Saturday the 2010 EPIC  Awards were held in the wonderful old city of New Orleans. There was much partying, sightseeing, eating, plot bunny births and drinking to be had.

Friday I had the experience of dining at one of the truly best restaurants I have even eaten at — The Commander’s Palace.  It was exquisite. The old house it was located in was gorgeous. The setting across the street from a huge mausoleum-packed cemetery was so atmospheric of New Orleans. The staff was friendly, knowledgeable, elegant and expert at their jobs. We even got a little ghost story with our $.25 luncheon martinis! (I only had two, I swear!)  The food was divine.   Turtle soup with sherry. Braised steak cooked just the way I like, with caramelized onions and seasoned side sauce for extra zing if you wanted it. The bread pudding souffle was heaven, especially with the Jack Daniel’s creme sauce poured in the steamy-warm center. The entire meal was perfection from start to finish. I couldn’t recommend this place more. A real highlight on the trip!

Saturday’s awards dinner was thrilling for MLR. Kirby Crow’s ANGELS OF THE DEEP took the erotic horror category, and MEXICAN HEAT by myself and Josh Lanyon took the erotic romantic suspense/mystery category. MH is published at MLR in print. The electronic format is with Samhain, so it was technically their win but it’s the same story so I’m running with it! lol. While accepting Kirby’s award since Kirby couldn’t be there, I did make a point of mentioning how wonderful it was to be allowed this year to enter our books in the proper categories instead of the previous years’ single GLBT category where romance, horror, mystery, paranormal, sci-fi and everything else competed against each other and only one GLBT book could win. We competed on level ground this year and took two categories home with us!

The trip was a great success. Especially because I got to spend more time with my friends Sandy Hicks, Ally Blue, Jet Mykles, Jade Buchanan, Rick Reed, ZA Maxfield, and Jolie du Pre! There is never enough time to be with friends in this fast paced world and I appreciate every moment that does bring us together. And I got to nudge several of  them about the manuscripts they are writing for me! *g*

The site should’ve been an author’s dream. All these threads talking about books, places to get them, the excitement of waiting for new releases, discovering something new. Hours after a book is released, there’s a good chance you’ll find it there.
The problem is, the people who frequented the site have no intention of paying for the books. They’ll click on the links, go to fileshare sites, and download the books.
As one of the members once said, “…why pay for the books when you can get them for free?”

Walking the e-plank

Whether published in e-format or print, there’s a good chance many writers will have to deal with piracy.
For Ginn Hale, author of Wicked Gentleman, the problems have been twofold.
“The first is the amount of my creative time that has been wasted by the endless cycle of having to write and request that a link be taken down only to have it pop back up under a slightly different name,” said Hale. “This can go on and on for weeks, until I just give up in frustration.”
“My second problem is that it’s made my first experiences with the readers of digital works a very negative one. I want to believe that most readers of e-books and electronic works are honest people, but being constantly pirated — and being told that I should be happy about it because it’s promotion — hasn’t done much to buoy my optimism.”
Like Hale, other authors have been frustrated by the pervasive links. (continue reading…)

MLR Press authors will be chatting all day  tomorrow, Saturday, May 9th over at the LoveRomanceCafe yahoo group.

They have the entire day set aside for us, so please drop by and chat for a bit. There will be plenty of excerpts from new releases and some soon-to-be released stories as well. Probably even a few old but still fabulous stories, too. Stop by any time. Stay as long or as short as you can. Authors will be popping in and out all day.

A few months ago, I asked fellow authors of GLBT romance to join together with me to look into forming a special interest chapter of the RWA. While RWA has acknowledged this sub-genre of romance, there was never a chapter where authors of this sub-genre could meet to discuss issues and experiences that focused on their writing, promotional needs and publishing issues. Over 100 authors showed up to discuss the possibilities. In the end 39 RWA members formed the Rainbow Romance Writers online special interest provisional chapter of RWA.

