Every year, I donate something to the Brenda Novak auction which raises money for diabetes. I do this because it’s a good cause, it’s fun… and because several of my aunts have diabetes, and so it’s personal.

But it got a little more personal for me this year, About a month ago, my father was diagnosed with diabetes. (He’s okay–it was caught early, and he’s going to be doing everything necessary to keep it under control.)

So this year, I decided to do something special. And so there are three separate auctions you can bid on that involve yours truly.

1. For readers: you can bid on a year of getting my books early. I’ll send you a digital copy of the book when I send the book to the copy-editor. You’ll be getting at least three full-length titles and a novella for this, and in actuality, I’m hoping it might be more.

2. For authors: I’m auctioning off four months of self-publishing mentorship. I’ll offer advice and help and all that good stuff.

3. For anyone: If you happen to be in or near Anaheim, CA from July 26 through July 28, 2012, you can meet me, Tessa Dare, Carey Baldwin, and Leigh LaValle for dinner or drinks. It’ll be fun. You’ll also get signed books from all four of us–I’m throwing in a complete signed set of the Turner series.

This is for a great cause–and for me, this year, it’s for my dad. You may not be interested in any of the above, but please browse the listings–there is something there for everyone!

Hi everyone!

The Governess Affair is out! And by out, I mean available for purchase at these fine venues:

Look for Three Weddings and a Murder at the end of May. (My contribution to that anthology is the shortest thing I’ve ever written: 16,000 words–but I happen to love it. I’ll say more later.)

Finally, are you in the Chicago area? I’ll be signing books–and yes, I’ll have e-books present.

I’ll be at the Chicago Marriott Northwest, 4800 Hoffman Boulevard, Hoffman Estates, IL 60192, on April 28th, 2012, from 2 to 3:30 PM, and I can’t wait to see you all!

It’s always amazing to me when a small team of one or two people is able to stop the Mighty Forces of Evil with a few well-placed kicks. One wonders how the enemy went about making its plans.

After extensive spying, I have uncovered the truth.

A Dark Fae Counsel, many years in the past.

Dark Fae Prince: I have completed a foolproof plan to break into the human world and take it over.

Fae Minion: Tell us, oh prince. Share your genius.

Dark Fae Prince: Here is my plan: Fever!

Fae Minion: …Kind of not following. You are referring to the thing you take Nyquil for?

Dark Fae Prince: Yes, well, what is it the humans say? Give me a fever long enough and a fulcrum on which to rest it, and I can move the world! Mu ha ha!

Fae Minion: I’m pretty sure that’s a ‘lever,’ Sir.

Dark Fae Prince: …Crap. Always thwarted by simple machines, dagnabbit. Well, let’s see how this fever thing turns out, eh? Humans can’t have that much Nyquil in stock, after all.

Vote for Unlocked: Where the enemy is the protagonist.

http://dabwaha.wordpress.com/

Having had an entire seven days to contemplate my strategy for success in DABWAHA, after Unveiled was defeated by Shadowfever, I had to think about why people were voting for that book..

Now, there are some possibilities that presented themselves. For instance:

• It was a wildly popular book that ended a wildly popular series.
• Barrons was compelling and Mac kicked ass.

I suppose that all of this might have something to do with it, but I can do nothing about those, and so I decided to ignore the wild popularity and the awesomeness of the book, and instead pretend that what I needed was to bridge the historical and the contemporary.

So I decided to write a rap. A Victorian rap. Never mind that I can’t rap; neither could the Victorians, so that would just give it added verisimilitude.

I penned lines like, “You bask in your villainy/You make me feel agony/My other carriage, it is made of mahogany.” Or: “Don’t mess with us, we’re pale and pasty/We don’t get any sun, and our food isn’t tasty.” I figured that Elaine would be wont to say something like, “I wear black and I wear red/Mock my laugh and I will kill you dead.” But–alas–none of these things came together in a coherent story.

I also–desperately–tried to come up with some version in which the speaker put headgear on a donkey that belonged to Barrons. You might wonder why anyone would do so. Well, when you do that, in Victorian parlance, you would say “I put a cap on your ass.” But the convoluted lead-up to joke ratio was pretty dismal–first, I’d have to give Barrons a donkey, and then I’d have to explain why it needed a hat, and then give it one…so no on that, too.

And so I’m left with only this:

Our lamps burn oil and our factories weave cotton
Peers veto bills and our burroughs are rotten.
It’s Victorian England and our voting’s skewed.
Take a page from us, and vote often, dude!

http://dabwaha.wordpress.com/

Hey everyone. It’s that time–time to vote in DABWAHA, the romance world’s March Madness tournament, in which only one can prevail!

