More Than Words Nominations close August 4! But...

We are in the process of soliciting nominations now for the 2007 book. The deadline for nominations is Aug 4.

Do you know a real-life heroine?

Nominate her for the Harlequin More Than Words Award

Somewhere right now a woman’s compassion is improving the quality of life in her community. With each act of kindness, each word of support, she is proving that real-life heroines do exist. And at Harlequin we believe her story should be told!

Each Harlequin More Than Words Award recipient will receive:

• $10,000 to advance the work of her associated charity

• National recognition and promotion on www.HarlequinMoreThanWords.com

• An all-expenses-paid trip to the award ceremony for her and a friend

• And a novella inspired by her life and work will be written by one of Harlequin’s most acclaimed authors

For more details, please visit www.HarlequinMoreThanWords.com

But as soon as one contest closes (11:59 p.m. on Aug. 4) the next one goes up (12:01 a.m. on Aug. 5) so we’re always interested in getting nominations in.

What I did this Weekend

I thought with all my floggy blogs, I'd just do a quick bloggy blog of sharing a few things I did this weekend that I really thought were special.

If you are planning to be in New York City between June 25-October 29, 2006, check out Dale Chihuly at the New York Botanical Garden, Garden and Glass exhibition. Tickets at ticketmaster.com, though we just got tickets ($20) at the gate—most of the exhibition is in the historic Enid A. Haupt Conservatory and it is amazing. Photo on left offers a quick peek.

There is much, much more and it is quite remarkable, not just as art, or glass, or a mind boggling creative vision, but juxtaposed with the plants and flowers, it makes you realize how amazing nature is, and see things with and through an artist's eye.

Also went to see a Leonard Cohen documentary, I'm Your Man showing at the Film Forum. The documentary itself is basically a concert film intercut with some interviews of Leonard Cohen, a few early photos and footage.

It is not a brilliant film, but I have always found Leonard Cohen a brilliant poet, songwriter and musician. No, it isn't because he's Canadian & I am practically Canadian at this point—I can date my fondness to college with Suzanne, Sisters of Mercy and Hey, That Ain't No Way To Say Goodbye along with the rest of the world. Then I'm pretty sure Elvis Stojko skated to I'm Your Man, Atom Egoyan used his songs in Exotica and enjoyed that. Really, I'm a fan.

Nick Cave does several songs in the film & I found Cave's interview and comments very touching (no, don't know his music, only know him because Leslie's a fan of his). But getting to hear Leonard Cohen talk made me realize what a truly amazing person he is. I just wanted to listen to him forever, perhaps interspersed with hearing him sing his songs.

So many times you "meet" an artist you admire & they aren't what you expect from their work. What you wanted, imagined believed them to be is crushed by their reality, and adjustments need to be made. Remarkable as I think his work is, I found Leonard Cohen even more inspiring as a person—and it was especially cool to have U2's Bono and Edge really articulate that specialness. Listening to them do the Tower of Song together was pretty amazing.

Bonus! Finally got to see Fan Fan La Tulipe! Many (many!) years ago visiting a friend in Paris during college, we both fell in love with a poster of Gérard Philipe in the original Fan Fan La Tulipe. We were never able to see the film then and I have been waiting for decades to see it. A lifelong dream has been realized! Excellent film—he definitely is shoulder to shoulder with Errol Flynn—but...not as cute as that poster.

All three of these experiences illustrate the facinating dynamic between viewer, creator, created object and inspiration. Sometimes the fantasy is better than reality...sometimes reality surprises us. And sometimes it takes seeing reality through art to make us realize how fantastical our reality actually is.

What Is Love? Tell us! We want to know!

Harlequin launches: www.writeharlequin.com

If you’ve got a good answer to our question, we’ll publish your response!

Welcome to the launch of something special—www.writeharlequin.com—where you can write Harlequin, and you may be contributing to writing a Harlequin!

Harlequin is canvassing our extraordinary community of romance experts—readers, authors, editors, aspiring writers, employees, interested parties, friends and family—to answer important questions like: What is Love? Got to www.writeharlequin.com, type in your answer and hit SUBMIT!

New questions will appear every few weeks, asking for your stories, opinions, insights on subjects like memorable kisses, love at first sight, dating disasters, perhaps provide snappy answers to your favorite stupid questions—really all the challenges and triumphs of romance & relationships...the sky’s the limit.

