Essays & Musings
What We’ve Been Thinking About
Thoughts on books, reading, culture, and the literary life.
the ask@AAR: What do AAR readers owe the authors we read?
October 9, 2020This year, I have gotten more emails from authors and publishers unhappy about negative reviews and/or comment threads here at AAR than I have in the previous five years. It’s…
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Romance Reading Quiz answers: Part Three
October 8, 2020We asked you what the worst romance novel you’ve read this year is and, with a few exceptions, you all nominated different reads that didn’t work for you. Several…
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Romance Reading Quiz answers: Part Two
October 7, 2020Today, we’re sharing the answers from the second question on this week’s reading quiz: Who is, currently, your favorite romance author? You had lots of choices but a few authors…
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Romance Reading Quiz answers: Part One
October 6, 2020Whoa! Over 100 of you filled out yesterday’s quiz on your romance reading! You go! I’ll be sharing your responses over the next week. Here are your choices for: Out…
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It’s Monday and we have questions!
October 5, 2020Happy Monday! We thought it would be fun to do a little survey–we’ll share the results this week! Go!
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the ask@AAR: How’s the discussion here working out for you?
October 2, 2020One of the great joys of 2020 has been the tenor, complexity, and abundance of the conversations here at AAR. We’ve had so many excellent, interesting, and, yes, feisty discussions…
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the ask@AAR: What romance takes you to a far away place?
September 25, 2020I’ve just finished my annual re-read of Meredith Duran’s debut The Duke of Shadows. The first part is set in India during the ill-fated rebellion of 1857. The rebellion began…
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the ask@AAR: What American romances have given you a strong sense of place?
September 18, 2020Right now, three of my four children are driving across America, taking ten days to go from the East Coast to the West. One of them is moving to take…
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the ask@AAR: How do you feel about politics in fiction?
September 11, 2020I just finished reading two books, Maria Vale’s Season of the Wolf and Carl Hiaasen’s Squeeze Me. Both made me think about the role of politics in fiction. In Vale’s…
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Inspire desire with ‘the good bits’ from great books By Siobhan Fitzgerald, co-founder, thegoodbits.com
September 9, 2020Romance readers have long known the power of the erotic to awaken desire—but for the uninitiated it can be a shock. Imagine reading, or listening to, Sierra Simone’s Priest for…
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Wolves, the Wild, and the Other: An Interview (and giveaway) with Maria Vale
September 8, 2020I’m not drawn usually to shapeshifter stories but the rave reviews at AAR for Maria Vale’s series, The Legend of All Wolves, convinced me to read book one, The Last…
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Keeping Time: a Guest Post by Alexandra Y. Caluen
September 6, 2020There’s a group on Facebook for self-published authors that I follow, and recently there was a discussion about a crowd of Amazon reviewers who piled on to criticize an author…
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