Meg Harris, Erotic Romance Author

Some impressive figures

2005-11-10T04:18:00.000-08:00

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

2005-11-02T04:54:00.000-08:00

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

2005-09-22T04:41:00.000-07:00

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!

2005-08-22T07:14:00.000-07:00

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!

2005-08-17T05:19:00.000-07:00

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

2005-07-27T04:18:00.000-07:00

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

2005-06-29T04:50:00.000-07:00

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:-).

A terrific review

2005-06-09T04:49:00.000-07:00

Imprisoned Prince just got a great review from eCataRomance. LindseyAnn called it "a stunning job...the pages sizzle with the heat Barrak and Tiryl create! Imprisoned Prince is now on my shelf of favorite futuristic romances! The characters were both amusing and endearing, and it made me fight between which side to root for. If sci-fi books rock your world, then Meg Harris’s fantastic book is the one to read!"

Wow. Thanks so much, LindseyAnn!

JERR

2005-06-06T04:54:00.000-07:00

In case you didn't spot it, part two of the interview with yours truly and three other EC authors was in the Just Erotic Romance Reviews newsletter yesterday.

All fixed

2005-06-03T04:28:00.000-07:00

Ellora's Cave has announced that they made a fix of the site Monday night (a whole new server) and that it finally seems to be working smoothly. Looks like this fix was the charm. So if you've been waiting desperately to buy Imprisoned Princ-- er, an EC book, get yourself over there and buy it!

A review

2005-05-27T04:20:00.000-07:00

Oooh, look, I got a very nice review of Imprisoned Prince from Enchanted in Romance! Rachelle gave me four unicorns and called my little story "a successful addition to the futuristic genre." And even better, she called it-- be impressed-- "pure genius." Wow, what a nice review!

Tagged

2005-05-23T04:20:00.000-07:00

I've been tagged by Breezy in the game that's been making its way around the blogosphere.

Total number of books I own:

Lots. And lots. And lots. I've lost count. I'm drowning in paper books. But I only have about twenty ebooks sitting on my harddrive. I'd like to increase that number!

Last book I bought:

Dangerous Games, by Charlene Teglia
(That's the last book I actually BOUGHT. Yeah, I've traded for a few at the used bookstore since then!)

Five books that mean a lot to me:

1. The Lord of the Rings. No explanation needed, right??

2. Harry Potter and the Numerous Sequels. Okay, that's five books right there (soon to be six). So I'm cheating a bit:). But my kids love these books, and they've helped keep them reading, and that's enough to make them near and dear to my heart. But the truth is, I enjoy them too. They're an intersection between the kids' world and my own, something that we can all enjoy talking about.

3. Skye O'Malley by Bertrice Small. My first excursion into the world of erotic romance (an excursion taken when I was much too young, I might add... I'll be hiding all my Small books in the attic when my oldest turns twelve!).

4. The Temple of My Familiar, by Alice Walker. I just love this book.

5. Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott. One of my favorite books as a girl, and still one I like to pick up every now and again. This and These Happy Golden Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder were some of the first "romance" I read as a child.

Like E.D'Trix, I sincerely doubt I can come up with five people who haven't played this already. So if you're wandering past reading this, you haven't played yet, and you have a blog... consider yourself tagged:).

An interview

2005-05-22T04:33:00.000-07:00

There's going to be an interview with yours truly (and three other EC authors) in today's edition of Just Erotic Romance Reviews. If you're dying to know all about me (and hey, why wouldn't you be??) be sure to check it out!

To trash or not to trash, that is the question

2005-05-17T11:08:00.000-07:00

An interesting juxtaposition: On the newly opened Novelspot, Diana Laurence trashes erotic romance (except, presumably, her own particular brand of the genre). She says, "To put it bluntly: Why does erotica so often have to suck?...I'm starting to think erotica is the unsightly boil on the cheek of romance... I've sampled from the erotic romance works of some quite successful new writers, and even though it's taboo to criticize your fellow authors, I'm sorry--I just found most of them terrible." Later she adds, "And don't you dare pay good money for these kinds of books. If you do I'll come after you with my keyboard and give you a sound conk over the head with it. And then I'll bandage the bump I gave you and make retribution by reading you some good erotica...."

And to top off this rant, she says, "To me this stuff is just verbal crack: if you have a fetish for the stuff it will turn you on, but there's nothing nourishing to the mind, heart or soul to be found in it." There's more... follow the link and do post to let her know your thoughts.

And on the Sirens' Blog, Elisa says, "Something that appeals to one person may not be what’s going to appeal to someone else. We all have our own tastes when it comes to everything in life, and books are no exception. Rude comments meant to insult those who read certain kinds of books do little more than showcase the narrow-mindedness and insecurities of the person making the comments."

Amen to that:-).

Now available on Amazon!

2005-05-17T04:40:00.000-07:00

I noticed last night that Imprisoned Prince is now available on Amazon!

