The Mac Arrives

The Mac arrives in a plain brown box,
brought to the door by a stranger
in uniform.

I slit the side.  It has paper triangles at each corner, tough and smooth, like playground equipment for juvenile pixies. 

I slide it out.


This is when the cat comes to help.
"You have a computer that is not full of cat hair," says the cat.  "I can fix that."

"Thank you," says I.

"Think nothing of it," says the cat.

The Macbook comes sitting on a soft cushiony black pad, with black and white things about it.

 





It's wrapped in a layer of thin plastic, which I remove, being handy that way.

The cat helps.

For a while I try to open the computer from the back, wrong way round.

"Hmmm . . ."  hmmms I to myself.  "I know this has a magnetic lock, but that is a very strong magnetic lock.

Eventually, I get it right.

and take the keyboard protection off.

Hello, Mac, says I.

Technical Topic -- Use of Images, Public Domain and Copyright

This is somewhat an extension of the post on Art and Image Resources.  It's talking about using the images on your blog.



Preface

Let me preface everything below by saying, 'I Am Not a Lawyer'. 

I am an enthusiastic supporter of Intellectual Property rights since this is how I earn my bread, so I'm not going to suggest anybody go violating copyright. 

Finally, I believe an artist has a moral and ethical right to control the sale of her own work.
I feel about cybertheft the way my chicken-keeping friend feels about foxes,
but without the gun.


Having finished all that prefacing, I'll do some backstory.
(If this were a work of fiction I would have lost all the readers long since.)

What is Public Domain?

Artwork and writing and Intellectual Property of every kind falls into two legal categories --

1.  -- work that is protected by copyright. 
That is -- somebody has rights on how the work gets used.

2.  -- work in the Public Domain. 
Nobody has rights to say how it gets used. 
And the artist is most likely dead.

What's in the Public Domain?

In a rather large nutshell,
in the United States,
if the picture or writing was published before 1923 it's in the Public Domain.

You can find information about Public Domain at the authoritative and well-written Stanford and Cornell sites.  You want details about in-or-out of copyright?  See here.

I give a site for international law way down at the bottom of the page, but those are deep waters in which I do not swim or even float on a lilo.


Use of COPYRIGHTED Images

Copyright images can be put on your blog

if:

-- You buy rights to use the image.  There are sites that sell all kinds of stock images.  Ummm ...  here.  here.  here.  Sometimes this doesn't even cost much. Or,   

-- You get permission from the holder of the copyright.  When I write for permission, I've found blogs and commercial sites come back about half the time saying I can use their images.  They want me to attribute and put up a link, which I am glad to do. Or,


-- The works are licensed under Creative Commons -- see the wiki here  (thank you Larry Lessig, Hal Abelson, and Eric Eldred.) -- which means you can use them under specific conditions.  Use requires attribution for many of these.  You add it in small print in a caption or at the bottom of the blog. 

You can copy creative commons icons here.  Or,

-- Your use is 'Fair Use' alllowed under provisions of the Copyright Law.  When it comes to artwork, 'Fair Use' is pretty stringently defined by the court. See Section Two here. 

From a bloggers' point of view, Fair Use of images is likely to be (a)  transforming the image to a new artwork, (b) using low resolution thumbnail views to talk about the art for non-commercial scholarly or review purposes.  Court cases have held that thumbnails are so small and graphically inferior that they do not compete with use of images by the copyright holder. Or,
 
-- The work has been placed deliberately in the Public Domain.
Copyright holders can place images on sites that allow unrestricted download and use. Or,

-- It is a work produced by an agency of the U.S. Government.  These are copyright to the U.S. Government and placed in the public domain.  (However, works produced by Federal contractors or under Federal grants are not necessarily in the public domain.) 


Use of Public Domain images

You can use exact reproductions of images of Public Domain artworks any way you want, including commercial and derivative use.

Wait -- 

Computer files of Public Domain images can be used?
Even those from private individuals?
Even those from museums?

Yes.


A simple, straightforward copy of a Public Domain painting or print can be used any old way you want.


Taking a picture of the Mona Lisa doesn't give you any rights to the Intellectual Property that is the Mona Lisa.

Owning the Mona Lisa doesn't give you Intellectual Property Rights either.

The ownership of the copy of a visual work, whether it is a painting, print, photograph, video recording, or .jpg file is distinct from the ownership of the Intellectual Property Rights.
Owning the physical work does not entitle one to the intangible intellectual property.

Photographing a work and creating a computer file of the two-dimensional visual image does not necessarily produce a copyrightable product.  Making 'slavish copies' of works of art may require both skill and effort, but there is no spark of originality which would make the reproduction copyrightable.  Indeed, the point of the exercise is to reproduce the works with great fidelity.

One way to think about the rights you acquire by making a copy is to compare it to Intellectual Property Rights to written works.  If I quote War and Peace on my blog and move a few commas around, I do not then have the right to tell other people how they can use that novel.  Even if I prove they copied it from my blog, I have not somehow generated rights to War and Peace just because -- hey, look, I'm so clever -- I copied it.


But the Museum site says I can't use the images. 

In the comment trail of the post on Art Resources, the Excellent Annie writes, in part:

************

. . .  If the painting or whatever is owned by a museum or is in the hands of a private collector, permission for its use may be and probably is required.

