Saving the Contemporary

Smart Bitch Sarah with her ph0ne s3x voice has turned me on (heh heh) to the Save the Contemporary campaign, #stc on Twitter. While I was on vacation I read four (!) contemporaries (START ME UP by Victoria Dahl, DEATH ANGEL by Linda Howard, as well as a handful of Blazes and a firefighter novel by Belle Andre). Today I bought two more, ONE GOOD MAN by Allison Kent and HER LAST LINE OF DEFENSE by Marie Donovan. I want something smutty so I really hope these Blazes actually blaze.

If you’re looking for a dirty contemporary or several, click over to Shelli Stevens‘ site and check out her book shelf. And please: do something great for yourself and read START ME UP by Victoria Dahl. Then come back and thank me nicely.

Review-O-Rama: Behind the Red Door

This is the first real review post I’m doing. I’m going to tag these as Review-O-Rama so they are easy to find.

The completely fabulous Jackie Barbosa kindly sent me a copy of her new release, Behind the Red Door, after only minimal begging on my part. Let me set up for you: this is a single author anthology with three related stories. The stories are set in immediately post-Napoleon England (more important in the second story than the others). I’ll review each story briefly and give some overall comments.

The first story in the anthology details the relationship of Nathaniel St. Clair, Marquess of Grenville, bad boy rake and secret Classical translator aka  Clarence Mathews, and The Honorable Miss Eleanor Palmer.

It starts with an interesting twist, as Eleanor barges into Grenville’s townhouse with a letter from her former fiancé, Grenville’s friend Holyfield.  The former fiancé that ran off with Grenville’s former fiancée.  Well, that’s interesting. More interesting is that Holyfield’s letter suggests that Eleanor should entertain Grenville as a possible match.  Eleanor is horrified by this suggestion, since Grenville’s reputation is wretched.  But, in true romance heroine fashion, she feels compelled to confront him with the letter and demand he assure her that he has no intention of pursuing her.

Continue reading Review-O-Rama: Behind the Red Door…

Now Available: All the Women in Pearl

ALL THE WOMEN IN PEARL is now available at Ellora’s Cave.

Don’t forget the first Carver story, either! ALL THE TREES IN PEARL is still available at Ellora’s Cave.

All the Women in Pearl – Release Day!

C.C. Carver’s honeysuckle kiss has haunted John Raincrow for more than ten years. He would recognize her anywhere—even in a dusty saloon, dressed in a harlot’s costume. She’s returned to Colorado too late though, and while he’ll see her back to Pearl safe and sound, he will not let himself know the woman she has become. Not even if that woman kneels between his knees, moans into his mouth or whispers “please”.

But John’s convictions might just collapse around him. The men of Pearl, Colorado, have already proven weakness in the face of feminine temptation. Ethan Carver showed you just how weak he could be in ALL THE TREES IN PEARL. Now his sister Collette has returned and decided she wants a Pearl man of her own. Read Collette’s story, ALL THE WOMEN IN PEARL, today.

You can find an excerpt at Ellora’s Cave.

And don’t forget: if you haven’t read ALL THE TREES IN PEARL, you can read the first chapter for free right here.

Thursday Not Thirteen

I was going to do one. But I didn’t. So instead, I’m going to tell you what I did today.

DH converted a UNIX box we had to a windows box for me. He swapped out the memory and generally made it so that I could finish my dissertation on one computer instead of spreading the load over two. Hooray, DH!

So, today I installed software. Lots of software. And tried to remember all the passwords for stuff that was auto-remembered by my computer for me.

What did I install, you ask? Oh, I know you’re dying to find out. DH already had windows XP ready for me, so AVG went on first, followed by Office 97, Malware Bytes, Firefox, Adobe Reader, iTunes, Tweetdeck, Inspiration, STATA (my statistics software), LeapFrog Connect (for Munchkin’s TAG system), and Full Tilt Poker. A girl’s gotta have her priorities.

I spent most of this evening recreating playlists that I hadn’t been smart enough to back up before swapping.

The next step in this little adventure is me doing battle with Word 2007. For some reason I’m having no problem with the ribbon navigation for Excel or Access, but I open Word and start twitching. I haven’t been brave enough to open PowerPoint yet. I might have seizures.

What’d you do today?

That’s Some Cover Art, Harry

Bad to Worse

“Buggerfuck.”

Cav looked up from the console to see Ellery run a hand over his close-cropped brown hair.  Shawn Ellery was the epitome of cool under fire. When he broke out the compound curses, things were not good. “What’s the problem?”

“I just received the order to start preparing for power down for the engine swap. Six hours.”

Cav’s spine went ramrod straight.  “Fuck.  Didn’t you talk to the Captain?”

Ellery ran his hand over his head again, his eyes dodging hers. Double fuck. He hadn’t.

Conscious of the crew members watching her, she chose her words carefully. “Commander, you have to tell her.”

His nostrils flared, but Cav refused to drop her gaze.  He knew she was right or he wouldn’t be so pissed.  He should have told the Captain as soon as he found out.  As far as Cav could tell, Ellery’s ego and need for control had convinced him to take a gamble on the arrival of the escort ship, banking on playing hero.  Now he was out of time and out of line, and he knew it.  Fortunately, though Ellery might be a bit of a glory hound, he wasn’t an asshole. She waited for him to come to that conclusion himself.

