I just read an excerpt, where the heroine is in a witness protection programme, hiding away in a safe house, but for some inexplicable reason, she’s told her mother and sisters where she is, so they’ve sent her birthday cards.

Can we say, Too Stupid To Fucking Live?

I don’t think I’ll be buying the book.

I like Ken Levine, and I usually find him quite amusing, but I have noticed that he has a penchant for ragging on female Hollywood celebs much more so than the men. I guess it’s an age thing, but I honestly find him terribly sexist.

His post about Nicole Kidman’s movie choices, and her alleged plastic surgery annoyed me so much that I had to comment. Three times.

It also annoyed me that he had two photographs of Kidman, one from years ago, and a more recent one, obviously to point out the changes made to her face.

It seems to me that in Hollywood, you’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. Everybody knows that the work dries up for women over forty in La La Land, much more so than for their male counterparts, so you can hardly blame them for trying to keep up with the younger, fresher starlets, in a town where a woman is only as good as her last botox injection.

I can probably excuse Ken for his sexism, after all he’s nearly a hundred years old from a different generation (57 is a different generation to mine dear), and he’s a bit of a shock-jock, but when I read this comment from some dumbass, I just about burst a blood vessel:

“Nicole, you have ruined your looks. Instead of aging gracefully, you have made your face a canvas of lies. Screw you for sending this message to women turning forty everywhere.”

You know what I say to that? Screw you bitch for perpetuating the belief that any attempts at self-improvement by women is a heinous crime.

In a world where youth is revered, and old age becomes an excuse to not employ somebody, there’s no such thing as growing old gracefully, (unless you’re lucky enough to be born with great genes). All there is is growing old, and either accepting that age comes to everybody, or fighting it tooth and nail.

She wasn’t the only annoying commenter however:

“I don’t want to see a movie starring a woman who has absolutely nothing in common with me.”

Sheesh. I of course had to respond to the genius who wrote that, even if it was three weeks later.

I’m not a huge fan of plastic surgery, but I think it’s wrong to constantly slag off the women in Hollywood who do have them, when so many Hollywood men are also going under the knife, with very little being said. And no, Michael Jackson doesn’t count.

Totally off-topic, but why is it that men can’t go shopping without having to pee a hundred times, and making you (read: me) wait for 15 minutes each time they have to relieve themselves? Sheesh.

Blackromancereader brings up a good point: how come Harlequin aren’t offering any freebie Kimani Press books, along with The Billionaire Sheik’s Virgin’s Secret Baby?

Surely this would be the perfect way to promote AA penned romance to the traditional white romance reader?

Maybe nobody at Harlequin even gave it a thought. Now that wouldn’t surprise me in the least.

Mind you, you would have thought that some of the KP authors might have stood up and made the same point.

The more things change, the more they stay the same I guess.

I followed the link that Anon supplied in a comment below, and I found this fascinating blog post. Here’s a snippet:

“Amid rumors of financial mishandling, Peacock Cove e-book publisher, Rebecca Gatto, plans to exchange vows with Charles “Chip” Davis in February 2008. Davis is also known as inmate # 5447632 at Fern Valley State Penitentiary.”

I can’t imagine that any publisher would flaunt herself in her undies, like the photo suggests, but how funny if it were true? Spoof or not, it sure is amusing, heheh.

I was just over at Erecsite, on the Whiskey Creek Press post, (they do so have interesting stuff over there) when this comment by Pepper Espinoza caught my eye:

“Liquid Silver has a sales requirement *and* a length requirement. They also flat out said that authors with a “good relationship” with the publisher will have priority for print, all else being equal. They claim that everything that meets those requirements will be moving into print at some point, but I have no idea when that’ll happen.”

I was a little gob-smacked. Does this mean that if an author doesn’t make nice with the publisher, that their books take much longer to go to print?

I always wondered if this was the case with Elloras Cave. There always used to be certain authors who’s books were slated for print really quickly, whilst other author’s books were left and left. (Actually, now that I think back, certain authors used to have a book out every two minutes, whilst others had to wait, and wait, and wait.)

I like Liquid Silver, but if what Pepper says is true, then what a crappy way to conduct business. They’re basically saying, if the author behaves well, then they get priority over the problem authors. Hmmm… not impressed by that at all. I kinda understand it, but it just seems….. wrong, somehow.

I wonder how many e-pubs make their printing decisions this way?

I just read this on Erecsite:

“Dear WCP Authors…
Hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas, and we wish you a great New
Year’s too. We’ve been working very hard at WCP, and we are making
some changes which we believe will help all of us find a bigger
audience for all our great WCP titles.

First, beginning with all new contracts signed on January 1, 2008
forward, the set-up fee charged by Pawprints to WCP authors for the
print option will be paid by Whiskey Creek Press (the book must be
35,000 words or more to be print eligible). WCP will put the book into
print and pay the set-up fee to Pawprints when one of two things happens:

1) The author pre-orders and pays for 30 copies or more, at the author
discount price (this is optional).
2) The book sells 50 copies or more in ebook format.”

OK, I get that WCP’s authors no longer have to pay for their own printing, but why do they have to buy 30 copies of their own books first?

I’m guessing that selling fifty e-books wont be a problem to most authors at WCP (or is it?) therefore, they wont have to worry about item number one. Maybe.

Anyhoo, it’s good to see an e-book publisher who listens and responds in a positive fashion, because let’s face it, that shit’s rarer than a lucid Britney Spears.

You can read the full statement over at Em’s Erecsite blog.

Hey, does this mean that they bowed down to pressure from The People? *g*

For those who don’t know already know, Eharlequin are giving away a free e-book everyday until January 1st. I’ve already downloaded the Blaze book from yesterday, and the Silhouette Special Edition book from today.

I started the Blaze already, because it’s written by Debbi Rawlins, who I’ve always liked, and I have to say, so far so good.

The male protag is very unusual, in that he doesn’t jump off the pages like most heroes do, and the heroine initially isn’t into him, (most unusual for a romance), so kinda blanks him for a while.

Anyway, going back to my reading.

I just read that the Pakistani opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto, has been assassinated. I knew it would only be a matter of time, but I was still shocked by the news.

When she returned, having been exiled for a good number of years, I thought she was extremely brave, if a little foolish.

Apparently she was shot in the head, then a suicide bomber blew himself up, taking a few other people with him.

Fucking animals.

…like Mel Gibson’s film career after that incident… especially after reading this comment from a fan on the Beyond Reach thread at Dear Author (Yes it’s still going strong):

“She must have gotten many other notes in regards to the ending of Beyond Reach. She responded with a generic note addressed to everyone saying that she did what she thought was right for the series and that she hopes we’ll stick with her through the next GC book.

She mentiones that she has plans for the Sara/Lena storyline and that if we decide to give up on her she will miss us as readers and hopes we will find many other authors that we will enjoy reading.”

Could she be anymore condescending, and uncaring about her fans? That was just such a big f*ck-you, it’s not even funny.

Out of the 168 (and counting) comments, that are there, only a handful, of those (if that) have commended her on her willingness to think outside the box, and take a risk for the good of the book. If we follow the rules of random sampling, that surely means the majority of her readers think that she fucked up royally. Hopefully, that translates into crappy books sales on her next GC book. Mean much? Probably.

Well, I’m sure she’ll be pleased that she got what she wanted; lots of people talking about her book months after she wrote it. After all, there’s no such thing as bad publicity, right?

Here at Karen Scott Central, we hope you all have a lovely Christmas, and a happy New Year!

Oh btw, don’t forget to recycle like crazy this Christmas!!