Romance is shifting to hc for proven sellers, but hasn't gotten to the point of publishing midlist or first-time authors in hc.

It's a big deal within the romance-writing community when you move to hardcover. And angsty -- if your sales don't justify the move, you may be dropped entirely.

Yeah, the guy in Crazy for You is so creepy-real.

YES. I found it creepy because it was so realistic and gradual and justified. Usually in books, stalkers are weird freaks with no rhyme or reason, just scary threatening serial killers. This was too real. Kinda killed the rest of the book for me.

I read Trickster's Choice by Tamora Pierce last night, and found it to be eminently readable

Not sure which that is, Erin, but she's a cute YA writer. I loved the Alanna books when I was 11, though they're not quite as good now, I was even more impressed with her latest quartet about Keladry. Cute stuff. Definitely YA, but still.

And suddenly "There's a Bimbo on the cover of my book" (filk by Maya Kaathryn Bonhoff) is going through my head....

Beyond bimbo. Mave of Connacht in pink armour, having her back licked by a raven-haired studly guy who apparently is supposed to be Connal of Ulster. So much for the Cycles of Oisin - they gave it a bodice ripper cover. I have nothing against bodice rippers, even though I don't read them, but the point is, the book wasn't a bodice ripper.

Around the house, the Bantam cover is affectionately-derisively known as Pink Sonia.

And suddenly "There's a Bimbo on the cover of my book" (filk by Maya Kaathryn Bonhoff) is going through my head....

Ooh! Full lyrics, pretty please?

Pink Sonia. Hahahahaha. Must click over to Amazon and see this for myself.

Katerina, it's here.

Scroll down the page to Fire Queen. What you can't tell onscreen is that the front cover is a two part; the outer is a frame, which lifts to reveal the full Pink Sonia horror within.

Pink armour. I kid you not.

Thirty. thousand. dollars. I saw the cover and thought I ought to spend thirty nine cents for a bullet to shoot the artist with....

Pink Sonia! Tee hee hee. You simply must add a full image of thirty! THOUSAND! dollars!!! worth of pink armour to your site. I had no idea that being a crap cover artist could pay so well.

(and now I'm jealous)

Yeah, that's the cover I got when I got your book from the library.

I was...startled.

Erin, you think *you* were startled? The book's not a romance, goddamnit. There's a love story, but that cover....

Thing is, that damned thing sold 75,000 copies. It was up at the checkout counter at Safeway. SOMEONE must have liked that cover.

Peoples is weird.

Well, by the time I got to it, it's been read so many time that Pink Sonia fell out into my hands.

So there's that, at least.