Pick-A-Book: Kristan Higgins

As mentioned in the previous post, RWA has asked me to be a presenter again at the annual Librarians Day event.  In previous years, I've been paired up with Tessa Dare (who I've read) and an editor with Harlequin.  This year I'm presenting with a fellow librarian and contemporary author Kristan Higgins.

Kristan Higgins, whose books I have never read.

Remember, when it comes to contemporaries, Wendy is Category Romance Girl - not so much Single Title Girl.

I figure the very least I can do is read something by my fellow panel member - and that's where you all come in.

Do you have a favorite Higgins book?  And if so, what it is?  Fire away your suggestions in the comments section, and depending on my reading mojo, we'll see how many I get through before the end of July.

RWA Librarians Day 2012

The annual Romance Writers of America conference is being held in my back yard (well, not literally) this year, and the final touches have been added to the Librarians Day event - which will be held on Wednesday, July 25 at the lovely Anaheim Marriott Hotel.  The cost is a ridiculously low price of $25 for the day.  If you are a librarian and the cost of attending the whole conference makes your wallet weep?  I cannot strongly encourage you enough to at least attend this one day.  For that $25 you get a half-day of workshops, lunch, and access to the kick-ass Librarian Goodie Room (which for the last several years has been off-the-chain).  This will be my seventh (?) Librarians Day and I have never had anything less than a wonderful time.

You can register via the RWA web site, and they cap registration at 100 attendees.  Check out the day's itinerary below - it's pretty awesome!

7:30 – 8:00 a.m.
Registration/ Badge Pick-Up

• This would be where you also get your first round of freebies.  Typically the conference bag along with several free books.

8:00 – 9:00 a.m.
Creative Marketing: Connecting Romance Readers and Authors at the Library
Speakers: Amy Alessio, Simone Elkeles, and Susan Gibberman
Description: Make the most of your resources with some interactive romance-themed programs for teens and adults including book launch parties, online book discussions, chocolate tastings and writing workshops. The 2008 RWA Librarian of the Year, Susan Gibberman, will join notable teen librarian Amy Alessio as well as best-selling and RITA award-winning author Simone Elkeles to highlight creative ways to market events to capture the attention of romance lovers.  Fill seats at your events, and keep them coming back for more.

• WooHoo!  Program ideas!  Also, Simone Elkeles = awesome.  I've heard her speak before.

9:00 – 10:00 a.m.
Focus on Historical Romance
Speakers: Suzanne Enoch, Karen Hawkins, Sabrina Jeffries, and Julia London
Description:  Chat with four popular (and hilarious) historical romance authors. What’s popular in historical romance now? What do they see coming in the subgenre?  What do they love about historical romance, and why do they write it? Who are their “must-read” romance authors?  Attend this fun discussion, and bring your questions, too!

• Out of this group, I'm most familiar with Sabrina Jeffries - who is a very good presenter.  This should be a fun panel!

10:00 – 10:30 a.m.
Break
Stretch your legs and enjoy some refreshments, but don’t wander too far! We’ll be hosting a fun romance trivia during the break and handing out prizes to librarians who correctly answer questions about the genre.

• A chance to win more freebies!  Plus, caffeine!  Cookies!  Woot!

10:30 – 11:30 a.m.
Blast from the Past
Speakers: John Charles, Joanne Hamilton-Selway, and Shelley Mosley
Description: Tired of the continuing focus on what is “new” and “hot” and “trendy” in romance fiction? Three former RWA Librarians of the Year will share with you their choices for a dozen “classic” romance writers whose books belong in every public library collection.

• Really happy to see this panel.  Bookstores are great, but one area where libraries have a distinct advantage is with "back list."  Also, I'm a firm believer in "core collection."  Every genre has one, including romance, and every library needs to strive to have the "essentials."

11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Romance Readers’ Advisory
Speakers: Wendy Crutcher, Kristan Higgins, and Kristin Ramsdell
Description: Two former RWA Librarians of the Year and bestselling romance author Kristan Higgins will share their tips for “romance readers’ advisory 101.”  From the RA interview to information on the genre, find out what you need to know.

