Book Review: Romeo by Gail Faulkner

I hesitate to apply the words sweet and endearing to an erotic romance, but that actually is how this story made me feel. I loved it, and adored the luscious heroine and hero.

Lauren had a heart transplant two years ago, but doesn't tell most people about it. She's tired of being babied and overprotected by her father and brothers, she wants to be able to live an independent and normal life. This weekend, she's off with her friend Carla (a doctor-to-be), to a gathering of Carla's family at the ranch owned by her wealthy cousin Romeo. Yep, that really is his name and he is drop-dead gorgeous and sexy and accustomed to having women fall at his feet. Carla describes him as "bossy, dictatorial and a general pain in the ass." That's because Romeo's parents died when he was young and he had to become the responsible head of the family very early. He goes overboard in trying to control and protect everyone, subconsciously trying to protect himself from losing another loved one.

Carla and her cousins are expecting lovely Lauren, known for being an "Ice Queen" with little interest in men, to give Romeo the cold shoulder, and they are looking forward to his reaction to a woman who doesn't fall for him. It doesn't work out quite that way -- Lauren and Romeo fall for each other at first sight, although in a private manner, not sloppy public pawings. Romeo recognizes Lauren's medical problems--his mother had a bad heart--and of course immediately tries to smother her with controlling protectiveness. But he's met his match in the seemingly quiet and gentle Lauren. She can manipulate with the best of them, and soon is making it quite clear to him what the word "equals" means and what the consequences are of trying to make her decisions for her. By the end of the story, it's easy to tell who will be in charge of this relationship, and that Romeo is going to enjoy every minute of the battle.

Lauren gets a five-star rating from me, she is the true iron fist in velvet glove and completely endearing and lovable. The relationship between Lauren and Romeo progesses a bit too fast--you really have to suspend disbelief to go along with them being engaged and contemplating a quick wedding trip to Las Vegas within two days of meeting. But the concept of love at first sight, of instantly recognizing "the one" and being immediately willing to make a life commitment, is a fantasy we all enjoy surrendering to, as a break from the way love works in real life.

Ebook at http://www.ellorascave.com/ or print book (trade paperback, $14.00) in the "Hurts So Good" anthology from Pocket Books
Author website: http://www.gailfaulkner.com/index2.html

Book Review: Captain’s Lady by Sharon Milburn

Yes, I can read and enjoy something that isn’t loaded with sizzling sex scenes! Mind you, I don’t do it very often, but I can…

Didn’t most of us read the short, traditional Regency romances when we were young girls? The incomparable Georgette Heyer! Those sweet, shy (but actually clever and independent) misses making their come-out in the London Season, those daring rakes who would drag the lady into scandal and then make a love-match of it? And all with just a kiss or two, perhaps a touch of hands.

This type of Regency fell out of favor in recent years, although “Regency-set historicals” remain popular – longer length, more complex story lines, much hotter sensuality. A few publishers have leapt to fill in the gap for readers who still want the traditional type of Regency. Cerridwen Press started its Cotillion line this year, putting out one ebook a month; the books seem to be showing up in print a couple of months after the ebook.

Captain’s Lady features Alice Carstairs, who is beyond the age of coming out and finding a husband (gee, if you haven’t done that by twenty, you’re on the shelf). Due to the loss of the family’s money, she is drudging at a bleak and uncomfortable position, running the household and caring for the children of a distant relative. It’s an awful situation, since that family is also about to lose its home and Alice’s integrity and loyalty are at their limit. The new heir is dashing Captain Sir Edward Masterman, and although he knows nothing about being lord of the manor, his arrival saves the household and Alice.

Despite the accusations and lies of others, Sir Edward quickly recognizes Alice’s true qualities and comes to rely on her opinions and her help in solving local problems. She is quite clever and tactful in her advice, and most of the staff and villagers love her. But there are those jealous or guilty few… Sir Edward wants to take care of Alice the way she takes care of everyone else. But he’s also torn by his attachment to his naval career and his desire to fight the evil Bonaparte. And Alice falls in love with him but of course thinks that he could never marry a penniless nobody like her. (For those of you inexperienced in traditional Regencies, this is the stock phrase used to describe a good half of these romances.)

This is a typical story of the genre, containing most of the standard elements. But it is very well written and well plotted, I enjoyed the author’s voice and talent, I loved the hero and heroine. I strongly recommend it to those who love the Traditional Regency genre.

Print (trade paperback, $9.99) and ebook ($5.95); Cerridwen Press
Author website: www.users.bigpond.com/micenko/

Book Review: Elven Surrender by Jory Strong

Anything Jory Strong writes is fantastic. I got hooked on her from her first book, Trace’s Psychic, and that Supernatural Bonds series remains my favorite. She has four ongoing series (paranormal, contemporary romantic suspense, futuristic), and mixes in the occasional unrelated short story or novella. Elven Surrender is a fantasy/paranormal short novella, with a menage a trois.