Note that everyone interested and able to type in a submission is a valued player in this project—no exceptions! And no limitations to the number of submissions: as much as your creativity allows—

Your great responses will be collected and reviewed with the hope of creating entertaining material using the shared information—whether it’s a full collection using the quotes or just a charming selection as an addition to a title or some other vehicle. Remember to give us a valid email address if you want to be contacted if selected!

The goal is to create a place to explore the creativity of our global community of people interested in romance and relationships—to find out the answers to some burning questions—and to determine ways to share that creativity and those answers with that community and the world at large. By sharing our views, ideas and thoughts, we can create a whole that is so much greater than the sum of its individual parts—something quite unique. We're seeing sharing content happening more and more, and our community seems uniquely suited to participate!

Why do it? Here are a few reasons: to explore your creativity...to share your opinion...recognition...out of curiosity...validation...delight in your cleverness...celebrate your whimsy...explore your sense of fun.

Because there is something satisfying about sharing your unique point of view. And because there's also something fascinating about checking out what others have said. There's always a sense of discovery.

You are entering a place of the known...and the unknown. Yes, you're entering (Twilight Zone music please) the mind of your fellow human beings. They are both amazingly similar and remarkably different from you.

Therein lies the challenge. Therein is the beauty.

We will be continuing to enhance and improve the site—am hoping to add the ability to post favorite samples, ask questions, solicit votes, etc.

Check out www.writeharlequin.com and let us know what you think!

You're Invited!

But only if you're at the RWA 26th Conference July 26-29, 2006 at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis in Atlanta, GA (open to members and non-members). But if you haven't already acted fast, note that this year's Conference is sold out and the waiting list has reached full capacity. But if you're going to be there, please visit....

Thursday, July 27th, 2:30-3:30p.m., In The Champagne Suite, Lobby Level

Come to a 21st Century Digital Fair @ The Champagne Suite aka The Harlequin Suite. Learn about Audio! eBooks! Manga! Harlequin On The Go! Isabelsblog.com! WriteHarlequin.com! Mobile! Other stuff! Ask Questions! Get Answers! Make Suggestions!

WIN PRIZES! DRAWS THROUGHOUT THE EVENT! HAVE FUN! EAT, DRINK & BE MERRY!

Come one, come all! You'll have a ball!

And for those more serious types, here's Malle's and my session at the RWA in Atlanta this year:

SUCCESSFUL STORYTELLING IN THE DIGITAL WORLD
Friday, July 28th 8:30-9:30 a.m. in room International 8

The divine Vicki Hinze will be our moderator.

We all are going to have to get up very early to be at this session, so I see no reason you shouldn't have to get up and be there too. I need incentives to rise & shine. You can do that for me. Can you tell I'm not a morning person? It really is an interesting topic (timely too), & Malle is a wonderful speaker. So get up & come on over! Here's the description:

What do you need to do to deliver effective, salable, storytelling in the multi-format Digital World? What impact do "new formats" and "multi-media" have on your writing, e.g. mobile, mobisodes, layering, audio, manga, etc.?

As part of the new business development department, Malle and Isabel are charged with finding ways to better capitalize on these new opportunities—join us to explore these questions. Audience participation.

Between time shifting TiVo, watching bonus episodes of 24 on your mobile, writing Fan Fiction or texting your American Idol votes, Blogging, creating or downloading podcasts, the new age of storytelling is here. It’s happening—and we are part of it.

Top 10 things to remember when telling stories in the digital age:

1. Great storytelling: foundation for everything
2. Bite sized, accessible, quick
3. Repurposed content
4. Portability (streaming, downloading, satellite)
5. Multiple layers (audio, visual)
6. World-building
7. Interaction connectedness, participation
8. Discovery, uncertainty, lack of control
9. Voyeuristic
10. Freedom

Your story is no longer limited to being read from a printed page but can be experienced in many ways at many time across multiple media creating a rich layered story experience.

Freedom =/= Free

OK, I don't know where the "does not equal" sign is on my keyboard. That's the best I can do.

My fellow NBD colleague, Mary, sent me two links I thought I'd share that offered some interesting insight into the issue of copyright in the digital age—a truly complex issue in which laws are being created, boundaries pushed, precedent explored. A brave new world with compelling arguments from many perspectives.

By way of back story, as you may know, both the Association of American Publishers (of which Harlequin is a member along with most other publishers and I am on the board) and the Author's Guild have filed suit against Google over copyright & a Google project with several University libraries (Stanford among them, Google founders are Stanford alums) to make digital copies of material under copyright without the copyright holders permission. You can go to Dogpile.com & search for additional detail...

