the instigators take up all the slack, we’ll move in later.” After all, it worked for Clarence Birdseye.

That excellent pundit, Sarah Hoyt, compared the changes currently taking place to Cornwallis surrendering to Washington. But that was similar. In those days before broadband, TV and even the telephone, America seemed so far away that it didn’t matter to the powers-that-were in Europe. So at the time, it was a little local difficulty that the willfully blind people in Britain brushed aside as less important than the balance of power falling apart in Europe. True, but it was only later generations who reaped the reward and came to a full understanding of what happened when Europe let America slip out of its grasping hands. Didn’t make the same mistake with Africa and India, at least they learned that much.

People will always look at the short term and use solutions that have worked in the past. They’ll commission reports and surveys that give them the answers they want (I know that one—I used to do it for a once-powerful consumer giant that is now no more. If I hadn’t, I’d have lost my job). In the end, they’ll probably win, and a new market will reform from the old, with a few new entrants, and maybe one giant. But we always do what we’re comfortable with, until the new way makes it completely impossible.

So sending material out to agents in the hope of snaring a big publisher is the way to go. Or it was. But with the long lead times the companies demand, that strategy is more dangerous than it used to be, because the industry is changing fast. In two years that publisher might have changed, and the contract you signed might not mean as much as you thought.

Publishers are taking action. They are taking fewer new authors, concentrating on their big authors, dropping midlist authors. They’re cutting advances to the bone, but they aren’t always offering the royalty commensurate with that, so gaining a few years of milking the author before the author gets wise and demands more. That will give them the cushion they need to adapt to their new market. Sell the expensive offices in Manhattan? Are you crazy? That’s where it’s at.

As a consequence, agents are being squeezed. In the last twenty years they have become the gatekeepers for the bigger publishers, doing the screening that hired interns used to take care of. Most of the big publishers are agented-only, which means they are closed to anyone who doesn’t produce what they are expecting to get.

Agents are still receiving floods of queries, but they’re not selling like they used to. Not their fault, they are working on the old model of getting to know editors and what they wanted. They even adapted to the increasing dominance of the marketing department and its emphasis on “product” rather than books. MBAs trained to dissect and analyze, and if it means ripping the heart out of the industry, so be it (and before MBAs start screaming about their value, you should know that I have one of those. Been there, done that. And, yeah, the money’s good, but I still walked away).

But don’t feel sorry for the agent. They’ve found a new source of income. More and more are opening their own self-publishing ventures. I don’t care what fancy words they put around it or how they describe it, they are acting as third parties, distributors. This doesn’t just damage their relationship with the writers, it damages the relationship with the publishers, too. The writer can no longer trust the agent to recommend the best possible deal if at the end of the day the agent has that self-publishing/vanity publishing option. And the possibility of generating extra income from that venture.

If they separated the self-publishing option completely, it might work better, but I doubt it. They’re still part of the same conglomerate, owned by the same people. Some agents are offering “services” to edit, give cover art, and format a book. Fair enough, you think, but it’s worth comparing what they do with the cost of employing an independent or several independents. However you cut it, it’s a conflict of interest.

How can that be right? That the person you are trusting to find you the best deal possible for your career has an interest in signing you to his or her own personal venture? I’m sure the agents mean well, at least most of them do, but before the world turned upside down, the AAR would have condemned this practice out of hand.

I’ve seen some really shoddy attempts at capitalizing on backlists recently. Inadequate cover art, poor editing, and one place only (usually Kindle). It made me angry that some of my favorite authors or their families thought so little of books that I’ve loved in the past that they’ll throw them away like that. That’s me as a reader, not me as a writer.

So sadly, I’ve decided to stop my Great Agent Hunt. Or to be even more careful who I apply to, because not every agent is into this, and I know they mean well. But there is no way I’d accept a deal with a publishing house, self-publishing house or whatever that my agent owns or has an interest in.

Douglas Adams was right.

Interesting times afoot.

Dennis Potter must be smiling from heaven.

The Murdoch scandal is only just beginning to permeate the USA. We in Britain have watched it unfold, our jaws gaping, and every day when we think, “Oh well, that’s over now,” something else equally jaw-dropping happens. And it’s important to the publishing community.

Why? Because Murdoch is the major shareholder, founder, and head honcho of NewsCorp, News International. He owns the London Times, the Wall Street Journal, scads of other newspapers the world over – and Harper Collins publishers. This scandal is now threatening to bring the whole of his organisation tumbling down. So keep an eye on it. In any case, I suspect America will soon be as mired in it as we are. If you’re in Australia, you already know about Murdoch, because that’s where he started. If you’re in Canada, and you’re feeling smug, don’t. Just check the holdings.

I’ll start at the beginning, as the story unfolded. On the 23rd of June, Levi Bellfield was found guilty of murdering 13-year-old Millie Dowler in 2002. In the UK, while a case is sub judice, the press are only allowed to report on the case and not comment. But after the conviction, it came out that when the police were looking for Millie, they found her phone. They kept it topped up because they hoped she or her kidnapper would get in touch. But the texts filled up. And someone unauthorised had hacked into the phone and removed texts so they could do so. Repeat and think about that. Someone had invaded a grief-stricken family’s privacy and possibly impeded a police investigation. It was traced to a former Private Investigator who, a few years before, had been found guilty of hacking into the phones of several celebrities.

And here’s the first twist. One of the people who helped to expose the PI had been Hugh Grant. That’s right, Hugh Grant, the actor. He’d secretly recorded a conversation he’d had with the PI where he’d confessed to hacking the phones.

The people concerned were journalists working for a Sunday rag, The News of the World. Sex, sin, and sales. Owned by the Murdoch Empire. Nobody had bothered much about the hacking, because it had been celebs who had been the victims. Or so it was thought. Hugh Grant hadn’t seen why celebrities should have their rights infringed, and so he’d decided to do something about it. Go, Hugh.

At the time, the editor of The News of the World had been one Rebekah Wade, now Rebekah Brooks. She had since been promoted to Chief Executive of News International, and she was one of Rupert Murdoch’s inner circle. But she refused to resign, and Murdoch supported her. She claimed she knew nothing about the hacking of Millie Dowler’s phone. Wade had been succeeded as editor of The News of the World by one Andy Coulson. Remember that name. He’ll turn up again.

Then it came out that not only had Millie Dowler’s phone been hacked, but the phones belonging to one of the parents in another notorious and horrible murder case, the phones of the families of people killed in the 7/7 terrorist bombing in London, the phones of parents of soldiers killed in Afghanistan – and more. This was getting worse than nasty, it was getting evil.

Andy Coulson had left his job with News International to work for the then leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron. The David Cameron who is now Britain’s Prime Minister. There is also an ex News International person working for the leader of the Opposition, Ed Milliband. So the corruption spreads. Or, I should say, the possible corruption. But Coulson was arrested as part of the investigation.

By now, terrorists could have walked up to 10 Downing Street, knocked on the door and said, “We’re tired of this shit. Let’s work out a peace plan” and they would have received a passing mention in the news. The BBC, which as far as we know is Murdoch-free, has been going nuts. But with every day that passes, something new turns up.

The second largest shareholder in News International, a Saudi prince who never gives interviews, gave an interview. He told the reporter that he supported Rupert Murdoch and his son James, but he had no time for Rebekah Brooks and she should resign. The next day, she obediently resigned. And then she was arrested. By appointment, no less. We should all have the police make an appointment to arrest us.

And it’s getting worse. Now the operations of The News of the World came under closer scrutiny. In a Parliamentary Committee some time back, Brooks had admitted that occasionally they paid the police for information. Whoa. So the police were involved. And then the most important police officer in the UK, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Paul Stephenson, resigned.

A Senator in the US has called for an enquiry into Murdoch’s activities in the US. And don’t forget, Murdoch’s corporation owns the Fox network, as they own the huge satellite and cable network in Europe, Sky.

Rupert Murdoch was about to take ownership of BSkyB, and he was being allowed to do so. Now he’s been forced to stop doing that.

That’s where it stands of the time of this writing. This is like the pebble dropping in the pool and spreading ripples. We’re in for a tsunami, and it will affect the publishing industry profoundly. Somebody important didn’t want Murdoch to gain control of BSkyB, someone who knew what was going on. You couldn’t make this stuff up. No, really, you couldn’t. You’d get notes from your editor, “This doesn’t seem believable.”

In the meantime, enjoy Hugh Grant on the BBC’s “Question Time,” a program of serious political debate. Go, Hugh.

Dennis Potter was right.

One of the accusations frequently leveled at romance books is the amount of tropes we have. Things like secret babies and big misunderstandings. They crop up all over the place, but I’m not totally against them, because when they’re used properly they concentrate the reader on what matters most – the characters involved.

In fact, you could say that if they’re used well, they can add extra insight, because it’s how the characters react to situations that is more important than the situation itself. But all too often the trope is used as an easy way to progress a story, and the characters behave in a predictable and disappointing way.

So what tropes are there? Well, in the Harlequin/Mills and Boon Presents/Modern line (and some M and B Riva books, too), and the Harlequin Desire line, they can be particularly prevalent. It’s one of the reasons I read them, to be honest. You can gauge an author’s skill with how well she can bring the trope alive. Some I will tolerate, some I’m less fond of, but blessed be the author who can bring them all to life and make them seem fresh. I’ll look at one of my unfaves in a little more detail.

The Secret Baby – usually the heroine has a baby that the father of the child doesn’t know about. Usually the father is also the hero of the book, and the story is about them coming to terms with the situation. Not one of my favourites, I have to admit. I can’t get over a couple of things. First, the father has a right to know, unless he’s abusive or dead, and even in the first category, there might be a case for him to know. Second, when there’s a weak, defenceless being involved (no, not the heroine, but the baby), then that being must take priority. So whatever the heroine thinks about the hero, she should tell him. Particularly when she is poor and he is rich. That baby has a right to certain things, and one of them is a comfortable childhood, if at all possible.

I’ve seen this one work, but only rarely. I even wrote one myself, but it wasn’t really a secret baby. Texas Heat has a heroine unable to get hold of the hero. He has good evidence to believe she betrayed him and he has cut himself off from her. But she doesn’t stop trying, even though she thinks he’s a shit. Because of the baby. I’ve seen books where the heroine is living in abject poverty, in a damp and bug-infested slum, and the hero is your rich billionaire, and then she feels resentful when he takes over. Say what? She doesn’t deserve to be in charge of a child, IMO.

That’s why I decided not to review Olivia Gates’ latest, The Sarantos Secret Baby, although I’m a big Gates fan. But although I decided to give it a try, the heroine is a complete idiot and doesn’t deserve the baby. Willfully keeping a baby’s existence from the father, however controlling the father is, isn’t a good basis for the story, and I spent the part of it I did read in complete sympathy with Ari and wondering why he doesn’t just take his baby and leave.

