I am over at Kirkus this week talking about difficult heroines, specifically Molly O'Keefe's, who fascinated me:
I'm… noticing that in some recent books, the heroine is not so easy to understand or even like. I'm meeting more dislikable heroines, heroines who are not lukewarm or perfectly perfect, but who makes difficult choices and who I struggle to empathize with as a reader.
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Janet Mullany has a pretty spiffy blog tour going on that ends today – with a buffalo goal: for every comment, she'll contribute a dollar to Heifer, with the goal of reaching 250 total comments so she can donate a water buffalo.
To quote Janet: “Nothing says hot romance like a water buffalo. When did you last read a literally ruminating hero with a big snuffly nose and huge, really huge horns who is a bovine tractor? A water buffalo enables a farmer to plant four times as much rice as he could on his own.”
There are a few stops on the tour, so if you're interested in adding a water buffalo to the list of romance heroes, you can leave a comment. Here are a few of the stops on the tour- and you can leave a comment at each if you're thinking hard core buffalo. To my knowledge, leaving a comment does not sign you up for anything, and you shouldn't get any spam out of it.
- October 8: A Chick Who Reads
- October 9: Realmantic Moments
- October 11: Carrie Ann Ryan's Blog
- October 11: STOP 2 Kacey's Konnections
- October 12: Novel Reflections
Buffalo ahoy!
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Katie Dunneback is doing a survey on erotic romance reading and public libraries. If you've got 2 minutes and would like to share your opinion, she'd appreciate it. Do you borrow erotic romance digitally or in print from the public library?
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The other night, I read a description in a book wherein the hero saw the heroine for the first time, and his cock twitched. This got me thinking: Do cocks twitch? So I asked Twitter. It was all downhill hilarious from there, so if you're thinking, “Gee, I'd like to read some funny and rather inappropriate stuff right now,” I storified the whole conversation. NSFW For Reals.
I'm still not convinced that flaccid cocks can twitch, but I'm more unconvinced that the male penis is some sort of all-knowing divining rod that involuntarily spasms when The One is present in the room.
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And now: cheap books! WOO!
- Unstoppable by Laura Griffin * $0.99 * A | BN | K | S | iBooks
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Almost Summer by Susan Mallery * $2.99 * A | BN | K | S | iBooks
- Keeping Faith by Jodi Picoult * $2.99 * A | BN | K | S | iBooks
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Soulless by Gail Carriger * $1.99 * A | BN | K | S | iBooks
- The Killing Moon by NK Jemisin * $1.99 * A | BN | K | S | iBooks
- The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova * $2.99 * A | BN | K | S | iBooks
There's been a good amount of discussion online about the Kristen Ashley books, including many people telling me I shouldn't read them, because they're not the kind of think I'd enjoy and my head would likely explode (that's almost tempting as a recommendation, now that I think about it). Either way, one of the Ashley books, which I have heard described as “like crack” or “like Pringles” because you can't stop at one, is $1.99. I'm not sure if I'm doing y'all a favor or if I'm causing a lot of agony here.
A box set of five books for $1.99:
Wicked, the book upon which the musical was based, is on sale with Bonus Materials:
The first three books in the Tasha Alexander's Lady Emily mystery series are $1.99 each:
- And Only to Deceive by Tasha Alexander * $1.99 * A | BN | K | S | iBooks
- A Poisoned Season by Tasha Alexander * $1.99 * A | BN | K | S | iBooks
- A Fatal Waltz by Tasha Alexander * $1.99 * A | BN | K | S | iBooks
What books have you bought this week?
I just bought Imogen Robertson’s Island of Bones, the third in her Crowther-Westerman series, since I just read Book 2. I’m enjoying these books immensely. I’m very much a slow-burn type of reader when it comes to setting up a romance, and so far these books are tempting me delightfully with the early warnings that Relationship Development is Happening.
Also, points for a 50s-ish hero and a heroine who starts off the series as both a wife and a mother, things I am not used to seeing in any of the genres I read.
Meanwhile, I also grabbed Elizabeth Lowell’s latest, Beautiful Sacrifice. Partway through this and finding it’s not grabbing me as much as her last one did (Death Echo), but we’ll see once I finish the book.
The only Kristen Ashley that’s showing up for $1.99 is Rock Chick, which I bought when Jane pointed it out last week. Haven’t read it yet. The rest of hers are all still showing at 3.99
I’m off work really early today, and now I have something to read (your storified Twitter conversation) while my tires are being rotated. Score!
Wow! I definitely miss a lot since i don’t use Twitter! I read several pages of your twitter conversation and was vastly entertained. Maybe someday I’ll get a smart phone….nah! I waste enough time reading stuff on my computer. I don’t want to end up being one of those people who look at my phone all day and trip over curbs! 😉
Also, thanks to you, I am now singing the Vegie Tales “Water Buffalo” song in my head. Yikes! it’s driving me crazy!
