Last year I made the resolution to find a new-to-me historical romance author to love. I signed up with NetGalley for the Avon historical releases and let rip. I read them. Remembering that in the past, covers were no indication of the book inside (anyone remember the original Fabio cover for “Flowers From The Storm”?) I sniggered at the endless parade of garishly coloured prom dresses and set to reading.

Well, I succeeded. I found one.

My criteria were very personal. I’m British (no, I hear you cry, you don’t say!) and I was brought up with my history. Learning it, breathing it, experiencing it every day. I went to a school that was set next to a twelfth-century gatehouse and took its name from the landmark. I lived in a house that was an amalgam of history – actually three houses knocked into one, clumsily in places, so that our kitchen was down a sloped passageway and our bathroom was down two steps from the rest of the house. I didn’t just know British history, I lived it. And I loved it, so I read and read and read.

Because I’m used to subtle differences of lifestyle and attitude, sometimes the characters in historicals read a lot more like twenty-first century Americans. It’s harder to pin this one down, but it’s an attitude, an emphasis on individuality and the right of a person to live his or her life the way he or she wants to. Other things, too. Difficult, but it’s just there.

The language, too, but I don’t entirely blame the author for that. What seems normal speech and syntax can come over as awkward and foreign-sounding, definitely not something a Brit would say, then or now. I write books with American characters, but I have American editors who go through them and point out things the average American would never say or do. It constantly amazes me that, even after ten years of studying, visiting, trying to immerse myself in the culture, I still get things wrong, and I can only be grateful to the editors who put me right. Who knew that Americans don’t have cafetieres, for instance? They have French presses.

So it’s not snobbery or entitlement or any other stupid thing that makes me wail about a book’s inaccuracy. I can’t unlearn what I know. Don’t get me wrong, if a book carries me away, if the characters burst off the page, then I’ll swallow a few nits and bits. Who cares, because nobody can get a book entirely right. However, I do ask that the author transports me to another age, another time, and lets me vicariously live another life. Not much to ask, is it?

Apparently, it is.

Some historicals use so few historical details that they can claim to be accurate historically, because they don’t actually go into details. So they could be set in the 1810s, the 1830s, or even later. Did it matter? Well, yes, because it meant the characters’ dilemmas weren’t in sharp focus. They were generic, like not being able to attract a man or failing after a season. Historically, if you were rich enough or well-connected enough, that didn’t matter.

And the Regency spies! There weren’t any, not in the way that the books describe them. The Napoleonic wars were largely military. The big thing about spies, all pre-Bond spies (yes, Bond, James Bond started the turnaround) was that they were emphatically not gentlemen. This is an era way before Realpolitik, and because a spy’s stock in trade was to lie and cheat and betray his friends, they were despised, not admired. Spies were not gentlemen. They were even kept separate from the other troops in the army, because the other men looked down on them and would victimize them. So a book about a spy in Regency times has a big hill to climb to make it believable. I tend to avoid them, but I’ve read one or two that worked, mainly because the heroes weren’t also aristocrats.

I love detail. Not so much that it swamps a story, but enough to give me a real feel for the time and place. For that matter, that goes whether it’s a historical or a contemporary or a paranormal. I like books that have an individual voice and stand out as different and special. A generic book about “the season,” that has obligatory mentions of Almack’s, and seven zillion young, dark, handsome dukes isn’t going to hold my interest. Nor is a book about a small town where everything is sweetness and light, for that matter.

I started to list the books I read this year, but it just got more and more depressing and it just read as horrid. Most of them are here, and a few are on ERWA, so you can look them up if you like. But I really, really wanted to find a new author to love. Every time I opened a new romance by a new-to-me author, I thought, “Perhaps this is the one. Perhaps this time I’ll get sucked in and I won’t be able to put this book down.” It happened once. Does that mean I’d wasted my time? By no means.

I got into American authored romance in the nineties, via writers like Jo Beverley, Mary Balogh, and Laura Kinsale, who all knew how to write a good book with great characters and still keep the historical details on the button. I wanted another one of those. Not too much to ask, you might say? Well, it seems so. The publishers are dumbing down, as if a reader of romance won’t notice or won’t care about the details. They fail to see that with the homogenisation of the history and the plot comes the homogenisation of the characters. Types rule now, as if being tall, dark, handsome and ruthless is all there is. I want something else, something that makes me remember characters. I read Julie Ann Long’s latest the other week and it almost made me weep. She has a lovely, frothy style, well suited to a light Regency romance, but there must have been a historical error on almost every page, some of them enough to make the most anti-historical reader’s eyes boggle. Faberge eggs in the 1810’s? Doesn’t anybody bother fact checking anymore? That book could have been stellar, but the lack of attention to detail, the whole premise (there were very few, if any, girls’ schools in that era) was so unbelievable, it dragged me away from the start of the story. I’ve been told that this book was probably not the best place to start, but with this book she lost my trust, that essential compact between author and reader that means the reader will go wherever the author takes her. I made so many notes, I nearly doubled the size of the file on my Kindle. It wasn’t that I was looking for things to crit, I was just so sad that this could have been a great read, and instead, the lack of attention to history dragged it down and out. I really thought I’d found my second author to love, but I don’t think I can go through that again.

And I’m so sorry. Not just for that, but because with every review, people think I’m too fussy (maybe I am), or setting myself up as an expert (you don’t have to be an expert to notice the errors in most of these books, really you don’t), or I’m jealous (I don’t need to be that, either). I’ve had emails and comments that accuse me of being all of those things. I just want a good historical romance, that’s all. I want to be able to sit back, open my ereader and know I’m in for a good book. Something like opening the latest Sarah Morgan, Nalini Singh, or Desiree Holt and relaxing with a contented sigh to enter somebody else’s world.

By all means, if you want to write a book about a vague era, distantly related to the Regency, do so, but don’t call it a historical. Call it something else, I don’t know, Regency fantasy or something. Authors are doing that with great effect in the steampunk genre, so why not? Just let me know that nobody, from the author to the editor to the publishing house, cares about the historical background and I’ll give it a go.

To give an example of what I mean, try reading a book about New York where the Empire State Building is free to all comers and the Metropolitan Museum is the same place as the one that gives the opera performances. Or a book about American history, where Apaches roam freely among fashionable New York society and everyone accepts it as normal. Would you feel insulted, amused, bewildered? None of the above?

When I opened Miranda Neville’s The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton, I’d almost despaired. I’d waded through masses of dreck, and some even more frustrating “nearly there” books, where something jerked me out of the narrative and made me unable to go on. But Neville delivered. She introduced characters I cared for, enjoyed and could believe in, and they lived in an era that I could recognise as the historical Regency. Believe me, that hasn’t always been the case. She put her characters in unusual but believable and highly enjoyable situations. They were individual and they stood out, so that I can still remember them, months after reading the book. I loved it, and I want more.

So there you have it, my year of reading dangerously. I’ll continue to read, hoping that someday a new author will appear who I can rave about, but I’ll also go back to my old favorites. If you think I’ve overlooked a really great author, please put her my way, and I’ll give her book a go.

Don’t forget, I won’t review books by friends without mentioning that in the review, and I don’t review books put out by publishers that I’m with. That’s so I avoid favouritism and keep myself as unbiased as possible. But if you’ve got it, let me know.

Thanks for listening, as that great transatlantic journalist, Alistair Cooke, used to say.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can get angry and upset without leaving the comfort of your own armchair these days. And listen to a lot of tinkly music while you’re doing it.

At the end of August, I took delivery of a new PC. An Acer X3950, to be precise. A terabyte of hard drive and Windows 7. A nice compact, quiet machine that did what it was told. Before the Acer, I usually had my computers custom-built, since I work the shit out of them, and I know what I want. This time I thought, “No, I’ll get one that has all the guarantees and suchlike in place.” I bought it from a big electronics chain in the UK called Comet.

Oh dear.

Last weekend the computer wouldn’t start. It hung on the welcome screen. I started it in safe mode and discovered that it worked. I disabled the graphics card driver and it started up. That meant I could do backups and then restore it to factory settings.

So it was ready to go back. The computer was barely six weeks old, so I knew I wanted a refund or a replacement unit. Why should I have it repaired? Under UK law, if the item is “not fit for the purpose” or “not of merchantable quality,” I’m entitled to my money back. I thought I was generous considering a replacement.

How naïve of me!

I called Comet. They said I had to call Acer. I explained that my contract was with Comet, not with Acer, and I wanted my money back. They explained that they needed my claim verified. I said okay, where’s the harm (like I said, naïve) and called Acer. All they were prepared to offer me was a repair. I rejected the repair, because again under law, if I accepted it, I’d accepted the unit, it would be considered used, and I couldn’t ask for a full refund. But they wouldn’t offer me anything else. Sod it, I said, (actually I said more than that, but only in private) and called Comet again.

Getting the idea?

But I got lucky at Comet, I guess. I found a nice lady called Amie, who, bless her, knew a bit more what she was talking about. She sent me back to Acer for what is called an RMA number, which Acer, naturally, refused to give me, and then I went back to Amie. Acer said to her that they thought it might be a software problem and they’d charge me for repairing that, so she sent me to the diagnostics department at Comet, who took me through a few procedures, and then were quite happy to sign off on it being a hardware problem and sent me back to Amie. Thank you, Amie, and your compatriots, for sticking with me through this.

That made me think Comet might have had problems with Acer before. Or was I just getting suspicious?

They wanted to browbeat me into accepting a repair. If I sent this thing off to Acer, they will repair it and then send it back, whatever I say, however I protest. One of the guys at Acer had me in tears, because whatever I said, he repeated his script. I asked him to put me on to somebody who knew what they were talking about. He repeated his line about only accepting it for repair.

The hassle? Makes me more determined. So maybe Acer were a little naïve. Or trying it on.

Oh and guess what. No email from any of these companies any more, so I can’t confirm anything in writing unless I write a good ol’ fashioned letter. Which I’ve done.

So the end of the saga? I took the unit back to my local store. They checked it over, confirmed the fault and gave me a refund. Great going. I’ll go there again.

What has this to do with publishing and books? It’s an example of an increasingly common mindset – bullying. We have an anti-bullying campaign going right now, and I think it’s extremely important to deal with the problem at its root, in the schools, because it leads to this kind of behavior. Just because you are bigger than me, it doesn’t give you any right to run rough-shod over my back.

Publishers totally do that. Not all, but sometimes they will do something just because they can. Not because it’s right. Now, I know the publishing industry fairly well. I know the conventions, how to do things, and what they are looking for. Sadly, I recently split with my agent, but I don’t want to rejoin the fray all on my own, so I’m looking for another. I want someone who knows more than I do, and is up for the fight, if a publisher arbitrarily decides that it wants to do something I don’t want it to do. I write, that’s my main focus, and I’m up for anything that frees me up to do that. And having someone more powerful than I am on my side.

So yes, Dorchester. The management at Dorchester is selling books they have no right to. Now in the past, a company could sell unsold copies of stock after a contract came to a close, but not print anymore. Dorchester is selling digital copies, so that doesn’t apply. Despite several authors sending takedowns, as of this post, the books are still there. The authors won’t see a penny of the money.

Do you see the connection? Some companies assume that because they can do something, then that’s okay. It’s up to the customer to know her rights. It’s up to the author/reader/customer, too. And once you stand up for your rights, you’re sometimes seen as a liability, an awkward customer. I came off the phone a time or two in tears the other day, but I got rid of them and came back, because once someone has driven you to extreme emotion, they’ve won. You’ll start to make unjustified, wild comments, or use emotion where it’s not appropriate. Lose it, in other words. They’ve got you.

Reasoned professionalism tends to get results. It doesn’t always do so, but it has a better chance than hysterics. Although, I wonder sometimes.

And at the end of this piece, I should also give an example of good service. A couple of years ago, I bought a netbook from Sainsbury’s (a big supermarket in the UK). After six months, the power button failed and there were a few other things wrong with it. I’m not a hard user, not a button-puncher. I took it back, expecting them to offer me a repair under the guarantee. After all, six months is a bit of a while to have free use of something. Nope. There and then, they gave me a full refund.

Fantastic. The result? I’d never hesitate to go back to Sainsbury’s and they’re one of the stores I go to first. Isn’t that worth something?

Involuntary idleness leaves one with a LOT of time to think.  You know what they say:

“In works of labour, or of skill,
I would be busy too;
For Satan finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do.”
Isaac Watts (1674-1748)

Here’s what’s been on my mind lately…

Now THIS is an alien.

Ancient aliens?  Really?! Puhleez.  And why is that show ALWAYS on television??  It’s always the same discussion and the same pictures and the same theories. Over and over and over again. Hey – get a clue – THE PYRAMIDS ARE JUST REALLY BIG BUILDINGS!

State education systems and school boards. In Texas, or perhaps just our school district, when calculating the ratio of teachers to students, they include in the teacher metric bus drivers and support staff (janitors, cafeteria, office, etc.). HOW is that supposed to be an accurate average measure of how many kids are in actual classrooms and under the supervision of one teacher?? Magically, 25+ kids becomes 17 in all their reported metrics. There are no classes with just 17 except for the special ed classes. FALSE numbers to make everyone look better. Irritates me and makes it nearly impossible to address the problem – it’s HIDDEN from us.

Psychic teens/kids??  Do NOT get me started.  Exploitation much?

Job hunting.  I must be shooting blanks, because I haven’t bagged one yet.

Old movies.  LOVE them.

Autumn. Love the cooler weather, but I’m sick, sick, sick of cleaning the leaves out of the pool.

Cooking.  Love doing it, but if it’s a big, multicourse meal,  I’m so tired afterward, I don’t enjoy the food.

Emily Procter. What is wrong with aging? I mean, can all that Botox, collagen, and Restylane be good for you? Have you seen her lately on CSI: Miami?

My child. She’s growing like a weed. She’s already 5’1″ and she’s only 11 years old. And she’s smart as a whip – already blows me out of the water in math.  She’s the MOST fun kid I’ve met (mom talking here).

Dog hair.  Why the f#$@ is it so bloody difficult to get out of rugs?  Just when I think I’ve vacuumed it all up, I see more! I’ve tried most brands of vacuums, and I keep going back to an old one that sounds like an airplane engine, but sucks great. But danggit – still see more.

Ignorant judges.  I can’t tell you how much it bothers me and how much I think it damages our system when a judge awards money to people because fast food made them fat, or because hot coffee burned them, or because a a band saw cut off their finger.  I mean, c’mon! Let evolution sort it out! Don’t award people for being stupid!  It just perpetuates the problem.

Dumb criminals. I mean, in a certain aspect, I’m glad they’re dumb – it makes them easier to catch.  However, it still makes me shake my head when I see a crook get caught in the car they stole, with the gun they used, and still wearing the clothes with the victim’s blood on it.  D’oh!

What makes you scratch your head?

