So, some of you have suffered under my first attempts at writing a blog including my horrible efforts with adding tags, links and quotes. (Believe me, this used to be a lot harder.) I’ve shared the first time I received a bad review. The time when at a booksigning someone asked if my book were crap and a bunch more first time experiences which are now all wrapped under BS’s tag of Jill’s First Blog.

Despite the voice in my head yelling, “MISTAKE!” I now have my own blog, and usually reserve it for embarrassing myself like with my fashion sense or my fascination with the mullet.

Booksquare suggested I come back and blog again. My third book, Hitting the Mark, has hit the shelves, so I guess I’m ready to tackle BS’s blog once more. She’s even told me in a private message she’s impressed with my ability to link, tag and quote within a post. But I won’t tell her that I do it all in blogger, then copy and paste over here to make it work right.

Despite the four previous paragraphs…here’s my real post:

For every book I’ve written (a whopping 3), I’ve written a “Dear Reader” letter. This is a newsy little note at the beginning of a book that is probably there to connect the reader emotionally with the author. The thing about it – no one should want that from me. I don’t even want to be connected to me emotionally. Not that horror show.

Truthfully, I’d prefer to write birthday thank you notes over this (and if you ever talk to my mother, you’ll know just how hard these are to get out of me). Writing the “Dear Reader” letter is a torment and I can’t for any reason figure out why. Although for Booksquare’s sake, I’ll just go with I prefer to make up stuff. Which is basically what I did in my reader letter for Hitting The Mark – I even challenged people to find which thing I said is actually the truth. In fact, lying in my Dear Reader letter was so much fun, I think I’m going to do it from now on.

The first time I had to write one of these I asked a few of my fellow writers, and the best advice given was to tell how I came up with the idea to write the book in an engaging way. Great advice yes – but the engaging is the hard part. As evidenced by my Dear Reader letters from my first two books. To be honest, writing is usually pretty boring. A lot of staring off into space. Looking at the blinking cursor. Considering cleaning my keyboard and avoiding the urge to surf. Trying to make that engaging is an agony.

Besides, I’m not sure anyone really wants to know where the germ of the idea for Hitting The Mark first sprung.

It was grad school. Being with a close-knit group of other students all new to the city, we ended up having the same hairdresser. She was great with hair and inexpensive as she was trying to build up her client list. BUT you had to listen to her stories. Let me tell you, the woman had stories.

She came by her career later in life and had a wealth of experiences that to this 22 year-old Okie girl were amazing. It wasn’t until all of us students were sitting around eating our lunchables (which I can’t believe I made most of meals of) that we realized every holiday season she had a new male humiliation tale to share. Gems like the superglued penis. The embarrassed trip to the emergency room due to a vengeful act from a woman upset her lover fell asleep during sex. Or the favorite one night stand kidney removal story. It had all become a holiday tradition. Ahhh, the days before Snopes.

And one December afternoon, she told me a story that has never left me. As she tells it, one of her friends (or clients – who remembers these details?) found out her husband/boyfriend was cheating on her. So, she dressed in really sexy lingerie, seduced him into allowing her to tie him up, and then threatened him with her curling iron. I think this was my hairdresser’s favorite part of the story because she was, after all a hairdresser and could probably really appreciate crime with a curling iron. Then, the woman calmly dressed and left the bedroom, leaving him tied up with an increasingly heating curling iron in a place sure to burn.

After hearing that story, I thought yes, there’s a romance novel in there!

Some years later, I start writing a new book with a woman tying up a man and leaving…and now Hitting The Mark is in stores (minus the curling iron).

So, no. I didn’t include that story in my Dear Reader letter. I chose to lie. And I think it’s a better Dear Reader letter for it.

Hack writer – From Wikipedia

There’s an interesting mix of what’s new at Harlequin and her own personal insights. For instance she shares her experiences at the BEA as well as information on Harlequin’s On The Goâ„¢ (HOTGo) program.

Wouldn’t You Like To Know…

Today’s links of interest:

• School Serving Up Books To Students
  When you’re dishing out Shel Silverstein and Tomie dePaolo you can’t go wrong.
• 
  Random House To Use More Recycled Paper In Books
  This is a post that will make Booksquare happy. I think.
• 
  Opening Books On Kennedy, Kerry
  For those who read my previous post on how much money romance writers make…it wasn’t this much.
• 
  ‘Code’ Names: Many Books Have Borrowed Dan Brown’s Famous Title
  This is the obligatory Da Vinci Code story.

One thing I do is answer every e-mail someone sends me asking about publishing, writing romance, etc. When talking about my first book, Never Naughty Enough, I usually just shortened the title to NNE in blogs, e-mails, etc. I’d planned on doing the same with Share The Darkness. That is until I realized just what that spelled out.

I was actually a little bit horrified. I love the title. In fact, it took me over 20 submissions to my editor to get it. And the fact that Share is in the title, makes the whole STD image that much better!

