Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Cover Snark: Wayback Retro Edition

The ever-awesome LadyRhian did some scanning, and then Candy and I did some screaming and some rushing and some eyewashing, and now it’s your turn to feast your eyes on the retro majesty.

Don’t say we didn’t warn you. As usual, these covers are NSFW in the fuchsia sense. I mean, there is NO way you can pass off that you’re doing work if you’re caught having a look-see at these.

HaBO: Billie Bloebaum Needs Your Help

Our Bookmatcher, Billie Bloebaum from Powell’s Airport SuperEdition, has a HaBO request:

Okay. Now it’s my turn to hope the Bitchery can help me out.

It’s been close to thirty years since I read this book—sometime in the mid-
to late-seventies. There’s a good chance that it was published in 1976 for the
Bicentennial. It was a novel for younger readers and one of the featured
characters was the Marquis de Lafayette. The book was possibly told in first
person from the heroine’s perspective. I don’t remember much about the plot,
except that there was a banquet fairly early on where a lot of talk revolved
around the war. I seem to remember that the heroine was betrothed—my mind
seems to think it was to Lafayette, but that isn’t historically correct, so
it’s likely she was engaged to another and just kind of got all swoony for
Lafayette. (And if the paintings of him are accurate, it must have been his
fortune, his brilliant mind, or a finely-turned leg that did her in.) I *do*
know that the novel took place in the U.S. and had a white-ish cover with red
and blue used for the title and author. It was a fairly plain cover, with an
oval-framed portrait (of Lafayette?) in the center and the trim size was
smaller than usual for a hardcover, closer to that of a mass market paperback.

Entirely unhelpful, I know, but my excuse is that my age was still in the
single digits at the time. But, this is the book that I would count as my very
first romance, so I’d really like to find it. I’m sure it won’t be as
entrancing as I remember, but it’s driving me batty not knowing what it is.

Please help.

Anyone recall this book? Remember, if the first comment guesses it in one try, and Billie confirms the winner, there be Titles bestowed upon the most helpful HaBO-lator in all the land.

 

Behold! A Video Interview with Jesse Petersen!

Jesse Peterson won the author interview I offered for the Brenda Novak Diabetes Auction, and she wanted to talk about her book Married With Zombies, which comes out 1 September 2010.

I decided it might be fun to do a goofy video author interview, and ask Jesse about her book, and what’s next in zombie fiction. She totally went along with my bizarre questions during the RWA conference - we’re in the lobby of the hotel, which fit the odd and silly finished product. Enjoy!

Crusie Winners

I got me some hardbacks, ready to rock and roll. The winners of the Maybe This Time giveaway are:

Amanda Blair

Dread Pirate Rachel

MadamOwl

Sarapencil

Babs

Natalie’s Mama

Following the Road

Lizw65

Please email me with your mailing addresses at SarahATsmartbitchestrashybooksDOTcom, with subject line “Crusie Book Winner,” and I shall put the book in the mail asap.

Thank you for entering, and happy reading!

Leah Hultenschmidt moves to SourceBooks

Starting 1 September, with email effective immediately, Leah Hultenschmidt is now Senior Editor at Sourcebooks. Woo hoo! From the official press release:

Sourcebooks Casablanca is now building on this success with the addition of Leah Hultenschmidt as Senior Editor.  Leah will acquire romance and YA projects for Sourcebooks’ Casablanca and Fire imprints, and she is the newest addition to the Sourcebooks New York office.

“I’m thrilled to be coming on board at Sourcebooks, whose innovation and commitment to authors is well known throughout the industry,” said Hultenschmidt.

Leah was most recently Editorial Director at Dorchester Publishing, one of the leading independent publishing houses for mass market fiction, where she served over ten years. She specialized in acquiring and editing romance fiction, westerns, and other mass market originals, and also has experience managing content for the Dorchester website. Leah has worked with New York Times bestselling authors Angie Fox and Jennifer Ashley and USA Today bestselling authors Joy Nash and Robin Popp, as well as many others. She developed the award-winning Classic Film Collection within the Western line to bring back into print novels that were the basis for such famous films as The Searches, Destry Rides Again, and The Outlaw Josey Wales.

Starting immediately, Leah can be reached at leah.hultenschmidt@sourcebooks.com.  Her first day with Sourcebooks is Wednesday, September 1.

I think this will make SourceBooks’ romance line much, much stronger and I am very curious to see what books are coming our way from her office. As we say in Jersey, fuckin’ A, that’s awesome.

Way to go, Leah!