When I am reading a book for review, I don’t usually read others’ reviews because I don’t want to be influenced.

Also, because time has a way of getting away from me for one reason or another, I don’t have a lot of time to check other blogs or sites and leisurely scroll through reviews. If there’s a book I’m interested in and I’m not sure about purchasing it, sure, I’ll take a minute or two to check it out, including reviews. But other than reviews by my TGTBTU-mates, I very seldom venture out in cyberspace for the express purpose of reading any.

But if for one reason or another I do wander through reviewland — a friend mentions a book she likes or even a specific review of a book she’s recommending or someone here at the blog will talk about one and my curiosity won’t be tamed, doesn’t really matter how — sometimes I’m simply amazed at what I read in other folks’ reviews.

You might see bad grammar or horrible punctuation. Or maybe the review is so lame it seems the reviewer couldn’t even have read the book. That’s nothing. What amazes me is the meanness, the hatefulness, the callousness with intent to hurt. It’s obvious that’s the reviewer’s purpose. They’re not leaving their opinion to benefit anyone, they want to malign and damage, all the while getting their three minutes of fame.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. I agree totally. But what’s wrong with a little diplomacy when venting about another person’s work? There’s no need to stomp on it or degrade it, especially when the reviewer knows his or her words will also wound the author of the piece.

And that’s another issue with some reviews — the author is also trashed right along with their book. The author’s life, beliefs, antics, or anything else has nothing to do with the book being read and reviewed and should not be part of it. You don’t like something the author has said and done? Fine. Don’t read their next book. It has absolutely nothing to do with the current book you’re reviewing.

Some of you will say, “Well, an author needs to have thick skin” when reading reviews. That’s true. Not everyone is going to like every book they read. Even me (though Sybil will debate that!). I’ve given what I consider my fair share of bad grades here at the blog for those books that didn’t work for me. But I do try very hard not to be vitriolic in my discussion of why I didn’t like a particular book. I hope I’ve succeeded in that endeavor. At least I’ve never had an author tell me they were hurt by my words. Can an author ever truly be prepared for a bad review? Maybe. I know he/she is probably never prepared for a mean-spirited review.

If I give a book an F and tell why I feel that way, give examples of what’s wrong in the story in my most humble opinion, I think most authors would appreciate the effort and time I’ve taken in reading the book and writing the review. They may not like the F, and that’s fair. I probably didn’t like giving it. But when it comes to giving a book an F, one star, one rose, one coffee cup, one whatever and also calling the work trash, sacrilegious, it’s not worth the paper it’s printed on, don’t bother buying this book and so on and so forth but with no explanation of why the reviewer feels this way, what’s the purpose other than to be cruel? And why would someone do that? That’s the $64,000 question that may never be answered.

Though you can tell an author that reviews are not personal, that’s true only to a point. They obviously are personal because you are talking about that author’s creation, something they give their blood, sweat, and tears to. It takes maybe half an hour to write an intentional or even unintentional, hateful review. A reviewer should think about the review’s possible long-term effects. Any criticism is going to go down hard, but if that criticism is done tastefully, diplomatically, and honestly, it’s a different pill to swallow. I’ve told plenty of authors I’ve talked with that reviews aren’t personal, and though I may get an “I know,” I also get a look that tells me they’d still rather believe in the tooth fairy than such drivel I just spewed.

Is it easier to say mean things because the Internet doesn’t allow face-to-face contact; therefore, confrontation is nearly nonexistent? If an author attempted to contact the reviewer for a more in-depth explanation, would the reviewer even respond? Probably not. That reviewer has had his/her say, they’ve ripped the heart out of the book and the author, no need to face the consequences. I know we all remember our mothers telling us, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all,” “Treat others as you would like to be treated.” So why don’t we practice that anymore?

Or is that just the way we are today in our society? I hope not. I hope there’s still plenty of people out there who do care about how others are treated, in person or online. Just because we don’t see the person we’re reviewing doesn’t mean we have to lose our humanity, our kindness, our compassion, our willingness to care about our fellow human beings. It doesn’t hurt or take any extra effort to write words that don’t sting or cut but still get the same point across.

Have you seen reviews out there that made you think, “Ouch, that’s mean,” “Wow, that person went a little over the top” or something similar? Are you an author who’s been the recipient of a mean-spirited review? Do you think I’m off base with this opinion? Do you have a differing one? Have you left a review for an author that crossed the line? Did you regret it later or did you feel you were spot on? Do the less-than-kind-hearted reviews out there make a difference? Should they be taken into consideration by other readers? Or should they be ignored if they contain no pertinent and only harmful information?

What have you got to say about it all?

You ever have a really good time one day, then wake up the next morning and feel like a truck hit you?

Yeah? 

Well, that’s where I was about a year ago.  Had a really great job, making really good money, then, BAM! a truck called “Unemployment” hit me.  When I woke up the next day, I was laid off and my body hurt all over.

I don’t remember much of the next several months.  It’s all a blur of depression, job hunting, and more depression.  I can’t say I am surprised the hunting was unsuccessful – I mean, who doesn’t want a depressed, expensive employee? Gack!

What I do remember is I sat on my sofa, researched Scottish castle ruins (I know, weird, right?), shuttled my kid to and from various kid activities, and moped.

I slowly realized that I’ve had a full-time job since I was 18, with the few exceptions of college semesters and one previous lay-off from a different company.  That’s almost 30 years of working all the time.  Does this look familiar to anyone?

Well crap. Here I am. Unemployed, single, kid to raise.  Now what do I do? I started to get mad, then I moped a bit more, and slowly realized it was time to re-think my life.  Helluva time to have the “what do I want to be when I grow up” conversation with myself, isn’t it?  But I did.

I decided to quit lallygagging around and get my law degree. There.  Decision made.  How do I make it happen, I ask myself.  Slowly, and with patience, I answered.

That done, I moved my daughter out of the three bedroom/two bath house and into a studio apartment over the garage at my mom and dad’s house.  Got rid of all the “excess” bells and whistles (just have the cell phone for telephone, etc.) and put a ton of furniture in storage.  I am now stripped down and ready to take anything on.

So. This is where I am today, over a year later, still looking for work, digging around for school grants and other ways to help pay for this new direction I’m taking.  I’m trying to stay local, so I’ll be able to be a mom in addition to all the rest – but at least I have a plan.  And that’s all I need right now – a way forward.

Where are you in your life? Are you doing what you want to do? Where you want to be? Is life turning out the way you thought it would?  How has the economic climate affected you?

Warning – this is a bit of a rant.

I read Harlequin books, more these days than before. I just seem to be on a Harlequin jag right now.

Anyway, pick up a book from the Presents line (Modern Romance in the UK) and you’ll find a reference to “designer” clothes. It is really beginning to get to me. When I read about another 25 year old dressed like a 40 year old, in elegant clothes which are described as “designer,” I want to hurl the book across the room.

Maybe if you understood my background better, you might guess where I’m coming from. All her working life, my mother worked with dress designers. She was a sample machinist and pattern cutter and grader. That means she worked to take a dress off the catwalk and turn it into a viable commercial product. Before she retired, I had a lot of designer clothes, because when a company, Debenhams or John Lewis, say, bought a designer original in order to reproduce it en masse, they weren’t allowed to sell the original. My mother would take the original garment to pieces, find a suitable, more commercial (i.e. cheaper) material, turn a 3D design into a series of flat pieces, and then lay the pieces out on the chosen fabric to get the most out of it. When I visited her at work, phrases like “I can get 6 of those to the roll” and “we can change linen to cotton here,” were legion.

After the garment was put into production, sold and they passed on to the next one, the company was left with a designer garment in pieces. Which my mother, and people of her team, put back together and ‘disappeared.’ So while most of my clothes were a season or two out of date, they were designer originals—and yes, I can name the designer, although for the most part they came without labels. You really don’t need labels to name a designer. Sigh, today, I have to manage with Marks and Spencer and Monsoon, but I’ve never found it much of a hardship, because if it’s for something special, Mum will tailor it for me. And it’s a relief, in a way, because clothes by named designers have to be honoured. See what I mean when you slip on a Givenchy or a Prada.

Then there are the lucrative offshoots, which often provide far more profit for the company than clothes, which are labour intensive and expensive. Perfume, accessories, jewellery, so that we can all afford a bit of Chanel. You can get a piece of clothing with a label from most large stores these days, and they don’t mean a great deal, except that a certain designer has signed off on them. So is our heroine buying from Debenhams and calling it “designer”? She could be.

So, this is designer:

And this:

and this:

and this:

Quirky, different, special. “Designer” means attention to detail, expensive fabrics. It doesn’t mean perfectly fitted, not necessarily. The couture collections are the ones that are made to fit, and there are only a handful of women in the world who can afford to buy regularly. Pret a porter, or Ready To Wear, are the big, commercial collections, but they don’t contain bland, beautifully fitted gowns and clothes. Once, that might have been the case, but when I think of designers like Courreges and Thierry Mugler, somehow I doubt it. I do feel passionately about fashion, because I’ve seen what goes into it, how hard people work, and how committed most designers are about their collections.

(BTW I was more than sad to read about the death of Alexander McQueen. He will be very much missed).

“Designer” means nothing on its own. I can draw a stick man on a piece of fabric, and wolla, I designed it. It’s ‘designer.’

And while I’m on the subject, I would absolutely love for the heroine of a Harlequin novel to dress her age. All these 25 year olds who dress like their mothers—no, I take that back, like their grandmothers, maybe. Give them more than jeans as a token to their age. Give them decent pants, give them a sense of fashion, or a style or something. Please. If they want to dress in classic elegance, then let them be aware of it. Soft pullovers and jeans don’t necessarily make for casual. I can see what’s happening here, and why for so many years Harlequin appealed to the older reader, but these days older readers have a bit of style, too. They dress in jeans, hippy wear, because, let’s face it, they were hippies, some of them. I’m guessing that a Harlequin writer isn’t allowed to mention a designer by name, and that’s half the trouble. So make some up. Get a Harlequin fashion house, call it, I don’t know, Banel or Devenchy, and rock it.

But not just “designer,” please. It’s smacks of the “designer” craze of the 1980’s, and it doesn’t mean anything.

BTW, those designs above pair up. Two each from two designers. Can you name the designers, and say which pair goes with which? And yes, the name of the designer is in the source of the picture, but don’t cheat! (And don’t you just love that big dress at the end?)

C2 and limecello have had their slumps, as have other duckies.  I wouldn’t say I’m in a slump – I’m reading less, certainly, but I’ve been enjoying what I’ve read as opposed to slogging through it in some desperate attempt to rediscover the joy.  (I’m knocking on wood now, to prevent the slump from seeking me out.  It can find you when you speak its name, like all bogeymen.)  There’s a very simple reason why I’m reading less: I’M IN COLLEGE.

As a recent conversation at my male, non-love interest’s 21^st birthday party went (I’m required to add non-love interest, as I am at the age where every mention of someone of the opposite sex will potentially link us together as mates):

“How are you?”

“I’m busy, but that goes without saying.”

“Yep.  I’m stressed, but we all are aren’t we?  How are you? We’re in college, it’s all implied.”

But in the end, I’ve been really grateful to be writing for TGTBTU and my own blog.  I’m the kind of person who needs some pressure to perform, and the blogs remind me to set aside some time to read.  I’d probably go nuts if I didn’t give myself that little bit of downtime.

On the other hand, I’ve been harsher in some of my most recent reviews.  Lashing out at people is a good stress reliever, as most of us know but wouldn’t care to admit.  In addition, my free time is more precious than ever.  I am not wasting it on something some par.   There’s a YA book, FALLEN, that fills me with rage every time I think about it.  I have never hated a book like that before.  (It is awful, there’s no denying that.  Even if I weren’t in desperate need of an all-expenses paid vacation to Hawaii I’d think it was a waste of paper.  It just would be a waste of paper I couldn’t care less about instead of one that incenses me.)

Really, I don’t have much of a problem with hating bad books.  But I am a little bothered by my behavior.  I’m sure it doesn’t seem dramatic to anyone else.

Like a number of people, I had my angsty, suicidal, I-hate-my-parents, no-one-likes-me period.  I did it a little earlier than most people, as it was at its worst when I was eleven and I was totally over it by the time I turned thirteen.  During that time I developed skills for processing my emotions and dealing with them that have worked for nearly a decade now.  I might’ve been a weird teenager, but I was a happy, well-adjusted one.  (I walked around smiling enough that a total stranger felt offended enough to confront me about my happiness.  That was an off-putting conversation.)

It feels weird to be expressing my anger impulsively, as I haven’t done that since elementary school.  (I’m not saying it’s wrong to express anger.  Just that I like to deliver my anger cold.)  I’m changing in a way that I’d like to stay the same, especially since the catalyst is change.

The work is only part of the stress of college.  A lot of the stress is figuring out what I’m doing this summer – what internships should I apply for? Where will I live? How will I pay to live there?  I’m graduating in December – what will I do then?  Graduate schools generally accept for the fall semester only – what will I do in that spare semester?  What if the graduate school I want doesn’t accept me and neither does my back-up?  The program I want isn’t offered a lot of places.  I just discovered that I’m ineligible for the scholarships that have been paying for my college due to my early graduation.  How am I going to pay for next semester?  One of the few things I’ve figured out is my living situation next year.  (Oh yes, and now my computer is acting weird.  Woo-hoo!  Is it just my power cord?  Something I need to have repaired? Is it worth it to repair an almost-three-year-old laptop?  Can I afford a new one?  Can I afford to repair an old one that might die naturally in a year?)

I love living in a society where I can change my mind about where I’m going, where I’m working, what I’m doing with my life.  I’m making important decisions, but I’m not likely to completely screw-up my life if I make the wrong one.  Maybe make it more difficult, but I’ll still have options.

I don’t know that I’m making a point here, much less a profound one.  I set out to write a pondering since I haven’t written one in forever.  I love reading what the others write since it reveals their personalities and voice.  I feel like I’m probably a blank slate to most of the regulars at the pond since I tend to only write reviews.  And I don’t want to be a blank slate.  I just keep starting ponderings and stopping, always second guessing myself and deciding that I really don’t have anything  new to add to the conversation.  (The one I’ve tried to write about most? Rape.  I often mention how its usual presentation bothers me in reviews, but I’ve never explained why.  I feel like other people have written about the topic much more eloquently than I even could, and the pondering begins to become a linkspam.)

I do this second guessing thing in class too.  I always wonder if I’m the person everybody else in the class hopes would just shut up already.  (There’s always one.)  The difference is that when writing I have more time to think about it.  In class I tend to open my mouth when I think of a point, because I know the conversation moves quickly and there may not be an opening for my point later.  (I tend to take seminar style classes, for those who are wondering.)

So I think my point is simply to talk about myself for a bit, and where I’m coming from when I write reviews.  No one would call me a party girl, but I think I am.  Books, movies, homemade food, rambling conversations with friends – that’s how I party and I’m not about to give my party up for anything.  Maybe actually posting this will give me the courage to open my mouth more often.

