I haven’t been keeping up with the news posts—in my defence, we’ve been doing pretty well with reviews this year…so far—but I have some exciting new projects that I just have to share with you guys. So here they are: the sekrit projects!

Romance Buzz

The lovely Kate Cuthbert is stepping down as editor of Booktopia’s Romance Buzz, and they have asked me to take on the role. I am so chuffed! This means I get to choose upcoming books to highlight and talk about. I also get to call myself Booktopia’s Queen of Romance, so I may have to go out and buy a pink boa and a sparkly tiara as befits my new station. Our joint issue went up last week. You can read it here.

ARRC panel

At ARRC in Brisbane, I’ll be moderating the Romance Hour (concurrent session 1D) with some fabulous authors: Kristan Higgins, Hope Tarr, Keri Arthur and Anne Gracie. If that doesn’t float your boat, Decadence will be moderating Angels and dragons and banshees, oh my! (concurrent session 1A). It kind of sucks that we’re on at the same time, but hopefully the sessions will be recorded, because omg, Rachel Vincent, Shona Husk, Nalini Singh and MJ Scott!

RWA conference panel

This year, I’ll be doing more than just going to the RWA conference parties—I’ll be participating in a panel! Kate Cuthbert, Sarah Wendell (Smart Bitches, Trashy Books) and I will be running a panel called Navigating the Choppy Waters of Online Reviews. Here’s the blurb:

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Despite the weak romance and a family conflict that remains unresolved, there are enough interesting characters and situations to make this book an engaging, if not altogether satisfying, read.

This review is part of the Australian Women Writers Challenge. Click here for a list of books I’ve read so far.

Wendy Hopkins arrives at the Pilbara in search of her biological father and some self-redemption after a bad decision in her previous job resulted in disastrous consequences. But being the safety manager at an iron ore wharf comes with a load of politics, an overdose of testosterone and, with cyclone season approaching, more danger than she bargains for.*

When a stranger, who ‘brought the same visual pop to her eyeballs that Brad Pitt brought to the big screen’, follows her while jogging, she punches him in the jaw. In return, he steals a kiss. The stranger turns out to be Gavin Jones, piling engineer and infamous womaniser, and it also turns out that he may have the information Wendy is looking for.

It must be a sign of how starved I am for Australian-set romances featuring authentic sounding Australian characters that I found it difficult to put this book down, despite the lacklustre character arcs and romance plot. I might have skimmed through some of the descriptions of working procedures at the wharf, but I was always drawn back by the dialogue. Where else, for example, would you find a simile like this: ’…when he came in here last week he was looking at you like you were a bowl of hot wedges served with sour cream and sweet chilli sauce.’

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Escapist fun, yes, but it’s also firmly on the side of women and the ties that bind them. A delight to read.

This review is part of the Australian Women Writers Challenge. Click here for a list of books I’ve read so far.

I’ve enjoyed Australian romance author Anne Gracie’s work in the past, but she’s one of those authors whose backlist is so intimidating, I’ve never got around to catching up. I think that’s about to change after reading this book.

Abigail Chantry, orphaned young and whose parents were disowned by their families, has been living on the edge of respectability. When she’s accosted on the way home and told that her sister, Jane, is being kept against her will at a brothel, she has no choice but to rescue her sister and the two women who came to her aid—Daisy, who grew up in the brothel but wants to be a dressmaker, and Damaris, a missionary’s daughter sold to the brothel owner on her way home to England.

Unable to keep her post as a governess and desperate for money, Abby breaks into a nearby mansion. She finds it devoid of valuables, but discovers an invalid, Lady Beatrice Devenham, being mistreated by her servants. With the consent of Lady Beatrice, Abby and the girls connive to take over the household and nurse the old lady back to health.

Meanwhile, Lady Beatrice’s nephew, Max, receives word that her aunt is being neglected, and returns to England to find the household taken over by impostors—the Chance sisters, whom Lady Beatrice claims as nieces. Needless to say, he’s not impressed. Likewise, Abby is outraged at being accused of trying to fleece Lady Beatrice when it was Max who had failed to monitor his aunt’s welfare.