Cerridwen

2005-05-12T14:04:00.000-07:00

Cerridwen Press, the new mainstream imprint of Ellora's Cave, launched today! Check out the great books!

Erotic romance that isn't

2005-05-11T05:39:00.000-07:00

I got TIE ME UP, TIE ME DOWN (Sherrilyn Kenyon, Melanie George, and Jaid Black) the other day, mostly because Jaid Black's name caught my eye. The cover describes the anthology as "three tales of erotic romance," and it appears to be the third entry in Pocket's effort to compete with Kensington's Brava imprint.

I've read the first two stories, and they're not bad. But they're not erotic romance, either. Granted that erotic romance is in the eye of the beholder, but I can't imagine either of these two stories being labeled "erotic romance" by anyone who's ever read a true erotic romance. They're no steamier than the average romance. Of course, not all Bravas can be described as "erotic romance" now (Lucy Monroe's THE REAL DEAL isn't particularly hot), but Brava muddied the waters by removing the "erotic romance" label a while ago, so there's no reason to expect all their books to be that hot.

If you label a book "erotic romance," though, it needs to be genuinely erotic, or the reader feels cheated. The first two stories in this anthology are nowhere near the spiciness of, say, the Brava novels written by Shannon McKenna or Alison Kent. Maybe the Jaid Black novella will be hot enough to make up for the other two...

"Those words"

2005-05-07T16:45:00.000-07:00

Shannon's post on dictating erotic romance cracked me up. We had a discussion on the EC list the other day about "those words" and the difficulty I had in learning to write using them. I am absolutely certain I could never learn to dictate them into a recorder!

Like I said on the EC list... I'm a prudish erotic romance author. Go figure:-). But it looks like I'm not the only one!

Writing a sequel

2005-05-06T04:27:00.000-07:00

The sequel to IMPRISONED PRINCE popped into my head this week, so I'm writing away. It's up to 4000 words (I'm aiming at about 30,000, although my books have a dismaying habit of growing bigger than planned!). I love it when characters just jump fully formed into my head. Now if only the plot were as clear to me as the characters...

IMPRISONED PRINCE released!

2005-05-04T06:48:00.000-07:00

My futuristic romance IMPRISONED PRINCE is now available on the Ellora's Cave front page, making me officially an EC author!! Woo-hoo!

Can you tell I'm excited??

I have a cover!!!

2005-05-03T08:47:00.000-07:00

And what a cover it is! You can find it here, at the bottom of the page. Wow... I'm drooling on my keyboard!

Finishing touches

2005-05-02T04:29:00.000-07:00

I got my line edits last night (late because my editor was at RT) and corrected a few errors in IMPRISONED PRINCE. I still haven't got my cover, though *quivering lip and looking pitiful*. I'm wondering if I'm going to see it first on Wednesday, same as everyone else. I guess I can survive two more days...

Mass market sales

2005-05-01T04:55:00.000-07:00

Wendy has an interesting post about how mass market sales are dropping and speculates on the reason, and several people have offered suggestions. My guesses? Ebooks (a small but growing market-- I know quite a few rabid readers who hardly read anything from the big publishers any more), the prevalence of used books (readers use those half-price books to stretch their book budget out), and trade paperbacks.

Trade paperbacks have become really big in the last few years, rather to my surprise. A member of my family, upon learning I write for EC and might eventually have trade-sized books in the stores, asked, "Yes, but who pays that much for books?" Uh... pretty much everyone nowadays, it seems:-). When smaller presses first started producing trades, they were at something of a disadvantage, because most paperbacks from big publishers were about half the price. But now readers have gotten used to buying Bravas and chick lit and various other books in the larger size. I think this is one reason why EC's trade paperbacks are doing so well in the stores... readers don't really blink an eye at the price any more.

Morgan Hawke's blog

2005-04-29T03:54:00.000-07:00

I wandered around Morgan Hawke's blog, Dark Erotica, for quite a while yesterday. It's full of useful information for the author of erotic romance. Here's the phrase that struck me the hardest: To be erotic fiction, sex has to drive the plot.

I'd never thought of that so clearly before, but I think it's true. If you write sex in a romance novel, it must always be important, and sex scenes must propel the plot forward. Otherwise it comes across as gratuitous because it isn't really important to either the characters or the reader. But sex isn't the driving force of an ordinary romance; love is.

An erotic romance, on the other hand, isn't just a romance with a lot of extra sex tossed in. Morgan quotes someone else: "If you can remove the sex from the erotica and still have a viable story in another genre, you did it wrong!" The sex is integral (not just important, but INTEGRAL) to the plot of an erotic romance, and the growing love between the characters is driven by the sex rather than vice versa. That's true of Imprisoned Prince, although honestly I didn't realize that when I wrote it.

Dangerous Games by Charlene Teglia

2005-04-28T03:52:00.000-07:00

I bought this from EC and read it yesterday, and it was awesome. I loved the sci-fi subplot, and I loved the way the hero and heroine grew and changed throughout the book. Oh, and I loved the hot sex *g*. I've never read anything by Charlene before, but she'll be going onto my autobuy list now for sure!