I’ve been thinking about the sudden surge to self-publishing and vanity publishing and the interest I’ve recently seen in various blogs and other places.

Being a suspicious soul, I started to think about why this should be. Not all improvements come because the time has come and it’s right for them. Sometimes the situation is carefully created.

I don’t for one minute think that the big six publishers intend to give an inch of ground to the new ones coming up, the Ellora’s Cave, Samhain and Loose-Id’s of this world. I’ve been involved in a developing market before, used to specialise in it, and I’ve seen it work itself out. Either a new big company emerges to take the profits, or one of the old boys muscles in and takes it later in the day, after others have pioneered. Or the market fragments, and the niches become the thing.

While every new market has a similar pattern, the details are more complex and the reasons come from several sources. With the new emphasis on self publishing, it might not come from the place you can first see, the vociferous place, the authors who are deciding to take that route.

Yes, the market is more open than it used to be. The big publishers have lost ground to the smaller ones, the market is more diverse. The smaller publisher can respond faster to market forces, demands for ‘more books about fairies,’ or ‘older heroes and heroines,’ or just ‘more sex.’ Even more when it’s digital. But many people still prefer a paper copy and many authors prefer not to put their livelihoods at the whim of a big corporation.

But there’s no demand from the public, the readership, for more self-published books. No big group of readers is seizing on a publisher like Lulu and asking for more books. The vanities aren’t growing market share. So where’s the demand coming from? When was the last time you walked into a bookstore and asked to be shown the self published section?

It’s being created. Sometimes a market responds to consumer need, sometimes the market shows the consumer what it really wants, and sometimes a market has to be built by the people who want it. These aren’t necessarily bad. I mean, who knew we needed Windows until Bill Gates showed us? Then yes, it was just what many of us were looking for, computing without all that tedious programming. I was involved in the early years of the computer. I learned (and forgot) four different programming languages, Cobol, Fortran 77, Basic and Diplomat, a language unique to the company I worked for. It was a complete drag. Then we get Windows, early BBC basic and the Acorn computers and we begin to see. It’s the experts who show us what we can have first.

But self publishing isn’t reinventing anything. It’s a book, same as other books. It’s for the author and the manufacturer. As a reader, I don’t care where the money’s going or who published a book as long as it’s readable and it looks pretty good. As an author, I put up my hands in horror at that statement, but to deny it would be foolish. I buy a book, I read it. If it’s in my price range, then I might buy it on a whim, the way most books are purchased. If it’s by a favorite author, I might pay a bit more. If it’s an art book, or something that is a beautiful object, I might pay more still (I do have some breathtaking fashion books – my shiny black copy of the book celebrating Yves St Laurent’s 25 years of design is one of my prized possessions, but oh, the price!)

So here’s what I think. I suspect it’s a production initiative. Think about it.

I suspect that there’s a convincing looking report going around, showing how the publisher can use up excess production capacity by farming it out.
I used to work in the print industry (I was a litho buyer) and print machinery is huge, massively expensive, and deteriorates quickly, as well as taking up a lot of physical space. It’s all expensive. So self publishing, for a publisher that owns such equipment and is looking for a way to use the capacity to take up the loss in bulk production, is a good idea.

And the marketing department has been told to sell it.

Most people know that the old system of oversupplying the stores so that every store has a book available, then returning half or more, is coming to an end. Stores are much more efficient in their stock turnover, there are fewer physical copies going to fewer stores, and the digital revolution is making serious inroads into paper books.

But those machines sit there, eating money.

Renting out time on the press looks like a win/win for the manufacturer. Which is why I think the marketing of Dellarte, the Harlequin vanity press, was so inept. They didn’t look hard enough at the front end. Editors, marketers etc could have told them what the reaction would be, and Harlequin employs some of the best, so my guess is that they were brought in on a done deal at the last minute and had to scramble to make the most of it. They want to keep those machines rolling. So sell it to the punter, in this case, to the writer.

Until that machinery is depreciated into oblivion, it has to make a profit for the company that owns it. The alternative is to do some clever financing, but most publishers have done that already. The production end is separated out so that it doesn’t drag the rest of the corporation down with it. But it’s still there and the parent company wants to maximize its profits.

So the editor, geared to selling to the reader, fine-tuned to deliver what the reader wants and the marketer, geared to making the most of what the company does best, is now expected to sell what the company produces. Which is, after all, how many companies started.

The difference for us is that they aren’t selling to the reader, they’re selling to the author. And that is so different it has to be hived off as a separate concern. I can’t see myself buying a book just to support the author, unless it’s a charity book, where all the profits are designated to one charity or another. The author who really knows what she’s doing can be on to a good thing. She must know the bookstores won’t take the books if they’re non returnable, she’s aware that she won’t have a big company behind her easing her way. She’s worked all that into her business plan. But the author who has tried every publisher and received a rejection from them all, who is being sold this option as a viable way of putting her “unusual, different, they-don’t-understand-me” book out there, it seems perfect. Of course it isn’t, it’s a cynical exercise to sell to the most vulnerable out there. Probably.

I would really love it if in the comments we didn’t get some of the self-publishing evangelists. Yes, we get it, it’s the best thing since sliced bread, a new market, a new opportunity, but this isn’t want this article is about. It’s about where the demand is really coming from and who stands to gain the most from it. And it isn’t the author. If you want to write a piece about how self-publishing has changed you and why an author should take that course, write an article and send it to Sybil (sorry, pet!). Or put it on a blog of your own.

The difference between self publishing and vanity publishing is deliberately obscured by many of the people selling it. For the customer, that is the author, it often isn’t clear until that first statement arrives, but basically it’s simple. In self publishing, the author buys a service, but she owns the ISBN, the copyright and 100% of what she can make from the final product, the book. In vanity publishing, the publisher owns the ISBN, can own the copyright too, and the publishing rights, and to take the Delarte example, takes 50%. So which is the best deal, especially since the author has to pay for everything and doesn’t even get the value of the Harlequin name on the dust jacket?

Let me see…

What does it mean for me? Nothing. I have no intention of going into self publishing in the market as it stands right now, though never say never. Things might change enough for me to consider it. But I’ve had my fill of selling, marketing, assessing markets, and doing everything for myself.

I come from a long line of small businesspeople, long enough to know I don’t want to wear myself out early doing things I don’t want to do. I want to write. And for me, the best option is to let someone else do all the other things. I want to concentrate on the thing I do best, which is the writing end. I could do the marketing, but I don’t wanna. Never did enjoy it very much. So I’ll give a proportion of the income up to someone who will. And will work hard to improve my sales and market share. Sure, I’ll help, which is why I can see the value in a cooperative, but I don’t want to do it all myself.

I just want to write. And read.

Just so you know, I’m writing this as a reader and a writer. Both halves, stuck together to make a whole. Not that that happens very often. It’s hard to keep the two parts separate when you read so much, hard to not let what you read bleed into what you write. I try to do it by reading in a different subgenre, reading contemporary when I’m writing historical, that kind of thing. But it doesn’t always work. 

So what happens when it doesn’t work? I just read a book that reminded me of this, a book where both of the main characters were perfectly nice, perfectly well behaved, and on the page it said they loved each other—so why didn’t I believe it?

It could have been the mood I was in, not quite ready to read this one, or it could have been because the characters weren’t ready—or weren’t suited to each other, despite the author bending over backwards to make it work. That sometimes happens when you’re on a strict deadline, you have to do a little mind control, try to make your characters work, despite the niggling feeling that this isn’t the right person to be with this one.

Have I done it? Hell, yeah. And worked hard to make it work, to make the chemistry blend. Sometimes with results, sometimes not. I have to refer to my own writing here, because I don’t know how other people do it, or even if they go through the same struggles, so please forgive me. I’ll refer to a couple of books that aren’t available, for one reason or another.

When I came to write “A Griffin’s Treasure,” I had it slotted into a timetable. I had a deadline, the book was accepted and contracted on proposal. I’d worked out the skeleton of the story, and it looked good. I couldn’t wait to start. But when I brought Josh and Chana together—nothing. I introduced a scene where another, female character with far more in common with my hero interacted with him, and I got sparks. But she’d already sparked with someone else and I really wanted to write that story, so I moved her out. Josh was a shape-shifter, Chana a female ex cop, but she had secrets even she didn’t know about.

So when that not-working feeling persisted, I stopped. My editor was understanding enough to accept a delay. I’d just miss my publishing slot, that was all. I went through every scene I’d written so far and used some analytical tools to tear it apart. Who wanted what, who needed what. And I realized that the reason they weren’t getting it together properly was that Chana had a secret, one even she wasn’t aware of. And when she became aware, it blasted the door open.

Wow. It worked so well. I went back and rewrote that sucker, knowing what I knew but the hero and heroine didn’t, writing that knowledge into their characters.

I won a major award for that book.

Second example? Corin’s story. Corin was one of the three brothers in the Triple Countess series of historical romances that happen in the 1750’s. All through the series I’d planned for him to have Alethea, the girl that Daniel and Miranda rescued in “Last Chance, My Love.” But when I put them together, they got on, sure, but there was no spark. Half way in, I stopped. I knew it wasn’t working. I did the analysis that I’d worked through in “A Griffin’s Treasure” but it didn’t work. I couldn’t see why they couldn’t get together. Corin was easy going and Alethea had problems that would make him step up to the mark, and he did it willingly enough. But I couldn’t get the spark going.

So I gave that book up. Recently I went back and tried him with a character I didn’t have a home for, one that had sprung into my head. I saw her incongruously dressed in a riding habit, wearing a mask, playing cards. Corin enjoyed playing cards. Bingo. I put him with Sapphira and the words flew off the page. I had to stop to re-plot, find out where they were going, but that was it. They went off together, sparking all over the place. “A Betting Chance” is coming out this April.

Sometimes it just happens, and the book works right from the start. “Chemistry of Evil,” the first paranormal I ever wrote was one of those, “Red Alert” did it too, and so did “Yorkshire,” the first Richard and Rose book. Actually, that is a prime example. I planned Richard to be a plain, ordinary hero, like Georgette Heyer’s “Mr. Dash of Nowhere in Particular” but he didn’t turn out that way. I found myself writing a peacock, a man in the full panoply of mid-Georgian gorgeousness and then I stopped and thought, “Where the hell did he come from?” I wanted a story about an ordinary seeming pair who blended into the background and solved mysteries, I wanted to give the hero a just-enough title, enough to get him into the privileged houses but not enough to make him stand out. I ended up with a flamboyant bad boy, a rebel who’d taken society and shoved it back in its teeth, one with huge emotional personal problems, who never paused if violence was needed, whose intelligence drove him to despair sometimes. An incredibly lonely man who recognized the other half of himself the minute he saw her. I didn’t believe in love at first sight before I wrote about Richard and Rose. They made me believe it.

Writers live for those moments.

I still don’t know why Josh and Chana worked and Corin and Alethea didn’t, not really, and reading that other book today reminded me of it, the one where the hero was okay, the heroine was okay, but they didn’t work together. I’d love to have read about them with different partners, but perhaps the writer didn’t have the time I had, or perhaps she thought differently to me, and thought her characters worked. For that reason, I’m not naming it. There was nothing wrong with the book, so maybe it was just me.

Who knows?

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.

We’ve all been there, haven’t we?  We want to read. We need to read.  But nothing catches our attention.  We start one book and put it aside and then start a different book, thinking maybe a genre change might help, and put it aside.  Repeat as necessary until there is a stack of books, each with maybe 25 pages read.  The TBR mountain mocks us with its stacks of unread books.  The bookstores sing their siren songs of new-book-fabulousness but we try to resist because of that stupid mocking mountain of books that has been unsatisfactory…and then we break down and buy something new, only to read another 25 pages before putting that book aside, too.

You know what I’m talking about, faithful reader…The Slump.  *screams echo in the distance*  When nothing seems to catch our attention enough to make us finish a book.  Everyone has a different method for dealing with slumpage.  Sometimes a re-read of an old fave will snap it.  Or maybe reading something entirely different might work.  Maybe an audio book will break through the wall of slump.  Maybe taking a break entirely from reading (oh the horror!!) is necessary -  as in, not even trying to find something good amidst all the stacks of books we all have.  Perhaps watching a bunch of movies will be the answer.

I’ve been in a slump since early November.  I tried my usual slump breakers – reading Bet Me usually works for me, for example – and I enjoyed the re-read, of course, but the slump continued.  I tried reading some other old faves, sometimes successfully and sometimes not.  Still, every time I picked up something new, I ended up putting it aside after a chapter or two.  I hate it when that happens!  There are books waiting for me that I know I will enjoy.  Eventually.

For now, I’ve decided to blame the holidays for my slump.  The busyness and travel and weird schedules must be to blame.  I’ve decided!  So now that the holidays are wrapping up and things will be getting back to normal, my slump will end.  Right??  Please?  Pretty please??  With sugar and a cherry on top???  *sniffle*

So tell me, faithful readers, what do you do when the slump strikes?  And if you have suggestions of fabulous slump-snapping books, I welcome them.

It’s the time of year and this is short, because I could go on and on, but I don’t need to.

I live in Britain, in a small, unremarkable town. When I go into town to do some shopping I pass a cottage where Oliver Cromwell lodged on his way to one of the Civil War battles. On the other side of the road is another building where Charles I stayed on his way back. They’re a restaurant and a pub now, but they have their blue plaques.

When I visit my mother in Leicester, I pass the church where men on the way to the Battle of Bosworth used the walls to sharpen their swords. I pass a place called Butt Lane, where the archers practised every Sunday, as they were required to do by their overlord. And at this time of year every village, every town, every city has a simple stone monument surrounded by poppy wreaths.

I’m reminded of history, of my ancestors, of the people who helped to make me what I am.

So what can I do in return? The very least I can do is to ensure that when I write a historical novel I don’t traduce their times, the things they believed in or  what they did. The very least is to try to get it right, take all the known facts and the attitudes of the times and take care not to distort them. I won’t do it even in the sacred name of entertainment.

Lynne Connolly

Several bloggers have answered comments on the AAR forums about blogging recently. In doing so, some have noticed a recent snippiness and touchiness in the reading community, from readers and from writers. I was hanging around at Wendy’s blog recently, something I do a lot, and she’s noticed something similar, too. Mrs. Giggles has spotted it. 

I think I have an inkling as to what might be going on, or at least some of it.

Actions and consequences…

I heard a program on the radio this morning, “Whistleblowers” about Paul Moore and how he warned the bank HBOS about its risky strategies and its target-based culture, and how it and banks like it pushed consumers into taking too many risks. It was all about selling, he said and they didn’t look at the long term consequences, and the unbalanced risk it introduced.

Sound familiar? It should.

