So, last night I was browsing through the Mills & Boon site, looking for new Moderns to buy (the equivalent of the Harlequin Presents) and put Katrakis’s Last Mistress by Caitlin Crews in my shopping bag, because 1) I like to give new HP authors a shot, hoping for someone new to feed my addiction, and 2) I love a revenge plot.

And, wheeeee! I hearted it. Yes, Nikos was emotionally stunted all the way through, and the desire for revenge lasted maybe a little too long (though it made for some great tension for me and emotional conflict for him, complete with character arc. Would he go through with his plan? WOULD HE? I couldn’t tell! and it’s so lovely to be uncertain when reading one of these books, even if I’m a little frustrated by the thing causing the uncertainty) — but the heroine! I loved her. She’s that awesome mix of practicality and vulnerability, and she has some great lines (actually, they both have some great exchanges, but it’s Tristanne’s* unwillingness to back down that won me over.) And although I shouldn’t have liked some of the end, the buildup of fairy-tale references throughout the book lent a weight to the sheer belief that the story itself seemed to have in romance and a happy ever after.

Anyway. I’m not sure when this comes out in the U.S. as a Presents (the only Crews book showing up on eHarlequin is her February release, which I am buying as soon as I post this — but, oooh, her site says it will be in March 2011) but I recommend it if you like angst and revenge plots, and non-doormat heroines.

I also kind of hope that the “last mistress” part of a title is a wink, re: the upcoming title changes for M&B. No more mistresses and billionaires? We’ll see.

(As an aside, it occurs to me that low-cost, universal health care would completely derail a bunch of heroines’ motivations. Really, what reason could they possibly have to become someone’s mistress if they didn’t have to worry about their parent’s/kid’s/sibling’s bills? Maybe that could be a new campaign: Free Health Care, and Free the Mistresses!)

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*Okay, I did have a hard time with the heroine’s name. I can’t count how many times I read it, then had to remind myself it was the woman’s.

In the past couple of months, and even more frequently since BURNING UP has been released, I’ve gotten this question: Where is the steampunk romance? They can find steampunk, but not much romance (and, okay, there isn’t much.) I’ve been replying to the e-mails naming titles and authors, but I know that I must miss some every time. Then I realized — there might be a better way.

When a category of romance is very big, I don’t find Amazon’s tagging system very helpful. If someone is looking for paranormal romance, 1,000,000 people have already tagged the books that everyone has already read, and so a reader looking for something new has to go pretty deep to find a book that isn’t a bestseller and already on a bunch of lists. But take a look at the steampunk romance tag.

There’s not much there. And even though there isn’t much steampunk romance in general, there should be MORE there. And it *could* be a useful tag for a reader who is interested in the steampunk romance subgenre.

So, readers and authors — if you are reading a steampunk romance, if you are selling a steampunk romance, please tag it steampunk romance. (Even if it only has steampunk elements … because judging by my e-mails, readers want those, too.) And I’ll point everyone who e-mails me in that direction.

(If you don’t have an Amazon account for tagging, leave a comment here or drop me a note, and I’ll tag it for you.)

Here’s one that doesn’t show up at Amazon yet, but is available on ebook: Ciar Cullen’s Steamside Chronicles

It’s not a romance, I don’t think, because the couple isn’t about to kiss — they’re dead and frozen in ice. So it’s just suspense, which works for me.

But I also loved the USA Today quote. I’m not sure if that makes it the awesomest book ever, or potentially the biggest trainwreck ever. But I was walking past the display at my local B&N (which had tons of copies of Burning Up, whee! and still tons of copies of Demon Blood, which isn’t as whee, but it’s okay. They sold one! And God knows I’ll end up buying the rest at some point. That B&N probably thinks I have a ton of fans, but really…I just have a lot of contests) and couldn’t resist.

Anyway. Also got: The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic–and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World (and created the Longest Title Ever) and The Science of Leonardo. Yay, research. Kind of. I liked the covers of these, too.

Every so often, I browse through A Mystical Unicorn online bookstore, looking for old categories that I want to re-read. Today, I was browsing through the books and hit this one … and cringed.

This book is a memorable one. Not just because it takes place in Colorado (not unheard of for Harlequin Romance at the time — in fact, one of my favorites from this time period is also set in Colorado — but it was still rare), but because of the scene where the heroine’s nipple is stabbed by a fishhook.

Yes, a fishhook. A barbed one.

She’s kissing the hero while he’s wearing his fishing vest. The next moment, she’s nearly fainting from the pain. Missy, who was flat-chested at the time and barely had any nipples to speak of, almost fainted, too. And twenty years later, I see the title of the book and feel the pain all over again.

So, as a warning to all romance readers out there … if you buy this book, be prepared for the nipple and the fishhook.

Here’s the book’s description:

Seeing him awakened painful memories. As a teenager Sara had corresponded with Brad Rawlins, her brother Peter’s best friend in Vietnam, but when Peter was killed the link had been severed. Brad had never written again. Now he was here in Colorado, a battle-scarred veteran with bitter memories of his own, and Sara realized her love for him had been no passing infatuation. How could she make him understand, though, when to him she was still just Peter’s kid sister?

