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?

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

I’ve done a fair few things since I joined the writing world. I’ve edited (don’t do it anymore – the pay wasn’t brilliant and it detracted from my own writing time), I review and I write. And, of course, I read.

When Syb asked me if I wanted to review for TGTBTU more regularly, I was delighted to do so. I always read the blog for the reviews as well as the other pieces, and I’d done a series on the Romantic Times Conference. Most of the books I review, I buy myself, or I get from NetGalley. I get the occasional ARC. I try to say in the review where it comes from.

I won’t review books by close friends or by publishers or lines who publish my work because friends and publishers mean more to me than reviewers. I try to keep to that particular book and my response to it when I review. If I don’t like a book, I’ll say so, but I might like another by the same author.

Honestly what you see is what you get with me and the reviews I do. I’ve been reading all my life except for the first two years (yes, I was reading at two and reading fluently by the time I went to nursery at three). I grew up in a house full of books. We didn’t have central heating, but we had books, so my mother bought a lot of old and tall bookcases at auctions and filled them with books. Great insulation. Some great reading, too.

So publishers think that some sites don’t review “fairly.” What’s a fair review? It’s only one reviewer’s opinion, after all. And I really want to refute the opinion that the reviewer somehow “owes” something to the person who sent them the book. As a reader, I want to read an honest opinion, which I have the right to agree or disagree with. As a reviewer, I don’t owe anyone anything. I’ve paid my dues, and I want a good read. When I open a book, I’m really hoping that it’s going to be a great read and I’m disappointed if it isn’t. I don’t set out to trash a book.

If a book has tropes that really don’t work for me, then I’ll say so. If a book squicks me out, I’ll say so, too. And it’s not always the writer’s fault, I get that too. If the blurb doesn’t mention it, or it’s sold in the wrong genre, and I pick it up that way, then it’s not a decision the author usually gets to take.

But as an author, I’m getting tired of the “authors should be seen and not heard” opinion. We write our books and we have to then get out of the way unless we’re invited. No, just no. Let me make it clear that author whining is not what I’m talking about here. That is clearly a stupid thing to do. But replying to criticism? Sure, why not,if it’s done in the spirit of discussion? Authors have opinions too and as long as it’s not a whine, I’d like to see more of it. But not author domination. Authors do have the temptation to go on and on. Otherwise we wouldn’t have the stamina to write all those words! And authors tend not to give opinions about books, but I wish there were more authors who dared to do so. But in these austere days, and believe me, they are really austere for the author, there is a lot more careful behaviour.

Author bullying I hate to see, too. When an author declares that her books are the best evah and even gathers a clique around her – not to be confused with fangirls who arrive of their own free will. Which brings up the subject of fan bullying. Recently I had the pleasure of discussing the Twilight books on a private loop without the twihards turning up. It was interesting and we learned a few things about the books that way. As a reviewer, you know if you review a book like that, the fans will turn up, so the pressure is already on to do a good one, or not to do one at all. And the author clan thing, there are a few, and I’m sure some of us know who they are. It means we don’t review your books because we don’t want to deal with the feedback, so you don’t get the exposure. Either that, or a reviewer might choose the book to increase traffic (surely not! But yes).

And now more bullying. The recent assertion by some authors and editors that authors should not give bad reviews – or else. I have never known a responsible editor to do or say that. Never. I’ve seen a few authors say that, and I wonder if it’s a gut response, or if they have evidence. But after all, reviewing is writing, too, and it can be great practice. I won’t be muzzled in that way. If I give up reviewing it’s my choice, and I want it to be a choice. Anyway, if you want to shut me up, offer me a publishing contract. Then my personal reviewing policy comes into play and I won’t review any more books from that publisher or line.

Flippancy apart, and offering me a publishing contract on that basis is about as real as that pig flying in the sky up there, I feel very uncomfortable about a publisher who would quieten authors that way, or a big author who would try to suppress comment by threatening boycotting or something similar. I don’t know if it happens, to be honest, but I really hope that it doesn’t.

Reviewing can evoke furious responses, but while I consider that the opportunity to do it is a privilege, I also think that the only person I owe anything to is the reader. I’m not doing it for the author, although I am one myself. I do it to give as honest an opinion as I can. And don’t forget, it is only my opinion. Feel free to pass on by.

My thoughts on RomCon are all over the place. If you want an extremely detailed minute by minute playbook, this is not where you’ll get that. RomCon? Well, I’d do it again. I’ve never been to any conferences/conventions before 2010, but this year I’ve hit up RT, Lori Foster’s get together, and now RomCon. I think of the three, RomCon was my favorite. It just has more. (I really enjoyed Lori Foster’s get together, and I have to say RT was my least favorite.)

Incidentally, most of the pictures have nothing to do with my rants – I just needed somewhere to put them. So for the second one there, I have nothing but nice things to say about Nalini Singh et al. Also, I’m not in any of these pictures, in case you were Lime hunting.

Straight off the bat, however, I vehemently, 100%, completely, cannot tell you how much I disagree with people saying there were too many authors. [I cannot help but say this snarky thing: apparently there was a lounge for authors. Well, maybe if there hadn't been one, or if authors didn't go to it, they would've been out there mingling with readers. Not to say there wasn't enough of that. But I mean, hello. If you're going to be in an author only room, of course it's going to seem like all authors and not enough readers. And that's my snarky bit. I of course understand that authors who went to the lounge weren't there the whole time and a lot of them did interact with readers and I pretty much saw every author I wanted to.] Did I get enough time with each and every one? No. And guess what? If more more more more more readers go we’re not going to be able to interact with the authors at all.

And on a different note, there were a lot lot lot of scheduled conflicts. Like a lot. I don’t know if I can stress this enough. The conference is short – something like 48 hours, and you know sixteen of those hours are allotted for sleeping. It depended on what event you were going to. For example, the teas were filled with what looked like  60 people.  Likely most readers. At the same time there were intimate chats with authors, which generally had 10-15 readers in the room. The teas and intimate chats being the “coveted events” as they were ticketed, all other panels I’m sure had less people, and it made it appear as if there were no readers. Well, based on what I observed, say during the day 150 readers were at “closed” events and the remaining were sleeping, meeting with people, or otherwise attending one of 2-4 scheduled panels. Yes, I can see how it seemed that readers were thin on the ground. However, I don’t think that’s the case and really really really hope the numbers don’t shift too much. (And here’s more snark – come on now authors. Do you really need that much more of a rockstar feel?)

Some of us were discussing – readers do talk to each other. Yes some people don’t know about the online community, but that seems to be the exception to the rule these days. And you know – maybe we’re just not that interesting. I don’t know. I feel completely fulfilled without going to conferences in my book talk and gushing. That’s what blogs, twitter, chat, texting, and phones are for.

So that’s my rant. Sure, let the conference get bigger. But don’t limit the number of authors. That’s probably at the top of my list for reasons to not come back to RomCon

Now, I will say I was unimpressed with the panels that I attended. Admittedly, I’m not very much of a panels type girl. I “just” got out of school. I don’t need to sit and be talked at. However, I dutifully followed friends to the controversial Fairy Godmother one, and felt as if I was being lectured and reprimanded. Every single person in the room I talked to felt the same way. (And as I hear it, there was only one person who thought the panel was enjoyable. Telling.) It could have been interesting, and fun and interactive, but that’s not the tone of the panel. It made me quite angry. I had to use the restroom, so I left, but after that, I didn’t want to, and was told not to bother going back in. Some people I hear were tweeting about it, but I went straight to texting my WTF feelings. Why was I annoyed? Piracy was brought up immediately after introductions, and the way it was approached and discussed we all felt like we were being attacked, and that we were all pirates. It only got worse. I truly felt that this was a[n understandable] pet peeve but those on the panel had finally gotten a captive audience/a trapped room of human bodies and faces that they could yell at. Not amazing. I ran into Sarah (from Smart Bitches) that evening and she was still unhappy. Of course I later found out she’d also gone to the book reviewer panel with Jane (from Dear Author), and that one was full of head exploding material was well – and led to the “books are not babies” discussion and hashtag on twitter. I’m still curious as to the results of Tessa Dare’s “experiment.”

I will say that in a way, coming to RomCon (I’m sitting in the hotel lounge/lobby as I write this, because I’m staying two extra days in Denver) was to play with friends. I didn’t know originally that they were going to be here, but I figured I’d meet fun people anyway. (It worked well enough at the Lori Foster event.) However, Ali and Joy did come, and that basically was the highlight for me – seeing friends. But in a more conference centered manner… meeting authors I’d interacted with online, but never met in person.

My list would be Julia Quinn (admittedly I’ve never interacted with her online but I always read her books and it was so cool to meet her. And talk about Outrageous Tacos.) Nalini Singh, Meljean Brook, Carolyn Jewel, Pamela Clare, Leanne Banks, Melissa Schroeder… There are more but I’m realizing this is turning into a something I don’t want, and anyway not really – I guess I talked to the same people/nobody. (And I’d met Carolyn Crane and Coutney Milan previously at RT.)

My random fun things and highlights? I tried to hang out with Carolyn Jewel all weekend, and it never worked. On Friday night for cocktails just when we were about to sit it was time for dinner- and Julia Quinn was at the table so I walked over to dinner with her (and ran into Ali and Joy and Eli) so we all sat together. We got there late. Bad us. I also sat next to Sally MacKenzie, whose books I’ve enjoyed, and had no idea who she was. (Sorry! I think I need to put in here that I’m just… not much of a fangirl. I barely recognized Julia Quinn and actually hadn’t recognized her the first time I saw her in the hallway. There. My secret shame.) Anyway, Sally MacKenzie is a fun, fabulous lady. We were bad and chatting throughout dinner and the “performance” because we were sitting in the back, the acoustics were bad, and we couldn’t hear a damn thing. This is also where the No Ordinary Taco discussion started. (Somehow Julia heard that instead of No Ordinary Cowboy. I don’t know either.) I didn’t know who the other two ladies  at our table were either, but I had a lot of fun with them. [Erm, Lavinia Kent was one of the them. So sorry to the third!]