It’s happening in the book business, and it’s not all down to the recession. Before 2009, signs of strain were already showing. Historically, books have always followed the newspaper model of distribution – copies were distributed to suppliers, bookstores for the main part, and those that didn’t sell were returned. That meant that you could drop into your local bookstore and be confident of finding the book you wanted. It also meant a bucketload of returns. Then Anderson News, one of the biggest distributors went under.

Two things were happening. The supermarkets were buying books in bulk, undercutting traditional retailers and doing their own distribution. And the newspaper industry was failing. It would have made sense to try to do away with the “sale or return” system, but it was too convenient to the companies involved – the accounting and financing of the publishers would have had to be restructured, and that can’t be done quickly, and it was a good thing for the supermarkets, who wouldn’t have surplus stock to sell or dispose of.

Sell or die…

At the publishing houses, there were a number of fine editors who had a lot of control over the books the house took and what was done with them. It gave each house a distinct identity, and its authors were given relative artistic freedom. Now, no decision is made independent of the marketing and finance departments. The question was no longer asked, “Is this book good for us?” but “Can we sell enough copies?”

A carefully balanced portfolio of bestsellers, middle ground authors and risky chances that could take off in a big way or could bomb spectacularly, was abandoned for the best seller model. Big authors, controversial themes, with big money put behind them. Middle ground authors, career authors with reputations but no huge sales were dropped. I’ve met a few, and while being resilient and determined to weather the storm, there’s a core of unhappiness and cynicism that just wasn’t there before. Existing authors are sometimes desperately chasing targets, because if their current book doesn’t sell up to target, they’re dropped. No second chances.

The publishing business has gone from brutal to savage, from relatively civilised to a jungle culture. If you don’t sell, you’re gone. No benefit of the doubt, no “see what your next title does,” no “this will be a slow burner.” Without that attitude, we wouldn’t have had The Lord of the Rings, or The Chronicles of Narnia, or even Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles, all series that became massive sellers, but had relatively slow starts.

Wait, we don’t get them, do we? Not any more. A series has to start with a huge bang and go on to sell and sell, otherwise it’s gone. A writer with a three-book contract will see her books cut off after the second, even the first, leaving the readers hungry for the last ones, and increasingly determined not to buy a series until it’s all out. So sales at first are low, and more get cut. A self fulfilling prophecy.

Big publishers are struggling to stay afloat. If it weren’t for cash reserves and the massive profits they stand to make by selling e-books and not passing on savings to authors or readers, they’d probably go under. Midlist authors are going to the e-publishers, giving up or trying for the big one. Or writing for Harlequin, which is taking serious note of the market and going from strength to strength.

Ahead of the curve…

Harlequin always had the drop on other publishers with its direct mail order service, which didn’t depend on distributors or returns. It had a regular audience and after slipping behind in the late 1990’s, turned its lines around and rejuvenated or dropped them. And Harlequin has an established, successful e-bookstore.

You’d expect me to say e-publishing is where the future is because I write for e-publishers. Well that’s not why I do it. I’ve had chances to write for others, but the offer or the money wasn’t quite right. I promised myself I’d do this to make myself happy, not to go for the big bucks or the huge sales. As it happens, I think I’ve fallen into the right part of the industry. Right for me, right for the future.

No, I don’t think we’ll see the end of the paper book. It’s a transition. But the sale-or-return culture, plus increasing costs in distribution and production, plus increasing pressure from ecologists has all pushed producers of print to think again. It’s been coming for a long time, from the day when Rupert Murdoch pushed the print unions to breaking point and then smashed them, from the day when Anderson’s closed its doors, to when Wal-Mart became indispensable to many people and one-stop shopping became important.

Make a fast splash…

So, back to the point of the article. Writers and readers getting snippy. Of course there’s no one reason. Writers are being pressured to write the big one, the big series, the High Concept book, something that is different but stays the same. Nobody’s telling them to, it’s just the way “the market” is going. Fewer authors, higher sales per unit. Splashy, lots of action, lots of sex.

For some writers, that’s exactly what they want to do. Others don’t, their metier runs to a different kind of book and they’re getting short shrift now. The chase for the next big thing has resulted in markets rising and falling ever faster. Right now it’s urban fantasy, next it’s steampunk, but if you aren’t already in there and working hard, either close to publication or accepted, then forget it, because for the writer, that’s over. The publishers have all the authors they want in that genre and you’re going to have to look for something else, something with a platform, a high concept, a distinct genre.

This is making writers edgy. They’re putting out books faster, and each book is getting a little less theirs, a little more of a product. Less love is going into creating it. Editors are all about buying the next book and spotting the next trend, not nurturing the writers they’ve already bought. It’s not their fault, it’s just the way the market is going.

Readers can only buy what is in the bookstores. If you love paranormal but you hate the market leaders, you’ll look for something else, pick up the next book with a great cover and blurb. Maybe you’ll find something. But rarely a book with great depth, something that speaks to your soul. It’s always been like that, there have always been splashy, dramatic books, and good luck to them. We all need one of those to read from time to time. But readers want more, they want different, and it’s getting harder to find. It’s not the reader’s concern to analyse and decide what they want. Why should they? But if they don’t find what they want, they’ll move on to videos, video games, other genres.

So writers, edgy with the increased pressures and with writing more books are snipping at readers, and readers, dissatisfied but not quite knowing why, are snipping back.

There are always exceptions, always a great book, always an author who ploughs her own furrow, but it’s the general trends, not individual greatness or otherwise that is driving the market. Always the Pareto rule, the 80:20 ratio that goes into the marketing and finance departments. There’s a reason for the saying “the exception proves the rule.”

Plus it’s the change of the season, and that always brings a bit of disturbance. So maybe it’s just the weather.

So here’s the deal with all this review blog stuff.  The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has decided that blogs and other similar opinion websites should disclose when a reviewed item has been supplied by the manufacturer/vendor/seller/etc., or when a manufacturer/vendor/etc. has paid for said review.  A “full disclosure” kind of thing. 

If you want the full story and more opinions on all of this, go to Dear Author.  Jane has done extensive analysis, including actually talking to a guy at the FTC, and has arrived at what seems to be reasonable conclusions about the possible impacts to big and small review sites.

Personally, I don’t think the FTC’s ruling is such a bad thing.  If someone publishes a review, I want to know if it’s an honest opinion or simply blather from a shill.  It allows me to appropriately weigh the opinion and make up my own mind whether that opinion is honest.

We here at TGTBTU (a.k.a. the Pond) blog, review, and comment here because we love to read.  (By the way, we’re Ducks because Sybil – the blog’s owner/maven/priestess – loves dicks er, ducks.)  TGTBTU is our hobby and definitely NOT a money-making venture.  We support the site from our own pockets, defraying some of the cost with what you’ll read below.

On the negative side of our little hobby, not including the cost of the books we read or the postage to send those books back and forth to each other, is the cost of the site and its Internet domains.  Sure we could run the site for free by using a blog host like Blogspot, but have instead elected to upgrade to a specific domain and server space – making us both easier to find and faster to load, which is a good thing.

On the plus side and helping to defray some of the cost, are Associate Programs.  We primarily use Amazon’s because it’s dead simple to create their product URL’s  – those little deelywhoppers inserted in reviews with the product’s thumbnail.  None of these Programs pay much – something like 3% per item purchased using the ID, or about $0.20 for a paperback.   There are other Associate Programs (Harlequin, etc.), but their links are so bloody complicated to craft that we generally don’t bother with them.

In fact, if you like it here at the Pond you can help support us by by adding our Amazon Associates ID, preceded by a slash (/thgothbaanthu-20), to the end of a product’s Amazon hyperlink before moving the item into your shopping cart. It’s not a lot of money, but every little bit helps.

With regard to a provider influencing our reviews, keep in mind that Amazon is not a publisher – they just sell the stuff, good or bad, new or used, in print or out. This means there isn’t an opportunity for an Associates Program provider to influence a reviewer’s opinion before the review is published. The money comes to us AFTER a review is published if the book review uses the ID-containing links, if you click on those links, AND if you put the book in your shopping cart right then and complete the purchase. A lot of ifs.

Also plus side for TGTBTU is that for the last year or so Harlequin provides TGTBTU with coupons for books bought on their site.  Syb will have to say how much it is, but I know it’s not a lot.  The understanding is that we’ll review a few of them every month.  They don’t push specific books – we can buy and review anything we want.  As you can see from our many C and D grades of Harlequin imprint books (even an F here and there), this allowance definitely does not guarantee a positive review of said books.

Again on the plus side is the normal book marketing done by the larger publishers, editors, and authors.  Publisher send a few advance reading copies (ARC’s), and sometimes final published copies, to an author and/or editor, who can then send those ARC’s/finals to reviewers in the hopes that the reviewer will do what reviewers do.  By the way, every year this ARC’ing seems to become more controversial as publishers spend less money on book marketing, pushing more of that responsibility on author’s shoulders.  So who knows how long they’ll do this and how picky they’ll get selecting recipients.

Now let’s consider the other negative side of the review blogging equation – the cost of the books and the postage to send a book to another reviewer.  I read an average of about one book per week.  This can lead to significant costs that are alleviated somewhat by the above mentioned book marketing practices:  roughly one-third of what I read is in the form of ARCs or finals from an editor or author.  From what I can gather, the other Ducks have similar habits to my own.  This means our book habit cost is defrayed somewhat, but not entirely.

Nevertheless, as with most book review sites, you should assume we have received for free all of the books we review.  That isn’t always the case, but considering the size of each of our TBR piles, to try to detail which book was a freebie or which book we bought would be nearly impossible.

Back over to the plus side is that we can, if we wish (most of us don’t), sell the final book copies we buy or receive.  (ARCs are never sold by the Ducks – in fact, since we take ARC responsibility seriously, we spend considerable effort to ensure we always know who has which ARC at any given time.)  If we do sell finals, it’s normally at a used book store like Half-Price Books where we can make a few pennies per book.  Yeah – we’re still not getting rich and we don’t even really cover costs, but it helps.

Here’s what all this plus-ing and minus-ing does: it allows us to nominally afford our hobby, and, if we feel strongly enough, share it in a public forum like this site. Otherwise, with the cost of books rising at an ever increasing rate, our little reading habit er, hobby would cripple our personal budgets and we wouldn’t be able to talk about the books with all of you lovely folks.

So what does this all mean to you, our readers? Not much more than just informing you that none of us are getting rich here.  We don’t sell reviews and don’t sell advertising on the site. We don’t really break even with the cost of the site, but we’re okay with that.

I liken TGTBTU to a very large book club that includes readers from all over the world.  It costs each of us a little to participate.  But it’s worth it because of the enjoyment we derive from sharing our collective hobby with all of you.  It’s definitely a labor of love.

It should come as no surprise to any of you that I am a fan of science-fiction.  I love it in all mediums – books, movies, television, manga, graphic novels, and good ol’ comic books.  It’s all good to me. Love Heinlein, Bradbury, LeGuin, Asimov, Herbert, Zelazny, etc.  And lately, I am finding sci-fi romances to be particularly fun.

But, no. WAIT! I’m a GIRL! That must mean I’m “ruining” sci-fi for all the Spanky and Alfalfas out there.  Let me explain… 

I ran across a post over on Karen Scott’s blog where she picks out the best quotes found on the web that week.  She was sharing a quote from a post written by author John Scalzi.  John was commenting on yet a different post written by an unmitigated jackass about how women (and gays, apparently) were ruining science-fiction.  Still with me here?

I’m not going to link to the original simpleton’s post because they don’t deserve it.  However, you can find it if you do a Google search for asswipes er, “The War on Science Fiction and Marvin Minsky”.  “War”?  Really? Hyperbole much?

Now.  I know and you know that statements like the following are merely misogynistic twaddle and deserve less than our attention.  Nevertheless, I was a bit outraged (like the sun is a bit hot) that this fool could be so misinformed (I’m guessing it’s been a while since his last blowjob):

“As we know, science fiction has inspired boys to pursue careers in science, engineering, and technology as grown men.  With women killing science fiction on television, the current generation of boys won’t have this opportunity to be inspired to work in these fields.  There is still a great deal of written science fiction that is real science fiction, so all is not lost.  However, many boys who would have gone on to make scientific discoveries and invent new technologies will not do so since they will never be inspired by science fiction as boys.”

Statements like that imply women aren’t inspired by science-fiction (news to me and my women friends who are engineers), and that women in science-fiction aren’t inspiring to others.  Guess I shouldn’t have read any of that nasty old Ursula K. LeGuin, Mary Shelley, or Anne McCaffrey.  Ruined me, apparently.  ::eyes rolling::

By the by, who else thinks this guy still lives in his mom’s basement, eating cheese from a can and drinking Mountain Dew while typing his blog posts in a bathrobe?  I agree with John Scalzi when he says that this jackass needs to…

“… STFU and take his ignorant ass back to his snug little wank hole…”

I’ll close while doing as John has suggested – just point and laugh my ever lovin’ ass off.

Disclaimer – I’m British, so I don’t think the FTC rules apply to me, but just in case – the vast majority of the books I review I’ve bought for myself. Because something attracted me to it, and because I wanted to enjoy the experience. So I have a vested interest in any book I read giving me some enjoyment. 

Also, I only review books. Not the author, or her choice of lifestyle, her taste in clothes, or her publisher or anything else. I do not have vendettas against anyone, nor do I have chips on my shoulder about anyone. Nothing here is intended as being personal.

I don’t review books by people I count as friends, or books from publishers that I’m published with. I would love to rave about Linnea Sinclair’s books, or Nicola Cornick’s, or Annie Burrows’, or Judi Fennell’s which I genuinely love, or some of the fantastic authors I’m privileged to share publishers with, but it’s too close to home, so I leave it to other people.

I don’t believe that all writers should stick together. This is prevalent in some circles, together with “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” No, just no. Neither do I consider my publishers some kind of in loco parentis, so we’re a family of any description. Writers should stick together for certain rights, like keeping up royalty and advance payments, but we don’t, we should encourage each other in our writing, but to accept that everything we do and all the books published are brilliant works of art, I’m sorry, I just can’t. I was a reader first, after all. Just.

Writers are people, not some kind of endangered species (I take that back – we are) and we aren’t all members of a club. I was a reader first, and I still am a voracious reader of romantic fiction.

As a writer myself, I know how much one’s own books mean, how close you can get to your characters and the story, but as a reader, I’m buying something that I hope will give me a few hours’ enjoyment. If it doesn’t, I’ll say so, and I’ll also say why. It’s my personal taste, nobody else’s, and should be taken for what that is worth, which in some circles is not much.

Having said all that, I’d rather give the author the benefit of the doubt. After all, I didn’t buy the book to be disappointed, I want to be entertained, I want to fall in love with the hero and to like the heroine, and I want their romance to sweep me away. So when I start a book it’s always with a sense of pleasurable anticipation. Sometimes I’m disappointed and sometimes I love it.

