For many years, I reviewed romances. You can see some of the reviews here. But lately I've been writing romance novellas. So whether you've come to read the reviews or get information about my writing, WELCOME! Read, enjoy, and leave messages if you wish. Every day is a good day for romance.
Showing posts with label All About Romance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label All About Romance. Show all posts
One of the things I'd hoped to do when I started writing reviews of gay romances at All About Romance and Booklist was to have m/m romances become an accepted part of the larger romance universe. I didn't accomplish my goal, but I'm so happy to report that Heidi Cullinan has!
Her marvelous romance, Fever Pitch, is on the finalist list for the Romance Writers of America 2015 awards. As far as I know, this is a first for both Heidi and for m/m romances.
It's a validation that what we are writing isn't so fringe after all, and gay romance is just as important in the world of romance writing as the Regencies, historicals, contemporaries, and other splinter groups that have been accepted for decades.
This article posted on Kirkus today is a real sign of the times. Publishers Weekly posted a article about gay romance by author Damon Suede in 2013, and then I wrote a short blog piece for Booklist about the enthusiastic response to gay romances at the recent RT convention in May.
Sometimes even if I really, really want to like a book, I just can't. That's the way it was for the latest update of Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice, this time with a gay twist. Sounds intriguing, yes? Well, it doesn't quite work out well. Here's an excerpt from my review that was posted at All About Romance today:
I'm fascinated by contemporary takes on the classic Pride and Prejudice novel, especially those that don't feel obligated to stick chapter by chapter to the book. For this reason, I was excited when I saw a gay romance version. If the classic could be changed to include sci-fi elements, why not an m/m take on it?
Closeted Pennsylvania college student Liam Bennett is happy for his brother Jamie, who's been hired by the Bingley Corporation after grad student Charlie Bingley worked with Jamie doing some computer coding. Charlie and his partner William Darcy are co-owners of Nerve, a highly profitable multimedia social networking site.
When Liam and Jamie attend a gala at the Oakham Mount University campus' Netherfield House, Liam is woefully and defiantly underdressed in a polo shirt and hoodie amid the other black tie guests. He gets to see first-hand Jamie's attraction to Charlie, an attraction which seems reciprocated.
Liam also gets to meet the aloof and disagreeable Will who cold-shoulders him. When Liam does an Internet search on Will, he finds that the 23-year-old's residence is Pemberley estate in Derbyshire, England. Liam also finds a number of paparazzi photos of Will and Violet de Bourgh, a British starlet and heiress.
Although Jamie is easy to get along with and liked by everyone, Liam is much too confrontational and bitingly clever to have many friends. His closest is Charlotte who's been his best friend since childhood and with whom he shares an off-campus apartment.
After running into Will a few times, Liam meets musician George Wickham whose band has just kicked him out and who is looking for a new gig. Liam and George become friends, with the wily George spiriting away one of Liam's younger brothers ostensibly to teach the teen how to play the guitar.
I wrote a blog piece that's posted today on All About Romance about some of the imaginary places I've always wanted to visit. You know those places, the places where those lucky protagonists get to shop or hang out.
Many of them are historic houses in Great Britain, but more of them are scattered around the world. There's a café in Paris that's featured in one of Shira Anthony's books and the bar in Virgin River in Robin Carr's books.
But the book that got me thinking about all of this lately is the wonderful, marvelous second-hand Cabbages and Kinks in Josephine Myles' latest, Stuff. I reviewed the book for AAR and then subsequently wrote the blog piece.
Not only is the name of the place absolutely charming--and wouldn't Lewis Carroll/Charles Dodgson be pleased to have such an establishment named such?--but Myles' descriptions of the shop's contents and her character Mas' imaginative arranging of them is sublime.
It's the kind of shop I would want to visit with my art group and love to hear their comments about the various bits and pieces in it.
I can't decide what my favorite item would be, but I do know that I'd buy one of Perry's sculptures to add to my art collection. I'd come back time and again to see what else he'd created too.
