Never underestimate the commercial value of mental illness.
Jasmine or honeysuckle, if you’re offering. Lavender and gardenia make my nose itch.
THE JEWEL OF MEDINA by Sherry Jones
A resident of the Ivory Tower, who apparently called dibs on A’isha (child bride of Muhammed) as her personal and exclusive domain of study and forgot to send the memo, raised a ruckus about a book she didn’t like and managed to get Random House to pull it after the author had been paid her $100k advance and the presses were rolling. I say it’s an academic hatchet job.
Harlequin. I *lurrrrve* you.
Got an email from Ms. Malle Vallik today on the subject of my ebook shopping woes. She will be addressing my concerns for the Harlequin digital team and wanted me to know that.
And you know what? With that one little email, all my lingering irritation vanished.
Harlequin is not hurt by the fact that I am now also in love with Kristan Higgins.
My credit card is trembling at this very moment. With anticipation or fear, I don’t know, but it’s going to get abused.
And you know what else? With that one little email, Harlequin got a customer for life, delivery issues be damned.
I remember when I was a kid, going to The Jones Store and Macy’s around Christmas time gathering our Santa choices, then wandering around to find a clerk to take your money. Unfortunately, “there was no one there to take my money and they wasted my time by making me go fetch them” isn’t a good defense for walking out of the store with what you want, even if you can break it out on a wage basis and demonstrate adequate opportunity loss.
Harlequin. Bite me.
I’d like to see new and different in romance. It took Ellora’s Cave and Loose Id and Samhain to break you out into genres you wouldn’t touch before (and no, they’re not all erotica).
I’d like to see you lead the way into e-publishing but again, you didn’t get in gear until the above-mentioned trailblazers kicked your butts. Apparently not even Baen was able to get to you like those three did.
.
The consignment system of inventory management is, I believe, in its late afternoon and Barnes & Noble CEO Riggio wants to push it into that good night. Agent Richard Curtis (and foresightful creator of e-Reads) points out that it’s not going away–on the dead-tree book brick’n’mortar playground, but, he says,
See, the thing is, I keep getting these great ideas to blog about, but then I get distracted and they don’t gel and I have about 6 half-written posts in my drafts folder that kinda sorta mean something to me now, but not really. Prepare for leftovers, kiddies, because mommy’s tired and she doesn’t want to cook dinner.
This is what’s apparently called “good” gossip. I shall take the liberty of bragging.