As some may remember, I’ve already posted about judging for this year’s RWA RITA contest. It was an interesting experience—some of the books were first rate (I’ve discovered a couple of authors I really enjoyed whose other books I’m now reading), others were less so. I plan on volunteering again next year. But one response […]
All regency heroines are virgins. It’s a standard trope. The only exceptions to this are widows and the very occasional courtesan. But mostly the regency heroine is untouched as the driven snow, no matter what her age happens to be. And thus the scene in which the hero discovers that he’s making love to a […]
I’m on record as believing user reviews are basically a good thing. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used these reviews for purchasing decisions on things like slow cookers. Reader reviews can come under the same heading, but not always. Some reader reviews are thoughtful and make a lot of sense. Some reader […]
You know how it is. You start reading a new novel and slowly you begin to see the outlines of the plot emerging. And after fifty pages or so, the pieces start falling into place. Okay, it’s another poor-bluestocking-goes-to-London plot—which variation will this be? Will she become a companion for her beautiful cousin? Will she […]
I’ve been judging contests for a few years now. I started doing it because I figured since I benefitted from contests as an unpublished writer, I should pay my dues by serving as a judge too. Judging contests for unpublished writers is pretty straightforward. As a rule, you only see the first couple of chapters […]
So here we are in this regency historical. The heroine is one of those “spirited” types who’s going to assert herself come hell or high water. She has a ring belonging to her dead sister that identifies the sister’s lover, the man responsible for her death. Our heroine is determined to unmask said cad by […]
Normally, I don’t comment on pirates and piracy. Yeah, it’s wrong. Yeah, it’s a royal pain in the ass. Yeah, it’s probably siphoning off some of my royalties. On the other hand, people who regularly download books from piracy sites probably aren’t going to be buying my books anyway since they don’t pay for books […]
A few weeks ago, Amazon announced an interesting statistic: their e-book sales, which had earlier eclipsed their hardback sales, had now exceeded their paperback sales. E-books were officially Amazon’s best-selling format. The response from a certain segment of the romance-writing community was immediate, although not exactly what you might expect. Amazon, they said, was lying. […]
Headhopping is one of those terms that’s well known to most people in the romance-writing community and probably unknown to anyone who isn’t part of it. It refers to shifting point of view from one character to another within a scene, and it’s a no-no. Actually, no-no is too mild. It’s a Mark Of Cain, […]
A couple of years ago I wrote a blog post about the Big Misunderstanding as a plot device and why I disliked it. Since that time, I’ve actually used a Big Misunderstanding in a plot of my own (see Venus In Blue Jeans), so I’ve sort of moderated my opinions. Yet I found myself thinking […]