. . . 

the reality is that institutions and private collectors have leverage here if only because individuals and publishers are not willing to cough up the legal fees required to challenge their assertion of . . . [reproduction rights].

********
  
Which is a good and careful approach for a publisher of print works to take -- and something to think about if you're planning to add illustrations to your manuscript.

But.

Museums, (may their shadow never grow less,) are as fallible as the rest of us.  They give in to temptation and attempt to scoop up rights to which they have no shadow of a moral or legal entitlement.

For a summary of why they have no legal entitlement, see Public Domain Art in an Age of Easier Mechanical Reproducibility here. 


I see no reason for bloggers to encourage a wholesale rights grab by private and institutional holders of the world's art heritage.

Will you get in trouble if you download a copy of Innocence Preferring Love to Wealth by Pierre Proudhon, currently in the Hermitage Museum?
I don't think a blogger has to worry about this.  

It would be a poor and shabby world if bloggers were intimidated into giving up their rights to use Public Domain images.


What about the museum images of pots and swords and drinking cups?
 
Taking a photo of a drinking cup is a creative act.  The picture of the drinking cup is copyright, even though the cup may be from 1599.

So --
Still Life with Drinking Cup painted in 1599 -- Public Domain.
1965 photo of 1599 drinking cup in the museum collection --  copyrighted.

Copyrighted images in a museum collection should only be used with permissions of the museum.  The museum's restriction on the use of their copyrighted images is found in the small print someplace on the site.


What About Works physically in Other Countries?  Are they Public Domain?

Is an artwork painted by an Italian living in Russia in 1896, sold in Germany, now displayed in Abu Dhabi, owned by a Brazilian conglomerate, posted on a website hosted in Switzerland whose owner is physically located in France, and downloaded in Hawaii
in the Public Domain?

Look.  Let's just not go there.
 
My rule of thumb is that if it's before 1900 it's probably not copyright anywhere.  Information on this international law is here, but I do not delve.

Art and Image Resources

Here's a list of places to find high quality, public domain images of historical costume, settings and objects.  I'm mostly interested in 1750 to 1830, so these will be best represented  

[ETA  -- now has both links and the URL printed out.]

Big Sites


Victoria and Albert Museum (allows use of museum images for noncommercial personal use.)
http://collections.vam.ac.uk/


Web Gallery of Art (These are all public domain.)
http://www.wga.hu/index1.html

Art Renewal (All public domain)
http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/Philosophy/AngelSpeech/angelspeech.php


The Artchive (These are all public domain, I think.  Browse by artist and title.  Get largest image by clicking to select, click on the blue line that says 'To order".  Then click on the painting.  Image has watermark.)
http://www.artchive.com/web_gallery/


The Louvre -- Virtual Visit (Groups images by time, place, and artistic school)
http://cartelen.louvre.fr/cartelen/visite?srv=col_frame

The Louvre -- Search the Collection (Type a word into the search box)
http://cartelen.louvre.fr/cartelen/visite?srv=crt_frm_rs&langue=en&initCritere=true

Base Joconde (Searches all the museums of France.  This is in French, so use babelfish for the search term.  Type search term into the box on the lower right and tick avec image.) 
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/documentation/joconde/fr/pres.htm


New York Public Library Digital Image Collection
(You can limit this by date.  See the lower part of the search parameters.) 
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgadvsearch.cfm

Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met approves scholarly, noncommercial use with attribution and link to Met.)
http://www.metmuseum.org/works_of_art/collection_database/

Flickr  (On the bottom of the form, click to search creative commons photos only.  These CC images must be attributed.)
http://www.flickr.com/search/advanced/?

(You can copy creative commons icons here.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_icons)

Hermitage Museum (Does not expressly allow scholarly posting, but many are public domain.  Images said to be invisibly watermarked.)
http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/fcgi-bin/db2www/advanced.mac/step1?selLang=English

The British Museum (Approves noncommercial scholarly uses.  Mark images copyright British Museum)
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database.aspx


Boston Museum of Fine Arts
http://www.mfa.org/search/collections

National Portrait Gallery  (Can be searched by date to find public domain.)
http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/advanced-search.php

Brighton Museum 
http://searchcollections.brighton-hove-rpml.org.uk/

Yale  (250,000 images on line, all expressly free for use.)
http://discover.odai.yale.edu/ydc/Search/Results?lookfor=&type=allfields&filter%255B%255D=resource_facet%253A%2522Resource%20available%20online%2522

Yale Center for British Art
http://britishart.yale.edu/collections/search
With its cool search engine and many public domain images.c

Wikipedia  (All the images on Wikipedia are either Public Domain or have been placed in all-use, non-attribution Creative Commons or equivalent.  When you search a topic, check the bottom of the page for a notice saying 'Wikimedia Commons has media related to . . . '.   To specifically search Wikimedia, the entry page is here.  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Pictures_and_images )

British Paintings Online
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/
There are over 200,000 of them.  Just wonderful. 


Web Gallery of Art  (Again, these images are public domain)
I had just a terrible time finding the 'search' feature.  Go to Gallery and the search tab is at the bottom of the page.  Not a bad search engine once you find it.
http://allart.biz/


Art.com  This is a commercial site, beautifully searchable by subject.  Many are Public Domain, but a good many are copyright, so you have to use common sense. If possible, search here to find the works, then find the image at a site with better resolution. 
http://www.art.com/


Smaller Sites

The Noel Collection (Allows use of images with acknowledgement of source and a link back) http://jamessmithnoelcollection.org 
The page is here. 