If you have a favorite imaginary place where you'd like to visit, I'd love to hear about it.
A widow is wooed out of her melancholy by a war veteran bartender who only asks that she tell him "just one thing" when she stops by his bar every Monday. Artist Lexie McCain's children are worried about her uncharacteristic funk after their father dies in an accident. Lexie has holed up in her studio away from town and friends which is very unusual. After they’ve harassed her sufficiently, Lexie agrees to walk into the nearby small town of Lapp Mill, Pennsylvania, at least once a week. She decides to go on non-busy Monday and makes her destination The Corner Bar, a low-key pub-like establishment where she has one beer and then walks home.
What she doesn't count on is proprietor Sam Corner who challenges her to tell him "just one thing" in exchange for her beer. Lexie agrees to play Sam's game and starts by telling him her name. What unfolds are memories based on the "one thing" Lexie and then Sam let escape from their lips including the painful deaths of Lexie's father, daughter, and finally husband and Sam's traumatic time in the service.
Lexie, who's been a good wife, mother, and art instructor, is floundering, but not morose to the point of being suicidal. In fact, she knows she's got to climb out of her current depression and as therapy starts weaving a tapestry depicting scenes from her life in it.
She's a strong, likable character, a woman without pretensions and with a solid sense of self. Like most of us when a life-changing event happens, she realizes she needs to pick herself up, dust herself off, and forge on with life. But her husband's death has hit her harder then those of her beloved father and daughter.
Becca and cover model
C. J. Hollenbach
at the RT Convention
I took the last week off and went to Pacific Grove, home of the wintering Monarch butterflies, next door to Monterey, California. While there is a sandy beach where families and surfers play, what draws me is the rockier coastline, the small furry creatures, and the beautiful, endless waves.
Usually I try to do no work at all, but this time I had three review books to read--all for Booklist this time. I've also decided to write a short story to submit for an upcoming Dreamspinner anthology, so I spent most of the time breathing in the sea breezes, reading, and writing.
In the meantime, here in cyberspace, my articles and reviews were being published. Instead of writing blog pieces about them individually, I'm listing each of them here:
All About Romance ran both Surviving the Convention, my account of the Romantic Times convention in May and a blog piece, From the Review's Studio, about why I chose to review gay romances and how I choose the books to review.
I've been a reader of Andrew Grey's gay romances for a couple of years now and have no idea why it's taken me this long to review one of his books. Here's an excerpt from Love Comes Home which was posted at All About Romance today:
A love story about a father and his son as much as one between two men, this is a superb example of Grey's command of the extraordinary in the everyday ordinary. For readers who wonder what gay romance is all about, this is an excellent place to start reading. Single father and Pleasanton, Michigan, architect Greg Hampton is particularly proud of his 10-year-old son Davey who's excelling in Little League baseball, especially since a Greg played ball in college. Greg was even courted to become a pro, so seeing his son engaged in the sport is particularly enjoyable for him. But when Davey's batting is off and he seems to be having trouble on the field, Greg is heartbroken to learn that his son has a degenerative eye disease and will become blind soon.
As Greg and his supportive group of friends deal with Davey's situation, Greg starts dating wealthy Tom Spangler, who has a soft spot for the frustrated but plucky Davey. To help Greg, Tom, who runs a charitable organization for his family, researches sports for the blind, coming up with beep baseball.
As Greg and Davey start to adjust to Davey's blindness, Greg's former wife, who rejected Davey during the divorce, reenters the picture, demanding visitation rights. While Greg is at first suspicious that she is trying to get more money from him, he's appalled when she brings a holistic doctor with her when Greg agrees to her visit.
Greg is a wonderful father who is truly devastated by his son's condition. He runs the gamut of paternal emotions from anger that his son must deal with his blindness after having seen for ten years to over-helpfulness, wanting to wait on the boy hand and foot. Fortunately, Greg has a supportive group of friends and a caring new boyfriend who all want the best for Davey. The children of Greg's friends are particularly impressive because they continue to treat the boy as they did before his blindness set in.
