Foreign editions!

Happy day!

This morning was taken over by distraction with shiny things. How shiny? Well, let’s try this on for shininess!

First, it’s foreign covers for various anthologies that will have “This Wicked Gift” in them, all coming out in the next week or so:

From left to right: UK, Japan, Germany, Australia!

I’m not sure which cover I like best, although it is seriously cool to see my name in Japanese: コートニー・ミラン

The Japanese title is “Christmas of Love” (according to Google Translate), and the German title means “Christmas Magic” (according to me). The UK/Australian versions look like slightly altered versions of the North American version, but with higher contrast. I’ve already seen one of the UK versions up close and personal, and it’s very pretty in person. My favorite title is definitely the German one–“Christmas Magic”–because I like the little tingle that you get when you think about that.

And then there are other editions of Proof by Seduction, many of which will look at least somewhat familiar:

From left to right: Estonian, Thorndike large print, Italian, German, Australian!

The Estonian title translates directly as “Proof by Seduction.” Le Ragioni del Cuore is “The Reasons of the Heart,” and Eine hinreißende Schwindlerin means something like “A Beautiful Liar.” Or maybe “A Gorgeous Con-Artist.”Aren’t they pretty? I don’t even have the slightest clue how to pronounce Tõestus Võrgutamise Abil. And it’s totally, utterly bizarre to look at these covers and to think, “Huh. I wrote that. And I have no idea what it says.” The Thorndike Press version is actually domestic–it’s a large print edition, for libraries, and as I am sure you can all see, they toned down the cover just a tad for the demographic that tends to read large print books.

Soon, we should be seeing versions in Dutch and Polish, and eventually French and who knows what else–and hey, in a few months, we’ll see Trial‘s first overseas appearance (Australia–they’re fast at getting books out!).

Shiny! Pretty! Ooooh.

Thank you

There were times when I was writing Trial by Desire when I really didn’t know why I was doing it. It was a really, really hard book to write. There were parts that felt like sending little splinters of bamboo up my fingernails. When I finished, I told Mr. Milan that if I ever had to write a book like that again, I was going to quit writing altogether because it just wasn’t worth it.

For the most part, I don’t comment on reviews, or on reader discussions. But Google Alerts sends me snippets…. And so this blog post is for everyone who has talked about this book online, or e-mailed me, or tweeted someone that they had to read this book… I just want to say thank you.

There were definitely times when it felt like this book was not worth the agony of writing it.

I don’t feel like that now.

This Wicked Gift

Want to read This Wicked Gift, my RITA-finaling novella, but haven’t yet?

40% of it is available on Google Books right now. (Initially I thought it was more, but I somehow missed that it skipped nearly the last half of the book.)

Yes, you’ll be missing most of the first half of the novella, including a handful of pages taken at random from bits and pieces throughout which really, really drives me nuts–did they have to take out the page that has the moment of penetration, for instance? Or the bit where they delete the page that tells you what it is Lavinia lost, that she needs found?

So think of it as an extended excerpt, annoyingly missing vital pages. If you really want those pages (and you know you do) you can get the full book for $3.89 for Kindle or Nook.

Romance:Porn as Rice:Chocolate

We’ve seen a handful of rehashes over the last few days of the age-old question of whether romance is porn, and if you object to the label, why you are objecting to it. There was an article in Slate recently. Smart Bitch Sarah posted a letter today in which a boyfriend asks a girlfriend to stop reading romances because he thinks they are porn.

Every so often, someone pipes up with this: “Why are you getting all annoyed when people say romance is porn? There’s nothing inherently bad about pornography. So who cares?”

Assuming that the pornography in question is made in a consensual, nonexploitative manner, I have nothing against it. And yet I do bristle when people say that romance is porn. Part of the reason is a type-classification argument. For instance, I love dogs, but if someone insisted that I was one, I would be offended. Even though I have nothing against dogs. Dogs are great; I just happen not to be one.

But mostly the romance=pornography thing bothers me because it implies that only a small level of romance is healthy in the intellectual diet.

If someone told me he spent 20 hours a week reading porn, I would think: “Whoa. Don’t you… like… get chafed? Down there?” I have nothing against porn. But porn is like chocolate: a wonderful snack; you can argue about the health benefits for an occasional piece; but everyone agrees that it should not be a staple of your diet, no matter how much you like it.

Romance, in my view, is not the chocolate of the intellectual buffet. I see it as more like rice. It’s filling. It’s chewy. Some cultures eat it with every meal. Others eat it sparingly. Some books are like risotto and others are like gallo pinto. There’s fried rice. There’s chicken-and-rice soup. There’s bi bim bap and nasi goreng and sushi… and can you tell it is almost lunch time for me? I am making myself hungry. (And yes, the line can be blurry: there are some books that are chocolate rice pudding–but that doesn’t mean that everything with rice in it is dessert.)

Plus, there’s brown rice and white rice and arborio rice and jasmine rice and wild rice… lotsa kinds of rice out there. And we haven’t even gotten to grains like quinoa, or things that act a lot like rice, but aren’t at all, like couscous.

