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Long before the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon, Anne Rice was writing a raunchy series of erotic novels in the 1980s under the pseudonym A.N. Roquelaure. The Sleeping Beauty series contained the following three novels: The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, Beauty’s Punishment and Beauty’s Release. The trilogy has been very successful for Anne Rice, and in the 1990s, […]

When bibliophiles think of horror, typically names like Stephen King, Anne Rice, and R.L. Stine come to mind. How about Peggy Parish? Dorkly.com editor-in-chief Andrew Bridgman and comics creator Andy Kluthe collaborated on a parody piece starring Amelia Bedelia.

Many children’s literature fans will fondly recall Parish’s lovable goofball maid “drawing the drapes,” “dressing the chicken,” and “dusting the furniture.” The ”Why Amelia Bedelia Is Literally The Most Terrifying Character Ever” piece features antics that include “making the bed,” “throwing a baby shower,” and “having a brainstorm session.” What do you think?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Goodreads has announced the winners of this year’s Goodreads Choice Awards. With 46,154 votes, Landline by Rainbow Rowell has won in the Best Fiction category.

We’ve linked to samples of all the winning titles below. Did your favorite writer make it to the end?

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We’ve collected the books debuting on Indiebound’s Indie Bestseller List for the week ending November 02, 2014–a sneak peek at the books everybody will be talking about next month.

(Debuted at #1 in Hardcover Nonfiction) Yes Please by Amy Poehler: “Do you find yourself daydreaming about hanging out with the actor behind the brilliant Leslie Knope on Parks and Recreation? Did you wish you were in the audience at the last two Golden Globes ceremonies, so you could bask in the hilarity of Amy’s one-liners? If your answer to these questions is ‘Yes Please!’ then you are in luck.” (October 2014)

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These are the songs that wake me up, take me out of my worries and anxieties, wash my brain cells, and send me to the keyboard to write with new vigor. 1. "It's My Life" by Bon Jovi This is a song I associate with my beloved vampire hero, Lestat, today. I imagine Lestat loving [...]

Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment have joined together to acquire the film rights to The Vampire Chronicles.

More than 20 million copies of these novels have been sold worldwide. Thus far, Anne Rice has written ten installments in her popular series. Knopf will publish book 11, Prince Lestat, on October 28, 2014.

Here’s more from Variety: “An earlier version of the story, Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles, starred Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise in 1994 and was a strong performer for Warner Bros. with $220 million in worldwide box office. Rice’s Queen of the Damned, also part of The Vampire Chronicles, starred Aaliyah and Stuart Townsend in 2002 and grossed $45 million worldwide for Warners.” Which actor would you cast as Lestat?

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The International Thriller Writers (ITW) have unveiled the winners of the 2014 ITW Thriller Awards. Check out the full list of winners below. Follow this link to view photos from the banquet celebration.

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Anne Rice has joined a number of authors who have signed a petition to stop “author harassment” in user reviews on Amazon.

The petition, which is addressed to Jeff Bezos and Jon Fine, calls for more oversight and control on Amazon’s product reviews system. The authors of the petition are trying to put an end to what they have described as bullying and harassment in book reviews.

“I believe, as do countless others—many who will have signed this petition—that the reason this bullying and harassment is able to take place is because of the allowance of anonymity on Amazon,” writes Todd Barselow, the petition organizer. “People have found ways to exploit this flaw in the system and are using it to bully, harass, and generally make life miserable for certain authors on Amazon.” continued…

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Here are some literary events to pencil in your calendar this week.

To get your event posted on our calendar, visit our Facebook Your Literary Event page. Please post your event at least one week prior to its date.

Celebrate John Lennon’s birthday with the readings of “Lennonight.” Join in on Tuesday, October 15th at 2A Bar starting 8 p.m. (New York, NY)

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Novelist Anne Rice wrote an intriguing one-sentence post on Facebook recently: “If you want Lestat to come back, can you tell me why in one sentence?”

