+ A collection of previously published novellas by Carla Kelly has been published by her new (non-mainstream romance) publisher, Cedar Fort. I thought I’d read all of her novellas before, but there is one that I hadn’t encountered. At $2.51, the three novellas are a bargain compared to the cost of the print backlist.
~ Have I been an observer of the romance publishing industry (and publishing generally) too long? A couple of recent posts written by people I thought were long-timers ponder things that I thought were common knowledge or generally understood. An author blogged recently about the relative size of her name on the cover of her new Harlequin Historical regency novel. I dunno, it seemed a little disingenuous for someone who has published several books with H/MB that their titles are fairly standard and seldom reveal much of use about the contents of the book and that many categories are sold based on line or author alone. And elsewhere in my feed reader (apologies, I can’t find the blog to link now) another blogger mentioned learning only recently (2010) that the decision to move to hardback was not one in which an author usually has any input. Really? Hasn’t this been discussed by author after author as their books or series gained success? I can recall Nora Roberts addressing this years ago when the In Death books moved to hardcover. Eh, I feel jaded and old.
+ David Simon, former reporter and and TV-writer/producer of The Wire, Treme, Homicide, and Generation Kill, has begun to write at his long held but unused website. (via Media Bistro).
~Sports in romance: I love and hate it. Read the sample of a m/m novel (ridiculously priced, which is one strike) whose characters are baseball players. In some ways, the sample showed a lot of baseball knowledge. Yet in other ways, it was a little off. Or maybe I just think it’s off and my understanding of baseball is off.
~ When I saw the cover for Suzanne Johnson’s urban fantasy novel, Royal Street, I did a double take because I first saw the author’s name as Susan Johnson and wondered when the Old School romance novelist had moved into UF. Uh, no, different author.
– When did 35,000 words become “novel” length? That’s…more like a novella in my mind. When I searched for standard novel lengths, this interesting post came up, among others. Pretty uniformly the various websites indicate that a standard novel length is over 50,000, and anything less is a novella. Is this word inflation? Maybe. Of course, the e-publisher whose definitions prompted this check is one of the pricier e-publishers; knowing they charge $6.99 for an ebook that is half the length of an HP is disenchanting.
~ While looking at various holiday resorts, I ran across The Towers at Mullett Bay. Now, I know that the word has and had other uses historically. But all I can imagine is a harbor full of be-mulletted men now: not the image I want for a vacation. 😛