Saturday was full of events – intimate chats with authors, and author sponsored teas which were ticketed events  – you entered a raffle to get into them. The historical one was fabulous, with a goody bag and prizes for all. I also went to the contemporary author tea the previous day, where it was more of a Q&A panel. I didn’t go to publisher spotlights on Friday, but had heard they weren’t that impressive. Saturday just seemed to be a more fun and worthy day all around. And I have to say the publisher spotlights on Saturday were extremely generous with the swag. (Swag is stuff we all get – and we all got books. It was nice.)

I also got to spend more time with Courtney Milan, because she sat with us at the HCI launch party. I have to admit, I had thought she might not really care for me – but I knew that was equally likely not to be true as nothing had happened to make me think that. So I figure if Courtney Milan didn’t like me, she wouldn’t have chosen to subject herself to my company during something she couldn’t leave. (I also didn’t know another author at the table was an author but she was incredibly gracious. Sorry!) Anyway, our table talked about dogs, and there was a girl across the table from me (sorry, woman) and she was the most adorable thing and I wish I’d gotten her name. So – Courtney showed me pictures/video of her dog. I’d heard of him before and seen pictures via twitter, but I want to meet him! (I love dogs.) He’s an Australian Shepherd and so adorable.

On Saturday night I sat next to Elizabeth Hoyt for dinner. I had no idea who she was (she looked familiar but I couldn’t remember, and I’m horrible about names and faces, so I’m pretty sure I committed some sort of faux pas and asked her what she did.) I also joked with her in a way I might not have if I had known she was Elizabeth Hoyt at the time, but I’m actually glad about that. Being too restrained isn’t fun – and not really how I am.

I do wish the hotel had been one downtown. I’m actually shy, and hate people. (Heh.) So it’s important for me to be able to leave a conference hotel and go do something. This was not possible at the Crowne Plaza and their concierge was not accommodating on Saturday night. I have/had mad love for Crowne Plaza concierge services (especially for the one in Columbus – I love you!) but this one disappointed. Of course I also became annoyed at a few of the hotel staff, but that’s all tied into the being trapped here issues.

Something I’d like to make a note of that every single person [reader] I spoke with mentioned – yes we were getting books, and that’s wonderful, but we were getting the same books. It seems like we were getting the same books over and over again. I know there a bunch I have two of – so guess what? I’m going to give them away. [At the moment I'm still figuring out how I'll do that.] I also gave away a number of books as soon as I got here – Jessica and Carolyn Crane were nice enough to let me stash stuff in their room, and when I went to pick it up I gave them books I already owned in hopes that they’ll read them. This process was repeated throughout the weekend.

Um… oh and this is totally a personal thing non-conference related. But a lot of people complimented me on my purse (and thank you! You’re all too sweet) – so I want to say, it’s the Lorca bag from Hayden-Harnett, and I think they’re such a fabulous company that I’m giving them a shout out. You should buy from them. Get your own Lorca. Really – and their customer service is basically unmatched. In excellence. And I also wore a flower ring that I’d just gotten as a birthday present – and that was Kenneth Jay Lane. Just in case you wanted to know O_o. (Well, if you want it, I think you should get it, right?)

Oh and my plug – if you haven’t read Julia Quinn, do so. Not only do I love her books, but she’s fantastic. She’s incredibly nice and fun – but not like nice in the way you’re scared you’re going to be bad and really have to be on your best behavior. She’s sarcastic and has a great sense of humor. The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever was a book I got here and gave away in hopes the person will enjoy it. That’s one of my favorite books by her. Also The Duke & I, The Lost Duke of Wyndham, Splendid, and I think my favorite book by her is Brighter than the Sun. (Ok and/but since I’m me, I will say I don’t love love love all her books. Some people also got What Happens in London here, and that didn’t work for me. Nor did I go for Mr. Cavendish, I Presume, even though Liv tells me I’m wrong.) Anyway, not only are Julia’s books great, but she’s nice. I was going downstairs and had a book I wanted her to sign – there was a historical authors event. However we ran into her at the elevators, and she actually got back off and came and signed a book for me. I mean, I know not a huge deal and like she gave me a kidney or anything, but I thought it was super sweet. Because I was like “oh wait-  oh no!” I did meet some authors who gave me the “I don’t want to talk to you but we’re so close to each other in passing it’d be rude not to acknowledge you and I’m a professional here so I’ll give you the curt hello.” So you know, I’m that much more thrilled with Julia Quinn’s awesomeness.

So, I hope RomCon is essentially the same next year as it was this year, with some tweaks. The entertainment ” ” was… not amazing- and most people seemed to flee the dance parties. There is that – I didn’t really talk about them because it wasn’t so much worth going. [Oh and along the same "keep going what you're doing line - reader focused. Please. Please please please don't assume all readers are wannabe writers. I know some readers are aspiring authors. But not all of us. Do not, for all that is good and holy on this Earth, turn this into another RWA/RT thing. Because let's be honest- RT is now more like RWA than anything else. I almost felt more like an intruder than anything else there.]

And I did like the format of the signing. With books elsewhere, you don’t feel a sense of obligation to buy a book just by looking at it. (It’s so awkward to pick up and book and put it down – unless you tell the author you already own it.) And with the ability to book browse people do buy more books, I heard at RT some people didn’t buy books they were curious about because they didn’t want to check out the book then realize it wasn’t for him/her and be obligated to take it. Also, it got rid of the whole ridiculous sticker business of RT. If you walked into the signing with books at RomCon, they were obviously yours. That was amazing. I think it would just help or be nice to let authors know this is the format, so they could have something in front of them at the signing – swag, little props, extra books, what have you.

So again, I have to say, I really hope the book signing format remains the same. But you know, I‘m just a lowly reader. What do I matter? [Sarcasm!] Also an author had a fantastic idea – of panels with readers sitting on the panels, answering questions. I love that. So… maybe not panels because that’s a lot of pressure, but how about round tables? I think that would also really fit in with the idea, concept, and spirit of RomCon. Incidentally, Carolyn Crane had this idea – and I think it’s amazing. [Incidentally NO those aren't all the books I got at RomCon. A few pictured, yes, but this is why I'm not too torn up about not getting books. And why I'm so avidly going for ebooks. Don't need to add any more to my book graveyard.]

And… those are my rambling wandering RomCon thoughts. If you’d like to know more about something [anything] I’ll do my best to answer any questions. Or gossip more

AKA What will make me wildly unpopular. Or, even less than wherever I am now? Whatever. This is a culmination of a number of thoughts and posts and conversations. In part, it’s why I’ve been quiet lately. Who am I kidding. For the past year. I’m blogging it now because… well, it’s a blog and I can talk about what I want [so long as Sybs hasn't forbidden it], and I want to “explain” where I am right now/what has contributed a bit to my reading slump. (Because every so often I issue cries of help/book recommendations. I am trying to get out of it.)

This is also going to be a meandering post that I’ve merged with what I was going to title “No Book For Me!”

A number of things are changing in publishing. Blogs are coming and going. This is nothing new. (Well the latter part. Publishing is slow to change, or at least it feels that way.)

I guess I’ve been disillusioned, or more annoyed by the “us vs them” mentality that seems to show up online consistently. There’s also the sense that “readers are the enemy” and frankly, I’m sick of that. No, readers are not the enemy. And I know not everyone feels that way, of course, but I see it consistently enough to annoy me. This also makes me sad, because I used to read at least a book every two days. Maybe two to three books on a good day. (More if they were categories.) Reading for pleasure was a priority for me. I mean I did this throughout my undergraduate career, law school, and while studying for the bar as well. It’s been a few months since I’ve read for pleasure daily. At first it felt strange. I used to read before I went to sleep, no matter the time. Now? I … don’t. I tried a few times, but just couldn’t get into books.

More explanation on being turned off reading? Sorry… but… authors. Social climbing, diva behavior… laughing while saying “oh I just write the same story over and over.” But … really the “I’m so much more important than you” vibe. Like an author who will be all “oh hiiiiiii” and excited to talk to you when you’re standing next to someone who is a “super star.” But if/when you’re alone – you’re more than invisible, said author actively is looking through you.

Maybe it’s because this is my first year attending conferences/signings, etc. Or I have bad luck. Or I’m over sensitive. Perhaps it’s all of that in a small part. But I’m also not the dullest crayon in the box. I’m fed up with that behavior, and I for sure know not all authors are like that, but I’m just really… over it. (I’ve been to RT this year, as well as Lori Foster’s Reader & Author Get Together. I didn’t like the former very much, enjoyed the latter… and will be going to RomCon as well. So, we’ll see. Either people will make an effort to ensure they aren’t marked by me as snobs, or will avoid me madly. And, for those of you going to RWA, you’re safe. I won’t be there to judge you.)

I also got sick of seeing rave reviews on every. single. book. out. there. I mean, yay for authors. Hooray for you, and job well done, and all that. However, call me a skeptic. Cynic. I don’t believe it. What makes it worse is people would agree with me in private – that, yes, s/he didn’t love that book more than his/her first born. I give a number of “C” reviews, which here at the pond is an average read. At many other places that’d be a 3 star/book/whatever review. (But a “C” looks so much worse and meaner, right?) I enjoy most books. I don’t love them all indiscriminately. I don’t love having to defend myself for being a discerning or critical reader. And no, actually, I’m not talking about authors behaving badly.

Anyway, readers are the enemy. No. Not true, and very annoying. Readers are consumers, who want reasonable prices, and to not be dicked around. Readers are consumers who expect this across the board. I guess in a way I’m waiting it out. After all, Bluray and HD DVD got figured out. The problem is a number of us aren’t patient enough to wait. Although I suppose now my life is more well rounded? I used to never watch movies. I’d see maybe three a year. So, being called or treated as the enemy makes me want to pirate books. I don’t, but gosh – every time I’m lectured about it it makes me want to. In fact outraged rants complete with swearing is what made me aware of book pirating in the first place. (Yup. Guess I was naive. Also – no worries. I’m too computer/technologically inept to pirate books even if I decided to. Which, if you didn’t pick up on that, I wouldn’t.)