• Oh, hey!  Look, it's me!  And Kristin Ramsdell (who has written the book on romance readers advisory) and World Famous Author Kristan Higgins.  Which begs the question - how did I end up here?  RWA, letting in the riff-raff again.....

12:30 – 2:00 p.m.
Librarian Luncheon Featuring New York Times Best-selling Author Kerrelyn Sparks 

• Trying to think of the last paranormal author we had at Librarians Day.  Sherrilyn Kenyon a few years ago me thinks.  Anywho, have never met Kerrelyn Sparks - so looking forward to this!
  

Last year's Goodie Room haul

2:00 – 4:00 p.m.
Librarian/Bookseller Networking Event with Authors
Come to this fun, informal meet-and-greet with romance authors!

• Along with the networking?  Yeah, this is the Librarian Goodie Room.  You do not want to miss this!

Don’t forget to come to RWA’s “Readers for Life” Literacy Autographing from 5:00 – 8:00 p.m. at the Anaheim Convention Center, where hundreds of romance authors will be signing copies of their novels. Proceeds from book sales go to ProLiteracy Worldwide.  

• The best part of the whole dang conference (well, that happens outside of the hotel bar).  Free and open to the public, an event that I think every romance fan should try to attend at least once in their lifetime - if only to see 400 authors and scores of fans crammed into a ballroom. 

It really is a fabulous day, and I cannot strongly encourage librarians enough to attend this event.  RWA has consistently done a lovely job of organizing the day, and you really get some major bang for your buck.  Hopefully I'll see a lot of you librarian-types there.....

Remodel, Exercise Hell, Detroit Libraries & Pudge

No, your eyes are not deceiving you - I did indeed do a little tweaking to the blog this weekend.  The banner and color scheme are pretty much the same, with the biggest shift happening to the side bar - which is now on the right hand side, with more space between elements.

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Last weekend My Man and I had to do some unexpected traveling (sadly, for a family funeral), and every time I travel I'm reminded of how badly I've let myself go.  Which means, yep - I'm back on the exercise wagon.

Please shoot me now.

I'm also trying to be a bit more diligent about what I'm eating - although I would hardly constitute it as a "diet."  More like avoiding all the fun stuff that I like to eat that I know I shouldn't.  Seriously, I have the exquisite culinary standards of your average 12-year-old boy. 

We have a college friend getting married in August.  Here's hoping I'll be able to buy a new dress in a smaller size by then.  It will just be a matter of finding that small shred of will power I left lying around here somewhere.....

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My mother is the Queen Of Newspaper Clippings.  She's read the newspaper every day for as long as I can remember, and even with the advent of the Internet, she still clips cartoons and articles to give to her children - no matter where we are in the world.

Her latest clipping to yours truly involves the advent of "Outdoor Libraries" in Detroit.  In response to several branch closings within the Detroit Public Library system (budget cuts dontcha know), students at the University of Michigan collaborated with students from the Marcus Garvey Academy to design outdoor libraries.  Basically weather-proofing book cases with free books inside.  The whole thing works on the honor system, and is designed to draw attention to the branch closures.

I'm of two minds on this initiative.  My first reaction was to find the whole thing sad and depressing.  Is the message that we don't need libraries so long as there are piles of free books set up around various cities?  Then I got off my high horse and stopped feeling sorry for my chosen profession.  If anything, this is a nice way to illustrate what's going on with not only libraries, but public service in general.  Also, anything to get young people more involved in their communities is win-win as far as I'm concerned.

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There's that crazy woman in the cape and tiara again

Ivan "Pudge" Rodriguez is retiring from Major League Baseball.  Not surprising news, but a little bittersweet for me since Pudge (and his magnificent derriere) was the object of my affection once the Tigers clawed their way back into respectability after the dismal year that was 2003 (and the 119-loss season).

