When Adam Fell for 99 cents at Dreamspinner This Weekend

Click here for When Adam Fell on sale.

All Four Foothills Pride Novellas in One Paperback Edition

On August 17, Foothills Pride Stories, Vol. 1, will be released by Dreamspinner Press. The paperback volume will include What's in a Name?, Redesigning Max, Behr Facts, and When Adam Fell, the first four Foothills Pride novellas.

What’s in a Name?: Barista Jimmy Patterson falls for bartender Guy Stone. Do coffee and booze make a happy ever after?

Redesigning Max: Interior designer Fredi Zimmer remodels Max Greene’s mountain cabin and the outdoorsman himself, but everything’s not peaceful as they find love.

Behr Facts: When someone tries to scam contractor Abe Behr, accountant Jeff Mason comes to the rescue. Big, burly, bearish Abe never thought he’d come to rely on anyone else, much less handsome Jeff.

When Adam Fell: TV Chef Adam de Leon left his longtime lover in San Francisco. Now David is back saying he’s no longer a junkie and is ready for forever this time. Can David be believed?

When more information becomes available, I'll post it here. To buy the novellas individually, use the links on the titles or at the right of this post.

I Write Romance Fiction

The April 26, 2015, issue of McLean's has an interesting article that anyone interested in writing fiction, and romance fiction in particular, should read.  "Why romance novelists are the rock stars of the literary world" not only gives wonderful background information about romance writing, but also gives the history as it's exploded with the e-book revolution.

Filmmaker Laurie Kahn says that, "in the three to four years in which she worked on the film, “There’s been a revolution in publishing, and it has upended everything. It used to be that the power was completely in the hands of the publishers, and authors were like hitchhikers waiting by the side of the road, hoping some agent would pick them up."

Kahn explores the much-derided romance genre in a documentary film she's just finished.  When talking about GLBT romances, the article says, "books [are] placed in the 'cultural studies' section of major bookstores—the likely assumption on the part of retailers being that LGBT romance is too niche for general fiction. In other words, if you’re a run-of-the-mill heterosexual romance novel, you’re the subject of cheap ridicule, and if you’re an LGBT romance novel, you’re perceived as irrelevant outside the realm of esoteric academic study."

Fortunately, the electronic revolution has occurred and the romance genre is flourishing even more, and it's possible for anyone interested in reading about love and relationships to find a book easily and quickly.

For a novella which doesn't feature sex, I recommend my own "What's in a Name?"  C'mon, now, you're not surprised I'd push my own book, are you?

You can buy What's in a Name? at

Dreamspinner Press

Amazon USA

Amazon UK

Barnes and Noble

Who Gets to Write Gay Romance? Men or Women or Both?

Jamie Fessenden

There's been a lot of discussion lately about whether women authors should write gay romance or not.  I'm still trying to figure out why not, seeing as how men and women authors have been writing about both sexes for hundreds of years.

Seems to me that the issue centers on the "romance" part of the question.  Are men--or women for that matter--romantically inclined?  And what, for heaven's sake, is romance?  Really, think about it.

The more romances I read, the less I know what I think romance is.  I've been married for 42 years.  I like to say that I never thought I'd live for 42 years given my rambunctious past, nor that I would be married to the same person for that length of time.  But here I am.  Here we are.


Lloyd Meeker

Fortunately, there are two very level-headed, intelligent blog pieces discussing the issue of who should write gay romances, and I recommend these pieces to everyone.

Gay romance author Jamie Fessenden's blog statement, "My Take on Women Writing MM Romance," starts the discussion (despite the lack of the talked about slash mark: M/M).

Following that is gay romance author Lloyd Meeker's response, "About Who Writes MM Romance," also bereft of slash.

By the way, I only bring up the slash mark because often discussions refer to it when commentators talk about the origins of gay romance.

I don't usually seek comments and won't with this post.  However, I do encourage those with strong opinions to comment on both Jamie's and Lloyd's sites.

Let freedom ring!

