Sandy M’s review of UnRidden by Cat Johnson
Contemporary Erotic Romance ebook released by Linden Bay 26 May 09

Cat Johnson is an author I discovered a few months back, liked the sound of her books, so I’ve been wanting to see if I like what she has to offer. I admit that most of the time I’m not bowled over when I finally get to experience authors out of the blue like this, but sometimes you find a gem or two.

I’m happy to say that Ms. Johnson may be one of those gems. This is my first book by her and I’m already looking at her backlist to find others to try. I like her writing a lot. And her characters. Well, hell, they’re cowboys! How can you not love cowboys? Especially when they’re as sexy as Mustang and Slade. Ms. Johnson even got me to like an older woman/younger man (men) story. Those usually aren’t my thing, but this one is done in a way that just seamlessly flows and I found myself liking everything about it.

Jenna is a romance writer and her editor has just rejected her latest manuscript, her work needs something more and a review even called her sex scenes boring. Cowboys are the trend, so, her editor tells her, write about cowboys. Well, being a city-bred girl, Jenna doesn’t know a heck of a lot about things western. At a writers’ convention in Tulsa she begins to do some research and hits the jackpot when she learns that the Championship Bull Riding competition is in town for the week. She hightails it down to all the goings-on to get some firsthand experience.

Best friends Slade Bower and Mustang Jackson ride the circuit together and share their women a good portion of the time, but that part of his life has become tedious for Slade. A different woman every night, not knowing a woman’s name, even looking her in the eye when he’s going to town inside her just doesn’t have what is used to for him. He wants something more, though he has no idea what that is. Mustang, on the other hand, is still going strong, picking just the right women with his southern charm and killer smile. Trying to perk Slade up some, Mustang picks a woman that isn’t anywhere near their usual, and damned if that doesn’t put the spark by in Slade’s eyes when he checks out their fun for the night. He’s not sure, however, she’s going to be quite as eager to join in as Mustang thinks she will be.

Before they can make their move, Jenna has searched them out to ask her questions and do her research. There’s definitely some attraction on her part, but these two are just boys. Handsome, sexy, and built boys. She gets her information but graciously declines their further offers, which she regrets later when back in her hotel room alone. Determined to rectify that mistake, she goes back the next night and the resulting heaven, rapture, bliss in their arms and their bed is the best time of her life. They spend a lovemaking-filled week together, but all things must come to an end. Jenna tearfully goes home to New York, Mustang and Slade head for Texas. Will they ever see each other again?

Well, yeah, of course they do, but I’m not going there. That’s the really emotional part of the book and you have to get your own copy to find out about that.  I had a great time with these characters. When Jenna makes her decision to be with both Mustang and Slade, she doesn’t pussyfoot around, vacillating yea or nay like you read in some books. Her decision made, she goes for it. She still has her vulnerabilities along the way, but she knows her mind and acts accordingly with little fuss. Mustang and Slade are real cowboys, flat out charming and sensitive when they find someone worthy. They have their moments from the hilarious to the unfamiliar emotional. There are some great secondary characters from Barb, Jenna’s author friend, to Chase, the even younger circuit rookie, who is a hoot all on his own.

So now I’m hooked and I want to read more of Ms. Johnson. She’s a gem that’s definitely turned bright and shiny for me.

Grade: B+

Summary:
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Slade Bower and Mustang Jackson are living the high life on the professional bull-riding circuit. The prize money is big, the bulls are rank, and the women are willing. But something is missing.
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For Slade, waking up in a different city with a different woman each morning is holding less and less appeal. Even Mustang’s creative attempts to shake things up don’t help. Then along comes a big-city author who’s like nothing they’ve ever encountered. Something about her makes Slade sit up and take notice—and Mustang is always up for anything.
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Romance writer Jenna Block has a problem: her agent thinks a cowboy book will jump start her career. A born New Yorker, Jenna doesn’t do cowboys, not on paper, and definitely not in real life. Luckily for her there are two cowboys ready, willing and able to take her out of her comfort zone in every way that counts…and some ways she hadn’t counted on.
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Read an excerpt here.

This just in…  News about Linden Bay and Samhain (with permission of Crissy Brashear to repost).

The management of Samhain Publishing have decided what will happen next to Linden Bay, which Samhain acquired earlier in the year. So here’s the scoop: 

The Linden Bay Romance house will be retired by the end of the year, preparatory to a relaunch as an imprint of Samhain, probably in 2011. However, the new Linden Bay won’t be the same as the old one. It’s going to be a YA house, a new venture for Samhain.

Crissy Brashear, Publisher at Samhain says, “We think the name lends itself to YA, in the same vein as Sweet Valley High, and opens all kinds of possibilities.”

The imprint will start with one book a month, and the entire year planned out in advance. The Winter 2011 books should be presented at BEA in 2010. The books will release simultaneously in digital and print, which is a new venture for Samhain, which releases the print books in its own house ten months after the ebook.

The current Linden Bay authors will have their books reviewed for potential migration to the main line, Samhain Publishing. The chosen books will be re-edited and re-released as Samhain books. Not all titles will be suitable, as there are some differences between the two houses, and those authors will have all their rights returned. If an author does not want his or her books to go forward, they may ask for their rights back and will receive them. The last Linden Bay books will be released in ebook format in August, 2009, and the LBR titles will be gradually removed from third party retailers.

