Archive for the ‘Maggie AAR’ Category
Thursday, February 16th, 2012
In her blog titled Stuart’s Coat, Sara’s Spectacles, and Jessica’s Glove , Sandy talked about “those hit-you-in-the-heart scenes. The kind you remember. The kind you share with other readers who very often respond “Yes!” The kind that make you feel what the characters are feeling.” In other words, the magic moments, the ones that define a love story.
Recently I’ve run across the opposite of the magic moment. This is a scene in which an author, with just a few lines, turns you against her hero or heroine. It’s an act or statement that makes you wish the other party would get with someone else, anyone else. It’s the I-can’t-get-over-what-just-happened blues. It can ruin a good book or at the very least, ruin the HEA.
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Tags: All About Romance, Charlaine Harris, Janet Evanovich, Rachel Gibson, Tawny Weber
Posted in Characters, Maggie AAR, Romance reading | 25 Comments »
Thursday, December 22nd, 2011
He needs to get out of town so the murderer he is testifying against doesn’t get the chance to kill him too. She needs to get out of town so she doesn’t have to trip over her ex and his blushing bride everywhere she goes. When they both land in Virgin River the scene is set for love.
Hidden Summit is the 17th book in the popular Virgin River series. When we begin the story we join Brie Valenzuela (from Whispering Rock) as she meets a tall dark stranger in a frou-frou coffee shop out of town. No, she isn’t cheating on Mike, but she is meeting another man. Conner Danson is the sole witness to a crime and it is clear the man he is testifying against will go to any lengths to keep him from testifying. He has already burned Conner’s business down to the ground and made threats against his widowed sister and her boys. The end result is forced relocation for Conner, and Virgin River, remote and with a small population, seems like the ideal place to hide. Brie, a former ADA, is Conner’s bridge to a whole new life. Conner’s not happy about the situation but he is determined to see this thing through to the end. He heads up to the hills and goes to work for Haggerty Construction.
Leslie Petruso’s ex-husband seems determined to kill her – with kindness. Even though he cheated on her, robbed her of her half of the communal property and left her heart in tattered pieces, he expects them to be the best of buds. He has done such a good job of painting himself as an angel that even her parents think she should just forgive and forget. Anxious to get away from it all, Leslie takes a job with her old friend Paul Haggerty (Second Chance Pass) and moves to Virgin River. There, she hopes to find a place to heal and get to know what life is like on her own. She doesn’t think she will ever be able to love or trust again. Then she meets Conner.
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Tags: All About Romance, Pandora's Box, robyn carr
Posted in Leigh AAR, Maggie AAR, Pandora's Box | 6 Comments »
Monday, December 5th, 2011
Once upon a time, in an economy much better than the one we have today, going out of business sales were a gleeful event for me. I would cheerfully scavenge through the picked over aisles looking for hidden treasures and incredible “steals”. I do my Christmas shopping all year long, so many of my finds were put carefully away to be lovingly wrapped in December. Oh, how thrilled I was to be able to provide gorgeous gifts at a discounted price. Of course this was back in the days when it seemed that most going out of business sales meant either the shop had been mismanaged or the owners were retiring. Most of the ones I shopped were due to the latter reason and so there was joy all around. They were happy to unload the unwanted merchandise, I was happy to snap it up at bargain price.
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Tags: All About Romance, Books, shopping
Posted in Books, Bookstores, Maggie AAR | 13 Comments »
Wednesday, November 9th, 2011
I’ll admit it: I like to play with my books. I have far too many books. And as with most of us, that means I have storage problems. Over the years I have tried dozens of different methods to organize them – keeping them in bins by author, by genre, by subgenre – and yet for all the brilliance of the plans, for all the hours I put into said plans, I have yet to find a permanent solution. Right now, my books are loosely stored by type in plastic bins in my basement. Mary Balogh books have received their own bin but the rest are stored pretty willy nilly . The only thing I make sure of is that the bins are well sealed. I don’t want mold or damp or some similar book damaging pestilence to get at them.
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Tags: All About Romance, book storage, Books
Posted in Books, Life, Maggie AAR | 25 Comments »
Wednesday, October 19th, 2011
An argument could be made that lately Halloween is in the romance aisles all year long. We seem to have an endless feast of werewolves, vampires, demon slayers and psychics. I’ve been a happy participant in the gloms of monster books but right now I am thinking more basic. The old standby of pull the ratty sheet from the cupboard, cut some holes in it and go -or in other words, its ghost season.
