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.
I read paper books in the daytime and the ebook at night so it doesn’t bother my husband while he’s trying to go to sleep, but I ran out of paper books in my house that I hadn’t read. On the recommendation of a friend, I picked up what was billed as an erotic historical Georgia romance (yeah, I’m into the Georgian thing right now) from the library.
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.
Upfront aside: On Amazon, Breaking Dawn is getting trashed for typos and grammatical errors and spelling errors, like… “blond” versus “blonde.” I didn’t bother to ask if the different usage was gender-specific. So for those who might misunderstand my usage of both “blond” and “blonde” in my book, let me disclaim that “blond” (no “e”) is to describe a male and “blonde” (with “e”) is to describe a female (you can apply that to “brunet” and “brunette” as well). Just your regular ordinary Latin declension.
That out of the way, I want to know how many people really don’t like blond heroes. I don’t remember where I ran across some “fact” with “data” that proclaimed that blond heroes don’t sell well.
I’m reading a book now with a blond villain and crimony, now that that I have that swirling around in my brain, I recall a good majority of the books I’ve read that have a slimy villain, they’re all blond. Not fair!
I love ’em. This is because of Wulfgar in The Wolf and the Dove. And other particular contributors to my life experience.
Two questions:
1. Do you have any particular dislike of blond heroes?
2. Is there evidence that blond heroes don’t sell as well as dark ones?
Late to the party, as usual. LibraryThing has been on my to-do list forever, and I finally got a decent start on it today. Mind, it’s far from complete.
I’m not going to be reviewing much
of anything in the future unless some-
one asks (I doubt that’ll happen much) or unless I’m totally blown away. I don’t think I write very good reviews, for one thing and for another, after thinking about it, I only have three categories: liked, didn’t like, and
didn’t want to finish.
I won’t review stuff I didn’t like. Now…stuff I didn’t want to finish may be a different animal altogether because then I start wondering why I didn’t want to finish it. Periodically, I’ll post what I’m reading that I like.