Melanie Milburne’s The Unclaimed Baby is another one. In this one the hero and the heroine both  behave badly. She doesn’t tell him about the baby, and when he finds out, he threatens to take the baby away. Bear in mind that the heroine, Bronte, is living in her native country, Australia, and she’s providing well for the baby. He is rich, sure, but that’s all he has going for him. So he makes her believe he can take her baby away using the courts? At that point the book fell apart for me. No, just no. The likely outcome is that the courts would award her custody and a maintenance allowance. There is no believable reason why Bronte should believe Luc and go away with him, except for the contrivance of the story. It’s shorthand, a shortcut to get the H/h together and, for me, anyway, it just doesn’t work. If Bronte is as thick as a brick, then maybe. Or if she has a record of criminal violence, maybe again, but none of that applies. Actually, Bronte is a complete doormat. After their split, he cut off contact with her. Rich people can do that. Changed his contact details, told his people to keep her away kind of thing. When she discovers she’s preggers she tries, but can’t get in touch. And then she apologises to him when he rants at her?

I chose those two books as examples because they are authors I usually enjoy who came unstuck when they started down the secret baby route. In fact, I can’t think of a book offhand that has done it right for me, although I keep reading them. Or DNF’ing them. It seems this is a trope that is fraught with difficulty, but I’m sure there have to be some great ones out there. I think many writers do it for That Scene, where the hero stops short, stares at the baby and sees a miniature of himself (or where he refuses to acknowledge the child). Combined with the Big Misunderstanding, it can be one of the biggest fail tropes ever. So the author who can carry it off is skilled indeed.

Anyone got any great secret baby stories? One where the heroine and the hero behave like adults, the baby isn’t used as a blackmailing device, or a way to force the hero and heroine together, where they actually think about the baby rather than their own selfish needs?

I read an article today by an a guest on an agent blog that I follow. She said that writers should find their “voice” and their writing identity and stick with it. A well-written article that gave the accepted facts about writing for major publishers.

http://cba-ramblings.blogspot.com/2011/05/finding-your-authentic-voice.html

Except that the writing world is in flux, and nobody knows what is going to happen next.

It’s a fact that the big publishers are losing their grip on the market. The advent of e-publishing and the growth of Amazon and other third-party sites caught them on the hop. They fought back with the Agency pricing model, and it’s catching them even worse. Because people who have shelled out for Kindles don’t expect to pay more for the ebook than they would for the paperback, especially when the arrangement is more like leasing than owning. I’ve seen it happening. It depresses digital publishing with the big publishers, but even with that, the market is growing bigger and faster than most pundits predicted.

This lets in the smaller publisher, the one that can react faster to market demands. Big conglomerates always move slower than the smaller ones. They have higher overheads and a corporate culture built around the old model, with staff welded to the old ideas. And they need to make higher profits to cover the higher costs. Working with established agents has always been a good way for them to filter the submissions to ones that they might actually be able to publish, given their requirements and areas of expertise. And the aforesaid corporate culture. But it’s also their weakness. They can’t spot trends until they’re almost over and these days, when news travels faster on Twitter than it does anywhere else, that’s a big problem. The lead time of a year, maybe two, before releases means they can’t swivel on a sixpence as their smaller counterparts can, and they need big sales to make profits that can only be garnered from the more homogenized product. That’s basic marketing sense, always has been. But the relative elements are changing.

It’s always been a fact that smaller publishers like Sourcebooks, Ellora’s Cave, Samhain and so on don’t require agented submissions. Some discourage it, and agents have never been interested in sales that are in the hundreds rather than the thousands. Now sales are growing and authors are making more decisions about their own careers and what they want to do.

There have always been writers who prefer to write in a variety of genres—Jayne Ann Krentz/Amanda Quick and Ann Maxwell spring to mind, as well as Lisa Kleypas. With a slight tweak to the author photo, maybe different websites, or website pages, authors are increasingly writing in more than one genre and becoming more difficult to classify. I do it, too.

I write around themes, things that interest me, for instance, “difference.” People who are different from the others around them, for one reason or another. I love exploring the ways they cope with that, and how they meet others who might be different. So the ex drug addict heroine of “Learning to Trust” who comes from a wealthy family, the teacher who happens to be a shape-shifting dragon, the daughter of a courtesan trying to make a life of her own in Georgian England, or the woman who enjoys making love in public but belongs to a hidebound, snobbish social group: they are all fodder to my particular writing mill. And I wouldn’t give any one of them up. But you see, that covers four genres—romantic suspense, paranormal romance, historical romance and erotic romance.

Do I have to pick one of them above the others, and shoehorn what I love writing about into one shelf?

I decided no. Writing in different genres refreshes my outlook and enables me to take different looks, take my theme from new angles. If I wrote purely historical romance, for instance, I’d become jaded and the themes would get samey. But I wouldn’t give up writing the historicals for anything.

Of course I have to keep my eye on the genres, write what’s most popular at the time, but that way I’m writing to the market, ie, looking at it as a day job, but still retaining my area of interest, my artistic integrity, if I want to be precious about it. Authors have been forced into genres that don’t quite fit with what they love writing, what their hearts and muses tell them to write. And okay, that does sound precious, but in effect, it leads to blanding out, the kind of cookie-cutter books that dilute the author’s voice and heart. If she wants to make a decent living, if she wants to sell enough copies to enable her children to go to school and keep a roof over her head. But things are changing, and fast.

I heard about an author today, Candace Hern, who is self-publishing her old traditional Regencies. The big publishers dropped the sweet, kisses-only Regencies years ago, after strangling them to death, and they asked all authors to write in a bit of the sensual. Me, I love writing the sensual and erotic. I’d do it anyway, but Candace wasn’t so keen. She did it, but her heart was in the trad. And now she has a chance to follow her heart and write what she truly loves. She’s revising some of her newer books to be the books she really wanted to write, as well as publishing the older titles.

With the new push to self-publishing and going with smaller publishers, the writer has a chance to write what she really wants, rather than what she is told the market wants, sometimes at third hand (the publisher tells the agent who tells the writer). Candace has a fair chance of doing well with her books, because enough people remember them and love them. Not enough for a big publisher, but enough for a smaller one. My books have elements that mean they don’t slot easily into a currently popular genre. My rejection letters from bigger publishers and agents are showing a common theme “You write well, but we can’t place the book right now.” Nice to know I write well, so I’ve not been particularly hurt or surprised. They need the instant winners. It was when I realised that I was doing all right without their help, and when I talked to authors with big houses at conventions and chapter meetings that I got my first real shock. I’m actually earning more than some of them. Not the Kleypases and Robertses of this world, of course, but still, I’m doing fine. So far (nothing is certain!)

The received wisdom is that the publisher goes with what sells. After all, what sells is what’s popular, right? Well yes and no. Because you can only buy what’s there to be bought.

I think the reader may be tiring of the homogenized, packaged book. They’re easy to read, and instantly forgettable. Good for long air journeys, bad for stickability. As usual, the savvy publisher, Harlequin, has noticed, perhaps more than many of the readers. My recent glom of the Bad Blood series had a purpose. I wanted to know what new themes and new ideas were moving into a Harlequin/Mills and Boon mainstay. The Modern/Presents line is one of the oldest established and also the best selling lines that company has. Not one to take chances with, you’d think. But HMB, who have been in business a hell of a long time, have seen trends come and go, and they know better than anyone else, that if you don’t move with the times, or even a little in advance, you eventually lose out. Your particular sales line on the graph starts to plateau and then dip. The revamp in the covers is being followed up by a revamp in content.

At least three of the Bad Blood series had what are radically different themes for the line, while still taking account of the line’s basic identity. This is the line of high living and billionaires, princesses and Cinderellas. That’s still there, but introducing a non-white heroine where her race isn’t the focal point of the story, a story about a couple in love having marital problems, and one about a heroine with a severe physical disability were new and to a line where requirements are so strict, definitely different.

So how does that pan in to my own career? Well before, I thought about getting to the big publishers through an agent. This year, I’ve hunted for agents. But they want best sellers, and although I’m a best seller for one publisher in one genre, that genre isn’t the biggest one that publisher has. If you see what I mean. Big fish, little pond. And these days, agents seem to want writers who are already selling scads and scads of books, the guaranteed best sellers who they can move to the big publishers with little change in content and still make loadsamoney.

It’s starting not to work, that approach. Because the writers they take aren’t necessarily that good, and readers aren’t stupid. They know they’re reading the books for the sex/laughs/screams or whatever. But after half a dozen or so, they’re ready to move on.

So time for a huge rethink, for me. I’d still like to write for a big publisher, and I’ve kind of achieved that by accepting an offer from Carina. But Carina is run by two very savvy women who have their fingers on the pulse, and know where they’re going. Not a conglomerate, a committee, who are deciding on the basis of sales and image.

Time for the big girl knickers.

After publishing 40 books, I think I can handle my own career. I don’t need anyone to give me advice on what to write or how to write it, unless it’s my editor, and that’s another reason to love the smaller publishers. Editors edit. Some people need that guidance, I know. But it’s about time I stood on my own feet and made my own creative decisions. If I hadn’t, when I decided to write a book that I didn’t have a publisher for, then I wouldn’t have signed with Carina, and wouldn’t have had Malle Valik telling me that she liked that my heroine was an ex drug addict, and that I’d gone with the book rather than the genre I was trying to write for.

Publishers will try to retain the cozy “you send us what we want and we’ll publish it” for a while, until they figure out the new models. They have the money, after all. But there’s a very important article put up over at Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s blog on the same theme. Go and read it. It’s on the changing role of the agent in the publishing world.

http://kriswrites.com/2011/05/04/the-business-rusch-advocates-addendums-and-sneaks-oh-my/

Perhaps we need lawyers and negotiators rather than the old fashioned agent. Perhaps we need authors in the same genre to band together and form their own marketing and selling group, to make it easy for readers to find what they like, instead of trying to find it in an undefined sea of authors.

One thing’s for sure. Everything is changing and there’s a revolution afoot. Who knows what will be left when the dust has settled? If it ever does.

A strange anomaly.

I wrote to Mills and Boon about it, but they haven’t replied yet.

There’s a new series from Mills and Boon Modern called Bad Blood Collection. They’re part of the May releases in the UK, and can be bought as a collection on Amazon.co.uk (be warned, though, it comes as one ginormous file) and will appear as Harlequin Presents later in the year.

Here are the covers and details at Mills and Boon. I’m currently reading through them.

Okay, so the second book, Shameless Playboy, has a blonde Southern Belle heroine and a dark-haired, green-eyed hero. Cover shot:

And the blurb:

Friday – the fourth day

This was the day of the Expo. It used to be on the Wednesday, I have no idea why they changed it. This year it was held in one of the ballrooms, and was good, at least it was for me. I did a lot of signing, talked about my books to people who wanted to know about them. I love to meet readers, and most of them are in the US. It’s my main reason for going. Not just of my books, of course, but all romance.

I was taken out to dinner by one of my publishers, Total E-Bound, and we had a great time. McCormick and Schmick’s, the restaurant was, and it is a very good one. Highly enjoyable.

Saturday – day five

The big book signing, the one where my voice goes completely. This year, it was quieter for me. There were a lot of visitors, but they wanted the YA stuff, not the books I write. The emphasis on the YA stream and graphic novels means that romance writers get less attention from the people visiting, which I think is a bit of a shame. But I would think that, wouldn’t I?

I sat next to the lovely Cat Adams, or half of the writing team that makes her up anyway, and several other Cougar authors, from the Tempt the Cougar series, sat close by. Lexxie Couper, Mari Freeman and Samantha Cayto were nearby.

