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This week we've asked some Roc/Ace authors to write in and let us know what they've been up to. The first author to respond to our call was the inimitable Jeanne C. Stein, who here clues us in on what the next year holds for her!

Now that the third book in the Anna Strong series, The Watcher, is out, I’ll be busy for the next couple of weeks doing signings in Southern California and Denver. For those of you who haven’t read a blurb about The Watcher, Anna (bounty-hunter-turned-vampire) finds herself battling a witch with ulterior motives, a Mexican drug lord with ties to both the mortal and immortal worlds, a psycho hit man, and her own demons in her continuing quest to find a place in the world. It's a tough fight, but the one thing Anna has always been able to handle is trouble.

As for my new projects, I just turned in the fourth Anna Strong novel, working title Legacy, to Jessica Wade, my editor. The tentative release date for that one is September 2008. In the meantime, I have a short story in the anthology Many Bloody Returns (available now) that features a witch with a real split personality named Sophie. I’m working on a proposal to give Sophie her own book. I’ll keep you informed how that works out! I will also have a straight mystery short in an anthology entitled Scene of the Crime edited by Dana Stabenow. I don’t have a release date yet but it will be sometime next year and I’ll let you know as soon as I do.

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My great aunt wrote biographies and even made a living at it, Book of the Month Club and everything. When I would ask her why she chose the subjects she did, she always looked at me as if I were silly. “Why, of course,” she would say, “because they were bright, interesting men.” Women, to her, though perhaps bright, could not be as interesting because they never had power, in the sense she admired it. So Catherine Drinker Bowen wrote best-selling biographies of John Adams, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sir Edward Coke, and the authors of the US Constitution. Only at the end of her writing life did she turn to men who were not quite such “models of probity,” as she would have said, to Sir Francis Bacon and Benjamin Franklin, both of whom had a relatively harmless, but scandalous side. Was she really a lawyer or a politician at heart? A judge? Born when she was, and into a family of four brothers and a renowned beauty for a sister, she never even went to college. She always told me that her mother introduced her to guests and visitors differently from the other children: “and this is my daughter who plays the violin.” So, I guess that’s as close as I’ll come to understanding why these men appealed to her.

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Roc and Ace publish science-fiction and fantasy, but what exactly does that mean? When people consider these genres, they might think of The Lord of the Rings or Star Wars—but beyond that it all gets a bit hazy. Enter any book store, however, and you’ll find hundreds if not thousands of novels lining the shelves in the Sci-Fi and Fantasy section. What’s going on? They can’t all be Tolkien rehashes and Star Trek spin offs, can they?

Of course not. The scope of science fiction and fantasy is limited only by the imagination of its authors, and this genre has some of the most powerfully imaginative people writing today. This week we’re going to examine the general categories that most authors fall into, and look at only a few of the great Roc and Ace writers who are excelling in each (if we could add all of Roc/Ace's talented and best selling authors, this entry would be far too long, so consider the names selected below but a random sampling!). Want to know the difference between Alternate History and Military SF? Learn about the increasingly popular Urban Fantasy, or examine the roots of Hard Science Fiction? Then read on, and come back for future installments later this week!

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Berkley/NAL is First Publisher to Hold #1 Spots on Both New York Times Trade and Mass Market Paperback Fiction Bestseller Lists as Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth is #1 Trade Title for a Second Straight Week and Nora Roberts' Blood Brothers Hits #1 in Mass Market

With The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett (NAL) holding the top slot on The New York Times trade paperback fiction list for the second week in a row and Blood Brothers by Nora Roberts (Jove) rising to #1 on the mass market fiction list in its second week, this represents the first time that one publishing house has held both of these #1 positions since The New York Times divided its paperback fiction bestseller list into separate trade and mass market lists this past September. For the week of December 16th, the Berkley, NAL, and Signet imprints have racked up a combined six titles on the paperback lists. Congratulations to Leslie Gelbman and her Berkley/NAL team!

In addition to being the most recent Oprah Book Club selection, Follett's The Pillars of the Earth was also featured on Oprah's annual "Favorite Things" special this year. The Signet mass market edition of The Pillars of the Earth is currently #7 on the mass market paperback fiction list in its sixth week. And World Without End (Dutton), Follett's sequel to Pillars, is at #4 on The New York Times hardcover fiction list, in its eighth week.