Jane Litte's Blog, page 1008

First Page: Unnamed Paranormal

Welcome to First Page Saturday. Individual authors anonymously send a first page read and critiqued by the Dear Author community of authors, readers and industry others. Anyone is welcome to comment. You may comment anonymously.

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Sweat dripped down my forehead. My hair hung damp in my face, a limp version of its former self. We'd been at this for hours. Hours. And all I'd managed to move was a pencil. Two inches.

"Again, Cameron," barked my tutor, Deacon. "You're not focusing. Move it to the ...

Housecleaning

We are doing an upgrade to the backend of the theme and will have some minor tweaking to do throughout the weekend.  I've got to add the "tags" at the top of the blog post for one and fix the bullet points in the lists on the sidebar, but if you notice something let me know in the comments.  The value of upgrading is that we should have a great new mobile site only it isn't working. YET.

Read the original article: Housecleaning and comment or visit Dear Author

Friday Midday News: The Blogger as a Journalist

Anita Clenney has filed her answer (PDF) to the Sourcebooks complaint.  In it, she asserts four points:

1) Inclusion of 8 pages of advertisements  without permission and/or payment constitutes a material breach.  Clenney argues that the industry standard is a) defined by the actions of two or more of the big 6 and that the industry standard is for inclusion of a provision regarding advertisement.

Unfortunately for Sourcebooks, its understanding of actual publishing industry practice as to the...

REVIEW: Holiday Kisses by Jaci Burton, HelenKay Dimon, Alison Kent, Shannon Stacey

[image error]This Time Next Year by Alison Kent. Brenna Keating is traveling to her grandmother's house for their annual Christmas celebration when a storm strikes and she is stranded after she loses control of her vehicle attempting to avoid a deer. A gruff man comes to her rescue and carries her off to his cabin. Dillon Craig knows an awful lot about Brenna but she's never heard of Dillon Craig, a military doctor who has sought refuge in the mountains and provides medical services to its residents...

Friday Film Review: Bad Santa

Bad Santa (aka Bad(der) Santa) (2003)

Genre: Holiday/Crime/Comedy

Grade: B

"Can I at least take the hat off?" – Willie

"No, I love the hat!" – Sue

[image error]Don't get me wrong. I love Christmas. I love decorating my trees and the outside porch. I love it when someone opens my gift to them and their face lights up. I love getting together with loved ones. I look forward to it all. But with merchants putting out decorations before October is half over and radio stations beginning to play carols on...

REVIEW: G-A-Y series by Kim Dare

Dear Ms. Dare.

I've been intrigued by your writing for a while. Your tagline is "Kink, love, and a happy ending. Do you Dare?" which I think is incredibly cute. Honestly, though, I've been put off by your publishers (Total-e-Bound and Resplendence Publishing…who?) and by the fact that your series are quite so long (TWELVE stories?!). But I bit the bullet, bought all TWELVE of your G-A-Y series, and I'm going to review ALL of them here.

I chose the G-A-Y series because they're all m/m, they're a...

Thursday Midday Links: Agency pricing in the government crosshairs

In March 2011, EU raided publishers' offices looking for evidence of price fixing.  Despite this, the agency model began to roll out this summer and now EU has officially opened an investigation into price fixing.

"The Commission will in particular investigate whether these publishing groups and Apple have engaged in illegal agreements or practices that would have the object or the effect of restricting competition in the European Union or in the European Economic Area," the EU executive said...

REVIEW: Demon Lover by Juliet Dark

Dear Ms. Dark,

This was an especially difficult book to grade. After much reflection, I have decided to recommend it because of the strength of the prose and what, I believe, are the very engaging middle sections of the book. However, despite the fact that Ballantine is billing this book as a paranormal romance, I think that this marketing is somewhat misleading. Although, the book plays with the tropes of both the gothic romance and the PNR, the structure of the novel is probably more akin...

REVIEW: The Plumed Bonnet by Mary Balogh

Dear Ms. Balogh,

Recently The Famous Heroine and The Plumed Bonnet were rereleased together in a 2-in-1 edition after many years out of print, and I reviewed and recommended The Famous Heroine. That book left me wanting to know more about Alistair, Duke of Bridgewater, one of the hero's friends.

[image error]In The Famous Heroine Alistair, having seen three of his friends trapped into marriage or married under false pretenses, determines to avoid the parson's mousetrap. The Plumed Bonnet begins several...

What Jia's Been Reading, Late November

Apparently a vacation was exactly what I needed to kick me out of my reading funk. Here's what I've been reading the past couple of weeks.

Steampunk! edited by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant
An anthology of steampunk stories that covers the spectrum. I like the variety of settings, characters, genres, and ideas but overall, there were only a couple standouts. On the other hand, there were only a couple stories I didn't like. The rest were average. That tends to be about right in terms of how well a...