Ghost romances seem to fall into two categories; ones where ghosts are present and ones where ghosts are the heroes Ghosts as heroes are pretty short on the ground.. Funnily enough, my favorite in this category has not changed during the time from that column to this one. I still love Rita Clay Estrada’s The Ivory Key most of all.
On the other hand, my favorite type of ghost tales seem to be far more popular. Ghosts who are funny, ghosts who are evil, ghost who are matchmakers or ghosts who are spooky might not abound but they are definitely more readily available. Among my favorites are the following:
Under the ghosts who are funny, one of my favorites is A Ghost of A Chance by Casey Claybourne, which deals with being haunted by your mother in law. Sound fun? When his mother in law dies at the wedding, Iain Ashingford, the Marquess Lindley, doesn’t see it so much as a sign as a favor. The woman had been a complete nightmare to deal with. But when she begins to haunt him Ian is far less pleased. Her interference results in a successful marriage for Daphne and Ian, something they would never have pulled off without her. And some of the situations she put Ian into were rather hilarious from my perspective.
Emily Carmichael did an equally funny ghost story in A Ghost for Maggie. The ghost here, a former madam named Robin Rowe, is hilarious as she tries to find a successful match-up for descendant Maggie. This is assuredly a case of the ghost stealing the show since the main couple is one of those strident types but Robin is delightful enough to have made the book memorable for me.
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Posted in Books, Maggie AAR, Reading, Romance reading | 26 Comments »
Monday, October 10th, 2011
Romance reading challenges are not new to AAR. And then there’s also the Annual TBR Challenge that has people participating from various sites around the internet, including here. Most folks, like me, participate in challenges because they have too many books and want to see a dent made in their darn TBR. But this year I added a challenge – the YA debut authors reading challenge that tasks one with reading 12 books in the calendar year by debut authors. I’m finally done and thought I’d report in with some of my good reads.
One interesting point was that my books basically broke down into three categories: fairy tale themed novels, paranormals and science fiction. All three are the style of book I read in romance as well. My fairy tale reads are probably the most like my traditional romance reads.
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Tags: All About Romance, Ellis O'Neal, Heather Dixon, Marissa Guibord, Young Adult
Posted in Maggie AAR, Reading | 13 Comments »
Wednesday, October 5th, 2011
And we’re back with another Pandora’s Box, this time featuring Heartstrings and Diamond Rings by Jane Graves.
Alison Carter is a jerk magnet, but she keeps convincing herself that meeting the right man is all about “modest expectations.” Seeing her latest boyfriend, Randy, in a mall jewelry store, then hearing him on the telephone talking to a Reverend McCormick, and finally finding a travel brochure on Hawaii doesn’t get her too excited, but then again nothing about him really does. However, when he tells her he has something special to ask her, she puts all the clues together. Finally she will be a bride and have a family. Except Randy’s question is not “will you marry me” but how about you, me, and Bonnie as in a threesome.
After crying on her best friend’s shoulder, Heather tells her about this wonderful matchmaker named Rochelle who found the perfect man for a co-worker. Monday morning, Alison is on the phone and is able to book a lunch hour appointment. Her dream man opens the door, and she decides that Rochelle is psychic only to find that Rochelle died two weeks ago, and her grandson Brandon Scott is taking over her business. No way is she going to pay Brandon fifteen hundred dollars for five introductions. However she doesn’t have a chance against Brandon’s guile.
Brandon’s life with his shyster father makes him an expert at reading people, so Alison is putty in his hands. She is just too nice and takes people at face value. After high school he worked construction but soon realizes that the money is in buying and flipping property. Traveling across the country buying property and then selling before the loan due date is exhilarating. However, his life as a high roller comes to abrupt end when the bottom drops out of the real estate market, leaving him broke and with bad credit. His grandmother’s will states that he can live in her house but as soon as he moves out, the house is to be turned over to her church. One of his buddies contacts him with a great investment opportunity, turning a dilapidated warehouse into loft apartments. Only he doesn’t have thirty thousand dollars for his share. Since he has six months to come up with the money he plans to earn it by taking over his grandmother’s matchmaking business. How difficult can it be?