Brooklyn Museum (Non-commercial use of images permitted, with attribution, as Creative Commons.  Yeah Brooklyn!)
http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/search/?advanced

The Tate   (No explicit permission for image use for scholarly purposes, but many images are public domain.  Images tend to be poor quality.)
http://www.tate.org.uk/collection/

The National Trust Museum of the U.K.  (The museum forbids use without licensing.  Images tend to be small and poor quality.  They have some public domain images.)
http://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/

Olga's Gallery (Russian oriented)
http://www.abcgallery.com/

Crocker Art Gallery (Only about 500 items.  Strong on California.)
http://www.digitalcrocker.org/DCG/main.php

Tufts Bolles Print Collection (Not indexed or searchable that I can see.  Try it out to see if it matches your interests.)
http://dl.tufts.edu/view_collection.jsp?pid=tufts:UA069.006.DO.MS004&page=1&cmodel=info:fedora/cm:Image.4DS:::info:fedora/cm:Image.3DS&sel=image

LACMA, (wide range of European and American artworks.  Searchable.) the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, has a goodly number of searchable images.   The search engine includes a parameter for selecting date.  Many public domain images.
http://collections.lacma.org/
 
Greypony  (Mainly C18 and C19.)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/12946229@N05/



Scholar's Resource  (Small images only, but it says where the site got them so most can be tracked down in larger format.)
http://www.scholarsresource.com/browse/classification/1?page=1

Romantic Query Letter (Not indexed.  Cool pictures.)
http://theromanticqueryletter.blogspot.com/

Getty Images  (On the advanced search page, click 'Creative stock images' and 'All royalty-free collections'.  Each image has release information below the image.  Read the license agreement.)
http://www.gettyimages.com/Search/AdvancedSearch.aspx
Similar to Getty is Diomedia here.   There are other stock image collections as well.

Old Paint Now here. (Searchable for keyword in box at upper left.  Searchable by date on left sidebar.  Some are not public domain.)
http://oldpainting.blogspot.com/
http://oldpainting.tumblr.com/

The Blue Lantern (Searchable for keyword in box at upper left.)
http://thebluelantern.blogspot.com/

Japonisme (Searchable for keyword in box at upper left.  Original photos are copyright to site.  Prints are copyright as per date of creation.  Many are public domain.)
http://lotusgreenfotos.blogspot.com/

Res Obscura (Another small blog of interesting Public Domain images.)
http://resobscura.blogspot.com/

Pre Raphaelite Art   (Searchable for keyword in box far at lower left.  These are old enough to be public domain.)
http://preraphaelitepaintings.blogspot.com/

Art Experts (A wide and interesting collection, searchable only by artist's name.  But LOTS of minor artists.)
http://www.artexpertswebsite.com/pages/artists.php

100 Years of Illustration (Vintage magazine covers and Adverts.  I'm assuming these are all pub dom on the site.)
http://giam.typepad.com/100_years_of_illustration/

National Education Network (These images are for educational use.  Interpreted broadly, this should include blogging on historical topics.)
http://gallery.e2bn.org/search.php

National Gallery of Australia  (search by keywords.  Set for list+image.  No express permission for scholarly use, but many are public dom.)
http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/

National Gallery of Ireland (Search by artist or date of artwork.)
http://onlinecollection.nationalgallery.ie/search/advanced/Objects;jsessionid=07866704D872FEF8832F34044A5D0F14?t:state:flow=696c0767-314f-4274-86ce-85f48b6e642a

Museum of the City of New York  (Lovely powerful search engine.  See the 'rights&reproductions tab at the top. Though they attempt to restrict use of public domain work, they have no right to do so.)
http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=MNY_HomePage#

Powerhouse Museum Collection  (Many creative commons images, but you have to check each image.)
http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/

Kunst Historisches Museum (This is German, so use babelfish to translate your search term.  No express permission for scholarly use, but many are public dom.)
http://bilddatenbank.khm.at/

Henry Luce Center for the Study of American Culture
(New York Historical Society's eMuseum.  No express permission for scholarly use, but many images are public dom.)
http://emuseum.nyhistory.org/code/emuseum.asp?style=Browse&currentrecord=1&newprofile=objects&newpage=search_basic&newvalues=1

Canadian Museum of Civilization    (No express permission for scholarly use, but many are public dom.)
http://collections.civilization.ca/public/pages/cmccpublic/emupublic/AdvQuery.php?lang=0

Musee McCord  or here on Flickr.  (Images may be used for educational purposes under the terms of use.)
http://www.mccord-museum.qc.ca/en/keys/collections/
or
http://www.flickr.com/photos/MuseeMcCordMuseum/

The Winterthur Collection  (No express permission for scholarly use. A few are public domain.)
http://museumcollection.winterthur.org/

Royal Ontario Museum  (No express permission for scholarly use, but many are public dom.)
http://images.rom.on.ca/public/index.php?function=home&sid=&ccid=

Anne Brown Military Collection  (Collection of military images, many pub dom.) 
http://dl.lib.brown.edu/catalog/catalog.php?verb=search&task=setup&colid=13&type=basic

The Athanaeum (Should be public domain.  Searchable.)
http://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/

Dobedobedo (Random but interesting.)
http://www.stumbleupon.com/stumbler/dobedobedo/all/

Madame Guillotine  (Women's C18 clothing.  All pub dom.)
http://madameguillotine.org.uk/

Victorian and Edwardian Paintings (Public Domain paintings and photos. )
http://goldenagepaintings.blogspot.com/

Creative Spaces (Searches several British museum data bases at once.  The individual sites have more thorough search engines.)
http://vna.nmolp.org/creativespaces/?page=home

Geograph Britain and Ireland These photos of British Isles places -- and many of them are just lovely -- are Creative Commons.
http://www.geograph.org.uk/

BibliOdyssey (Great images from old books and prints, almost all public domain.)
http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/ 

Do you know other collections of historically interesting images?
Please share.

