Guest Blogger Author Jane Litte Talks About Latest Berkley Anthology AGONY/ECTASY

Guest Blogger Jane Litte 

Talks About 

Berkley's Latest Anthology

AGONY/ECSTASY

Thanks to Christine and the community here at Romantic Crush Junkies for allowing me to share my publishing endeavor with all of you. Honestly it seems weird to refer to the anthology in the possessive because I didn't write any part of the book.  My contribution was to read about 80 short stories around 5,000 words in length and try to find twenty to place in this collection. We ended up with twenty authors contributed twenty one stories.  

The anthology is an extension of the blog in that it is like a recommendation and as readers know, recommendations are both wonderful and awful.  They are wonderful because you really want to spread the love for a good book, but they are awful because you are asking someone to spend their hard earned money based on something you've said!  That's a lot of responsibility.  

Because the anthology is a collection of stories rather than just one, I feel just a little safer because surely there are some stories that every reader can enjoy (well, every reader that likes the steamy, hot, and sexy, right?)  But a recommendation is often far more difficult to give than a pass on a book.  Because when you tell another reader that book A didn't work for you, the worst that can happen is that the reader misses out on a potentially good read.  And while that is bad, it can't be as bad as when you are excited about a book and then a reader buys that book on your recommendation and ends up hating it.  But by hearing what your reader friend doesn't like and what she does like helps  to refine later recommendations.  Feedback becomes the way to become a better recommender of books.

I view reader comments that way.  It helps me refine my recommendations to particular readers.  Whenever someone asks me for a recommendation, I first ask what types of books they love.  Who are their favorite authors? Do they have a particular trope the love (mine is the friends to lovers trope)?  I also ask them about things that drive them crazy in books. The more you know, the better you can be at giving a safe recommendation.

But with the anthology, of course, I don't personally know all the readers that are going to buy the book so I had to pick a diverse set of stories that I thought would have broad appeal.  Not every story in any anthology pleases the same reader, but hopefully there are enough different stories that are well suited to disparate readers that the reader comes away satisfied that her money was well spent.  

Agony/Ecstasy

Meljean Brook, HelenKay Dimon, Jean Johnson, Margaret Rowe

All new stories of punishing extremes and unbearable pleasure...

With historical, contemporary, and futuristic backdrops, this outrageously diverse collection of original stories explores every conceivable variation of BDSM erotica—from knitting circles to the Titanic to a retelling of The Little Mermaid. Featuring all-new stories by Meljean Brook, Jean Johnson, Bettie Sharpe, Jill Myles, Margaret Rowe, Sara Thorn, and more, this book has everything a reader could hope for in an erotic romance.

(Original Stories of Agonizing Pleasure/Exquisite Pain)

Berkley (Heat), December 2011
ISBN-10: 0425243451
ISBN-13: 9780425243459
448 pages Trade Size

$16.00