Okay. I confess. I have a googlealert on my own name. Well, on Diane Perkins, Diane Gaston—and Gerard Butler. A google alert sends a message to your email anytime something new comes up on whatever topic you select. As you can see, I’ve selected three of my favorite topics for this service!

This week Diane Gaston popped up on my googlealert email, and I discovered that my RITA winner, A Reputable Rake, is an ebook! Harlequin has bundled A Reputable Rake with Nicola Cornick’s The Rake’s Mistress and Georgina Devon’s The Rake into an ebook available for order on eHarlequin and other ebookstores such as Fictionwise. It is called Rapturous Rake Bundle.

I’m delighted to enter the ebook market! A number of years ago I saw an ebook reader that intrigued me and made me feel that there would be a strong future for books in this format. Since then the market has grown. You might even say it provided the impetus for an entirely new romance subgenre – Erotic Romace – when Ellora’s Cave burst on the scene.

Many of us would never want to give up books, the feel of them, the smell of them, the sight of them three deep in our bookcases and piled next to our beds. When I see kids playing on their Game Boys (or whatever the “in” handheld game device is now), my own young adult offspring with their new IPods, and young career men and women with their Blackberries, I think that maybe ebooks will be the preferred way of publishing books in the future.

One idea I heard was to put textbooks on electronic reading devices. What a great thing that would be! Our high school and college students, even elementary school student, would not need to carry fat backpacks. Think of all the trees we would save! And one would hope that the cost of such books would decrease. Think of the innovations one could add to textbooks — short videos, animated diagrams, sound.

Most things I’ve read on the issue of ebooks say that there is still not an affordable, user-friendly
device on which to download books. Let’s face it, the IPod screen is a little small and even that device isn’t exactly inexpensive.

I haven’t yet read an ebook, but there is one on my TBR pile. My friend Delle Jacobs‘ His Majesty The Prince of Toads (A Regency!) is my first ebook download and I’m eager to read it!

Ebooks tend to have very long shelf life so an author’s backlist is readily available and ebook publishers often publish books that don’t fit a typical print publishing niche.

So, have you read any good eBooks lately?
Do you hate the idea of eBooks or are you a little bit intrigued?

To set up a google alert of your very own, go here:
http://www.google.com/alerts?hl=en

And this is why I google Gerard Butler! Here he is on the set of 300, due for release in March!

Cheers!
Diane

Kalen’s comment on Friday about being tired of Regency spies got me to thinking.

What Regency plots are readers tired of?

One of the things that strikes terror into my heart is the idea that the Regency genre might run out of plots. For example, one of the tried and true Regency plots is the lord and the governess plot. You know, the spunky governess comes to care for the lord’s unruly children and winds up married to the lord. I love that plot. I have a whole book with such a plot in my head, but I doubt that any publisher would buy it in today’s market. Unless I could give it a great twist. Maybe not even then.

Several of my plots have been “Marriage of Convenience” plots – The Mysterious Miss M, The Wagering Widow, The Improper Wife, The Marriage Bargain. Obviously that is another plot I’m fond of. Are readers sick of that one? When I first wrote The Mysterious Miss M editors said that readers would never accept a prostitute heroine, but now it seems like there are lots of Regencies out there with prostitute or courtesan heroines. Did the readers change or were those editors simply mistaken? And was it my heroine who made that book popular or was it because I used that marriage of convenience plot?

I always wondered if the traditional Regency lines were hampered by overuse of some of the popular plots – the marriage of convenience, governess and lord, unmarried duke and the ingenue in her first season, bookish spinster and debauched rakehell. What are some others?

Ironically, though, I started reading fewer traditional regencies when they started to widen the plots into suspense, mystery, paranormal. Were other readers saturated by the “traditional” plots or did they miss them, like I did?

Presently I read very few regency-set novels, but it is because I’m afraid of contaminating my fragile muse. I’m afraid I’ll either mimic others’ great ideas or I’ll be struck wordless by others’ creativity….

After I finish writing my next Harlequin Mills & Boon and my next Warner, I’ll have to seriously think about these issues. I have a fledgling Regency plot floating around in my head. It has a bit of paranormal in it, but by the time I get to writing those books, will the appetite for paranomal be satiated?

Do other Regency writers worry about such things or is it just me? I’m always afraid I will never have another story idea….

Writing Regency romance is my passion, though. I don’t ever want to stop. How do we keep the Regency genre fresh? Is it by reinventing the tried and true plots or by expanding the genre into new directions? Will the Regency ever lose its position as a popular time period in romance? Gosh I hope not!

So, tell me… What Regency plots are you tired of? Which ones do you never get tired of? Do you like it when Regency spreads itself into other genres? And, last of all, do you think the Regency genre is here to stay?

I hope everyone rang in the New Year exactly as they wished. I did, with a quiet night at home, which is my favorite way to celebrate this holiday. I watched The Producers on TV and The Sound of Music. Wild lady here!

I’ve done a little thinking about New Year’s Resolutions and decided that I should have some. I ought to just cut and paste from last year. And the year before. And the year before that. There are a few that tend to repeat.

Diane’s New Year’s Resolutions

1. Lose weight and keep it off this time. I vow this every year and perhaps this year I will stick to it. I really want to.

2. Exercise regularly; that is, go back to Curves. I was doing so well at Curves and then I became swamped with deadlines, but I know that should not be an excuse.

3. Get organized and set a schedule for myself. I think I would not have to engage in writing marathons if I were more disciplined.

4. Read more. I really envied my fellow Riskies who shared their favorite books of 2006. I read mostly research books in 2006 and I need to get back to reading fiction, especially my friends’ romance novels, like Colleen Gleason’s The Rest Falls Away, in bookstores today!

5. Spend more time feeding my muse by going places and doing things. I live less than a half hour from the museums in Washington, DC. I should visit them more. I’ve never been to Lee’s Mansion, right in Arlington County where I worked for a brazillion years. Or to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, a nice drive away, in Charlottesville, VA, where I negotiated my first book sale at a convenience store pay phone, with the trucks whizzing by…. But that is another story!

I do believe in New Year’s resolutions! This is a time to be optimistic. The New Year brings us all a new beginning, a time to start all over again.

How about you? Did you make resolutions?

And don’t forget to come by for Colleen Gleason’s visit on Thursday. In the meantime, take a look at her Trailer for The Rest Falls Away.

Cheers!
Diane

A Poem for Christmas Day. No matter what holiday you celebrate (or have celebrated) at this time of year, I hope it is/was a wonderful one. This poem by Tennyson, although a little later than “our” time, brings my wishes for all of us.
Cheers,
Diane

RING OUT, WILD BELLS
Christmas Poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more,
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

My Christmas “gifts” came early this year – two requests for revisions for Diane Gaston’s newest Harlequin Mills & Boon, The Vanishing Viscountess, and Diane Perkins’ latest Warner Forever, Desire in His Eyes.

After an author turns in a completed manuscript, the next step in the publishing process is for the editor to read through it and write a revision letter with things the editor thinks should be changed. It was my luck that my HMB revisions came incredibly fast and my Warner revisions came sorta late and that they both came at Christmas time.

The author has some say so in whether she actually makes the changes that the editors request, but my experience has been that my editors make the books better and I’m happy to take their advice.

Imagine my surprise, however, when both editors asked me to “show” why my heroes and heroines fell in love with each other. In both these books, my heroes and heroines are, shall we say, put in very intimate situations with each other. I could not stop them! My heroes and heroines ganged up on me and demanded a more “sensual” book, but apparently they forgot to remind me to show why they were so “attracted” to each other. Why did they fall in love?

I’ve no doubt I can fix this little problem. The present I’m giving to myself is to not even look at these two manuscripts until after Christmas, but in the meantime, it got me thinking. How do readers like the author to show how the hero and heroine in a romance fall in love?

That’s my question for you today. How do you like your heroes and heroines to show they are falling in love?

Cheers,
Diane