More on prejudice

2005-04-27T04:33:00.000-07:00

I made reference yesterday to Sylvia's comments on prejudice against erotic publishers. In case you didn't follow the link, here's the quote in question, from a letter to the editor of the RWR (the RWA's publication):

"Also we may want to stop prattling on about how ‘we just don’t get no respect’ when we allow dopey-looking hunks in ridiculous costumes advertising an erotic publisher on our back cover. There’s a big difference between sensual romance and erotica, and I think we made a big mistake in lowering our standards to accept such a publisher."

Hmmmm. Two different issues here, yes? One is the covers. As Shannon points out so adroitly, romance novel covers have a long history of featuring "dopey-looking hunks in ridiculous costumes." One word: Fabio.

Issue number two is the idea that RWA "lowered its standards" to admit EC. (I assume we're talking about EC here; although Zebra and Harlequin both publish erotic romance, I doubt anyone would seriously suggest Harlequin should be booted from the RWA.) But as Ellen pointed out in the discussion on Sylvia's site, RWA didn't "lower its standards" to let Ellora's Cave in-- EC met the guidelines fair and square.

Prejudice against erotic publishers

2005-04-26T16:36:00.000-07:00

I haven't had a lot of time to post today... sorry. But Sylvia has an awesome blog entry about prejudice against publishers of erotic romance and the effect it can have on their guidelines. Check it out!

I'm officially coming soon!

2005-04-25T09:28:00.000-07:00

My book is now listed on the coming soon page at Ellora's Cave! No cover as yet.

And the title is apparently simply IMPRISONED PRINCE (no THE). It's a trifle embarrassing to have the title of your own book wrong:-).

RT

2005-04-25T04:18:00.000-07:00

Everyone, and I mean everyone, in the online romance world is headed for RT. But not me. I'm stuck here, all alone *sniff*. I hope to make it next year. But in the meantime, I get to sit here twiddling my thumbs and read about everyone's preparations, then read about how great it was when you all get back. It's like being a wallflower (despite my undeniable beauty and charming personality:-). I'm envious. Maybe even jealous.

Oh, well... there's always next year. I bet Cinderella said that to herself a lot, too!

Erotic romance is serious stuff

2005-04-24T10:44:00.000-07:00

EC author Dakota Cassidy has a new blog. She says she writes "carnomedy," her very apt term for funny erotic romance.

Oddly, although I've written comedy in the past, I can't write humorous erotic romance. When I write romantica, it's serious stuff. I'm not sure why that is... apparently I take sex seriously. Well, there are worse things, I guess!

Alpha heroes and wimpy heroines

2005-04-23T12:45:00.000-07:00

Yesterday there was a thread on All About Romance's Potpourri Board about EC books. A reader stated that she found many of EC's books to have very dominating heroes but relatively wimpy heroines.

Having read quite a few EC books, I don't really agree with this, but the perception that alpha heroes must be paired with wussy heroines intrigues me. My heroine isn't in the least wimpy. She's the leader of a galactic empire, and she has the hero in chains before the first chapter is over. But THE IMPRISONED PRINCE isn't a female-dominant book, either. Eventually the tables are turned, and the heroine finds herself in chains. I'm not going to tell you how the book ends, but I will tell you that I prefer books in which the hero and heroine are equally strong and equally dominant. I also like to write stories in which the characters learn from their mistakes and grow by the end of the book. I hope I've succeeded!

For another interesting view on alpha heroes, check out EC author Charlene Teglia's post yesterday on Romancing the Blog.

A quick update

2005-04-22T08:43:00.000-07:00

I've just been informed by my editor that THE IMPRISONED PRINCE will be released on May 4!! That's less than two weeks from now. I'm totally thrilled!

About my book

2005-04-22T04:56:00.000-07:00

My first book for Ellora's Cave is called THE IMPRISONED PRINCE, and it's a sexy futuristic. Here's the blurb:

Prince Barrak of Terra is sent to negotiate for peace with the Zytellians, an aggressive, matriarchal species which has conquered much of the known galaxy. Tiryl, the leader of the Zytellians, refuses to negotiate with a male, and she makes Barrak her prisoner instead. She is determined to teach him his proper place in her society-- as a subordinate whose only purpose is to please women-- and she uses every method at her disposal to "retrain" him. Barrak finds himself in chains... and in her bed. When Barrak frees himself, he turns the tables and makes Tiryl his prisoner... and teaches her a lesson that she won't soon forget.

Hello!

2005-04-21T04:12:00.000-07:00

I'm an author whose first erotic romance will be released by Ellora's Cave very soon. I'm a multi-published author, but this is my first foray into the world of erotic romance. I've enjoyed working with my editor, and I can't wait till my book is released! I'll tell you more about my book tomorrow:-).