You’ll notice there is no Dilemma Friday today, I did have a decent one to post, but I wanted to know if this is a feature that’s worth keeping.

If you want me to continue with the DFs, please let me know in the comments section.

If you don’t give a shit, then don’t bother posting a comment.

If I get enough yeses, then I’ll continue to post the DFs.

Simple yes?

I see Madris De Pasteur of New Concepts Publishing fame hasn’t lost her ability to make friends and influence people:

To roll or not to roll, this is the question—
We’re currently working on designing a new webpage for NCP to be launched early next year. Due to the fact that the unhappy have made a nuisance of themselves reminding us repeatedly to remove their books upon expiration, we’ve inadvertently removed some books by authors who wanted to roll over.

That being the case and also because it could simplify things for us when designing the new page, we want to create a list of people who intend to remain with NCP. Please respond with your intentions to the author liaison address–NOT directly to me–so a list can be compiled and, hopefully, we can eliminate some of the confusion and focus on promoting the career authors and getting their books listed with the distributors, etc.

Due to the difficulty in removing books from listings with our distributors, books that will not be renewing will not be sent to distributors. Also, a reminder–the most effective promotion to build a fan base is frequent releases.

Thanks!
Madris
NCP

Lol, why am I not surprised that those idiots at NCP would mistakenly remove books of the few authors that they have, who are crazy enough to still want to stay with them?

Thanks to you-know-who for the heads up. *g*

Aint that the truth.

There’s a great column over at Dear Author about cultural appropriation in romance, go read and learn.

By the way, if anybody can figure out what the third commenter is talking about, I’ll give you an effing medal. Jesus H, that was some gobbledygook speak right there.

Anyway, I thought I’d highlight some of the more noteworthy comments: (more…)

Why do the heroines and heroes always have to resolve any familial issues before they can have their HEA? Seriously.

And those stories where the heroine has Daddy Issues and can’t find happiness with her hero until they’re resolved? Very effing annoying.

I’d love it if an author just let the heroine come to terms with her familial issues without having to have a big emotional scene, whereby she’s then able to finally have sex with her hero.

Is that too much to ask for?

Really?

They look so happy together don’t they? No doubt the vile Rush Limbaughs and the Sean Hannitys will try to put a negative spin on the photo. Bastards.

When I read this earlier today, it made me cry.

It starts:

I learned to read when I was 4, just as my 4-year-old best friend Danny became sick (he was dying of leukemia) and I was starting to be sexually abused by a next-door neighbor. I quickly discovered that when you open a book you could jump into a new world and escape the world that you are forced to live in.

Danny was the one who first made me realize the power of books. No matter how crappy he felt if you read him Put Me in the Zoo he would giggle and glow with enjoyment. I read him that book hundreds of times before he died when we were 6 and it never failed to make him feel better.

By the time I was 6 and raped for the first time by that neighbor, I was reading at a 6th grade level and the books I devoured were the likes of Nancy Drew, the Hardy Brothers, Trixie Belden, the Box Car Kids, Little Women and The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

This story belongs to a reader called Chloe, and I totally applaud her bravery.

For the rest of her story, pop over to Dear Author.

This fantastic Dilemma Friday comes courtesy of regular KKB reader Anon76, so thanks very much.

This week’s dilemma is as follows:

You and your husband have a beautiful little girl (let’s call her Megan). When she’s five years old, you discover that she’s developed Leukemia. You go to see all the specialists that you can, and they inform you that in order to keep her alive, she’s going to need constant blood transfusions, and various organs will have to be replaced throughout her probably short life.

You learn that one way of ensuring that Megan has a genetic match for the organs that she needs, is to have a another child.

What do you do? Do you engineer a child specially to save the child that you already have, or do you just keep up with the various treatments and pray for a miracle for Megan?

What would you do?

By the way, anybody interested in submitting a Dilemma Friday post, can do so by emailing me at hairylemony @ gmail. com (no spaces). I’ll be happy to post the decent ones on here over the next few Fridays.

From this conversation, I hope that we have all learned to think before posting, commenting or tweeting.

It has been said, ad nauseam, that all people should think before putting their thoughts up there in the internets for everyone, their pet parrot and their alien relatives to see. After all, it’s there forever, in one way or another (from Google cache to screen caps).

It has been noted that we eeeeeeeeeeeeeebol readers keep lists of authors behaving badly, and that we are not shy to share those lists with other readers whenever flaps like this latest break out.

It has been repeated all over the cyber-universe that, however unfair it may be, authors ought to behave in a different (wiser, more professional) manner than readers do–after all, authors are selling stuff to readers, and it behooves them to keep that in mind at all times.

Please note that I abhor piracy with a vengeance–as a reader, anything that will discourage authors from writing hurts me, and since it’s all about me…

(more…)

So the other day, I read Lora Leigh’s Coyote’s Mate.

I’ve followed her Breed books for what seems like forever, and I have to admit, even when I think I couldn’t possibly read another LL, I give in to temptation, and purchase yet another one.

You know that scene in Brokeback Mountain when Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) turns to Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and says “You are too much for me Ennis, you sonofawhoreson bitch! I wish I knew how to quit you.”? That’s just how I feel about Lora Leigh books. Sometimes I too wish I could quit her.

I’ve been reading her since circa 2005, and I’ve had a love/hate relationship with her Breed books ever since. I’ll read one book, and it’ll blow me away, and then I’ll read another, and I’ll wonder at the brand of mushrooms Lora was smoking when she wrote said book.

Anyway, it’s been quite a while since I visited the world of the Breeds, so I picked up Coyote’s Mate and read it last weekend. (more…)

Having dealt with the public consistently for some four years, I readily understand how draining, unreasonable and aggressive people can be towards those of you who make your living as customer representatives.

Perhaps it would help everyone involved if you would internalize this trivial fact: by the time a customer seeks you out, he or she is already aggravated by a broken down system. He or she doesn’t have the emotional reserves to be kind, understanding and apologetic about interrupting your day with unreasonable demands to receive whatever services s/he is already paying for–the nerve!–and when you yourself are short, ungracious and rude, it only compounds the problem, unnecessarily prolonging an interaction that is, clearly, as repugnant to you as it is to the customer.

Therefore, perhaps it would behoove you, in a fit of self-interest, to be expedient in resolving whatever disagreement or complaint is coming your way, so that you may hang the phone all the sooner, turn around to your fellow customer service representatives, and make fun of/bitch about the latest imbecile to interrupt your working day with her trivial and stupid problems.

Thank you kindly,

a customer.

An excellent tutorial: