Jane Litte's Blog, page 1024

REVIEW: I Just Play One on TV by A.L. Turner

Dear Ms. Turner.

I read your book back in August and loved it, but it's taken me a while to get back to it for review. Reading it a second time, I still loved it and it surprised me anew with its complexity and how much I loved the characters.

[image error]The story is told from Vince's first person perspective. And he's just wonderful. He's in LA as an aspiring actor and interviews for two roles in one day: the "straight" man on a horrible sitcom, and a character in a high-concept sci-fi show with a...

Wednesday Midday Links: Liking the Unlikeable Character

Tribute Books has announced that beginning in 2012 it will become solely an e-book publisher young adult titles. They are looking for authors who are ready have a book published to a royalty paying press and are offering a 50% off the net retail price in royalties. They want to work with 12 authors, publishing one book per month.

This is not an endorsement of Tribute Books, but merely information that I'm passing along.

*****

Amazon has announced its quarterly earnings. While it enjoyed a 44...

REVIEW: Heartstrings and Diamond Rings by Jane Graves

Dear Ms. Graves,

Lately I've been trying to read more new-to-me authors and when your latest book, "Heartstrings and Diamond Rings" landed in my arc pile, it was fate. I had heard you have a good reputation for humor and this story certainly backs that up. That plus good hero/heroine snappy dialogue are what makes the book for me.

[image error]After her latest long term relationship disaster, Alison Carter ends venting and crying to her best friend Heather. Where have all the good men gone and why can't...

DA Weekly Deals Under $2.99

We search prices by the following imprints: Avon, EOS, Forever, HarperCollins, HQN, Kensington, MIRA, Pocket, Pocket Star, Orbit, Samhain, Sourcebooks, and Macmillan. Note that Kensington Zebra Debuts are often under $3.00.  These searches are performed at Amazon and the prices are not always reflected at other stores.  These prices reflect US deals and may not be present at non US retailers.

We also included a few books that were over $2.99 such as the Pocket list.  Those Pocket book deals...

The Dear Author Intro Interview & Giveaway: Alma Katsu, author of The Taker

I didn't think I'd be doing this interview.  A few chapters into The Taker , I knew it wasn't exactly romance, and doubted it was right for Dear Author.  But the story of Puritan-born Lanore McIlvrae and the gift she's cursed with kept calling me back, and months after the last page, I was still thinking about it.  So here is The Taker , a well of love stories that takes you first to present-day Maine, then deeper, darker 200 years earlier, and then to where it all seems to begin, the age of...

TRIPLE PLAY REVIEW: Donovan Brothers Brewery series by Victoria Dahl

Dear Ms. Dahl:

I had been planning to review Good Girls Don't, but by the time I got to it, Bad Boys Do was out and Real Men Will was imminent. So I figured I might as well review all three, since the trilogy's release dates are so close together. I'm not a stickler for reading a series in order, and I don't think the Donovan family series needs to be read that way, but I will say that reading it in order made a definite impact on how I experienced each book, sometimes for the better and...

What Janine is Reading, Late Summer/Early Fall 2011

In addition to the books I read for review, I've been doing some reading with my husband. Because he is not a romance fan, and I am not a fan of science fiction (his genre of choice), we have to meet in the middle. For the most part that has turned out to be young adult fantasy. Here are some of the books we've read together:

This World We Live In by Susan Beth Pfeffer

This is the third book in Pfeffer's series about how people's lives are changed when an asteroid knocks the moon's orbit...

REVIEW: Missing Mother-to-Be by Elle Kennedy

Dear Readers:

[image error]I ordinarily don't pick books from the category Suspense line.  Most of what I've read in that line has glaring problems in balance between a believable suspense and a believable romance but I like Elle Kennedy books and I wanted to try to get back into the Intrigue game (it sells really well as a line).  Unfortunately, it is so effed up and crazy that in true Nonnie style, I have to review this in list format.  Beware, there will be spoilers because I cannot express how crazy...

GUEST POST: An Essay on Working Heroines

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Like many romance fans, I recently read the newest book by Loretta Chase, Silk Is For Seduction.  Like many fans, I too loved it.  It is a great example of the qualities I look for in a romance: interesting characters, engaging storyline and witty, sometimes startlingly funny, dialogue.  It also seemed refreshingly different.  Now, I've been reading romances since the mid-nineties.  So I've read through the many tropes of the historical heroine – the TSTL innocent, the hoyden, the martyr...

THE BITE BEFORE CHRISTMAS scavenger hunt

Today Avon and Dear Author are giving a holiday gift to the readers of Dear Author in celebration of the publication of "A Bite Before Christmas", a two story anthology from Lynsay Sands and Jeaniene Frost. (I almost called the two of them "vampire mavens" but as I was typing it out I realized it was horrible and deleted it. Then I thought I would share with you the horrors of my undeleted thought process!)  NOTE: This Giveaway is for ONE HOUR ONLY.

[image error]THE GIFT by Sands is an original novella...