AAR Top 100 List

Artist Liu Bolin Hidden in Books on Shelf

Top 100 favorite romances.  If you haven't already voted, be sure to do so.  Remember that you DON'T have to vote for 100 books.  A list of 1 is still a list.  But you can only vote once, so if you have two favorite books, you'll have to vote for them in ranked order.
It's that time again for voting for the

This year I've added a lot of the M/M gay titles that I've enjoyed in the past few years, a world I didn't even know existed the first year I compiled a top 100 list.  So without further ado (as they say in the awards shows), here's how I voted for the Top 100 romances:

1.      Slightly Dangerous, Mary Balogh

2.      Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

3.      The Temporary Wife, Mary Balogh

4.      Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

5.      Dance with Me, Heidi Cullinan

6.      Suddenly You, Lisa Kleypas

7.      Something Like Autumn, Jay Bell

8.      Marriage of Mercy, Carla Kelly

9.      Love Lessons, Heidi Cullinan

10.  The More I See You, Lynn Kurland

11.  The Older Woman, Cheryl Reavis

12.  Covet Thy Neighbor, L. A. Witt

13.  She’s Got It Bad, Sarah Mayberry

14.  Beyond Duty, SJD Peterson

15.  A Reason to Live, Maureen McKade

16.  Tigers and Devils, Sean Kennedy

17.  About Last Night, Ruthie Marx

18.  Black Hawk Tattoo, Aundrea Singer

19.  Nothingness of Ben, Brad Boney

20.  Plan B, SJD Peterson

21.  Weekend with Mr. Darcy, Victoria Connelly

22.  After the End, Alex Kidwell

23.  A Different Kind of Forever, Dee Ernst

24.  It’s Not Shakespeare, Amy Lane

25.  After Ben, Con Riley

Be Prepared to Weep and Weep Again

I had Jojo Moyes' Me Before You on my Paperback Swap wish list for a year and still was on the waiting list when I spied it on the review list for All About Romance.  To say that I snarfed it right up might be a slight exaggeration--okay, totally not an exaggeration at all.  I couldn't wait to read it since I'd read so many wonderful things about it.

Then I read the book.  Well, Moyes definitely has a handle on pulling out readers' sobs.  I cried and sniffed through the whole book.  What a wonderful book, I thought.  Sigh.

As we usually do, my husband and I were discussing books over lunch one day.  I had a new review book to read when he asked me about the Moyes book that he'd seen me sniffling over.  What was it about, he asked.

Glibly I started telling him the plot, and as I did so, I found my initial enjoyment of it turn to rage.  Why in the heck should Louisa love Will?  What was lovable about the guy?  As I told my husband the story, I wondered why no one had just driven Will to Switzerland and offed him.

As I kept recounting the story--before I'd finished writing the review--it suddenly occurred to me that it wasn't a love story at all, but a tale of class differences and just another way that Britain differed from the States.  Moyes' genius wasn't in writing a love story for the ages but in explaining once again what the upper class is all about to America's middle class.  We are not like them.  Still.

Essentially, Will is an unlikeable git who pawns off his idea of an ideal life to a well-meaning woman who knocked herself out to make him happy.  Throwing money at her after he was gone was a nice finish, but in the end it was his way of turning her from her working class sensibilities to upper class snobbishness.  In effect, he cloned himself onto her and "gave" her his shallow life.

Was she better off now that he was gone?  We're all supposed to think she was much better off and had a chance of leading a much broader life.  But like everything else in the book, that's debatable.

Mature, Successful Men in Love

Shira Anthony's Aria is a delight--mainly because the two love interests are successful men in totally divergent fields and working out of completely different parts of the world.  When they fall in love, unlike many "straight" romances where the woman defers to the man and either reestablishes herself wherever he's based or completely quits her career to move where he lives, Athony's superstar tenor and talented lawyer must figure out how to make their lives mesh while keeping their careers.

Writers of "straight" romances should learn something from this and make their women characters more assertive.  No, this doesn't mean that the women demand that the men give up their jobs, but rather that the men and women learn how to negotiate in order to make their lives mesh.

If we're talking real equality, then this is a must.  A round of applause for Anthony who figured this out and made it a plot point in Aria.

My review of Aria was featured on AAR this weekend and can be read at the links associated with the book's title in this blog piece.

Back in the Saddle

I can't believe that it's been since August that I wrote and had reviews published.  After kidney surgery in May, I thought I was on the road to recovery until cracked ribs hit me in September.  With any luck, all that's behind me and I'm now really recovering.  It's been a long, slow process, and it turns out that I'm not a very patient patient.

It hasn't helped that I've read a bunch of "C" grade books during my recovery.  The first of the romances for AAR, Tallie's Hero, is reviewed today.  It's definitely one of those that I really wanted to like and in synopsis sounds wonderful.  Too bad the reality didn't pan out.  In fact, in places the book read like author Sarah Luck was just a little too close to her source material and was coping the give-away pamphlets and self-published booklets given away at historical sites.