Today I got a message from the Goodreads Team that they want me to cease
and desist from posting this message in the review section of a book: Watch for
my review at (the name of the venue at which my review will run and the URL for that venue). I review for All About Romance, Booklist, and The Romance Reviews.
After my review ran at the review site, I always change the Goodreads review to be the
first four or five paragraphs of the review with the last paragraph as Read
read the rest of my review at AAR, Booklist or TRR with the permanent URL for the
review.
I posted the first message as a courtesy to authors who might want to know
if their books will be reviewed and where it will be reviewed, and the second so authors and readers would know
the review had run. It never occurred to me that this would be unacceptable to
the Goodreads powers that be. But it is.
I understand that Goodreads is a fan-based site, but I didn't understand that the fans (or at least The Team who represent the fans) don't want to know that your book is being reviewed somewhere else.
So now that I've been called on the carpet (or to the principal's office as it actually feels), I'll stop notifying you at Goodreads that your book is going to be reviewed. If you want to know this, you'll have to go to Shelfari or Library Thing instead.
As a lifelong voracious reader, I was intrigued by the premise of Z. A. Maxfield's Eddie: Grime Doesn't Pay. Eddie, a dyslexic whose adapted to his inability to read quickly by using a number of electronic gadgets, falls for Andrew, a teacher whose father was a bookseller and who has shelves of books in his house.
I know that if my husband wasn't a reader (and writer) we would have never gotten married. Being with someone who doesn't read would have driven me crazy. Since I worked in libraries and newspaper offices, the chances of my falling for someone who wasn't a reader weren't large. So I was curious to see if Maxfield could convince me that Eddie and Andrew might make it as a couple.
Fortunately, she did, and it was easy to give the book an "A" rating at All About Romance. I think the thing that tipped the balance was that Eddie wasn't against reading, but knew there were many things he needed to read, like menus in restaurants for example, and found ways to work with his inability to decipher them.
As I read the book, I realized it wasn't someone with dyslexia that I couldn't have lived with, but someone who hid himself because of his inability to read well and who refused to find ways around his inability.
Once upon a time in a place far, far away, when I was younger and my hands were steady as rocks, I took up calligraphy and loved it. There's something so soothing about the building of strokes to make letters to form words.
Rowan Speedwell in Illumination hints at this nearly mystical creative feeling when he describes the pages his character Miles pens and decorates. Of course, the book, a gay romance novel, doesn't dwell on Miles' ability to create one-of-a-kind manuscript pages and other artwork, but instead how this agoraphobic, whose mind has betrayed him, breaks out of his cloister.
I'm thinking that next I need to read Speedwell's Ghosts of Bourbon Street in order to get ready for the Romantic Times Convention in May that's being held in New Orleans. That should help put me in the mood!
Today All About Romance is running one of my favorite yearly columns, the AAR reviewers' picks for Buried Treasures, those books published during the year that didn't get as much publicity as we think they should have.
My picks are three gay romances (go figure!):
* Sex and Sourdough by A. J. Thomas: I'm not much of a hiker, or walker for that matter, but this book made me want to lace up my hiking shoes and get out on the trail. In addition, Thomas is the kind of quirky storyteller that I enjoy. I'd read her A Casual Weekend Thing and was blown away by how different it was in a sea of gay romances that are beginning to look cloned. Both books are unique, each with its own style, so I can't wait to read Thomas' next one and have been telling my friends about her.
* Beyond Duty by SJD Peterson: Peterson's not an easy author for readers who like their books with little or no sex, but the themes she grapples with are important and worthy of discussion. In Beyond Duty two career soldiers are retiring and still in prime condition. They've been lovers for years, meeting up between deployments, and have even bought a house together. But now they're at a crossroads that will determine what could possibly be the majority of their lives. The questions aren't easy, and the answers even harder to decide. Since the troops are coming home and our fighting forces are being cut, this is a book that applies both for hetero and homosexuals.