The shadow of steroids has followed him since the whole Canseco thing blew up, but like Teflon nothing ever really stuck to Pudge.  I like to delude myself into thinking that's because he is "innocent" - because honestly I have a hard time thinking of Pudge as the Professor Moriarty of the Steroids Era.

What he did, most definitely, do is save the Detroit Tigers.  Which sounds maudlin and silly given the organization has been around for over 100 years - but it's easy to forget for non-fans how truly terrible we were in 2003.  We had guys on the roster for those 119-losses that probably should have been playing that season in AA or AAA ball.  No free agent anywhere wanted anything to do with Detroit.  Play in Detroit?  Dear Lord, why?!?!?!

Then in waltzed Pudge.  Oh sure, he didn't do it out of the kindness of his own heart.  We certainly paid him well enough!  He was coming off a World Series win (with the Florida Marlins), and had proven he could still play the position of catcher at a very high level.  Once he signed?  The dominoes started falling.  We signed other free agents, we drafted some very good players, we rolled the dice on several trades that definitely worked in our favor.

And it started with Pudge.  You'll go into the Hall of Fame as a Texas Ranger, but you'll always be my Tiger.  Bon voyage you sexy beast.

Hey, Let's Put On A Show!

Dancing At The Chance by DeAnna Cameron is marketed as historical fiction, but has such strong romantic elements to it that romance readers will feel right at home.  If I had to hazard a, rather cynical, guess - I'd say this decision was made because of the time period the author chooses to operate it - that of Gilded Age (1907 to be exact) New York City.  A vibrant, fantastic time period, especially in American history, and one that has been treated as the kiss of death in romance circles for so long that my bitter, copious tears have long since dried to dust.  Historical fiction seems more open to the realm of various eras though, and happy day for romance readers that Cameron infuses her story with plenty of drama and a happy ending.

Pepper MacClair arrived in New York with her penniless mother as a child.  Through luck and pluck, Mom ends up being employed as a seamstress at the illustrious Chance Theater, which stages vaudeville shows six times a day, six days a week.  Pepper grew up in that theater, with dreams, ambitions to become a famous dancer, and an eye for the theater owner's son.  However the years have not been kind to the Chance.  Bigger splashier shows (namely, Ziegfeld's), other theaters putting performers under exclusive contracts, and the new medium of motion pictures, has slowly chipped away at the Chance's grand reputation.  The owner is now a sickly old man, and the stage manager running things has his head up his own behind.  Waltzing back into the picture, a possible savior - the theater owner's son, Pepper's true love, and certainly the man who can turn the struggling theater around.  Or can he?

Basically what we have here is a bang-up soap opera drama.  Her mother now passed, Pepper is struggling to make it as a dancer, living in a rented room in the theater's basement.  Robert, the owner's son, coming back into the picture, fills her with elation and hope.  She's so in love with him, and just knows that he's coming back to not only save the theater, but to reunite with her as well.  Waiting in the wings?  Gregory, a stagehand who also, like Pepper, grew up in the theater.  A man with a secret past, and a man who pines for a woman who thinks she's in love with someone else.

That being said, this story isn't truly a love triangle.  For it to be a true love triangle, there should be some question in the reader's mind who the real hero is, and we certainly don't get that here.  Any reader with two brain cells to rub together knows who the hero of this story is fairly early on.  The writing is on the wall, it's just a matter of Pepper putting the pieces together.  Which, honestly, takes some time since the girl is 18-years-old and dense.  Hey, I mean no insult.  I was, after all, 18 once and like Pepper equally as dense.  Which makes her more than slightly problematic as a romance heroine, especially when she's smart enough to realize that her dear departed mother was in a lesbian relationship later in her life.  She picks up on that fairly quickly - yet other things that seem even more obvious don't register on her radar?  Hmmmm.....

If I have any complaint with this rollicking story, it's in Pepper.  Mostly because I expect a girl who literally grew up in a theater community to be a bit more "worldly."  I couldn't decide if she was naive or just seeing what she so desperately wanted to see.  Eventually, and blessedly, she opens her eyes - but for someone who grew up in a less than conventional environment, around less than conventional people, her lack of worldliness was a bit odd.  Also, there were times when I wished this story had a been a bit meatier, and longer in page count.  The author moves things along at a very good clip, alternating between several characters and giving us multiple points of view.  However, sometimes things take place off-stage that I wanted to be privy too.