Boxsitting

Boxsitting

Joanna here, pondering that puzzling phenomenon of the holiday season -- boxsitting.
The affinity of cats for boxes remains one of the great evolutionary mysteries.  What possible competitive advantage does a small predator gain from fitting into a box? 

Science is baffled.

and we continue  here . . .

Barnes and Noble Picks of 2010

The Barnes and Noble Romance Blog has listed a bang-up strong set of books for favorites of 2010.

And me.  Me.  mememememe.
Oh wow.

What a lineup of strong heroines and exciting adventure.   Paranormal and Romantic Suspense and one Historical Romance.



1.    Lover Mine by J.R. Ward
2.    Deadly Fear by Cynthia Eden
3.    The Darkest Hour by Maya Banks
4.    The Forbidden Rose by Joanna Bourne
5.    Not Knowing Jack by K.A. Mitchell
6.    Blood Spells by Jessica Andersen
7.    Stormwalker by Allyson James
8.    Life After Joe by Harper Fox
9.    Indulgence in Death by J.D. Robb
10.  Resistance by L.M. Turner
11.  Dark Peril by Christine Feehan
12.  The Search by Nora Roberts
13.  Archangel’s Kiss by Nalini Singh
14.  Ruthless Game by Christine Feehan


I've linked to the paperbacks, where available, but these are all also in nookbook format.

More great books of 2010

Annie, in the comment trail, notes that Forbidden Rose is listed at Cultural Gutter, here, (an insightful and interesting blog, btw, which I'd point folks to even if they didn't like Forbidden Rose,) as one of their best books read in 2010.

Isn't that wonderful?  I don't know what to say. I don't recognize myself as the person on a list like this.

So I'll just point out all the great books I'm keeping company with and how much I like them.  That is very easy for me to do. 

Mary Balogh, A Secret Affair*
Joanna Bourne, The Forbidden Rose *g*
Loretta Chase, Last Night’s Scandal  *
Jennifer Crusie, The Cinderella Deal  *
Eileen Dreyer, Barely a Lady
Elizabeth Hoyt, Wicked Intentions *
Julie James, Something About You
Lisa Kleypas, Love in the Afternoon *
Nora Roberts, The Search
Sharon Shinn, Troubled Waters

I've read the ones with *.

They are wonderful books that I recommend wholeheartedly.   I read the Crusie book when it first came out.  I love all her work.  But it's been a while and I've forgotten the details.  I'll have to dig out my old copy or buy a new one and enjoy it all over again.

The Dreyer book is on my TBR shelf already, just jittering in place with impatience.  I'm going to read it the minute I finish this manuscript I'm working on.
The NR book I haven't bought yet, but will.  There's an Indie bookstore in town with a copy waiting for me.

The other two are a contemp and a paranormal.  I'm slower to pick up these genres, but I'll take steps to get them now that they've been recommended.

I am going to take this opportunity to say how glad I am for a surname that begins with 'B'.  It puts me close to the top of alphabetic lists which makes me feel important.
My maiden name, Watkins, left me at the bottom of all those lists.  Always in the back of the class.

Christmas pics

Let me indulge myself in Christmas pics.

Here is our little tree.

The Resident Kid  and I go tromping into the woods to cut it down, so it tends to get smaller every year as I grow less and less enthusiastic about toting a Big Tree back to the car.
You may see various homemade decorations prominent upon it.

The big thing hanging behind it is a gilim, which is a woven tapistry rug.  This one comes from the hills up near the Caspian sea.  There are lots of funny, stiff little animals woven into it.

Continuing to indulge myself . . . (if I can't indulge myself on my own blog, where can I?)

This is the central portion of a creche that's spread out all along the mantlepiece.
Major players here. 

We got all kinds of animals in the creche, some of them oddly small or large in comparison with the others.  A bunch of these are hand-carved and painted.
The animal front and center, among all those chickens and ducks, is -- I think -- a hedgehog.

Behind the hedgehog there's a little carved dog and a pair of cats hugging each other way in back.  We got those someplace when I was a kid, but I don't remember where.  They are not terribly cat-like cats, but they're the only cats we got and I like cats, so they get to go in close.
I think the weird turquoise-coloured goose all contorted up in the back came home from China during WWII.

The guy with the basket of eggs, (what is a chicken farmer called?  A chickherd?)  and the shepherd with his five or six sheep,
(you can't see him because he's out of the picture to the left,) 
get to be closer to the manger than the Three Kings.
We're very egalitarian in our creche.

Procrastinators . . . You know who you are.

It's December 22.

There are still THREE people to buy presents for.

