Bitchin' Blog Posts
: Victoria Dahl
August 09, 2011 | Tuesday | 54 Comments
Many books establish reader sympathy for the tortured hero early in the book. Reader sympathy allows a secret and somewhat omniscient understanding of what appears to other characters to be aloof, arrogant or even cruel behavior. If the reader didn’t know the hero has a tortured, miserable past, or a turning point in his life that changed his character, he’d seem more like a shit and less like a hero. In Lord of Scoundrels, Loretta Chase establishes from the earliest pages Dain’s miserable childhood, and his feelings of distrust, abandonment, and shame. He does not fit, he does not look…
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June 29, 2011 | Wednesday | 11 Comments
This RITA® Reader Challenge review was written by ReadinginAK, who, contrasted with the other review for this novel, didn’t enjoy the book entirely. This novel finaled in the Historical Romance category. Plot Summary: Jude Bertrand is not an excellent dancer. Nor does he wear the most fashionable coats. But when Marissa York’s brother approaches him, desperate to preserve Marissa’s tenuous reputation, Jude does prove heroic enough to offer to marry the girl. In fact, the union should more than make up for his lack of social graces and his own scandalous past. . . Marissa knows that betrothal to the…
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June 29, 2011 | Wednesday | 1 Comments
This RITA® Reader Challenge review was written by Zulma, who really enjoyed this book. This novel finaled in the Historical Romance category. Plot Summary: Jude Bertrand is not an excellent dancer. Nor does he wear the most fashionable coats. But when Marissa York’s brother approaches him, desperate to preserve Marissa’s tenuous reputation, Jude does prove heroic enough to offer to marry the girl. In fact, the union should more than make up for his lack of social graces and his own scandalous past. . . Marissa knows that betrothal to the son of a duke, even one as raw and…
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May 20, 2011 | Friday | 17 Comments
Look, the world is supposed to end tomorrow, so why not three videos?!
Here’s a collection of romance authors making me giggle. It’s long, but worth it. Watch the whole thing, and stay for the outtakes where Deanna Raybourn curses.
Link!
Seriously. Bugger. Damn. Well done, ladies.
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May 17, 2011 | Tuesday | 681 Comments
Behold, the excitement! I am containing myself to one exclamation point (not including the title) and that was it. Please appreciate my restraint, here. I have A Pile Of ARCs to give away of my October book, Everything I Know About Love, I Learned from Romance Novels, which so very, very many of you helped create. From the depths of the box on my dining room table currently being fought over by my cats, I have 10 shiny copies to giveaway. But that is Not All. This book is all about the lessons we’ve learned from reading romance novels, and…
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January 19, 2011 | Wednesday | 53 Comments
I’ve spent the last few days knocked on my backside by Hella Flu, and in that time, I watched Vanilla Ice renovate a house (he crunked a pool, made a bathroom bling, and told me about single celled micro-organisms, and about encephalitis. No, really, I wasn’t having a fever hallucination. Vanilla Ice said “encephalitis” to me) and read a lot of novellas. I didn’t have the attention span or energy to read an entire book, so I was in a serious novellaly-minded mood. “Novellaly” is my new favorite word, too. One of the books I picked up was The Guy…
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May 01, 2010 | Saturday | 33 Comments
RT is difficult to describe to someone who isn’t familiar with romance novels, with fan conventions or with the way avid women readers feel about their books. For example, I told someone recently that romance novel readers have a noise they make when someone mentions a book they adore as well. Sort of a heavy sigh, like an extended, “Aaaaaaah.” I’ve said before that two romance readers might not have a single thing in common except the books they read, and that alone gives them hours of conversation. However, I am guilty of forgetting, and I need to be more…
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June 25, 2009 | Thursday | 20 Comments
Back when Jane and I started the Save the Contemporary campaign, I found a reader who was mighty pissed that we’d recommended Talk Me Down as a contemporary romance. Why? In her opinion, it was romantic suspense. I disagreed - I thought the secondary story line operating behind Molly and Ben was not nearly as pronounced and spicy as the conflict between the protagonists themselves. I liked Talk Me Down - and I’m not a fan of romantic suspense on the whole. So that may be part of the reason I didn’t enjoy Start Me Up nearly as much: the…
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June 19, 2009 | Friday | 4 Comments
One hundred and forty-six entries, and two THREE ARCs of Victoria Dahl’s One Week as Lovers. Thanks to a generous, and I think anonymous source, I now have THREE bound galleys for your reading pleasure.
SO! Let’s get to selecting teh winnahs!
Kathy
caligi
CrystalGB
Hooray, and email me with your postal address for shipping of book-ness.
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