All this being said, I liked how the author did a slow reveal on a lot of the character baggage, and the secondary characters are certainly a lively, interesting bunch that add a lot of color to the story.  It's a quick whiz-bang of a read, and one I happily plowed through in a sitting.  It's not perfect, but like any good vaudeville show?  It's entertaining, worth the dime and the time.

Final Grade = B-

Contest Alert! 

Don't miss the huge Publication Celebration contest, running March 5 to April 30. Win era-inspired jewelry, Victorian tapestry purses, jingly belly dance scarves, chocolate, and more. A grand prize winner will receive his or her choice of a Kindle or Nook. Click here to read the rules and enter.

TBR Challenge 2012: No Temas A La Muerte

The Book: The Edge of Night by Jill Sorenson

The Particulars: Romantic suspense, Bantam Dell, 2011, In Print

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?:  While Jill Sorenson is a relatively local author for me, the initial reason why I picked up this book is because the back cover blurb intrigued me.

The Review:  I tend to be very critical of romantic suspense.  Chalk it up to cutting my teeth on mysteries as a teenager.  I'm fine when the romance gets a bit of the short-shift, but the suspense?  Yeah, I tend to get cranky.  Which is actually my biggest gripe with this sub genre.  Too often it tends to operate in a world I don't recognize.  While I can swallow some fantasy elements in contemporaries and historicals - I tend to like my suspense gritty.  And happy day, the author gives me gritty.  She gives me more than enough of it in fact - so much that I think not all romance readers will be as enthralled with this story as I was (mores the pity).

April Ortiz is a young single mother barely scrapping by in Chula Vista, California.  Jenny's daddy (whom she never married - thank the good Lord) is in prison and she does not mourn his absence.  She's working nights in a sleazy nightclub where her uniform is beyond skimpy, and taking college classes to get her degree in social work.  She's stretched beyond thin already, and now it appears she's going to finally have to cut off her mother, whose growing drug problem is getting to be....well....a problem.  This is not a woman who needs more on her plate - but that's what she gets when one of her coworkers is found murdered - raped and strangled - in known gang territory.

Noah Young is a clean cut kid from northern California, raised in a conservative religious family.  The fact that he's now a cop and living in Chula Vista (of all places) is a bit of a shock to his parents - but he wants to make a difference and feels working on the gang unit in this hard area is where he can do the most good.  It's his instincts and observational skills that lead him to the body of a murdered young woman.  Ambitious, and with an eye on moving his way into the homicide unit, he's enthusiastic when the lead detective asks him and his partner to do some follow-up work on the victim.  Which leads him to the nightclub where the victim worked, and April Ortiz. 

Besides the growing attraction between April and Noah, coupled with the conflict that they are really, really from two different worlds - the author also tosses in a secondary romance (of sorts) when Noah's 19-year-old sister drops out of her Christian college and shows up at his front door.  Naturally she falls for an entirely unsuitable young man, who has extremely close ties (platonic, naturally) with April. 

Once I sat down to start this book I practically inhaled it.  The author does a very nice job setting her stage, giving readers wonderful descriptions of the neighborhood - complete with gangs, drugs, and graffiti.  It's easy to understand, growing up as she did, why April wouldn't fall all over her attraction for Noah.  In fact she's extremely guarded and closed off.  Noah is open, earnest, ambitious, and completely gob-smacked by April.  So much so that he can barely keep his eyes off of her when he first arrives at the club.  The secondary romance is also nicely well drawn, adding more conflict to the story because it almost has that "forbidden" quality to it.  Noah's sister is young, sheltered, a touch naive - and not only lands herself in some trouble, but learns that her knight in shining armor is a well-known gang member - April's sort-of brother-in-law, Eric.