Some people don’t like rice, because they don’t like the way their body reacts to the carbs. And that is okay. But if someone told me they ate rice at every meal, or that rice formed a regular part of their diet, I wouldn’t think, “yeah, maybe you should branch out.” It’s quite possible for a healthy diet to include a good amount of rice.

Most romance readers out there browse a varied diet. They read historical fiction (not just historical romance). Science fiction. Fantasy. Mystery. Nonfiction. The news. Drama. Memoir. Short stories. Poetry. They demand more than boy meets girl of their romances, too–they don’t just want a scoop of white rice on a plate. Romance novels touch on family relations, wars, spies, spousal abuse, alien abductions, mystery, suspense, gay rights, race relations, murder… you name it, it’s in a romance novel.

That’s why I firmly believe that a healthy reading diet can contain a large proportion of romance novels. I don’t think the same is true of pornography.

All caught up!

This post violates one of the unspoken rules of authordom: in it, I imply that my books are not like babies and I do not love them all equally. Prepare to be shocked.

One of the reasons I’m excited about the release of Trial by Desire is probably not obvious on the face of it.

You see, the publication order of my books has not been the same as the order in which I wrote them. I wrote Proof by Seduction first, found an agent and an editor and sold the book, and had started work on Trial by Desire when my editor asked me if I’d like to write a novella. So I wrote “This Wicked Gift” a full year after I’d written Proof by Seduction, and well after I’d conceived the idea for Trial.

For a young writer (and I am young as a writer!), a year is a really long time. There are skills you learn by doing, things that you learn from writing books that you can’t learn any other way. I can definitely tell that I’ve grown as a writer. I can point to some things in Proof and know that I would handle them differently now. This is not to say that I think it’s a bad book. But I do think I’m a better writer since I wrote my first book, and I think you can tell by looking at the novella that came out before my first book.

In any event, I’ve finally caught up to myself. After Trial, my books are finally going to be coming out in the order in which I wrote them. I hope that in the years to come I continue to grow as a writer. And what I hope that means for you is that the best is yet to come.

But speaking of future books: I’ve posted the first scene from my January 25, 2011 release, Unveiled. No relation to Trial by Desire or Proof by Seduction.

Mr. Milan reviews TRIAL BY DESIRE

Do you know the drill yet? Mr. Milan, a completely objective reviewer who just so happens to be my husband, reviews my books. I edit for length (that’s it). This review is the result.

Hi everyone. It’s Mr. Milan again. Usually I just review Courtney’s books, but as you will see this is half review, half investigative journalism. You will understand the necessity for this when I reach the end.

As you may know, my past reviews of my wife Courtney’s work have been, on the whole, negative. Not that I don’t love Courtney. I do. It’s just that as a book reviewer, I have to call them as I see them. With her past work, there just wasn’t enough of the things that I liked to warrant a positive review.

Let me remind everyone where I’m coming from: I’m an avid reader of fiction, just not the kind of fiction Courtney usually writes. My tastes tend toward fantasy, sci-fi, and spy novels. I’ve read everything China Mieville’s ever published, I have a whole shelf of Barry Eisler’s books, and I’ll even, if it isn’t too vapid and mopey, read the occasional work of literary fiction (a good recent example is Wolf Hall by Hillary Mantel).

So, blessed (burdened?) with this background, I turned to Courtney’s new novel, Trial by Desire. I read it from cover to cover.

As a reviewer I try to keep an open mind, but you do sometimes judge an author by her previous books.  I had certain expectations when I came to this book. I am sure you can guess what those are by my previous reviews and that’s because you are judging me by those too. You are expecting me to say that this book sucked.

This book didn’t suck.

I checked the front and the book was still a couple sharing a torrid embrace. I checked the name and it was still Courtney Milan. A less secure individual might next have checked his pants to see if his manhood was still intact.

You may be surprised by my less than wholly negative review. But you really shouldn’t be. Trial was full of good action scenes, and they were well-written. The hero, Ned Carhart, isn’t afraid to mix it up, and Courtney, to her credit, isn’t afraid to write about it. Ned confronts rampaging horses, makes witty comments while held at gunpoint, and punches out the villain several times. He’s actually a great hero. I can see why the heroine would admire him.

Especially because the heroine’s not bad herself. Kathleen Carhart commands respect, because she’s willing to stand up for what she thinks is right. And she’s willing to risk more than just social humiliation or financial disappointment in order to win the man she loves. She’s a lot like Ned–she’ll face real danger if she has to, and that’s cool.

This book had more action in it than William Gibson’s latest book, Zero History. All of this made me wonder: what happened? How did someone who wrote the Sherman-Tank-deprived Proof by Seduction come up with a book that I enjoyed? This is where the investigative journalism part comes in.

Romance novels are often unfairly maligned for adhering to predictable formulae, the most common being the happy ending with the protagonists together in everlasting love. For me, that’s not a problem. Many other kinds of genre fiction are just as predictable — when was the last time the sleuth in a genre mystery failed to solve the crime? Following a convention that defines the genre isn’t cause for complaint.