* Something Like Autumn by Jay Bell: Our older daughter lives in Italy with her husband, twins, and dogs, and we were going to visit for the first time since they moved there. I knew the flight from California to Italy would be long, so I saved the third in Bell's Something Like series for the long trip. What better way to wallow in a favorite author's work? But sometimes I'm so stupid that I despair. I knew what happened to the main character before I started the book since he was a character in the previous book. I knew. And I read it anyway, over the entire flight. It's my favorite book, and I will never forgive Jay Bell for not changing the story. Read it and you'll know what I mean.
I was dubious when I saw the galley of Talya Andor's The Fall Guide available on NetGalley. But after reading the sample, I decided to read the book for review at AAR. I'm glad I did.
At first glance, Eric looks to be a complete twink flake. As we all know, however, looks can be deceiving, which is the point of Eric's new line of cosmetics for men. Eric's vision isn't just for gay men but for all men, just as cosmetics for women are for all women.
While it sounds on the surface as silly, at least to someone like myself who wears no makeup, it isn't since as Andor points out so many men wear makeup on the job. No? You don't think so? Think again. What do Mr. Rogers, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Cruise, and any other male stage or screen star have in common on the job? Yup, makeup.
So once I got past my prejudice about men and makeup, and let myself go with the flow, The Fall Guide became an interesting and enjoyable book. Good job, Andor! I can't wait to read more of your work.
Don't you just hate it when you read the synopsis of a book, then the sample, and the book doesn't live up to your expectations? I do. And my reviews posted at All About Romance and The Romance Reviews today are those kinds of disappointing books.
Long the Mile by Ally Blue has a wonderful premise in two homeless men who were once successful helping each other learn how to live on the street. Since my husband and I once were on the board of a homeless project and mentored one of the first families, I was curious about how accurate Blue would be in her novel. Not so much, as it turned out, which was a big disappointment.
Adored by Shawn Bailey, on the other hand, doesn't promise to be realistic, by any means. However, it has so many out-and-out horrific problems that it's a wonder that Phaze (celebrating nine years in publishing their website proudly announces) thought the book worthy of publication. Why did I think it was worthy of review? I'd hoped to see all the problems convincingly cleared up by the end of the book. Instead, they're just left as is. Truly disappointing.
When a male model wants to become his own man and shuck his sugar daddy, buying an abandoned church in order to refurbish it for destination gay weddings seems like a good idea. I wasn't sure I wanted to read Kate Sherwood's The Fall but even though the promo material didn't exactly sell me, Sherwood's writing drew me in and now I'm looking forward to the book's sequel.
Sherwood has built a wonderful tight-knit community around the clueless Mackenzie, whose first name (Scott) is mentioned once in the book. I've got to wonder why this is such a mystery and why the former model doesn't use it. Maybe I'm making more out of this minor mystery than is called for, but I'm hoping there's a great story behind it in the next book.
More than anything, it's great to see a gay romance set in Canada, and rural Canada at that.
On the same day that the San Francisco Chronicle ran its BatKid special edition, with byline by Clark Kent (about time he wrote a news story!), my review of Damon Suede's Bad Idea, a novel that has fun with comic books, ran.
Suede's book dovetailed with all the wonderfully dorky things I've loved my whole life: larger than large characters, elaborate costumes, wonderfully garish makeup, and people who think outrageous thoughts and then put them into being. I was so afraid that Bad Idea would turn out to be just that: a travesty of everything I love about comics and the edges of creativity.
Fortunately for everyone, Suede's Bad Idea is not only a Good Idea, but a Great Idea. His take on the highs and lows of pure creation and soul-searing marketing make for wonderful reading.
Is this the book for you? Read my review and find out.
I've added a third online publication for which I'm reviewing gay romance fiction (and possibly other types of romance). In addition to AAR and Booklist, I'll be reviewing for The Romance Reviews.
Each of the review publications is different, and each in its own way is unique, which I very much enjoy. I'd urge all romance readers to look at the reviews at all these sites to find books they will enjoy. Here's how to find a review site that will work for you:
Go to the review site and enter the title of one of your favorite romance novels.
1) Has the book been reviewed?
2) Does the reviewer agree with you that the book is great?
3) Do you and the reviewer agree about WHY the book is great?
4) Or does the reviewer think the book isn't so good?
5) Why does the reviewer think this? Are these reasons valid?
Rather than judge a book review site on its current reviews, you will get more information about whether you want to read new books that are reviewed if you know how the reviewers reacted to a book you're familiar with. There's nothing more disappointing than to read a rave review and spend money on a copy of the book only to find out you dislike it.
While I'd love to say that the three places for which I review are the perfect venues for finding the perfect romance reviews, I know we all differ. So give the three book review sites above a chance. I hope we can add you as a reader.http://www.theromancereviews.com/
Having taught at a junior college for many years, I've watched college students come and go. Most of them have baggage, some heavier than others, but all burdened by something. Stress is usually at the top of the heap, but often the stress is compounded by some other bits of baggage that the students struggle with as well as cope with their homework and labs.
In Left Drowning, author Jessica Park pours on the baggage and then wants readers to know that the teens with heavy emotional scars are still passing their classes, turning in their homework, and generally being successful students. And as a former English composition instructor, I'm not buying it.
Understandably, Blythe, the main character, has emotional scars from surviving the fire that killed her parents. Compounding that, Blythe feels guilty for ruining her brother's sports career because she dragged him out of the burning building over a piece of glass that impaired his leg. All of that I can understand.
What I don't believe is that the reclusive Blythe, who hasn't gotten any help from extended family or friends, is still passing her classes. In my experience, even students with less baggage than Blythe fail their classes and need help before they can concentrate enough to become successful.
That a group of equally scarred students bring her into their group is no surprise. But that they all turn out to be successful students is.
I wish this fairytale were true. But my experience is that it's just a fairytale, and these college students might just as well wait for their pumpkins to turn into coaches as to believe that angst equals passing grades.
Only Con Riley could make the beauty of salvaged articles compelling. In Salvage, one of the characters explains, “Salvage is everything we keep here—old things that can be used again by a different owner. Sometimes, finding out about where all these things came from, and about the people who might have first used them, is worth far more than treasure.”
That comment stuck with me for the entire book, and I've often thought of the "old things" scattered throughout my house that I'm using. Unfortunately, many of them, like the old TV cabinet in the living room that we transformed into a stereo unit, we have no idea about the people who owned them first or why they gave them away. I would love to know about that TV cabinet and also the upright piano in the family room with its inlaid gold, copper, and shell images.
How did the cabinet end up in Colorado and the piano get from England to south Texas? Who were the people who bought these items and why did they let them go?
Riley's poignant book looks at family and friends as it does the salvaged items, giving readers more than a satisfying romance, giving them something to ponder as they look around the people and things in their lives.
Had to laugh today when the editor of All About Romance (AAR) ran my review of Fear which she said she couldn't resist for Halloween.
Fear, however, isn't a funny book at all since it deals with the physical and mental abuse of a gay man by his partner. Getting some one with low self-esteem extricated from an abuser is neither easy nor fun, which is why Kendrick's book is so hard-hitting.
If you or someone you know is being abused, please get help from:
I love the double entendre of the title "Junk" for a gay romance. Although the subject of hoarding is serious, there's something deliciously funny about two gay men talking about one of the men's junk and meaning both definitions of the word.
I was pleasantly surprised at how enthralling Josephine Myles' Junk was considering that when I first saw the title I thought the book might be one of those great concept, not so great execution titles. You know what I mean--those books that sound great in the blurb, but turn out to be mundane or nearly dreadful when you read them.
Myles' book isn't one of those. The main characters have baggage, but not so much that they can't get together and not so much that a reader doubts their ability to have a happily ever after. And in the end, that's all we want really--just a chance to wish the protagonists of the books we read long, healthy and joyful lives.
