Catch-Up Links

While I was on medical hiatus, I stopped writing for Heroes & Heartbreakers. I continued my work for Publishers Weekly and, as I felt well enough, wrote some brief reviews for Amazon and Amazon Vine. Here are the links you missed, beginning with a link from my return to the H&H rotation:

• Kindle Magic (or How to Organize Your Kindle) article by Laurie Gold for Heroes & Heartbreakers
• Vine review of Lustfully Ever After by Kristina Wright (Erotic Romance)
• Vine review of Dermacontrol Foam Wash by Cetaphil (Skincare)
• Vine review of Apron Anxiety by Alysssa Shelasky (Memoir)
• Vine review of Paris in Love by Eloisa James (Memoir)
• Vine review of Curly-Q Dinnerware Set by Rachael Ray (Housewares)
• Review of Women's JB-6210-F "Victory" Pink Stainless Steel Diamond Watch by Just Bling (Jewelry/Watches)
• Review of Colored Gemstones by Paul Deasy (Reference)
• Vine review of Mio, Mango Peach by Kraft (Water Enhancer)
• Vine review of Fruit Design Post-It Notes by 3M (Office Supplies)
• Review of Catherine the Great by Robert K. Massie (Biography)
• Review of Conan O'Brien Can't Stop (documentary) DVD, directed by Rodman Flender
  

Catch-Up Links

New at H&H: Lauren Dane's Troubled Heroines

Online today from me at Heroes & Heartbreakers: Lauren Dane’s Troubled Heroines and Their Sexual Freedom. I'll let you know up front: It's pretty long, but it includes discussion of half a dozen books. Initially it was a full third longer, but I trimmed down the excerpts to the bare bone, and Megan assures me it's not too long. She's a great editor, so if she says it's good, I accept the compliment. It begins:

"When I worked at the bookstore, I once helped set up a “thought-provoking read” table, and to my surprise, a book by erotic romance author Lauren Dane was on the list to include. The titles to include on display tables and end caps are determined by The Powers On High, and never before had I seen an erotic romance included, so my interest was definitely piqued."

Click here to continue reading Lauren Dane’s Troubled Heroines and Their Sexual Freedom, then post a comment over at H&H.

New at H&H: Lauren Dane's Troubled Heroines

Fresh Meat: Janet Mullany's Tell Me More

Online from me today at Heroes & Heartbreakers

Fresh Meat: Janet Mullany's Tell Me More (excerpted below)

***

Knowing there's a difference between fantasy and reality is one thing, but having reality shoved in your face, even in a fictional setting, is something else entirely. Janet Mullany's Tell Me More is hilarious at moments because Jo Hutchinson is brutally honest, about herself and the people and situations around her. Unfortunately, that honesty, and the absolute explicitness of the author's prose result in a schizophrenic kind of read. The book went from LOL funny in one moment to squickishness in the next.

Please click here to read my new Fresh Meat in full. Feel free to Tell Me More over at H&H once you've read it.

Fresh Meat: Janet Mullany's Tell Me More

New at H&H: A Makeover of a Different Kind

I think that subconsciously, watching Will Farrell's hilarious appearance on Conan O'Brien's show in early May gave me the idea for my new article at Heroes & Heartbreakers. It reminded me of a joke I heard back in the day. The joke kicks off the article. Feel free to watch the clip below in its entirety, but it's between 1:20 and 1:55 minutes in that it all started to gel in my head.

Putting a piece out there of on a topic such as this (you'll see when you read it) was not something I took lightly. I mentioned last week that I had a blast writing it, but that it took a lot of effort on my part to get to and maintain just the right tone...to write about a delicate matter and keep it light so as to be funny yet not be prurient, and to be revelatory enough while not exposing myself too much in the text. Hopefully I succeeded.

Because of the subject matter's delicacy, I feel a little squirmy knowing that people will actually read the article. On the other hand, I'm kinda proud of myself for tackling the topic in a funny way. Did I succeed? Please let me know by posting a comment at H&H after you read it.

New at H&H: A Makeover of a Different Kind

Tracker's Sin by Sarah McCarty

Tracker's Sin

Sarah McCarty

Grade: B/B- (and aren't I glad I am no longer required to get more specific!)

Tracker's Sin, book four in Sarah McCarty's Hell's Eight series, worked for me better than books two and three (Sam's Creed and Tucker's Claim). Sam's Creed was more than a little purple prosey, particularly in terms of a rather outlandish love scene on horseback, and I had problems understanding the heroine in Tucker's Claim. This fall's outing is a more worthy follow-up to Caine's Reckoning, book one in McCarthy’s frontier historical series for Harlequin's Spice imprint. Given that it also resolves a major plot-line running through the earlier books - which I grant needed to be done - I wonder how McCarty will avoid jumping the shark with book five, which I imagine will detail the life of Tracker's twin, Shadow...how he will fall in love, and whether or not he'll make use of the same sort of cream Caine's wife Desi oh-so-helpfully, and more than a little creepily, provides to sister Ari on her on her wedding night.

Read this review in its entirety at Amazon. It is not a Vine review; I received a digital copy from the publisher.

Tracker's Sin by Sarah McCarty

Kinky: Charlene Teglia & Cherise Sinclair

If you've read either my old blog or ATBF columns, you'll know that several years ago I embarked upon a reading journey into erotic romance. You might also know that a few years ago, after venturing into more hard-core content, I posed the following question: "If the point of erotic content is to arouse, and that's my dictionary's definition of it, then would reading more and more hard-core content be like over-reliance on a vibrator so that anything not super-kinky would leave me, fictionally and literally, numb?"

