Blah, blah, blah

Friday I went to Borders so that H-Bomb could use up his gift card, and I was wandering around looking at all the new book displays, and I was feeling awfully underwhelmed. Lots of vampires and vampire slayers. It looks like Urban Fantasy (less focus on the romance) is on the upswing. But nothing calling to me. I'm definitely suffering from book ennui. I feel like I had a couple of really good, different reads in the past couple of weeks. Now I'm looking around at the piles and piles sitting around and just...bleh. I'm looking for a "dare-to-be-great situation." I think I'm going to have to hit the e-pubs.

I almost bought The Dream Hunter by Sherrilyn Kenyon, just to get something, but I'm so glad I didn't, because the anonymous paranormal reader struck again. I bought it for 75 cents at the library yesterday, along with Dead Sexy, by Amanda Ashley. which got some bad reviews on Amazon. I thought they had the same cover image there for a minute. Not sure if I'm feeling the close up cover. The guy on TDH looks like Adrian Grenier, and the DS guy looks like he's going to cry. See? The chin, it's almost trembling.





I was surprised to find myself genuinely offended by something in Romance Blogland.
I usually am amused, and sometimes interested by the various debates, but I have to say I really disliked the title of this post. You know she wanted it, Part the second,deals with the book Claiming the Courtesan by Anna Campbell, which has been garnering a lot of attention. I'm not too into the "forced seduction" trope myself, but I could care less if others are. But the title of this post, oy! I find myself unable to take what's written seriously, because of the reference to the mindset of date rapists everywhere. Ewww. As for the post itself, eh, but Jane said it better than me. Anna Campbell herself was at Sybil's recently. Although I wasn't planning on reading this, I may have to, just to make up my own mind.

There's no such thing as bad advertising...

If you've been reading any blogs to do with romance, you most likely already know that there was a dust-up at Karen Scott's Blog, regarding Changeling Press. It got a bit nutty, and I don't remember the particulars, but a lot of it revolved around their covers, which are, by and large, quite startling and even disturbing. I'm being nice here. Anyhow, the only reason I'm bringing this up because at the time, I wondered if the folks at Changeling stirred the pot in order to drum up traffic to their site. Then Fickle Fiona put this post up at her site. Looking through these covers, I decided to read some of the excerpts, and found myself making a purchase. So there you go. Sometimes even bad press (or snarky bloggers) can work in your favor, 'cuz I'm sure that others went to laugh and ended up spending also.

So of the 13 covers chosen by Fiona, these are the books that I purchased:



Ugly. Creepy Ugly. It does reflect the content of the story, but there's just something that makes you shudder. I chose this one because I kinda liked the excerpt. It was the story of a vampire who is disfigured in an attack, and so hides away, leaving his human lover in despair. But hey, the vampires decide to have a masquerade party, so he decides to approach her while masked. Will he just have one more night with her, or will she be able to accept him, scars and all? What do you think happens? You're right. This wasn't terrible (I feel like I've been typing that a lot lately), but not particularly memorable. There were decent sex scenes, but the hero and heroine weren't particularly developed and I didn't feel invested in the story at all.



There's something about this cover that simultaneously fascinates me and horrifies me at the same time. Dude is just so weird. That tiny head...the distorted, square body with the enormous muscles...the short arms...the hand on the cocked hip. I can't look at it for too long, or I start to feel a little queasy. No joke. In this case, the excerpt and description did me in. Guy's a yeti apparently. My mind immediately goes here. Wasn't that guy a yeti? Hmmm...okay. My curiosity got the better of me and, lured by the promise of yetisex!, I bought it. And it wasn't that bad. Better than I thought it would be. Very light in tone, rather tongue in cheek, which is the only way it could've worked. It revolves around the Paranormal Mates Society, sort of a Match.com for supernatural critters. So this Yeti is surprised to find his perfect match is a Brazilian Fire-Serpent, 'cuz he's, like an Abominable Snowman and she's so hot! Whatevah. Regarding the Yetisex, they both have human forms, although there is one scene where they get it on while she's a serpent and he's in Yeti form. I wasn't even squicked out because I was too busy trying to visualize what was going on. It was just strange, rather than sexy. There was also a light bondage thing going on, almost like an afterthought (as if Yeti-Serpent sex isn't kinky enough). Overall, a cute, breezy story.