Now? I’ve been watching a lot of TV, and many more movies. Oscar nominees, new box office hits, etc. Whatever I can get from the library. As for television… my newest show I watch? The Ultimate Fighter. I’ve come a long way from not even being able to watch Macbeth in AP English. (Violence! No!) Um, guess a lot of stuff annoys me? Iron Chef, Burn Notice… So You Think You Can Dance… sometimes Chopped. Catching up on The Office, Bones, maybe re-watch Spartacus: Blood and Sand. Justified, Deadliest Warrior, Merlin. Giada at Home. Gordon Ramsay’s F Word. Kitchen Nightmares. Sometimes Hell’s Kitchen, and if I remember, Master Chef. (I don’t have Bravo, otherwise I’d watch Top Chef. No Cooking Channel either, sadly.) And more. The United States of Tara. The Tudors.
Movies? I’ve been on a Takeshi Kaneshiro kick. Or as much as I could. Watched Red Cliff/ Chi Bi, the international version, and Warlords. Love the former, meh on the second. The Young Victoria. Inglourious Basterds. Sherlock Holmes. Law Abiding Citizen. 9. It’s Complicated. And so on.

And my secret shame? I have even watched the odd episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. >.<

So that’s my meandering rant, as usual. Now my questions for you? Have you been annoyed by something lately? Or have you have stopped doing/participating in something you enjoyed due to being turned off from/by it? Do you have slump buster books to suggest? Or your own secret shame shows? (Or shows in general you enjoy – obviously I’m not picky right now.)

*ETA: My point in this post is… why can’t we be nice or at least civil to everyone? Why only be nice to a person when you think s/he is someone “special?” It’s really not a “ZOMG PAY ATTENTION TO MEEEE” – it’s a “Hey – how about throwing that stranger a smile and a simple hello?” I’m willing to bet the person [especially in the closed setting of a romance conference] doesn’t have leprosy, and it’ll be ok. Promise.

I haven’t had a good long blog title in a while. I love the meaty ones but learned early on to shorten them because of link issues. And spacing. Also short and pithy gets more attention, right? I should know – I have the attention span of a two year old. No really. I’m happy to be having five different conversations at the same time. With a single person. (The other person is generally less thrilled.)

But! This is a post/review/defense of reading out of order. Exhibit A: Broken by Shiloh Walker. (And for any of you who think I’m biased – which is the good thing, not prejudiced- which is bad – I read this book before I ever met her. In fact, in the interest of honest disclosure, I bought this book to enter a contest to try to win a nook. A nook! I really wanted it. I didn’t win.) But the blurb looked good and I’d thought the previous titles I’d read by Ms. Walker were okay as well, so I gave it a go.

This is the premise/blurb:

Quinn Rafferty is working as a bounty hunter and bail bondsman in St. Louis when a new neighbor catches his eye. He’s tempted by her beauty—but he knows from experience that anyone desperate enough to live in his building is damaged goods. Besides, he has his own soul to mend before he can worry about anyone else.

Desperate
Sara Davis is on the run, but not for the usual reasons a woman goes on the lam. She’s not an abused wife, and she’s not a criminal. But she does have a plan for her future. And as much as she finds herself attracted to her gruff, tough neighbor, she can’t risk telling him the secrets she’s hiding. There’s just too much at stake.

Driven to desire…
But Quinn must get closer to Sara when she turns out to be the target of his new missing persons case, and he discovers that there is something more complex and dangerous to her than he thought. Now, both Quinn and Sara will have to expose their true feelings—as well as their fragile hearts—if they hope their love will survive…

Admittedly, parts interested me, and others didn’t. Bounty Hunter and bondsman didn’t really move me one way or the other. But the fact that Quinn fell in love with his target, Sara… well I love the forbidden romance stories. The angst and yearning – the delicious wanting… I eat it up.

So, we have the characters. First of all, Quinn is incredibly likable, which is strange because… he’s definitely not a people person. In fact, he’s down right surly and mean. I’d say that’s part of his charm, but it really isn’t. He’s a brick wall. What saves him, is that he has a huge heart. It just takes a lot of digging – and it’s not easy going. I liked that Ms. Walker kept him true to himself. Quinn isn’t friendly. He doesn’t want to be friends, and rather dislikes people. But in all that, you know he’s a good and decent human being. That his coldness isn’t complete. He’s definitely not a marshmallow, but he isn’t soulless.

Sara… I like, in a way because she fooled me. I won’t go into spoilers here, but Ms. Walker tricked me but good. I generally figure out books quickly. Too quickly, which is yet another reason why I don’t go for romantic suspense. Ms. Walker, however, had me snowed. I definitely didn’t suspect right off the bat. I also like Sara because when we meet her, she’s taking charge, and ready to make a change. She’s also lived and is living a hard life, and you just want good things for her.

A reason for that is because Sara is so real. She’s definitely not perfect, and makes mistakes. She isn’t always put together, but she’s driven. Part of that is clear in how disciplined she is.

Suffice it to say, I really liked the characters, and the plot, and the book. It’s one of my favorite reads of the year. I’d give it an “A.”

Because I enjoyed the book so much I immediately bought the book that actually comes first in the series. Actually, I was enjoying Broken so much, I bought Fragile about halfway in, riding the high of a good read.

I did not like Fragile as much. At all. The beginning of Fragile was very different to me. The whole tone, everything. Of course the setting was different, but for Broken it was authentic, and made sense. For Fragile I felt that I was expected to suspend my relief more often that I’m prepared to. I also felt that Quinn stole the show – pretty much as soon as we met him. And, the problem is that Luke Rafferty’s story comes first. Yes, there were some slight spoilers in Broken (which I obviously picked up on) that may have contributed to my less than love of Fragile. However, I contend that it didn’t truly matter.

Here is the blurb/premise of Fragile:

Sometimes the last thing you want is exactly what you need…

BATTLE SCARRED

Six years after trading in his combat gear for hospital scrubs, Luke Rafferty still hasn’t found what he’s been searching for: a normal life. At his job, Luke is faced with things just as heartbreaking as those on the battlefield, none more so than the abused children brought in by a pretty red-headed social worker.

HEARTBROKEN

For Devon Manning, being a social worker is a rewarding job, but also a constant reminder of her own troubled youth. Devon takes everything one day at a time—unable to form a relationship with anyone except the children she rescues.

A DESIRE TO HEAL…

When Luke meets Devon, he thinks he might have found what he’s been looking for, but in order to get the life he wants, Luke has to break through Devon’s emotional barriers and make her realize that his healing touch might be just the complication her life needs…

I started out liking Devon a lot. Liked her more than Sara, even, and was all in. And then… she got hit with a stupid stick. It’s a phrase that I think should come back. Because, she really and truly was. Yes, there were parts I liked, but Devon essentially cut off her nose to spite her face. She decided to avoid Luke, and was just awful… for no good reason. In fact, she knew it was the wrong choice and was unhappy. Generally, I can respect such stubbornness. In fact, that was fine.

And here, we come upon spoilers. I’ve whited them out for you if you haven’t read the series and/or can’t stand spoilers. (If you’d like to see the text, just highlight it.)

Devon is/was attacked. She’s a social worker and had a crazy dad out to get her. Not. Cool. She sensed it, and knew something was out there, but sneaks around because “she can handle herself” and avoids the people trying to protect her. Maybe I’m just overly paranoid, but if I felt that someone was stalking me, I’d be keeping close to whoever was assigned to protect me. And ask a security guard to walk me to my car, instead of trying to brazen it out. Seriously – it’s not fun walking at night from point A to point B wondering if someone is going to stab you. Devon understand this… but doesn’t follow it. *Even though she knows there’s a threat.*

Even more… crazy stalker dad dies. She passes out, and (to my mind) didn’t think she killed him – yet somehow crazy stalker dad is dead. So… she obviously did it, right? Even the book doesn’t spell out a third party does the deed, but come on now, Miss Devon. I’m getting frustrated just writing about this.

And then – to make it all worse, Devon breaks up with Luke. She thinks he’s attacking her. Well, you know what? Ok fine. Our girl is finally showing some survival and protective instincts. But, things don’t get better. In fact, they get worse. She dreams someone is doing horrible things to her. She wakes up with her clothes off. Now I don’t know about you, but I’ve never stripped off my clothes while I was asleep. And I’m not one of those sleeps like the dead people either. Strange occurrences like that don’t give her a clue. I could not believe that. It was too much for me. The fact that she had “waking nightmares” – couldn’t distinguish dreams from reality it seemed… but the fact that physical objects were moving – things she hadn’t done, when she was supposed to be the only person in the house?

Anyway, the ending was fine. It was great and everything was resolved and happy. Unfortunately at that point I wanted to smack Devon upside the head and say “look, you idiot, if you had any sense at all you wouldn’t have let it escalate to this degree. Set up a nanny cam. Something. Anything.” I suppose she did suffer enough… but it annoyed me. And so… if I had read Fragile first… I’m not sure that I would have read Broken. I likely would have suspected a similar story or device… which would have been a shame because Broken is fantastic.

So there you have it. And, if you don’t have the book? Go buy it. Honestly. I think you should. And then come back and discuss the plot with me.

Now, your turn. Will you read books out of order? Do you read the end before reading the book? Did you ever have a good experience reading out of order? Bad?

Aka: My thoughts on the Romantic Times Convention. (As for why this title? Well… you’ll have to read on.) First of all, it was held in Columbus, Ohio. I think you all know I love the Buckeye Nation. I’m quite attached to it, and for good reason. (GO BUCKS!) On my “RT Report”… let me apologize now. I’m totally out of the loop and unpopular, and wasn’t invited to any special author room parties, or author lunches and author/reader get together type things. And as this is being posted you know, well over a week after the actual event, everyone else has already said what you’ve wanted to hear – the juicy good stuff, and actual event run downs.