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One of my favourite books from 2012. And no, I’m not killing any fairies.

Karou is a seventeen-year-old art student in Prague, leading a double life. She runs errands for Brimstone, a monster-like creature who collects teeth in his store in the Elsewhere, half in this world, half in the other. She has no idea how she came to be leading this life full of secrets, but that’s changes when her life is interrupted by someone attempting to close the doors to Elsewhere and she must find out what is going on, who she is, and what that means to her.

Every wonderful thing you’ve read in a review about this book is true, I promise. I fell in love with the lyrical prose, the well-crafted world building and the creative wordcraft and characters. Like every teenager, Karou feels like both in place and different to others at the same time. There are things about herself that she doesn’t understand, like she’s trying to grow into herself and figure out who she really is.

The difference from your typical teenage novel and this one is, of course, that Karou was raised by monsters and goes around the world collecting teeth for reasons she is never told. She seems to like her life, despite the secrecy, until one day the door to Elsewhere is attacked by … angels. One in particular, who can’t bring himself to kill her.

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Just the right combination of humour, mayhem and sweetness to appeal to a broad audience. Whether or not it will work for romance readers remains to be seen.

I have a special spot for romantic fiction from Text Publishing. This is the publisher who introduced me to Krissy Kneen and Toni Jordan, so when I heard about The Rosie Project, I couldn’t wait to read it. This book has received some pretty spectacular attention, garnering local awards and becoming the Aussie darling of the Frankfurt Book Fair when Text sold it to 30 different territories.

I admit to some ambivalence towards the book’s success. It’s fabulous to have an Australian author do so well, particularly for a locally set book in a genre that so rarely gets accolades from the literary establishment. But this is a romance written by a man, featuring a male protagonist, written in the first person, ostensibly in a genre that generally prides itself for being written by women for women. I don’t have anything against male romance—in fact, this type of book is right up my alley—but part of me resents that this type of a romance novel is marketed to be somehow more worthy of merit and attention, without the stigma of genre, than the novels regularly published under romance imprints.

That aside, there’s no denying that this is a well-written book with just the right amount of humour, mayhem and sweetness to be enjoyable as well as satisfying. Genetics professor Don Tillman is an unconventional hero—meticulous, efficient, intelligent and socially inept. His only friends, married couple Gene and Claudia, who also provide therapy in an unofficial capacity, have attempted to help him but with dismal results.

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You know this is a good book when I’m compelled to read the entire series.

When they find themselves accidentally renting the same castle in Tuscany, three lords and three ladies make a bet to devote themselves to scholarly pursuits for an entire year without intimate interaction with the opposite sex.

In this book, the second of the Affairs By Moonlight series, Elizabeth Harewood, now the Countess of Somerton and mother of a precocious five-year-old son, encounters Roland Penhallow, the ex-love of her life. She’s escaped to this castle to hide from her husband, who is abusive and somewhat depraved. She cannot afford to give away here whereabouts, as she is afraid he will take her son away. Roland has been in love with Elizabeth for years and sees this opportunity as a chance to get her back. Will this work itself out?

Of course, it will.

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A beautifully written, subtle, angsty story by one of the best writers of modern category romance. My first keeper for 2013.

This review is part of the Australian Women Writers Challenge. Click here for a list of books I’ve read so far.

Evie Jones and her business partner, Max, need additional funding for a project that could make their careers. When they attempt to enter a marriage of convenience in order to gain access to Max’s trust fund, they’re faced with a very big inconvenience—Max’s brother and Evie’s ex-lover. Eleven years ago, Evie and Logan had a week-long affair that ended in heartbreak. The sex was too rough, she was too inexperienced, and they were both too consumed by passion to take care of themselves and each other.

There’s no denying the chemistry that still exists between Evie and Logan. Logan wants nothing to do with her—his memory of their affair is steeped in shame and self-loathing. Evie knows that they’re different people now. She’s had eleven years to come to terms with the affair, and to understand her needs and boundaries. Evie is convinced there could be a way for them to find happiness together, but to do that she will have to convince Logan to give their relationship another chance.

This book, one of the launch titles for Harlequin’s new KISS line, is my first keeper for the year. 

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A wobbly beginning belies a unique and enjoyable romance set against a compelling Kenyan landscape.

The premise of Burning Embers immediately hooked me in, simply because it seemed contradictory and potentially problematic. I know—that’s a terrible reason for wanting to read a book, but it’s the morbid curiosity I have. A contemporary historical? Set in 1970s Kenya? With a book cover using the most clichéd imagery to signify ‘Africa’? From a publisher that acquires Twilight fan fiction? So much could go wrong, as much as it could go right (not that I intentionally look for stories to rant about, mind you!).

It just so happens one of my favourite romance tropes is the 1970s/80s exotic encounter, complete with foreign locale, young, innocent Anglo heroine, and dark, smouldering hero (usually Mediterranean/Hispanic/French/North African), accompanied by a secondary line-up of quirky and/or villainous ‘natives’.

Yes, the casual sexism and racism and other -isms in these stories are bothersome. Yet for all their unsavoury colonial attitudes, I find these stories irresistible in their naiveté and datedness. Go figure.

So how would a book by a contemporary author recalling old-fashioned times hold up with a reader with modern-day sensibilities? Surprisingly well, in fact. And better yet, this story did not smell at all Twilight-esque, even though the cover literally looks it…

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The latest news on the Black Dagger Brotherhood series by our resident guru, Decadence. Updated 25/1/2013: Dates edited.

Click here for a round-up of all BDB-related posts on Book Thingo.

Lover at Last has come in at 592 pages long and 199,807 words, 650 words longer than Lover Reborn. It’s been a tough road, with J. R. Ward’s hard drive getting destroyed, erasing fifty pages of the story, and then restored by a techie Marine and a data retrieval specialist.

In the lead-up to Lover at Last’s release in March, Ward has been posting quotes on her Facebook page:

Blay walks past Qhuinn like he doesn’t exist
Qhuinn prepares for death
“…where upon Layla grows a set”
A humble Qhuinn kisses Blay, but it’s not their first hook-up of the book
Qhuinn kissing Blay (Blay’s POV)
Blay finds out that Qhuinn attacked Saxton
Layla acknowledging the important things in life

I don’t know what it relates to, but she’s also asked Brazilian readers how a granddaughter would respectfully refer to her grandmother.

Virtual Signings

There will be five virtual signings this year, with Lover Awakened already closed. The business only orders a finite number of books and once that runs out, that’s it, no more. It’s unconfirmed, but I suspect she signs around 2000 copies of each book. The signings typically open around a month prior to the release date when they are sent out, last around a week, and only offer hardcovers.

Here are the dates so far of the other virtual signings in Australian EST:

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This series is fine-grade book crack, and I’m inhaling these books as fast as I possibly can.

I don’t know why it took me so long to pick up a Patricia Briggs novel, but I just spent seven straight days reading her Alpha and Omega series and then her Mercy Thompson series. When I was done, I started rereading the books in chronological order.

I blame Sarah Wendell and all the enablers on Twitter.

Mercy Thompson is a walker—a coyote shifter and the only one of her kind that she knows of. She has abandonment issues—her mother sent her to be fostered with the werewolves, her foster dad committed suicide, and she was sent away at sixteen when the pack’s Alpha caught her necking with his son—which has led her to value two things: her independence and her ability to keep a low profile and not get into any more trouble.

So when hiring a desperate werewolf to work at her garage—’I have a degree in history, which is one of the reasons I’m an auto mechanic.’—leads to Mercy accidentally killing another moonstruck werewolf, she contacts the local pack’s Alpha for help. Adam Hauptman is the Alpha of the Columbia Basin pack and Mercy’s next door neighbour. They have an…interesting relationship in which Mercy, in response to Adam’s attempts to assert any authority over her, ‘spoke respectfully to his face—usually—and pulled the dilapidated old Rabbit [she] kept for parts out into [her] back field where it was clearly visible from Adam’s bedroom window.’

This isn’t a romance, by the way, but there is a burgeoning romantic arc for Mercy. More on that soon.

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