And in the evening? Hold on to your hats, folks. A small group of us, four to be precise, were invited to observe at a BDSM club. No, I’m not into it, but I really wanted to see it. There is a lot I can’t divulge, because we signed an agreement not to. That’s totally okay with me. They deserve their privacy and some respect. The music was on a loop, a mixture of rock and trance, and there were some jaw-dropping performances, not just because of the nature of the club. One woman did a beautiful demonstration of flagellation, something I never thought I’d say, but it was really skillful, very impressive. And she didn’t leave a mark that I saw on her partner’s body. I did think the little socks the flagellant wore were a nice touch. Perhaps her feet get cold easily. She was wearing other clothes, but not much. Then the person doing the flagellation turned into a switch. With a change of hairstyle and clothes, she allowed someone else to flagellate her, again an interesting display. We watched a man use fire on a woman. It’s very rare, because of safety reasons, but it looked amazing.

The threesome getting busy in the seat next to me were a bit noisy at times. I could have done without the slurping. And the man with a very nice erection and little else who went to the fridge to get cold drinks suffered a little from the cold air of the fridge. Pity.

There is no alcohol allowed, but there is a cold drinks fridge and they gave us some really nice cookies. So that’s where you find great cookies in LA. While the lifestyle is not for me, I enjoyed watching it very much. I learned that it is in some ways a beautiful art, and that that BDSM people make great cookies.

Sunday – the last day

I was almost relieved. Today I finished packing and took stock of this year’s RT. Interesting. I met lots of people, got some requests for this and that, and met with a brand new publisher, which has some old friends in it. Yes, I’ve signed with Carina Press. Or at least not signed, because I can’t get the Internet, and I don’t have access to a printer yet, but I’m thrilled to be there, and to accept their offer for a contemporary thriller.

One word of warning. I used a company, Supershuttle, to get to and from the airport in San Francisco and in Los Angeles. In San Francisco they were great. Did exactly what they promised to do. In Los Angeles, not so much. The shuttle took two hours to get from the airport to my hotel, taking a circuitous route, and on the way to the airport, in many ways more important, although I’d allowed myself plenty of time, I was late for check-in. One driver was incredibly rude and another took me, but then we waited half an hour for another passenger, making us all late. It was like another company was involved.

LAX is huge, like most international airports, and once there, I had little trouble, although some of my luggage was too heavy. The people were helpful, and we got the problem sorted out.

While I was sorry RT had come to an end for another year, I think I achieved quite a bit. I made contact with friends and colleagues, some old, some new, and learned a bit more about the ever changing romance scene. I learned things you can’t learn online, just rumours, or atmospheres, talked to people who had useful information, gave a little myself. It’s definitely helped develop my career, though usually not in ways you can pin down.

And special thoughts to my friend and roomie, Desiree Holt, and to Susanna Kearsley, the other RNA member who braved the journey.

I have a few pictures!

The band, Run Devil Run, at the Viper Room.

Me and gun at the AFT demo

Samantha Cayto, Desiree Holt and Allie Standifer at the Ellora’s Cave ball. With interesting accessory!

The brilliant Bollywood dancers at the Ellora’s Cave ball

Kathy Andrico in her sekret fairy guise.

The first day – Tuesday

This isn’t really officially the first day, but it’s the day people start arriving and getting stuff organized. I checked out of my Hollywood hotel today and came over to the Westin Bonaventure. An impressive hotel with an awful lot of concrete. The lobby area is nicely designed, but there’s too much gray, too much solid concrete.

I met with people, chatted with people, had a good time. My roomie arrived, but since my roomie is Desiree Holt, she started getting inspiration and writing almost immediately. She’s a powerhouse, that woman.

And tonight – tonight Decadent Publishing took us to the Viper Room. They have a series featuring one of the bands who play there. Run, Devil, Run. Honestly? They were great. I mean nice and tight and they had that drive that rock bands need. And a lot of hair.

Interesting to visit the Viper Room, and I had several drinkies and enjoyed the band even more.

The second day – Wednesday

I started by doing an interview for Gosh! TV. I followed Heather Graham and was before Sylvia Day, so I’m the English person in between those two. I enjoyed it, though I’m not used to these things, so I don’t know how well I did.

And all that without caffeine.

After that, the day followed its usual hectic course. I knew the places where I definitely had to be and the ones where I wanted to be, so I did them. I am not a directions person. I have no sense of direction and I can get lost in my own house if I’m not paying attention, so a hotel as vast as the Westin Bonaventure is somewhat of a challenge. It has four towers, so you have to be sure to get the right elevators if you want to reach your room, and the rooms are mostly San something – Bernadino, Barbara, although I haven’t come across a San Quentin yet. So I get seriously lost.

My “must” for today was the Ellora’s Cave ball at night. It was good. The theme was Bollywood, so we’ve all had a lot of fun getting into our costumes and choosing them, with the ton and a half of jewelry that accompanies saris, salwars and lenghas.

Instead of the usual hunk dance, we had a Bollywood dance troupe who were very entertaining and talented. The dancing was fun, and the troupe stayed to lead the dancers for the first part of the evening.

I went to bed far too late and completely knackered, but so happy to be with friends again.

Thursday – the third day

Today I had a few musts. I put them on my phone with reminders because, well, I need to. With several active publishers, one of the challenges is to go to all the publisher events and still try to fit in a few classes and trips to the club room, which has a wonderful collection of jewelry dealers this year. I haven’t yet succumbed, though I have some pieces marked out as mine. I went to the Ellora’s Cave brunch (a private brunch for EC writers, where we get the State of the Union and discussions about where we’re going in the year to come), the Samhain steampunk party and the Carina cocktail party. Oh yes, I received an offer from Carina that I’m more than thrilled about. It’s lovely to be able to work with Angela James again, and Malle Valik is great. I got to meet her today.

Unfortunately, for most of the day I had a crippling migraine and I had to lie down for most of the afternoon while the pain meds took effect. But I recovered enough to attend the fairy ball tonight. It was another fun party and went very well, with the theme of Venetian Masquerade. I wore my new Monsoon silk gown and had the pleasure of the company of two readers at our table, as well as my roomie and insatiable writer Desiree Holt, together with Allie Standifer and Samantha Cayto. We rocked the place.

A little social time in the bar and I went back to my room, relieved that the migraine had dissipated and happy with a good day productively spent. Although I am getting a bit itchy now from the lack of writing time. I think many of the writers feel this way at about this time in the conference, and Desiree actually got some work done.

But I still can’t get online. So I’m hoping to find a Starbucks tomorrow so I can send you this report. The only thing that sucks about this hotel is the Internet. Hella expensive and half the time it doesn’t work.

So here I am, the night before I move to the RT hotel, ruminating. Which did I like the best? They both had strong points, and both had lousy points.

First, the LA hotel really really beats the SF hotel, and yet they both had the same stars (three and a half). The SF hotel room was small, faced a brick wall, had basic pine furniture and a small TV on top of the closet, in which nothing would hang. Too short. Nice bathroom, though. Very clean and a great location.

The LA hotel, the Hollywood Hotel on North Vermont, is great. Lovely room, worthy of a four star, decent bathroom, more channels on the TV (I do the research so you don’t have to). Absolutely lousy area, but it’s doable, because there’s a Metro station across the road. So all you need to see of the area is the road as you cross it. Mind you, I didn’t really see a decent area in LA, and, believe me, I traveled around a lot. I’ll come to that later. I saw places where you’d have to be wealthy to live there, and places that seemed seedy and not very safe. But nothing in between, the kind of area I live in at home, respectable homes, safe area. Where do the teachers and the librarians and, for that matter, the authors live?

I went to the Getty and to the LA County Art gallery. Not deeply impressed by the art collections, and I kind of collect galleries. I’ve been to most of the major ones, though I still have to do the Getty in Florida, the Russian ones and the ones in Copenhagen and Vienna. The galleries in LA held one, maybe two, major Old Master works, a few minor works by major figures, and a lot of “who”? The Getty, however, was a wonderful place. Breathtaking. And its collection of decorative arts is nothing short of first class, primary, important people. As are some of the pieces in LACMA. Maybe I’m spoiled. In both places they are beautifully presented, but the LACMA paintings have mostly been overcleaned, and I wept for them. What you’ve removed, you can’t put back. Stripped. The Getty paintings were more sympathetically restored and conserved.

The modern art collection in LACMA is better, but like the old master collections, there are some notable absences. I haven’t seen one Constable, and if there’s an artist you need to see face to canvas, so to speak, it’s Constable. Nothing prepares you for that punch between the eyes that you get from the real thing. No Caravaggios, and only a couple of Turners, but since he tried to buy them all back toward the end of his life, that’s not entirely shocking. And no Leonardos, Raphaels and only one tiny but exquisite Holbein.

The decorative arts? First class. Some important pieces by great masters, and beautifully conserved. Porcelain and furniture a must, and if you’re into those, especially earlier and French pieces, you’re in for a great time.

Anyway, enough. What LA is good at is what LA does. I only went on one studio tour, the one at Warner Brothers, because Casablanca is my favourite film and I couldn’t resist, but although it wasn’t cheap, it was worth every penny. Our tour guide, Bob, found out what our group wanted to see before we left for the tour, and he made sure we saw them. So we didn’t bother with Central Perk, for instance, because none of us were Friends fans, but we saw other things, like the Casablanca sound stage and the stage for the new series, Harry’s Law, which one of our group really liked, and we all found interesting.

Bob, who acts, and also speaks several languages, was an engaging host who appeared genuinely interested in us and what we wanted to do. Because I missed the group I was supposed to be on (transport woes) they put me on another one, so I was alone. Bob got me to ride shotgun and made sure I didn’t feel lost or alone. Way to go, Bob and thanks for a great couple of hours that I wouldn’t have missed for the world.

LA is also good for shopping and eating out. The eating out experiences were fun, like the one at the Hard Rock café. Great drinks, by the way. Have a Roadie, so to speak. Vodka, vodka, and cherries. Nice. My second roadie was a lot sweeter than my first, and you can take that any way you want to, except that I only had one drink at the Hard Rock café.

The Farmers’ Market was fun, and I had my second cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory on a balcony overlooking the main shopping area. Lovely. The first was at the top of Macy’s in San Francisco.

Now the really bad. Transport. I don’t drive, and while that can be tricky in other cities, but doable, LA is awful. The metro is fine, but half empty. It doesn’t seem to have a rush hour. I’ve never, ever seen an urban underground railway system so deserted. The buses are pretty horrible and they seem to run when they want to. I’ve met some of the rudest people I’ve ever encountered driving LA buses. But I used the English technique, and it worked out for me.

The English technique? If I told you, I’d have to kill you. But if you’re at RT, ask, and I might tell you without the lethal part.

Getting cabs and drivers? Good luck. Either nowhere to be found, or exorbitant or both. I’m about two miles, from the RT hotel, but when I asked for a quote for a driver, I was told somewhere between $40 and $60. Wow.

So next is the main event and Internet that costs almost as much as gold. My Internet at the SF hotel was reasonable, it worked out to around $5 a day, and here at the Hollywood Hotel, it’s free in the rooms. And I got breakfast at both places. The Westin Bonaventure? $15 a day, plus that’s just for your room. If you want it in public areas, it’s another $15 a day.

