Jayne-eHarlequin's blog

Don’t miss the Holiday Event of the year at eHarlequin.com! 

Be sure to mark your calendars for December 16th, 2009 for the eighth annual Holiday Open House in our eHarlequin.com online Community.

We’ll be sharing virtual eggnog and holiday cheer with 22 hours of discussions in the forums, three hours of live chat, over 100 authors, fabulous door prizes and all your favorite romance categories represented, all to celebrate the best of the Holiday Season and give you a sneak peak into what to expect inside your books in 2010!

You’ll meet the authors you love, and a few we know you soon will—from warm-hearted and tender romances to the thrills and chills of the paranormal, they write the stories that keep you turning the pages and churning through that To-Be-Read pile. So make a date to join us as we share the joy of the season, make some new friends, catch up on forum gossip and get up-to-the-minute news about series, books and authors —you might even win a prize or two while getting to know us!

We're so excited to finally be able to announce the launch of Carina Press™ today, a digital-only publishing house that will operate independently of Harlequin's traditional publishing businesses.

Carina Press will publish a broad range of fiction with an emphasis on romance and its subgenres. We will also acquire voices in mystery, suspense and thrillers, science fiction, fantasy, erotica, gay/lesbian, and more! Whether you've never been published or are multi-published and are interested in exploring the potential of digital publishing we are interested in hearing from you. Our philosophy is: no great story should go untold!

November shines the Spotlight on Love Inspired, and we're doing it up in style. Here are a few things you can look forward to this month.

First, if you haven't started reading yet, we have a great online read by Margaret Daley, called Shattered Trust. A bit of trivia for you- this is Margaret's FIRST online read for us. Those of you who've been on the boards a while know that Margaret is one of our longtime members and we just adore her. So please stop by, lend your support, and let her know just how much we appreciate her.

Second, starting November 9th, and going through November 24th, we're having a Thanksgiving Blessings and Traditions discussion. Because the heart of Love Inspired books is all about faith and family, we're sharing this special holiday with our online family. We hope you'll join us and share your traditions as well. And who knows, maybe you'll find a special new tradition of your own to incorporate into your celebrations.

eHarlequin.com and the eHarlequin eBook Store are getting into the Paranormal spirit, too, with a great sale! From now until October 31st, you can save 35% on paranormal romance and fantasy novels in the Moonlight Madness sale. Snap up books by favorite authors like Gena Showalter, Rachel Vincent, Jennifer Armintrout, Heather Graham, P.C. Cast, and more… or you could try something new like a paranormal Blaze or Spice book.

And pssst…come back on Monday to play our Nocturne Hangman game on the Hosty Hot Spot forum and WIN book prizes!

Jayne

Love to dress up for Halloween? Let your imagination fly and you can win a great prize!

eBook retailer Omnilit, Silhouette Nocturne Bites and Sony are co-sponsoring an online Halloween Costume Contest — with a grand prize of a silver Sony Pocket Edition Reader (one of their new eBook reader designs, worth $199!).  Other prizes include Omnilit $50 gift certificates for the Prettiest, Scariest, and Sexiest costumes!

Love to dress up for Halloween? Let your imagination fly and you can win a great prize!

eBook retailer Omnilit, Silhouette Nocturne Bites and Sony
are co-sponsoring an online Halloween Costume Contest — with a grand prize of a silver Sony Pocket Edition Reader (one of their new eBook reader designs, worth $199!).  Other prizes include Omnilit $50 gift certificates for the Prettiest, Scariest, and Sexiest costumes!

Our 60th Anniversary just keeps getting better!

Harlequin has teamed up with Flower Pot Press to release a line of tantalizing paper products, including journals, notepads, and address books that capture the allure of our early Harlequin novels.  Cover art from sixty years of satisfying readers with daring adventures, psychological intrigue, and steamy romance will adorn products to capture your secrets or even your to-do lists...and more! This particular line will display some of our most memorable cover art from the 1940s and 50s and feature products in the Harlequin Notables line ranging in price from $8 to $15.

We all have temptations that we can't resist. For some it's as harmless as a piece of chocolate cake, for others it's as risky as a romp in public. Some of us give into temptation, others resist. What do you do?

Can you be tempted to share?

Harlequin would like to invite you to participate in our exciting Romance Report online survey and Tempted Forum. Your contributions will help shape the content of our Report which will be filled with results, tips and advice from the experts, the hottest celebrities and more! We want to hear about the people, places and things that tempt you most. Participate in the Romance Report online survey and your contributions will help shape our upcoming Report.

Click here to take the survey and tell us what you find the most Tempting!

Jayne

Remember that tomorrow,  Wednesday, Sept. 23 at 11am EDT / 4pm GMT / 8am PDT is our live editor chat with Harlequin Presents editor Joanne Grant about the Harlequin Presents Writing Competition! Joanne will be taking questions and telling us everything she's looking for in the line. You could join the ranks of previous winners Lynn Raye Harris whose debut novel, SPANISH MAGNATE, RED-HOT REVENGE, is coming out in 2009 from Harlequin Presents and Lucy King who sold her novel Damsel in Distress to Modern Heat. This will be a live event held in the eHarlequin.com Community chat room — click here to get there when the times comes!

Bring your questions (just remember it’s a protocol chat — you alert the moderator that you have a question and she will tell you when it’s our turn to ask) or just follow along! I will be live-blogging on   Harlequin Twitter using the hash tag #presentschat as well and we will post the transcript sometime on our Community pages afterwards.

Do you ever wonder what you’d say to an author if you had the chance to discuss each chapter of her story with her WHILE you’re reading her work? Wonder no longer! In the eHarlequin.com Community we have a tradition of inviting our Online Read authors to visit while the chapters of their stories are published in our Daily, Weekly and Special Event program on the Online Read section of the website.

These discussions have not only provided our aspiring authors with a great opportunity to learn how to craft a serialized story in a shorter format, they’ve given our authors a wonderful forum to discuss motivation, characterization and plotting…not to mention hot heroes, crafty villains and feisty heroines! In fact on a couple of occasions our Community’s love of a secondary character in an online read, has resulted in a spin off story!