I thought about avoiding the whole thing, but now I have people e-mailing me privately. “Hey Jill, you know the initials of your book say STD.” I’m just now going to embrace it. This has taken branding to a whole new level.

One way authors brand is to create their own catch phrase. Fellow Blaze author, Mia Zachary uses “Sensual Romance With A Touch Of Sass” Gena Showalter creates a different tag line for every book.

Share STD tonight.

Actually, I don’t want people to share STD. I want them to encourage their friends and family members to get their OWN STD.

Got STD?
Cozy up with STD!
STD now shipping!
When you think romance…think STD!

Then my good friend booksquare suggested the following. I really like it:

Jill Monroe — catch her STD.
It’s an STD that’s good for you.

Feel free to come up with your own!

…the fact is that book blogs can be vibrant and sharply opinionated, full of odes to favorite authors and jibes at everything from “cheesy” bestsellers to the shrinking book review sections of major newspapers.

Hey, that’s Booksquare!

Book blogs aren’t without their quirks, however. Like readers and reviewers, they can be snobbish or parochial. And they’re hardly egalitarian: Most are run by one person with dictatorial powers over what gets reviewed and by whom.

Hey, that’s Booksquare!

Actually, one of my favorite parts of the article (other than the Booksquare mention) was the Christian Science Monitor trying to mention the Bookslut blog without saying slut.

Book blogs’ buzz grows louder

When I was in journalism school, we were told to be very careful of falling in love with our own words. Of being so enamored of our slant of the story that we forgot things like facts, research and basically avoiding the easy cliche.

This week I found a delicious article in The Guardian that should be in a freshmen’s textbook:

They both put a lot of emphasis on chastity, though there is a lot more snogging in Mills & Boon than there is in the Bible.

Fundamental knowledge error – there was a heck of a lot more begetting in the Bible, which I presume was preceded by snogging.

I don’t know who this person interviewed or what books this person read, but they certainly aren’t the real readers of romance. And wow, with technology that took me less than .29 seconds (thanks to google), I was able to find some really quick and dirty stats stating clearly the type of woman who reads romance. Wow, over 60% of them have gone to college, 10% (like me) have post-graduate degrees. While these particular stats refer to readers in the US, I bet they translate.

The Real Readers of Romance from Story For You

The central theme behind any romance – two people falling in love and struggling to make the relationship work. Totally universal, I can see how that appeals to no one. Perhaps the author needs a good dose of a happy ending – much more satisfying than falling in love with her own words.

Guardian Get Real

There it was – in all its easy to read font and googled with ease glory. Unglory.

There are stages of grieving, and getting a bad review is quite similar. Denial and Anger are first and on the heels of each other. Then comes the forwarding of the bad review to all your friends and critique partners. A round of blasting e-mails, usually with the subject header of “They’re Wrong” and “They Totally Missed It” floods your inbox.

Next comes the stage involving chocolate and diet cherry cokes from Sonic (I celebrate with these items, too). The last stage is acceptance. This stage only comes after I have rewritten the review. This is my favorite part, and easy to do. I remove all the words I don’t like. For instance, the new review became:

Never Naughty Enough is… entertaining and unexpected.

Really – all those words were there. Booksquare, being the Hollywood type, should appreciate my creative blurbing.

The fact of the matter is this is a a business. Reviewers aren’t there to be my friend, and I’m not there to be theirs. If they like my book, they are wise, savvy, hip and intelligent. If they don’t like my book, they’re obviously having a very bad day.

Back in December, Daniel suggested I post my reviews. To read a good review, go here.

• Romance Reviews Today
• Road To Romance
• Fallen Angel Reviews

And no, I don’t play equal opportunity with the bad ones.

And for some children…this is a very painful process. As well as for me. I applaud all those who made sure the students could read by the time they got to me.

Reading Booksquare’s answers to The Happy Booker’s Questionnaire, I thought of the 5 books I’d take on a desert island and not being able to narrow it down. I love to read. Despite their current trouble with consonant blends and short vowels, most all of these children will learn to read by the end of the second grade. As I looked at these young faces, I wondered…would they develop that love of reading so many of us who read this blog share? That excitement of not being able to go to sleep because you just had to see what happened next? Feeling anxious because you have two books and you can’t decide which to read first?

The best instruction I ever received when it came to teaching was simple…find something that the child finds interesting, tie it in, and the rest will take care of itself. For some reason, teachers find it harder to get boys interested in reading than girls. My own nephew was a reluctant readers until he found Harry Potter. Here’s a great site for finding interesting things for the guys to read:

• Guys Read

As of this morning, Oprah hasn’t responded, but surely she’s feeling beyond flattered. What is it like to wield such power? We cannot help but wonder if we’d use ours, should we have it, for good. Could we resist temptation? Probably not.

In other Oprah news, she’s building her brand via more publishing. Yes, the world will be subjected to additional Dr. Phil and Suze Orman titles. Getting back to the all powerful issue, what if Oprah decided to try her hand at publishing fiction? We will leave it to you to build your own fantasy there.

• The Big “O”
• Oprah hardcover series to extend brand