Daylight robbery, I call it.

As for the rest? See you there!

And they are adventures. Great big ones. While I can’t say my income is in the realm of the Rowlings, or even the Novaks, I’m not complaining (much) because it means I get to go places and see things I could never have done without it. I’ve made some good friends, seen things and done things I’ve really enjoyed and I’ve discovered the joys of solo travel.

I really love traveling alone. I’ve never been what you might call the adventurous sort, not really, and crippling travel sickness for much of my life didn’t help. The kind that made you need a day in bed either end of the journey. So lunches in Paris were out, even though quite a few of my friends were doing it.

The sickness went, and I was persuaded by one of my friends to go to the Romantic Times Convention in Houston, a few years ago. Since I knew I’d be meeting her at the other end, I took the plunge. Thanks to the Internet, prices were better, even though I had to dip deep into my savings, and I knew it was an extravagance, but my sweet husband persuaded me, and I went.

I got some great breaks at that first conference, even though I didn’t entirely know it at the time. I met people, chatted and they must have decided they wanted to work with me, because I got some flattering offers. Not out of the blue, things don’t happen like that, I had to apply first, but it went better than I thought, and I ended up going again. And again. It’s now the RT Booklover’s convention, but I still go. And this year it’s in Los Angeles. And here I am, in San Francisco, having a break before the Conference.

Sooo- San Francisco. I’m an old hippie, so I had to visit Haight-Ashbury. Obviously it would be a tourist trap these days, like Carnaby Street or King’s Road in London, but it’s kind of a pilgrimage. And someone offered me a brownie, so my cup is full. Not that I bought the brownie. Just nice to be asked.

The thing that amazed me more than anything else was that there is no history museum in San Francisco. And the city has such an interesting history, too, with the gold rush and the earthquake and the hippy era and all. When I get to a new place, I try to make the city museum one of my first calls. But here – nothing. I did visit the De Young art gallery, where the paintings are beautifully preserved, but nothing truly exciting. The Rodins were beautifully displayed.

The highlight of my visit was Alcatraz. We went on an evening cruise, and it was damp and rainy, perfect to experience The Rock. Absolutely terrifying place, with an atmosphere guaranteed to chill. All those sociopaths and psychopaths must have left something behind them, an edginess, maybe. But I felt tense the whole time I was there.

Tomorrow, LA and closer to the convention!

It’s probably not escaped your notice that there have been a few author blowouts recently about reviews and authors who review and reviewers in general. I’m not going there, I’m just not, although I’m prepared to explain what I do and why. I’m an author, I’m a reader, I review. Deal with it.

But there have also been some discussions about professionalism. Since this is a topic that interests me more than somewhat, here’s my tuppence, and it’s about professionalism with authors and reviewers. And be warned, this is subjective. Sorry. But, as far as I know, there aren’t any industry standards, so you have to do your own thing. These are the rules I try to run my career by, and if you have any more comments, have at it. Love a good discussion, but I will walk away from an Internet spat.

I think authors owe it to their publishers to keep confidential matters just that. It seems to be really important to me, or maybe it’s my position that makes it important. I write for several publishers, not just one, and they are rivals and competitors. But I have never, and I will never, provide a publisher with any information about another that I have discovered because of my privileged position. Not that they’ve ever asked me to, and that’s one indication that you’re dealing with a worthwhile outfit. It used to be called ethical behavior. For all I know, it is still. I will not leak anonymously or otherwise, something I haven’t permission to leak. I won’t tell tales to one publisher about another. I won’t whine about one publisher to another. If you see some information here that I have discovered, you can bet that either it’s a personal opinion, or I’ve asked the publisher’s permission to post. I don’t think I would have lasted too long without that ethical code. But it’s not something you see written down, except on the occasional confidentiality clause. I’m sad that they even have to exist, to be honest, because once you sign that contract you have a privileged relationship with the publisher (not talking in the legal sense, or at least, I don’t think I am).

That’s what author friends are for, and to some extent, that’s what conventions and meetings are for. You can’t trust the Internet to keep your secrets, so sometimes face to face is the only way. I have probably half a dozen author friends I can really, really trust, and I discuss things that are bothering me with them and they discuss their troubles with me. Because you don’t have the luxury of the real life watercooler, and the Internet ones are a bit, well, public. We are a support network, of a kind. But nothing, absolutely nothing, goes further.

Terrible when that trust breaks down. When it does, someone pays, and in the two instances I have inside knowledge of, the results were truly tragic. No, I won’t go into details, but yes, terrible results. I was marginally involved in one of them and it makes me deeply ashamed that I was. I got carried away in a witch hunt, and felt the thrill of righteous indignation, but later, I got to hear the real story and the result. So learn from what I say in this instance, not what I did. Don’t get involved. If you have a valid comment to make, do it and then leave before someone says “Hitler.”

Gossip and rumor online? Enjoy it, but don’t take it seriously unless you have positive proof. Like a murmur of “crows” at one end of a room turns into “murder” at the end, and two and two equals three million. The one that comes to mind, and that I’ve mentioned before, was the demise of Triskelion. The company ran out of money. The other rumors were nothing, but there were some damaging leaks which didn’t help anyone, but they did precipitate the company into bankruptcy, which was a bit of a shame for the 50 plus authors involved. The owners walked away, and so did the commenters.  We were left with the mess, so you might say that the wrong people suffered for that one. It’s over now, and I just regard it as a lesson learned. Life’s too short for grudges.

We all know that sometimes someone will say something controversial for a bit of publicity. It happens everywhere. My history tutor at university told us, “If you have a good book, a well thought out theory and a solid thesis, wait. Find something really controversial, something a lot of people will disagree with, but something you can defend. Write and publish that. Give them two dignified responses and then let them argue. Then put out the book you really wanted to publish. They’ll be watching you.” Sometimes it’s just for the blog hits, especially when it’s an author or blogger you’ve barely heard of before. It works, it always has. Kim Kardashian and Katie Price have made great careers out of doing that. Not looking? Flash your crotch, that will do it. Have an argument in public, get drunk, punch a paparazzi. You thought that was all spontaneous, that they really felt that way, that they’re embarrassed when the youtube clip of them crotch-flashing gets its millionth hit? Really?

The reviewing bit? No, I don’t intend to reply or comment to the inflammatory views I’ve been reading hither and yon. I’m privileged to have people who want to read my reviews, but I always try to make it clear that it’s just my opinion. Just one reader sharing her views. You don’t have to write to be able to do it, and sometimes, I think it’s an advantage not to. But I do, so I try to give a writer’s viewpoint. It’s always about that particular book. I have writers who are on the edge – sometimes their books really, really rock my boat, and sometimes they just annoy me, but if I only commented on the ones I loved, it’s like showing only one side. And I don’t do it for writers. If a writer reads one of my reviews and likes it, maybe wants to use a quote, that’s great, fantastic, in fact. But I do it for the reader, not the author. I’m sharing with other readers my experience reading.

I don’t review books from publishers or lines I’m also with, because that’s a bit close to home, and because I value friendship higher. Plus, I might be privy to some information that might color my opinion, such as the author’s state of health, or the way a publisher edits. I don’t usually review books from friends, but if I do, it will be a book I’m bursting with love for, and I will, I promise, state my connection up front.

Sometimes I’ve met authors because of my reviews, and we’ve become friends. And that’s even when I’ve given a negative review. I like to think it’s because they’re as professional as I try to be. The ones who take it all personally—my best advice is to close down the Internet for a few days, and walk away. Publishers who take any notice of reviews? Are you kidding? All a big publisher these days is interested in is the bottom line. It’s a hard world out there. If you’re a train-wreck personality who manages to produce halfway decent books at regular intervals, they will be falling over themselves to get to you. If you’re a regular, nice person who produces great books, they’ll have you too. But a review is another mention online, and one of the first things you learn in marketing 101 is that it’s the mentions that count first, not what was actually said.

I learned early in my career. My first published book was “Yorkshire.” I had some great reviews for it, then someone ripped it to shreds. My then publisher advised me to ignore it, because responding would feed it, and increase the hit rate. I took the advice, and the review died a death. It’s not there anymore, and to be honest, I can’t remember where it was. The review was deeply unfair, and I honestly believe that the writer hadn’t read all the book. She (or he) certainly hadn’t read a first person book before, because that aspect gobsmacked her (or him). So I consoled myself that I was in good company, but that review hurt, it really did. I had other not so good reviews later, but they didn’t hurt so much, because those reviewers had read the book and decided it wasn’t for them. Fair enough. I’d start to worry if I wrote a book that everybody loved. Bland R Us. Yes, it hurts because we want everybody to love our babies, but as the mother of a biter, I know that not everybody loves the offspring, literary or otherwise.

Anyway, after that appalling review, my sales went up.

But if everybody did that, we’d have to rely on the real nutters for our amusement. So maybe I shouldn’t say it. Because it’s all grist to the writing mill, and let’s face it, it means we can put off working for another day or two.

The recent screening of “Downton Abbey” on US TV has created a storm on the blogs about entail, what it is and why. Reading the comments has proved deeply illuminating, about the way the entail is understood by an American audience. So I thought it might be a good time to try to explain a few things, about Downton and about the historical romances I’ve read recently. And why there were so many recent fails for me.

In British society, the state is all, and the individual is far less important. So the entail takes care of the need to keep the power invested in one place, rather than dissipated among lots of people, as would happen if the inheritance was divided amongst the living heirs. And it helps me to understand how mistakes are made and assumptions made in romance novels. Because romance novels are, by their nature, about individuals.

I don’t know about you, but when I read a book, I want the romance, not a detailed resume of society and forms. Therefore I’ve always held that when you can stick with the simplest way of doing things, then do it. When in doubt, concentrate on the romance. There are title purists who delight in discovering exceptions, and while people find them fascinating, they’re hard to explain in the context of a romance novel, while still giving space to the love story.

In my attempt (failed) to find a new historical romance author to glom and love last year, one of the biggest pitfalls was title usage. The inability to understand how the system worked, and consequently, how British society worked in the past was a big problem for me. Time and again I kept thinking “but it doesn’t work like that,” and so the whole story fell down, as a paper-thin construction of fluff and meringue.

There are lots of sites on title usage in detail, but what puts a lot of people off is the seeming complicatedness of it all. In essence, it’s not complicated, it’s really not, so I’ve tried to do something a bit different in this piece. I’ve put the “rules” with caveats underneath, for people who like the complicated stuff, and I’ve tried to explain some of the reasoning behind it and why it goes to the roots of society. So for writers, if you want to have exceptions to the rule, think about why and how it will impact on the rule.

Some of the worst examples aren’t the actual bending of the rules, they’re because the writer doesn’t understand the reasoning behind them.

And for purists – if you look hard enough, there’s often an exception. But I’d much, much rather an author got it right, than tried to bend the rules to suit the story, because they didn’t understand how the rules worked.

For readers, this is just a brief outline of the simple stuff.