His breath hissed out between clenched teeth. “I know. I know I fucked this up. Shit.”

Continue reading Bad to Worse…

Friday Finale

And we are finally at the end of my little blow out. Shhh. Don’t tell Emily.

What do I want to do for this last day? We’ve done research material, non-traditional, what erotic romance is. Let’s get down and dirty. What are you looking for in a hot or erotic romance read? What makes you go “oh, yeah” and what makes you go “oh, no!”?

For me, I need the characters to be there. Not cardboard cutouts, not placeholders going through the motions. No, I need the characters to engage me emotionally. If I can’t hook up with at least one character, the story is dead for me. And I don’t want to read that. Sadly, unlike some people we could name *coughEmilycough* I am constitutionally incapable of skimming books and I rarely, rarely don’t finish one.  It has to be epic-fail-OMGWTFBBQ bad for me not to finish it. Beyond the characters, I like to have a plot that doesn’t make me want to bash my head into a brick wall. Preferably one that makes a modicum of sense and has at least some pretense of plausibility. I know I’m asking a lot, but there it is.

What makes a romance a blow-out, though, what makes it a story I recommend to my friends and can’t stop talking about, is a combination of craft, character development, plot, voice, and a lack of major WTF?! moments. This last seems like it would be pretty simple, but even the most stratospheric of talents give me WTF moments because I store way too much info in my little brain. Example? In one of Nora Roberts’ MacGregor books, she has Alan and family coming home from Alan’s stint as President and being relieved because they don’t have to deal with Secret Service stuff anymore. Uh. No. No. Sorry, even former Presidents get the SS treatment. Sucks to be you, but there it is. I’ll hit physics WTF moments, word choice WTF moments (no, really, I should never, ever read a simile likening the heroine’s sex noises to a tortured kitten. EVER), political WTF moments, biology WTF moments (the mysteriously strangely placed hymen is a big one). So that last is harder than you might expect.

But, assuming these high hurdles are crossed,  the story hits the Elise Logan Hall of Fame. Truthfully, there aren’t that many. But they’re good.

How about you? How do you judge your reads? What benchmarks do you use?

To tempt you into divulging your secrets, today’s prize offering includes Robin Schone’s The Lady’s Tutor, an autographed (well, autograph stamp, anyway) copy of Joan Johnston’s Outcast, and a $10 gift certificate for Books on Board.

Thursday Thirteen – the Party edition

So it’s Thursday, and time for the traditional Thursday Thirteen. But, if you’ve been following along, you’ll also know that Em is out of town, so, like Crazy Eddie at the local used car lot, I’m giving stuff away. In order to win, comment – and note if you want to be entered. Evidently some people want to comment but not win. Okay. I can live with that.

Thirteen Books I Bought for Research. No, really.

1. Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss.

2. A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking.

3. Political Terrorism by Alex P. Schmid and Albert J. Jongman.

4. Negative Binomial Regression by Joseph M. Hilbe.

5. The Mammoth Book of International Erotica, edited by Maxim Jakubowski.

6. SM 101 by Jay Wiseman.

7. Come Hither: A Common Sense Guide to Kinky Sex by Gloria Brame

8. The Political Economy of Terrorism by Walter Enders and Todd Sandler

9. Dancing Naked in the Mind Field by Kary Mullis.

10. The Element Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures by John and Caitlin Matthews.

11. The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking.

12. Elements of Arousal by Lars Eighner. [Turns out this is difficult to find. Odd, since I had no problem finding it.]

13. Hot Sex by Tracey Cox [Freudian name much?].

What have you bought for research?

And, in order to tempt you to post about your research, you can win some…er… handy research books today! Tickle His Pickle by Dr. Sadie Allison, Hot Sex by Tracey Cox, The Ultimate Guide to Cunnilingus and the Ultimate Guide to Fellatio, both by Violet Blue.  We want you to have plenty of research material. *cough*

Wicked Wednesday

Woo hoo! I’m having fun with the alliteration this week. Y’all will all be dying to get Emily back next week just so I lay off the alliterative titles.

Let’s see. What shall we do today? Oh! I know! How about “non-traditional” relationships? By that I mean not one guy-one gal pairings. I mean menage, same sex, all that stuff.

It seems to me that, at least in my experience, epubs are way out in front of print press in terms of exploring non-traditional relationships. Menage is well-established in epubs but is only just gaining a foothold in print. Slash is also way ahead at the epubs, since there’s practically no print presence for true yaoi, gei comi, or other forms. There’s a small subculture market for gay fiction, but it doesn’t necessarily conform to the conventions of romance, so it’s pretty hit or miss for most romance readers.

What do y’all think? Are the epubs ahead of print in this area? Do you, as a reader, want more non-traditional, or are you happy with the traditional one guy-one girl pairing?

Tell me!

Today’s prize is a non-traditional trio. Jacqueline Carey’s Santa Olivia (theoretically YA, but… it isn’t), Be With Me by Maya Bank s (1 woman, 3 men), and Simon Sheppard’s In Deep, a collection of his erotic m/m stories.