I'd love to know what you think about THE SISTER!

Sorry to hear you haven't been feeling well. It's funny you mention your 3-year old trashing the house. I remember when my boys were little and I had my wisdom teeth out, and they had the run of the house for a while. I haven't noticed ad placement yet in novels, but I think I probably wouldn't have noticed it before all the discussion, either. Something to watch for, I guess.

I don't like the whole ad placement stuff. I read a book that had a lot of brand names and pop culture references last year, and half the time I was frustrated because I didn't know of the brands she was talking about. It turns out I don't know everything there is to know about brands/pop culture so using such things in say...metaphors doesn't really make things a whole lot clearer for me. That, and you would think that referring to a lot of popular now brand names would make your book get really dated really quickly, and I can't think of why you'd want that, I mean, unless you're getting big payoffs from companies you're mentioning and are willing to let your (not so) literary masterpiece play second fiddle to that... which seems oddly self-defeating. Hmmm. Interesting.

Julie - I'm ashamed to admit I've only read the Prologue. It sounds interesting, though.

Lisa - Yeah, my son had a great time doing whatever he wanted to. At least he took a 4 1/2 hour nap!

Megan - I don't mind "ad placement" as long as it's not intrusive on the story.

I agree, it's going to date the book. Not that people are going to be reading Carpe Demon 50 years from now anyway!

You make a good point about not understanding the references. Julie Kenner seemed overly concerned about making the teenagers in the book seem real, so she constantly had them going to Gap, sampling Clinique makeup, etc. She also had them saying things like, "He's so not the bomb, Mom." Whatever.

Hi! I'm kind of new to your blog; I've tried posting before, but Blogger wouldn't let me. Here's hoping this one works!

The ad placement issue is interesting. I have yet to read any books with it myself, but I feel like it would diminish the quality of the book, because it would be jarring.

There's something not quite honest about it---I suppose I think of writers as artists who make choices in the interests of the story, and the idea that they would let money influence what they write is disturbing, even if it is just making a character drink Diet Coke instead of just pop. Anyway, you've given me something interesting to think about!

No recommendation for adoption-related books, but when my aunt and uncle adopted internationally through their own church, they had a very positive experience. I only hope you're as blessed as we were when my cousin joined out family!

Poodle - Someone else complained that they couldn't post a comment here because it only allowed people with Blogger accounts to post. I had no idea it was set up that way, so I changed it. Hopefully, everyone (except spammers) can now comment.

I don't know that Julie Kenner does receive incentives to use names of stores/products in her books. She probably doesn't, so I don't want to accuse her. I just thought she overused the brand names. It got annoying pretty quickly.

I don't really mind the ad placement thing too much, because I do hate it when authors have to resort to using veiled descriptions of pop culture. My kids were watching an Arthur episode the other day where the characters were all excited about a new "Henry Scribner" movie - it was describing Harry Potter, but couldn't use the actual name Harry Potter because of copyright issues (I guess). That was truly annoying.

So, anyway, an interesting issue ...

You're right, that is different. I suppose it's a balancing act for authors, to include brand names where it would be natural for real people to use them, but not to overuse them.