Save the Contemporary: Hot Under Pressure and The Magnate’s Make Believe Mistress

Save the ContemporaryIt’s time for another Save the Contemporary campaign, with Dear Author, Smart Bitches, and prizes from Harlequin!

This time, we’re featuring two books – yes, two.

Some of the great contemporary stories are found in category romance, so we’ve picked two books that we both really loved:

Hot Under Pressure CoverBook Cover

Our contest takes its inspiration from Kathleen O’Reilly, who was explaining to Sarah what made category romance so great:

…a category novel will exactly fit the time it takes for me to run a hot tub of water until the water turns too cold to stand, which is the exact amount of peace I have until my family figures out where I’m hiding.

To encourage total indulgence, relaxation, and contemporary romance reading, Jane and Sarah have put together a multi-part contest with daily prizes this week only, plus a grand prize at the end.

First: at 9pm EST, 8pm CST, today (4 August) Jane and Sarah will select 10 winners from the comments to this entry on each of their sites. Those lucky winners will receive a copy of both Hot Under Pressure by Kathleen O’Reilly and The Magnate’s Make Believe Mistress by Bronwyn Jameson.

Second: every day this week at 9pm EST, two winners a day will be chosen from those who Twitter about the Save the Contemporary campaign (#stc) and from those who blog about or email the contest entry. To email, simply forward the details to a friend using the “Email This Page” link at Save the Contemporary.com , or email us at sbj.contests @ gmail.com with a link to your blog entry. The more times you forward the details of this giveaway, the greater chance you have of winning.  For the Tweet campaign, use the “Share This”  and twitter the contest link, along with whatever you want to say about contemporary category romances—but don’t forget the #stc tag!

We’ll pick one winner a day at 9pm EST/8pm CST from those who blog/email, and one from that day’s #stc tweets. Each daily winner will receive:

– a Harlequin vintage cover art bag
– a copy of each book
– a Lush Bath Bomb for use while reading the books

Finally, on Friday at 9pm EST, we’ll pick our grand prize winner from all who entered. The grand prize winner will receive a Harlequin cover art bag, a copy of each book, and the LUSH True Romance gift set, which includes massage bar, bath bombs and other treats.

Jane and Sarah are all about the True Romance, after all.

PLUS, for the duration of the Save the Contemporary campaign this week only, Harlequin’s digital team is offering an additional 15% off the eBooks at eHarlequin.com, for a total of 25% off the digital list price. The coupon code is BLOGSPECIAL, and you can use it at checkout for purchases storewide at eHarlequin.com.

Special huge thanks to Harlequin for the books and the bags and the coupon-y goodness!

To sum up, leave a comment here to win a copy of the books.  Make the contest viral by either going to “savethecontemporary.com” to use the Email This Page / Share This or twittering the contest using #stc. Virality = more prizes! Help us spread the word about great romance by helping us save the contemporary.

Categorized:

General Bitching...

Comments are Closed

  1. Tris says:

    WoW! A Katherine O’Reilly book which you’ve just reviewed =D

    Harlequin is really going all out on this. Great campaign!

  2. GrowlyCub says:

    Would love to win a copy of the O’Reilly! 🙂

  3. medumb says:

    Is Bronwyn Australian?
    Hoping these books are available as ebooks.

  4. Sasha says:

    Save the contemporary, save the world(?) 🙂

  5. SeaGrace says:

    Thank you Harlequin for supporting your readers as they try to save the contemporary.

    (Psssst.  Isn’t HQN saving the contemporary already by publishing lots ofcontemporary books?)

    word: getting53.  Spooky – how did you know I was 53?

  6. StephB says:

    Ooh, sounds fun.

  7. Rhonni says:

    Yum!

    How delicious is this? I have to admit, I tend to skip contemporaries, because I enjoy a certain amount of smut that I don’t think I’ll find there. I could be wrong.

    (… and yes, I like the word smut, it makes my 6’6” tall husband actually giggle when he asks “what’s in the Amazon box?” and I answer “Smut.”

  8. Lynz says:

    … and yes, I like the word smut, it makes my 6’6” tall husband actually giggle when he asks “what’s in the Amazon box?” and I answer “Smut.”

    Hehe, it’s so much fun to watch tall men giggle. It’s the last thing you expect them to do, really.

    Curious fact of the day: the instructions made more sense to me when I read them here than they did when I read them on Dear Author. Hmm. Give me a couple of hours and I’ll think up some logical explanation for it.

    Query: are the Harlequin bags the same as the ones they gave out at the RWA conference this year? Because those were schmexy.

  9. Starh Opahl says:

    Wow, nice contest, my dears!

    Oh, random integer pick me!

  10. JJ says:

    Wow!  What a lot of great stuff.

  11. heathero says:

    Like Rhonni, I tend to skip the category romances. But over the weekend @HeatherOsborn (another heathero! instant kinship, right?) tweeted the titles & I laughed until the tears streamed down my face … then I started choking on the tears because I swallowed them funny (wrong pipe! ick!). Good times!

  12. Camilla says:

    I love the category reviews. Its a part of romance I gave up on years ago, and I have actually gotten back into. Off to buy these two!!

