Jane Litte's Blog, page 936

Thursday News: Is the serial revival around the corner? Or a gimmick with a limited life span?

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Image from Big Stock Photo

One thing that the mainstream rise of fan fiction may have an impact on is how stories are told. Fan fiction is almost always told in serial fashion with writers uploading a section or chapter at a time. Wikipedia says that serialized novels gained prominence in the Victorian period and Dickens is probably the best known serialized author.

One author who is burning up the charts is self published author Sara Fawkes whose series “Anything He Wants” sells on Amazon for...

Daily Deals: UF, SEALs, and Children

Web of Lies (Elemental Assassin Series #2) by Jennifer Estep. $ 3.99

This is book two in the Elemental Assassin series. Book one is also on sale and I featured it a couple of days ago. So this deal is for everyone who picked up the first one and has now returned for seconds.

From the Jacket Copy:

Curiosity is definitely going to get me dead one of these days. Probably real soon.

I’m Gin Blanco.

You might know me as the Spider, the most feared assassin in the South. I’m retired now, but trouble s...

What Janine is Reading: June 2012

My June reading was a mixture of the good and the disappointing. Here’s what I read:

[image error]A Gentleman Undone by Cecilia Grant

I loved Grant’s debut, A Lady Awakened. This is the follow up, about the brother of the heroine from the earlier book, an officer in the Napoleonic Wars who sold his commission and finds it hard to reintegrate into society.

At a gaming club, Will meets Lydia Slaughter, card sharp and another man’s mistress. When he confronts her about her having cheated him of his winnings, he...

REVIEW: The Dark Knight by Elizabeth Elliott

Dear Ms. Elliott,

It’s hard to believe that it’s been more than fifteen years since your popular medieval romance Betrothed was released. That book featured a secondary character, the brother of the heroine, who caught the attention of many readers. Dante Chiavari was a dangerous and deadly assassin who had been living by his wits ever since his parents were betrayed and murdered in Venice. A planned sequel to Betrothed, featuring Dante as the hero and titled Assassin was announced. Readers wa...

RITA Best First Book 2012 Interviews: Paranormals

Romance Writers of America honors authors through the RITAs, awarded each year in a number of categories, including Best First Book. Once again, I’m pleased to host those nominees here at Dear Author. Each of the three installments in this series will feature a different sub-genre. The books you’ll see today finaled in a second category as well, and though I’ve grouped them as paranormals, they all bring in elements from other genres. If you’d like to win a diverse bundle of books, read on an...

REVIEW: Secrets and Speed Dating by Leah Ashton

Trying to move on from a disastrous engagement, Sophie Morgan needs a date for her best friend’s wedding–and fast! And what quicker way to find a man than speed dating? Only it’s bar manager Dan Halliday who catches Sophie’s eye.

Dan can’t resist helping a damsel in distress, so he offers her a deal–a few shifts in the bar in exchange for the date–no strings attached. But when pretence leads to passion, they both get more than they bargained for. And it’s too late to have any secrets between t...

Wednesday News: Worldwide fiber cabling map, Kobo launches new spy app, RH makes a fan fiction rights grab

Underwater map of fiber cabling – Telegeography.com

Thought this was very cool. The screenshot captures just a tiny portion of the entire world’s fiber cabling.

PayPal Bans Major File-Hosting Services Over Piracy Concerns | TorrentFreak – “In recent weeks, PayPal has cut off many of the world’s largest filehosting sites from its service including MediaFire, Putlocker and DepositFiles. Growing concern over copyright infringement has resulted in an extremely strict and in some cases privacy-viola...

Daily Deals: Mystery and Classic Historical Romance

Final Price (A Paul Chang Mystery) by J. Gregory Smith. $ 2.99

It features an Asian detective. Other than the Leslie Glass series, I am unfamiliar with an Asian as a lead in a suspense/thriller/mystery/detective series. John Burdett reviewed the book for Amazon and said ” The best of his innovations is that the narrative is binocular: we see the world through the eyes of Paul Chang, a Chinese-American detective, and Shamus Ryan, the car salesman. It is not so much a whodunit (although this qu...

REVIEW: The Dark Palazzo by Virgina Coffman

Dear Ms. Coffman,

During my junior year of high school, I happened to take AP European History. I recall many things from that course, but what I chiefly remember is the section on the French Revolution. Perhaps it was my general interest in all things French during that phase of my adolescence, but I seem to remember that I was especially fascinated with the Revolution more than any other section we studied. I sympathized with the sans culottes. After all, I too felt oppressed on a daily basi...

REVIEW: Mr. Churchill’s Secretary by Susan Elia MacNeal

London, 1940. Winston Churchill has just been sworn in, war rages across the Channel, and the threat of a Blitz looms larger by the day. But none of this deters Maggie Hope. She graduated at the top of her college class and possesses all the skills of the finest minds in British intelligence, but her gender qualifies her only to be the newest typist at No. 10 Downing Street. Her indefatigable spirit and remarkable gifts for codebreaking, though, rival those of even the highest men in governme...