And every reviewer, every reader for that matter longs for the Holy Grail – the perfect book, the one that satisfies completely. I can’t promise that it will satisfy you, because what does it for me might not do it for you, but you never know. One day another Lord of Scoundrels, Flowers From the Storm, or The Lady’s Tutor will arrive, with no more fanfare than all the others in the book bag. And I’ll be there.

That’s why I review.

You might have noticed a slight absence here. Then again, you might not, why should you? But with all this blethering about writers and writing, and the endless push, push, push for a publisher, I thought I’d say something about writing. Specifically why I write, because I can’t speak for anyone else. 

It’s supposed to be fun.

I could stop there, but I won’t. So there. I just started writing the first new historical for over a year. The book I wrote before that was about a merman. The one before that was about an ex-model and her plastic surgeon. And God, it was fun.

I switch things around because I enjoy doing it, but I can do it now because I’ve found my voice. I still don’t know what the hell it is, but apparently I have one and apparently some people like it. Great. But that, gentle reader, isn’t why I write.

I write because it’s fun.

For the money? When I first started writing for publication, eight years ago, it was in the Wild West days of epublishing, when publishers routinely started, published, then exploded in a puff of conjurer’s smoke. We got wary, we got suspicious, we got wise. And I barely cleared $50 a month, if I was lucky. So years passed, I kept writing, (because it was fun) and I started earning more money. Now I’m one of the highest earning epublished authors in the UK. Not sure about anything else.

What does that mean? It means I get to attend one of the best damned parties anywhere once a year (Romantic Times Convention) and I don’t have to dip into my savings to do it. It means I can attend a few other shindigs here at home. It means I can afford a nice computer and peripherals instead of second-hand outdated stuff. That’s about it.

Except that it’s fun.

What else does it mean? That I work 10 hours plus a day on something I find the greatest fun outside bed. That I have found the one thing that I do well. Everything else I’m adequate, or competent, or rubbish at, but writing is something I do well. Or so I’m led to believe. I still don’t quite believe it. That I’ve met people who understand, everyone from an ex navy extrovert to an ex-PI to a stay-at-home Mom to a real honest-to-goodness lady and they all know that staring into space or having a long bath can mean that you’re working.

And they’re all fun.

My life has been blessed recently by the people I’ve met, either in person or online, people I’d never have dreamed I’d be comfortable with, but I am. I’ve travelled on my own, something I’ve discovered that I adore, I’ve been valued for what I do, I’ve read things about me that have thrilled me to the core, made me snort with laughter because they got it so wrong, or just made me plain angry.

But it’s all been fun.

And it all comes down to the writing. The day it stops being fun is the day I stop, and I don’t just mean the first day, because however much you enjoy what you do, there is always the occasional day when you don’t want to do it for one reason or another. It’s when I get up for, oh, I don’t know, a year of days and I don’t want to write, I don’t itch to get my hands on that keyboard. That’s when I’ll stop, but I doubt that will happen.

The publishing industry isn’t always a barrel of laughs. Like every other entertainment industry (and don’t kid yourself, that’s what we’re doing here) it has its share of backbiters, naysayers and Players in the Tim Robbins sense, people who love negotiating the shoals of nastiness that lie in wait to trap any writer.

But it also contains people who love writing, writers, the whole process and one of these makes up for ten of the other kind, because they give us the support and the encouragement we need. It’s because for every one published writer, there are a hundred who will take her place tomorrow, for nothing.

So I might not always write for publication, though I’m riding this roller-coaster with the most enjoyment. However, it’s not essential to the core of what I do. It’s not why I do it. If I lost all my publishing slots tomorrow (God forbid) I’d still write.

So that’s why I do it. It’s fun.

Recently I read on a list that history is all a matter of opinion, not of specific facts, so I thought it was worth revisiting the historical romance, and the knotty topic of accuracy. Does it add to a romance, or take away from it?  [Gwen ed.: read more about the Ducks' views on historical accuracy by following the Accuracy tag here.]

If you take the various Acts of Parliament, the political history in general (it’s all documented, word for word, always has been), plus the economic developments then you have a sound basis for discussion and opinion. But you can’t do it without that framework, and in my mind it’s unalterable. There are certain facts you can’t change, and some that evolved and arrived gradually, but there are some things you can’t alter.Sometimes it’s because they never happened, and there has to be a reason why not, other times it’s anachronisms.

To take things I’ve seen in historical romances, there are some things that just couldn’t have happened.

• A known, famous courtesan marrying a peer of the realm and them being accepted into society with open arms.

Never happened. Couldn’t. Various authors (including me, I have to admit, in A Chance To Dream) have played with the trope, but you have to work really hard for it to become probable.

• Peers of the realm becoming pirates.

It never happened. You have to dig into the wherefores to work out why, but since it never happened, there must have been a reason why not. (Lots of reasons, any of which would work). The most important thing – it never happened.

• Regency gentlemen drinking whisky or whiskey from a decanter on the sideboard.

Whisky (which is Scotland-specific) or whiskey (anywhere else) wasn’t legalised until 1823 and the great technical development, the Coffey still, which made it possible to produce Scotch in bulk, wasn’t invented until 1831. A gentleman could have it distilled for his own use, but it wasn’t a common drink, and didn’t really get popular until the 1840′s. Give the darlings brandy instead.

• A medieval Scottish warrior brandishing his claymore.

No claymores until the late 16th century. They weren’t even called that until then. I’ll leave it to the weapons experts to explain why, because it’s not my area.

• A medieval Scottish warrior wearing a skirted kilt in his clan’s tartan.

Skirted kilts weren’t developed until the 18th century. Before then, they had a plaid, sometimes known as the “great kilt.” No clan tartans until the 19th century, although there were geographically-specific patterns and colors from which the tartan was developed. So you’d be able to say “from the Lomond area” but not “You’re a Campbell.” Or something. If you could see the colors, because the plaid was never washed. It served as a blanket, as well as an item of clothing.

If you know anything about history, it’s likely these details will jerk you out of the story. If you don’t, it’s likely the story will be the “generic” type and if the reader has experience with lots of historicals, they’ll notice how flat the story is, and not be able to put her finger on it. If it’s labelled “historical fantasy,” go girl, put a dragon in and I’ll run all the way to the bookstore to buy it!

Writers owe it to their readers, and to the people they are writing about to make it as real as they can – and that includes sound world-building and accurate history. By all means, speculate, discuss, but base it on a knowledge of what happened then, how people thought then, and you’ll have a great story.

Are there any books based in American history that are this far out? Would a writer of contemporaries get away with sending the traffic the wrong way up Madison Avenue, or having all the avenues in New York have two-way traffic? Why should we expect anything less of the historical writer?

It’s an insult to say “it’s only a romance, so it’s okay, I can write what I like and get away with it” or something else I’ve overheard, “They’ll never notice.” So what? The other person a writer should respect is herself and her art.

I’ve only read one Elizabeth Hoyt so far, for instance, and I already know I love her work and I can forgive her the odd slip, if she makes them, but I’m too busy reading to notice. She gets the feel right, the spirit of the age, and she works hard to fit her characters into a recognisable era and voice. I don’t ask for absolute accuracy, only that the author tries. Or calls it something else.

So if the writer respects the genre they right in, the people and the times she is writing about, and her own writing ability, she should think about getting the details right. Please. So I have more historical romances to read. I dearly love a good historical romance, and I haven’t read too many recently.

And when is the new Kinsale coming out? Please make it soon, my copy of Shadow Heart is worn out!

Besides it being a chance for me to catch up with my online buds, I enjoy the annual RWA conference because it gives me a chance to put my ear to the nearest wall and catch the latest buzz. This year I once again roomed with KristieJ from Ramblings On Romance. Kristie has spent the better part of the last year promoting the heck out of Broken Wing by Judith James and berating badgering coaxing her fellow members of Romance Blog Land to read the book that she so fell in love with. The result? Kristie has almost 30 bloggers listed on her sidebar of those of us who have read the book.

It was while we were at RWA in Washington D.C. that Kristie had the opportunity to chat with some people from Sourcebooks, the publisher that will be publishing Judith James second novel, Highland Rebel, in September. They told Kristie that Broken Wing was the highest selling title in Medallion Press history. At this point Kristie hasn’t had this confirmed with the folks over at Medallion, but why would Sourcebooks make something like that up? The answer is, they wouldn’t.

There was a brouhaha several months back involving an interview an editor and VP from Harpercollins Avon did over at All About Romance essentially dismissing the value of online promotion and bloggers. My response to this was that if Avon was waiting for the day when a blogger was going to be solely responsible for “making” a book, they’d be waiting a long time. Listen, I’m a librarian. I can tell you in no uncertain terms that there are two ways to “make” a book. 1) The publisher’s PR department puts in a lot of long hours and 2) Oprah picks it for her book club.

This naturally brought up a lot of discussion on how “important” reader bloggers are and how much “traffic” we get.

Horse hooey

The minute reader bloggers begin losing sight of what their purpose is, and why they got into the game to begin with, is when they start feeding a corporate machine. Most of us started blogging for one reason, and one reason only. We wanted to connect with other readers who loved the romance genre as much as we do. I started blogging because 1) I like to hear myself talk and 2) there was no one in my real life who I could talk books with. Yep, that’s right. The librarian didn’t have a soul to talk to about romance novels. No joke. I was a drowning woman. I was desperate. So I went to the web.

Kristie has never lost sight of this. I also know that she’ll never think that she was the sole reason that Broken Wing sold well for Medallion. Hey, the pretty good review the book got in Publisher’s Weekly didn’t exactly hurt matters. No, Kristie didn’t “make” that book – but she did jump start what most authors and publishers kill for.

Word of mouth.

Kristie got close to 30 bloggers to read that book. And some of them loved it as much as she did. They blogged about the book. They told friends who aren’t online about the book. And then those friends told other friends.

Do I think bloggers can “make” books? Not entirely. But they can build momentum. Broken Wing is the best example we have so far. It helps that it was from a smaller publisher, who doesn’t have the same sort of name recognition as say, Random House or Harpercollins. It also helps tremendously that it was KristieJ promoting the hell out of that book. Why? Because I’m not sure any other blogger could have done what she did.

People read and like Kristie’s blog for one reason – because Kristie is the one blogging. She’s a genuine person with a genuine “voice.” She’s “regular people.” That’s attractive as hell to a whole lot of readers. When they read Kristie’s blog it’s like meeting their best friend for coffee. So when she got really excited over a debut author’s book for a small publisher? The people who read and like her blog listened. Hey, people read and like my blog too – but I can say for certain that me loving a book and giving it a glowing review doesn’t have the same impact. Why? Because Kristie turned promoting Broken Wing into an event.

I think as the online romance community continues to grow, and new social media platforms come to the forefront, there will be more opportunity to observe what impact bloggers and readers have on the publishing industry at large. Reader bloggers can be a valuable promotional tool for authors and publishers if utilized the right way. It worked in this instance because Kristie loves Broken Wing, she is genuine about that love, and it showed through in her blog posts about it. The moment reader bloggers try to morph themselves into publicity machines is when we fail. It won’t be genuine anymore and it will be really blatantly obvious to people reading our blogs. We all got into this game because we love books, we love reading, and we love the romance genre with an unflinching loyalty. We should all take a page from Kristie’s book and remember that.

I have a heap of books, and I was interested to see who was going to win the RITAs. I’ll leave the Golden Heart out of it, since I’ve had no opportunity to read any of them. 

Once I bought all the RITA winners and read them, but I only did that a couple of times, because I found the books a strange mix, and none of them led me to a new favourite. I either knew the author’s work already, or the book didn’t interest me. So I wondered why, as a reader, I felt so apathetic about the winners.

I know winning a RITA can mean great things for an author, because industry does, or used to, take note. In these troubled times I don’t know if it will mean the same thing.

My doubts about the contest itself doesn’t mean that I don’t respect and congratulate those authors who do win the contest. (If you were wondering, I think that it no longer reflects the reading habits of the romance reading public, that it cynically excludes swathes of the market—e-published authors, even with the new revisions, don’t get a fair shot, for instance, and erotic romance doesn’t get a decent shot either).

I entered the Golden Heart once, but my book went past the limit, so I didn’t get to go through. Neither did I get any money back, which seemed a bit unfair. Recently I’ve decided not to enter contests in the immediate future. I’ve always felt uncomfortable competing against authors I respect and admire, and while I’m thrilled with the awards I have won, I’m tending towards believing that the only ones that truly mean anything are the ones where authors are nominated and elected by the reader. Even then, the emergence of the fangirl universe means that certain authors have an advantage. Or is that fair? Stephanie Meyer’s fangirls are notorious for turning up at discussions and waylaying them, but then again, not many authors can say they’ve featured constantly in bestselling lists the way she has. The only honest way to approach it, it seems, is the purely personal, so this is definitely showing my reading preferences.

FWIW, here’s my take.

	Best Contemporary Series Romance – Karen Templeton for A Mother’s Wish. It’s from a line I don’t often read, because the stories often involve children, and I’m not really interested in them. But I might pick this one up.
	Best Contemporary Series Romance: Suspense/Adventure – Danger Signals by Kathleen Creighton. I’ve not read one of hers, but I enjoy romantic suspense, so I might get this one, if I can. I’ve never read her books, but she’s now won the award three times, so that piques my interest.
	Best Young Adult Romance – Hell Week by Rosemary Clement-Moore. Is this a romance or is it urban fantasy? Anyway, it’s not my thing, so I won’t be looking into this one. I’ll leave it to the young adults.
	Best Historical Romance – The Edge of Impropriety by Pam Rosenthal. Very good. I’ll be adding this one to my TBR, but I probably would have added it anyway.
	Best Regency Historical Romance – My Lord and Spymaster by Joanna Bourne. This has been on my TBR for a while. I enjoyed the first book.So no, it won’t alter my reading habits.
	Best Inspirational Romance – Finding Stefanie by Susan May Warren – Definitely not my thing. I need the sexing. Did winning a RITA make me want to try the book? No. But best wishes to Susan May Warren.
	Best Romance Novella – “The Fall of Rogue Gerard” by Stephanie Laurens in It Happened One Night. I stopped reading Laurens years ago, because I found all her stories the same, so I might as well reread Devil’s Bride, which I do. I might look this one up, though, for old times’ sake and see if her appeal has increased with absence.
	Best Paranormal Romance – Seducing Mr. Darcy by Gwyn Cready. This was a wtf, especially with Nalini Singh in the running. Will I read it? No. I don’t like books that take Jane Austen’s books and traduce them. They just don’t appeal to me. So the Darcy in the title actually puts me off. And while it’s deeply unfair for me to think so, a book that beats Singh has a strike against it. The reviews I’ve read of this book aren’t good, I think two DNF’s, and a C or something like that. I won’t buy it, but I’ll read it without prejudice if I get it for review.
	Best Novel with Strong Romantic Elements – Tribute by Nora Roberts. Congratulations, Nora. Will I read it? Probably not, because – here’s my big, big confession – I don’t like her books. Brickbats coming my way, I know, but it’s nothing I can put my finger on. I’ve bought and tried some of her most highly recommended books and they just don’t do it for me. Highly personal, which is why I’ve never commented on it. She’s a great writer, I can see that, and I admire her skill, but something, somewhere, doesn’t do it.
	Best Romantic Suspense – Take No Prisoners by Cindy Gerard. I think I have this one in my TBR pile. I enjoy Gerard’s books, so while I’m happy for her, it wouldn’t have made any difference to my buying choice.
	Best First Book – Oh. My. Gods. by Tera Lynn Childs. This one actually made me go and look it up. No. actually, omg no. Interesting concept, but long distance running and Greek gods? No.
	Best Contemporary Single Title Romance – Not Another Bad Date by Rachel Gibson. I like Gibson’s books, so I’ll probably pick this one up, but it doesn’t make me want to rush it up the TBR pile.

