If you’re not a romance writer or an avid reader, you may have never heard of RT Book Reviews (formerly known as Romantic Times, not RT). If you think back though, you may remember seeing me posting or heard me talking about “going to RT” which is author-speak for attending the huge (like 2000 people big) Romantic Times Booklovers Convention held each spring and sponsored by the aforementioned RT Book Reviews magazine.

Now that you have the background I can get to the good stuff. RT reviewers can be tough, for lack of a better word. To get reviewed by them at all can be tricky. I personally consider a 3 star review from RT a rave and to date, that’s all I’ve ever gotten from them. I’ve seen big name authors get 2 stars, at which point I empathized, cringed and held my breath yesterday when looking for reviews for my September Studs in Spurs eBook release, Flanked, to send to my publisher. These are to be included in the print version coming out next year, which in true publishing fashion we are working on now. So back to the story…yesterday as I’m Googling, I saw there was a review from RT for my yet to be released FLANKED, but I couldn’t see the review itself.

Now, I’ll gladly drop the thousand dollars (usually much more) to attend the annual RT convention, but I’m too cheap to pay the $29 or whatever it is subscribe to the magazine. They’ve only reviewed me 3 times or so, and that was years ago and I can get the content eventually later online anyway. So there I sat with a link to my review and no way to see it unless I found someone who had a log in. I considered subscribing just to read it, but I was sitting at the gate in the Atlanta airport and didn’t feel confident whipping out my credit card then and there to do it, but that was going to be my last resort upon arriving home. Luckily one of my friends is very connected. Her subscription had run out but she thought she could find someone with an active subscription to go and look up my review. So when I woke up this morning, after an entire day and night of nail biting worry, there was the most incredible thing waiting for me–a 4 star, glowing review for FLANKED! Nice way to start to day. And an even nicer thing to paste into my Galley Proof document to be added by Samhain to the front of Flanked when it releases in print next year.

Now, I don’t want to go to RT jail, so I’m only going to post a short snippet below. Just enough so you can share my joy! 4 Stars from RT!

“Smart, sassy and intensely sexy, this fifth installment in the Studs in Spurs series is unbridled entertainment from start to finish. Combining a charmingly earnest hero and an admirably strong, no-nonsense heroine leads to chemistry that’s both surprising and engrossing. Best of all, this is a story with depth as well as heat…“ RT Book Reviews, 4 Stars

For the full review those who subscribe to RT Book Reviews can see the rest in the print magazine, or online by logging in. For the rest, the review will be visible in a few months on their site.