Silver has been trained as a witch, and is about to undergo the initiation rite and go off to handle her own remote territory. But a little-understood mystical mark appears on her hand, indicating that she may be destined to be the mate of a warlock—a fate she does not want, as it would mean surrendering her will and mind to the warlock’s control and never having a territory of her own. Pursued, she flees into the forbidden forest, where she’s intercepted by…

Wraith and Tynan, elven half-brothers. They were raised to hate each other, competing to eventually assume their father’s role as Lord of their land. But they are actually both more intelligent, more interested in healing and helping their people after their father’s evil rule—even if it means they must work together. The only way they can combine their powers and have their elven people accept them jointly is to share a wife. They foresee Silver, and know the mark on her hand means she is theirs. What neither they nor she know is that she is a rare half-elven, and her heritage could have an unpredictable impact on their joining.

Loved it! Hot, hot. (Ooh, I wish I had a bathroom/bathing tub like Wraith’s!) Short but satisfying, although I do hope Ms. Strong considers setting more stories in this world in future. Write faster, write faster!

e-book, available from http://www.ellorascave.com/
Author website: http://www.jorystrong.com/welcome.html

Book Review: Witch Fire by Anya Bast

Until now, Mira’s had a rather dull life. She was raised by a maiden aunt after her parents were killed in an accident when she was a baby. She’s recovering from a recent divorce from her cheating lawyer husband, living in a cheap apartment and working as a waitress to earn money to go back to college. Then sexy Jack sits down at a table in the diner and orders coffee – and Mira’s world changes. Turns out she’s an incredibly powerful and rare air witch, as were both her parents. Jack is a fire witch, sent by the Witch Coven to protect her. Seems that the head of the Evil Warlocks, who killed Mira’s parents, now wants her. To cure his own fatal illness, he needs to summon a demon by draining the power of (and killing) four elemental witches.

When Mira’s attacked by warlocks, Jack takes her to the Coven headquarters to protect her and to provide her with training in her powers. The two of them also, of course (after all, this is a romance), fall in lust and love, but they both resist the attraction. Mira wants time to recover from her divorce, plus is trying to cope with all these wild alterations in her world view. Jack’s reasons are darker – he’s overcome by guilt. He hasn’t told Mira that (1) his father is head of the evil warlocks, and (2) when he was ten years old he witnessed his father killing her mother, and was unable to save her.

This was an intriguing story that kept me reading. Not perfect, but very good, and I will definitely buy the sequel (Witch Blood). Mira and Jack are great characters. There’s lots of intense sex. Well, actually, I got so interested in the plot moving forward that I began to skim the sex scenes – at times, it did feel like some were unnecessary to the story and had been inserted just to feed the trend for erotic romances. I appreciated that although Mira initially resisted believing in witch’s and magic—wouldn’t most of us?—once she saw it “in action” she was smart enough to accept. She is a determined, intelligent and level-headed heroine. There’s one TSTL moment near the end, when she insists that Jack not be included in a dangerous rescue mission—even though he’s the most capable person, she wants to protect him. Of course he finds out and shows up to save the day.

My only other complaint is the very sparse world-building. I wanted to know a lot more about these elemental witches: where they come from, how their power works and what its limits are, how they fit into the regular world, how their own witch society functions and governs itself, and so forth. Almost nothing is explained. At one point, Mira asks these questions and no one answers her, either. I hope Ms. Bast expands on this in the future books of the Elemental Witches series. I’m eager to read them!

print book (mass market, $7.99), Berkley Sensation
You can check out the author’s website at www.anyabast.com

Are the Big Boys Ruining Erotic Romance?

The continued success of erotic romance depends on expanding the reader base, enticing more mainstream romance readers to this genre. But are the big New York print publishers turning off readers who give erotic romance a try?

Remember the days when almost the only place to get quality erotic romance was online from e-publishers? Although print publishers like Red Sage (the Secrets anthologies started in 1995) and Black Lace had been around for a while, they weren’t in the forefront of most romance readers’ recognition. Ellora’s Cave basically launched the erotic romance trend in 2000 after author/founder Jaid Black was told by NY publishers that women would not want to read her sexually explicit romances. EC became (and still is) the big fish in this pond. Other e-pubs and small presses jumped into the water and found it a good place to be. Sales went up and up – clearly, women DID want to read ErRom. Then a couple of years ago, EC went into print and hit the Borders bookshelves in a big way. That’s when NY print publishers really began to notice that this could be a lucrative market segment, and now all the big boys have joined the party. Kensington Aphrodisia, Harlequin Spice, Avon Red, Berkley Heat. ErRom is THE booming genre in romance. But will it last, or how long until the boom goes bust, and what will determine whether the trend stays with us?

