New Reviews at Coffee Time Romance....

Well, today must've been my lucky day! Six of my reviews got posted to the Coffee Time Romance website today. LOL I love it when my reviews are posted because I put a lot of time and energy into writing objective reviews. Also, I've found writing reviews helps to keep my other writing sharp. In other words it's great practice. So, want to see what I've been reading lately? Check out these reviews, all the books were good!

22 Nights by Linda Winstead Jones

The Mane Attraction by Shelly Laurenston Sexy werelion story, yum!

Duality: Guardians of the Light Book 1 by Renee Wildes

Mysteria Lane, an anthology with stories by Mary Janice Davidson, Susan Grant, Gena Showalter, and PC Cast

Prey by Melina Morel

Shadow on the Crystal by Brittany Kingston

Should romance authors speak their mind?

I read an interesting post on another blog today about how some romance authors don't feel comfortable expressing strong opinions for fear of driving readers away. I personally don't have a problem expressing my opinions, strong or otherwise, at least most of the time. But I can see how if a romance author were to say, have a very strong, and unpopular opinion and express it in such a way that most readers would find it offensive, that they could possibly lose readers. An example might be a romance author who believes that Roe vs Wade should be overturned, and believes that anyone who does not agree with him/her is an idiot and states that baldly on his/her blog. Yeah, that person is probably going to lose a few readers, but then again, I've also seen when this tactic is done correctly that it generates a lot of visits to the author's blog by the curious, as well as a lot of comments, even if they are angry ones.

The truth is I have a lot of opinions that many would consider unpopular. I'm Native American (Oglala Lakota) and my feelings about the importance of maintaining our languages and culture, as well as a separate cultural identity are strong. Much of these views and feelings play out in the stories I write, and I've been accused of being "opinionated" by others, including a reviewer of one of my books. I think that when it comes to strong views, opinions, and beliefs it's important to be able to speak intelligently, and respectfully. If as a romance writer you do that, accepting the fact that not everyone is going to agree with you, then you should never be afraid to express a strong, or even less than popular opinion. The problem comes in I think when not just romance authors, but anyone expresses their opinion on a subject and then cannot accept when others disagree. When a person becomes defensive, angry, uses abusive language etc. because others don't agree with their opinion then this is what can drive off readers.

Anyway, just an interesting footnote to being a romance writer that I thought I would share my thoughts on.

New Reviews up at Coffee Time...

I have some new reviews posted at Coffee Time Romance. I don't generally post those here, but I thought it might be fun for some of my readers to see what I've been reading lately. After all we authors like to read too!

So, check out my current reviews and see what I've been reading!

Mercury's War by Lora Leigh
Intimate Traitors by Astrid Amara
Barbariansof Malka by Justus Roux
Night Fall by Cherry Adair
Somebody'sWatching by Veronica Blaque

Update on Free Romance Fiction...

As most know who've been following this blog I've been helping with a new website called Free Romance Fiction.com. Originally we decided we were going to have a deadline of September 30, 2008 for submissions that received a month of free premium advertising. However, we've moved up that deadline to October 31, 2008, so if you are also a published romance author and you're looking for a way to get the word out about your books this is a prime opportunity. You can check out our guidelines here. If you turn in a story by midnight on October 31, 2008, you'll get a free month of premium advertising with the cover for your latest release on our front page!

Don't have a story to submit right now? No problem, we have really reasonable advertising rates. $25 gets you three months of premium advertising, with either a static banner or cover slot, or $10 for one month. The other pages are even less, you can check out our rates here.

Don't forget to check out the free reads we already have available in the Historical and Paranormal sections!