Both of these stories were quite short. I read ebooks on my laptops using Microsoft Reader, and the first story was 84 pages, the second was 64 (I don't know if the pagination would be different with other programs). Neither took me more than an hour to read. I paid 3.99 and 3.49 respectively, and I just felt that it was too much. Am I wrong? The stories were okay, but slight and underdeveloped. I was left feeling like I could've spent that money on a Grande Mocha Frappucino. I would've spent as much time with the Frappucino, and I would've been left feeling more satisfied.

I'm looking for a Hugh Jass...

Is there a Hugh Jass here?

Normally, I try and stay away from the cover snark. I leave it to the experts. Also, the whole point of my Changeling Press experiment was to not judge a book by its cover.

But...



Sometimes a cover speaks for itself. I didn't read this one, but I almost bought it. It sounds interesting enough, and I was curious if he had an enormous ass for a reason.

Also the cover to JR Ward's Lover Revealed can be found here. That Sybil gets all the cool news first. I think this'll be out March '07.

Did they have hair gel in 1820-something?

Picked this up at Borders today also. The tiny cover on Amazon didn't do it justice. I especially loved the stubble. C'mon, now! Poor Loretta Chase can't catch a break in the artist department. I suppose the guy's good looking, but I don't like this hairdo on contemporary guys.

Covers Galore (This One's for Steph)

So my good friend Steph recently began reading my blog. My wit and wisdom inspired her to go out and get her very first romance novel. I suggested Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase, as a good one to start with. I warned her, as a newbie, that the cover was pretty bad.

Cover in question:



So she emails me that she chickened out because of the cover. The world of romance covers is a strange and varied one. I, for one, will take an English manor house over a shirtless clinch any day. But I have discovered in my reading, that a lot of people do like characters on the cover b/c it helps them to envision the hero and heroine. They often do the opposite for me, ruining my vision of them.

It seems that authors have little control over their covers. It's the luck of the draw. Which is a shame, because although I try to preach "don't judge a book by it's cover" when recommending books to kids, I too, will not read a book based upon its cover. So I thought I'd help Steph get past her distaste for clinchy covers by showing her how bad they can be. Luckily, some hardworking bloggers have already done the work of posting some true howlers. Have fun Steph, and make sure no one's looking over your shoulder. Without further ado, get ready to cry laughing, and want to wash your eyes out with bleach:

Smart Bitches Cover Snark--so much awful goodness.

Some dude named Longmire does romance novels--The titles are obviously changed, but it's hysterical, and actually shows a wide range of cover archetypes.

Bam is hilarious, and she definitely writes better back cover blurbs than the real ones. Interesting job, by the way. How does one become a novel blurb writer?

So it could always be worse. Perhaps invest in some of the book covers that my mom had, as if we didn't know what was under them. I may invest myself, as I can be a cover phobe. I've come a long way, but old prejudices still persist for me. Ah well.

The "WTF? " Cover

So one day I walked into the bookstore and I picked up this book.
Having already passed over "Dark Lover" and something by Lynn Viehl (I hoped that's right), I picked it up and was like "Oh, another one. Enough already. And look at this stupid cover, they were really phoning it in with this one." And then I see in the corner "A Zebra Regency Romance." Huh? I look back down at the stupid cover people and flip over the book. The premise actually sounds pretty intriguing see blurb), and I really do have a hard time resisting vampire books so I bought it. And read it. It was ok. I loved the hero, but the heroine, one of those bluestocking types, started to get on my nerves a lot. Some of the secondary characters were fun. Part of the problem is that I don't read traditional Regencies, although I've read plenty of historicals that take place during the period, so I'm not real familiar with the style. I kept waiting for the sex. It was a bit by the numbers: Sexy, brooding hero--check. Equally brooding and sexy vamp buddies--check. Telepathic connection between hero and heroine--check. I did prefer that one by Teresa Medeiros that came out recently, but it's worth a try particularly if you like Regencies.

But the cover? Readers of Romance are often treated to a variety of absurd and downright insane covers, but this cover is noteworthy for having absolutely nothing to do with the book. What is with the dimpled, square-jawed hero's shit eating grin? "Look Ma, no fangs." The tousled hair, the tux, he looks like he's headed to a charity auction to become some repressed bachelorette's dream date. Definitely not a regency era Romanian count. Whatever. Is the heroine supposed to look like Samantha from "Bewitched?" She looks nothing like the frizzy haired, John Lennon specs wearing heroine. And nothing, nothing about this cover says Regency. Well, except the writing in the corner. It looks like the cover for a cheesy chick lit. This cover totally burns my ass. If you can't find something suitable, just stick a picture of a house on the cover or something. Someone was feeling pretty lazy at Zebra that day.