On a side note, if you find it confusing, Google has a number of initiatives, some appropriately requesting receivingng copyright holders permission, the Library project not. However the names these various initiatives are called seem to change, making it hard to pin things down (perhaps that's the point).

I see this issue as being the subtext to the conversation between Richard Sarnoff & Lawrence Lessig below...

Click through to the blog by ZDNet's Mitch Ratcliffe. He's talking about a forum at the D: conference (all things Digital) with Richard Sarnoff, Random House CEO and Lawrence Lessig, a lawyer teaching law at Stanford University.

I found Mitch's piece well articulated, focusing on what I see as the true challenge—the ability for creators to control and be compensated for their work.

I am going to quote two paragraphs of his, in case you don't click through, because I think he puts things so nicely:

"But I think it's a little too easy to applaud lawyers complaining about lawyers when the problem is a question of, as Lessig said, 'the digital destiny of American culture or world history.' The lawyers are the sideshow, the problem is how to pay for the culture Mr. Lessig wants to preserve, and lawyers aren't the experts I'd rely on for culture. After all, with rare exceptions, lawyers don't produce writing or video or music that anyone would want to read, see or hear except to pass a test.

"The big question is how artists, writers, performers and others who dedicate themselves to creative work and make no living from a "day job" are going to get paid. This doesn't mean one has to be a "paid professional" to be a writer or artist or filmmaker, only that if one does choose to make their living that way, they need to put food on the table just like anyone else. And, if they produce a great work or monstrous hit, why shouldn't they live in a big house and eat caviar from the belly buttons of their favored gender or contribute their fortunes to charity and schools for the art, should they so choose? After all, it's only fair given the nature of the economy that someone who bets everything on their creativity should get paid when they make something people want, enjoy or participate in with zest."

While one could continue to argue this is a new medium, needing zero barriers to entry, I actually think it's time we began to up the ante & ask for more—like let's start to figure out control & compensation, which is what copyright is supposed to be about.

The next story Mary shared was the Virgin France music piracy article, where the courts found that Virgin France had illegally downloaded Madonna's Hung Up to sell on their own website. Check out the BBC article.

In case you don't click:

"France Telecom's Herve Payan told the International Herald Tribune: 'This is an amazing case of simple piracy by a respected company.'"

Why, you might wonder? "Virgin France said it had broken the exclusive agreement in the interest of consumers. The group...have recently attacked record firms for releasing top selling singles to mobile and internet firms under exclusive deals. Similar deals in the US involving the Starbucks coffee chain have also prompted anger, with retailer HMV claiming such moves limit consumer access to music."

There is a sense of entitlement that seems to feel justified in rolling over individual decisions and the right to control one's own content....But ultimately, it is something the courts will decide.

As a treat for reading this far, here's an example of a publisher (moi...well, whatever) choosing to give something away—a cool $1.00 off Coupon, good wherever books are sold—for Brenda Novak's DEAD SILENCE, out July 26th, set in a small fictional town in Mississippi. Scary.

Are you engaged?

"I'm looking for a good story, well told."

Perhaps not what you want to hear from your true love, but that is what builds a lifelong romance with a reader and the stories you create.

And for Harlequin and Silhouette series romance, forming that long-term relationship, delivering on that promise, building trust, understanding, respect and growing with that relationship—well, that's what it's all about.

Continually refreshing and revitalizing the series franchise is a demanding and challenging task—but that hasn't changed in the many decades Harlequin, Silhouette and Mills & Boon have been delighting readers around the world.

What does Series Relevance Mean to You?

I thought I'd go to the source and report back! For Randall Toye, Director Global Series (pictured here), it's all about engaging the reader. Connecting with her—whether it is with her fantasies or her realities, it's all about touching her, telling stories that make her laugh, make her cry, sweep her away. Stories that have her closing her book feeling good, refreshed, revitalized, reaffirmed.

The key focus is a good story, well told. The basic building blocks? Character, Structure, Pacing, Payoff. Easy to list. Not so easy to deliver. As one author beautifully articulated: "Just because they're easy to read doesn't mean they're easy to write!" Quite the opposite. The series romance, like a sonnet, is a beautiful, disciplined, elegant, and demanding creative form.

In addition to ensuring we consistently deliver a good story well told, the editorial team has also been working on addressing issues of both language and character responses. Many genres have stock phrases and characters—Romance does, as do Westerns, Mystery, etc.

Those familiar elements can be part of what defines a genre and what we love about it—but they are also what can make a genre feel tired, unoriginal, or if not refreshed, can feel dated. For romance, those can be the moments and language that feels "cheesy" which can be distancing, and a reader turn-off. But be warned. There is such a thing as "Good cheese." We know it when we see it....

