Jane Litte's Blog, page 959

REVIEW: Gaijin by Remittance Girl

Dear Remittance Girl,

Your novella, Gaijin, caught me by surprise. A friend recommended it to me on Twitter and then loaned it to me through my Kindle. I had heard about it and investigated purchasing it once before, but shied away from making an actual purchase. Somehow, I wasn’t expecting as much thoughtfulness as I got.

To begin with, I want to make it clear to readers of this review that Gaijin is in no way a romance. It is erotica, but whether or not a reader finds it erotic will likely de...

GAME REVIEW: Matches and Matrimony: A Pride and Prejudice Tale

I was pruning my hard drive when I stumbled across a game labelled Matches and Matrimony: A Pride and Prejudice Tale.

I somehow forgot I bought this gamelast year. Since I was in the mood for a game set in Jane Austen’s fictional universe, I was all for it. Even whenI discovered it’s not an adventure game, but a RPG (role-playing game) or strategy game. I hadn’t played this type of game before but hey, it’s Jane Austen. So I was willing to try.

Right off the bat, the game opens with a tutorial...

Monday Midday Links: Musicians Seek Self Publishing Options; Real Data About Ebooks from The BookSmugglers

Musicians Realizing They Don’t Need Major Labels Anymore | Techdirt – ” Jordis Unga, a singer who has appeared on two reality TV shows (Rock Star: INXS and The Voice), has decided that she doesn’t need to sign a label deal. While she didn’t win on either show, she did build up quite a following, and she decided that for her debut album, she might as well just hit up Kickstarter, and ask for $33,000. Which she got. In less than a day. In the first day alone her project on Kickstarter raised ov...

REVIEW: The Saturnalia Effect by Heidi Belleau,Violetta Vane

Dear Ms. Belleau and Ms. Vane.

I found this story by clickingclickingclicking through the various posted responses to our post about M/M romance and Fan Fiction. Heidi gives good blog and then I was intrigued, as I always am with prison stories, by the short she wrote with Violetta Vane. This story is fabulous, I’m so thrilled I found it, and I can’t wait for more from this pair of authors.

Click for a larger NSFW image

Troy is very young (early 20s) and in prison for 40 years for following wher...

REVIEW: Confessions of a Slightly Neurotic Hitwoman by JB Lynn

Dear Ms. Lynn,

Honestly, if someone told me a week ago that I’d be reading a book about a woman with a crappy life who survived a car wreck with only a concussion that now lets her communicate with a pet lizard and that in order to pay the astronomical medical bills pilling up to keep her comatose young niece in a speciality hospital has taken up a mobster’s offer to undertake a hit, I would have told them, “Are you shitting me?!” No, wait that’s not emphatic enough. It would probably have bee...

Reclaiming Your Copyright After Thirty-Five Years

Introduction

This is a long article. Grab a cup of coffee and settle in. I wrote this article and sent it to the RWR but it wasn’t suited for publication so I thought I would share it with you. The right to sever a copyright grant after 35 years came to my attention when Evan Schnittman mentioned it briefly at the end of one of his articles. I went off to research the issue because I found it fascinating. This is what I learned.

A new author enters a publishing contract with very little negotia...

Copyright Terms Should Be Shorter

From Flickr account ĐāżŦ {mostly absent)

Copyrights, particularly lengthy ones, benefit the corporations that license and/or those copyrights. The Copyright Extension Act of 1998 isn’t called the Mickey Mouse protection act because it is designed to protect individual creators. It is designated as such because it benefits one of the largest owners of intellectual property, Disney. As of 1998, the term of copyright extends from 50 years for an individual and 75 years for a corporation to li...

REVIEW: Masque of the Red Death by Bethany Griffin

Dear Ms. Griffin,

I’m a big Edgar Allan Poe fan. Any book with a title referencing him is always going to get a second look from me. Combined with a striking cover, it’s almost guaranteed I will pick it up. I initially thought Masque of the Red Death was a debut, but your name sounded familiar so I did a quick search. I discovered I’d reviewed your debut (a contemporary YA) a few years ago. And while I didn’t much care for that novel, I’m always willing to give an author another try, especiall...

Overseas Giveaway

A few months ago, Lydia H, a Putnam publicist/marketing individual, emailed me about a book called “Overseas”. Putnam is a hardcover imprint for Penguin and I confess that I was a little apprehensive about a mainstream book being billed as romantic. Romance can mean many things to non romance readers. Plus there was time travel and while I’ve read a few time travel and enjoyed them, I’ve also read many time travels that dealt with the concept poorly and left me despondent (Hello, Knight in S...

First Page: Adventures of Pearl Whyte

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. You can submit your own First Page using this form.

Chapter 1: Death of a Legend

A full moon illuminates a cloudless black night sky. A sixty foot long wooden hulled airship floats lazily in front of the moon; its ninety foot cigar shaped helium filled gasbag holds the...