(a) Your Cousin Sylvia, aka 'Translucent', the once and future flowerchild, lives in Bend, Oregon;
(b) Your brother Neiman, the oil geologist who your mother keeps reminding you earns such a good living, is in Yellow Knife, Northwest Territory;
(c) and in New York City, your old friend Stephanie continues to be an actress-model and general all-round flake.

You have not sent them presents yet.
AAAAARRRGGGHH!

Have I got a deal for you.

Remember I said, The Spymaster's Lady was coming in audio book?

It didn't just come out in audio book.
It came out in WONDERFUL audiobook.

The reader -- Kristin Potter -- is just great.  The audiobook is rated at 4.5 which is phenom!  

You can hear a sample here or here. 
And here's a review of the audiobook at Amazon.

You can buy the audiobook here,  here, and  here,


You're allowed to download the audiobook to four computers and three devices.


I should also remind you that your Cousin Mary has a kobo (or nook,) (or a kindle,) and you can give any of my books as a gift direct to her kobo, (or nook,) (or kindle.)  Here, (or  Here,)  (or  Here,) tells you how to do it.

There.  Panic Holiday gift-giving made easy.

Win books

Your chance to win some books.


The Word Wenches will be giving away a Word Wenches Library on January 1st  2011.  

 One book by each of the Wenches -- Jo Beverley, Nicola Cornick, Cara Elliott/Andrea Pickens, Anne Gracie, Susan Fraser King/Sarah Gabriel, Mary Jo Putney, Patricia Rice, and me. 


All you have to do is comment on a December blog post at Word Wenches.  Comment more than once for more chances to win.

Word Wenches is here.

Linking to query advice

Are you about to query?

I'm offering some links to

JM Tohine's blog post on "The Biggest Mistakes Writer's Make When Querying Agents'.  Here.

To Miss Snark's blog.  Here.  Which is a big ol' banquet of information you can return to again and again.

Nathan Bransford's advice on a couple few topics.  Here.  Here. Here. and Here.

And  Dystel & Goderich's very sensible 'It's Not About the Details' post.  Here.

I hope some of this will help you. 

My own advice:  What matters is the manuscript.  Only that.

The rest is sound and fury, signifying nothing.  You get the manuscript right and somebody will buy it.

Nothing I like better than . . .

Nothing I like better than Book Pimping.
Except bragging.

This is a case where I can do both.

Sarah Wendell of Smart Bitches does the Romance blog at Kirkus Reviews.  Here is her Best of 2010 list.    Here.

I'm posting it in case you have been hiding out in Serbia in a cave, meditating, and you somehow missed it.


Last Night’s Scandal by Loretta Chase (Avon, 2010)
Hot Finish by Erin McCarthy (Berkley, 2010)
The Summer of You by Kate Noble (Berkley, 2010)
Something About You by Julie James (Berkley, 2010)
Maybe This Time by Jennifer Crusie (St Martin’s, 2010)
Exclusively Yours by Shannon Stacey (Carina Press, 2010)
Iron Duke by Meljean Brook (Berkley, 2010)
Butterfly Swords by Jeannie Lin (Harlequin, 2010)
His at Night by Sherry Thomas (Bantam, 2010)
Raised by Wolves by Jennifer Lynn Barnes (EgmontUSA, 2010)
What the Librarian Did by Karina Bliss (Harlequin, 2010)
Archangel’s Kiss by Nalini Singh (Berkley, 2010)
Scoundrel by Zoe Archer (Zebra/Kensington, 2010)
All I Ever Wanted by Kristan Higgins (HQN, 2010)
Happy Ever After by Nora Roberts (Berkley, 2010)
Bayou Moon by Ilona Andrews (Ace, 2010)
The Forbidden Rose by Joanna Bourne (Berkley, 2010)
Nine Rules to Break when Romancing a Rake by Sarah MacLean (Avon, 2010)
Naked Edge by Pamela Clare (Berkley, 2010)
Strawberries for Dessert by Marie Sexton (Dreamspinner, 2010)
Seven Nights to Forever by Evangeline Collins (Berkley, 2010)

I'm going to make a couple few comments.

1.  The first is that I'm on it.  See!  Lookit!!
Isn't that ultimate cool?

2.  We got books on this list from publishers who are not the New York Usuals.  Very interesting.

3. We got four books from various arms of HQN.  Category don't get no respect from reviewers and it's nice to see a list with HQN authors on it since HQN sells more books than Aunt Minnie has cats and always holds big juicy numbers at Bookscan.

4.  About half these books are from a single publisher -- Berkley --which happens to be my publisher.  So congratulations Berkley, you are doing something right.

I suspect this has to do with publishing innovative stuff.

5. I've read:

Last Night’s Scandal,
The Summer of You,
Butterfly Swords,
His at Night.

These four are just excellent and I recommend them to you.

I haven't read more than four because I mostly can't read Romance while I'm writing.    It messes with my head.
I have another four of these 20 in my tbr pile.

I've held off buying the Berkley books in the hopes I can get free -- and signed -- copies at RWA National.  (. . .  sorry about that.)

So there we go.  New authors and old favorites.  Wonderful books.  Go buy some.

Win Some Books . . .

Your chance to win a complete Word Wenches library.  Here.

Books from Jo Beverley, Mary Jo Putney, Patricia Rice, Anne Gracie, Susan Fraser King, Patricia Rice, Cara Elliott, and me. 

AAR Top 100 Romances . . . and ME

I am so delighted.  So very floating around the Ceiling.

