Well, hopefully one day I’ll learn. And perhaps I’ll end up being the perfect woman, like the one in this video:

;-)

M

(For the full post, check out  Writers Gone Wild)

Read something recently on an literary agency blog I follow. The agents were discussing genre trends — what’s hot and what’s not. And according to one of the agents, the erotic romance trend has “cooled off”. She suggests this could be because the genre is being diluted by the increasingly hot love scenes that are now commonplace in paranormals and historicals.

Gosh, I sure hope she’s wrong in this case — and not just because I happen to be published in the genre!

Sure, paranormals and historicals are getting “hotter”, but I like the upfront, unabashed honesty of the erotic romance genre. It doesn’t pussyfoot around with euphemisms or have to walk some unseen line that makes it still acceptable to the general reading public. It doesn’t pretend to be anything other than it is. It’s “out there”. It pushes boundaries. And IMHO, an exquisitely written, emotionally heartwrenching love scene can also push boundaries and be an explicit, fully-realized sex scene, where the main characters are being honest and upfront about what they like, want, and feel comfortable with. The two don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

So over at Writers Gone Wild today I’m putting this question to commenters: Is erotic romance as a separate genre on its way out?

Swing on by and let me know what you think.

:-)

M

And I gotta give a huge shout-out to the lovely — and organised! — Calista Fox, who brandished her fluffy whip and got us all together for this event, and the talented Nathalie Gray, who designed the graphic.

So, congratulations to all the winners…. And especially to one particular person who left a comment on my Feb 15th “Find him someone to love!” post :

RACHIE G

Rachie, you’ve won an ARC of my May 1st Red Sage Presents release, LET SLEEPING DEMONS LIE.

Please contact me with your preferred email so I can send you your prize.

M

Gotta share, because this is definitely a SQUEEEEE! moment for me *VBG*

The first review of Let Sleeping Demons Lie is just in from Night Owl Reviews and it’s a goodie: 4 1/2 stars and a top pick!

Which has prompted me to learn how to add a new page to my website. (So much for my plans of writing up a storm this morning, LOL)

So go check out the My Books page, and you’ll see I’ve figured out how to give Let Sleeping Demons Lie its very own page. There’s links to the full review, the official Red Sage Publishing excerpt and upcoming guest blog posts etc.

Doin’ the happy dance!

:-)

M

Another bunch of really great books this month, and I’ve already discussed Soulless, Archangel’s Kiss and Beautiful Creatures over at the Writers Gone Wild blog. All totally awesome in completely different ways, BTW!

Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick was another fab YA read this month. Was toying with whether or not to let my daughter read it, as it seemed a bit too real-life scary in parts — creepy mask-wearing stalkers and home invasions aren’t generally the kind of stuff I want my 13 year old to be dealing with! But suffice it to say, the paranormal element came to the fore and tied all the nasty stuff up in a beautiful gory bow. And she likes to read horrors, so I figured this, she could handle. And she did. And loved the book, too.

But I figured it was time to feature something with no paranormal or fantasy element for a change.

*Gasp!* Yes, I do actually read “normal” stuff. I’ll read just about anything…. Except for horrors. Not a fan of horrors. I think I got put off them as a teenager, when a bunch of us were supposed to be going to see Flashdance and somehow we ended up at Amityville 2, The Possession. The guys were rapt. Me? I spent the entire movie with my hands over my eyes, inevitably daring a peek just as something horribly ghastly occured on the big screen. Timing has never been my strong point, LOL. I did watch The Ring on TV a couple of years back. Scariest damn movie ever. And left me with no desire to watch another horror. Gimme a nice, gory, shoot ‘em up, high-body-count action flick like Kill Bill or From Dusk Till Dawn or Desperado, any day. I’ll take my gore with guns, not spooky stuff.

And speaking of guns, I gotta say, I loved Agnes and the Hitman by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer.

I’ve read a couple of Jennifer Crusie’s books (Getting Rid Of Bradley, and Faking It) and I love her writing. She writes funny, wonderful characters, and funny, wonderful books. And I’ve been lucky enough to hear her speak when she was one of our key-note speakers at our RWNZ conference a couple of years back. She was fabulous.

I remember her mentioning that  she’d written a book with Bob Mayer (also a hugely successful author). And her brief on the pros and cons of collaborating on a romance novel with a former Green Beret (who had a very different approach to the writing process than she did), was the stuff of much amusement and amazement.

In fact, their website sums it up perfectly: “What happens when a perfectly nice romance writer writes a book with a grim paranoid action adventure novelist?” Visit CrusieMayer.com to find the answer!

Anyway, Agnes and the Hitman is one of the results of that collaboration. And boy, is it seamless.

Agnes, is a food writer with well-known anger management issues… specifically the efficient way her frypan has connected with the skulls of a couple of no-hoper boyfriends who screwed her over. When she’s stressed, she often has conversations in her head with her court-appointed psychiatrist in her head. Like when a gun-toting kid tries to dog-nap Rhett, her drooly old Bassett hound, forcing Agnes to wield her frypan yet again. With disastrous results.