Her die-hard fans left more than 8,100 comments explaining why they hoped she’d bring back the vampire who starred in her beloved Vampire Chronicles series (including her bestseller, The Vampire Lestat). She followed up the post with another short and cryptic update: “In one sentence, what one thing do you NOT like about Lestat?”

Would you read a new Lestat book? Could thousands of fans convince the horror novelist to bring back her famous character?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

For your weekend reading pleasure, here are our top stories of the week, including The Dark Knight Rises spoilers and Anne Rice erotica and disappearing books (embedded above).

Click here to sign up for GalleyCat’s daily email newsletter, getting all our publishing stories, book deal news, videos, podcasts, interviews, and writing advice in one place.

1. Self-Published Bestseller List
2. The Dark Knight Rises Spoilers Released
3. Tom Cruise Plays Jack Reacher in New Trailer
4. Book That Disappears As You Read
5. The Lost History of Fifty Shades of Grey
6. What Should We Do with ARCs?
7. Anne Rice Republishes Erotica Trilogy
8. How a Charles Dickens Novel Inspired The Dark Knight Rises
9. Self-Published Author Jamie McGuire Lands Book Deal
10. Most Highlighted Passages in Fifty Shades of Grey (Safe for Work)

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Plume will republish three erotica books that Anne Rice published in the 1980s under the pen name, A.N. Roquelaure.

The erotic trilogy revisits the Sleeping Beauty fairytale, imagining that a handsome Prince awakens Beauty to a life of “complete and total enslavement to him.”

Coming on July 11th, books are The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, Beauty’s Punishment and Beauty’s Release. Rice also wrote a new preface for the book, defending erotica and talking about the series.

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Just in time for Halloween, novelist Anne Rice wrote a Facebook post critiquing Twilight–comparing Stephenie Meyer‘s vampire characters to Rice’s famous Lestat de Lioncourt and Louis de Pointe du Lac.

Rice wrote: “Lestat and Louie feel sorry for vampires that sparkle in the sun. They would never hurt immortals who choose to spend eternity going to high school over and over again in a small town —- anymore than they would hurt the physically disabled or the mentally challenged. My vampires possess gravitas. They can afford to be merciful.”

What do you think–how do the two vampire books stack up? The post has already generated thousands of likes and hundreds of comments on Facebook. (Via)

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It’s still way too early to decide the winner in the social network race (but it appears Google+ might be lagging as it’s already losing visitors. In our opinion, the network still has yet to show how it’s better than Facebook)... Read the rest of this post

Check out this video with legendary author Anne Rice (Interview with the Vampire) and her writer son Christopher Rice (The Moonlit Earth), on writing and being an author. I found the interview inspiring, encouraging, and wise, so full of insight, and good advice–including not to listen to advice (something I also say!) but to go with what works for you as a writer. I identified with so much Anne Rice said, and got a lot out of the talk, including the answers to audience questions. I loved hearing that other people told Anne Rice that she wasn’t a real writer because she didn’t write every day–yet here she is, so successful!–because I’ve had the same experience, people telling me what a “real” writer is, and that I don’t fit it. I also loved hearing about how much Anne thinks putting emotion into characters, getting the reader to feel, is important. It’s so validating!

What do you think?

Anne Rice in conversation with Christopher Rice from Ted Habte-Gabr on Vimeo.

Ever wanted to own a piece of vampire novelist Anne Rice? Powell’s Books will be selling 7,000 titles from Anne Rice’s private library.

Depending on the success of this venture, Powell’s may expand to in-store offerings as well. Right now, the site has posted more than 1000 titles, including Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, and Homer‘s Odyssey.

Here’s more from the site: “Included in the collection are editions signed or annotated by Ms. Rice, and many have her library markings on the spines. The collection showcases her love of literature and writing and reveals a true intellectual curiosity — classic philosophy, the Brontes, biblical archaeology, and Louisiana history are just a few of the subject areas represented.”

Editor’s Note: This post was changed to correctly state that 1000, not 9 titles are currently available for sale on the site.

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In the used book business it’s easy to get into a rut, especially in
buying. Like with a lot of things, if you stick with a system you’ve
developed, it often starts to seem like it’s being proved right.