All About Romance has just published their list of 100 favorite Romances.

I'm on the list.

See it here. Or try here.

These are books readers loved.  These are the memorable books.  The keepers.  Books from 1813 or 1991 or 2010.  Historical, Paranormal, Contemporary, and Romantic Suspense.  Most of the authors are Best Sellers, but there are midlist authors on the list too.

Interestingly, I'm counting eight 'first books' out of the hundred.  (I'm going to include my own Spymaster's Lady in there too, even if it's cheating.)
I could be wrong, Lord knows, but I think these are all first books:

The Duke of Shadows , by Meredith Duran
Passion by Lisa Valdez
Private Arrangements   by Sherry Thomas
Whitney My Love  by Judith McNaught
Jane Eyre  by Charlotte Bronte
The Raven Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt
The Spymaster's Lady  by Joanna Bourne
Outlander  by Diana Gabaldon


(ETA to add a book.  Thanks to Scorpio M who pointed out the Hoyt, which I had missed.)
(ETA yet again.  To remove a book.  Jane Austen's first published work was Sense and Sensibility, not P&P.  Bad jo!  Bad, bad jo!) 

This is just a hilluvalotta first books.
I have decided to call this the "First Book Effect".

I've read 85 of 100 -- which is to say I don't read much Romantic suspense or Paranormal but I've read all the others.  I can testify that the ones I've read are powerful romantic works. If you want to recommend Romance to a friend, put forward any of these books.

If you haven't read them yourself, you might go ahead and do so.

Sipping Tea -- Georgian Style

Is there no Latin word for Tea?  Upon my soul, if I had known that I would have let the vulgar stuff alone.
        Hilaire Belloc

No Latin for tea because tea didn't travel the silk roads all the way to the west.  In Roman times, tea was an entirely Chinese secret.  Tea only made it to Europe about 1600, the Dutch and the Portuguese carrying it home along with the other spoils of oriental trade.
 
It was the Age of Enlightenment. 
The Age of Exploration.  
The Age of Discovery. 
Europeans needed more than ale to fortify them for these earthshaking events.  They took to tea, coffee and chocolate like ducks to watercress.  
More at Word Wenches, here.

Library Journal. Oh My.

Library Journal has listed Forbidden Rose as one of its Best Genre Books of 2010.  Here.

I am delighted and very, very honored.  

 I don't even know what to say.

Kristin Ramsdell, who works with Romance genre for Library Journal, puts Forbidden Rose in the most wonderful company.  Lookit:

 

(me) Bourne, Joanna. The Forbidden Rose. Berkley Sensation: Penguin Group (USA). ISBN 9780425235614. pap. $7.99.

From a burned-out chateau in the French countryside to the treacherous, violent streets of revolutionary Paris, this superbly plotted adventure pairs up an English spy and a French aristocrat. (LJ 6/15/10)  Here.

Brockway, Connie. The Golden Season. Onyx: Penguin Group (USA). ISBN 9780451412836. pap. $7.99.

A peerless lady of the ton learns she is almost penniless and surreptitiously sets out to find a wealthy suitor during her last "Golden Season." This delightfully witty, deliciously sensual romance is peppered with humor and enhanced by memorable characters. (LJ 2/15/10)  Here.

Dreyer, Eileen. Barely a Lady. Forever: Grand Central. (Drake's Rakes, Bk. 1). ISBN 9780446542081. pap. $6.99.

A woman whose life was devastated five years earlier by deceit, betrayal, and divorce has her peace shattered once more when her ex-husband is found at Waterloo, wounded, suspected of treason, suffering from selective amnesia, and convinced that they are still happily married. An emotionally compelling, flawlessly crafted gem. (LJ 6/15/10) Here.

Kinsale, Laura. Lessons in French. Sourcebooks Casablanca. ISBN 9781402237010. pap. $7.99.

An aristocratic, bull-breeding heroine and a charming French émigré hero reclaim their love in this funny, whimsical, clever, and thoroughly rewarding sensual romance that is Kinsale's first appearance in the market in several years. (LJ 2/15/10) Here.

 McDonald, L.J. The Battle Sylph. Leisure: Dorchester. ISBN 9780843963007. pap. $7.99.

This stunningly creative and riveting debut novel of a young woman who escaped sacrificial murder to become the adored queen of her remarkable battle sylph is a mental and emotional delight for both fantasy and romance readers. (LJ 2/15/10) Here.

 

I've read the Kinsale, of course.  Wonderful, wonderful book.  I have already resolved to put Eileen Dreyer's on my TBR shelf.  The Brockway book sounds fabulous,  Another one I must buy. 

I wonder what the MacDonald book will be like.  It doesn't necessarily sound like a Romance, but I'll check it out.

AAR Anual Reader's Poll

Reminding everybody that the ballot for the AAR Annual Reader's Poll closes on November 15.  That's only 2 days from now.

It's here.



This is where you tell the world what Romance books you love.  This is our chance, as readers, to bring our favorites to the attention of others.


While I'm talking about AAR polls -- you might drop by the 2009 Best Book winners,  Here,  just to kind of refresh your memory. 

The 2009 overall winners were:

Best Romance

The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie, Jennifer Ashley

Honorable Mentions for Best Romance 
Not Quite a Husband, Sherry Thomas
Bound by Your Touch, Meredith Duran

You should go buy those three if for some inexplicable reason you have not.  The Best of 2009 selections continue unabated down the page.