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Tags: All About Romance, Jane Graves, Pandora's Box
Posted in Leigh AAR, Maggie AAR, Romance reading | 12 Comments »
Monday, September 26th, 2011
Spoiler Alert: If you haven’t read the Lord of the Rings books or seen the movies, this post contains spoilers regarding the ending.
We’ve been having quite the lively discussion on the Romance Potpourri Board about just how much the HEA constrains the writing of a novel, whether books are written to a recipe or formula, and what reasonable amount of reality and originality can be expected from genre fiction (romance in particular) given said restraints. The whole formula issue is an old one here at AAR, with some of us looking for the works that push that barrier, and others pointing out thatours are not the only novels written to a pattern.
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Tags: All About Romance, Amy Kathleen Ryan, Beth Revis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Pam Regis, Romance reading
Posted in Maggie AAR, Romance reading | 42 Comments »
Monday, September 12th, 2011
The recent Labor Day weekend had friends and I discussing the changing job market. Many of us had launched into second (and even third) career paths, something that certainly wasn’t expected when we initially graduated from college. This got me to thinking of others who have a secondary career path (or sometimes even just a second job!); the writers who keep me supplied in romances.
Contrary to what many in the media may think, an author does not, as Eileen Dreyer so succinctly put it, choose this path because she is “a sexually frustrated loser dressed in a robe and bunny slippers who lives in a dreary apartment with my cat and lives vicariously through my devastatingly beautiful heroines.” Most seem to choose it because it is a girlhood dream. And many, many, many of them come to writing only after having pursued another career first. I am fascinated by the diversity of what those careers are and thought others might be to. So here it is, a cataloging of what several of the greats did before they were romance writers.
Linda Howard worked at a trucking company, which explains to me at least why she can create such realistic men. I would imagine working in a male dominated field like that would show one a great deal about how the opposite sex thinks. Susanna Kearsley was a museum curator, and I think that is reflected in the wonderful historical settings of some of her novels. Justine Davis was in law enforcement before being a writer. She writes authentic romantic suspense with an authentic flavor now. And Inez Kelly was a 911 dispatcher and Linnea Sinclair worked as a private detective and also a news reporter before taking on romantic science fiction. Sandra Brown also worked as a reporter, and Pamela Clare “went to work for a newspaper and held almost every position in the newsroom before becoming the paper’s first woman editor.” Karina Bliss, who has received a DIK here at AAR for Here Comes the Groom, worked as a travel journalist. And Carla Kelly? Well, among her many and varied careers, she has worked as a park ranger and was a Valley City Time Record feature writer.
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Tags: All About Romance, Carla Kelly, Charlotte McClain, Christyne Butler, Debbie Macomber, Dorien Kelly, Eileen Dreyer, Helen Kay Dimon, Inez Kelly, J.R. Ward, Julie James, Justine Davis, Karen Rose, Karina Bliss, Kylie Brant, Laura Kinsale, Lauren Willig, linda howard, Linnea Sinclair, Mary Balogh, Merline Lovelace, Monica McCarty, Nicole Burnham, Pamela Clare, Sandra Brown, Stephanie Laurens, susan elizabeth phillips, Susan Grant, Susanna Kearsley, Tess Gerritsen
Posted in Authors, Maggie AAR | 12 Comments »
Monday, September 5th, 2011
Roku finally has Mad Men and I have been racing through seasons one and two at the clip of several episodes per day. My husband, who finds the show extremely boring, can’t understand my attraction. In many ways, I can’t understand my attraction. One thing I know does appeal to me is the fast paced, formal dress office atmosphere. The sheer glamour of the show – with the elegant restaurants, tailored suits and endless smoking and drinking (something that would have gotten you quickly terminated in any of my working environs) – lures me in.
Which reminded me; I can still remember the first time I seriously thought about romance characters and what they did for a living. It was in 2004 when Robin Uncapher mentioned why she loved the book Do-Over by Dorien Kelly. Up to that point I had never paid any attention to how an actual work environment looked compared to a romance work environment. Which led to another thought. While we see many professional careers or self-made business people in romance, how often do we see the typical working stiff? Where are the waitresses, the shop workers, the baristas?
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Posted in Characters, Heroes, Heroines, Maggie AAR | 16 Comments »
