Where are the books you love?

2017 was a very bad year if you prefer to read your romance in a traditional paperback book. Publishers have been cutting back on paper release of series romance - not because readers don't still love them, not because the they are no longer being written or published, but because shelf space has become such a rare commodity.

With the loss of bookstore chains such as the much-lamented Borders and with supermarkets cutting space for everything but the fastest moving titles, publishers have been forced to reduce paper sales of some of their series to their bookclub subscribers and online sales.

Series that are now digital only include Harlequin Romance but to reassure you, they are still available in paper direct from Harlequin and from Amazon.

But...

While online sales and digital work for the dyed-in-the-wool, hard-core fans who know what they like, have authors they auto-buy and have access to a debit or credit card, the sad fact is that the point-of-sale reader, the woman who, passing the shelf during her weekly shop and makes a spontaneous decision to buy a book, no longer has the same wide choice.

She may have always bought from her favourite series in the past, grabbing one with the right colour cover and buzz word title in the few seconds she has to make her choice because she knows it will deliver the romance hit she loves. If that option is no longer open to her she may choose from what is there - or not buy at all. It's a bit like the supermarket reducing your choice of cookies to a few top-selling brands. Their only interest is, after all, the bottom line and they figure that you'll buy something even if it isn't your first choice. Or, of course, you may go somewhere else. If it's cookies, not a problem. If it's books it may mean the local thrift shop where there will be secondhand copies of the books she loves. At least for a while.

Meanwhile the  paper copies are only available in limited numbers and you can't buy them secondhand. Even when there are fabulous deals - a lot of my books are on special offer at the moment - they are available only to those with an expensive eReader, computer or phone and access to a debit or credit card. For vast numbers of readers the books will simply have disappeared. They won't know why. They'll merely shrug and stop looking for them. Maybe they'll stop reading romance.

I have no answers, just a sore heart.

A Holiday Motto

I love the holidays! I love that so many people seem willing to not only find the glee that's all around them, but actively try to give glee to others as well!

So when I set out to write a story for Maeve, who was a solitary secondary character in my A Valley Ridge Wedding trilogy (You Are Invited, April Showers and A Walk Down the Aisle), I knew that it had to be special, and that I wanted to find a very special way for her to find her glee by giving it in A Valley Ridge Christmas!

I'd already established she had a giving heart…she reopened the community's small library almost single handedly.  So when a homeless family shows up literally on her doorstep she jumps right in.  What I love about Maeve is she lives her life by the words, "I can't save the world, but I can try."  That willingness to jump in…well, I knew she needed a very special man.  Oh, I wrapped him in a bit of a Scrooge-ish exterior.  He lives life by the motto…everyone's got an angle.  I loved pitting an optimist against a pessimist.

Now that I know that Maeve's got the right man, I'm busy getting ready for the holidays here.  I made my first batch of cutout cookies earlier this week…and they're almost gone.  There's a certain Cookie Monster who's taking finals and she says they help.  So, I'll be making more cookies and I still have some hard candy to make!  I make a number of flavors, but the kids' favorite is one we call Death by Cinnamon.  They're pretty sure that any candy

that makes your eyes water is good!

I hope your holiday prep is going well!  And I'm wishing you a wonderful holiday season.  I hope you're surrounded by friends and family.  And if you have a chance to try out Maeve's personal motto this holiday season, I hope you give it a try!

Holly


PS My other Christmas release, Spruced Up: A Maid in LA Holiday Novella is on sale for 99 cents for Kindle until December 15th!

