Was Fatal Attraction's Glenn Close your typical editor?

An agent friend of mine wrote to me as follows:

“Her eyes were crystal blue and she looked at me across the table with withering candor.  ‘I just don’t think she would climax that fast,’  she said.  ‘She’s the kind of woman who needs to take it up slowly.’ Her gaze never unlocked from mine as she spoke to me.

“Had I been the brooding hero of a novel I’d have responded with a seductive rejoinder.  But I’m not the hero of a novel.  I’m a literary agent. The stunning woman opposite me was an editor, and we were discussing a sex scene in a romance novel by an author I represented. Whatever repartee I might have thought of, there was only one appropriate – if wimpy – response:  ‘I’ll discuss it with my client.’”

Exchanges like that one take place every day in the book industry, and Russell Smith, writing in the Globe and Mail about a prominent publishing executive recently caught up in a sexual harassment scandal, reminds us that the publishing business is saturated in sexuality.

“It’s an unusual industry,” Smith writes, “one dominated by highly educated and intelligent women, many of them young. Most of the high-up executives on the commercial side of publishing are still men. The literary side is female. Most of the editors-in-chief of the major publishing houses are women; most of the publicists are women; almost all the agents are women; the powerful CBC Radio programs that discuss books are hosted by women; most of the readers are women; the single powerful bookstore chain in the country is run by a woman. And it is a highly social industry, because social events promote books: Anyone who works for a publishing house must attend, as part of work, frequent evening book launches, book fairs and literary festivals, and they are all soaked in booze. So are most of the writers.

“Furthermore, if you’re involved with fiction, or even with memoir and biography, you’re discussing sex and romance the whole time – because most novels still have relationships at their core. So you spend a lot of genuine professional work time, as a straight male talking to straight females, answering questions like, ‘Why would she let him take her top off right then?’ It becomes difficult to define exactly what flirting is in this environment.”

So – why aren’t there more sex scandals in publishing?  A key reason is professionalism.  Fatal Attraction notwithstanding, lust and lechery do not mix with representing or publishing authors.  “I need these people working at their best and most relaxed,” says Smith. “They make me look good. If I made any of my colleagues nervous about talking to me or seeing me then I would only be damaging myself. They wouldn’t want to help me. So you could say it’s a selfish self-control. Hell, even a consensual relationship would be idiotic: I need my colleagues to be objective and unemotional. And I need my career more than I need the ego-boost of impressing a lady. Perhaps I’m getting old, but believe it or not, I actually value my colleagues’ professional abilities more than their beauty.”

Publishing people are commendably restrained when it comes to surrendering to sexual temptation with their professional colleagues.  Most of us are content to enjoy hot sex vicariously through the vehicle of a well crafted (what I call a Three Cold Shower) fictional sex scene.  And some people I know have confided that seeing a book they’re involved in hit the bestseller list is better than sex.

Call it weird. Call it perverse.  Call it publishing.

Read The truth about publishing: It’s full of hotties

Richard Curtis

E-Reads is in the process of reissuing a number of out of print romances by Patricia Grasso, and we’re particularly pleased about No Decent Gentleman.

Sabrina Savage has been raised to be a perfect lady. When her father dies under mysterious circumstances, she is shocked and upset, but at his funeral she meets a stranger, Adam St. Aubyn, Marquess of Stonehurst, who helps her mourn and promises to help her uncover the truth about his untimely death.

She can barely admit it to herself, though, how much a man she has never met before can stir her heart and her passions, can make her feel like she has known him all her life, can make her feel as if he is her savior. Then, at the reading of her father’s will, she learns that she has been pledged to Adam since childhood and that he had come to collect his unknown bride.

Fiercely independent of spirit, Sabrina challenges Adam to release her from their vows if she should find a more suitable match among London’s ton. But, in her heart, she cannot resist the powerful seduction of his personality. He guards his secrets as closely as he guards his heart while his gaze pierces her soul. And, unknown to her, he is as deeply stricken with love for Sabrina as she is with love for him.

Keep your eye on Grasso’s author page for more titles and formats.

RC

In Janet Dailey’s bestseller Rivals a love affair bursts into a battle between the sexes.

Flame Morgan, the high-class v-p of a San Francisco ad agency, is instantly attracted to Chance Stuart, a wealthy, powerful land developer. Chance romances her lavishly but withholds a damaging secret during their whirlwind courtship and quick marriage. Starting with the Oklahoma land rush there has been bad blood between the Stuart and Morgan clans but Chance has long desired Morgan’s Walk, a family estate that Flame has inherited. Flame believes that Chance only married her to get at Morgan’s Walk and blocks his ‘land grab.’

The story throbs with Dailey’s legendary mix of mystery, revenge, jet-set action and red-hot sex, plus Dailey’s tried and true formula for down-home color and sweet romance.

Like kick-ass heroines in a Harlequin Bombshell romance, the Romance Writers of America brass put Plan B into effect with Predator Drone speed and efficiency after floods damaged the Nashville hotel and conference facilities hosting RWA’s annual conference in July. Within days they’d transferred the venue to The Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Resort in Orlando, same dates: July 28-31.

Expressing sadness and well wishes to friends and businesses in Nashville, and the hope of returning to the Gaylord Opryland (whose lobby was sickeningly inundated), the organization’s directors said they have “made arrangements to contribute a portion of our charitable donations from the 2010 Literacy Autographing event to Nashville Adult Literacy Council.”