So there we are. Over for another year. But looking down this list, it hardly scratches the surface of my reading preferences. Where are the erotics? Where are the best sellers of last year, the ones that took the lists by storm?

It doesn’t reflect my reading choices, and it makes me wonder how many other readers feel the same. There have been revisions to the RITA entry guidelines, but in effect, they don’t mean a great deal. The big publishers have a three-week head start on the smaller pubs, so it’s still a tiered thing, and since the number of entries is limited, that means in effect that the big publishers and authors published by the smaller houses have to scramble for what’s left. And if you enter and you either get your entry wrong, or you go over the numbers, you don’t get your money back. Every entrant also has to enter six printed copies of their book, perfect bound, and all that stuff. I write ebooks, and even when my books come out in print, it’s some time after the ebook, so I doubt many publishers will want that expense. So we’re unlikely to see much difference to entrants in future years, unless they go for complete parity.

As a reader, not a writer, I give a big “meh” to this. I don’t care. A book that has “RITA winner” on the cover isn’t necessarily going to attract me rather than a book that doesn’t. I go on the genre, the author, the blurb and an extract, and yes, the cover, sometimes. I put off reading Flowers From The Storm for ages because of the naff Fabio cover [Gwen Ed.: mouse over the cover to the right for some Fabio-ness]! Now it’s one of my all time favourite romances.

So what gems did they miss? And don’t you want to know who didn’t enter, so who wasn’t in the running?

For those of you who know what I write, it won’t be a surprise to know that I like my books sexy. But it’s not essential.

  Recently I read two books that were kisses-only by one author I already know I like, namely, Trish Wylie’s His L.A. Cinderella and Kate Hewitt’s The Sheikh’s Love Child (both recent releases). I’m a huge fan of Trish Wylie who is doing her best to bring the Harlequin lines up to date, trying to disperse the tycoon/mistress image that is dragging the image of the Presents/Modern line back forty years or more. (Btw, Harlequin, I get the books DESPITE the titles, not because of them – more later, on that, maybe).

The Wylie was a delightful read, charming with characters you can like and believe. The heroine abandoned her career as a scriptwriter when the first film she wrote with her partner and lover bombed at the box office. He carried on and found success, she went on to teach and they separated. He brings her back to write a sequel to what turned out to be a sleeper, and they fall in love all over again. I really enjoyed it.

Kate Hewitt is a new writer to me and while the book isn’t without its faults – it’s one of the rugby books, and as a rugby fan, they make me squirm – it worked. I nearly stopped reading at the first chapter, when the whiney hero feels so sorry for himself I wanted to slap him silly, but I did like the heroine when I read her, and as it turned out, the hero did have a reason to be so miserable. This has a secret baby theme, but I went past it, and while there were some inconsistencies, the central characters were strong and well-defined.

But for me, at any rate, there was a big hole in the middle of each book. No sex. No, I’m not shallow, I honestly believe that sex is a very important part of any adult romantic relationship. It needs to work in bed. You can have love without sex, you can have sex without love, but in the kind of relationship described in romance novels, sex is essential. I don’t even need it described in great detail.

It was entirely absent in the Wylie book, and while I could understand why she kept pushing him away, in the end it became a little TSTL and even tiresome. With the Hewitt, there was a consummated relationship, but it was in a kind of “oh well, we got that bit over with” way, although the sexual tension throughout the book was well described. I wanted to know why and how.

For a woman, sex changes everything, one way or the other and it does for many men, too. Good or bad, it’s an important part of the relationship. From getting down and dirty with each other, to the pillow talk, to the necessary intimacies that make a relationship real, I missed it in these books. It was like eating the icing without the cake.

In these books I loved the way the couples rebuilt their relationships, but I wanted more, even if it was just a “reconnecting in that way made all the difference” kind of vague description. Sex is there, it’s the elephant in the room, and when the epublishers finally opened the door and examined that part of it, it opened romance to a new world and a new sensibility. Authors could finally examine in detail that central part of a relationship, what is right about it, and what is wrong.

One of the most important parts of the best books about BDSM describe how one person finds fulfillment through a particular kind of sex, novels by the likes of Joey W. Hill and Doreen Orsini and in so doing, find the person who can help him or her achieve it. It’s about souls connecting as well as bodies, and I think that was what I missed in these two books.

I know a number of authors have playlists for their books, or ones that they listen to while writing books or certain scenes. This got me to thinking – not so much about what inspires an author, as… what songs I thought would be great for certain heroines. A number of very kind individuals also helped me pick out songs; so thanks, ladies! I hope you had fun.

If you’re an author or aspiring author, maybe one of these songs will inspire. Or at least introduce you to a new artist you might like. Obviously this applies in general as well. Some of these songs I absolutely adore. Some, I find hilarious.

First up, we have The Betrayed Heroine – you know, maybe before she meets the hero; how she feels about her ex (or the hero after he does some douchebag thing)

First: (I’m just so entertained by this song. I was driving when I first heard it, not paying attention, then with the chorus the words penetrated, and my reaction was “O_O”.)

Jazmine Sullivan – Bust Your Windows

And as an honorable mention, we have Blu Cantrell’s Hit ‘Em Up Style. (The two are so similar we had to pick only one.)

For our Kick Ass Heroines

Kelly Clarkson – Miss Independent
(Embedding disabled)

Rise Against – Survive

Christina Aguilera – Fighter
(Embedding disabled)

Alicia Keys – Karma
(Embedding disabled)

(Um, apparently I’m friends with angry tweeple, or at least ones that like a really strong, slightly vindictive heroine…  I have awesome friends.)

For the Angsty Heroine - you know, after the hero did some douchebag asshat thing

Allure -All Cried Out ft 112

For our Heroine who is Moving On

A Fine Frenzy – Near to You

For the Quirky Heroine

Ingrid Michaelson – The Way I Am

[I fucking HATE CLOWNS. but I love this song. so maybe listen but don't' watch]

The “Pulling It Together” Heroine

Anna Nalick – Breathe (2 am)

Our Falling in Love Heroine

Imogen Heap – Goodnight and Go
(Embedding disabled)

So, now that you’ve listened to them all (or at least hopefully some of them)… what do you think? Good choices? Bad?
Obviously this wasn’t a comprehensive list because I didn’t want you stuck in front of your computer forever…
And what are some songs you would suggest as a heroine anthem? Or even… a hero anthem? (Although hold tight – that one is forthcoming, but I’m always open to suggestions!)

Limecello’s Reflection of Lover Avenged (Black Dagger Brotherhood, Book 7) by J.R. Ward
Paranormal romance hardcover released by NAL 28 Apr 09

Well now. That’s about as much of a review as you’re going to get. After “talking” to Sybil about it, we decided this would go in the Ponderings section, which made everything much easier for me. No reason to be professional, or thoughtful and insightful within the constraints of writing a good review. Now, I get to ramble and let my thoughts wander at will. If I can even manage to type these words correctly. 

Oh… right… and since this isn’t a review, this post will likely be spoilerific. If you hate spoilers, skip the middle part, and scroll down to the end where I talk general book stuff, please, because I really would like your input. (And I’m sure you’ll have something important to add – my hope, as always, is that someone important will see it and listen.)

I can’t write a review for this book in good conscience, because I’d say I didn’t read a good 40% of it. How does that work? I flipped through all the pages that had anything to do with “lessers.” And the civilian vampires. Frankly, I don’t care. I came into this series expecting to read about the Black Dagger Brotherhood members. And that’s what I chose to read. All the rest? Pretty un-involving.

I came into the series, and really liked it. (Oh as an aside, can I say I really like this cover? Looks great. Of course he also looks nothing like what I imagined Rehv would look like, but win some lose some. I will say that Ms. Ward does a pretty good job of including characters from previous books. (Perhaps a problem is she can’t let them go? Or at least… they jump in and out of importance as she needs them.)

First issue with the book? Wrath. And Beth. And you know, the other Brothers too. How would nobody but Butch know that Wrath is out hunting? First of all, I think the character are all too clever to be tricked for four months. Yes, Wrath has all those smart king genes, but come on. Aside from the obvious – in that Wrath is madly in love with Beth, and Beth is not a blithering idiot, the truth would have come out sooner. Wrath would have told her. He may have gone out regardless, but… it’s not really a secret he could keep. It would not have been a shock to Beth.

Then, Butch knows because he has to inhale the lessers. Ok, whatever. However, when Butch does this, he needs to be healed by Vishous. If Wrath has indeed been out killing lessers for four months, you’d think he’d have killed a lot. So Butch has to do his thing a lot. Which means a lot of recovery, and healing. He has a wife you know, okay, a shellan. Marissa would know. And she’d probably let it slip to someone else. And Vishous would’ve known too, as he would’ve had to heal Butch. Major gap here, but that’s like the first few pages, so we’ll ignore that.

I’m not really clear on the sympaths thing. I’m sure we’ll find out more about it later. I’m going to be honest and also say I pretty much forgot everything about the book already. I probably would’ve given it a C+ based on what I read. I mean, it’s good, don’t get me wrong – on the better side of average, a good, average read. Gets a C+ here. I don’t like what is going on with Phury. (And what is going on there?)

But I will say I LOVED Ehlena. She of course has a difficult life as all J.R. Ward heroines do, but she’s a real person, with a relatively normal struggle… and then she goes has a weak moment and steals drugs. (Ehlena is a nurse -she steals prescription meds for Rehv.) Of course she’s also fallen aristocracy. Whoops. There goes the normalcy. I don’t care. I heart Ehlena. I thought she was very realistic – until the breakup with Rehv. Yes, it made some sense because she was a nurse and so horrified by the drug overdose deaths, and finds out Rhev = the master dealer… but she was so emotionally invested at that point. I didn’t believe she could just walk away, or be so very unwilling to hear what he had to say. Then she bounces back a few chapters in – so it was all for dramatic effect, really.

Anyway, the strange and twisted courtship between Ehlena and Rehvenge is the cutest thing ever. I wish I could re-read all the scenes between them, but I can’t because the book was due. (Yes, I got it from the library. I’ve been drifting away from this series so I didn’t want to shell out the $25 for it – but also, I generally read books from the library. Libraries, being the wonderful, terrific things they are probably provide 70% of my leisure reading material, possibly more.)

My personal pet peeve is how spastic the characters are. Especially in their speech. And… I cannot imagine a brother, if he’s seriously as hardcore and badass as the book suggests, saying “oh em gee.” Even my uber geeky nerdboy friends don’t say “omg.”

Anyway, I love how Rehv and Ehlena are connected – they both feel alone, are drawn to each other, and find such comfort in the other’s presence. I loved their stilted courtship, and the conversations they had over the phone. It was so high school and cute. (I wonder if this is what the Twilight books are like – sans the high school/hormonal teenage emotion.) I really liked how into Ehlena Rehv was. There’s one line where it says his chest sparkled because he was so happy to be with her. It just makes you love them.

I will say that I liked Lover Avenged a lot more than the previous two books. I know it being in hardcover annoyed a lot of people, but …  well it didn’t bother me because I got it from the library! I also liked that Ehlena had purpose, and was necessary. She also really and truly didn’t need Rehv to survive. Ehlena and her father were lucky enough to inherit a good sum of money, and she was totally fine on her own. (Aside from that whole emotionally involved thing.)

And now, we come to what bothered me most in the book. Xhex being “lost.” Are you kidding me? Especially considering how Ehlena found Rehv? Even if there’s some weird thing that empath blood is different… Rehv can still track Xhex down. Why? Because he’s half vampire. Accordingly, he can sense his blood in Xhex. Thus, Rehv can pinpoint where Xhex is, which is how a number of other characters have been found previously in the series. Perhaps John doesn’t know this. However, I think this is a giant plot hole, and I really hate unnecessary or weak drama. Ridiculous. (I’m also not big on a John/Xhex romance, but then what do I know. I also hate the idea of a Teddy/Lucy romance, for SEP.)

I also think everything has gone a bit far. Lash can now shoot energy balls? (And I didn’t know about it until the end/the big fight because remember I don’t read Lesser stuff. How the hell can you win over that? And Lassiter just stands around being useless – but I hope he hooks up with some vampire girl. That would be fun. Also because it doesn’t seem like the end is near, so with a slew of more books in this never ending series, I can hope for all sorts of ridiculous things that have a high likelihood of happening.

And what is with Dr. Manny? I also think/hope that Tohr and Payne will get together.

Anyway, enough with my wild conjectures. What do you think about the series? What did you think?

Oh, and here are a couple of excerpts:  here and here.

Have some fun with the Duck Sauce Theater in the lower left of our main window…

Feel free to comment here if you have a vid you’d like to see posted some day in our Theater.   We’re not picky – we’ll post just about anything, including book-related vids. 

Tonight is a huge night in football, and when I say football, I mean the game played with the round ball, not the funny-shaped one.  Football is the biggest sport in the world – bar none. Every nation in the world – except the United States – watches it with a passion. In most of those countries it’s the biggest sport. And tonight is the big one. 

Anyway, I’m not here to convert you, just to compare sport and romance. The more I watch football, or top class tennis, or rugby, the more I see similarities between it and romance. I can’t talk about American sports because I’m not familiar enough with them but I’d bet that the same similarities exist.

A football match lasts for 90 minutes, plus injury time, and in certain circumstances, extra time and maybe a penalty shoot-out. The pitch has a goal at each end. The team that scores the most goals wins. There are 11 men (or women!) in a team, and those 22 people plus the on-field referee are the only ones allowed on the pitch during a game.

This structure allows for drama to take place. No two matches are the same, and the result is never a foregone conclusion, but it will be a happy ending for someone. There is ebb and flow, attack and retreat, and individual dramas ensue when one player takes on another or tempers get too high and someone gets sent off. Each team manager has a station, a dugout, where he stands and rants and raves at the players, just to add to the drama. The manager is an older man, sometimes an ex player, sometimes, like Sir Alex Ferguson, a man who was an indifferent player but a superlative manager.

