Some impressive figures

HelenKay has some impressive figures about Ellora's Cave from an article in the Akron Beacon Journal. "(In 2003), the company posted $1.2 million in sales. In 2004, it reached $3 million in sales, and is on pace to double that figure this year."

Also, "Borders took a chance on Engler (EC's founder, aka Jaid Black) in 2004, picking up (Ellora's Cave's) titles. They expected $100,000 in sales, but ended up topping $2 million in the first eight months."

How about that?

I'm still here

I bet you wonder what happened to me. Or maybe not:). I had a monster computer crash, and because my backup disk was also screwed up, I lost about two-thirds of my IMPRISONED HEART manuscript *sobs*. I was almost finished with the d*mn thing, too. On the up side, it's still in my head (that's the only place it is right now... grumble). As soon as I finish something else I'm working on for my other pen name, I'm going to sit down and rewrite IH as fast as I can.

In the meantime, thanks for your patience:). I'm going to dedicate myself to writing several Meg Harris books in 2006, so hopefully you'll see a lot more releases from me in the next year!

Imprisoned Heart

The manuscript I'm calling IMPRISONED HEART is going along well. I'm about two-thirds done, and I really like the way it's shaping up. I hope my editor will like it, too.

I saw a post on All About Romance last week suggesting that the fantasies in EC books indicate they're all written by men. That's not the impression I get from reading EC books... all those fantasies work just fine for me. And just for the record... I'm female:).

Now at Fictionwise!

I just discovered that Imprisoned Prince is available at Fictionwise! I think it was there last week and I just didn't notice *blushing with embarrassment*. Anyway... I'm thrilled to see it there!

Working!

I am now working seriously on my second book in the IMPRISONED series. I'm tentatively calling it Imprisoned Heart, and it's the story of Jaya, a secondary character in Imprisoned Prince. I'm about a third of the way done. It isn't under contract yet, but I did tell my editor I'd get it done in the next three months, and I hope to have it done even sooner. I hope that when it's finished she'll like it enough to buy it!

Erotic vs. porn again

There's a brilliant post over at Romancing the Blog today about whether calling erotic romance porn makes it porn, and whether readers really care a hill of beans about RWA's definition of romance anyway:

"Tell me, if the RWA decided tomorrow that your favorite author or favorite romance genre wasn’t “really” romance, would it make a difference to you? Would you drop the book in shocked horror and refuse to ever read anything that wasn’t romance again? I’m thinking probably not."

Barnes and Noble

While I was wandering around the romance section of my local Barnes and Noble yesterday, I observed three employees arguing over how best to expand the romance section (they had to take away from either the mystery or the science fiction sections, and they couldn't agree on which option was best). I'm guessing they have to expand the romance section because they're now carrying EC books (there are so many EC books in print now that they take up quite a lot of space in my local Waldenbooks!). Next time I go through, I'll confirm that hypothesis:-).