Sales Continue, and Heyer was PISSED

Sales continue, much to my surprise! Not really.

But this is a surprise: Lord of Scoundrels (BN | Kindle | Kobo)  is still .99c, even though I thought the sale ended on 31 July. As one reader suggested to me in an email, that’s a great price to gift a copy to someone who might otherwise sniff derisively at the romance genre. I’m going to send it to a few people now. Heh heh heh. Surprise Romance!

And if you were curious about the Amish romance phenomenon, Cindy Woodsmall’s Hope of Refuge (my grade: C) is on sale for $1.99.  (BN | Kindle | Kobo) It’s the first of an Amish romance series, and at $2, if you’re wondering what that subgenre is like, it’s not as big a money drop as the paperback, which is $11 in some places.


Book CoverEver wonder about Georgette Heyer’s opinion of plagiarism and of Barbara Cartland? Ponder no more: an upcoming biography reveals Heyer’s comments after she discovered similarities between her book “These Old Shades,” published in 1926 (and back in print), and Barbara Cartland’s “Knave of Hearts,” published in 1950 (and no longer in print).

The Bookseller.com reports that Heyer wrote:

“I think I could have borne it better had Miss Cartland not been so common-minded, so salacious and so illiterate,” Heyer told her agent, Leonard Parker Moore, in no uncertain terms. “I think ill enough of theShades, but, good God! That 19-year-old work has more style, more of what it takes, than this offal which she has written at the age of 46!”

But it was Cartland’s historical and linguistic errors that really offended the writer‚ herself a stickler for accuracy. “She displays an abysmal ignorance of her period. Cheek by jowl with some piece of what I should call special knowledge (all of which I can point out in my books), one finds an anachronism so blatant as to show clearly that Miss Cartland knows rather less about the period than the average schoolgirl,” said Heyer, who told her agent she would “rather by far that a common thief broke in and stole all the silver”.

This biography sounds like something well worth reading for Heyer fans, and those curious about the foundations of Regency romance. It’s only available for pre-order in the UK, though.

Graceful curtsey to Billie Bloebaum for the link.

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