This discussion at Amazon caught my eye a few weeks ago, and it’s still going strong. But what got me was that the original poster named two HPs (Harlequin Presents) that are on my own list … books that I’ve kept on my shelves simply because they made me SO mad. And out of all the HPs that have ever been published, I just had to laugh that her list matched two of mine (I’ve read some of the others on her list, and although I didn’t like some of them, I didn’t hate them quite as much as these two.)

#4 Shattered Dreams by Sally Wentworth–Can anybody say Stockholm Syndrome here? I mean the H physically tortures the h and this is okay with her, “forget about it, because I already have” and the H’s response “I just did it because I love you!” That is not love.

#3 Dark Summer Dawn by Sara Craven–The h in this is another please track mud all over me kinda girl and the H is so brutish it is not even funny. This book is the picture of a codependent abusive relationship and should be read as a warning manual for all young girls.

Yeah, the hero rapes her during the titular moment … as a dark summer dawn approaches. Gotta love that. :-/

The funny thing is, I have other books by the same authors that are on my keeper shelves for the right reasons. But these particular two? No. (There’s actually another Sara Craven that has almost exactly the same plot and setup as Dark Summer Dawn, but no rape. It’s not very good either.) There’s a line between arrogance and abuse, and these two heroes jump right over it.

Anyway, it’s an interesting discussion, particularly if you are a HP fanatic. Or, you know, just a fan.

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cover images taken from fictiondb

I ended up reading this weekend. I finished a book I’ve needed to read for several months (more on that one later, closer to its release), and then I wanted something fast-paced and gory, but couldn’t find anything that sounded perfect, so I ended up opening a fantasy novel I’ve had sitting around for a little while (thanks to Ana’s review at the Book Smugglers): THE HUNDRED THOUSAND KINGDOMS by N.K. Jemisin.

And I didn’t put it down again. I even did the reading-while-stirring-the-pot thing over the stove while making dinner. I’m not good at reviewing, and Ana’s review pretty much says everything I would. The non-linear storytelling frame Jemisin uses is just … amazing. Within a few short sentences, she sucked me in. And now, having reached the end, I want to go back and read it again with everything that happened in the course of the story in mind, because I have a feeling it will be like reading it for the first time all over again, peeling back a thick layer of the story that I hadn’t seen before.

Seriously, just a great book.

Ana at the Book Smugglers wrote an early review of my novella, Here There Be Monsters, for Steampunk Week II.

And last night at around 3 a.m., I sent her a guest post about steampunk romance that’s supposed to go up on Saturday (if it’s Saturday, click here!) Last night was kind of hazy: I remember a lot of caffeine, and cackling maniacally after taxes and a cruddy writing day, so all bets are off for that post. (And there will be a giveaway with it — not one of my books, but it’s steampunk.)

Today (Friday!) I’ve got a post up at Odd Shots, talking about book signings, with pictures from different signings, and a book to give away that I bought at a signing: Patricia Briggs’s SILVER BORNE. Drop on by, and comment on my ever-changing hair. Or, you know, just talk about whether or not you’d go to a signing.

I’m getting back to writing. Another 3 a.m. and a caffeine IV is calling my name.

Carolyn Crane, blogger extraordinaire at the Thrillionth Page, has her debut releasing today, the first of an urban fantasy trilogy called MIND GAMES. I got a chance to read it months and months ago, and this is what I said then,

“With a twisty, edgy storyline, a unique premise and a fascinating heroine, MIND GAMES jumpstarts a smart and original urban fantasy series. A fabulous debut!”

It has a twisted, comic-book feel to it, which pretty much guaranteed that I’d love it, but the smart writing just knocked it out of the park for me.

Over at Lurv a la Mode, KMont has posted the cover for THE IRON DUKE … at least the cover that Berkley used for the catalog. The cover is still undergoing changes (to the dude in the porthole) but you can get a general idea of the look it will have. I love it (and am glad they are tweaking porthole dude )

A free short story. “In Sheep’s Clothing” was originally published in THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF PARANORMAL ROMANCE, but now it’s here, too. Just click on the cover.

I’ve got a post up at Odd Shots featuring the trailers of several paranormal-ish movies that I’m looking forward to (once I get caught up with my writing.) I’m not online much, and I expect that this blog will be pretty quiet through the end of February, but I’ll always be at Odd Shots on Fridays.

So far, my 2010 release schedule looks like this (full descriptions below the cut):

DEMON BLOOD (excerpt added), July 2010
“Here There Be Monsters” in BURNING UP, August 2010
THE IRON DUKE, October 2010

I expect to revamp the site around March or April, and I should have more information regarding the Iron Seas series up then, along with excerpts. I hope everyone is having a fantastic New Year!

Click to see the full descriptions of the upcoming books…which I totally copied from the “Upcoming” page on this site, heh. Cut and paste blogging, you gotta love it.