I read most of Hello, Gorgeous! What does most mean? Does that mean I’m almost finished? Nope. I finished it already. I just skipped most of the beginning. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good book and I enjoyed it immensely, but I’m a romance reader. That means I’m looking for romance. In Hello, Gorgeous! Mr. Gorgeous doesn’t enter the scene until page 75 and only for a brief moment. Then he joins the story full time on page 85. That’s way too much other stuff going on before we get to the hot guy, at least for me.

This is why I’m fairly certain I won’t be able to get into chick lit or any other book that isn’t primarily a romance. I do read Stephen King and Dean Koontz, but label a book a romance (Hello, Gorgeous! says Contemporary Romance right on the spine) and I want the yummy dude to hit the scene pretty early into it. If not the first scene, then pretty darn close to it. Page 85 out of 195 is a little late in the game. But hey, this is just my opinion as a reader. As a writer, I always try to start a story at the last possible moment before the reader misses something. Does that make sense?

Yep, I’m talking to all of you blog readers. I’m also talking about the books I ended up with from B&N today. Hubby did the shopping for me (and he was suitably impressed with the Brava display at B&N and proud of me for eventually having one of those books with my name on it.) and he found they didn’t stock Erin’s book or Lucy’s. So he came home with:

I’ve read a few stories by MaryJanice and I thoroughly enjoyed every one of them, so I’m looking forward to reading Hello, Gorgeous! First thing I did though was read Jordan’s Private Investigations. I haven’t read the other two stories yet, but Jordan’s alone was worth the cost of the book.

The controversy over e-pubbed vs. print pubbed? I don’t know and I dropped out of the discussion long ago. I don’t express my views well and often come across as diva-ish when I try, so it’s best I keep my mouth shut about the subject. However, Ellen posted a link and reply to this post (now deleted) that says,

“I view e-pubbed and self-pubbed books as the second class citizens of the publishing world.”

If you go read zippy_gigglet’s post, I do ask that you not flame her. She freely admits that this is simply her opinion and she has a right to it. You have a right to your opinion too, just be gentle with it. *g* Please.

I haven’t really had the time to read in a long while. I think tomorrow the kids and I will load up and head to Barnes & Noble. I’ve got a few Brava books on my TBR list (jees, am I lucky to be in these ladies’ company or what? ).
I plan to pick up:

I’ve read two stories by Erin–Houston We Have a Problem and Fuzzy Logic in Bad Boys Over Easy and I enjoyed both immensely. I highly recommend Houston.

The Real Deal will be my first by Lucy Monroe and I’m looking forward to reading Jordan’s Private Investigations.

With any luck my new MS Word won’t arrive until Monday and I can just laze around and read with no guilt whatsoever. Hubby bought me Russell Stover No Sugar Added Mint Patties and they are yum. Bravas and chocolate. Can life get any better? In fact, I think I’ll put together a basket of chocolate and Bad Boys Ahoy! when the time comes. Would you like to win something like that?

What are you reading now? Anything good?

For those of you who came by earlier and left a comment, I’m sorry. WP 1.5 ate them. Should be fixed now. For those of you using 1.5 be careful when putting anything in the Blacklist box. I inserted three words often found in my spam, but never in comments and WP proceeded to delete every comment posted, regardless of content.

Recently Emma posted about historicals being too hard to sell these days.

I commented that I’d noticed some well known historical authors were beginning to write contemporaries. The latest being my all-time favorite author Lisa Kleypas.

From the Avon Authors’ Board:

I love writing historical novels–they are all I’ve written since the age of 21, and I just turned 40 this year! But I am eager to stretch my wings a little and try a new challenge . . . so yes, I am going to be writing three contemporary novels for St. Martin’s Press, as well as continuing to write the Wallflowers for Avon. I will post more about this on my website in the coming weeks

Thanks again–

Warmly,
Lisa

“I love you.” sometimes isn’t enough. So when my daughter wants to get the depth of her affection across she says, “Mama, you’re my special Christmas movie.”

I know just what she means.