You can become totally engrossed in the game, and all over the world, people do.

The fortunes of football have ebbed and flowed over the years, from a dangerous thug-ridden game to a family sport that is supreme worldwide. The money that goes into it is breathtaking.

And right at the top is Manchester United. After a hard season of ups and downs (retaining the Premiership title, losing the FA Cup in the quarter finals, winning the Carling Cup), they are on the brink of achieving something no other team have done – retaining the Champions’ League Cup. Sometimes known as “Europe,” this is the crème de la crème, where you have to be at the top in order to even participate. Manchester United are playing Barcelona in Rome. Difficult to top that, really.

Each player is a star, from the good-looking prima donna Ronaldo, to the potato-looking but stunningly powerful Rooney. And tonight is their night.

How romantic is that? So I’ll settle down in front of the TV tonight (can’t go, but this is the next best thing) for 90 minutes of drama and excitement. [Ed.: The UEFA Champions League Final is tonight - I think it's like the European Super Bowl for Soccer.]

Go United!

As posted earlier, Lynne Connolly discussed the nature of class in the Historical Romance. What does that mean for the audience? Why are there more earls, marquis and dukes than anything else? How accurate is the social history that’s being written in historicals? These are all valid questions and Lynne, being a writer of historicals, has to think about these questions when writing her books. As a student of history, I like what she’s saying. People behaved differently in Regency times than today. Victorian social norms are seen as stodgy, straightlaced and old fashioned today, but there are many books written in 19th century England. 

There are authors out there that get it right. There are authors out there that get it wrong. Research, whether for romance or a thesis is essential as there’s always someone out there that’s going to call one out on something that is, by definition, wrong. It’s not an easy task, as evidenced by Lynne’s post, to get the facts right and make everyone happy. Authors are readers too, and deserve to read something that appeals to their sense of historical accuracy as well as a great story that entertains.

I’m not sure what brought about Lynne’s idea to write what she did, but I do applaud her. And yet at the same time, there’s the fact that I am reading a romance novel. I’m not disparaging the genre, but with it does come the understanding that I’ve got the book in front of me because I want to read about the characters rather than the history. That historical setting provides a backdrop for a story and Syb has teased me a time or two about some of the historicals that I read because since I’m a history buff shouldn’t I turn my nose up at these things?

The answer to that is no. I’m not reading a dissertation on the guerrilla tactics and their motivations in Spain against Napoleon. Nor am I reading a social commentary on the aristocracy of England as compared to everyone else in the Industrial Revolution. The crux of what Lynne is saying is, as most historicals go, the situations would never have happened and people wouldn’t have behaved as they did in what is billed as a historical. And besides that, we definitely should care that the hero wouldn’t be speaking as he does to a servant or a worker he meets on the street.

And should the humble reader care? That’s up to personal choice. When it comes down to the bottom line, I don’t read historicals for the history. It’s the fantasy really, that probably dates back to the fairy tales. Or at least the doctored fairy tales that have the happy endings. I’m sure I’m not alone in this, but the other point made by Lynne is that historicals published in America are by and large written by Americans, and the audience can’t really tell the difference between the way things actually were and our modern conceptions of how life and society ran itself 200 years ago. In another country. That had a social stratification and rank system that was eschewed by the founding fathers, at least to some extent. But then Americans can’t be of the mindset that life in the US is not defined by social structure and class different, because it is there. The one thing that Americans don’t do enough of is travel to the places they read about to see how life works (and by extension might have worked).

While I could go on to complain about the lack of valid historical education in America and the unwillingness of legislators to fix the real problems of the education system. . .uh. . .well ok, so maybe it is a lack of education on the part of Americans. It’s not up to the schools to teach everything, it should be up to the individual to find out on their own what they want to know and extend beyond the state mandated curriculum. The author’s editor can read a book with mistakes and inaccuracies and still send it to press, and the reader then takes that as history. The mistakes are on the part of the reader who made a choice to believe something inaccurate and not find out the right information. The choices made by editors are far more difficult, but is it up to the writer or the editor to make sure that the history is always accurate?

Unfortunately there aren’t a lot of changes for this, though the internet has provided access to sources that previously weren’t available. This can help both authors and readers understand, say, the relationship between the English and the Scottish between 1100 and 1900. This post on the AAR board delves into it though I will admit that I didn’t read the whole thing. I am glad the discussion is there, but is the accuracy there in the discussion? History is not black and white facts and figures that only one person got right and there’s a single go to source.

Perhaps this is all based on a false conception of history itself. History is not just facts, dates and people. History majors in college must choose not only what period they want to focus on but then a theme. Social, economic, military, cultural, political, urban, gender, the list can go on and new themes are added all the time. There’s revisionist history, conformist history, structuralist, Marxist, etc, and so many different points of view, areas of bias and the plain fact that what is written as history was done by the winners. The fact that there are various historical interpretations and the history taught to your parents or your children is different than what you were taught comes as a shock at times to people.

What comes out of this idea are books that are inaccurate, not because of lack of research, but lack of understanding about what exactly history is. If Americans want American characters written correctly by Brits in contemporary novels, as well as historicals, then Brits have the right to want British characters written by Americans to have the same level of accuracy. Readers shouldn’t read a romance and accept the story of a Duke as a spy or a Lady who has her maid as a best friend as a historical truth, because it obviously wouldn’t happen. The social strata in historical times defined what people did as much as the subtle social strata of the present day does.

So where can this leave the humble romance writer? Hopefully with a good fact checker, as the editor has more than just content to worry about. Use of historical aspects can kill a story, and it has for me more times that I like to admit. However, a well written romance with good characters can help me to ignore the inaccuracies in a historical. But then maybe I’m a weird reader. I’ve never written a letter to an author berating them for any historical inaccuracy because that’s not what I’m reading their book for. I want the fantasy of a happily ever after and perhaps I secretly wish for that elusive excellent, accurate historical setting. Perhaps my hope someday to get a story about a Cit, or a solider in the lord’s army or even a businessman who does well enough but isn’t a magnate will be written and sold. Until then, I will live with the lowly servant getting the duke in an era when the few dukes were old and marriages were arranged more often than not.

But Lynne? Can we have that story about the Cit?

I haven’t done a favorites post in a while, and after a few random conversations on Twitter (personal twitter accounts: limecello, gwen, c2, shannon, wendy)  I realized there were a wealth of favorites I could feature here. So that’s what I decided to do. Maybe this’ll happen again, maybe it won’t, but I had fun doing it, and I hope everyone else did and will too. So… enjoy. This is my new “favorites” post with some super star guests. I’ve very excited, and grateful that some of these very talented authors (and individuals) decided to contribute.

Amie Stuart – Action Flicks: Action flicks make me squee harder than a 13 year old girl at a Jonas Brothers concert. Seriously, I get more excited than my kids as we get closer and closer to the Summer Blockbuster Movie season-and I have BOYS! It’s like Christmas and my birthday all wrapped together and this year promises to be (for me) exceptional-Terminator, Star Trek, Wolverine, G. I. Joe, Public Enemies and yes, even Angels & Demons is on my radar. Give me guns, blood, bombs and mayhem; give me totally unbelievable car chases and plot twists that would make the Heroes staff writers drool with envy, but Lord have mercy, don’t give me a hankie or any of that, “You complete me,” crap. In truth, I think I was a dude in my last life.

Ann Aguirre – (She was originally going to talk about Sham Wows but couldn’t because she doesn’t have one, so if any generous soul wants to give Ann a present, there’s your perfect suggestion, and chance!) . My favorite thing in the world is my Eternally Soft blanket from J.C. Penney. I actually find I sleep better underneath it because it’s so soft. The satin edging makes it like a baby blankie, only it’s king sized. I had one when I was a kid, and then I went years without one. I managed to track it down to J.C. Penney, and I ordered three, when I bought them, so they would last a while. I even got them monogrammed, which is oh-so-fancy. I have blue, cream, and hazelnut. These are the best blankets ever, so light and soft, but they’re snuggly warm too.

c2 got paid by a LOT of companies to do hers… (and seemed to misunderstand singular vs plural…) Sometimes it’s the little things that make us happy! Here are some of my most favorite things:

	Sympathy for the Skin body cream. If I did not use this fabulous banana vanilla concoction I would be positively reptilian during the winter months! Nobody wants that…trust me. .
	Big Mouth lip gloss. I can’t tell that it plumps and I don’t need it to, anyway, but this gloss does smooth my lips out and enhance the natural color plus it isn’t sticky and goopy. Yay!
	There are no words for how happy my Sleep Mate makes me. I love sleep! Good sleep is a fabulous and rare thing, says me. I don’t like identifiable sounds in a roof when I’m trying to sleep – like a television or radio or ticking clock (hatesssss the ticking clocks!!). But I don’t like complete silence either. Normally I’m so easy going but I’m difficult when it comes to all thing sleep-related. Heh. . Anyhoo, I grew up with a window air conditioner in my room so I love the sound of a fan when I sleep and the Sleep Mate sounds just like a fan or air conditioner of some sort. It masks all the weird sounds that might intrude on my sleep but isn’t so loud that I can’t hear the storm siren, if it starts wailing. Plus I have the loudest refrigerator ever and the kitchen shares a wall with my bedroom. If you’re a light sleeper or have noisy neighbors or just don’t like too much silence, a Sleep Mate might be a product for you. If you’re a light sleeper or have noisy neighbors or just don’t like too much silence, a Sleep Mate might be a product for you. I grew up with a window air conditioner in my room so I love the sound of a fan when I sleep. Plus I have the loudest refrigerator ever and the kitchen shares a wall with my bedroom.
	Sprees! My favorite candy since I was a little C2. I found the tube version a few weeks ago in a tiny market in a nearby town. Win! (Ed note: They can be bought online as well.)
	Piggy Polish nail polish. Such fun colors! And bonus toe rings (that are way too big for my toes but might fit someone). What more can you ask? .
	Spiderman gummies vitamins Best vitamins EVER!
	Jokari Fizz-Keeper Pump and Pour! You squeeze the bubble and your soda stays fizzy. I didn’t think it would work but it SO does!
	Tarte emphaseyes eyeliner- Love this eyeliner! In black (the other colors I’ve tried don’t show much). I only use it on the bottom lid, usually. It stays put and makes it super easy to get right up by the lashline.
	Dee Tenorio – I pondered this very carefully. Should I talk about my love for my children or husband, the people who fill my days and make my life worthwhile? Should I talk about my nearly unnatural passion for football and how all I want for Christmas is a Drew Brees Charger jersey? Or an LT? Or maybe just LT, period? But no, I thought, if I should be honest, one thing that makes me happy, every time…is cake. I know, it’s lame, but it’s true. Cake is love in a spongy, frosting covered, pudding or fruit filled shape. That’s why they make it for birthdays. I love a light cake, the kind that when you sink a fork into it, the whole piece bends then releases back to it’s previous shape. The frosting should be creamy without leaving a waxy coating on your tongue. Sweet without gagging you. Oh, and it should have two layers. And it needs filling, preferably pudding. That’s where the affection is. Yup yup. Goooood times.
	HelenKay Dimon – Home. I love to travel and the more exotic the better. Enjoy going out with friends because having a balance between work and fun is important. I live in Southern California with so many wonderful vacation spots nearby – the beach on one side and the desert on the other. Beverly Hills a morning’s drive away and so many great locations close by plane. But the place I’m happiest is my house. It’s not big. It’s not in the most expensive area. There are things I’d love to change. Heaven knows it needs work…and a good cleaning. None of those defects matter to me. Whether I’m in my back yard sitting in the sun and surrounded by flowers, or in my family room fighting the pets for space on the couch, I’m content. Comfortable. Secure. It’s both a feeling and a place. It’s where I work and where I avoid doing work. Home is where my family is and where I always want to be. . . [And yes, that is an actual picture of HelenKay's gorgeous home! Now don't break her trust or mine by going off and stalking her!]
	JenB (she won’t admit it, but I’m giving it to you straight – she was paid off by Kiehl’s) – My favorite thing is Kiehl’s. I got hooked on Kiehl’s because of their Lip Balm #1. I keep a half-ounce tube in my purse and the one-ounce jar on my nightstand. It’s great on its own or under lipstick, and it lasts a long time because it’s ultra-moisturizing. It’s also the only lip balm I’ve found that doesn’t break me out around my mouth or cause my lips to feel like they’ve become dependent on it (unlike Carmex). Of course I didn’t stop at the lip balm. I also love their Leave-In Conditioner. My hair is thick, wavy, and somewhat coarse, and so far this tames it better than any other product. I’m constantly changing shampoos and conditioners, but this leave-in is a constant. Other Kiehl’s favorites are the Light Nourishing Eye Cream, Creamy Avocado Eye Treatment, Blue Herbal Spot Treatment, Ultimate Strength Hand Salve, their FABULOUS lip glosses, and most recently the Tinted Moisturizer. They even have a line of baby products which I’m tempted to try because of my sensitive skin. And for those of you with extra cash and extra-pampered pets, try their Canine & Equine lines.
	Katiebabs – One of my favorite things in the whole world is to chew gum. If I could live on coffee, pretzels and gum, I would be one happy person. And what is there not to like about gum? Where else can you choose between a zillion different flavors that can give you hours of enjoyment? Bubble gum is a great appetite suppressant and allows you to do many things with your mouth. (I know it sounds dirty, doesn’t it?). . I have become quite the gum expert. Orbit gum is my absolute favorite because it is pretty inexpensive, comes in an easy to use package and the flavor lasts for hours. Bubble gum is like choosing your favorite color crayon because there are so many flavors to choose from. After a meal, usually after lunch I must have a piece to cleanse my palate. . Just by saying these two words- bubble gum makes me smile.
	Keri Stevens – I confess. I am in love with my front-loader washer. Yes, he is a large appliance. And yes, he is a large appliance. Because he has such massive . . . capacity, I wash three times as much clothing in each load than my old top-loader could swallow. . He’s beautiful, too – a shiny stainless steel drum set in a white case. When his surface is dirty, it takes just a lick and swipe to clean him up. Easy. And when he spins? Oh, when he spins! I can sit for hours, mesmerized gazing through his glass door to the maelstrom. But it doesn’t take hours, of course-because he’s energy-efficient, water-conserving and fast. And when it comes to my dirty clothes, fast is a very good thing. . Lord Grey (I’m pretty sure that’s what the LG on his front stands for) is the strong, silent type. His cycles are so quiet that he makes clothes washing seem effortless-but when I lean against him, I feel him throb. I get on my knees in front of him, pushing in dry clothes, pulling out wet. But the balance of power in our relationship is equal: I know how to push all of his buttons. And although I live with four other people, apparently I am the only one able to turn him on.
	Limecello -Me? I love free things, or discounts and coupons, and have been known to share links to free cookies/meals/etc. I discovered SwagBucks in February, and I waited until I made sure it was legitimate before I started telling people. (Also to make sure it wasn’t spammy or would give you a virus- I knew my computer was dying so I didn’t mind TOO much if something else happened to it.) But you know? All was good. So sign up – and get yourself some swag too. You don’t even have to use the link I posted, but I’d love for you to do that, because I do get referral points up to a certain mark. (And yes it works, I’ve gotten $55 in Gift Cards from it, that yes I have used and they work, and am working on getting more.) . But that leads me to my real thing. What makes me happy is basic human kindness. One day, Amie surprised me with a really nice post, and messaged me, saying she thought it was great that I teach little inner city brats. (I won’t talk about it here.) I still need to *really* pass it on, but I ran into a really nice valet named Tim this past week. I got lost and parked at the wrong place when going to see the ophthalmologist. I was also wearing heels because afterward I was meeting friends for dinner because one of them was leaving for CA. Anyway, the valet took care of parking for me. He got me a band aid because my shoes ate my heels (literally all the skin still is gone), walked me to my car, swiped me out, then drove me to the proper lot. Just because. What an amazing guy. He told me some weird things like he lost weight and wanted a 30″ waist for when he hit 50, but you know. It was nice for him to help me out.
	Moira Rogers (Yes, I got a matched set! Go me!)
	Bree – I’m going to go out on a limb and say no one who uses utensils wouldn’t find their lives way better with one of these around. It’s a spoon! It’s a fork! It’s a freaking titanium spork! Not only is it useful for those eating-related quandaries (like shrimp fried rice) but you can use it for self defense, too. Not to mention the street cred that comes along with owning such an epic piece of cutlery. . (Disclaimer: street cred only accumulated among the extremely geeky or quirky.)
	Donna - My favorite thing right now is Food Network. There are very few shows on that channel I won’t watch. Whenever I’m stuck in a rut–culinary or otherwise–I just switch it on and educate myself. Okay, well, I mostly just drool. But sometimes there is edification going on, I swear!Any time I need some new recipe or technique to mess around with in the kitchen, Food Network delivers. When I have insomnia and can’t work for some reason, Food Network delivers–usually in the form of an episode of “Chopped” or “Ace of Cakes” or something else I can only stare at in amazement as slumber slowly overtakes me.And then we have my absolute hero. My younger daughter calls him “the man who makes food,” and we both stare devotedly at the television when he’s on screen. If he tried to sell me snake oil, I’d buy it. I have thirty episodes of “Good Eats” on my DVR–in high-definition, no less.Yes, it’s true. I am a foodie and a nerd…and Alton Brown is my king.