Unfortunately, the next few reviews for AAR will be just as lackluster as this one was.  (The "cowboy" on the cover, however, is a real cutie!  Nothing lackluster about him.)

The Ballerina and the Sheriff

I'm not sure why I chose to review for AAR Slow Dance with the Sheriff by Nikki Logan.  In it, two people who've fled New York City for Larkville, Texas, after being scarred by traumatic occurrences are drawn together.  They both resist the pull, but in the end come together.  This is a romance, after all.

Logan writes some truly inspired scenes in the book, one of which has stayed with me all these weeks after having finished reading and reviewing it.  Jed, the sheriff, takes former ballerina Ellie to see bats leave their cave at dusk.  As she watches them soar, she starts moving and finds her joy in movement that she lost right before she came to Texas.  It's a lovely scene in which readers get to experience broken Jed give Ellie a gift that's more priceless than any he could buy her in a store.

It's scenes like that that make me feel wonderful and are found so rarely in other genres.  Romance, I've found, doesn't necessarily have anything to do with sex, but rather how we interact with others on a personal level.  Standing in the near dark and holding another person's hand as bats fly from a cave isn't sexy, but it's pure love.

A Small Online Rant

If I'd written this to a newspaper and it had printed it, my AAR blog piece, A Slow Books Addendum, would be called an opinion piece.  When I worked as an editor at the Houston Chronicle and edited the op-ed page, I thought of the people who wrote in as the crazies.  They wrote impassioned pieces about sewers and transportation and what I considered everyday minutia.  Now, as Pogo would say, I are one of them.

But I truly am incensed that a person or group of people can decide what's good and right for the rest of us to read.  It was bad enough when the Literary Canon was compiled by old white guys, but even worse when feminists got involved and decided to be as didactic as their male counterparts.

Where's the new day, new millennium when children are allowed to read what speaks to them?  When we aren't told what's "good" for us and what's "bad" but are allowed to figure that out for ourselves?  So what if I don't pick something you think I should love?  We're both reading.  And thinking.  And that's really the point, isn't it?

Las Vegas without a Hint of Vegas

The review of Night after Night is up at AAR today.  This is a solid romance with two love stories for the price of one.  And the two stories aren't brothers, sisters, or relatives for a change!

The primary couple are a jewelry designer and an ex-con -- in both senses of the word, convict and con man.  As a person who enjoys looking at new designers' work, I wish Denison had gone into more description of Zoe's creations.  But description, either of the jewelry or the locale (Las Vegas) isn't Denison's strong point.

The secondary couple are a mega singing star and a nightclub owner.  Again, the backstory for these two is really well done and their motivations believable.  But also again, the description of Jessica's concert and Noah's club are sadly missing.

I'm really hoping that Denison learns how to add pointed description to her writing because then she'll really be a killer author.

Three Reviews Sent to Booklist Today

Sent the following reviews to my Booklist editor:

The Spy Who Left Me by Gina Robinson:  Chick lit meets James Bond.  Not really my cup of tea, but interesting enough.  This is definitely one of those books where a reviewer must pretend to be another reader in order to do the book justice in the review.

Hot Zone by Catherine Mann:  A good beach read about para-rescue-men in the Bahamas.  The story won't do anything for tourism there, but Hugh Franco and his captain were interesting characters.  Kick-ass Amelia, however, exceeded the price of admission.  And fortunately even though a toddler was one of the characters, he wasn't cloyingly cute, but kept mostly in the background.

Wild Thing by Robin Kaye:  This was an odd one since the hero, who was awfully metro-male for being a rugged outdoorsman and wilderness guide, immediately fell in love with a Goth New Yorker, which took a while to reconcile.  But after Toni got her moxie back and stopped being afraid of abandonment in the wilderness--something that wouldn't happen since her company had paid so much for Hunter's services--the book picked up quite a bit.

Review Background: The Life History of a Reviewer

I've been a book reviewer for most of my adult life.  I started at The Houston Post newspaper where I worked as a librarian and reviewed any books that were assigned to me by the features department.  I met my husband at the Post, but since they had a nepotism policy (ironic because Ovita Culp Hobby's family ran the paper), I applied for a job at the rival Houston newspaper.

When I moved to The Houston Chronicle and worked as a features staffer, I had a multitude of jobs, including reviewing books, movies, and events.  Again, I had no real specialty, but reviewed whatever was assigned to me.