1.     The oldest son gets everything, if he’s still alive when his father dies. He gets the lot. They did this to keep the estate intact. The estate (land, investments, possessions) was the basis of the power of a family, and the family went far beyond just the title holder. Tendrils stretched far and wide, but if the estate was dissipated, it diminished the power and influence for everybody. If there is no oldest son, they go back a generation. And then another, until they find an oldest son in the direct line. Always, almost without exception, it’s the men who inherit. Titles that descend in the female line need to be carefully studied and explained. There is entailed property, the stuff that is “stuck” to the title, and can’t be willed away, and there is the private fortune, that isn’t entailed. But if the title holder willed that away, he diminished the title, and so it wasn’t often done.

2.     No illegitimate child can inherit a title. He can be given one by the Crown in his own right, but he can’t inherit one. In the days before blood tests and DNA tests, the children of a marriage were considered the children of the husband of their mother, unless he explicitly repudiated them within a stated time frame (I think it was six months, but I’m not certain about that).

3.     Titles in order: duke, marquis or marquess, earl, viscount, baron. Baronets and knights of the realm aren’t members of the peerage, they’re commoners who hold honours.

4.     Royal titles are different. They run under different laws and are separate from titles of nobility. Just to confuse people a bit, a royal duke is different to a duke of the peerage. A royal duke ranks higher than a prince, which is why the title of duke is given preference (except for the Prince of Wales).

5.     Heirs presumptive can’t hold courtesy titles. An heir apparent will inherit the title as long as he doesn’t die before his father or grandfather. An heir presumptive will inherit the title if the title holder doesn’t produce an heir, and until the title holder dies, he is considered capable of doing that. So if the heir is the nephew, brother or even cousin of the current title holder, he’s the heir presumptive. A courtesy title is the one held by the heir apparent. So in “Downton Abbey,” the heir who dies on the Titanic and the one who arrives later in the first episode are both heirs presumptive. Usually the courtesy title is the next highest title held by the title holder in rank, though not always. So the son of the Duke of Devonshire holds the courtesy title Marquis of Hartington. A courtesy title isn’t one of nobility, so the holder can have a seat in the House of Commons, and is a commoner in law.

6. When a man is a “Sir,” he is always referred to by his first name. So Sir Harry Smith is always referred to as Sir Harry, never Sir Smith.

7. A title holder can’t resign his title. He can decide not to use it, he can pass the responsibility of the title over to other people (but in my eyes that doesn’t make for a very romantic hero), but he can’t resign it and leave it open for someone else. Once he is the Earl of Somewhere, he remains that until his death.

8. Foreign nationals can’t inherit titles. Once naturalisation became possible, heirs can choose to become naturalised British citizens in order to inherit a title. This goes double for American citizens, who are forbidden to take or use titles in the Constitution. They can receive honorary titles, but that’s it. If you think about it, that’s common sense. The title holder used to be one of the group of people loyal to the Crown. They were expected to defend their country against all comers, and recruit soldiers in the service of their King and country.

9. There is no formal investiture of a title. The title holder can enter Parliament, and will be received there in a formal ceremony. But that isn’t any kind of investiture.

10. Girls can’t inherit titles. I can hear the cries of “oh yes they can!” clear over the Atlantic. But I’d say that unless there is a real point to it, then best to avoid it. One title, the Dukedom of Marlborough, can descend through the female line, but only in the absence of a male heir, and only to get to a male. Some obscure Scottish baronies break this rule, too. But if you don’t need it, don’t use it. The principle of keeping the estate strong and intact is dissipated if a female (who could well marry someone from a different powerful family) inherits.

11. Titles of address are known by all. When the point of view of the story is a daughter of the aristocracy or a title holder, they would know these rules. Until the Victorian era, they weren’t written down in a book of etiquette, they were just known. So calling the daughter of a baron “lady” someone or other, if she wasn’t married to someone entitled to use “lord,” is just wrong, and will jerk the reader out of the story. The daughters of dukes, marquesses and earls are allowed to use the courtesy title of “Lady.” All the others, ie viscounts and barons, are “the honourable Miss” someone or other. “honourable” is never used except in formal correspondence. When I was a student, I shared a house with the daughter of a viscount. I had no idea until I saw a letter addressed to “the honourable.” Sons of dukes and marquesses may use the title “lord.” All the others are Honorables, and are addressed as “Mr. Surname.” They are courtesy titles.

12. You don’t have to have a title in order to be important. Some of the most important men of the Georgian era didn’t have titles. “Diamond” Pitt was enormously wealthy, but he was a merchant, and his descendants, Pitt the Elder and Pitt the Younger, either didn’t hold titles or were awarded them later on. It didn’t matter. Robert Walpole was knighted and later received a barony, but that wasn’t the basis of his power or influence. Queen Charlotte, the wife of George III had to borrow diamonds from City merchants in order to make a good enough splash at her husband’s coronation. They went back afterwards. Some earls had greater influence and more wealth than dukes. So please, please, think beyond the duke. In the Regency era, there were only 25 dukes, anyway.

Yes, there are exceptions. But I still hold that the romance is the thing, so if in doubt, stick to the obvious and simple rules that everyone understands. The other thing is that these rules only hold until around the First World War. After that, everything started to change. Peers no longer have an automatic place in the House of Lords. They can ‘resign’ their titles for their lifetime. And the whole of the power structure of society changed, from landed families to industrial. The real peers of today, the people with power and influence are the heads of the big conglomerates and the untitled politicians.

As a rule of thumb, I look for real life examples. So, for instance, there weren’t any aristocratic pirates, ie nobody holding a valid British title ever took to the High Seas.

No woman ever moved from being a famous courtesan to marry a peer of the realm and become a leader of polite society. Peers married prostitutes, but they had to live in seclusion, and the marriage had serious consequences to the title and to the descendants (and yes, I know I wrote one in “A Chance To Dream” but I worked hard to make it plausible, and the heroine had to make a lot of sacrifices to attain her dream – it’s an exception thing!)

If you want to read more, or you want to find out about the exceptions and the difficulties, go to Debrett’s or Burke’s. Laura does a great job at explaining Regency usage and titles, too.

A personal plea to authors and publishers of the genre. Please think about creating a “historical fantasy” line. That would be fun. Based on the rules, but with extras and exceptions. Places where young ladies can prance about in public unchaperoned, where the peerage consists of young and handsome dukes, where the fundamental principles are based more on American society than British. What puts me off about picking up a historical, is that they’re not. If it was labelled Fantasy, I’d be able to pick it up and enjoy it. If you want to write a historical, please care enough to do plenty of research. Enjoy the research, embrace it.

And isn’t Downton Abbey totally awesome? It gets better, and much, much funnier, although you’ll hate yourself for laughing. Julian Fellowes is a bloody genius.

Like our Gwen, the last year has not been all that peachy keen for me. Actually, the last three years have been full of crappiness from betrayal by so-called friends resulting in the loss of my job, among other things, to filing for disability, which has led to my recent move from a county boasting more than a million people to a small Central California town of a tad more than ten thousand folks. The stress is less, I’m closer to family, and now I can concentrate on me, something I should have started a while back this last bit of my slippery-slope life.

I figured the time would come that I’d have to make this move. Disability, even my own personal insurance policy, doesn’t pay much nowadays, especially due to the fact I’ve had the policy since 1988. So I began the tedious task of trying to find a cheaper place that’s
still in a decent part of town. I almost took off to parts unknown in Wyoming, but that fell through. As things have finally calmed down, the past couple of weeks have not been a time I can yet look back at and laugh. At least not a belly laugh at this point in time.

And here’s why……

I knew moving during the holidays wouldn’t be the best of times for such an event. But I also figured since I had three weeks before Christmas to pack as much as possible, moving would, well, move along at a nice, consistent pace. How wrong I was. Everything else
under the sun moved expect me and my belongings. I ended up with the move from hell.

The original plan was to move to weekend before Christmas. Everything would be taken care of a week in advance and I could enjoy
the holiday with family and friends. Mother Nature, however, had a whole nother idea in mind. Rain. It started a few days before
Sunday, the 19th, D-Day. I kept watch on our local news, hoping against hope the rain would die down and we could get to work. Not
to be. That Sunday, the weatherman said, would bring 60% chance of rain. He couldn’t be wrong, like most weathermen are,
this particular day?? I wouldn’t be greedy. All I needed was a just a little sunshine!

So I called Penske and pushed our rental truck date back a week to December 26th. Yes, the day after Christmas. Had no choice with
no more weekends in the month of December. So, once again, everything is scheduled and we just have to wait out Mother Nature to
see what happens in a week’s time.

We actually got lucky, the percentage of rain went down to 20. Thank goodness. Things should be looking up soon! As the old saying goes, I spoke too soon. This was the first time I’d rented a Penske truck. But they gave me a good deal – unlimited mileage and extra discounts for renting online as a couple of examples. I should have known right then the cosmos were lining up against me because something was going right. Online Penske employees told me our local office opened at 8:30 a.m. Me and my brother-in-law, Tim, showed up at 8:35. Doors were locked. On the door was posted their winter hours, 9:00. Of course. So we waited and finally someone shows up.

But the weekend guy had no idea what’s going on. “I don’t have any 26-foot trucks on the yard.”

“Well,” I told him, “get one.”

“I have no way of doing that.”

Seems the Friday, Christmas Eve, crew, were too excited to start their holiday to leave a note explaining what’s supposed to happen on Sunday. So I called my handy-dandy Penske 800 number. I’m not a happy mover about this time. After explaining to the gal who answered the phone what’s happening, she insisted the guy can call his district office to get the truck I need. He insisted the district office is closed, it’s Sunday after all.

In between all of this, another phone call came into this Penske office. Seems a 26-foot truck should be dropped off in about 10 minutes. Well, what do you know, something right for once! And that was my first clue. 20 minutes ticks by. No truck. Oh, maybe they said they’d be leaving in 10 minutes, not dropping off in 10 minutes, the weekend guy backpedaled. He then tried to call the folks who rented the truck and gets nothing but voicemail. And he also discovered they’re coming from a small town at least 45 minutes away. Didn’t surprise me one darned bit.

So about the time I start thinking it, the weekend guy said, “There’s a U-Haul just down the street.” So Tim and I head out, still
full of optimism, despite our not-so-stellar start to the morning. Our luck held, U-Haul had the size truck we needed, with some added extras, and I saved about 90 bucks. Finally some success!

The weather held the entire day. Loading the truck went smoothly for a few hours while my sister, Lisa, and I continued packing whatever we could get our hands on. Which was a lot. The biggest obstacle I had to get over for this move? My books. Like most avid readers, I have a very large TBR pile. Like only very few bookaholics, my TBR pile is really a mountain. I have thousands of books. Thousands. The majority, by this day, had been packed. Even carted the 60-odd miles to a storage unit closer to my new home. But a lot still remained, even after friends had helped packed what could be so far. Worrying about packing all the books also kept me disorganized as far as packing other things in the condo. Needless to say, we didn’t get nearly as much loaded on that darned U-Haul as we’d anticipated.

Darkness fell. Bones ached. Eyes drooped. My sister decided to stay the night so we could work on better organization for the next day. Tim would bring more reinforcements back so all would move faster. Sounded like a good, solid plan. I think the cosmos were laughing so darned hard by this time, gasping for breath, that they just couldn’t keep up with the seven pairs of hands we had aiding our mission on Monday. Things went relatively well.