I’m very proud to announce that as of today we are no longer provisional but officially part of RWA! Here is the official announcement from chapter president Jade Buchanan:

Rainbow Romance Writers is the newest Special Interest Chapter within the Romance Writers of America. A lot of hard work has gone into setting us up as a chapter, but we are very proud to announce that writers specializing in LGBT romance now have a specific place to network with other career-focused writers and concentrate on our unique needs within the romance genre.

Our goals are:

* to promote excellence in gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender romances
* to help members become published in LGBT romances
* to be an advocate within the industry for our genre
* to be a resource to our members and others on writing and the publishing industry

We currently have 39 wonderful members who represent all different aspects of the LGBT romance genre.

Interested writers can contact us at membership@rainbowromancewriters.com
if they would like to become members of Rainbow Romance Writers. They can also email me directly at jade.buchanan@yahoo.com

http://www.rainbowromancewriters.com

Here’s a HUGE thank you to everyone involved in making this happen, those in the new chapter and those at RWA who service the interest of the whole romance writing community! KUDOS!

01. What are your nicknames?

I don’t have any that I know of. Laura is kind of short to start with. If I am called anything else, it’s probably not printable.

02. How does your hair look currently?

Long, past my shoulder, dark brown, almost black, straight but very full and thick. My hair is one of my best features. It frames my second best feature, my dark eyes.

03. What’s new in your life right now?

Chaos, but that’s not new.  I’m rearranging my office so I can set up a workstation for my eldest son to help me out with time-consuming tasks for the press. It may sound small but the room is large and is filled with computers, four printers, external cd burners, table space, shipping supplies, bookcases, books, promo material, booth supplies, office supplies, fax machines, scanners, and phone lines, cables and enough power cords to reach to town. I do not attempt this job lightly! It will easily take days to accomplish without disrupting work too much. Plus I’m getting ready to make our new bookstore feature live for the press. Lots of work going into that one.

04. How many colors are you wearing now?

Two. Lilac nightie and black dressing gown. Sorry, it’s 2 am. I like to be comfortable when I write.

05. Are you an introvert or extrovert?

Extrovert. I think. (continue reading…)

You may have noticed that rankings and bestseller info has been removed from all a lot of gay romance and gay fiction books in the last few days. It appears that Amazon has decided we are to be hidden from the mainstream readerships. Obviously they don’t understand that a lot of our readers ARE mainstream.

When Amazon was asked about the missing rankings they responded to one author with:

In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us.

Best regards,

Ashlyn D
Member Services
Amazon.com Advantage

Plainly, we are being discriminated against by Amazon, shoved into the backroom–again.

Not all authors of adult fiction are being targeted but it is widespread and rampant. So if you are looking for rankings and bestseller lists of adult or gay fiction,  it looks like you’ll need to buy directly from the publisher or hit up B&N.

Hopefully next month MLR Press will have the ability in place to buy ebooks directly from the site (with paypal and credit cards through paypal to begin with) and print books soon after that. We getting everything in place for direct sales. We value our readers and now we REALLY like Barnes and Noble.

From Twitter posts:
If you want to protest to Amazon direct, this is their email addy: connect-help@amazon.com
Other ways to get in touch with them: http://clicheideas.com/amazon.htm

Or write to their CEO:
Jeffrey Bezos. The address is 1200 12th Avenue South, Seattle, Washington 98144-2734, United States Phone: 206-266-1000 Fax: 206-622-2405

There is a petition in circulation, see link below:

The Lambda Literary Awards were announced yesterday and I’m proud to be able to say that two MLR Press titles are among the finalists! Two titles–six authors!

HARD WORKING MEN an anthology by William Maltese, Victor J. Banis, Jardonn Smith and J.P. Bowie made it to the Gay Erotica category while MEXICAN HEAT by Josh Lanyon and Laura Baumbach (me) made it to the Gay Romance listing.

Congratulations to all!

The complete list is here: (continue reading…)