The writer of my latest is an insufferable twat and I'd like to stab her fingers with my copyediting pencil. But I won't. Because this is a single title and it's going to earn me a lot of money, unless of course I blind myself before page FOUR HUNDRED AND TEN with said pencil.

(Seriously, it is so, so long it makes me want to scream.)

So this one's a ( Read more... )

Working on a Harlequintrigue murder mystery. Main characters are a jumpy psychic widow and the detective (DETECTIVE MACK STEELE, oh no, I am not kidding, and I don't think Michael Scott wrote this book) who's been in love with her since before her husband died. I'm 50 pages in. They're making out in the front seat of his car.

When she slipped two ( Read more... )

Okay, this has been nagging at me the whole book. There was a character (a bad guy) named Victor Dago. He got murdered. I know that's a pretty outdated ethnic slur for Italians, but it's been sticking in my head the whole book. And now, after this line-

"Yes, this morning. It took some doing, but I convinced him you weren't here to destroy Firehill  ( Read more... )

It's always kind of awkward when I'm working on a book in my office and I get to the boots-knocking scenes. Why yes, the manuscript in front of me does include the word nipples seven times on this page! Hello, fellow workers at the worldwide leader in sports! Argh.

Today is even more awkward, because this book just fucking sucks so, so hard. And not ( Read more... )

In this world of WTF. Seriously, I have already yelled at this book five or six times and I'm only on page 17. Obviously I'm not getting through 100 pages tonight. So I thought I'd share a few of the things that made me yell, just on this one page.

A little background: Mac has been hired as a bodyguard for Emma and her horse, Navigator, who is a ( Read more... )

It humbles me to say this, but that book is good. Like, really good. Like, I couldn't sleep last night so I got out of bed at one in the morning and did another hour of copyediting because I was enjoying the story. I am suitably chastened and now that I've mentioned it the production manager will send me, like, seven Love Inspireds about Tea ( Read more... )

I believe I've been quite clear about my feelings on responsible sex in romance novels. I know there are authors and readers who argue that stopping in the middle of all the hot, hot sexxing to get the condom interrupts the pace of the book, or that that it's fantasy and escapism, so who wants to talk about diaphragms or Nuvarings in books? But I ( Read more... )

Just a little Harlequin fail in case anyone is stuck at work today. So this book is due back on the 29th, and I brought it home, through a blizzard, in the hopes it would offer some distraction from the family if I need it. Except that the book heartily sucks. The heroine is a sanctimonious asshole, the hero is a poorly developed, boring stick in ( Read more... )

This book is just cripplingly stupid. It's all I can do not to smash my face into the desk repeatedly. Allow me to summarize, in three parts, with the second part first and the third part second.

2. Colloquial usage is fine, but complete ignorance is not. I submit:

"If he'd have died two months ago, his story would have had a different ending." [ ( Read more... )

So our heroine the Coast Guard whatever is afraid of scuba diving (because her father died on a dive-isn't that always the way?), which appears to be a substantial part of the job. But she and Heath go diving in the seeekrit underwater cave on Devil's Island where the diamond smugglers did their totally eeeeevil diamond smuggling, and it becomes ( Read more... )