Except for my rheumatoid arthritis. The wrists hurt. The shoulders hurt. The back hurt. The knees hurt. Hell, pretty much everything hurt. It was Vicodin time!

And we started early Monday morning. Packed boxes, loaded the truck. Packed boxes, loaded the truck. At least I had good friends who came to town to help. Our own Dinca drove an hour to pack up the last of my kitchen and bedroom and other varieties of places, I’m sure. My long-time friend Linda is only thirty minutes away but she made the trip to help too. My nephew, cousin, and one of their friends, along with my brother-in-law, made up the heavy-item movers. So we had a houseful. This day actually went well. Finally got on the road early evening, parked the truck, and everyone flopped exhausted into bed.

The problems started again the next morning, Tuesday. My brother-in-law had called a good friend to help him unload the truck. Said friend said, “Sure!” and we agreed 9:00 would be a good time to start. Eddie, the friend, and his son got to the house a little early and parked on the roadside to await Tim’s arrival. I could see a car from the window and called Tim to make sure that was Eddie. Sure was, so all is well. Until about two minutes later.

I glance out the window again and a sheriff’s car has pulled up behind Eddie, is at his car questioning him about whatever. I call Tim to tell Eddie when all was done to drive up into the driveway so nothing else happens. I then open the garage door so the officer could see someone was home, maybe he’d come over and talk to me. No dice. He continued to grill Eddie for several more minutes. Long story short, the cop thought Eddie and his son, who are Hispanic, were going to burglarize our house because of the U-Haul sitting in plain sight. Sigh. The deputy finally ran their plates and let them go about their day when he discovers they’re no potential threat. Seems like he could have done that first thing. Sure would brought my anxiety level down a few notches.

Next problem. The guys head out to fire up the truck so we can get moving.    no pun intended! I’m finishing up in the house, go by the window again and see all of them near the back of the truck, and my curiosity gets the better of me. I take a closer look and realize they’re doing something at the back tire. OMFG!!!! The truck has sunk into the ground and it’s stuck! All the rain had made the ground quite soft, of course, and that truck was stuffed to the gills. Can you just see it sinking inch by agonizing inch over night?? Arrrgh! None of the guys’ efforts were paying off, so Tim called another friend who has one of those big-ton pickup trucks that will hopefully unstick that darned U-Haul. Took two tries and left super black skid marks on the drive and huge ruts in the ground, but it was finally free from the mud and we could get to work!

The next couple of hours went smoothly, the truck was unloaded quickly. Then we hit the road to head back to the condo for the next load. I pulled into the complex, stopped to get the day’s mail, and just as I stepped out of the car, you guessed it, it started to rain. And it rained. And it rained. And it rained. The entire time, five hours, we were there. It was absolutely miserable. Miserable, I say! It was worse for the guys trekking in and out with the last of the furniture, the last-minute items that hadn’t been packed, the patio furniture and other outdoor pieces. The rain penetrated every piece of clothing, including their shoes. And, of course, things didn’t go all that smoothly, mostly due to my memory.

As we got the last of everything in the truck, I remembered there were still some items in the garage from when we’d worked in there the day before. So Tim pulls the truck around to the other side of the complex, I drive the car over. As had been happening the last several weeks, the garage door opener chose that moment not to work. Sigh. I take the key to the pedestrian door off my keyring, had it to my nephew and he heads around to get the place open. As he’s doing that, I suddenly remember we hadn’t finished getting everything out of the small storage area in the backyard. Another sigh. So after clearing out the garage, we head back to the house and cram what we can into another box and cram that into the U-Haul!

Everything is out!!!

It rained on us the entire way home, but at that point no one cared. It was nice just to be warm and out of the rain.

The next day, Wednesday, we had to unload that last truckload. When we were at the storage unit to put away what can’t be used right at the moment, Tim tells me there’s no way it’s all going to fit in the space left in the units I have so far. LOL, yes, I’m planning a yard sale but the weather has to be better for that! So I rent another unit just get the truck empty so we can get it turned in. Finally everything is taken care of and we all let out a huge breath with our two thousandth sigh of relief.

I’m still working on unpacking, pulling boxes from the storage units, but at least I have time now and I can leave it be if it rains. My arthritis still acts up now and again because of all the physical work I had to do, some days are better than others, but the vicodin still comes in handy, along with some Soma once in a while. Yes, I believe in drugs!

The only problem I currently have three weeks later is the internet. Because we live in a rural area, we are somewhat limited in provider choices, as I’m sure some of you know. But when I called Verizon – the only telephone carrier in this area – they assured me we’d be able to get internet, so they’d send the appropriate equipment and I’d be up and running. Said equipment arrives, I set it up as directed. Nothing happens. No connection. I call Verizon. After some line testing, the rep decides there’s no signal so no internet right now and a tech will have to be dispatched. February 14. What???? Are you kidding me???? Nope, they aren’t kidding. Talk about lousy customer service.

In the meantime I’m haunting the two local cyber cafes each day to get online. I got caught up with email. I got the reviews written for the books I’d read during the last however many weeks. I played a couple of Facebook games because I was going through withdrawals on that score. I’m calling Verizon every day to bug the hell out of them, but so far that’s not helping. Anyone out there have any contacts at Verizon? I’ll beg, borrow, and steal for help with them!

So that’s my little tale of my move from hell. Four days of problems and setbacks. I hope you never have to go through such crap,  though I know moving is never a picnic. My books kept me sane. I still daydreamed about my favorite heroes. Thank god some things never change.

When anyone asks me what I am waiting for, there is really only one book that I immediately think of. I am pretty blinded to anything else, so I had to look at what’s coming out. These are what I found, which I mostly knew about, but they just got shoved into the back of my mind.

Lover Unleashed by J. R. Ward

I don’t think anyone else could write a world like this and get away with it.

The Darkest Secret and Dark Taste of Rapture by Gena Showalter

I love her books. I can’t say I’ve ever read one I didn’t like. She is an auto buy for me, no matter what the book is.

The Vampire Voss by Colleen Gleason

I’m really looking forward to all her books that are coming out this year.  I love her Gardella Chronicles books, so I am excited for this one.

Ghost Story by Jim Butcher

Every April, it’s not spring that I am looking forward to, it’s Harry Dresden! My favorite Urban Fantasy man will be back again and I so cannot wait. This is my 2nd most wanted book this year.

Kiss of Snow by Nalini Singh

This is the book I have been waiting years and years for! Hawke is just….well, words cannot describe how badly I want this book right now. I don’t think I have ever been so anxious for a book that wasn’t Harry Potter.

Naked City anthology

Jim Butcher and Patricia Briggs, it doesn’t get much better than them in urban fantasy.

Hidden Away by Maya Banks

I think this is my favorite contemporary series. Maya Banks knows how to write amazing emotional love stories.

I am going to stop here, there are so many books coming out this year, this list could be pages long.

I always have such a hard time pulling out the books I really like from a previous year. Yes, there’s too many, but it’s also difficult because sometimes you can’t choose because you can’t compare books in different genres. Though I read mostly historical and paranormal, I also enjoy contemps and romantic suspense a lot. Thus, I poured over my entire 2010 review list, chose those that I really loved, and then the difficulty began in whittling it down. My biggest hurdle is books from a series, if an author released more than one book in the year. Sometimes one of many stood out. Sometimes I couldn’t choose one over the other and sometimes I could. In that case, I’ve cheated and listed all the books I loved in that series.     It’s my list and I can do what I want!

So here they are:

10.  The Taming of the Wolf by Lydia Dare

While I’ve so far enjoyed all of the books in this series, it’s the hero, Dashiel, who stole my heart and has ended up my favorite of the series. Lydia Dare has stayed true to her characters and given readers solid, consistent, and intriguing stories. See my TTotW review here.

9.   Lessons From a Scarlet Lady by Emma Wildes

As I said in in my review of this book, it’s a breath of fresh air. Emma Wildes writes a terrific couple who I loved to read about. They kept my interest the entire book, and I wanted more of them when I was done reading. I’m a new fan for sure.

8.   Broken by Shiloh Walker

It would be surprising to me if a Shiloh Walker book didn’t make my Top 10. She’s become a favorite very quickly and she’s never once disappointed me. Though I also enjoyed Fragile, it was Quinn who caught my interest and I anxiously awaited his story. I love a broken, tortured hero and Quinn fit the bill to a T. Read about him here.

7. The Fire Lord’s Lover by Kathryne Kennedy

I became a huge fan of Kathryne Kennedy from the first book of her Relics of Merlin series and was really disappointed when I found she’s not been able to write more it at this point in time. But with her imagination, I shouldn’t have worried at all. Ms. Kennedy has given us another series that is simply awesome. The Fire Lord’s Lover is a perfect start and I can’t wait for more. My review is here.

6.  Raising Kane by Lorelei James – Shoulda Been a Cowboy, Cowgirls Don’t Cry & Slow Ride short story

I can never get enough of Lorelei James. Her stories are real, as are her characters. She doesn’t pretty up a book if tragedy is called for, and in doing so she tugs so hard on your heartstrings it ain’t funny. Her cowboys walk the walk and talk the talk. Her love scenes range from intense and raw to fun and lighthearted. You get everything in a Lorelei James book. Every book she released in 2010 is a Top 10, but Raising Kane is my fave. See my RK review here.

5.   Pleasures of a Notorious Gentleman by Lorraine Heath

Lorraine Heath has been a favorite of mine since I read her Texas trilogy and nothing changed when I read her first Regency. She’s simply and truly wonderful. I loved this entire London’s Greatest Lovers trilogy, but it’s Stephen’s story that I really remember. I had my doubts about him, as I said in my review, but he turned out to be one of those heroes you’ll never, ever forget.

4.   Moon Craving by Lucy Monroe

You know those books you wait for? And wait for? Forever, it seems? Moon Craving is one of those for me. I fell in love with Lucy Monroe’s werewolves in her first book, Moon Awakening, in her Children of the Moon series, and I wanted more. But it took a few years for that next one. The wait was worth it, however. Another terrific story for Monroe and paranormal fans. Read my review here.

3.   The Darkest Hour by Maya Banks – No Place to Run

I have so fallen in love with the Kelly Family in Maya Banks’ KGI series. Especially those Kelly boys. They’re alpha and yummy and they still obey their parents. And they fall hard when they find their heroines. So, hell, what’s not to love?? Read about those Kelly boys here.

2.   Bonds of Justice by Nalini Singh – Play of Passion & Blaze of Memory

Nalini Singh is one of those authors who you’re going to love no matter what she puts on the page. I can’t imagine anyone arguing with that, if they’ve read any of her books. Bonds of Justice takes the No. 1 spot – by a very narrow margin over Play of Passion – for me of her books in 2010 because I sobbed reading this book. I very, very rarely cry when reading. It takes something so very special for me shed a tear while reading, but when it happens, I remember it. So due to my full-out sobbing near the end of BoJ, I’ll never forget Max and Sophia. Read my review about them here.

Now for my No 1. pick, I couldn’t decide between these two books, so they’re co-winners. They win not only for the story, the worlds the authors have created, but also for the beautiful, lyrical, haunting writing these authors possess. It takes an awesome author to be able to keep momentum and creativity and imagination in a series going, to make the next book better than the last. Both of these authors have those things down pat. I never have to hope the next book will disappoint me because it won’t be as good as the first or the one just prior. I know the next book will be even better.