And to make things more complex, these lessons vary from series to series. Brand promise and reader expectations vary, so what relevance means is interpreted differently within each series.

Engaging the reader must start with the first sentence and continue with a compelling first chapter. Not to say the rest of the story isn't vital, but if the reader doesn't get past the first sentence/first chapter, it's moot, isn't it?

Randall, Dianne and I were all at a Novelists Inc. conference with Harlan Coben as the keynote speaker. He talked about the importance of the first sentence for him and gave a great example, which I will paraphrase, "When the second bullet hit my chest, I thought of my daughter." I still remember that sentence and think about how many questions that sentence generated. Questions we are compelled to read on to find out about. Good lesson!

The challenge is to continue to appeal to current readers while reaching out to new readers and re-connecting with lapsed readers with something genuinely different, that will appeal. As authors and editors continue to work to refresh and invigorate series, we will also be launching a number of new lines and are actively looking for new authors, new voices and submissions.

You can always check out eHarlequin's Writing Guidelines at the bottom of their home page for information on what's new, who is looking, what they're looking for. Here are just a few new lines launching in the coming months....

Kimani Romance
Launch June, 2006: At Kimani Press, you will find the new home to three of the industry's leading imprints targeting the African-American reader including: Arabesque, Sepia and New Spirit. Starting in July 2006, Kimani Press launches Kimani Romance, the industry's only African-American series romance program.

Silhouette Nocturne
Launch October, 2006: Nocturne is looking for stories that deliver a dark, very sexy read that will entertain readers and take them from everyday life to an atmospheric, complex, paranormal world filled with characters struggling with life and death issues. These stories will be fast-paced, action-packed and mission-oriented, with a strong level of sensuality.

Harlequin Everlasting
Launch February 2007: The love of a lifetime across a lifetime! Looking for emotionally intense stories emphasizing richly drawn, believable characters whose complex interplay over time create a compelling tapestry. The focus is on the sweep of people, personalty, setting and story, not just the romantic relationship and its initial resolution.

Steeple Hill Love Inspired Historical.
Launch October, 2007: This new brand in the Steeple Hill imprint is a series of historical romances featuring Christian characters facing the many challenges of life and love in a variety of historical time periods.

In addition to all of the above, there are about four more new Kimani programs, Mills & Boon X-Tra Sensual, new Silhouette Desire guidelines and of course the just launched Spice guidelines listed on eHarlequin's writing guidles (click link above or go to www.eHarlequin.com.

We are very engaged....

Show and Tell

If Descartes were alive today, do you think he’d say “I Google, therefore I am?” Hmmm. No, not quite passive enough. More like, “I can be Googled, therefore I must exist.”

While I am irritated with aspects of Google (am on AAP board--Association of American Publishers--copyright issues, lawsuits, etc.) that doesn't take away from the delightful sense of arrival in seeing my blog appear on a Google search.

I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge those pioneers of the Early Days of my blogging infancy. I think my first appearance was in Harlequin Blaze author Jill Shalvis’s Blog (scroll down to photo about 1/2 way. July 28, 2005. Cute, eh? When you reach the bears you have gone too far. Are you listening Timothy Treadwell?) James Pearson of Audible.com, Silhouette Intimate Moments author Suzanne McMinn and I sat together for a very enjoyable eHarlequin lunch at the Reno RWA. Naturally those eHarlequin authors were totally web savvy and taught me a thing or two!

Then of course there was the always ahead-of the-curve Literary Agent Irene Goodman’s invitation to guest blog on her site to introduce the New Business team.

Now there is an ever expanding circle of bloggers and websites that are connecting us so amazinginly by our mutual interests and shared passions. My first link—and let me tell you, I was as excited as though it was my first date—was Mills & Boon Historical author Michelle Styles.

Let me just correct that analogy. I don't think I ever was really asked out on a date, now that I think about it, so this really was VERY exciting! There was that warm fuzzy moment, like being picked to be on the team.

Other front runners in the blogsphere were Harlequin Blaze author Jill Monroe, Silhouette Intimate Moment author Loreth Anne White, Silhouette Desire author Nalini Singh and HQN author Beth Ciotta. It's a pleasure to be part of the team. Many authors have experienced this for years with listserves, chat rooms and email loops, but it is very cool to be part of this virtual circle, expanding and connecting us.

I was thinking of people going off to "find themselves" and realizing what an impossible task that is. We only have to look at the connections we make to realize we are a thousand selves, aren't we?