E-readers and me by Michelle Styles

My husband always declares that I am difficult to buy presents for. (I disagree. I am very easy -- I like lots of things. I just don't like filling out  lists of things I might I like.)  However this wedding anniversary (our 23rd last month), he knew precisely what to get -- a kindle (with a pink cover!) In the UK, the kindle dominates with something like 80% + of the market. There is no nook in the UK.
After all what do you get a woman who loves to read and who is rapidly running out of bookcase space..particularily when you are stumped?
Although I had read books on the computer, I had resisted getting an e-reader. The expense was one consideration and I do like the feel of paper. It was not on my top ten list. It was something I had planned to get around to at some point.  However I do take his point about the number of books in the house...
I do like my kindle. It is light weight and I can make the font size the correct size for my eyes. This is a consideration in dealing with something like the GRR Martin books which are huge and printed in mouse print.  A Dance with Dragons is 983 pages long and the print is fairly small and this is a hardback!
Best of all, it has a free sample feature. Forget the free books on kindle (to a certain extent), I like the free samples, particularly as I can then just buy the book. With teaser pamphlets, I have to go into a shop and buy the book but this way, I can just download and keep reading.
There are a number of authors who I have heard about but had not tried. In the UK, particularly in the North East, it can be difficult to find the authors I like, so I have often resorted to Amazon. Sometimes with mixed results. So I have become wary.  But now when I hear about a book, I can download a sample and see if the book is really going to be for me or not. Personally I like having the time to read the sample rather than just flicking. (Actually kindle does have free apps for just about any electronic device you might like to use from PCs to Ipads and Andriods. So you could do the free samples with any device. Just saying )
It is also easier to read in bright sunshine or in the dark.  And it fits in my purse which means I should never have to resort to reading the posters in the doctor's office again because I have run out of reading material.
The RWA National was also all about going digital. Since Christmas and really within the last quarter, publishers have seen a huge increase in digital sales. The revolution has gone from sometime in the future to now. It brings a wealth of opportunity for everyone but also a lot of change. For readers, particularly ones with poor eyesight, it means the ability to make the font size larger without paying Large Print prices OR dealing with the added weight. It also means people do not have to be as concerned bad covers. (I never minded the romance covers but my husbands and sons are of a more delicate nature...) The content stays the same. The delivery method is slightly different. That is all.
My husband was slightly shocked at the suitcase of free books that I brought back from the conference but that is another story...
One great thing for all lovers of Harlequin Historical is that they are moving to simultaneous publication in the UK and the NA market next Spring. This is because of people downloading the books from both sides of the Atlantic. It means that readers won't have to wait.
Anyway, now having received a kindle as a present, I can understand what the fuss is about. I still like print but will be saving it for special books. And if you like books and an e-reader is low down on your list...move it up.
My husband now faces another problem though...what to get me for Christmas...He has already started muttering about me providing him with a list...how hard can it be? I love books and lots of other things!
What do other people think about e-readers?

Michelle Styles writes warm, witty and intimate historical romance for Harlequin Historical. Her latest release in the UK is To Marry a Matchmaker (both print and ebook). To learn more about her books, visit her website www.michellestyles.co.uk

Grandma and the Prince - Part 22 - Barbara Bretton

ATTENTION: We have a winner! PETITE, I need your mailing address ASAP so I can ship out your prizes. Email me by clicking here or writing to barbarabretton AT gmail DOT com and I'll get right on it.

And one more thing: SPUN BY SORCERY will hit the shelves right around Halloween and I can't think of a better book to curl up with in between trick or treaters. I hope you'll check it out. I'm running a BIG contest at my website: the lucky winner will receive a shiny new Kindle! Click on contest, and make sure you enter.

Now let's get back to my grandfather's story. Last month he met Teddy Roosevelt.

This month he meets the love of his life. Enjoy!

* * * *

It was the lowest part of the Lower East Side. Two buildings face each other across
the narrow city street. They are mirror images. A small apartment in a brick
building with fire escapes at the living room windows.

They didn’t call it the Big Apple back in the early 1930s. It was just simply the
hub of the known universe. Certainly the hub of Grandpa’s.

Sometimes I think the term “long hot summer” was invented to describe the hell that is Manhattan in August. It’s a dangerous time. Tempers are short. Grievances multiply. Desires hide close to the surface. The orphan boy from Kansas, the World War I sailor, is now a New York City cop. He’s with the mounted force. He always knew his riding skills would come in handy someday.

He sits at the window late at night and watches life on the streets, counts the
windows of the apartment building across the way, notices the patterns of light and dark, the shadowy shapes behind the filmy curtains and wonders. He wonders about the small, dark-haired woman in the third floor apartment. He sees her moving about each night, back and forth, graceful movements in the warm night air.

That night he is sitting there in the darkness, watching the way the lit end of his
cigarette glows metallic red in the dark. He draws a circle in the air then
notices with a start that the dark-haired woman across the way is mimicking his
movements with her own glowing cigarette. He draws an X. She draws an X.
Squares. Figure 8s. Elongated ovals.