Crissy Brashear adds: “Change is both exciting and scary, and growth cannot occur without it. By establishing a solid foundation today, we can build a house that will be in publishing for many years to come and continue to explore new voices and fresh ideas. LB isn’t the only imprint planned—others are in development. Samhain is poised to grow even further in the marketplace. We will work towards that growth and solidify Samhain’s position in the publishing industry.”

As a Samhain author, it’s exciting to hear about new developments, but since I have books contracted and scheduled through 2010, I don’t think it affects me directly. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed being a Samhain author, and I hope that will continue for some time to come.

 I’ve been involved in the epublishing market since close to its inception as a potentially profitable fiction market, ie around the late ‘90’s, early 2000’s. I slipped into it by accident – I write unabashed romance and I live in the UK, where if you write romance, it’s Mills and Boon or nothing. Sagas, which until recently filled the market, are more about a woman’s life than they are about romance and an American reader wouldn’t class them as romance.

Anyway, once M and B rejected my historical, because it’s in the first person, (“Yorkshire,”) I had nowhere to go, so someone suggested the USA. The big publishers seemed impossible, so I tried epublishing, figuring it would be a good stepping-stone. I’m still there.

But boy, has it changed! It’s no longer a stepping-stone, but an end in itself. Now what I have to say concerns certain comments I’ve seen recently by people who ought to know better, but maybe it’s because they can’t see the numbers. Any more than I can give them.

However, any study of any market will tell you that the top 20% of companies makes 80% of the profit. It’s called the Pareto rule, and although the numbers are obviously not exact, it’s true for almost every market you can think of. It’s true for New York publishing, it’s true for epublishing, too.

In New York, the big five (six?) make far more than all the other small publishers, and that’s not even thinking about the self-publishing outfits. It works the same way in epublishing, although detailed figures aren’t available and authors are constrained by their non-disclosure agreements with the publishers so they can’t give them, which is why I can’t tell you my sales and earnings in any detail. There must be a large audience of people who don’t participate on the message boards, the blogs or the loops who just buy books, because sales are now very healthy indeed.

I write for three of the biggest epublishers – Ellora’s Cave, Samhain and Loose-Id, and my income is – well it’s in five figures, which is what a midlist New York author can expect. This is not unusual for an author for the largest epub houses, and it’s no longer confined to the erotic only. My Samhain historicals are highly sensual, not erotic, and I’ve featured in the Samhain list of top ten sellers several times, as have other non-erotic authors.

I am fairly prolific, but a lot of that is reissues. My editors are as exacting as you’ll find anywhere, sometimes more so, and I have at least two for each book, and extra editing for print releases. I’m not showing off, I’m just tired of people saying that epubbed authors earn miniscule amounts, and then quoting someone from one of the smaller epubs. The majority of sales don’t lie there. Authors write for them for various reasons – to get into the market, because they’re friends with the owners, because they’re happy with the editing and cover art the house offers or because they expect the house to grow and want to grow with it.

It’s now very difficult to get a book accepted by the bigger epublishing houses. The bigger epublishers spend a great deal on cover art, the website and other incidentals, so it’s not true that it’s cheap to produce an ebook. And the author gets a bigger cut, too, than they can expect in New York. And barriers to entry are rising – art is more expensive, editors demand a proper salary, and promotion and website costs are rising, too.

However, asking a hardback price for an ebook is a marketing decision, not one of economics, and I’d be unhappy if anyone was asked to pay $12 or more for one of my ebooks, unless I’d written a book the length of “Lord of the Rings.”

Concentrate on where the majority of sales are and you’ll find an expanding, dynamic market which is changing to reflect the nature of the changing market. Ellora’s Cave now has a new website, Jasmine Jade, which encompasses all its imprints. Samhain has just acquired Linden Bay Romance, to increase its scope and its roster of authors. Harlequin has made major investments in putting its books out as ebooks, and the marketing team there is one of the sharpest you’ll find anywhere. They have good reason for doing so. I’m not even touching on the new readers like the Kindle and Sony. Suffice it to say that they’ve helped to boost sales, too.

While I’d love to write for New York or London, or both, it’s no longer my sole career path. Epublishing has been good to me, even considering the Wild West days, and I sincerely believe it’s the way of the future. Not least because last year I made the decision to get my new books in e-format whenever possible (I just ran out of space). And I no longer feel I have to defend the industry. I can afford to shrug and walk away. Just trying to put a few misconceptions right, that’s all.

Is everything hunky-dory in the epublishing world? Of course not. But it’s no longer something that can be swept under the carpet, although its position as the red-headed stepchild of the fiction market will probably stick with it for a while.

When a market matures, one of the most typical behaviors is for the larger companies to buy smaller, but well run enterprises in order to gain market share. Yesterday Samhain Publishing fulfilled expectations by buying Linden Bay Romance

It was announced to the authors, and the official press release is due today. It looks like a good move, giving more authors a chance to benefit from Samhain’s reputation and quality in the marketplace. We Samhain authors have been assured that it won’t affect our publishing slots or our editors, although some editors will be working on some Linden Bay books. Linden Bay will continue as a separate entity for the time being, but there are plans to amalgamate it and its authors into the Samhain community. It brings a new set of authors to Samhain, and while they will no doubt have to reach Samhain’s stringent standards, from what I’ve seen of their work, they shouldn’t have much difficulty doing so.

So what next? With the emarket expanding, the big publishers are taking more of an interest. Already, Samhain and Ellora’s Cave have co-ventures in place for the publishers, and we can see this expanding as time goes on. And e-authors or ex e-authors like Lora Leigh and Sherrilyn Kenyon are making a big splash in the print market too, so many of them are savvy with both formats and markets.