I thought it’d be weird to run around as “Limecello” – so I went as “me” – or “Elle Cello, Reader.” We had some mishaps with my name tag, but eventually I got it – and I wish I had the name of the woman who printed it out. She looked so harassed and I was very grateful she squeezed me in right before shutting down on Wednesday night. Granted, I had been hovering around the desk off and on (mostly on) for the past three hours. And been told the previous day that my badge would be ready first thing in the morning. (Hey, no badge = not allowed into anything. It’s important.)

I’ve always heard that the Romantic Times Convention is a reader-focused event, but that’s definitely not the impression I got, from the RT Virgin thing, to the end. I heard some colorful language in regards to thoughts about this RT compared to previous ones. I know there was a significant focus on book sellers this year, and all of them seemed quite pleased, so one supposes that’s a good thing.

I was grumpy Lime at times because of sleep deprivation… but I did have fun overall at RT. (Just, you know, not enough to entice me to go back.) In fact, let me tell you my highlights. I got to meet and play with Shiloh Walker. She has awesome fruit wines. I can’t be bought with books or e-arcs… but this blueberry wine she had… Anyway Shiloh is super fun and hilarious and definitely not adorabubbles. (Pst  – she is, but don’t let her know I said that. She’ll come after me. And possibly vomit a little. On me. Not cool.)

Mr. Romance Contestants, Shayla Black, Sylvia Day, Lora Leigh

Totally tongue in cheek here – believe it or not I don’t look like a lime, and I’m, in fact, not even green. It made me difficult to recognize. For a very short period I amused myself by picking out authors, and smiling politely, wondering if they’d say hello. We’d be standing in the same group/within a few feet of each other. (Most didn’t. It’s ok – authors are solitary types and not necessarily social creatures. I wasn’t feeling the social butterfly vibe so I didn’t put myself out either.)

Cavemenboys

I had dinner with Shiloh Walker, Beth Kerry, and Julie James on Wednesday – which was totally random, and fun. They were chatting books. Shiloh and I  bumped into Beth and Julie later at the EC party, and Julie James made me take a picture of the infamous EC Cavemen. She’ll deny it, but she said I had to. I have witnesses. I resisted until the bitter end, and, in fact, missed most of the show, and only got a picture of all the cavemen turning away, as you can see. During, Jay (one of the Mr. Romance contestants), Julie and I played a game of one-upmanship using the EC covers on the decks of cards at each table. I hands down won with the card that had a corgi on it.

Actually most of my favorite parts of RT happened off the conference site. Major highlights were meeting Ali (@simplyali), and Joy (@JoyfullyReviewd). Yes, twitter was my connection to 97% of the people there Those two were basically my constant companions and partners in crime for a number of events. I also took them out of the hotel to a few local bars. (Ok, so we stopped at the second one. Brother’s. I’ve got more stories about that but those are better left for another time and place. We had cheap – as in not expensive – drinks, and Joy introduced me and Ali to Patron. In fact, the saying “one tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor” – is not true.)

Prior to that, I went out for happy hour with the super fun, and super nice Lauren Dane and Anya Bast. We went to Due Amici, where they disappointingly didn’t have any happy hour drink specials, (boo site that lied to me!) but did have fantastic appetizers. I now regret not taking pictures, but we were having too much fun chatting, eating, and drinking. And rushing. We were on a tight schedule. Otherwise, another personal highlight/victory was convincing the concierge from the Crowne Royal that I was staying at that hotel and getting a ride around the city.

I also have something about me that makes people tell me very strange things. For example, one of the Mr. Romance contestants told me he only has 4% body fat. Then an author’s husband told me he and his wife were together for XX years, but it took them ZZ years to get married, but now he lives in state AB and she lives in state CD. Believe me – it was weird and awkward. It was basically his introduction and I have no idea why he was telling me that.

I also met Lucy Monroe (and her husband), Shelli Stevens, Carolyn Crane, and Jess Granger. And others. I’m avoiding listing more people because I don’t want to forget anyone. I have to mention Carolyn though, because I walked up to her, and said “Hi Carolyn, I’m Limecello.” And she stood up and said “Oh! Hi it’s so nice to finally meet you and put a face to the name!” Then we talked a little bit more, she signed her League of Reluctant Adults passport, and I left. I then tweeted updates, and Carolyn said “Wait, I met you?!?!” This was on Thursday, so I proceeded to tease her mercilessly for the rest of the convention. I even rudely yelled across our table at the Fairy Ball to reintroduce myself. It was good fun. And the rest is extraneous.

Louisa Edwards (Kindly posed 3x's, told me I was less cute w/ each pic )

Lynne Connolly

Victoria Dahl (She's mad I destroyed her in the round face competition. Sorry, Vicki - next time!)

Oh – right, the signing. I hated it. Too many people. Reminded me of Times Square which I also abhor. Also I lived essentially without my luggage for two days, so I had nothing… but after that, I made Ali and Joy go to Louisa Edwards’s event with me. Free booze! It ran against Mr. Romance but… well – you can look up the “#mangeant” tweets. And, I wasn’t blown away with the whole thing… (The Mr. Romance competition, I mean. Although I saw some pictures and oh man camo pants and bad dancing? Still. I have no regrets.) Anyway – Louisa’s event was hands down one of my favorite parts of  “official” RT. And I’m not saying that just because I won a bottle of rose petal infused vodka.

Lauren Dane

Lucy Monroe

Courtney Milan

Finally… Saturday night. Ali, Joy, and I tried to leave the hotel again, but 280 N. High Street defeated us and we couldn’t figure out the plaza. So we went back to the hotel bar, broken hearted and discouraged. I took the heat of the hot wings I ordered personally, and was determined to defeat them. I did. Then, we moved to the bar area, and caught Jess Granger as she was about to go to bed. We had some awesome conversation, and for some unknown horrible reason Joy brought up strange shifters. Were-trees were definitely mentioned . Then, were-ducks. Jess proceeded to traumatize us with stories about ducks on her campus…and mating season.  Considering here at the pond we’re duckies… it was too good to pass up.

I also have to give Jess a shout out because I may or may not have threatened to bring the wrath of God down on her if she was lying to me/us about the number of books in her current series. (Seven to nine books – now you can all help me keep her accountable.) However, my feelings/rant on series is fit for another post.

Oh, and I’m sure I offended some people. I’m not a very gushy person. I squee and eee when I’m happy. Even in person. But nothing particularly set off my “whee” meter at RT. I actually met some authors that I’ve heard of but haven’t read/haven’t read in a while, so I had nothing to say. Considering how “big” [as in successful and popular] a few of these authors were, I think they expected more “yay!” from me. Sorry there. A few awkward silences occurred when I was introduced and followed with an “Oh hi, It’s nice to meet you.” And then… silence. Awkward, of course.

In the end… I don’t think I’ll be going to another RT. Or, at least I don’t plan on it, and I can’t particularly see what would entice me to go. I know other people loved it and had a great time, and others said “well at least it wasn’t the worst one I’ve been to,” but… enh. So for those of you who missed out… or are feeling totally crushed, personally, I didn’t think it was anything super special.

I also felt that books people were getting were grudgingly given. Maybe it was the last day burn out. But that’s the vibe I got from the start. I won a grand total of four books during the whole conference, but managed to get more at “free for all” type things. And, I got some swag in promo alley and at the book fair. I hate crowds, however, so I only hit up a few authors and then sat along the side of the room.

I am giving away a swag bag, however, stuffed pull of promo items – signed and unsigned blurb books, bookmarks, cover flats, pens, knick knacks, and… 5 books. That’ll be on twitter so find me there.

And, of course, I’m happy to discuss more etc in the comments.

A post in which I finally get some things done, and prove why I shouldn’t post straight into Word Press, especially at 2AM+.

Way back in the dark ages, I had a pondering titled “Heroine Anthems.” (Wow, really. It went live in early June, which means I probably had it done some time in May… so uhh… six months is O_o a reasonable follow up, right?) Lucky for me I have some friendly tweeple giving me not so subtle hints and reminders to get it done. (Sadly these days my twitter account is probably the most reliable medium for contacting me.)

So – for a number of the videos, the embedding has been disabled by request, and I respect that. I also want to link to the official music video whenever possible because well, a myriad of reasons.

First up, the current state of our hero. He’s a mess. He needs the love of a good woman. [And perhaps some loving, depending on what sub genre you read/write.] Animal I Have Become. This is for the “angry, wounded heroes. The hero who has been to war or killed and thinks he’s irredeemable.” (I can’t say it any better, so thanks, Lorelie!)

Now, our intrepid “I won’t commit” hero. He also considers himself something of a player- and the previous women he’s dated or been with in the past have only proven him right. Of course. He’ll Break Your Heart.

And I can’t have a post without some love to the angsty hero, so… come on- brace yourself for some hilarious awesome Duran Duran, and Come Undone!

This is also our slightly recovered hero, who is now madly playing the field. Come on – “you can have whatever you like…” This song is so dirty, and fun – perfect. “Brain so good – swore you went to college…I want your body, need your body, long as you’ve got me you won’t need nobody…” Come on! Listen to this song! (Of course it’s “Whatever you like” by TI.)

The next song is for our hero who is falling in love. Conveniently titled, Falling in Love in a Coffee Shop.

I “discovered” Landon Pigg a few years ago, and am happy for his success – or at least that fact that tons of commercials have picked up his songs. This is a really sweet song, and I like his style. And one that ties in – the hero who is already in love, but… it didn’t work out. Come on – you know you’ve read/written the “oops it didn’t work out the first time, but lets try it again baby, because you’re the one who got away and I’ve never forgotten you or stopped thinking about you.” Again, aptly titled- Can’t Let Go.

Now we move on to the hero pining after the “unattainable” heroine. I love this song so hard. Yay Vertical Horizon – Everything You Want. You know – the hero who thinks the heroine should be with X guy (not him) who is so perfect because he (the hero) is too messed up for her… <3 <3 <3 “I am everything you want. I am everything you need. I am everything inside of you that you wish you could be. I say all the right the things at exactly the right time but I mean nothing to you and I don’t know why…”

And more angsty hero. [I like this song - it seems upbeat, but if you listen to the lyrics... it so isn't. So, so not.]

