Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Wow!  You go girls.  Great interview and she is a great author.  Thanks!

I’ve long believed there were too few hedgehogs in today’s literature. Great interview! I would love to see more of these.

Great interview. Laura Kinsale sets the standard for me. She’s just an awesome writer. I would love to read a light romp but bring on the angst!

Fabulous interview, and great to know a new Kinsale book is coming! Woo! :-)

Outstanding interview.  Reading that there’s a Kinsale Regency era comic romance in the works just made my day.

Hedgehog! I honest-to-God love that marching soldier. Great interview, thanks.

Excellent interview! Thank you, Bitches. And thank you, Ms Kinsale.

I’m trying SO HARD to remember the cats in the Laura Kinsale novels, but I can’t.

*sobs while putting down crack pipe*

Maddy sees a cat among the boats in FFtS when she’s wandering about Chelsea after the Eydie incident.

Robert in MSF has his kinda emotional breakthrough when the alley cat makes friendly towards him, like page 300-something.

I am not proud of this knowledge. It’s a sickness. Pass the crack pipe.

Candy, listen honey, put the pipe down.  Ms. Kinsale is being sly with you!  The only cats I can recall were infant ones that Maddie and her crazy Lord played with in the Garden in Flowers From the Storm.

Pea-green with envy over the interview, ladies (slams back a Genny Cream Ale).  Kinsale is the goddess, and we her humble acolytes. 

Great interview too! ;-) There’s never enough Kinsale in blogland.

OMG! Squeeeeeeeeee!!!! (Is that squeeing loud enough for y’all to hear on both edges of the US?)

What a fabulous interview and we may now anticipate future Kinsale books! YAY!!

Yes, Laura Kinsale is a goddess. (Picture the humble Regency romance writer bowing and muttering “I am not worthy, I am SO not worthy”...though I did once have a hedgehog pee on the hero’s breeches. Before I’d read Midsummer Moon. Honest!)

Though it would be great to see a new book out soon, I wholeheartedly respect her need to keep a healthy relationship with her muse.  Her books are worth waiting for.

Reading Kinsale’s comments about the Google library fiasco makes a small-time author like me want to boo-hoo in my marital-aid drawer.

The only reason to do this writing gig is because you love, love, love it. And I do.

I just stumbled onto this site through a link and look a Laura Kinsale interview. All with the coolness and the smart glasses.

Although, I am a bit confused by the Google book discussion. A quick Google got me this, http://www.policybandwidth.com/doc/googleprint.pdf off of http://books.google.com/intl/en/googlebooks/about.html

“for books still under copyright users will be able to see only a few sentences on either side of the search term....a full page of the book is never seen for an in-copyright book scanned as part of the Library Project unless a publisher decides to transfer their book into their Publisher Program account, in which case it would be under the agreement between Google and the copyright holder.”

So, unless Laura wants to contact Google and say, “Please display my books on the web,” it sounds like a non-issue.

And back to the squee, huh, prize bull. Insert bull jokes here.

Glad you all are enjoying the interview! 

About the question of whether the google project is a non-issue because users can only see a few lines at a time...yes, that’s how google wants it be seen, as if they innocently only copied a couple of lines and stubborn authors and publishers are standing in the way of progress. 

However, the entire work is copied into the database without permission, and the project is intended to directly profit Google.  This establishes that there is a profit potential in the availability of the work on a search engine, even a couple of lines at a time.  The owner of the copied work should both have the right participate in that profitablity and the right NOT to participate in it. 

It’s true that copyright owners can’t create a search engine--it’s also true that google can’t create literature to be searched.  There are two sides to this profit equation, but google wants to leave out the one inconvenient to themselves.

The point of copyright itself is to allow the producer of the work to fairly profit from copies made of it, for whatever that may be worth.  The difference between Google’s project and say, Beth quoting from Midsummer Moon in a critique on her blog, which is a clear-cut case of Fair Use, is Google’s profit motive.  Google’s decision to use copyrighted works without payment or permission immediately makes any other format for a library search engine (say, one that offers copyright owners a fair participation in the profit) impossible. 

I realize these are esoteric points to most SB readers! I replied to this question because Sarah asked it, not because I’m particularly on a crusade about it.  It just annoys me, because it is one more erosion of copyright that is leading, in my opinion, to all information, including novels, being “free.” I know where that will lead...it will lead to the sponsor model, like TV, in which the cost of publishing is paid by advertising, rather than by the consumer.  So the advertisers make the decisions on what gets published.

And that is when I’ll quit publishing books. :)

How’s that for some controversy?  LOL.

Ok, so if a person hadn’t yet read a Laura Kinsale book (stop throwing stuff at me!!!), which book would y’all recommend starting with?

