A week ago today something strange happened to me. My latest book, TO BEGUILE A BEAST, made the New York Times Bestseller list. Why is that strange? Because making a bestseller list—especially the NYT—is a benchmark in a writer’s career. It’s supposed to be an Important Event. And of course it is. Last week I got flowers, I got phone calls that involved shrieks (some of them mine) I got congratulatory emails from lots of other very gracious authors. But at the same time, in my everyday world?

Making a list didn’t change anything at all.

I still have to do laundry. My offspring still don’t believe I’m anything special (besides their mother.) Heck, I still have to make my next book deadline.

Even in the publishing world making the list is kind…

Today we’re starting a new monthly contest called MYSTERY BOOK.  It’s very simple. We’ve picked a romance book and you have to guess which one it is.  Really, it’s quite simple. You ask questions, we answer them, you try to guess the title of the book. The prize: a $10 Amazon Gift Certificate. The game is open to all readers from around the globe.  DO NOT post your answers on the blog – to be eligible all answers must be e-mailed to alphamail@romancenovel.tv with “mysterybook” in the subject line.

THE RULES:
1.    Try to guess which book has been selected as this month’s MYSTERY BOOK  by asking questions that will allow you to piece together the title of the book.
2.    You can ask us anything you’d like; however, we’re allowed to take the 5th…

Zen and the Art of Vampires: 4.5 stars

Crouching Vampire, Hidden Fang: 5 Stars

In a climate where authorial desire for innovation and reader expectations have clashed in very notable ways, Katie MacAlister’s latest ‘Dark Ones’ novels stand out as examples of how best to deal with both concepts and come out with a home run.

No matter how many times people try to deny it, both authorial desire for innovation and reader expectations, are necessary and important parts of the author-reader relationship.  Readers anticipate future volumes of long standing series as if they are old friends, and treat them accordingly.  But if an author has written a large number of books in a series, they might, and sometimes do, get tired of the same patterns.  So how are these two important principles…

I’ve been reading quite a bit these past few weeks. Admittedly I haven’t tried any new authors, and shame on me.  I’ve just had so many books to catch up on.

I finally got around to reading Lora Leigh’s Wild Card the first book in her new Elite Ops series. The book was released last August and has been sitting on my TBR pile for almost a year.  I picked it up in anticipation of reading the second book in the series, Maverick, which was released in March. The Elite Ops series is about six men who have left their previous lives behind by letting everyone think they are dead. They’ve signed their lives away to the black ops organization, Elite Operations, a group so far underground they answer to nobody.  Their mission…

I came across a interesting article by Richard Davies at AbeBooks.com.

The article tells of “treasures” or just plain interesting things found by readers of used books. Feel free to read the entire article, but I had to share some highlights of what people have found –

“A golf scorecard signed by Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale.” (Sandy and Don formed one of baseball’s greatest pitching duos in the late 1950s and 1960s when playing for the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers)
Fred from Fred Dorsett Enterprises in California

“Once I found two business cards carefully taped together. I picked at the edge and they came apart revealing a three-foot long accordion folded panorama of 1970s pornography.
BL from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

“A wealthy, elderly woman in my town died a few years ago and left a large…

What are we looking for?  Really, I’m curious.  What are we looking for when we pick up a book? What is it about a good book that makes us pick up the phone and call our friends and say “you’ve got to read this one”?  What about the books  we slog through with dispirted interest?  And then there are the  books that are  so bad that we can’t finish them? I’ve been trying to figure that out. I’ve gone to numerous web sites and read many reviews to try and discern what we’re  looking for in a book. What is that certain ’something’ that speaks to one person and falls on deaf ears to another? Why do I love some books that you wouldn’t read even if you were sitting…