Seriously – the song title has nothing to do with it – and its not supposed to be dirty. But… Deep Inside of You. Who doesn’t love Third Eye Blind? Come on now. This also works as the “a-ha” moment a hero has. Maybe after a knock out thrown down fight he has with the heroine – after they’ve “broken up” as it were… I imagine this is how he’d feel.

This is another great song that fits somewhere in this close range of emotions. Voxtrot is under exposed and under appreciated. Especially this song.

More in love hero.

“I don’t believe that anybody feels the way I feel about you now…” And the whole saving part… come on now. This is the hero who is about to give in – willing to take a chance on that elusive thing we call love.

And… this is the hero ready to take a stab.

So here we have is All I Want, by Toad the Wet Sprocket.

Anyway, Mark McGrath is/was incredibly pretty. And he had a good voice. Rumor has it Sugar Ray is coming back. I have mixed feelings about the band – loved/hated their songs- but… this one is just so so… “Answer the phone… I know that you’re home…” Come on. This works for so many genres.

More happy – (ok so this post isn’t linear. Get over it.) This is perfect for when the hero discovers the heroine. Fascinating New Thing. Fits perfectly, yes? And who doesn’t like them a little Semisonic?

Then there’s Stand Inside Your Love. “You and me/ Meant to be/ Immutable/ Impossible/ Its destiny… You’re everything that I want and ask for … Who wouldn’t be the one you love? … You’re mine forever now…”

And… the happiest song here. The hero realizes he’s in love! And this is a good thing, and he’s happy about it. Anyway this song makes me happy too. And it is so cute. And perfect. “But I know one thing – that I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you…”

And finally… we end with Follow Through. I’ve never seen the video before now. Hello, Gavin Degraw. Seriously – “Oh, this is the start of something good…” The perfect song for the cautiously happy and upbeat happily ever after.

Heart. So – what do you think? Do any songs come to mind instantly as “hero anthems” for you? Have you read a book then heard a song, or thought of a song and said *this one*? This list is by no means comprehensive or exhaustive – but I had to limit myself.

ETA: And… this post might be a little… scattered, because it’s been a year in the making, marinating in the “back part” of the blog.

Ok – so I’ve decided to celebrate random holidays each year. Last year it was the Chinese/Lunar New Year. This year, after a quick and random, totally unscientific twitter poll… it was decided 2010 I’d highlight Earth Day.

Being green is very popular now. I’m all for that. I’ve been accused of being a tree hugger, but I’m definitely not on top of everything. I don’t turn off all my electronics, etc – anyway there’s more I could be doing.

I’m not going to give a little Earth Day lesson, because you can find all the information online. I do like that it’s such an international holiday – more than 175 countries celebrate it each year!

I’ve been meaning to give away an ebook as well, so… what’s the prize? A copy of Maya Banks’ new and improved Colter’s Woman. That’s how I plan to celebrate Earth Day this year.

My question is then – what do you think about Earth Day? Did you ever celebrate it? Do you? And… if you read them, what book would you most like to see as an ebook? If you don’t read ebooks, why not?

Personally, I most want As You Desire by Connie Brockway to be released as an electronic book.

And because I’m always for more frivolity…well, me being me I’ve forgotten – so I’ll put it on you! Tell me something lighthearted and fun, that is relevant to this post! (Earth Day, ebooks…)

*NB: As usual, the winner will be announced in the comments. Contest closes a week from Friday.

So… you might remember my part 2 of 3 post awhile back, titled Speak, Boo Boo, Speak. I wanted you to know that winners have been chosen and notified, and prizes have gone out.
First up, there’s the grand prize winner who got a copy of Leave Me Breathless by the fabulous HelenKay Dimon. Names of winners haven’t been added to protect the guilty. (Of course if they want to step up and say in the comments, that’s great. It’s just I was threatened with dire consequences by some of the entrants if I revealed their identities.)

Dear Helen Kay,

Notice that I’m spelling your name the proper way. Why do you smash the Helen and Kay together? That’s really weird. Do you do it on purpose, or did your parents do that to you? Can they speak English?

Anyway, I wanted to write to you for advice. I keep trying to write a book but can never get past the first page. Can you help me? Maybe if you read my page you could give me advice. And don’t give me some bullshit legaleze about being unable to read unpublished work. No one has to know except you and me, and I’m totally trustworthy. I would never sue you, even if your next book was a complete ripoff of my ideas.

Thank you for your time, and I’m enclosing the page. Please read it. If you don’t, I’m going to make sure everyone knows how selfish you are, and no one will ever read your books again. (That’s not a threat, just a fact, because if you’re a selfish person, I just think people should know.)

Your fan,

Wanna Be

And we have a second winner, who got a book by Larissa Ione (Pleasure Unbound). I’d like to note at this point, that there was a panel of 3+ impartial judges who picked winners. Because I totally wouldn’t have picked this one. (Kidding!)

Dear HelenKay Dimon, Larissa Ione, Jaci Burton, and Lauren Dane.

I know you receive a lot of fan mail. Some of it questionable. However, I am not a nutjob. I read your books, I put them up and other than sacrificing a newborn kitten every year on the release date, they stay on the keeper shelf waiting to be re-read.

I’m writing today about Limecello

For years now I’ve read her blog. Her reviews make my change purse jingle. Sometimes she’s made my Amazon account sob. And ooo the times I’ve giggled!! Even when she gets snippy and tart she’s still a wonderful blogger gal.

So in her honor I’m sending you this list of things to make out of limecello…

With Limecello juice you can make:
Margarita
Lime Pie
Lime Marinade to soak meat in

With any jiggly bits:
Lime Jello Mold

Crunchy bits:
Crispy Lime Cookies
Lucious Lime Crusty Chicken

So for the sweet, savory, jiggly and the crusty end this letter with a heartfelt appeal to you. Please Authors, send me Limecello’s address so I can GPS her and squeeze the juice outta her. Feel free to roll her around on the countertop to soften her up before I get there.

Signed,

Freaky Fruit Freak.

So there you have it. And stay tuned to part 3/3 of my “Boo Boo series” (Hah!) That will go live… you know. Some time. Up for grabs there will be a copy of Jill Shalvis’s baseball book Double Play. (And possibly others. Or not. We’ll see how the wind blows. ‘Cuz that’s how we roll.)

It’s often said that writers are either pantsers (often rendered inaccurately as pansters, probably because it’s easier to pronounce) or plotters. Pantsers as in “write by the seat of your pants.” They make it up as they go along and don’t know where they’re going until they get there.

I think there are writers who do very long plots.

I’m writing this as a writer in the hope that some readers might be interested in the process.

We need to think—a lot. Think about characters, scenes and all the paraphernalia that makes for an intriguing novel. But for a novel that resonates, one that echoes in the hearts of its readers long after they’ve finished, a writer also needs to work out what’s going underneath. The duck or the iceberg of writing, where nine-tenths of it is below the surface. It’s that nine-tenths that decides whether the book, be it Harlequin category, historical romance or kick-ass urban fantasy, will be a game-changing one or not.

Sometimes the superficiality is the story. After all, we all live on the surface for most of the time. Romantic comedy can do that, and still be superb. But the ones that live with us are the ones with depth, something below the surface, maybe an inner sadness that affects one of the characters, one they bravely cover up—most of the time.

But in the true sense of the archetype, a character should stand for something. Something that affects a great number of the readers, something the reader can identify with at a deeper level than the daily routine. When that happens, the character speaks to the reader down through the ages, like Hamlet’s dilemma, something every person who has seen the play remembers and something that in some way reflects on his or her own life.

The plot has to work. Most writers trip up somewhere, but the world has to hold together. In a contemporary romance, the traffic has to go the right way up (or down) Madison Avenue, in a paranormal a dragon who can’t breathe fire can’t suddenly start doing it half way through the book without good reason. Everyone has to act in character, Americans can’t suddenly become French, brown eyes shouldn’t turn blue, unless the owner was wearing contacts, and novels set in the Regency shouldn’t have heroines in crinolines.

The author has to keep all those balls in the air, and at first it’s tricky. A plan is an enormous help, together with whatever tools the author finds necessary. Rewrites can add depth and richness.

A lot of beginning writers are pantsers. They just start, then very often they stall partway through when the story peters out. They learn to write past that eventually.

Me, I’ll take all the tools I can get. But I’m also all about jettisoning them when they’re not working. I don’t think many writers use exactly the same method throughout their careers. I could be wrong, since there are as many different ways of writing as there are writers.

Recently I’ve been stopping half way through writing a book to redo the plot. The characters and the story want to move in a different direction and so I stop. And yet the overall shape of the book remains the same.

So I’m going to try the next book with an outline and let it take me to new places. Wish me luck because this is new to me and I’m a bit scared. And excited!

As we all know, there are some crazies on teh interwebs. We’ve all heard about them, read them, or even experienced them. If you’re an author, you might also get the bonus of getting some crazy emails. Fan letters, hate letters, the works.

Every so often, an author will mention a “speshul” email on twitter. Recently, some authors talking about such a happenstance were HelenKay Dimon, Larissa Ione, Jaci Burton, and Lauren Dane.

Here’s an example.

Dear Larissa,

Thank you so much for writing your Demon books. I’ve been following the Demonica series since the first one, PLEASURE UNBOUND was released, and I can’t tell you how glad I am that I found them.

Finally!

An author is writing books that are specifically relevant to me! I, too, have my own special Demon who rocks my world. It’s so nice that you do too, and that you can understand where I’m coming from.

One of my problems with the series is when Wraith gave the Heofon to Kyran. Wraith would never have done such a thing because it would have been all about him and no one else. Why did you do that? You were wrong. Why would he do that?

And you’re wrong about Hell. I’ve been there. Satan is super cool. I’m going to tell him about your sucky books.