1.  Haunting Warrior by Erin Quinn & Crown of Crystal Flame by C.L. Wilson

Erin Quinn’s Haunting series is just that, haunting. In storyline. In characters. In writing. Absolutely stunning all the way around. I am breathlessly waiting for the next installment this April. I will have myself locked in my room until that book is finished.

C.L. Wilson’s Tairen Soul series was a treat and a treasure to read. This last installment brought everything together for an absolutely stunning ending that left readers gasping. The way this woman strings words together is just amazing. I’m sad this series is now complete, but readers of the series know that their favorite characters will be featured in future books. That’s worth waiting for.

Notice I used “absolutely stunning” for each of these authors. Wasn’t a mistake. Completely intentional. Cuz it just is.

Because I had a huge list picked out before I cut it down to my Top 10, I do want to give mention to those that just barely missed the cut.  So here are my Honorable Mentions in no particular order :

Drink of Me & Stealing Kathryn by Jacquelyn Frank – An imagination that is just awesome!

Shadows at Midnight by Elizabeth Jennings – I know Ash didn’t care for this one, but it’s on my keeper shelf!

Taming the Highland Bride & The Hellion and the Highlander by Lynsay Sands – I love Lynsay Sands! I need to start reading her vamps…

Legend of the White Wolf, Seduced by the Wolf & Wolf Fever by Terry Spear – Yuuuuuuuuuuumy werewolves!

A Highlander’s Homecoming by Melissa Mayhue – Time travel. Scottish Highlanders. One of the best at both!

Marked & Entwined by Elisabeth Naughton – Zodiac warriors to die for! Also try her Stolen series.

Naked Edge by Pamela Clare – Hawt love scenes! Oh, and a great mystery and thrilling suspense too!

A Kiss to Kill by Nina Bruhns – Oh my! I want more, more, more!

Infamous by Suzanne Brockmann – I love her romances within a romance. And I love this cowboy!

The Chief by Monica McCarty – I love this concept of Highlander Special Ops! Fun, intense, and so romantic!

Shadow Bound by Erin Kellison – Debut author done good. Terrific and dark!

Shut Up & Kiss Me by Christie Craig – Only humorous book on my list. There’s a reason for that. She’s one of the very best!

Destined to Last by Alyssa Johnson – Beautifully written with such engaging characters. Can’t wait to see what she does next!

The Treasure Keeper by Shana Abe – Dragons! ‘Nuff said.

And even I have a few books that didn’t make the grade for me in 2010. Mikey really doesn’t like everything!

4.   Mad, Bad and Blonde by Cathie Linz

Waaaaaaaaaay too much snipping and sniping and insulting going on between the hero and heroine for me. It went on and on. And on. And on. And on. And that’s too bad because the first part of the book is good. Right up until the heroine went blonde. See my review here.

3.    Time Storm by Samanta Winston

Sigh. Even the time travel didn’t help this book. We only get to know the characters through their fucking. Pirates and danger and all that goes with it was okay, as was the time travel, but it just wasn’t put together to keep my interest. I remember being glad it’s a short story. My review can be read here.

2.   Tomorrow is Another Day novella by Sandra Hill in the Ladies Prefer Rogues anthology

Even the play on Gone with the Wind didn’t save this novella. The characters didn’t work for me either all because of their attitudes. At least the time travel element worked. Guess I should be grateful for that. My review is here.

1.   Passionate Pleasures by Bertrice Small

This book is just a mess all the way around. The characters are likable but that’s about it. It felt like Ms. Small just tried too hard to write erotic romance. I think her niche is historicals and she should stick with that. You can read my review here.

There are people who write, and there are people who write for publication. And even there, there are subdivisions. There are the hopeful, the enthusiastic, and the jaded, for a start.

I started to write because I needed to write. However it was many years before it occurred to me that instead of dumping the results in the bin every so often, it might be a good idea to try for publication.

I was lucky enough to be accepted right away. Then the problems started. First, someone contacted me and warned me about the publisher I was about to sign with. That would have been Starlight (for those of you who remember, please repress your shudders). So I signed with NBI (even more shudders). A year or two in, and the owner of NBI disappeared. Worse than bankruptcy, in a way, because who do you ask for your rights back? Well, it sorted itself out. Then I signed with Triskelion, which was marred only when the company filed for bankruptcy. So I know something of which I speak.

It’s still happening. The latest train wreck is the First One Publishing contest, which, by the way, I strongly advise you not to enter.

Readers love them. Writers watch and suck in their breaths, for the most part. If they’re religious, they cross themselves. Because yes, it could happen to you.

Sometimes the information is plain wrong, and sometimes it’s a shitstorm started by a few disgruntled authors. Sometimes, it’s just crazy. And sometimes, things go on in plain sight, and nobody says anything, because, well, we don’t want to upset the applecart, do we?

It’s far more complicated than most people see.

Authors write. There are thousands of them. The RWA has around nine thousand members. So insecurity is built in to the job, because even for the best seller, there are hundreds of men and women queuing behind her waiting for her to slip up, disagree with her publisher or come up with a dud.

Authors are also a bit strange. We look at the world slightly differently, but we all do it in our own ways. Differently. We are great marks, because we’re desperate. The money’s not good, and publication is hard to come by.

And so marked we are. We are targeted for fake contests, we sign with publishers who want us to pay for the privilege of seeing our work in print, we’re given less than 10% royalties for providing 90% of content.

But more than that, we find ourselves in the hands of amateurs, or people who, being experts in one area of publishing, think they can do it all. People who want to run a business on a shoestring, and so take too many shortcuts with cheaply thrown together websites, badly designed in-house covers and authors-turned-editors.

Sometimes, when someone really talented is involved, these small projects work. Look at them closely and you can usually tell the difference. Look at Ellora’s Cave’s Jaid Black, or Samhain’s Crissy Brashear. Amazing women with the vision and the talent to make things work, and the wisdom to know that they can’t cut corners and they can’t do everything themselves. Every business has to start somewhere and it’s with that hope that new authors sign with a new publisher. Sometimes they strike it lucky. Sometimes not.

As you make more of a name for yourself, you become a little safer. You make friends you can trust, contacts you admire, and you know where to go. But because there’s no definite link, nothing concrete, and because sometimes you hear the word in confidence, you can’t pass it on. For instance, many authors knew that Dorchester was in some trouble over two years ago. Dorchester had always run on the edge, always had a reputation for not paying on time, but usually, they managed to pull everything around at the eleventh hour. They might even manage it this time, and turn themselves from a mass market paperback house to a digital-first house. For the sake of the authors, I really hope that happens, and I wish them all the luck they deserve. Just that.

Then you meet the crazy author. The larger houses usually avoid them, or drop them after a book. I mean the author who thinks she is entitled, or who won’t accept any edits, or who trashes everyone who isn’t her. I’ve met one or three. Sometimes they seem perfectly normal, but either the business drives them crazy, or they were crazy to start with.

There are crazy editors, too, and even more crazy owners. There are more and more small publishing houses, especially on the digital side, and they vary from professional and determined, to ambitious and frivolous. Sometimes there’s no way of knowing which is which, and that’s why many authors wait until the company has been going awhile.

Rumours abound. Most have a nugget of truth about them, but very few can be taken completely at face value. There are usually far more elements than any one person can know. For instance, three or so disgruntled authors can cause huge damage to a company. They could be right in whatever it is they say, or they could have another reason, a grudge or a personal dispute. Sometimes a rumour can grow as you watch it, and expand into a total shitstorm, where people who know very little about the situation take a view, and that view becomes the truth.

It’s not just in publishing, of course. My mother worked in the fashion industry all her life, and publishing is still on the nursery slopes compared to the fashion slalom. “The Devil Wears Prada” is a sugary version of what really goes on. Fashion runs on paranoia, desperation and despair, but produces some truly beautiful things, and a designer like Karl Lagerfeld could probably buy Bolivia if he wanted it.

Oh yes, and the self-publishing thing? There is an attitude I’ve heard voiced that hasn’t been aired anywhere that I’ve seen. Let me say that I would love to see a self-published author do really well, someone unknown who makes it.

But publishers and agents are cheering in the background, because since computers became commonplace, manuscripts have been snowing into the offices of the big publishers and agents. Far more than they can handle. The self-publishing boom should help with that, at least a bit. Rather than wait 6 months or more for a reply, the impatient author is taking her own path. Most fail. Some don’t. But instead of authors, they become businesspeople. And the slush pile shrinks a bit.

The truth about NBI? The owner did a runner. We have never heard from her since. The truth about Triskelion? Borders made huge orders for print, then returned nearly all the books. If that hadn’t happened, the company would have bumbled on a lot longer. The owner’s husband was also a Realtor in Arizona, so the good times ended rather suddenly. But at least Trisk filed for bankruptcy, instead of just disappearing. Not entirely good news, but at least the authors stood a chance of getting their rights back in reasonable time. All the other rumours about the company had some truth, and some outright falsehoods, but once the mob got hold of it, it didn’t stand a chance.

And yes, I’ve been involved in one shitstorm I still feel shame about, because I didn’t know the full truth when I gave my opinion. And no, I won’t say what it is, because the person involved has suffered enough. It taught me not to jump in, wellies first. I will give an opinion, but I won’t take part in any mobs. Unless it’s of the flash variety.

Lynne Connolly http://lynneconnolly.com

Most days I feel like I’ve been skulking around the online romance community forever. But Sybil asked me to properly introduce myself, and who am I to deny Sybil? So here it is – Super Librarian 101.

I discovered the joys of reading through mystery novels, which to this day are my first love. I had a brief, torrid affair with romance when I was in high school, but it was merely a fling. Once I was off to college there was just no hope for me. Besides the fact that reading anything for pleasure was now a distant memory, academia warped my fragile little mind. Yeah, I was one of those types that thought romance novels were poorly written tripe for bored housewives who enjoyed fantasizing about Fabio because their husbands couldn’t be bothered to find their G-Spot. It wasn’t until I took my first professional library job that I realized that my opinion of the romance genre might be slightly “off.” So I started reading, and quickly became addicted. I reviewed for The Romance Reader from 1999-2007, and started my own blog, The Misadventures of Super Librarian, in 2003.

I have been around a while, but that doesn’t mean everybody out there “knows” me. Plus, rehashing my particular reading foibles, likes and dislikes is a good thing, and will hopefully help all of you to determine if my reviews are worth your time.

Grading:
I subscribe to the school of thought that most books fall under the B/C umbrella. I’ve had to explain it to more than one person over the years that when I slap a B grade on a book that means I liked it. No really. I liked it. I may have liked it a lot. It just didn’t have that “A-Ha!” moment that I require from an A read. Likewise, a book really has to drive me to drink large quantities of vodka for me to give it a D/F.

What I Look For:
I’m the type of reader who puts a lot of focus on the characters. If I like the characters, I tend to like the book. If the characters drive me insane? No amount of fantastic writing, imaginative plotting or beautiful prose is saving the book for me. Also, I’m a pretty straight-ahead reader. If you want a reviewer to dissect the book, discuss symbolism, and research the historical accuracy? I am so not your girl. I’m more a see book, read book, hopefully like book kind of girl.