She is there the next night and the next. The fourth night he takes the plunge.
He climbs down his fire escape, strides across the street, and walks into her
building. He finds her apartment on the first try. She opens the door and smiles
up at him. I’m Larry, he says. She holds out her hand. I’m Margie. She invites
him in for a cold drink and the rest, as they say, is history.

Margie was the second of Grandpa’s five wives. She was also his favorite, the
one he lost to death and not divorce. My mother often said she believed their
lives would have been very different if Margie had been able to beat cancer.
This is Margie at the New York World’s Fair in 1939, not long before she died.

(Grandpa’s fifth and last wife, Bess, looked enough like Margie to be her twin sister.)

Margie was an interior decorator for the big department stores of the day. She
also decorated the homes of the big department store owners. Her career took off
not long after she met Grandpa and they soon found themselves living on the snooty upper East Side in a fancy one-step-below-the-penthouse apartment. Imagine how it felt for my mother, a child of divorce back in the days when divorce carried a terrible stigma for all concerned, to leave behind the farm and outhouse in Maryland and arrive a few hours later in Manhattan where she was met by a liveried driver in a big black limousine. “You’ll be living here now,” my grandfather said to her at the train station. “You won’t be going back to Maryland.”

My mother told me she cried when she heard that and Grandpa grew very angry with her. Why wasn’t she happy to live in splendor instead of poverty? What was the matter with his ten year old daughter? My mother didn’t care about the splendor. She missed her mother and her friends and the pets she’d left behind. She missed her old life.

Margie understood that, however, and she set out to shower my mother with what she really needed: love. Margie welcomed Grandpa’s only daughter and his two sons into her life with a full heart. She was everything you could have wished for in a mother.

I wish I could find my notes about Margie and Grandpa’s apartment. My
mother told me about the lacquered hunter green walls and the sleek furniture. She remembered every candlestick, every sconce, every vase, and throw pillow. She said Margie always wrapped her presents in shiny white paper and tied them with red satin ribbons. One Christmas Mrs. Saks (of Saks Fifth Avenue) sent her driver to the apartment with a back seat filled with presents for Margie and her family. My mother would come home from school to find a stack of dresses piled high on her four-poster and a note from Margie: “Pick whatever you like! You can model for me when I come home from work.”
Which my mother went on to do for awhile before I was born.




This is a photo of Uncle Budd and Uncle Jimmy. You can see Grandpa reflected inthe mirror. Margie was the photographer. Notice the clock suspended from a heavy cord. That clock hangs today in my living room. The dragon candlesticks rest on my mantel. The samovar inspired my 2003 book, SHORE LIGHTS.



See this picture of their dining room? Notice the table if you will. That table
is upstairs right now in my office. You might not recognize it with the copier and stacks of paper on top of it, but it’s there. That table came into my life in 1971 and has supported sewing machines, typewriters, computers, printers, fax machines, and copiers. Not a day goes by when I don’t look at that table and think of the woman it first belonged to.

Margie was dead more than fifty years when my mother shared her story but the pain of loss was still evident on her face and in her voice. I listened to her talk about Margie with Grandpa in those months before his death and I thought I knew the depth of her love for her stepmother. Truth is, I hadn’t a clue. It wasn’t until Grandpa died that I learned just how much Mom loved Margie.

She loved her enough to keep her secrets.

Margie’s death from cancer was long and heartbreaking and it coincided with the darkest period in my grandfather's life. He was recovering from a terrible riding accident when Margie was diagnosed and was caught up in his own pain and loss. (His horse fell on him, crushing his pelvis and causing catastrophic damage.) The stress on both of them must have been unbearable and near the end Margie made a terrible mistake. My mother was around sixteen at the time. She came home from school early one day and found a man in Margie’s bed. The bed she shared with Grandpa. The man was Margie’s first husband. My mother was shocked and she ran crying to her room. Margie slipped into a robe and followed her. I don’t know
exactly what she said to my mother but I do know she shouldered the blame herself.

She never asked my mother to lie for her. She never asked anything at all of my
mother except for love. Whatever you do, Margie said, I’ll understand.

Grandpa never knew of the incident. My mother held onto that secret until his
death.

And now you know too.

* * *

How about another contest? Leave a comment below and you'll be automatically entered to win signed books and maybe a surprise or two. The winner will be announced next month.

And don't forget to visit my website and enter the Kindle contest. Good luck!