Just in case you, too, want to get that song stuck in your head:
I had class Wednesday night and I can’t even begin to describe how much fun I had when I came back later and found my Tweet stream filled with retweets about cock twitching. *snort* I was unable to control my laughter so the roommates were filled with much curiosity about why I was in tears. And really, thank you all. Those tweets were FANTASTIC. 😉
I didn’t buy it, but I got Alison Weir’s A Dangerous Inheritance from the library. Looking forward to curling up with that.
And this is a bit different for this blog, but it is a book I feel everyone should read, so The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker is on sale for $1.99 at Amazon this month.
I have been meaning to read that book – thank you!
If you want to buy a copy, here are bookstore links for “The Gift of Fear”:
A | BN | K
I actually bought a handful of ebooks this week.
Christie Craig Bundle—-> 3 full length books for $1.99
Mercury Falls—-> Kindle Special Offer for $1.00
The Swing of Her Hips—-> $.99 for a novella by a new-to-me author
Under Fire—-> $1.00 for a full length book by Catherine Mann
Please pay attention publishers! I will buy a lot when the individual prices are low.
This is an amazing and validating book! All us girls hereabouts should read it.
I’m almost certain that Jessewave investigated the phenomenon of the twitching cock a while ago…
I am in the process of adding a pre-paid CC card to my Sony account, so that I can buy some of the discounted books. Not that I need more books… But I cannot resist a bargain.
Thanks so much for the water buffalo love, Sarah! Also you can win a backlist book if you’re lucky. So please get on there and comment!
I bought Susanna Kearsley’s Mariana the other day when it was the Kindle Deal of the Day. It took me two days to read it (for reference, I usually read between 2 and 3 books in an afternoon), but it was so worth it. My god, is that woman a good writer. I loved The Winter Sea, and I just found that I own a copy of The Rose Garden, so I’ll be reading that next.
A bit out of genre, but the humble bundle for the moment is books (it’s usually games). Mostly spec fic, but you set what you want to pay which is an interesting challenge ( and you rewarded for paying above the average).
https://www.humblebundle.com/
On my iPad so the finer details of spelling/ linking can be a real challenge.
If only there was a romance humble bundle…
Oy, the cock twitching! So funny. How did I miss that whole conversation on twitter?!?
For what it’s worth, I too asked my husband about the cock twitch and he said yes it happens. He conceded maybe “twitch” isn’t the best word, but he said there is a bit of movement when a guy feels the first stirrings of arousal. He described it as something less sudden than a twitch but more sudden than it is gradual, if that makes sense.
Just got confirmation that his flaccid cock cannot twitch, and when erect it’s all voluntary. So yeah.
I just gulped in one evening the book “On the Island” by Tracey Garvis-Graves. Thirty-year-old English teacher sets off with a sixteen-year-old boy to meet his family at their island vacation home, to tutor him for the summer after he missed a bunch of school being sick with Hodgkin’s lymphoma and all that. Their plane crashes in the Indian Ocean and they wind up stuck on a desert island and things get interesting WHEN HE IS LEGAL JUST READ IT. I had it sitting on my “thinking about it” wishlist on Amazon for forever because the teenager thing was ooking me out, but I wanted something different and went ahead and bought it and I’m so glad I did.
Ok, about the Tasha Alexander books, since I’ve seen them mentioned a couple of times here. I read a couple of them, since they’re a genre I like, and felt a vague sense of deja vu which I finally placed. Heroine marries into wealth and great position. Heroine’s first husband murdered. Heroine’s name is Lady Emily Ashton. Heroine ends up solving mysteries. This treads WAY too close to Anne Perry’s Pitt novels where an important secondary character (and the main character in at least two novels) is Lady Emily AshWORTH. Her first husband gives her great wealth and position and is murdered, and she works (with her sister) to solve mysteries in Victorian London.
I believe the near identical names and settings and plot points are coincidental. (This IS the kind of “unconscious borrowing” that plagiarists always claim when caught.) But it points up a lack of originality about the books that sets my teeth on edge.
Yup, that was my first thought too. And here’s the link. Made for some lively discussion over there too. Gee, I can’t imagine why it might be such a popular topic… 😉
I bought, and have been compulsively reading, Jo Goodman’s recently re-released Thorne brothers trilogy. The first book, My Steadfast Heart, was priced low, which I think is a great strategy to get new readers to try the book. The other two books cost a little more, but you’d only be likely to buy them if you liked the first one, and the most expensive one is still only $4.99, which is well within my range for backlist from an author I trust. I am loving them all (first half of the 19th century, England and the US, including the Pre-Civil War South and San Franciso during the Gold Rush).