Sourcebooks Casablanca Romance Authors

Deb couldn't blog with us today, but I have a re-post of a great blog from 2013. Enjoy!   by Deb Werksman Editorial Manager Sourcebooks Casablanca I've been doing a lot of exploring in my personal life about men and women, masculinity and femininity. A great topic for a romance editor, don't you think? I've been reading books and listening to tapes by Allison Armstrong in addition to applying all the transformation I get from the courses I take at Landmark Education. As you may already know, one of my editorial criteria for the romances on my list is, "a heroine the reader can relate to." So I got to thinking about the balance between feistiness in a heroine and her femininity and to what degree a heroine needs to be independent in thought and action and to what degree her femininity (what Allison calls "a strong woman voluntarily vulnerable") empowers the hero to be the man he needs to be to fulfill one of my other crit...

My parents and I went to visit my older sister when she was in college, I was about 15. Shortly after my arrival, she noticed my preoccupation with my new wrist watch. It even had one of those outer timing dials you could turn for purposes that were never quite clear, but I was deeply enamored of it. It also had that cool little AM/PM window where the "3" was supposed to be (the date window didn't come along until later). (And, yes, this was even before LED and other digital watches, waaaayyy before portable phones.) This is about the right age. (Cool shirt hunh?) So, the first thing my sister did after my parents weren't in the room was grab my watch and set it some random amount ahead (or way behind). "There!" She handed it back to me, quite pleased with herself. "That's Matthew time. You aren't allowed to calibrate it to real time, or anyone else's. Or explain what's going on for the duration of your entire visit." I soon le...

First off, I can't. I'm a complete and certified klutz. No, really. I took this series of tests once to determine what possible careers I'd be good at and my single lowest score, by a 30% margin, was manual dexterity. My penmanship was actually outlawed in tenth grade and for high school graduation I received two gifts: new skis for me and an electric typewriter (dating myself there) for my professors. When I use a ruler to draw a straight line, I get a thumb-bump (you know, where the pen bumps against your thumb and screws up the line) and then the ruler slips and I get a dragging curve that swoops down the page. My kid tried to teach me juggling with soft little bean bags... I broke things. The fact that I can type at all or ride my bike without falling off is a modern miracle. But lately I've been having some great juggling practice. In the last 7 days I've (in order) received feedback from my first readers on Book IV of "The Night Stalkers" ser...