So now… it’s your turn! What is your new favorite thing? Or you can pass on the awesome by talking about someone who you appreciate. Or you know, turn this into a rant. That’s great too. Just join in and chat – it’ll be fun, and the water is nice. I promise!

Dear Authors,

This is a friendly letter in regards to your websites. Have excerpts for your books. ALL of them, dammit. Yes – enough readers may want that super old one republished, and it might happen. If they know about it. If you revamp your site, please DO NOT remove the book blurbs and excerpts. You might have that 10-15 year old book still for sale on amazon, through the publisher, and I’m not buying it unless I’ve read an excerpt. I also might want it enough to create a big stink on say, Harlequin, and convince them to republish. (Hey, it’s been known to happen. Every so often I’ll go in there and stomp around and issue my demands. Sometimes, they’re even met. I so heart Harlequin.) 

Also, about the excerpts… If the link is to a pdf, please warn us. Some computers don’t like that sort of thing, so we need to prepare our machines.

Please have book blurbs. Sometimes, I want to know what the book is about, and cannot find it anywhere. You, kind author, should have easy access to it. Please post it. Right by the book page. We put them by our reviews too, and sometimes (while not necessarily accurate), blubs are that final step that convince a reader to buy.

Speaking of – have a book page! A one that is easy to navigate. I know you, or your web developer want to show off your mad interwebbing skillz. But make it user friendly. If you didn’t know the site – could you find it all? Too often I go to a site and become frustrated. I want to hit someone, or break something, because I should be able to easily find your book page and information. That is not always the case. Please fix that. Make sure there are clear links to your books. SEPARATE links. Make sure the links WORK and go to the CORRECT book. Thanks. Also, make sure the links are PROPERLY LABELED. Help our blind friends out. And you know, the ones who aren’t blind because that’s just not useful for anyone if you have a mislabeled link.

Make sure your webpage is legible. Accordingly, watch for typos. I know we all make them. I for sure do. But I’m not a professional reviewer (would that I were!) – and still – I do try and edit everything. Also, no glitter graphics, please. Not on your website. No dancing, moving, shifting, pixelated anything. Not unless you’re in middle school.

Make sure the font is readable, the colors compatible. Do people need to highlight text for it to be visible? That is BAD. Is it something that appeals to a four year old girl and only said four year old? Also bad.

Check your webpage in different browsers. I hesitate to say the “old guard” loves IE and nobody else does… but a number of people use Mozilla Firefox (because its better). Do see if your webpage works in FF and other browsers.

Don’t have misinformation on your site. Yes, it may seem all sophisticated and erudite, and that you’re so culturally aware… but if it’s wrong, you are fail. Please make sure what legend/myth/”fact” you have posted are in fact, correct.

Don’t sign up for chats/visits etc, then do a no show. If you had an emergency, that’s understandable – but do try to give notice. (Other professionals do the same.) Accordingly, don’t renege on contests. If you promise one, follow through. As a side, update your contests page. If you don’t want to do one anymore, take it down.

Naked man pictures – why. On a blog, fun posts, a fun page- fine. All over your main page? Look. We get you write romance. Or erotica. Or erotic romance. No need to throw it in the viewer’s face. Or perpetuate all the derision for the genre of some non-reader who stumbles upon your page. Honestly. For fun, all well and good- bring on the naked men. But on a home page? … ehh. Unless you’re a p0rn star, that’s not really how you want yourself represented professionally… is it?

I heard a new, and horrifying one today, about an author photograph. Just… be aware of how you present yourself. Would you be embarrassed if say, the clerk of courts recognized you from your web page? Your mayor? Your first grade teacher? A senator? If yes… reconsider posting whatever it may be.

NO MUSIC, or forcing someone to watch your book trailer as soon as they access your site. Please – just have a welcome/home page. If you write adult materials and don’t want someone underage accessing your site, I understand the “go away if you’re under 18.” Otherwise, please let the viewer choose what fancy doodads they want to see.

Thus – that floating toolbar? Anchor it. Instead of it being useful, it covers up text and images I want to see elsewhere in the page. The toolbar lurching around trying to follow me as I scroll around doesn’t make me think “oh how nice and helpful!” It makes me wonder if the toolbar is having a seizure, and I have the urge to break my cute little laptop screen. This is not good.

Make sure your home page is user friendly. Don’t hide links in images or place links in counter-intuitive places. There is one website I get linked to once every few months, (yes an author page), and I’ve never once found anything. I’m stuck on the main page and I don’t know where anything is or anything about that author. And after the initial go, I’ve never tried again. I’ve also never read anything by that author, and you know, don’t really care to. If s/he wanted me to read his/her books, a readily accessible book page would be there. I’m reasonably intelligent – rather confident in my smarts. I’m also competent with computers and the internet. Your webpage shouldn’t stump or frustrate me.

A suggestion – have “upcoming news” – important professional things you’re doing. A blog tour? Book tour? Speaking engagement? New book coming out? Do let readers know.

Possibly have a newsletter or email list. Have a contact page. And/or a blog. Group blogs. However, if you can’t keep up with the blog you have now, don’t go joining more. Don’t create a second one. Don’t pretend to have a blog that you don’t even update. Consensus from the duckies is also that if you have a personal blog and can’t handle it – stop. Don’t let your assistant/mom/random person update for you. Not. Good.

Lastly, don’t say you’re happy to hear from readers if you’re not. What do I mean? Well, I personally, have bad luck “cold calling” authors. I’ve done it a few times now, and was always ignored. (And yes, I gave the author sufficient time to respond – anywhere from one, to twelve months.) Really. I’d be ok with you shooting back an email six months after my “sent” date. I’m sure you’re busy, and believe it or not, I’m hella busy too. Don’t encourage readers to contact you, and say you love chatting/interacting with readers, if you’re not going to. However, I have corresponded with some fabulous authors, and I know there are a number of authors out there who love getting emails from readers and respond. Joy!

That’s just my little rant/hope for all author pages.

Have I offended anyone? Dug out any culprits? Is there anything you would have added to this list?

Signed,
Limecello, et al

So this has been floating around in my fevered little head the past few days… but first I’d like to discuss one thing. Last week, strange things started happening to the Amazon rankings of books. Lauren Dane, I know, mentioned it a few times. Then, today (Sunday), word spread that Amazon did an EPIC FAIL. They removed all books with “adult content” from their general searches. (They’ll show if you’re in the “books” department, generally… but still.) I saw Larissa Ione and Stephanie Tyler’s Sydney Croft books disappear before my eyes while searching for Larissa Ione. (It was pretty creepy.) 

I think much of the news was from this post, and of course a number of authors who write erotic romance or erotica are/were affected.

I don’t think this was a brilliant thing for Amazon to do. It also follows something I’ve noted a long time ago, and mentioned a few times – but not here. Did you notice that Amazon killed the Romance section from their Bargain Books page? I’m not 100% sure when that happened, but it’s been this way for six months at least. At first I thought it was a glitch. And you know, I don’t check it daily. Then, I emailed Amazon. Nothing. Emailed them again. The same. Third time? “Oh we’re working on it.” (That was over a month ago.)

… Shady business. Anyway, the ladies at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books decided to google bomb Amazon. “New term?” Amazon Rank. Go on, click. You know you want to!Ok – so maybe Amazon will change it’s no “adult” book policy. And bring back the bargain romance books. (Sorry, authors, I know some of you hate this – but… some of us are poor. Like really poor. And… like airlines should learn selling some is better than none, yes?)

Now… book talk. I think I’ll have some rant-y posts coming up, so I want the prelude to be something nice. Also, Jen B’s post made me want to chat books too.

If you were asked to compare the authors (or pick which you prefer) from Austen and Eliot – who would you choose? And more importantly, would your mind default to George Eliot, or T.S. Eliot? I thought of the former, Jen B, the latter.

Next, have all of you read The Awakening? Should I cave to Jen and issue a general challenge for all of us to read/re-read it? I remember liking it… but definitely was not as affected by Kate Chopin’s writing.

Do you have a favorite book? I think the book I’ve read the most in my life is The Witch of Blackbird Pond. Maybe a guilty secret? I loved The Scarlet Pimpernel – there’s this one quote that makes me want to die. I had a wonderful unabridged hardcover copy, but lost it in college. So if anyone ever goes to suite 461, Drackett Tower, and wants to check behind the “desk” closest to the window and see if my long lost copy is there, you’d be my hero. I saw the movie with Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman (cuz that’s her name) in 10th Grade World History CP, and was hooked. My friends quoted that silly little poem and cracked up. That demmed elusive pimpernel! .

I’ve already waxed … well, if not poetic, often about romance novels – and hey, bring them up – I’m happy to discuss them as always.

But kid books are next on my list. Twilight? Meh. I picked it up and read/skimmed through it, and was unimpressed. Maybe it’s because I’m not 12 anymore. (But, uh, I was reading Michael Crichton in 5th grade, and John Grisham in 7th…) Anyway, I don’t see much of the appeal of today’s kid books. Especially little kid books. Granted, I real all the series ones. Boxcar Children? Sweet Valley Twins (and then High), Baby Sitter’s Club, Nancy Drew, and all the Oz books. Whoever doesn’t like L. Frank Baum is a hater.

I also read this series – about this dark haired girl who rode horses and was all “poor little rich girl me” and she lived somewhere like …Virginia and I’ve wanted to find those books forever but can’t. (Unfortunately, as a kid, I remembered what books I liked based on cover picture. Not title, not author. Not a good system, I know. When the library got rid of them? I was and am sunk. Sad.) There was also this historical Native American tale about a girl who was rejected by her father the chief because a) she was a girl and b) her eyes were funky but she ends up saving her people and hooking up with a dude name Jackal…

I love L.M. Montgomery. Madeline L’Engle. Before them, Laura Ingalls Wilder. Lloyd Alexander. Susan Cooper. Man, those are great books. Cynthia Voigt. On Fortune’s Wheel might be one of my favorite books ever. And I’m slowly acquiring her Tillerman series. I also liked Ella Enchanted – but feel like that was Gail Carson Levine’s best work. All the other Newberry books – Wheel on the School, Pippi Longstocking, you know the rest. Fantastic.

I did read L.J. Smith (and reviewed a trilogy too!) I remember Freeze Tag and The Immortal by Christopher Pike. (Who the hell grinds up a glass then hides it in a burger patty?!?) Anyway.

In high school, I basically read from the reading lists/assignments, and classics. She was never required reading, I’m quite fond of Austen, and like her gentle, witty sarcasm. Persuasion and Mansfield Park are fabulous. (And everyone knows Pride and Prejudice as well as Sense and Sensibility or Emma.)

I never did finish Candide by Voltaire :X but I loved The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas… more than his Three Musketeers books… and Thomas Hardy I’ve already mentioned because he’s the catalyst that pushed me towards romances. I had something floating around in my head about Tess of the d’Urbervilles but can’t remember. I guess it’s still more memorable than Far from the Madding Crowd. Never loved Dickens, and I did love Jane Eyre, though my favorite Brontë is Anne with The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Poor unloved Anne. Emily… and Wuthering Heights… blah.

SO! What about you? Kid books you like? Adult? Classics? I also loved reading interesting biographies as a kid. Blue Jacket really sticks out… oh and hello – I can’t not mention Louisa May Alcott. Loved A Long, Fatal Love Chase. (Shout out to Liv too because she sent it to me after I mentioned it…)

Come and dish – what books are your favorites, past or present? Come on… there may be good reason to do so!

(Oh right- so, as many of you know, March was a wash at the pond. TGTBTU sorely missed it’s fearless leader Sybil. However, it was a wash for me as well. This whole damn year has been. I may have only slept one week in February, and two in March. However, I don’t feel like ranting right now. (That would take me down a slippery slope – one from which I might never be able to climb back up. Especially considering what I’d be talking about.)

As I said, I’m poor. Really damn poor. So that monthly contest I promised? I’m going to have to change the terms. As in, it will no longer be monthly, but whenever I feel like it. Still, for US residents only.

The first winner was Sherry Thomas, and the second winner was Jen B. I didn’t have one for March because well, see above. March was a black hole for me.

**Also, Shelley, you won the giveaway for Anya Bast. Please email us your information. And… don’t despair.

***Lauren Dane has her giveaway – and Anya Bast and Lauren Dane in their wonderfulness and generosity are planning on giving away a few copies of their new anthology What Happens in Vegas… After Dark. So stay tuned for details.