DebR--You’re in for a treat!  If you’re looking for a “light” Kinsale to start with, I recommend Midsummer Moon.  Memorable hero and heroine, and it has hedgehogs.

For a more serious read, Flowers from the Storm, and for a real workout that you’ll love, For My Lady’s Heart,.

I almost envy you the opportunity to be exposed to all of this fine writing for the first time.

DebR, my personal favorite is Seize the Fire, but it’s really heavy with lots of issues on both sides of h/h.  After that, I agree with Darlene.  For My Lady’s Heart is incredible, but its dialogue is written mostly in a modified Old English.  Midsummer Moon is cute and easy to get into.

Flowers from the Storm is part of my “conversion kit” (phrase coined by my blog buddy Megan Frampton).  These are books I’ve used--successfully--to convert people who look down their noses at romance novels.

The Shadow and The Star was what did it for me. Ninjas! A virgin hero! Exotic locations!

My most re-read Kinsale, however, is Midsummer Moon. Merlin is just so damn charming, and dude, THE HEDGEHOG SAVES THE DAY.

Twice!

Oh, and Laura: I’m the one who came up with the question about Google, not Sarah. I thought it’d be an interesting hornet’s nest to stir.

Ah, I should have known who was trying to cause trouble. The Turbulent Miss C! ;)

See, I’m going to be on the other side from Laura Kinsale on this one. Baen, a reasonably sized, fairly well respected publisher has been offering chapters of all their books and selected whole works on their website for free, and the numbers that Eric Flint has been muttering about seem to show that the backlist of books that have been offered for free have seen a significant increase in sales over numbers previous to their release...and not only the free books, but the rest in those series as well.

Hell, I know from personal experience that it works. I’ve bought at least 30 books because I read the first one on Baen and wanted the rest of the series a couple times. And then bought the first one to hand to friends, who then went out and bought the series. The other useful part is if I’m waffling on buying a book, read the first 2-4 chapters online, and decide I can’t live without it, it’s just become a certain sale instead of a ‘maybe’.

Good point, Esthanya, and the kind of info I might, as the copyright owner, take into consideration in making my decision on whether or not to have my book in the program.  But it’s still my decision to make, not Google’s.

What about, say, books that contain material that certain religions might find offensive?  What if an author preferred that their work not be searchable online because parts of it could be taken out of context and even put them at personal risk?  Yet Google still wants to make this decision for them, for profit.

Thanks for all the answers evryone.  They were very helpful, although it still took me a little while to decide what to get.

I just ordered “Midsummer Moon”, “Flowers from the Storm”, “The Shadow and the Star”, and “Sieze the Fire”. I figure that should give me a good mix of fun and deep to dive into.

DebR--you might want to read The Hidden Heart before you read The Shadow and the Star.  They stand alone, but the fantastic hero of TSatS is introduced in THH, and you get much of his backstory there, explaining his traumatic childhood.

Just my $.02.

Oh, ok, thanks for the tip, Darlene!  I’ll go check it out.  I might even be able to add that to my order, since I doubt they’ve shipped yet.

My whole problem with the google issue is that I’M the copyright holder to my books and they don’t bother to ask me to use my material.

Sure, I want people to buy my books! While I’d write even if no one read them, I do get a kick out of that part. But that doesn’t mean I like it when someone simply takes something I created and uses it for their own profit without even asking.

Thank you for the explanation(s). Since I very much live on the other side of the electronic divide, it’s a discussion that puzzles/interests me. (i.e., I’m a geek, and if Socrates was correct, and reading/writing makes you forgetful, how much more addictive the ability to search with a keystroke)

One of my final papers in college, mumble mumble years ago, was about the relationship of copyright and the printing press with some speculation about how electronic media might affect the current paradigm. (Hey I was in college, I had to use words like paradigm. It’s like a law, only more pretentious.)

And to bring the discussion back to the interview, based on the comments about the unsold latest, and thinking about the on-going concatenation of publishers/decline of small bookstores, I’ll be curious to see if authors start turning to online as sort of a nouveau version of the small presses from the beginning of print. Which, yeesh, talk about pretentious. Gah! Anyway, thanks. This is hopefully a hornets nest where there is tea and cream dolloped scones and gosh, I feel all off topic. Perhaps, hmmm...my favorite’s always been Seize the Fire. It’s an angsty bread thing.

Someone please, publish that prize bull book under conditions Laura would accept. :)

Hey, maybe Google would publish it! ;)

Laura: Pity your loyal fans, accept one of the offers soon. We can only live so long without our fix. ;)

Candy: There’s an unfortunate cat in My Sweet Folly who had to eat the wedding cake for Robert because they couldn’t find a replacement for the squirrel yet, I believe.