If I had more time, I’d tell you more about my Demon, but you don’t deserve to hear about him. I’m going to tell my demon to kick your demon’s ass the next time he sees him in hell.

I hope you learned your lesson. I’ll be looking for your next Demonica book, just to see if you did. Do not disappoint me in this. I do not like being disappointed.

Your #1 Fan

P.S. I’ve got my eyes on you.

So there you go. Why does this involve all of you? Well. Here’s where the fun begins! I teased the aforementioned authors that I was tempted to write them a very special fan letter. They said they’d post any bat shit crazy email I sent them.

This is where you come in. You have your choice of any of those four authors. Write the craziest, most freaky, creepy, incendiary email you can, and send it to crazyfanletter@gmail.com. (I know, I know I said I’m for contests where you just have to post to be entered, but don’t you think this is a fun and worthy cause?!) **NB** Because I’m having you email that specially created address, please include your info (name + address) in your email to expedite the shipping process for winners. Believe me – I won’t be sharing your information. And, you don’t need to sign your fan letter with your own name – sign it however you want, and add the info somewhere else in the email.

I’ve found an impartial panel, and the winner will get a copy of one of HelenKay Dimon’s books. (I’m hoping to find Holding Out for a Hero at Borders.) There might also be additional winners who get one of Larissa Ione’s Demonica books.

Incidentally, if you have any questions, please post them here, at the blog, rather than emailing that address. Also, if you’d like – and to keep conversation going, which author you’re writing your fan letter to. It’d be great if we could get a nice mix.

And don’t worry – I’ll be posting the best letters we get, and possible snippets of others as well. Ready, set, go!

*P.S. That’s not a real reader letter. I wrote that with my good friend Mad. At one point I had to tell her she was being too nice. And we kept trying to up the crazy, but we’re just not that good. I’m pretty sure you can do much better.

So actually, I really wanted to title this “can’t we all just be average?” But honestly – would that catch your attention? Would you care about a post like that? And who knows. Maybe I feel like stirring the pot. (Not really, but since when have I not been stubborn? Never. That’s when.)

I will say I keep a relatively low profile, because I’m paranoid. I’m also somewhat young, and I’d like to keep my options open for the public, and private sector. And I’ve seen how bat shit crazy some people get on the internet. I know if someone really wanted to find information about me, they could. Easily. But the idea is for me not to catch the attention of “teh crazies.”

I never know what will resonate with others, or not. I thought Raoul Bova (the 1st guy in “Under the Tuscan Sun”) would be big in romance land. Even though I’m pretty over him now, I had quite liked him. And admit it. We all know how much romance readers, writers, and bloggers like pouring over the eye candy.  Which is why I’m going to post pictures of Andy Whitfield and Matthew Bomer. (Both of whom I mentioned in my brilliant post The Curse of Ennui.) Actually, the post I most wanted people to read was simply titled You Guys. [Come on - I thought it was very mature, and fitting across the board and applies to a number of situations. Me! Mature!]

I also had a contest post talking about… contests, but I’m about to almost renege on my stance for the one of the parts, but I think for good cause. (Keep an eye out- I’m giving away Jill Shalvis’s Double Play, and I’d like to give away HelenKay Dimon’s Holding Out For a Hero for another. Hopefully I’ll be able to get it, and I didn’t just embarrass myself be becoming a liar.)

Anyway, I scan twitter like I imagine police officers listen to the police scanner these days. I’m on hiatus. It’s no fun. Apparently I depend on twitter for a lot of my social interaction. I choose not to ponder that carefully. (Also because my age demographic, most of my friend’s lives are in the toilet right now. That’s also not a subject I want to address because I’m rather bitter about it all.) I see comments on certain posts, or discussions.

A recent [yet recurring one] is being part of the “in crowd.” Everyone knows the “big blogs” in romance land are DA and SBTB. Most people also know about KKB and KB seems to be getting more attention these days too. I’d do links, but right now I’m too lazy. Maybe later. Or maybe one of the amazing schedulers/formatters at the pond will take care of it. It seems everyone also knows about Mrs. Giggles, and… that one lady who does a billion reviews a day, but oftentimes seems she reads a different book from the rest of us. (My memory is ril gud. Honest. Hah! Harriet Klausner. It came to me in a few days. See?!)

Let me first say, I don’t [regularly] visit any of those blogs. Everyone once in a blue moon I’ll click over, but I generally… just don’t. I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read at Mrs. Giggles- it seems she is willing to say what others aren’t. Karen does too, but I think I’m kind of scared of her. (I also want to say, I have a slightly more positive association with Mrs. Giggles because some people have asked me if I’m her O_o. Well, I’m not. But I’d be super cool if I was! Also, Sybs told me flat out she’d kill me if I was and was lying to her. As you see, Sybs is also scary, and made of hilarious awesome.) Oh! But I also like how people in the comments at Karen’s blog are willing to call others out. Karen especially. Accountability is also important. (And I think people just wouldn’t ask Karen what her problem is, because she’d tell them. Then demand an answer to her question. Waste of time – best to answer first.) Would I do it in the exact same way? No – but I’m not Karen. Nevertheless, I like that she can be a bulldog with certain points. I definitely respect and appreciate that.

Generally, people like being agreeable. It’s empirically proven. If you want someone to agree with you, you end your sentence with some sort of affirmative, right? Or maybe, it’s people don’t like saying “no.” Which is why I sometimes end a sentence with “no?” (Because it amuses me.) Truth. You can talk circles around people with things like this. It’s also why people who write surveys or conduct polling obsess so much over wording and answer choices. (Yay, I’m finally putting some of my college education to good use! *snork*) This is a good, and bad thing.

The purpose of saying something bellicose (yay Latin!) then, is more hits. More publicity, more more more. Would I love to be paid to sit around and read and review books and blog? You bet a significant amount I would! (I’d say life but that seems too drastic, no?) Also… I don’t really see what’s so special about me that I should be paid to do that. I also think I’d run out of content pretty quickly. (And, at a few of the blogs I visit regularly, I’m 60% sure the others have no idea I’m a reviewer.) A friend from college recently told me I’m in the top 1% of … something… edumacated… (I like to think I have a sense of humor too, ok? In fact, maybe this entire damn blog post is an exercise in building up my fragile ego. So humor me, dammit.) That was a somewhat good feeling, then again, my current circumstances are pretty sad. So it doesn’t matter. But that statement circles back to my “popular” topic – which also fosters “SPECIAL!” and “IMPORTANT!” (See? There’s a logical connection.)

I also believe strongly in standing by what I say, so I prefer not to say something extremely stringent or polarized, because I’m also extremely inconsistent. I change my mind a lot, it seems, and am indecisive. I simply refuse to be fake. If I don’t like you, I prefer to not deal with you entirely. Or, I’ll exchange a civil “hello” and move on, careful not to engage in any other way.

Opinions are all well and good, as long as they hover somewhere around the realm of reason. I know people get called Nazi’s a lot… which… really makes the word lose all meaning. And belittles actual historical events. (Though admit it – the Nazi uniforms were hot. They had some tailoring and style going on. Sad about you know, all the other connotations attached…) A lot of people seem to harbor a lot of antagonism toward Jane, Sarah, and Karen, I’m going to say off the top of my head. I’m sure there are a myriad of reasons and potentialities for this. And as I said – everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion. Others, dislike them for their “popularity.” I tend to associate mob mentality, to DA and SBTB, more, especially, based simply on what I’ve seen/heard.

Something else that might bother people is the general tone of “sycophantic” support found in a number of regulars. I won’t name who said that to protect the guilty. You know, props to “the big blogs” for creating such supportive communities. I say as long as the crazy is kept to the keyboard and not violating laws or infringing on people’s privacy… well,  better to rant online than shoot someone. I might wonder how these people actually act in person as well. But I’m too lazy. My blogging self is close to identical to my “real life self.” Or at least I like to think so. I over think. (But I think I’m right.)

In short, I’m deciding to be guilty of exactly what people are fed up with – talking to hear the sound of my own voice. Or, I guess typing to see my own words published on a blog. (And we’re all missing out, really, because I have quite a nice voice. Honest. Ask Sybs (or don’t really, she gets mad at me too often) JenB, or c2, or Holly. I’m pretty sure all of them have heard me speak, or at least read something.) Anyway, my point is… there is something slightly narcissistic about blogging. (And who here thinks Echo was dumb as hell for falling in love with a gay man? Hm, apparently late night posts under extreme stress make me more incendiary. Or just make really random comments that too easily can be misconstrued.)

I like to think I contribute something to the community, either by persuading, or outright bullying people into buying books I enjoyed. (I’m pretty talkative, as you can see.) Or my little Share the Love thing I did around the holidays. I’d like to have more giveaways, but I’m poor. Like, embarrassingly poor. But it’s ok, because I’ve been a student for so long I’m too poor to afford pride. So I have none. Maybe some day when I grow up and stuff, I’ll wish I never wrote this. (No but srsly, at this point, it’s true.) So really, I’m just talking to have something to do in between what I should be doing. And I like talking with you. Truly.

Not that I’ll do it if I don’t want to, but what interests you? How did you find out about the pond? What makes you come back? What makes you a kind soul who comments on these posts? (And did I tell you every time you comment on a post at the pond a fairy gets its wings? And two fairies get their wings when you comment on one of my posts?) Honestly, I am curious, because some of you who comment have been swimming around the pond longer than I have. And new or old, you all rock.

So go ahead – help some fairies get their wings! (I’d add a picture but dammit I can’t find one. And Sybs – before you get mad at me again, doing this cut into my sleeping time only, not my other stuff time )

Our good friend C-Squared blogged about this – and if you follow me on twitter, you’ll know I whined about it a lot – 2009 was not a good year for me. For a variety of reasons. Whatever. I haven’t/hadn’t been able to read as much. I put off books I was looking forward to, because when I started them, they simply didn’t grip me.

I only read I think a little over 100 books in 2009. Which… for me, is sad. In ’07 I read something like 350 books. (I don’t actually keep track, because… well that’s time I could spend reading!) I did do a reading challenge with a counter though, which is why I have that ball park figure. What did I do instead of read and write reviews? Let me tell you.

