Jane Litte's Blog, page 917

Friday News: DOJ delivers a sharp retort; Amazon sets date to announce new Kindles; and Tom Sawyer + Steampunk?

The DOJ filed its response to the resistances filed against the request that Judge Cote approves the settlement with HarperCollins, Hachette, and Simon & Schuster. If you’ve read Courtney Milan’s brilliant piece that books are not special snowflakes, you’ve read the DOJ’s retort which uses the same case law (and admittedly why wouldn’t they) and the same language, falling short of implementing the term “special snowflake.”

If you haven’t read Milan’s piece, the upshot is this. Every industry i...

Daily Deals: Vampire, Contemporary and Swedish Chick Lit

A Quick Bite by Lynsay Sands. $.99.

From Jacket Copy:

Lissianna has been spending her centuries pining for Mr. Right, not just a quick snack, and this sexy guy she finds in her bed looks like he might be a candidate. But there’s another, more pressing issue: her tendency to faint at the sight of blood … an especially annoying quirk for a vampire. Of course it doesn’t hurt that this man has a delicious-looking neck. What kind of cold-blooded vampire woman could resist a bite of that?

Dr. Gregory...

JOINT REVIEW: Spice and Smoke by Suleikha Snyder

Janine: About the time we had the discussion of diversity in Harlequin’s romances here at DA, Suleikha Snyder made a couple of thoughtful comments on Twitter, and that got me interested in her volume of two connected stories, a novella called Spice and Smoke.

Spice and Smoke is set in the world of Bollywood cinema and features Indian characters. Since I’ve never been to India or even watched a Bollywood film (except for the snippets I’ve caught on the television monitors in Indian restaurants,...

REVIEW: Heron’s Cove by Carla Neggers

Dear Ms. Neggers:

I confess that I am not a devoted reader but it’s not because your books aren’t pleasurable reads. They are but I tend to think that now the books are published in hardcover that they aren’t likely to be geared toward the romance reader. Heron’s Cove, however, provides a good dose of romance along with its mystery. I’d categorize this more as a cozy mystery because while there is a little suspense, there is no real danger to the characters and nothing gruesome is described. O...

Thursday News: Emily Giffin stirs up a sh!storm; US Navy SEAL reveals all (and not in a good way); Katherine Hawkins’ cover appropriated by another author

Forgive me, but I feel a bit irritable and thus my commentary on today’s news might have a slight edge. First up, we have Emily Giffin — pretty, successful, happily married Emily Giffin. Ms. Giffin, allegedly the nicest person ever per her fans, chortled over the fact that her husband called a reader “psycho” on Amazon and then encouraged, via Facebook and Twitter, her fans to go forth and engage in the same behavior. Well, bullshit. Nice people don’t call random readers psycho for an entirel...

Daily Deals: Historical romance and YA

[image error] Chasing Redbird by Sharon Creech. $ 1.99

From the Jacket Copy:

It started out as an ordinary summer. But the minute thirteen-year-old Zinny covered the old, overgrown trail that ran through the woods behind her family’s house, she realized that things were about to change.

Right from the start, Zinny knew that uncovering the trail would be more than just a summer project. It was her chance to finally make people notice her, and to have a place she could call her very own. But more than that, Zin...

M/M Lightning Reviews

I read a handful of m/m ARCs over the past month, with varying levels of success. I either DNF’d them or didn’t have enough to say to warrant a full-blown review, so I decided a lightning-review post fit the bill. In no particular order:

[image error]But My Boyfriend Is by K.A. Mitchell

Mitchell is an auto-buy, auto-read author for me, and this novel is a spin-off set in the Aaron & Joey world (they starred in Collision Course and are featured in No Souvenirs). Dylan Williams’ twin brother Darryl winds up i...

Debut Print Book: Hiding His Witness by C. J. Miller

I’ve had some concerns by readers who are primarily print readers that the coverage at Dear Author has been too focused on ebooks. When I asked the readers what they were interested in seeing, they responded that they would like to know more about print debut authors. We developed a little questionnaire and every Wednesday at 10:00 AM CST (as long as we have content) we’ll post the questionnaire answers along with links to the author’s site and a buy link to her book. I hope this helps people...

REVIEW: Beloved Enemy by Mary Schaller

Dear Ms. Schaller,

When I was looking at the Harlequin Historicals for this past April, this cover seemed familiar to me. The generic blurb rang vague bells. Looking back through my reading list, I discovered why. It was first published in 2004 and I had read it then. Curious to see how it would hold up, I decided to read it again.

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Julia Chandler lives in Alexandria, VA with her staunchly Confederate family. Their political views have almost totally ostracized them from society as Alexandria...

Wednesday News: Weird Tales weird shifts on Revealing Eden; Newsweek doesn’t fact check!!; and Nook sales flat

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Image via Big Stock Photo

Niall Ferguson’s Obama story, fact-checked – Politicsaside, I found this kind of fascinating. Newsweek, a magazine with a circulation of over 1.5 million, does not have a fact checking department “Krugman is correct — the magazine, like many others, does not have a fact-checking department. “We, like other news organisations today, rely on our writers to submit factually accurate material,” Newsweek spokesman Andrew Kirk told POLITICO.” Over at the Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi...