Just in Case You Want to Vote

So I got this email today:

The book, What's in a Name? by Pat Henshaw, was submitted to compete in the TRR Readers' Choice Awards - Winter 2015.

We are pleased to inform you that What's in a Name? has fulfilled the minimum requirements and is moved to the next round -- the Nomination Round.

In the Nomination Round, What's in a Name? has to garner at least 50 nominations within the time period in order to qualify for the next and final round. The nomination will start on September 11 and end on September 30. Invite your fans and reader community to nominate the book here: http://glbt.theromancereviews.com/viewbooks.php?bookid=16499
So if you are one of the wonderful people who votes for things like this, I'd appreciate your vote, as would Jimmy and Guy, the protagonists of What's in a Name?

Thanks!

If you haven't read the first two of the Foothills Pride series, What's in a Name? or Redesigning Max, you can use the Amazon links to the right of this blog piece or click on the titles to order them.

Q & A and Giveaway!

That's right!  Jimmy and Guy, of What's in a Name?, ask a multiple choice question at The Romance Reviews Anniversary party tomorrow and the winner gets a prize.

Check it out on Monday, March 30.  YOU could be the big winner.

Good luck!

Buy What's in a Name? at online booksellers including

Amazon
Amazon UK
Amazon Canada
Barnes and Noble
Dreamspinner Press

You're Invited to a Party!

 

Remember to join and sign in to play the games and win prizes!

I Want to Eat at Rick Reed's House

Rick R. Reed is a man of many talents as far as writing goes.  Some of his books, like Raining Men for example, are hard-hitting and nearly painful to get through.  Others, like his latest, Dinner at Home, can nearly be compared to cozy mysteries.  Dinner at Home is a cozy gay romance, with its charming protagonist, spunky little girl, and well-meaning former drug addict who's trying desperately to stay clean.

If that isn't enough, Reed includes very tempting description of mouth-watering dishes throughout the story and then gives the recipes for them at the end of the book.  Who knew that a man whose writing seemed to reflect a dark spirit actually was a jovial Italian chef as well?

I noticed on some of the review sites that this book isn't gleaning the five-star reviews Reed's other work has gotten.  I think this is the stun factor.  His writing and this story aren't any less wonderful, but I don't think readers expect this of him and are rating their confusion rather than the quality of his work.

Here's an excerpt from my 5-star review that was posted on The Romance Reviews today:

Readers should be ready to grab their pots and pans and be ready to cook while savoring Rick R. Reed's latest gay romance.

Talk about a bad day. At breakfast, Seattle ad executive Ollie D'Angelo finds his boyfriend has had another lover for six months and now wants Ollie to move out, then when he gets to work, he finds his position has been eliminated.

A perpetually upbeat person and cook at heart, Ollie rallies to decide this is his chance of a lifetime to do something he's always wanted. With his savings, he starts Dinner at Home, a catering service for people who are too busy to cook dinner at night.

As he's unpacking after delivering a meal one evening, down-and-out Hank Mellinger sees Ollie's open car and enters it, bent on stealing something. When the bigger Ollie catches Hank and finds out the man needs money for rent and food for himself and his niece, instead of turning him over to the police, Ollie takes Hank and his niece home with him.

A former crack addict, Hank is now clean and trying desperately to stay that way. His twin sister is in prison on the East Coast and his mother refuses to take responsibility for four-year-old Addison, a swearing, too-old-for-her-age little girl.
Read the rest of the review at The Romance Reviews.

Weight Isn't Really the Issue, Is It?

From my review of The Skinny on Love by Fyn Alexander:

Two men scarred by their childhoods clash over weight issues in this poignant love story.

When 36-year old private detective Sky Cook gets a call from 37-year-old former British Army captain (now gym owner) John Moorcroft about finding his long lost mother, Sky thinks the case will be a slam dunk.

But when the tall, overweight Sky shows up at John's gym and realizes how much he despises flabby, unfit people, Sky's skeptical about being able to work with him. However, they agree to barter services. John will help Sky lose weight and get in shape while Sky will find John's mom who left when he was a boy.

Sky is skeptical when John, while showing signs of being gay, adamantly keeps telling everyone around him that he's straight. When Sky meets John's acerbic father, who beat John after he'd seen his son in a gay neighborhood when John was a teen, the detective isn't surprised that John is hiding so far in the closet or that John's mother left the volatile man.

As Sky and John get to know one another better and Sky succumbs to John's masterful personality, they not only discover the mother's secrets but also something else...

Read the rest of my review at The Romance Reviews.

While I Was Vacationing

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.

Booklist also ran my account of the RT Convention in the Likely Stories book blog under the headline Gay Romance Comes Out at the Romantic Times Convention.  Also, my review of Jude Deveraux's From All Time ran in the July 2014 e-copy of the magazine.

The Romance Reviews ran my review of Missed Connections: I Swear to You.

So even though I wasn't at home, my week away was very busy online.

Canadian Hockey versus Curling

Burning Up the Ice by Devon Rhodes and T. A. Chase marks the first time I've heard that Canadians break down into two groups about ice sports.  I knew both hockey and curling were huge crowd pleasers in Canada, but I never knew that the ice is prepared differently for the sports and different kinds of ice are needed for each one.

Call it the education of an American who as a child spent her time both on lake ice and inside on auditorium ice.  I understand and appreciate the vast difference between these, much preferring the auditorium ice only because I didn't have to take a snow shovel beforehand to clear snow and debris off the ice before I could skate.

I was particularly taken by injured NHL hockey player who turns into a little boy when his friend and soon to be lover lets him drive the Zamboni.  Having watched a Zamboni make its rounds before a skating lesson or to clean the ice before public skating, I too have always wanted to drive a Zamboni.

Have sex on it like the two men in the story do?  Not so much.

Dear Goodreads Authors

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.

 

Thanks for reading this note,

Pat

Don't Try to Fool Me

How do I decide which books to review and which to pass on?  The Internet has made this process much easier than it once was.  I read the book description which I take with a grain of salt.  If the book sounds much too good to be true, I might add another grain or two.

Then I go to Amazon and read the sample.  When Amazon doesn't have a sample, I go to the publisher's website and hope to find a sample of the book there.  Finally, if all else fails, I search for the author's website online and see if there's a sample there.

Armed with the book description and sample, I'm usually fairly certain that the book is something I want to read.  Of course since I haven't read the entirety, I'm only intrigued, not completely sold on the book.  But I'll read it for review.

But sometimes the book turns out to be something quite a bit different than what I expected.  A case in point is Jack Greene's Whiplash, the review of which is up on The Romance Reviews site.  And this kind of bait-and-switch makes me really, really cranky--cranky enough to tell the world just how disappointed I am.

But wait!  Even though it was entered into the GLBT review queue, shouldn't I review it as erotica which is where it should have been entered?  No, I don't think so.  If you show me a Granny Smith apple and ask me to judge it as an orange, I'm going to give it a bad review.  It's NOT an orange.  The same goes for erotica parading as a gay romance.

It's a new era.  There's more to gay romance than sex.  Erotica should be judged as erotica, and gay romance should be reviewed as romance.

Another Double Review Day

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.

Two Hanukkah Tales

Yesterday two review sites featured my reviews.  Today The Romance Reviews is featuring two of my reviews of Hanukkah stories.  Both are by Dreamspinner Press, and I'm still trying to figure out why these stories are included in Dreamspinner's Advent Calendar.  Maybe I'm wrong, but I think Advent is a purely Christian concept.  So why are Jewish holiday stories included?  Or why isn't the Advent Calendar called something like the Holiday Calendar?

Anyway, the two novellas that I review on the TRR site are both nice, "awwww"-inspiring tales.

In Bashert by Gale Stanley, a Jewish Penn State freshman is having religious doubts and meets up with a Jewish grad student who celebrates Hanukkah with him.  The word bashert translates as "destiny" or "soul mate" which I think is a little presumptuous for this particular story.  Just because two people click for eight days doesn't mean they're destined for each other.  I don't think because someone is Jewish (or Roman Catholic, or Southern Baptist, or any other religion for that matter), he will automatically become a soul mate of a person who practices that same religion.  Isn't more necessary to make someone a soul mate?  My answer's yes.

In Another Life by Cardeno C., on the other hand, is a strange riff on It's a Wonderful Life.  Instead of seeing what life would be like if he weren't born, the Jewish 18-year-old who is committing suicide sees what life would be like if he lived.  Hanukkah is mentioned in the story, but isn't a focal point like it is in Bashert, so calling this a holiday novella is stretching the point as far as it'll go.

But the author's use of humor in an otherwise grim tale makes the story likable.  As holiday stories go, however, it falls very short, making me wonder why it was included in the Advent Calendar.

In the News

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/