Dolores Monaco

Yep, just as I figured — the only possible choice at Barnes & Noble after exhausting all your titles on the shelf is an author who has so little respect for her readers and the Regency period as to dispense with any pretense of authenticity whatever. Fortunately, I assured myself when I paid for the three I selected in desperation today that I could return them and get my money back. Sigh! So much more satisfying to go back to the dozen or so Balogh titles on my shelf and delight in re-reading them. Fortunately for me, you have been a prolific author. In my own interest I must soon conduct a more diligent search through your many titles in order to settle on some not locally available that I can order through B&N.

I discovered Georgette Heyer in the 1950s and was delighted to find that same meticulous care for character and period in your books, along with generous doses of tasteful sexual episodes. Rather than settle for a poor “knock-off’ I may as well go back to a Texas novelist who is at least rooted in her locale and moreover has enough respect for herself and her readers to stick to it. Unfortunately, that author doesn’t always ‘hit the mark’ on the heart strings where I’m concerned. as you never fail to do.

I am going to add something deeply personal here and tell you that I suffer from hereditary Major Depression but have overcome that with God’s help, a decade of psychological counseling and my Catholic faith. I happily live alone with two sweet cats and subsist on a meager Social Security pension. Reading top notch fiction like that which you create contributes mightily to my satisfaction in my circumstances and overall well-being. At the risk of conceit I can tell you that I possess an extremely high I.Q., a hungry mind that would devour me had I not fed and watered it daily since my earliest memories in the crib. Since that time my intellect and imagination and the splendid education I diligently sought have enriched my life beyond measure. In my determination to leave behind an ignorant Southern rural heritage I went at self-education ‘hammer and tongs’ starting in my early teens with Great Books like Ivanhoe, War and Peace, Madame Bovary (oof! depressing!) and other classics.

Looking over the list of your many titles is such a consolation, along with an awareness that you do not repeat yourself. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Believe me, I know enough about writing to recognize that it’s hard work. As Winston Churchill, one of the two heroes of my life* expressed his determination to save the civilized world from Nazism, writing demands “blood, sweat, tears and toil.”

*Rosa Parks, the black lady who refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama and sparked the dismantling of segregation, is my other hero.