Eventually I decided that I'd stop with the Asking of Questions and read whatever the hell appealed to me. The result? Earlier this year I went through a mini-non-fiction glom. Right now I'm in the midst of reading quite a few erotic romances, and a couple of authors stand out above the rest: Charlene Teglia, and relative newcomer Cherise Sinclair.

Each author writes books in erotic romance sub-genres that attract me. With Teglia it's shapeshifters and other paranormal creatures. Sinclair, on the other hand, writes books and short stories with a strong BDSM theme. Like many woman, I'm drawn to erotic stories featuring women who cede control of their sexual pleasure to men who intuitively know how to play their bodies like virtuoso violinists.

I've often said that erotic romance blends oh-so-nicely with the paranormal because human social structures, norms, and mores simply don't apply, giving authors leeway with characters and storylines. Which, in turn allows me as a reader to accept behavior I would not otherwise tolerate, let alone enjoy. Such as a young woman who discovers she is a werewolf who must mate with an entire pack in order to decide upon her true mate. Or a witch who must have sex with a dragon, a fae, a vampire, a demon, and a werewolf in order to save the world from a demonic plot.

Let's face it...plenty of authors can write amazing, kinkier-than-hell sex scenes. But in order to actually interest me to read the author again, - let alone write about her - I need more. Teglia actually delivered poignancy, humor, and in both the books I just described (Animal Attraction and Claimed by the Wolf), she managed both simultaneously.

The second book I described, Claimed by the Wolf, is the first in a series, and I'm a little concerned about that because while I apparently have no problem with one female witch who has a werewolf mate yet is also a "junior wife" to four other paranormal hunks, I absolutely don't want to read a book two in which another female needs to sleep with all five heroes - including the witch's mate - in order to save the world again. Call me a greedy girl, but, hey, she's playing into my fantasy. It doesn't hurt that because none of the witch's five lovers is human...and each finds it erotic to watch her with his fellow guardians...it's not a problem for them. If it turns out each of these heroes becomes monogamous as a single mate enters the picture in four subsequent books...fine. Otherwise, I'll be giving up on the Shadow Guardians tout de suite.

Writing about Cherise Sinclair presents a bigger problem. She writes about real people taking sexuality to an extreme on a daily basis, not just an occasional "kinky Thursday." Though I subscribe to the "anything goes between two consenting adults in real life" school of thought, it makes me sad to think of people who cannot enjoy sex unless they are playing roles, using toys, or giving/receiving pain. But that's reality, and as I have preached for almost fifteen years, fiction is not reality.

In my fantasy life I have no problem whatsoever with dominant men, feisty but submissive women, and the manipulative head games the former play with the latter to achieve multiple orgasms all around. In fact, I get off on it. And Sinclair, like Teglia, can write with tenderness and poignancy. Are all dominant men as handsome and psychologically astute as they are in her writing? Again...who cares?

While I've no interest in Sinclair's intergalactic The Starlight Rite, I have read the rest of her abbreviated back-list and look forward to more. Teglia's backlist is far lengthier, and she writes in a variety of erotic sub-genres, which means I'll be picking and choosing.

Though I've read a great deal of erotic romance over the years, I tend to be guarded about what I share with others because for me reading these stories is intensely personal and I feel the need to limit what I expose of myself. That said, I'm not ashamed of what I read, so every so often I'm going to put on my big girl panties and let my full freak fly.

Kinky: Charlene Teglia & Cherise Sinclair

Books To Look For

I've been very vocal about my love for Gail Carriger's Soulless, my only Publishers Weekly starred review for 2009. And I've hand-sold quite hard Lori Handeland's Phoenix Chronicles. At the bookstore I hand-sold about 50 copies to date of the former - and because of that sales record the store will be sent roughly the same number of copies of the sequel, Changeless. As for Handeland's series, I've sold roughly 3 1/2 dozen of book one, somewhat less of book two, and less still of book three.

Part of the problem is that with an urban fantasy series, you can't sell books two or three without selling book one. Because we haven't had many copies of each book at one time, I can't often do what I managed to do during my last two shifts: sell all three together. Most readers new to the series, though, take a slower approach and simply buy book one. When they come back, we don't have books two or three, and they end up ordering copies online, or they go elsewhere. It's tough because the series is very much a sleeper; I can only hope it catches on, and with Keri Arthur's Riley Jenson series coming to an end in June, there will be one less series with which it must compete.

Last week I read Changeless, which is terrifically funny, very visually Steampunkish, and, like Soulless before it, pitch perfect. The cliffhanger ending is its only flaw, but I'm sure all will be resolved in book three (Blameless), to be published at the end of summer. But back to Changeless...there's a moment during which a rather clueless character remarks about the love between "Pyramid and Thirsty" that so reminded me of A Midsummer Night's Dream that I marveled at Carriger's skill. (My daughter has so far been the only one to "get" the reference, which surprised me as those I asked were literate folk.)

I've not yet read Chaos Bites, although I did read the excerpt Handeland has up on her site. As expected, it was exciting, intriguing, and sexy, and I look forward to reading it as soon as it goes on sale. Because it's such a sleeper series, though, I worry about its long-term success and whether or not the author will be given the opportunity to take it where she wants it to go. At the author's website, just one title (Demons at the Gate) is listed beyond Chaos Bites...I hope the series won't end there.

So here are covers of both books, with links to the author's sites, as well as some of the other books I'm looking forward to in the near future:

What are you looking forward to reading...and if you read urban fantasy, can I convince you to try The Phoenix Chronicles?

Books To Look For