Now I get to give you my not-so-humble opinion. Join in and post your thoughts.

I’ve heard a lot of muttering that the ErRom market is getting swamped, flooded, overcrowded—whatever you want to call it. In other words, too many books coming out. For some reason, people think that will overwhelm readers, drive them away from the genre. I don’t get it. Why would having lots of choices make readers less likely to buy books in the genre? Yes, it means more competition amongst authors/books, possibly lowering the sales figures on each individual book. After all, if a reader buys, say, six ErRom books each a month, and there are only six new ones released – well, you know yours will be bought. BUT if there are twelve new titles to choose from, your book may only get picked up by half the people. HOWEVER, the overall number of ErRom books purchased didn’t go down.

In fact, I believe having more titles available could increase the popularity of the genre. Readers will have different types and subgenres and author writing styles to select from, are more likely to find things they really like, and therefore will keep reading the genre.

But I think there are two factors that COULD seriously damage the ability of ErRom to spread to a much bigger segment of the mainstream romance readers. And both are being caused by the frantic efforts of the big NY publishers to get in on this trend and milk as much out of it as quickly as possible, even if they end up killing it off. After all, there will always be another trend for them to chase…

(1) Blurring the line between erotic romance and erotica.
The epubs stressed the difference between the two. If something was labeled “erotic romance”, it was a ROMANCE--focus on the relationship between hero and heroine, ending with that emotionally satisfying committed HEA (to paraphrase the RWA definition). ErRom added explicit sex as part of the development of the relationship and the plot. “Erotica” can be fun and sexy and even have romance – but the focus is on the sexual relationship, not the emotional one, and the hero and heroine are not necessarily monogamous and may not be committed to each other at the end of the story. Some readers like both genres, some prefer one or the other only.

The NY boys are trying to have it both ways. Their advertising and labels on the books can’t be trusted to correctly identify ErRom versus erotica. Maybe they don’t understand the distinction. A lot of authors say it’s hard to figure out what these publishers want to see submitted, because the publishers don’t know themselves. They’re still trying to figure out what sells best. Maybe these publishers don’t WANT to let romance readers know that some of those stories are erotica, not romance – because that could lower sales. So this leads to confusion, dissatisfaction, and disillusionment amongst readers new to the genre, those trying it out to see if they like it. If you want to read a romance, you’re going to be disappointed if that “erotic romance” you bought isn’t “romantic”. You may conclude the whole genre is lacking, and you won’t waste your money buying any more books.

Failing to clearly define and appropriately identify erotic romance versus erotica is turning off the mainstream romance readers who are new to trying this genre.

(2) Putting out poor quality stories in the rush to cash in on this trend as quickly as possible.
With all the NY pubs in the act now, “resources” are stretched thin to fill all those releases. In this case, the resources are authors who can produce great ErRom stories. First the big boys raided the epublishers for experienced authors already proven to be fan favorites. (Several EC authors told me the story of how it sure looked like editors at Avon Red took the list of authors off the EC website and alphabetically started contacting almost all, soliciting submissions.)

Now publishers are “running out of resources”. There’s been much speculation that editors at some of the NY pub erotic romance lines are lowering standards, desperately accepting books, sliding them through the editing process, and generally putting out a lot of not-so-good stories—just because they need books to release. What is one to think when a brand new, never-published author brags online that she just got a three-book contract from a major NY ErRom publisher based on a couple of pages of synopsis and the first few chapters of one unfinished book? What drove that editor to accept this, since she can’t tell if the author is even capable of completing a full book, let alone by deadline, and whether the author can sustain the quality throughout, not just is those first couple polished-over-and-over chapters? Well, the editor likely accepted it because, yes, she loved the story concept; but also because she’s under pressure to get lots of ErRom out there while the market is hot, and is competing against all the other ErRom lines trying to find authors. So the editor may not have the time to ask to see a full manuscript like one normally would. I’ve read the advance promo for this book and series, it sounds very intriguing. But will the writing and stories measure up, given the author’s inexperience and the pressure the editor may be under to get anything that can be labeled ErROm, no matter how poorly written or edited, out onto the bookshelves?

I hear constant comments from readers and from other authors that there are some books they really enjoy in the NY ErRom lines, but find far too many amateurish, poorly written, poorly edited. Giving new authors their shot is a great thing, but does require extra time and effort from the editor/publisher to work with the author on the first books. And that doesn’t seem to be happening in the rush to put out ErRom while the trend is still hot.

A mainstream romance reader just trying out erotic romance is unfortunately likely to start with one of these not-so-great books, and be turned off the genre as a whole.

Conclusion: I firmly believe erotic romance as a genre is a permanent part of the landscape. Like trends in past, its popularity will blaze for a while, then cool down. But the best writers and publishers will continue, and in fact will likely do even better once the fad-following publishers eventually move on to something else. IF those big boys don't irreparably damage the genre's reputation and marketability with mainstream romance readers.