Last week, when Unveiled suffered ignominious defeat at the hands of Karen Marie Moning’s Shadowfever, I vowed I would be back. Also, during the last round I used my keen powers of observation to determine the following: when I was awake, I gained on Shadowfever. When I was asleep, Shadowfever gained on me.

The solution would be, of course, not to sleep. Unfortunately, I am too old for that now–I now fall asleep at random times when I shouldn’t, often holding a book or a pen.

Instead, I have scheduled a handful of blogposts throughout the night–I figure that way maybe I can pretend that I am not sleeping, and bamboozle all of Karen Marie Moning’s fans into a hasty retreat. It is time to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat! It is time to come back and…uh, come back. It is time to win by a very narrow margin!

And you can help by voting for Unlocked here:

http://dabwaha.wordpress.com/

First: If you are in Las Vegas, I will be signing books tomorrow evening (March 17th, starting at 9 PM). I won’t be alone, either–Ann Aguirre, Lauren Dane, Megan Hart, Vivian Arend, Zoe Archer, and Tessa Dare will also be there to sign. It will be an Event. There will be a couple having their vows renewed, a little bit of reading from books, and cake.

The address:

Chapel of the Flowers
1717 Las Vegas Blvd. So.
Las Vegas, NV 89104 USA

You can find out more details on Ann Aguirre’s website.

Second, Unlocked is now up in DABWAHA. If you have a chance sometime in the next 12 hours, head over to the DABWAHA site and give it a vote.

I’ve been busy lately–writing hard and buying a house–but pretty soon I’m going to have a post up that will detail what you’ll get to see from me in the next five or six months… and it’s more than I’ve mentioned. 🙂

So, for those of you who are new to romance, you should know that it’s time for DABWAHA!

What is DABWAHA? It’s like March Madness for romance writers–and you vote on the winner. But before I go any farther, I have another, more important announcement to make.

CALLING ALL DARLENE MARSHALL FANS! It is now time for our first annual Darlene Marshall reread! Here’s the way it’s going to work. Stop, drop everything, and go immediately and reread every Darlene Marshall book. Do not pass go. Do not even finish reading this blog post. Go read Sea Change–an amazing book about a woman who dresses as a man to pass as a ship’s doctor. You don’t want to miss this reread–there’s a cat named Pirate! There’s amputation! There’s murder! There is willful gender blindness of the hilarious sort. Go now! And once you’ve read it once, go read it a second time–and a third.

Okay…

Waiting…

Are they gone? Good! That should hold ’em for the next twelve hours or so–long enough for the rest of us to do the important deed.

Okay, now the real message: Go vote for Unveiled by Courtney Milan in DABWAHA. Unveiled is up against Darlene Marshall’s Sea Change. Which is a lovely book, on any other day of the week. But for today–it’s going down to the bottom of Davy Jones’s Locker.

EDIT: Wouldn’t it be great if I included the link? http://dabwaha.wordpress.com/  It’s here. Go! Vote like the wind!

So, I have a question I’d like to throw out there to the romance community.

What do you think of authors asking for reviews? I don’t mean asking for reviews in exchange for money or a prize.  I don’t mean asking friends and family for reviews. But I have seen a handful of self-published books, where at the end of the book, there is a brief note that says something like this:

If you enjoyed this book, please consider leaving a review on Amazon.com.

I have been arguing with myself about this practice for months now. First, I think that it is true that having reviews helps you sell books. My sales on Amazon.de jumped up a notch on the day I got my first review for my German edition of Unlocked. I think that having more reviews may get more people to click on a book, also leading to more sales–if people think that this is a book that people are “talking” about, and that it has buzz, that operates as an attractant. (There are some other, sneakier benefits that I won’t go into.)

People ask me questions about things like writing books and getting buzz and getting discovered, and the truth is, what little research I’ve done (I’ve seen it in three or four books, and those books have more reviews than you’d usually see in their position, and more uniformly positive) suggests that asking for reviews gets you more of them.

On the other hand, the fact that asking works makes me wary of the process. Is this not a form of biasing your reviews from their random sample? Is it okay to do this? I think authors–especially authors who value their reputation–need to be very careful of how they tread in this area, particularly in light of Linda Hilton’s post here, detailing books where it appears that the authors have dragooned friends, family members, and sock puppets into posting positive reviews without admitting to bias.

This is one of those things where I’ve realized it’s impossible for me to dissect how I feel about this all. Should I do it? I don’t know. Should I counsel other authors, who are just starting out to do it? I don’t know. If it’s wrong for me to do it, is it wrong for them? If it’s okay for them, is it okay for me? I argue with myself back and forth and forth and back, and what it’s really come down to is that I don’t know how this practice would be viewed by readers.