Instead of going back to crafts, etc, of which I did do some… or cooking and baking – which I also did … I watched tv. And played mindless computer games.
I decided that Bubble Spinner is the devil’s handmaiden. And Lucky Balls is close behind. Mind the Blox took up some time, but not nearly as much as the first two.

And then there was Rome Puzzle/Cradle of Rome. Incidentally, I’m linking because I’m a giver. Enjoy.

Of course, I also frittered time away on Twitter. Which I’m [trying] to take a hiatus from now. A number of people have gotten increased emails from me. And look! I’m blogging! But this is a topic I’ve been meaning to get to anyway.

I also spent a lot of time on Hulu. Free movies and television! Sadly, only to residents of the USA. I don’t know of any international sites that are similar, or I’d share them. What are some of the shows I watched? Here I’ll link to imdb for the international crowd. (And I hope you know I appreciate you all very much!) *Also, word is that Hulu will start charging for its content soon. Apparently they find the commercials insufficient. When that happens, it’s goodbye Hulu for me. Sad.

White Collar. I also tried to catch this on USA. Hello. Matthew Bomer? He is pretty. I also can’t resist catching up on episodes of Nip/Tuck when they’re posted… but that’s such a train wreck I’ll save you all from the pain.

I also got DVD’s from the library of Burn Notice, and Bones. Two fantastic shows. First of all, Jeffrey Donovan and David Boreanez  – I simply have very positive associations with both of them, because of The Pretender, and Buffy. Then there’s Gabrielle Anwar – who I think is very striking – and Emily Deschanel is awesome.

And… I hate to admit it… but… I’m watching, and enjoying Cougar Town. While Courtney Cox… I don’t know how to feel about her, Christa Miller and Josh Hopkins are great. And the dialogue, script, it’s all very enjoyable. And aside from a few episodes of “cougar” ness, that’s not a big part of it. I think it was just the name to attract buzz. Or, I think and hope. Then I randomly catch episodes of Modern Family, In the Middle, and Ugly Betty… but not enough to mention.

I watched a few movies – but not fantastic ones. But one, was…

The film, is Strictly Sexual. Now hear me out. I tried telling a chat about it, but they were like “zomg Lime! You’re watching pr0n?!!??!” *facepalm* Anyway – it reminded me of a contemporary romance novel, actually. (And ok, so the premise is raunchy, but it’s only rated R. Come on now.

Rome (yum, Kevin McKidd), or Spartacus: Blood and Sand are much more scandalous. Incidentally, authors, Andy Whitfield. Please to use him as inspiration for a hero. No really.)

So, it’s about two women who are friends, and not looking for a relationship… but want a physical connection. So, they go and find two guys. Who they think are gigolos. But actually are construction workers new to the city. [The movie takes place in CA – the guys are from Queens, NY.) They decide to have a purely “benefits” er, relationship. Not even so much the friends part. Actually, one of the girls is really uptight, and she decides “keeping” the boys will help her learn about sex an improve her confidence. Come on now – there are romance novels with a lot less in terms of premise.

The point is – the movie seems shallow – but it follows the relationship between the two couples. The fact that they can’t just be hooking up without emotional ties forming, and divergent paths. There’s the two couples, then the fact that the women are friends, and the men are friends. And have been. A lot of different relationship dynamics and complexities. There’s the incredibly sweet, happy, amazing fairy tale ending… then the slightly bittersweet realistic one. Anyway, I thought it was cute. And would be something like a romance novel on the silver screen.

For one couple, it works out. Romantically. They fall in love. For another, it doesn’t. It’s incredibly real. A little coarse at times I suppose, and not as fluffy cotton candy as a romance novel. (The characters don’t go running around saying how this is the best sex they’ve ever had in their life from the get go, and nobody really waxes poetic about their feelings. Or angst.) Tough there is some of it. Anyway, it’s loosely, to my mind, a romance novel on the “big” screen.

There you have it.

Of course, I did read some fantastic books. By Lisa Kleypas. Jill Shalvis. HelenKay Dimon, Lauren Dane. And of course a number of other authors had stories I enjoyed as well. Julie Cohen, and India Grey were two of my category “discoveries.”

Nevertheless, I spent more than my time amount of time watching things, instead of reading.

I’ve been incognito of late.  I haven’t talked to you good folks in a while so I crawled out of my hole to have a whine and whinge, and to see how many of you are in the same situation. It’s the start of a new year – a year I know will have a lot of changes for me and my family.  I’m just waiting to see what will be the next shoe dropped… 

The holidays were joyous mayhem – a whirlwind of family, cooking, cleaning, visiting, more cooking, more cleaning, more family.  Just insane fun.  Now January is painfully slow in comparison.  So as I take stock, it  occurs to me that the Grateful Dead had it right in their song “Truckin’” (video provided below for your enjoyment)…

Sometimes the lights all shining on me
Other times I can barely see
Lately it occurs to me
What a long strange trip it’s been

My life of late has certainly been a long, strange trip.  Despite my perennially creative counting, I’m still getting older.  Of course, this means my daughter and my parents are also getting older.  Relentless aging has introduced so many complications into what was once such a simple life that my mind is regularly boggled.  Not that it takes a lot to boggle this old girl, but, still, consider me boggled.

For example, I have a regular sense of outrage that my body is rebelling.  I used to prize my “cast iron stomach” that is now made of easily dented tin, metaphorically speaking.  And my eyes! Oh my goodness, my eyes.  I’m convinced signs and menus are being made in smaller type than before.

My daughter is a different story.  I made the mistake the other day of watching a video of her when she was a baby.  I could just eat her up.  She was so small, and sweet, and so very pink.  She was like a strawberry confection – red hair, ivory skin, and always, always dressed in pink.

Today? Today she’s a pre-teen who has begun to notice boys and frequently thinks her mom is weird.  She has occasional flashes of her younger self – I cherish those times when she seems like “my little pink girl” again.  She also has regular bouts of some other entity that just makes me want to shake my mom and say “how did you put up with me?!?”  Because, as you could guess and to my horror, my daughter is JUST LIKE ME.  Argh!

Then there’s my parents.  My folks have been married for 50 years.  After college, I left and did my own thing, occasionally living at home, but mostly on my own.  I moved close to home about 8 years ago and have gotten to know my parents.  I have come to realize that they’re not only the people who sired me, but they’re my friends as well.  And they’re aging.

My dad has lived with a significant illness since March 2000.  The doctors told us to prepare to lose him in two to five years, or less.  As you can tell, he’s lasted much longer than that mostly due to the tremendous care of my mom.  She nurses and cares for my dad, oversees his meds, argues with doctors for the best care, and generally holds him together.  She’s become an expert on all aspects of his care.

Now Dad is getting more frail.  He’s not bouncing back from mild illness as he once did. His mind is starting to falter much like his mom did just scant months before she died.

I also noticed the other day how much my mom has aged in the last ten years, and especially in the last month.  This has  taken such a toll on her.  She was once the very pampered wife of a hale and hardy man who did very nearly anything she asked. The overnight adjustment to a diametrically opposed role has been hard on her.  Now that Dad is getting worse, I’m equally worried about Mom.

This all came on the heels of my being laid off last September from a job I’d had for 13 years.  Admittedly it was a job that I had come to hate, but still…  I want to use a less polemic word than “hate” but I really had come to dread each day for so many reasons.

Keep in mind I’ve done nothing but work full time for almost 30 years.  I’ve never been more than a week out of a job in my life.  Not working – not going to work each day – has been very odd.  I have some severance that will last me another few weeks and I really will start seriously looking for a job.  Soon. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to get to know myself.  I’m even going to go back to school.  We’ll see what the future brings.

So all this to say aging sucks.  It has its high spots – watching my daughter grow into a wonderful young woman – and its low spots – watching my parents age.  But as Jim Morrison said, no one here gets out alive.  It’s up to us to make the best of it we can.  I think it was Chuck Swindoll or Lou Holtz who said something to the effect that our attitude in life is 10% what happens and 90% how we react to it.  Words to live by.

So, the title may be misleading… but this is a contest post. It’s also a rant, because… well what’s an entry from your good friend Limecello without some ranting, right?

Anyway. I basically stopped visiting blogs. I used to visit nearly 200 daily. And I don’t mean with google reader or something (also, did I totally make that up?) I bookmarked them, and I visited each and every one. I tried to comment on them all as well, but sometimes I just had no idea what to say. That happens. I’m not sure what the proper comment is without seeming inane or something.

My point being – recently I’ve seen more and more complaints that blogs have no content these days. They’re just… contests. I, for one, love contests. They’re how (as I’ve said) I “discovered” a number of authors and series. Yay for contests! (Contest whores less so, but that’s another post for another time.)

Authors often post links to contests on twitter – blogs they’re visiting, etc, where there is also a giveaway. Oh boy, oh joy, right?

Wrong. Maybe I just don’t care anymore. Or I’ve been suffering from book and general ennui… but oftentimes I can’t even be bothered to read through the rules. E.g. Comment here, blog about it, put it on facebook, and cross reference with twitter, follow all of us who blog here, and my great aunt Jane, and stand on your head. While reciting the preamble to the United States Constitution.

In many instances, I’ve heard people say they’d rather just buy the book. And upon further reflection, dear bloggers and authors, is that your intent? If so… sneaky. And well played, my friend. Well played.

But cynical me thinks it has to do with promo. In order to enter the contest, you must follow me! And my blog! And lurve me! And pet me! And link to me! And make me POPULAR. *shrug* So I think we all know I’m not the blog owner here… I wouldn’t even know if you were following this blog. (And isn’t it google reader makes it something different weird? I dunno.)

Long story short, the only requirement to be eligible for this contest is that you comment. As yourself, and don’t cheat by creating socks. I check to the best of my ability, and it really pisses me off to have to double check, etc.