Publisher's Weekly 'Best Books of 2010'

Publisher's Weekly gives us a list of The 100 Best Books of 2010.  Here.  As they put it:

This year we took our annual slugfest to the pub underneath our new office and came up with a list of the year's top 100 books.

Courtney Milan 'tagged' me this morning in a Facebook post saying congratulations.
I'm on that list.
With FORBIDDEN ROSE.  Here.

That's saying it's one of the 100 best books of all kinds of books.
I cannot tell you how puzzled, dazzled, and delighted I am.

Every once in a while I'll climb on my hobby horse and complain about how Romance genre gets no respect from reviewers.  I will have to eat a number of those ill-considered words.
Romance genre has FIVE books on that list.

(Two of those five Romances are from Berkley.  They're doing something right at Berkley.)

The five Romance genre books listed among the 100 Best Books of 2010 by Publisher's Weekly are:
 

The Forbidden Rose
Joanna Bourne (Berkley Sensation)
In mid-revolution France, a noblewoman and a spy are torn between wartime practicality and headstrong passion. The gripping espionage story and wry voiceovers from the heroine will win hearts.

The Iron Duke
Meljean Brook (Berkley)
Brook's fabulous steampunk tale has an iron-boned war hero and a half-Asian detective inspector matching wits and wills on airships and battleships and in smoke-choked London as England recovers from 200 years of Mongol rule.

The Heir
Grace Burrowes (Sourcebooks Casablanca)
Burrowes pulls off an improbable Regency affair between a spoiled ducal heir and a housekeeper with a secret.

Barely a Lady
Eileen Dreyer (Grand Central/Forever)
The wartime amnesia romance is as old as the hills, but RWA Hall of Famer Dreyer (aka Kathleen Korbel) makes this one work.

Trial by Desire
Courtney Milan (HQN)
Modern readers will be as intrigued by the Victorian-era political issues as they are by the central story of a man trying to reconnect with the wife he abandoned.

from Publisher's Weekly, quoted under Fair Use.


Two of those are already set aside in my mammoth TBR pile, waiting till I finish the manuscript.  I will zip out and buy the other two.



ETA:

Rose Fox, over at PW's Genreville, gives us an insider look at the process of selection and reveals the books that nearly edged out the five 'listees'.   

More great books, says jo, rubbing her hands gleefully.

Rose Fox's comments on these other great books are:


Proof by Seduction,
Courtney Milan
A stunning debut Victorian that very nearly made the top list, outclassed only by its sequel. 

Whisper of Scandal,
Nicola Cornick
An adventure story wrapped around a heartbreaking tale of a woman rendered barren by her husband’s beatings. 

Last Night’s Scandal,
Loretta Chase:

The hilarious and adorable story of two rapscallions renovating a haunted Scottish castle. 

Marry Me,
Jo Goodman:
A moving 19th century American romance with tons of interesting period medical detail.


Warrior/Scoundrel/Rebel
Zoë Archer’s
Cranks up the Indiana Jones–style adventure to 11 and then piles on the sexy heat.

Welcome to Harmony
Jodi Thomas
Contemporary Western, is a really lovely meditation on what it means to be family.

No Chance,
Christy Reece
series kickoff  is an exemplary romantic suspense novel with a fabulous self-saving heroine.

Dragged in from Facebook

Me, (on Facebook) :  My computer is sick.  Sick.  Sick.  Sick.

If desperation were a cup, mine would be full up to the top and brimming over.

You know how writers go into a quiet room and create stuff and maybe put their feet up and consider plotting over a cup of strong tea. . . .
 

Me.  Not so much.
I just think about the damned nightmare computer.

I will limp it along till January when the deadline and the editor changes will be done.

In January I am going to give serious thought to getting a Mac. I am weary beyond words of every chapter feeling like a sandcastle built below the tideline

Romantic Times 2010 Reviewer's Choice Contest

Madly beating my own drum --

My novel, Forbidden Rose, has been nommed by RT in the 2010 Annual Reviewer's Choice Contest, 'Historical Romantic Adventure' category.

Fellow WordWench Jo Beverly, (The Secret Duke,) is nominated for Best British Isle and WordWench Pat Rice, (The Wicked Wyckerly,) under Historical Love and Laughter.


I cannot begin to list the wonderful books nominated.  I'd link to the noms -- it's just a shopping list of what to buy -- but I don't know where to find it on the net.

Thai Cover

I'm back from the Surrey International Writer's Conference.  There's notes on it by other folks here.  I'm too desperately harassed to contribute, but as you can see, folks loved it.


'What a blast,' is my comment.

Am up to my gills in the manuscript and will be very very silent here on the blog for at least a month.

Alert fellow RWA member May, whom I met at RWA National last year, writes to tell me the Thai edition of Spymaster's Lady is about to be released.  

Pretty cover, isn't it?  There seems to be a white rose and a pink peony and something central that might possibly be a silver butterfly.
Or not.

Also a threatening shadow.

It says 'Award' which is either about the book itself or the name of the Romance line.

The theme may be a bit obscure, but I do like flowers.

ETA:  Excellent reader May, in the comment trail says:

The "Award" in the cover means that your book received the award, which in this case is from All About Romance.  The Thai title actually translated as The Spymaster's Lady.