Besides nobody knows more than me how hard Courtney works. I heard her swearing up a storm over this book. It wasn’t easy for her to write. But I’m her husband, and I was around when she was working on this book. I have access to the notes that she keeps in boxes in the basement. And after reading the book and having that weird positive reaction, I just couldn’t help but get suspicious.

It’s not that Courtney used a formula to help her write this book. Before you read on, make sure you are sitting down and remove any small children from the vicinity because this might be disturbing.

Courtney actually used algebra.

I am writing this review at the kitchen table with a sheaf of papers spread in front of me filled with mathematical calculations that I am convinced are her deriving this book from first principles. I don’t know how she did it, but here is a snippet of proof–and remember I have reams and reams of paper containing items like this.

Courtney uses partition functions to derive Trial by Desire

I hope you are as shocked as I am by this undeniable proof that Courtney is blatantly writing her books to a formula. I do have to admit that it is a very complicated formula and that she used a lot of them. I feel equally confident that other romance writers don’t do this. Nonetheless it explains my initial positive reaction to this book.

My enjoyment of the book was dulled considerably by this discovery.

Three Sherman Tanks.

Sherman Tanksherman tankSherman Tank

It’s Courtney again. Thank you, Mr. Milan, for that…uh…very kind review filled with scurrilous lies.

One person, making a difference

Yesterday, limecello (a reader, a reviewer, and a wonderful part of the online romance community) posted a blog for Social Good Day. She made the following promise:

I’m poor- I have no job and have law school loans, but this is important to me. I wish I could give more… but here’s what I’m going to do. If 10 people comment on this post today, I’ll donate $10 to the (RED) fund. [And let’s hear it for optimism, because if there are a whole slew of comments, I’ll re-assess that amount.]

After a few hours, inspired by Limecello’s positive attitude (and her drumming up comments for the post), Shiloh Walker agreed to add in $50 if she got to fifty comments. And then… it just seemed to snowball. By the end of the day, limecello had raised $1,150. Over one thousand dollars–all because she started out asking for ten comments, to pledge ten dollars.

And so if you ever have any doubt that one person can make a difference–that one little thing is never as little as it seems–and that the romance community can come together and make good things happen, just take a look at this post.

Dark Horizon

Last week, I introduced you to Madame Esmerelda’s predictions for a new year, a short prequel to Proof by Seduction.

This week, I have a second prequel–this one touching on Gareth’s time in Brazil. I present to you Dark Horizon, a short (1500 words) story.

Six days from now, you’ll get… but that would be telling, wouldn’t it?

I forgot to mention this last time, but both stories are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 license. Feel free to share with your friends.

In Oregon? I’m signing books tonight.

I’m going to be at the Powell’s in Beaverton, Oregon, tonight, signing books.

Sadly, I don’t think they’re going to have early copies of TRIAL BY DESIRE out–it’s a week and a half too early for that. But I will have some awesome goodies–copies of THE GIRL WHO LOVED HISTORICAL ROMANCE (a free book of teaser excerpts), as well as everything you need to turn your books into either a Compendium of Utterly Dire Events, or Trial by Barbed Wire.

Come find me!

TRIAL: Two weeks away!

We are now at the T-13 days mark for Trial by Desire–and if my experience with Proof by Seduction is at all any indication, my guess is that means that Trial is going to start sneaking onto some bookstore shelves pretty darned soon–before the release date.

In any event, in celebration of breaking the two-week mark, I have also posted a free ultra-short story–a prequel to Proof by Seduction that I wrote a while back that involves Madame Esmerelda’s predictions for the New Year. Next week, you’ll get another one–another short prequel to Proof. And the week after that… well, you’ll get Trial, but you’ll get something else, too, so be sure to visit then.

But I’m sure you want to hear more about Trial. Booklist (the American Library Association’s review publication) just released a starred review for Trial by Desire—one that absolutely blew me away:

Milan deftly incorporates realistic historical grit in her coverage of the Opium Wars, social candor in her treatment of domestic violence, and stunning emotional depth in the mesmerizing plot, and the result is an exquisitely sensual and unforgettable romance by one of the genre’s incandescent new stars.

A review like that almost makes me want to read the book–which says something, seeing as how I already know how it ends. 😉 (Actually, it also makes me want to manage expectations: to say, “You know, ‘incandescent’ might be a little strong–how about just ‘faintly glimmering’ instead?”)

Finally, the winners of Proof by Seduction from my last post: Julie, kimmie lange, Angela, Robin K, and Stacey. Send your snail-mail to courtney@courtneymilan.com and these will go out in the mail.

Er: I’ve edited this to add one last thing. For those who want to read the official prequel, such as it is, my novella, “This Wicked Gift,” in The Heart of Christmas is now on sale in e-version for $3.89 at Amazon (for Kindle and related applications) and Barnes & Noble (Nook, et al).