The whole time I was reading this book I found myself more than excited by the possibility that it would be fantastic for Lil' Sis' high school English classroom.  It's a neighborhood her students would recognize, with a young twenty-something single mother heroine whose baby daddy is in prison.  And then I got to the sex scenes.  Whoa doggie!  Totally not PG-rated, that's for dang sure.  Although it might be good for the girls to learn that it's OK to expect your man to not be a selfish lover (if ya know what I mean).  Plus, dude - I'm really glad April has more than one screaming orgasm because girlfriend sure deserved them all.

So we have a well-fleshed out suspense thread, interesting characters, operating within a world that isn't Pollyanna white-wash.  And that's kind of where the author gets stuck.  It's not a Pollyanna world she has created, and therefore you have a bit of a bittersweet ending.  The bad guy does get caught, Noah and April do live happily-ever-after - but not everything about this ending is puppy dogs, gum drops and rainbows.  It's just....not.  And that may be an issue for some readers.  I actually appreciated it, because the author "keeps it real."  But if you're a reader who needs everything to be sunny, happy, and tied up in a pretty pink bow at the end?  Yeah, don't say I didn't warn you.

In the end, I really enjoyed this story.  It does have some issues that all romantic suspense novels seem to have (the monologing villain, not enough red herrings for my liking) - but it's exciting, it's highly readable, and has a lot of the elements I like to see in this sub genre but don't always get.   It's also the kind of book I would love to see a sequel for - so go out and buy lots of copies so the author gets a contract to do so.

Final Grade = B

Note: Yes, I live in SoCal and yes, my Spanish is truly terrible.  If the title of this blog post is broken-Spanish Spanish, it's all my fault.  Well, and Google's.

Reminder: TBR Challenge For April

For those of you participating in the 2012 TBR Challenge, a reminder that your commentary is "due" on Wednesday, April 18. 

The theme this month is New-To-You Author.  That's right, an author that you have never read before.  This one is always fun since it means you can go totally obscure (that author who was a One Book Wonder) or you can finally try that author everybody else has been raving about (What do you mean you haven't read Author X yet?!)

Remember, the themes are completely and totally optional.  If you're not in the mood, feel free to go off the beaten path.  The themes aren't nearly as "important" as digging some long neglected book out of your TBR pile.

And hey, and it's only April!  It's not too late to sign-up for the challenge and join in on the fun.   If you're interested, or just want to be a snoop, please check out the TBR Challenge 2012 information page.

Comforting Vs. Tired

I tend to file away all genre fiction in the same file cabinet I keep in my brain.  Which is to say, I don't think they're all that different from each other.  It's "genre" for a reason.  There are conventions, there are expectations - it just varies depending on the genre you're talking about.  For example, hero(ine) quests are pretty darn popular in fantasy, in romances you get the "happy ending," and in mystery/suspense I expect there to be some crime-solving involved.

One thing though that I think does make the romance genre unique is this concept that many readers have of a Comfort Author.  Those authors we turn to when we want and/or need "comforting."  It's the genre reading equivalent of drinking hot chocolate by the fire place on a cold winter's day; Or having a crappy day at work, and coming home to have macaroni and cheese for dinner.

What makes an author a Comfort Author for me is that I know exactly what I'm going to get even before I read the first sentence.  I know this concept is enough to turn up the noses of every stuffed literary shirt on the planet, with English professors falling into a swoon and tutting, tutting an awful lot.  I know, it sounds absurd.

Which begs the question - what is exactly the deciding factor on what makes a Comfort Author....well....comforting?

Ask any reader on the planet if they stopped reading an author because "all their books were the exact same thing over and over again," and every single one of us has at least one.  Besides the sloppiness of the final product - it's why I ultimately quit Patricia Cornwell.  I've heard other readers say it's why they've quit Janet Evanovich, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Lora Leigh and Danielle Steel (just to name a few).