That is very interesting.

What a pity it isn't illegal . . . Regency Ice Cream

Ice cream is exquisite. 
What a pity it isn't illegal. 
~Voltaire

 
There's a certain perversity to Mother Nature.
Take  strawberry ice cream. 
Here we have an obvious Good Thing.  Combine fresh strawberries, something sweet, and milk.  Cradle the mixture in ice and harden it. 
Voilà -- you're going to end up with something tasty.



But it's not so straightforward.

Here, at Word Wenches

Required reading

This isn't great books on the shelf right now that you should go out and buy,
because I am not reading anything. 
I'm sitting around, emo-ing and whinging about deadline.

This is a list of websites for folks who want to write and sell their work.


If you read the archives of these blogs, the whole 'New York publishing world archetype' will take form in your mind.  You can become one with the publishing process.
This is like the Navajo hunter visualizing his prey before he hunts.


Miss Snark here. Later here.
Pub Rants here.
Agency Gatekeeper here.
Evil Editor here.
Bookends here
Rants and Ramblings here.
Dystel & Goderich here.
Et in arcadeia here.

How many characters?

This is something I wrote elsewhere and am dragging back here, somewhat tired and shopworn, for your delectation.

How many characters in a story?


Let's say you have 90K words to play around with.  In that space, you can develop between seven and ten characters.  A dozen at the outside.

Three or four can be major actors with flaws and inconsistencies and pasts.  With POVs.  Another six or seven can fill the role of secondaries.  We see a good bit of these secondary guys.

But we end up with just these two or three cool main characters.

In all -- a dozen recognizable and developed characters. 
Not two dozen.  Not twenty.  Not even seventeen.

There's a reason movies are named 'Ocean's Eleven' or 'The Dirty Dozen', instead of Ocean's Twenty-two and The Dirty Thirty. The Guns of Navarone was a team of seven plus a villain.  How many characters perform significant action in The Great Escape?
(And that was deliberately plotted for cameos.)

If you have nothing to do some rainy weekend, you might watch these pictures and study how the screen time is allotted. It's a good lesson in handling multicharacter fiction with de-emphasized main characters.

In these movies, we do not have seventeen developed characters to keep track of. When you look carefully, it's more like eight.

How come? 


There is the Mother Cat Effect.
which I have just named.

A mother cat can count to five. This is, she's aware of five kittens in the sense that if you sneak in and take one away, she notices.  If she has six or seven kittens and you nab one, she doesn't notice.

I am not advocating the theft of kittens here. I'm trying to say that your reader has what might be called a cat-awareness of characters and this stretches to about eight or ten characters all told.

More characters than that, and they are going to just slide out of her mind and become, 'Oh. That guy who's going to blow up the hot dog stand.' 'Oh, his old girlfriend.' 'Oh, the bank manager.'

The eleventh and dozenth characters are no longer individuals. They are a moveable place in the plot. They are scenery with arms.

A writer might know and love each of their twenty or thirty people and tell them apart. If the writer was doing a sea thriller he could create two-dozen individual boats and explain this one has this sort of rigging and that one is out of Nantucket. He could give them idiosyncrasies and put memorable names on them.

But the reader, after six or eight cutters and sloops, stops building a picture. Three pages later, she couldn't match the name with the boat. He would have created something the reader doesn't 'see' and wasted his precious words and the reader's focus while doing so.

Characters are a zero sum game. After six or eight, you can add only another character by stealing reality from the ones in place.

One way we end up with excess character-age is we create a separate thread of action that does not have the POV character in it.  That action needs a whole new set of characters to run it.
We tell ourselves this is cool stuff.  Even though it happens outside the eye range of the POV characters, we must show the reader.

Might be the factory building deadly green bottles. Might be Napoleon planning the next battle.
But our MCs can't be there.

This is a job for TELL DON'T SHOW.

Feeding in information the POV character can't see is one of the technique thingums we have to conquer. (And Bloody Hard it is.) We are always trying to get this information to the reader.
But creating scenes to 'explain stuff' is almost always misguided.

The core rule that covers this is that 'scenes arise from the action of our main characters'.   Events are important because the MCs react to them.


Think about any of these thrillers with doomsday machines being built. Moonraker, True Lies, X-Men and so on.

Watch how there is always a MC, hero or villain, on screen or about to walk onscreen. We don't see the secret laboratory. We see the villain in the secret laboratory.


Look at a beautifully plot-driven book like any of Agatha Christie's.

(Count her characters, btw, in books that are deliberately plotted with a huge cast. Not twenty-two developed characters milling around. Fewer than a dozen, and those mostly stereotypes. Murder on the Orient Express. Ten Little Indians. A dozen is the outer limit.  There is a reason for this.)

Anyhow, see how the action of her books intertwines with the characters.

The body in the library does not remain isolated from the MCs. Poirot visits the library. Mrs. Marple comes to sit with the owner of the house. There is no separate thread for the excitement of that murder. As soon as humanly possible it is folded into the action of the characters. All scenery and event leads back to the hands and eyes of the MCs.


Doesn't matter how lovely the scene is, how exciting, how important . . . we have to replot to put the POV character there.

Tension doesn't happen because there's a poisonous green glowing vial on an anonymous assembly line in a mysterious factory.

Tension happens because a green glowing vial gets unpacked by the MCs twelve-year-old daughter and set on the kitchen counter.