Book review: Ellora's Cavemen: Seasons of Seduction I & II

First off, let me say that I read a lot of anthologies. My reading time is limited, it's almost impossible to find an uninterrupted chunk of several hours to plow through a whole book. But I can fit in novella-length stories. Plus, like many other readers, I've found this is a great way to discover new-to-me authors. I couldn't even count the number of times I've loved a story in an anthology and done an Amazon or Google search for that author and discovered their backlist. And bought them all!

I love the annual series from Ellora's Cave. Four books each year, six stories in each, a mix of genres, a mix of experienced and newbie authors. I don't, of course, love every story in every book, but these anthologies probably have the highest "success rate" with me for liking almost all the stories.

Plus, the books come out in print (trade paperback) the same day they are released as ebooks! I do indeed call my local Borders and rush to get the book. I'm feeling especially spoiled this time. I bought Seasons of Seduction I, but a friend gave me the ARC of volume II, which was available at BEA.

Ellora's Cavemen: Seasons of Seduction I (March 2007)

An historical, a contemporary, a vampire, an alien abduction (sorta), a paranormal (a banshee and a demon), and a fantasy paranormal! Something to please anyone. And contains one of my very favorite authors, Jory Strong; I'd pay the $15.99 for her alone.

1. Okay, I admit I'm not a fan of historicals, especially medievals. So I sort of skimmed Her Lance-Alot by Delilah Devlin. But who could resist that title!
2. The contemporary Dance of the Plain Jane by newbie Lillian Feisty is hot, hot!
3. Very interesting Club Vamp by Allyson James, plus I adore menage stories. I'd have loved to read this as a longer story with the world building expanded.
4. Another luscious menage in Choosing Madison by Sherrill Quinn (another newbie at the Cave). The aliens are a lot of fun.
5. Come Howling by Denise Rossetti is hysterical! Who knew a banshee could be so funny? Definitely not the half-breed demon who falls for her.
6. Lyrael's Sacrifice - Not the best by Jory Strong, in my opinion. But even on her off days she's incredible. Again, there's a lot of stuff packed into this short length, it might have benefited from more space to explain the world.

Ellora's Cavemen: Seasons of Seduction II (June 2007)
(Remember that I read the ARC - there could have been some changes between that and the final version released yesterday.)

1. Gillian's Island by Lani Aames is a contemporary with paranormal elements. It was good, but not great. It's a bit hard to cram two couples/relationships into a short story.
2. Devon's Vix by Rebecca Airies actually had a new twist on a vampire world. Something a little different in this overloaded genre is always welcome! I loved the relationship between h/h. Vix, BTW, is her term for a female vampire - I like it.
3. Wendy's Summer Job by Charlotte Boyett-Compo is pure spoof of all the cliches in romance novels. It is completely unlike the dark fantasies this author typically writes. The author's note at the beginning says, "Please read little Wendy's story with your tongue firmly tucked in your sweet little cheek and expect the words to be a pretty shade of purple." Enjoy!
4. I'd love to know more about the warprinces and the futuristic world introduced in Chasing the Dragon by Megan Kerans. Maybe she'll do future novels set there.
5. Viking's Pledge by Melany Logen is an historical. The h/h relationship is very touching, as he is determined to protect her and willing to give her up if that's what she wants.
6. Taking It All by Cheyenne McCray is hot BDSM. Ooh, I love the ice cube scene! One of my favorite fantasies.

e-book ($9.99) and print book (trade paperback) from Ellora's Cave Publishing

Welcome to my world

If you aren't part of the solution, you are part of the problem...

I resisted getting into the blogging trend. There are many things about it I dislike. It eats up time when I could be reading books or writing my own stories. And so many blogs are either merely an excuse for the blogger's ego, or are really negative: out-and-out attempts to create controversy or push some nasty agenda or spread unpleasant gossip.

Then I started visualizing the type of blog I wanted to read. And realized that I should be part of the solution by creating a blog like that. A blog for authors and for readers, where we discuss publishing industry news, provide information to each other, and talk about the books we read. But always in a constructive manner - no flaming, no attempts to discredit or defame any writer or publisher, no revealing info about anyone's personal life. The focus is on the books and the industry. Yeah, a book review can be unflattering - if I don't like it, I'm going to say so. But in context of what didn't work for me in the story, and always about the story, not about the author's personal life. And if there are troubling rumors about a publisher, sharing those with other authors can help us all - but only as long as the information is constructive and is not clearly overblown or an attempt to discredit someone or some company.

So if you are looking for nasty dirt, or want to have arguments, or want to learn intimate details about someone's life, this is not the place for you. But if you want to analyze books - what worked, what didn't - or discuss writing problems and styles or philosophize about the publishing world, please join me in scribbling.