Things I Hate:
Love triangles, soul mates, financially strapped single mothers who don’t use birth control and get pregnant…again, 95% of secret baby plots, oops we had sex one time and now I’m pregnant, virgin widows, idiot virgin heroines (you’re going to put what where?!), books that vilify the sexually experienced woman, hopelessly infertile heroines who magically become pregnant thanks to the hero’s super sperm, twins, flowery writing (I don’t need 25 pages describing a rain storm, I just don’t), paranormal/erotica hybrids.

Things I Like:
Friends to lovers, marriage of convenience, emotionally crippled characters, scarred characters, mail order bride, suspense (anything from tame to gory), plain jane heroines, spinster heroines, cowboys, Alpha heroes who end up groveling, Beta heroes, older heroine/younger hero stories, westerns, the Victorian era, romantic suspense, category romance, straight-up erotica.

And those are just the highlights. Probably more than any of you ever wanted to know, but don’t blame me. Sybil made me do it.

Dreaming with Sandy M – a very short story

Once upon a time Sandy dreamed of living in a lighthouse on the California coastline. Well, she still does, but that ain’t happenin’ any time soon.

So instead she’s moved to a small town in Central California where folks roaming downtown on a beautiful spring evening still say hello and wave to those they pass. So far she and her mountainous TBR pile and her kitty Winter are faring well.

After years of reading Nora Roberts, Linda Howard, Iris Johansen, Sandra Brown, all of whom had backlists to keep her busy for many years into the future, plus a stint into the legal thriller world of John Grisham, Scott Turow, and the like, Sandy’s reading world changed drastically.

Approximately ten years ago when she discovered an historical romance chat group, which boasted a group of ladies from all over the world and who know their books and authors backward and forward, from that moment on Sandy’s reading world expanded. Through her new friends in this chat group, she learned of such authors as Julia Quinn, Mary Jo Putney, Catherine Anderson, Melody Thomas, Victoria Alexander, and so many others.

Not long after this Sandy picked up a book by one of her favorites, Linda Howard’s Son of the Morning, a book that threw the heroine back in time to meet her hero. Sandy was enthralled and began looking for any time travel book there was to find. From there Karen Marie Moning, Diana Gabaldon, Lynn Kurland, Sandy Blair, among others, were added to her wishlist, and then came the werewolves, the vampires, the ghosts, the witches by such authors as Kresley Cole, Amanda Ashley, J.R. Ward, Susan Krinard, and a host of others.

And when she met, a number of years ago, a strange Duck by the name of Sybil, Sandy has been given the opportunity to share her views of books she loves – and some she doesn’t – with other readers around the world.  Definitely a dream come true.

In the meantime, now with a library of her own in her cozy lighthouse, Sandy reads about 20 books a month while waiting for her knight in shining armor to travel through time and carry her away to their Happily Ever After.

The End

Are you tired of top ten lists, faithful reader? I hope not because here’s mine.

10. Rules of an Engagement by Suzanne Enoch – what could be better than sailing the South Pacific, encountering natives, fascinating wildlife and pirates? If your ship’s captain is smoking hot, of course. Read my review HERE.

9. Pleasures of a Dark Prince by Kresley Cole – an very good entry into a consistently excellent series.

8. Lessons in French by Laura Kinsale – soooo nice to see Ms. Kinsale back and full of humor.

7. Slow Heat by Jill Shalvis – I love Ms. Shalvis’ baseball series and hope for more books soon. Please? Pretty please??

6. Love in the Afternoon by Lisa Kleypas – the end of the Hathaway series. I’ve always had a soft spot for Beatrix and was very pleased with her book. Also, I’m a sucker for books with letter writing.

5. Infinity by Sherrilyn Kenyon – the first story in her Chronicles of Nick series. I’m not usually a YA reader but I was intrigued enough by hints of this one to pick it up. So good! And she seems to be correcting/re-booting some errors in the main DH series, maybe. We shall see.

4. Play of Passion by Nalini Singh – one of my favorites of the series and certainly my favorite of recent entries. Plus we get to see bits of Hawke and Sienna. Yay!

3. Exclusively Yours by Shannon Stacey – are you looking for an excellent straight-up contemporary? Look no further! And the sequel is very good, too.

2. Here There Be Monsters by Meljean Brook – so it’s a novella. And I was skeptical, even after seeing the raves. Why would I put a novella I was unsure about picking up on my “Best of” list? Because it’s awesome! It gives us our first glimpse into Ms. Brook’s Iron Seas series which leads me to…

NUMBER 1!! The Iron Duke by Meljean Brook – I don’t have words for how excellent this book is. It defies description – at least, a description that properly conveys it’s awesomeness. All I can say is READ IT.

Now for some books I’m looking forward to in 2011 (in release order, as things stand now):

Call Me Irresistible by Susan Elizabeth Phillips – yes, I know several people have already read this one but I haven’t. My copy is pre-ordered though. Why? It’s Teddy’s book! It seems like I’ve been waiting for his story forever.

ShadowFever by Karen Marie Moning – why this one? Barrons! And the wait is almost over. Yay!

A Lot Like Love by Julie James – I have enjoyed all of Ms. James’ books so far and expect this one to continue that trend.

Breaking the Rules by Suzanne Brockmann – do you need to ask why? One word: Izzy Izzy Izzy! (What? It’s one word…three times.)

Any Man of Mine by Rachel Gibson (beware the Flash!) – her last few books have been hit-or-miss for me so I’m hoping this one will be a hit. Sorry for the lack of cover. Our friends over at the Book Binge have it posted, though.

There are many more, of course, but those are the ones that are coming up soonish.

Agree? Disagree? What are you looking forward to?

Since I’ve started writing romances, I’ve heard no end of times that the category romance is easy to write for. Not from the people writing them, but the people reading them, with the addendum “I’d write one myself, but I don’t have the time. After all, how hard can it be?” So after three attempts at writing one, I think I have the answer.

Romance writers come at the task from different directions. A story, in order to be successful, has to have two forms of conflict – internal and external. And by “conflict,” I don’t mean two people arguing, then making up, arguing and making up over and over again. Or even coming to blows. I mean the things that are stopping them getting together. If they meet, sleep together, fall in love and marry, there’s not much of a story. It’s what happens to stop them that makes it really interesting. The conflicts can come from inside and out. There’s “I’m not worth loving, so nobody will love me,” (internal) and there’s “Shit, that monster attacking me wants to kill me. But he’s so hot!” (external).

Most people (including me, ten years ago) who want to write romance tend to start with the external. It’s easier to write, easier to visualise and much easier to make a story out of it, or it is for me, anyway. If the protagonists are constantly running away from the bad guys and getting shot at, a story is much easier to keep rolling. But it’s not a romance if they don’t have that external push and pull, as well. It took me a few attempts to learn that one. More, to learn that a romance that stays with the reader is the one with more internal story than external. Memorable characters with real problems, not contrived ones, people the reader can care about and root for, whatever their situation.

I write paranormal romance and historical romance. In both there are built-in conflicts, but the more I write, and the more I read, the more important the internal story becomes, for me at least. And it’s hella difficult to get right. For most of my career I’ve been interested in instalove and the conflicts that engenders. What if you instantly fall for the most unsuitable man around? What if he falls for you? How do you know it’s the real thing, and how do you cope with the seismic shifts in your life? I’m still interested in that, but the falling in love process is also beginning to have an insistent pull.

I’ve read Mills and Boon Moderns (Harlequin Presents) a lot, even more in the past couple of years. They’re short, easy reads, and they have a comfort feeling about them. There are well-worn tropes, beloved of the reviewer – secret babies, big misunderstandings, revenge plots and so on. The hero is always alpha, a leader, and the heroine a Cinderella type. These are, as successful Modern author Penny Jordan explained to me a few years ago, fairy stories set in modern times.

But the tropes are there because the authors have to make the inner life far more important. In the 50,000 words they’re allotted, they have no time to set up elaborate fantasy worlds or the nuances of history (which is why the historical romance authors are allowed a slightly longer word length). It’s the core, the basis of romance – what internal forces are driving the hero and heroine apart.

Because I started from the other end, the complex worlds and the detail. I still love writing that, I guess I always will, but I thought it would be good for developing my skills to strip that all away and work with the internal life of the characters only.

I tried to write one earlier this year, and ended up with a story that had bombs and violence in it, as well as the love story. Well, I just couldn’t resist. I’d planned this story set in Naples and New York, and nobody could have been more surprised than me when the mob showed up and started throwing firebombs. But it seemed such a good way to develop the story that I couldn’t resist. Now I have a 75,000 word story that wouldn’t fit in the Modern line, and I don’t know what to do with it. But writing it was a blast. Oh yes, and it turned out a bit hotter than I’d planned, too. The two protagonists couldn’t keep their hands off each other.

So I’ve started again. This time my protagonists are more Modern-ish. A heroine who is the daughter of a wealthy man, forced to marry another wealthy man because of a business deal. How hard could it be?

The answer is, very.

But I’m not doing this just to sell a book. In fact, the chances of selling a book to the line is really low, because of the thousands of queries they get every year. I’m doing it to force myself to concentrate on the internal conflict, and to improve my writing in general. If a writer isn’t constantly trying to improve, maybe she should ask herself why. I’ve built a reasonably successful career, but there is no way on earth I want to write without trying to improve what I do. There is always, always room for improvement. If I were writing books just to make money, I might as well give up and start flipping burgers, because the hourly rate is so much better!

The tropes are there, because they’re not as important as what is going on in the heads and hearts of the protagonists. When a Modern fails, it’s often because the inner lives aren’t believable, or just don’t work. The eternal virgin, the magic vayjayjay that converts a hardened philanderer into a one-woman man, the sexy tycoon (I’ve met a lot in real life, but sexy doesn’t describe most of them, to put it mildly), the I’ve-been-shafted-by-one-woman-so-all-women-are-worthless trope. When used skilfully, they can be shortcuts to an exploration of inner feelings, and when the hero and heroine finally lay aside their preconceptions, it can be a great read. When used to provide a quick thrill, they usually fail, or provide a ho-hum read.

Working to make these people special and specific, individuals instead of types, is hard, especially when there are no frills in the way, details of scene and setting, to distract. I’m loving it. I don’t know how successful it will be, and God knows I have other stories to write, but I had to get this one out before I started on the next.

Which is one that I’m looking forward immensely to writing, and dreading at the same time. The last Richard and Rose book in this cycle. I really need a clear head for that one. Meantime, if you want a failed Modern romance about a millionaire, a woman trying to start a new life for herself and the Italian mob, I’ll keep you posted. I’ll start submitting it soon, and we’ll see if it can succeed on its own.

The process has given me an immense respect for those authors who keep writing the stories and, for the most part, keep them fresh and new. I still don’t know how they do it. That doesn’t mean I’ll be getting softer in my reviews. I’ll still be telling it like it is, saying when a story doesn’t work for me and why. It’s given me new insights, which I hope will help me develop as a writer.

And I should mention that I have a new Cougar story coming out at the end of December. Sunshine on Chrome. It’s part of the Cougar Challenge series, something I’ve so enjoyed working on that it’s almost shameful. I’ll probably write something about that, sometime, because the trope has a grip on me and I have a feeling I’ll write more.