  13. Lori S. says:

    Oooh!  Can I haz contemporary?

  14. Shaina says:

    oo! *comments* Your review of that book made it sound so good, I WANT IT!
    here’s hoping my stupid luck changes, and i’ll actually win something for once…

  15. Chris says:

    I have some categories I’ve picked up tres cheap at the thrift store – you’ve reminded me that I need to pull them out. 🙂

    Apparently my validation word wants to aid me on that: remember59.

  16. Carrie Lofty says:

    Gimme, please 🙂

  17. crystal adkins says:

    I would love to win! Contemporary’s are always refreshing to read!

  18. HeatherK says:

    I curled up with the newest Diana Palmer the other day (finally) and thoroughly enjoyed it. Must confess that I read more contemps than anything else, though I do enjoy a number of paranormals and write in completely different genres from contemp. SilDes is my favorite line, not a fan of Blaze books, though. Haven’t found one that can keep me interested in it yet.

    spamword: Arms36, if I had 36 arms, I’d get a whole lot more done in a day. Shoot, another set of arms and an extra set of eyes and I could read two things at once, which would be cool.

  19. meghan says:

    i just thought i would try this out and see how my luck is running these days.

    and right now i feel like a moron since i just figured out what the spam word comments people leave behind are coming from…whoops thought you all should know that i had been wondering about that for awhile. 🙂

  20. Lenore says:

    Reading category romance is like eating a box of chocolate. Can’t stop at just one!

  21. HeatherK says:

    Meghan, don’t feel bad about the spamword. Took me a while to figure it out, too, mostly because I read and never commented. When I started commenting, it hit me.

  22. Cassie says:

    Love the contemporary!

  23. CT says:

    I’ve been on board ever since you tweeted the line “She had her heart set to stupid and he wasn’t going to talk her out of it.”

    NEED!

  24. Natasha R says:

    Would loove to win a copy of both books! I wanted to read The Magnate’s Make Believe Mistress by Bronwyn Jameson ever since it was mentioned in the people’s magazine article!

  25. Xay says:

    I’ve been eyeing both of those books for a few days now…

  26. Lostshadows says:

    I’ve been meaning to contemporaries more of a try. Free books sound like a good way to do that. 😉

  27. MamaNice says:

    My first venture into category has been this summer with the e-reader, so I’m ready for more!

    Any tech-savvy people wanna make a widget we can stick on our webpages?

  28. BethanyA says:

    I am going on vacation soon and historicals make me dizzy on the beach. Save the contemporary and save my vacation!

  29. Susan D. says:

    While the free books are an attractive prize, the item that sealed the deal for me is the bath bomb. Why? Because I’ll buy the books anyway, but the Bath Bomb—total, utter indulgence and the there’s only one store that sells them near me & I don’t go to that mall often. Want want want.

    BTW, SB and DA are a publisher’s dream: you make up the contests, do the marketing, engage us readers. Pub provides some books (which they’d do anyway). If you ever decide to get into university press books, may I be first in line to provide the books? 😉

  30. Diatryma says:

    The workshop I staffed recently included a couple trips to B&N.  We mocked some of the Harlequin titles and ended up buying one.  I am still kicking myself for not buying three, including The Magnate’s Make-Believe Mistress.  Should have gone with the alliteration….

  31. Jackie says:

    You know, I’ve never read a category. I’m not sure *why* but I now know that it is something lacking in my reading repertoire!

  32. SugarSpice says:

    I should really start reading contemporaries… I keep getting stuck in historical mode. This is, of course not bad, but historicals are dreadfully similar sometimes.

  33. KellyMaher says:

    You guys are totally in my trust network with the STC campaign, and these two will definitely be added to my limited shopping list to check out in person.

  34. Christy says:

    I’d love a chance to explore some contemporaries, thye’re not usually my style.  🙂 Oh, and I love free!

  35. naughty_nymph says:

    Save the Contemporary!

  36. Sarah W says:

    Jennifer Crusie get her start in the contemporary categories, I think.

    I remember loving Anyone But You when it was a paperback in the “Love and Laughter” collection of either Harlequin or Silhouette.  It was among the few category romances I keep, instead of donating them to the library. 

    Later, after Crusie’s books were coming out in hardback, I realized that her voice sounded really familiar—-and that I’d put four of her categories on my keeper shelf throughout the years without noticing they were all by the same author!

  37. Lori says:

    Free books—-my two favorite words. I prefer contemporaries to historicals, but I had gotten out of the habit of reading categories. I’ve recently rediscovered them and getting two for free would make my day.

  38. maered says:

    Count me in, please.  Love these contests!

  39. Stacey P. says:

    Oh wow—looks like a fun prize pack, at all levels, 🙂

  40. Erin says:

    I never read category.  *ducks*  My mother in law reads category—TONS of it—and I just can’t. do. it.  I completely get that I’m just uneducated.  It’s not all Presents, right?  I do love contemporary though, and it’s pretty hard to find these days.  So perhaps, (just perhaps, I’m not promising anything here…) I should think about doing a little category shopping over at HQN.

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