The German translation of Unlawful Contact, available in November

Welcome back for another round of "Fun with Foreign Covers"!

I love these. It's fun for me to see what other cultures do with the covers to my books and the titles. Sometimes they're outrageous — a couple of the German covers for my historicals are hilarious in their inaccuracy, for example. But sometimes I like the foreign covers better, one example being the Spanish translation of Surrender — Rendición.


I love this cover!

At the top you see the cover for Süß ist die Angst — the German translation of Unlawful Contact. Stylistically, the cover is great for romantic suspense, and it fits nicely with my first German I-Team release, Kold vie der Tod.

Interestingly, the title Unlawful Contact has been giving foreign publishers fits, because it's a U.S. legal term and not really that easily translatable, at least not in a way that preserves the nice little double entendre. "Süß ist die Angst" means "Sweet is the Fear," which is a nice sequel to their title for Hard Evidence, which translates to "Cold as Death."

In Spain, Unlawful Contact is being released in October under the title Espósame — which I've been told means "Handcuff me." Oh, my! That kind of gets to the point — and then some! No cover for it yet, but expect it to be as sedate as the title is spicy.


A Portuguese translation of something that I wrote

Although I'm supposed to get copies of all foreign books, I often don't receive those copies. Heck, sometimes I don't even know a book is available in a certain language until I get the book two years after it came out. No joke. Here's a cover I went hunting for. I knew I had at least one book out in Portuguese. And here it is. I have no clue which of my books this is. But there it is.


The Thai translation of Extreme Exposure

This year, I discovered quite after the fact that my books were being released in Thai. That means my novels are now in seven languages. That's fewer languages than I studied in high school, but it's a growing number. I was excited. Then I learned from a Thai reader that apparently all my historicals are being released there, as well as the I-Team series. Book tour to Bangkok, anyone? I would love to go.

Latest Poll Results: You voted, there was no voter fraud, and the results are in! I guess I thought paranormal romance would rate higher and historical romance would rate much lower. After all, what we hear constantly from publishers is that paranormal continues to be hot and historicals just aren't strong.

But a huge majority of you chose historical romance as your favorite sub-genre, with romantic suspense coming second, erotic romance coming in third and paranormal fourth. I suppose the results might be explained in part by the fact that you voted here on my blog and I write historicals and romantic suspense. One might logically infer, then, that you're here because you like those sub-genres and read them. (Egads, can I give it a rest? I sound like a reporter even when I'm home having fun with you all on my blog!)

Historical romance — 24 (75 percent)
Contemporary romantic suspense — 19 (59 percent)
Erotic romance — 12 (37 percent)
Paranormal — 9 (28 percent)
Contemporary romance — 6 (18 percent)
Urban fantasy — 3 (9 percent)
Steampunk — 2 (6 percent)
Christian romance — 2 (6 percent)

I'll have a new poll up soon. Also, there will be I-Team interviews coming soon.

In the meantime, I'm off to bed. This week has been crazy at the paper, with an almost entirely new editorial staff slowly coming on board and a new computer program for laying out the paper's pages that no one knows how to use, including me. (Note to self: Next time, get a tutorial before you're on deadline with a bloody newspaper!)