But then there are other authors who employ similar themes and tropes consistently throughout their body of work, and we continue to lap it up - begging for more.  Or in my case with Maggie Osborne, bemoan the fact that they retired.  Because as much as I love Maggie?  Yeah, she had a tendency to beat the ol' "rough around the edges, tomboy heroine" drum pretty dang hard.  Then there's Pamela Morsi - whose historicals tended to all be set in a similar backwoods settings, all with "salt of the Earth" style characters.

My latest Comfort Author?  Just might be Jessica Hart, who has such a major category romance backlist that I'll probably get through it all by the time I'm 85.  I'm currently reading her latest release, We'll Always Have Paris (review eventually will land over at TGTBTU), and I was struck by the fact that she definitely has her favorite pet themes.  This story features a stuffed-shirt hero and a bubbly, extroverted heroine who will undoubtedly breathe some life into his gray, drab world.

It's a familiar trope for me, and for Hart.  She's used it before in Oh-So-Sensible Secretary (stuffed shirt heroine, free-spirit hero) and Juggling Briefcase and Baby (stuffed shirt hero, free-spirit heroine).  She's also fond of the heroine who is the polar opposite of the rest of her family members (see We'll Always Have Paris and Under the Boss's Mistletoe).  And yet?  I'm sucked in.  To the point where I'm kicking myself from here to eternity for starting the book when I darn well knew I was going to have to put it down and go to my job.

Stupid job.  Stupid boss for expecting me to do stupid work while I'm at my stupid job.  I knew I should have called in dead when I had the chance.

So what is it about Maggie Osborne, Pamela Morsi and Jessica Hart that keeps me reading, even when the book has striking similarities to other books written by those very same authors?  What has turned them into Comfort Authors as opposed to Old Tired Authors I've Broken Up With?

Honestly?  I'm not entirely sure.  It might be that they're working with tropes and themes that I've grown so particularly fond of over the years that they don't feel "tired" to me (yet, at any rate).  It could also come down to the elusive magical element we call Voice.  Some authors just have that little bit of magic, that element to their writing that sucks you in to the point where you'd read their grocery list.  I'm not sure how to define it, and I'm not even sure what those elements are in an author's "voice" that end up striking a chord with me.

Whatever it is, I probably shouldn't try to over-analyze it or question it too much.  I should just be happy that I have such a relationship with more than one writer.  Enjoy the ride Wendy, enjoy the ride.

What is it for you that makes an author a Comfort Author?  Are there striking similarities shared between their books that you've overlooked for one reason or another?  What makes you quit one author because all their books "sound the same," yet continue on with others and deem them "comforting?"

Erotic World-Building And Opening Day

I know, I just had a post go live over at Heroes & Heartbreakers earlier in the week, and now I have another one?  What can I say, after going months with zero blog inspiration, I hit upon two ideas right around the same time, and naturally wrote both posts in one sitting.  So....two posts going living in one week.

Today's topic du jour is world-building in erotica and erotic romance.  My personal recommendation for a subtitle would have been We Like More Than The Sex Stupid, but blessedly the title H&H came (Ha!) up with is much more clever. 

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Today is Opening Day for Major League Baseball.

I usually like to devote an entire blog post to Opening Day, but I just don't quite have it in me this year.  Work has been really busy this week, and my grey matter turned to mush about three days ago.  Plus what more could I possibly say about baseball that the movie Moneyball didn't say for me last year?  In the immortal words of Brad Pitt/Billy Beane:

"It's easy to be romantic about baseball."

And that pretty much sums it all up.  It's why I still love the game, even when it's not always easy to (blah, blah, blah steroids; blah, blah, blah, Pick-A-Steinbrenner; blah, blah, blah Bud Selig).  I mean, seriously?  I like to read romance novels.  That right there should be a small clue that secretly buried behind the several layers of sarcasm there beats a heart of a swoony, mopey, hopeless romantic.

So yeah, baseball.

Or as I'm already thinking of this season: Year One Of The Prince Fielder Honeymoon.  Tiger fans, mark my words, I figure we've got three solid years before we're cursing that contract up, down and sideways.....

Until then, let's enjoy the ride and play ball!