Personally, we were keenly looking forward to hearing some good pickin’ in Nashville, but it looks like we’re stuck with “When You Wish Upon a Star”. And drinks with authors and editors may get a little weird with children clamoring for their mommies to take them to Goofy’s Wiseacre Farm. Nevertheless, the conference must go on, and we take our hats off to RWA for snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, and doing it compassionately as well.

Richard Curtis

Colter Langston’s daughter Missy needs a mother, and Deirdre won’t do. She’s too sexy to play housewife. That’s why sweet, young Natalie Crane is so perfect. And when they are married, Colter decides he has to be honest with her about his heart: it’s cold. Natalie doesn’t know what to do–can she make him love her? Or will Deirdre lure him back into her arms? You’ll learn the answer in Fiesta San Antonio by Janet Dailey.

E-Reads carries almost sixty Janet Dailey romances. Check her author page and fill in your collection.

The Master Fiddler

Naïve Jacquie Grey thought that her life would just work itself out. But now that she’s stuck in Tombstone, Arizona without a dime, she’s beginning to rethink that strategy. Her vulnerability and gullible nature make Jacquie the perfect mark for handsome Choya Barnett, who can’t help but use her innocence to his advantage. Now that Jacquie’s body and soul are laid bare, will Choya regret his cruelty?

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The Ivory Cane

From the moment they met in the streets of San Francisco, Sabrina had mixed feelings about him. Bay Cameron was strong and noble, but insufferably rude. Moments after he saved her life, he had insulted her pride–an unforgivable crime as far as she was concerned. Sabrina Lane was blind, but she could easily see that this man brought out her most passionate impulses. She might even fall in love with him–if she could stand his company.

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In Sweet Promise, Erica Wakefield’s torrid past is behind her–she has finally escaped her self-destructive ways. She knows that she has found the perfect man: handsome, rich and completely in love with her. Forest is exactly what Erica’s millionaire father wants for his beautiful daughter. So why is this Texas spitfire still thinking about her estranged husband, Rafael de la Torres? Wasn’t the Mexican lover just a ploy to get Daddy’s attention? When Erica has to find Rafael and make him sign the divorce papers, she runs the risk that he will reignite the passion that smolders in her memory?

In Tangled Vines by Janet Dailey, elegant 90-year-old Katherine Rutledge runs her family’s Napa Valley winery. Her estranged son runs a rival winery and an alcoholic neighbor, Len Dougherty, lives on 10 acres of the Rutledge vineyard given to his family as compensation for the accidental death of his father. Meanwhile, beautiful, ambitious Kelly Douglas, a rising TV newscaster is assigned to prepare an in-depth report on the Rutledge winery, which is in negotiations to merge with a French winery. Kelly long ago escaped Dougherty, her physically abusive father and doesn’t want to go back home. Then, there’s a murder in which her father is the prime suspect while complications arise via a budding romance with Sam Rutledge, Katherine’s grandson and the manager of the Rutledge winery.

E-Reads publishes over fifty Janet Dailey novels. Visit her author page for a full selection.

A Valentine’s Day gift for Janet Dailey fans: E-Reads is happy to bring back her classic novel Aspen Gold.

Kit Masters, born and brought up on an Aspen ranch, left to pursue an acting career in Hollywood but she still possesses a strong sense of family, loyalty, and integrity and has deep ties to the land where she grew up. After ten years, she returns home to settle her father’s estate and realizes she must choose between her career and Tom Bannon, a man she has not seen for ten years, the man who broke her heart by marrying someone else—the man she still loves. Kit has gotten a golden opportunity, the lead role in a movie opposite famous actor-producer-and legendary seducer John Travis. The movie will be filming in Aspen. She meets Bannon again and they rediscover their romance even though she still feels the pain of his betrayal, while he is haunted by the memory of his dead wife. But now, Travis has begun to pursue Kit ardently.

E-Reads publishes over fifty Janet Dailey novels. Visit her author page for a full selection.

“I could write a better book than that!”

How many writing careers have started with that exclamation?

That’s just how it began for bestselling romance author Janet Dailey. The legend is that her husband Bill gazed at her and said, “Well, then, get off your behind and write one!” The book she turned out was No Quarter Asked and it launched a fabulously successful career whose terminus was the bestseller list. After too long out of print, E-Reads is happy to bring it back, both in print and e-book.

No Quarter Asked was published by Harlequin in 1974, making her the category romance giant’s first American author. She eventually wrote a total of 57 novels for Harlequin, including one set in every state of the Union. These later became known as “The Janet Dailey Americana Series.” The Daileys were instrumental in forming the Silhouette romance fiction line, for which Janet wrote 12 more titles before entering the single title field in 1979 with Touch the Wind, which marked her debut on the New York Times best seller list.

No Quarter Asked is the first of the Cord & Stacy Series which includes Fiesta San Antonio (1977) and For Bitter or Worse (1978).

To see all 57 of Janet Dailey’s early books, click here.

RC

In my haste to report the story of the Romance Writers of America’s response to the self-publishing venture launched by Harlequin Enterprises, I selected some photo illustrations that were in poor taste. I regret it and have deleted them from my postings. They were inappropriate and, I realize, belittled the grave issues that are being aired by all people of good will who are working to find a way to resolve the dispute. In particular they were offensive to women including my wife, to whom I should have listened before giving in to an unworthy impulse.

Richard Curtis