So, I’m asking for your thoughts. What would you think if you saw an author asking you to please consider leaving a review?

• I have no problem with it. As long as the author doesn’t offer compensation, it’s all good.
• It makes me a little uneasy, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s not that bad.
• It makes me a lot uneasy, and makes me wonder whether the reviews the author gets are skewed.
• It would completely turn me off, and I wouldn’t buy another book by that author.

Does your answer change if, instead of saying, “If you liked this book, please consider leaving a review,” the book simply says, “Please consider leaving a review”?

I definitely want to hear your thoughts on this.

There has been news going around about Romance Writers, Ink., a chapter of Romance Writers of America.

Their annual contest, “More than Magic” judges published romance novels. As the contest rules explain:

Our judges are all romance readers. Within that group are RWI chapter members and members of other RWA chapters. We recruit judges nationwide and even worldwide (for e-books) and our only requirement is that they are regular romance readers.

They tell us which categories and what “heat” level they prefer to read, so our entrants’ books get into the hands of people who might give them the most favorable rating.

Our final round judges are chosen for the diversity of their romance reading interests and enjoyment, sense of fair comparison across all categories, and knowledge of the romance genre.

Oh, wait. That’s not the part that I meant to quote. The contest rules also say this:

– Note: MTM will no longer accept same-sex entries in any category.

I…see.

On Kari Gregg’s blog, Cathy Pegau notes that she e-mailed them and was told that they decided not to accept same-sex entries because the majority of the chapter felt uncomfortable with them.  Apparently, it’s possible for the MTM contest to get entrants’ books in the hands of diverse judges from multiple RWA chapters who are comfortable with all types of romances and heat levels. You can write M/F erotica. You can write M/M/F. You can write about aliens from another planet who have tentacles, or barbed sexual organs. You can write degrading rapes. None of those things are barred from entry in the More than Magic contest, and if you write them, they’ll try to find judges who are predisposed to like your books.

But they won’t do that if you write same sex romance–even if it’s a sweet romance with no sexual contact whatsoever. No–when it comes to same sex romance, the fact that they might be able to identify judges in their chapter or outside of it who would be willing to read same sex entries and judge them fairly somehow becomes irrelevant. In that instance, the majority gets to say that those entries don’t belong.

Others have taken a variety of tactics. They’ve written to RWA (who apparently sanctioned this nonsense). They’ve written to the contest directly. I suspect that writing to RWA and the contest will result in much handwringing–there’s nothing in the P&PM or the Bylaws that prevent this, not without stretching overly much. There’s nothing in the P&PM that prevents a chapter from barring interracial romance, either. What should prevent such things from happening–is good sense and common human decency.

While we can put pressure on RWA to create and maintain more egalitarian guidelines, RWA as an organization moves at a snail’s pace.

But just because something’s allowed doesn’t mean that it must be accepted blindly. This is not okay. And just because we’re working on a longer-term solution by discussing policy changes doesn’t mean that we have to let the instant behavior slide.

And so I’d like to suggest something simple: I’m asking that people don’t enter the More than Magic contest, and e-mail the contest coordinator at jackie.rwimagic@netscape.com to let her know why. You don’t need to be rude or uncivil. Just clear and concise.

The message I sent was this:

Dear Romance Writers, Ink:

I will not be entering your More than Magic contest because, while you state in your judging guidelines that you make an effort to find judges who are compatible with diverse romance works, you exclude same-sex romances. This is unacceptable to me, and it irreparably poisons the value of the contest itself. I have forwarded my reasons for refusing to enter the contest to my chapter-mates.

I hope that you reconsider your guidelines in upcoming years, and find a way to make accommodations for all romances.

I’m also asking that unpublished writers refuse to enter their contest for unpublished writers when it’s announced–the “Where the Magic Begins” contest. I’m asking editors and agents to refuse to act as final judges for the “Where the Magic Begins” contest. If you have already entered, please write to them and withdraw your entry. Editors and agents, if you’ve already agreed to serve as final judges, please withdraw. And for everyone–when the final judges–if the final judges are announced for the unpublished contest, please contact any editors and agents you know to inform them of the fact that the chapter discriminates, and ask them to withdraw.

I don’t know if we can change RWA’s policies, but we can make it costly–extremely costly–for chapters to choose to discriminate. It may be their right to choose intolerance. But it’s our right to refuse to tolerate it, and to make them feel the cost of their decision. This is not acceptable.

I will be sending the text of this post to the RWA-PAN loop and my local chapter loops. Forwarding encouraged.