Coming Soon – The Romances We’re Most Looking Forward to Reading in October 2020

2020 may have turned out to be the Year from Hell, but the weeks and months seem to be passing as fast as ever and here we are at October, for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, the time when the nights really start drawing in and the weather takes a definitely cooler term. Traditionally, it’s the time we all start thinking about curling up somewhere warm with a good book, whether it’s one that will give us the warm fuzzies, or one that will keep us biting our nails or on the edge of our seats […]

By |2020-09-23T21:55:52-04:00September 23rd, 2020|Categories: Eagerly Awaiting, Romance reading, Upcoming releases|Tags: , |13 Comments
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the [email protected]: What American romances have given you a strong sense of place?

Right 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 a new job and his siblings decided to accompany him and see the nation. Thus far, they’ve visited the Civil Rights Museum in Alabama, hiked in the Atchafalaya Basin in Louisiana, slept on the banks of the Mississippi, and sat in the sand dunes of New Mexico. […]

By |2020-09-17T16:35:27-04:00September 18th, 2020|Categories: Dabney AAR, the ask @AAR|27 Comments
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September 2020 TBR Challenge – Dress for Success

“Dress for Success” can mean all kinds of things. In Lynn’s case, she went for fashion designer lead characters. Or, one can do as Caz did, and pull out a Pygmalion-esque story. And then there are masquerade balls, heroes and heroines in disguise…all kinds of possibilities.  What would be your favorite “dress for success” book?

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By |2020-09-16T07:16:08-04:00September 16th, 2020|Categories: Caz AAR, Historicals, Lynn Spencer, Romance reading, TBR Challenge|Tags: , , , , |31 Comments
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What’s Your Reading Journey?

If you’re an AAR old timer (I’ll let you define what that means), you may be wondering if I fell off the face of the earth. Short answer: Yes, yes I did. Short version for those who don’t avidly follow my life: I was a managing editor and then publisher of AAR for years (1998-2016-ish). In 2014 my marriage of 25 years ended, in 2015 I met the love of my life, in 2018 he died. Now it’s 2020, and even with a world that has had no bottom since 2018, I am still on the planet. The seismic shifts in my world have drastically affected my reading, though. […]

By |2020-09-12T20:58:25-04:00September 13th, 2020|Categories: AAR Blythe, Reading, Real Life|Tags: |59 Comments
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the [email protected]: How do you feel about politics in fiction?

I 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 The Legend of All Wolves series, the reader sees human incursion into nature and man’s love of sport hunting from the perspective of wolves. Vale doesn’t use phrases like climate change and habitat loss, but her point is inescapable: Humanity is wreaking havoc on the wild. […]

By |2020-09-11T10:55:57-04:00September 11th, 2020|Categories: Dabney AAR, the ask @AAR|Tags: |78 Comments
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Inspire desire with ‘the good bits’ from great books By Siobhan Fitzgerald, co-founder, thegoodbits.com

Romance 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 the first time on the bus home from work, and being just a little bit overcome with a compelling attack of WOWEEEEEE. […]

By |2020-09-09T14:03:47-04:00September 9th, 2020|Categories: Romance reading|Tags: |12 Comments
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Wolves, the Wild, and the Other: An Interview (and giveaway) with Maria Vale

I’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 Wolf. Hooked, I binged on the next three and enjoyed them all. The series is uniquely complex and, as I read the books, I had questions. Maria, thankfully, was happy to answer them. She’s also–woo hoo!–giving away a free ebook set of the series–make a comment below and you’ll be entered into a drawing for them! […]

By |2020-09-08T06:47:40-04:00September 8th, 2020|Categories: Authors, Dabney AAR, giveaways, Interviews|Tags: , , |28 Comments
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Keeping Time: a Guest Post by Alexandra Y. Caluen

There’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 for not accounting for the coronavirus pandemic in her book, which was set (at least in part) in 2020. The book in question was published in 2019. […]

By |2020-09-04T19:57:40-04:00September 6th, 2020|Categories: Guest Posts|Tags: , |33 Comments
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the [email protected]: What’s your idea of a romantic meal?

Yesterday was my–gasp–32nd anniversary and to celebrate Dr. Feelgood and I ordered takeout pizza from a place that specializes in Roman inspired thin, crunchy crust pizza. I made us each a ginger martini, and we sat on our patio and talked about A Place to Call Home. It was lovely–any meal I don’t have to make is a good one–but not especially romantic. Which was fine. […]

By |2020-09-04T07:32:41-04:00September 4th, 2020|Categories: Dabney AAR, the ask @AAR|Tags: |50 Comments
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