For example: When we opened 6 or so years ago we tried just about every
fiction genre in the shop and online. Romance, thriller, literary,
classics, crime, etc. etc. I should add the caveat that both of us (my
brother and I run the store) have, as the Irish put it, “notions”, so we
were hardly married to the romance and thriller end of the spectrum.
After a few months the Tom Clancys, Danielle Steeles, John Grishams, and
Nora Roberts weren’t exactly running out the door, so we bagged ‘em and
concentrated on books that we knew something about.

Time passed and we were proven right! We didn’t sell any of that stuff
(though we kept a stash of a dozen or so hyper popular authors boxed in
the basement for emergencies). What’s nice about these broad decisions is
that they save a lot of time - you can stop looking at broad swathes of
categories and just put them out of your mind completely. This is
reassuring but not always any more useful than “company policy” is at a
more traditional business.

Last year we moved our shop across town (Boston is a small town so the
move amounted to a longish walk) and the new location had slightly
different tastes, so when people brought in piles of books, I was more
likely to take a longer look. So, in that mode, when a woman brought in a
few bags of vampire books - mostly what they are calling paranormal
romance - I was more inclined to look. Obviously we’ve paid some measure
of attention to Anne Rice (as she’s slowly become impossible to sell) and
the Twilight books have moved rapidly in and back out of the shop, but I
was completely unprepared for how this phenomenon still has legs. We
purchased maybe 50 of these and they have flown out the door.

Now, this phenomenon was ably profiled in this
very space, but I think it may have understated the breadth of this
category - more than just a spiking of vampire popularity, it’s staking
claim to wide swathes of romance territory. Hundreds of novels that were
once romance fiction, romance suspense, romance historical fiction, are
being absorbed under the (increasingly broad) paranormal romance category.

As near as I can tell, there are two types as represented by two general
cover designs.

The super sexualized Goth cover:

and the charmingly cartoonish:

Sometimes the publisher even has a change of heart (focus groups being
what they are) and one is swapped out for the other:

The cartoon Lynsay Sands covers are generally out of print now. Perhaps
bound to become collector’s items (I’m kidding of course, there must be
100,000 of them out there)? There’s not a big difference in saleability
as far as I can tell, just two different targeted market segments. What’s
most remarkable about these is how they sell though - online, in the
store, and even though they are often 5 years old (which is usually ages
with this sort of thing). It just goes to show that even though you might
think you know what’s going on (I’m down with Twilight, watched the True
Blood mash-up of James Lee Burke and Vampires), you can still be missing
everything beneath the surface. Some of the series just go on and on -
the Laurel Hamilton one is approaching 20 in the series.

So I’ve vowed to be more vigilant, less opinionated, but also to peer more
intently at the horizon. For I’m sure some of you are on top of this
already and have shrugged at my revelatory tone. So you count yourself
ready for the continued love affair with vampires, but are you prepared
for the next wave? What will follow Vampires in a world where Jane Austen
and Zombies is a bestseller with a movie deal?

Amorous were-wolves (it’s been done - here’s a
whole subsection of Werewolf and “Shifter” stories)? Naughty nymphs?
Lascivious Satyrs? I wouldn’t even want speculate on the narrative
possibilities of centaurs or harpies. Zombies are a tough sell,
romantically, but how about Mummies (you could just un-mummy the mummies
like the movie franchise did so famously. This worked in Twilight - what
if Vampires could go out in the daytime? What if they were unbothered by
crosses, garlic, running water, etc. What if they were exactly like
normal people only much more attractive and awesomer? Sold!). Demon
lovers are as old as the hills, and Patrick Swayze sort of put a stake (so
to speak) in ghosts, but how about lovable poltergeists or revenants.

The list could go on (goblins, golems, ginger-bread men) but whatever
happens, I’ll be ready the next time.

–
Pazzo Books
1898a Centre St.
West Roxbury, MA 02131
617-323-2919

web: pazzobooks.com
blog: pazzobooks.com/blog.htm
twitter: twitter.com/pazzobooks