Shane, has been dispatched by his uncle Joey to protect Agnes. Shane’s a hitman for a rather ruthless government agency, and he finds himself seduced by Agnes’s incredible cooking skills… among other things. The result is funny, complex, wonderful, and very, very clever. As the book cover says, “Sometimes instant attraction is a recipe for disaster.” And what a glorious disaster it is!

Here’s a sample:

Agnes got to her feet, wishing she had her frying pan back. “Shane. Okay, Shane, thank you for scaring the hell out of me, but this is my house, so I’ll ask the questions.” She took a deep breath. “Joey sent you. Why?”

“I’m here to protect some kid. Little Agnes?”

“That’s me,” Agnes said.

There was a silence long enough to hear crickets it, and Agnes thought, If he makes some crack about me not being little, I’m gonna hit him again, and then he spoke.

“I’m here to protect you,” he said, sounding resigned. “Unless you hit me again, in which case, whoever I’m supposed to save you from can have your ass.”

“Protect me?” That wasn’t good. She’d been worried about the police finding out about her record, but Joey thought she needed to be protected from something else, something only somebody like this guy could stave off. Which meant something was seriously wrong. Not that the guy who was now a corpse in her basement hadn’t been a tip-oof, but if Joey thought something was so bad that she needed this guy, it must be really bad, because a guy like this could protect her from…

Anything.

Out in the front hall, Brenda’s ugly black grandfather clock began to chime the hour in big gongs that sounded like Death’s oven timer, and Agnes looked at Shane again.

Big. Broad. Dark. Strong. Handsome if you liked thugs. Looked like Joey. And he was here to keep her safe.

How are you feeling right now, Agnes?

Could be worse.

“Okay, Shane,” Agnes said as Brenda’s clock gonged midnight. “I got Joey in the kitchen, a cop in the front hall, a dead body in the basement, and you in my bedroom. Where do you want to start?”

Throw in the wedding from hell, a jerkoff fiance who’s already married… to the woman who’s running a real-estate scam on Agnes, five million bucks, a bunch of Southern mobsters, and a couple of pink flamingoes, and you’ve got the recipe for a great read. Enjoy! I know I did.

Here’s my February reading list:

• Tonight, My Love by Tracie Sommers
• Slow Hands by Leslie Kelly
• All He Wants For Christmas by Jill Shalvis**
• My Grown-Up Christmas List by Jacquie D’Alessandro**
• Soulless by Gail Carriger
• Dark Visions: The Strange Power by L.J. Smith
• Dark Visions: The Possessed by L.J. Smith
• Dark Visions: The Passion by L.J. Smith
• Tantalize by Cynthia Leitich Smith
• the Last Vampire by Christopher Pike
• Deadtown by Nancy Holzner
• Claiming His Brought Bride by Rachel Bailey
• Stone Cold Lover by Mel Teshco
• Archangel’s Kiss by Nalini Singh
• Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick
• Claiming His Bought Bride by Rachel Bailey
• Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
• Agnes and the Hitman by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer
• Come Toy With Me by Cara Summers
• And a Dead Guy in a Pear Tree by Leslie Kelly**
• The Accidental Demon Slayer by Angie Fox
• Up On The Housetop by Jamie Sobrato**

**Heating Up The Holidays anthology

:-)

M

So, as you do, I resorted to the tried and true book recommendation post. Yanno, quote the blurb, give a couple of sentences about why you liked it, rinse and repeat. In this case, x 3.  Hey, at least it wasn’t man-titty!

Luckily for you, one of our newer Wild Women, Jennifer Hart, wrote exactly the kind of post I wish I’d come up with!

Here’s the intro from her post:

DO YOU LOVE YOUR WIP?

While real love is messy and complex and there is no surefire way to tell whether your toe is in the muck or hip deep sans waders, it’s staggeringly easy to decide if you are in love with your Work In Progress. Come on down and take the quiz I made up just for this purpose!

So, gentle writers (and curious others), you really must visit Writers Gone Wild and take Jennifer’s quiz.

Why?

Duh. Because it’s awesome! And it’ll make you laugh. And did I mention it’s awesome?

So, after taking this quiz, do I love my WIP?

Now, that would be telling ;-)

P.S. If anyone is interested, my Writers Gone Wild book recommendations were, in my not-so-humble option, must-reads. Here they are, in no particular order:

• Archangel’s Kiss by Nalini Singh
• Soulless by Gail Carriger
• Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

(For the book blurbs and a brief gush from this author, click here to go to my Writers Gone Wild post.)

:-)

M

And if you want to know why, check out this Dude is a Prince post from May 28th 2008 on the Literary Rejections on Display blog.

BTW: gotta say thank-you to Eric, for bringing this link to my attention. His Pimp My Novel blog is quite brilliant. (Do you get the incredibly subtle plug? Seriously, as I’ve mentioned before it’s a great blog. Go subscribe it.)

:-)

M

So for your chance to win an ARC of LET SLEEPING DEMONS LIE, pop on over to Red Sage Revealed and leave me a comment on my “Find him somebody to love!” post.

Looking forward to chatting with you!

M