What am I giving away, my dear Boo Boo’s and not Boo Boo’s? A copy of Coming Undone by Lauren Dane. It is unsigned, because I bought it my little own self with my little own money. I also basically jumped through all necessary contest hoops, because it took about 6 phone calls, and 2.5 hours of driving to finally get one copy. This copy, my friends, is precious.

Or… if you want bonus entries to this contest… and here I can’t resist. I need you to pat your head and you rub your belly, while jumping rope. But not just any jump – double dutch. Then I want you to do a hand stand outside in the snow, while reciting the Emancipation Proclamation, immediately followed by the choreography of Thriller. [All must be recorded and sent to me.] And I promise… if someone does do that… I’ll send you [well, the first full entry, but I don't think more than one person would even contemplate doing this...] a copy of Coming Undone as well.

So ready? Set? … GO!

Well, this is a very vague and open topic… but of course I’m going to limit it to the romance community. I think we all know that what you do online can come back to haunt you- right or wrong.

Authors sometimes go a little… er, crazy? Over reviews. There are numerous examples. Authors have created socks (fake profiles) and reviewed their own books in glowing terms. Bloggers or readers have had comments they’ve made bite them in the ass. Or you know, other stuff you do.

Every so often I see an author post “what to do?” asking the question, because someone who doesn’t like his or her books keeps entering contests on the author’s blog or website. Either for, or not, the author’s books. I don’t know what the answer is. Maybe this is just a very cautionary post with open ended everything. In fact, I like that. (The open ended-ness.)

There are of course some authors whose books I enjoy more than others. I love to pimp out books. I love for people to read the same books I do, because then I can dish with them. We can discuss the book and squee and talk about what we loved and how wonderful it is. If I like the author based on his/her online presence, that’s just a bonus. I want good things for good people, so I might push harder.

If I don’t like a book, I won’t push it. I might like the author very much as a person, but I might think one of his or her books was… not that great. Possibly even sub par. Won’t push that. Or, maybe I like the books, but the author less. Unless the author has done something “bad” or to elicit a bad memory or reaction, I won’t mind pushing his or her books based on what someone is looking for. I’m always happy to give book recommendations.

I’m also honest – I’ll say a number of people like whatever book, but me? Not so much. Every so often I have people say “OMG UR SO RONG!” But… whatever. I didn’t like it. Said person can’t crawl into my brain and change my thoughts or what I think. Or fix grammatical errors, or misuse of words, or plot holes either. :X Yeah, I notice those things.

On the other hand… I won’t push the books of an author if she or he does something I term as “shitty” – or something that rubs me the wrong way. That’s a danger of social media.

I’ve talked books with a number of readers and authors… and have exchanged “shit lists” with some people. I’ve decided to avoid a few authors based on his or her actions. A friend had an author tell her off – when the author didn’t even read her comment on the blog. Diva behavior, embarrassing someone in a very public forum, is in bad taste. Worse when the author doesn’t even actually read the comment. I’ve decided to no longer buy that author’s books. Said author has never done anything to me… and likely won’t miss my, or my friend’s money… but neither of us see any reason to support him/her.

Authors that start ignoring a reader, or blogger after a less than glowing review. (Wake up call- a number of sites out there only post good reviews. Doesn’t mean your book is awesome. Maybe… but not necessarily.) Unfollowing someone. Be it on twitter, facebook, a blog, etc. There are ways for people to tell, and they do notice. I admit, I’m crazy and excessively sensitive and think-y, so that last one bothers me. A lot. I’m trying to get over it. But can I prevent it from affecting me? Not at this point. Subsequently, I don’t plan to buy X author’s books in the foreseeable future. I’m already drowning in books and other things to do anyway.

Something else I’ve noticed. Being subscribed to author’s newsletters. I visit a lot of random sites periodically, so I’m not 100% sure what I signed on for or not. I do save all the notification emails, but truly I’m too lazy to check. And too busy at this point. However, there are some authors I swear somehow got my email address from something or other – maybe a blog post? A comment? I don’t know – and subscribed me to his or her newsletter. This makes me unhappy.

Also, when newsletters don’t have a way for you to unsubscribe. I don’t know if it’s bad for an author’s newletter to be marked as spam, but I might do that. Some newsletters won’t die – and I know I’ve unsubscribed from them a number of times, yet they keep coming back.

Then there’s facebook. I don’t want to become a fan of you, dear author. If I did, I would do so proactively. I don’t do much with my facebook. I’m on twitter much more. Too much. I’ll cut back for a while, I think. Maybe.

This is also why I’m not on good reads. Not enough time, no interest, and all I hear about it is “WHY IS THIS ST00PID AUTHOR RECOMMENDING HIS/HER OWN BOOKS TO ME?!?!”
Does not want.

Anyway, those are just the negatives. Because I’ve been online blog hopping, on twitter etc, I discovered a number of great authors.  Contests are also fantastic. In fact, I won one of Nalini Singh’s books, which led me to buy her entire Psy/Changeling series – and read her Silhouette Desire categories. The same with Kresley Cole. (Sans you know, the non-existent harlequin books.) JR Ward as well – though maybe I’m less grateful for that one. Jaci Burton, Lauren Dane, Megan Hart. Anya Bast. Sydney Croft – and thus Larissa Ione and Stephanie Tyler. Susan Lyons. Dee Tenorio. Elizabeth Hoyt. I’d never have discovered those authors if I hadn’t been online. And many more terrific authors as well. And they’ve written some of my favorite books.

(And I am not mentioning Lisa Kleypas, Erin McCarthy, HelenKay Dimon, Christina Dodd, Eloisa James, Deirdre Martin, Leanne Banks, Emilie Rose, Katherine Garbera, Nancy Warren, Jennifer Crusie, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Julia Quinn, Sarah Mayberry, Rachel Gibson, Nicole Jordan, etc, because I’d already read their books. Oh wait.)

So there you go. Being online has good and bad things. Does this mean stay off line? No. Does this mean you should be a robot? No. Do you always have to be Mary Sue? I’d like to hope not. Civility and basic human courtesy would always be nice… but differences in opinion are also good too.

Just some thoughts.

I know I probably come across as a Debbie Downer. Or, actually, I don’t know. Sybil tells me (every so often, that I’m being too much of a Mary Sue and that I’m butt-kissing. And then she tells me I can’t have X book because the author just died and I probably will hate it and even she isn’t mean enough to post an F or DNF review of author who newly died’s book.) Apparently I’m equal parts Glinda, and Elphaba. (And yes I am disappointed in myself for not remember if L. Frank Baum had given the Wicked Witch a name.) And for what it’s worth, I don’t think I brown nose – I simply try to remain upbeat on my “public face” and be happy and celebrate achievements. If you look carefully, I actually do very little promotion.

I’d like to be able to say that we all realize there are different levels of importance, and gravitas. The tragedies of say, the Holocaust, or slavery, are much greater than a fatal car accident you see on the local news. To drive the point home, it’s a lot worse than your computer dying. Or even, you spilling something on your new book. I get that. We all get that.

At the same time… the little things are, and can be bothersome. One of the things that pisses me off the most are the unsympathetic people. Not even the eternal optimists… just those that belittle your woes and feelings. It makes me livid. I want to break, crush, and kill things.

Let me give you an example. I might say… “I got a really nasty paper cut today, and think it’s infected. Ouch. Whine!” And personal acquaintance will say “yeah, well, at least you don’t have to deal with road side bombs in Iraq.”

Um, no shit. Fuck you. I realize a paper cut in no way compares to dealing with IEDs. I know I can’t even comprehend what it would be like to have to live like that. But you know what? I still bled, and possibly have an infection. Of course it gets worse, but it could also get better.

I have mixed feelings about saying this… but – or because – it seems on blog land you always have to be happy. And nice. And pleasant. Always. And what we do is whine and bitch and moan to our friends in private. Through emails, instant messages, direct messages, chat rooms, and the like. Ok, fine. But you know, that’s not realistic. Because, admit it – you do that. Or have bitch fests over text messages, the phone, in person. You have to, or you’ll explode. It’s unnaturally to be able to take everything in stride, rationalize it and be hunky dory.

Not that we’re always nice – I realize this. Really. I’m not trying to create a shit storm. (And God help me if I do.) What I’m really saying, I guess… is respect each other. Listen to what the other person is saying. Step into his or her shoes. I feel like this is my blessing, and my curse. I think too much. I do my best to see everything from both sides. (Although I also freely admit to being quite irrational. Every so often I hate everyone who is more successful and younger than I am. It’s nothing personal – just a principle thing.)

Don’t dismiss or disallow someone’s feelings. Unless I’m doing that to you. I’m always right. [Did my very sorry attempt at levity work?]

And/but sometimes… yes. It is, what it is. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Don’t get mired in the nitty gritty. But at the same time, yes, it is what it is. Maybe some little thing is wrong, and a person will stand to the death and fight over that tiny detail. I can respect that. [Not just because I'm like that. I like to think I'm pretty easy going - but things can set me off. I generally don't like confrontation, but I will argue something into the ground if I believe in it. I might even use caps lock, expletives, or excessive punctuation.]

And that’s something we need to understand as well. Some authors freak out or hate typos in their printed books. You could say “well that’s only one or two misspelled word out of thousands.” But guess what – very likely other readers notice it. Sure, it doesn’t make the reader gasp, and throw the book across the room, while they fling an arm up and faint backwards, shrieking “I cannot believe this travesty has seen the light of day!” But it still registers. So, to explain. If I see a typo, I’m not going to go ape shit. I’m not going to throw the book out the window, and I’m not going to write down every page with a typo in my review. But I will see it. That’s all.

That probably failed miserably as an example, and I’ll likely regret it.

Let me summarize, or try to explain my point. Be respectful. Allow people to disagree, as long as it’s rational. Personal attacks, or stalkerish behavior is always unnecessary and excessive. But let people have opinions that differ from yours. Don’t belittle them for that, or condescend. (Because chances are that snarky, subtle insult you couldn’t resist inserting has been picked up by someone. And that someone is smarter than you are. Really – there’s always someone smarter out there.) Don’t be an ass.

Be Sensitive.