The Month That Was March 2012

Lemon Drop: The best things in life are free; But you can keep them for the birds and bees; Now give me money.....

Me:  I tried changing the lyrics to "give me the Mega Millions" and that didn't work out so well for me.

Lemon Drop: That's what I want!

Me: Obviously you had better luck though.

Lemon Drop: I sure did Auntie Wendy!  Mommy says she's my "Great Aunt" and I can totally see why.  This lady is, like, awesome!  Anyway, Great Aunt Dee sent me TWO DOLLARS!

Me: Wow!  That is exciting stuff.  What was the occasion?

Lemon Drop:  Seriously Auntie Wendy?  I'm two-years old now!  Get it, two-years-old, a TWO dollar bill.  Geez.

Me: ::droll sarcasm:: Wow, you don't say?  Well while you're thinking of ways to burn through that wind-fall, how about I tell you about last month's reading?  It started off rocky, but ended strong - thank goodness!

Title links will take you to full reviews

In the Flesh by Portia Da Costa, Historical erotic romance, HQN, 2012, Grade = DNF

• I adore Portia Da Costa.  Adore.  So yeah, making the decision to DNF did not come lightly.  Got about halfway through and the pacing was seriously dragging for me.  The set-up of the story seemed to be taking forever, and there weren't enough tantalizing tid-bits about the enigmatic hero dropped to keep me motivated.  I have liked the historical short stories Da Costa has written in this universe - so maybe this is just a matter of bigger not equaling better for me.

Lust in the Library by Amelia Fayer, Contemporary erotic novella, Avon Impulse, 2012, Grade = DNF

• The complete disregard for credible library world building drove me batty.  It would be like writing an erotic romance about airline pilots and having them flying a single engine Cessna to Mars.

Foxfire Bride by Maggie Osborne, Historical romance, Ballantine, 2004, Grade = A-

• After two DNFs in a row, I needed to restore my mojo - so I hit up this road romance featuring a no-nonsense, yet vulnerable heroine, and an ambitious hero trying to prove his mettle to his father.  Loved it!

Nobody's Hero by Carrie Alexander, Harlequin SuperRomance, ?, Grade = B-

• My TBR Challenge read of the month.  A very cute story (in a good way) about a widowed heroine, her precocious daughter, and a wounded state trooper hero who just wants some peace and quiet.  Really enjoyed the New England setting and the homage to Trixie Belden.

Best Erotic Romance edited by Kristina Wright, Contemporary erotic romance anthology, Cleis Press, 2011, Grade = B

• An extremely solid anthology of erotic romance short stories.  Highly recommended for newbies, and even long-time readers of the spicy side of life.

Capturing the Silken Thief by Jeannie Lin, Digital historical romance short story, Harlequin Historical Undone, 2012, Grade = B+

• Loved the scholarly hero and the heroine from the wrong side of the tracks.  Good solid story, nice romance, an example of the Undone line done right.

Back in the Soldier's Arms by Soraya Lane, Harlequin Romance, 2012, Grade = B+

• An emotional marriage-in-trouble story about an Army heroine on leave, and her ex-Navy husband who fell off the fidelity wagon.  Heartbreaking, timely, really stellar. 

Lemon Drop: Your lovin' gives me a thrill; But your lovin' don't pay my bills; Now give me money....

And don't think I haven't noticed the complete lack of presents from my Auntie Wen-en-en-dy....

Me: Sweetie, I have your gift - you're just going to be getting it a little late.....

Lemon Drop: Money don't get everything it's true; What it don't get, I can't use; Now give me money.....

Me: ::throwing hands up in air:: I'm going to see you on Friday!  You'll have it then!

Lemon Drop: That's what I want!

Once I Had A Secret Love....

Oh hey, look what we have here!  Wendy has finally contributed something to Heroes & Heartbreakers again.  It's been ages since I've blogged over there, so why not throw me (and them!) some love by heading on over?  My latest topic du jour is guilty pleasure themes in category romance.  In other words, stuff you like to read that you know you probably shouldn't - but dang, you just can't help yourself.