Teddy Pig has taken a bullet for us, and not only saw the cover and sent us a jpg, but then went out and BOUGHT the thing just to get a better cover picture. Pictures under the cut because of not-especially-worksafe graphics and REALLY not worksafe commentary.
Sarah: I bet this is some angsty gay romance right here: Finnegan promised he would wash his drawers, but Raoul could see through his lies. His promises meant as much as the guarantees on the Oxy Clean tub: despite the temptations of the pretty pink scoop hidden inside, Finnegan would get no what-what in his butt until his spanky pants were sparkling.
Candy: I can only come to one conclusion: the use of “Finnegan” in the title and the skid marks are a tribute to James Joyce. I’ve posted the link to Joyce’s delightfully scatalogical love letters before a couple of years ago, but I think these sorts of masterworks could stand re-reading. A choice excerpt:
I got your hot letter tonight and have been trying to picture you frigging your cunt in the closet. How do you do it? Do you stand against the wall with your hand tickling up under your clothes or do you squat down on the hole with your skirts up and your hand hard at work in through the slit of your drawers? Does it give you the horn now to shit? I wonder how you can do it. Do you come in the act of shitting or do you frig yourself off first and then shit? It must be a fearfully lecherous thing to see a girl with her clothes up frigging furiously at her cunt, to see her pretty white drawers pulled open behind and her bum sticking out and a fat brown thing stuck half-way out of her hole. You say you will shit your drawers, dear, and let me fuck you then. I would like to hear you shit them, dear, first and then fuck you. Some night when we are somewhere in the dark and talking dirty and you feel your shite ready to fall put your arms round my neck in shame and shit it down softly.
Cover #2 comes from Bitchery reader Mary, who was rather alarmed by the image she sent us. With good reason.
Sarah: This poor man does not know how far she has misled him. When breast implants burst, they are not like piñatas. They are not sinfully sweet. Candy does not fly out, neither the Malaysian nor the high-fructose corn syrup kind. Poor thing. He’s about to get doused with silicone and saline.
Candy: Alas, the poor woman did not heed the old adage about being careful what you wish for. She asked for breasts that would grow bigger with every squeeze, but forgot little details like, oh, more skin.
Our final image comes from the author herself, who was so excited and bemused by her French cover for Lady X’s Cowboy. Apologies to Nathalie and all our French readers, but it seems the US has KICKED ZEE ASS of ZEE FRENCH in zee COVER department! And Fifi can smell the fear… in your PANTS.
Sarah: The cow-boy, he is going to gallop his steed across Fire Island in that ascot-thing he’s wearing. But see how she tries to stop him!
“Your shirt! It must be tucked in! And that fungus on your arm! It must be seen by the dermatologist!”
Alas, he shot her with his tiny, tiny gun.
Candy: Damn, given his stylish bandana, flawless chaps and artfully unbuttoned shirt, you think somebody would’ve done a better bleach job on the poor darling. Standards, people! Standards!
Hot gay guys = nice.
James Joyce writing about poop = uncalled for.
And that’s one craptastic French cover. Too bad, because the US cover is quite nifty.
Is the entire bikini made of candy?
Does it melt in your mouth not in your hand?
James Joyce – I think my brain just went tilt.
You know, on that first cover it’s amazing how the eye is immediately drawn…not to the nicely sculpted chests or abs, not to the bulging triceps, not even to the chiseled chins. But instead, “holycrapwhatisthatyellowstainonthefrontofhisundies??!!” And James Joyce? ick…
And the freshly siliconed (obviously JUST had surgery because those puppies haven’t dropped into place yet and are still hard as a rock) woman on the front of #2 needs to go back to her plastic surgeon. When he put in her implants HE FORGOT TO PUT HER NIPPLE BACK ON!! I mean, there’s no areola even showing—nothin’! Something went horribly wrong with that breast augmentation. I’d ask for my money back.
What are those dirt stripes across La Lady’s buttocks? Whip marks?
HE FORGOT TO PUT HER NIPPLE BACK ON!!
Nah, it was a gummy bear. He ate it.
Bloody hell, it’s 9am in Sydney and I feel like I need another shower after reading that James Joyce extract… Damn you Candy!
Lol!! I know…that poor girl on “sinfully sweet”. I love the candy bikini, but she reminds me of being like 2 weeks postpartem with giant oobies that outsized my infant’s head. Scary, scary times…my chest hurts just thinking about it.
But at least I had a nipple at the time…
lol,
Anna J. Evans
How? How does La Lady keep that impossibly flimsy lilac bodice/blouse/top type thingy up over her boobs? Wild West Wig Tape??
I always secretly thought Joyce’s writing was shit; what I didn’t realize was what a high, sexy compliment he would have considered that appellation.
I hope to hell it is a tribute to James Joyce and not the Finnegan I first thought of.
Who knew James Joyce was such a big ol’
freak? And not in a good way either.
Sometimes the covers you post leave me speechless.
This is one of those times.
Poor James Joyce, did no one ever tell him not to put anything in a letter that he would be ashamed to have seen on the front page of the Times? Or maybe it wouldn’t have bothered him.
James Joyce has likely turned every English major into a secret hater since his squirts-of-consciousness babbling about finger-lickin’, nostril-flarin’ good (to him, anyway) defecations were deemed literature.
I never could stand the sweaty-palmed mofo…especially after what he wrote about, and likely did to, my Polish-Irish-Jewish great-grandmother.
Well, then again, she did lie a lot.
So how was the story, Teddy Pig?
I’m baaaaaaaaaaaaaack… online again after 5 miserable, terrifying weeks of only being able to use the ‘net for 10 minutes at a time! And this is what I come back to? James Joyce’s heavy-breathing “frigging shit” musing?
Ahh, Bitches, how I’ve missed you.
Charlene,
The father died about halfway through the book. I envied him. He got away.
The father died about halfway through the book. I envied him. He got away.
Posted by Teddy Pig
LOL LOL LOL. BUT we must get a full blow-by-blow (as it were) of the whole book.
And those dirty undies in Finnegan’s Promise??? They’re called “Tidy Whities” for a reason, boys. WASH THEM. Try Oxyclean. They swear it can get any stain out!
Teddy – Admit it. You really, really wanted to read another Carol Lynne.
Wait, there were romance covers around that fecophiliac Joyce quote? I was so busy soaking my brain in bleach that I didn’t notice…
My anti-spam is “efforts” as in the “efforts” it will take me to get the “fat brown thing” visual out of my head. Suddenly those alpha bastards from the rape thread seem positively romantic in comparison.
*hurk*
Oh mon dieu! Quel désastre!
Le Cowboy et La Lady…? That sort of title should put the translator on Le Firing Squad. It’s like that oldish late 80s early 90s scifi movie entitled “I Come in Peace” (yeah, I know, funny) which the French translated into “Dark Angel” (I shit you not!).
And Sarah, you do me proud weet zee Frrrench aksawnt. I luv Les Beetch!
And Jaymes Joyce: what the hell was that about?!?!? He wrote that shit (oh, look, a pun!)?! Frankly though, I only ever heard the name, never anything about his work. Hey, the French have their own crap-oriented writers to worry about.
You know, Finnegan is still too nice a cover to be here. I know, I know, the dude’s underwear’s a bit, erm, suspect. But still.
hmmm…I wonder if you can get those candy bikini’s out of vending machines, like the candy necklaces? I think I figured out what happened, he is laying one breast and that super inflates the other, kinda like a waterbed.
The James Joyce thing…speechless.
control18-she must have good muscle control. Ew.Visuals now in my head.
“How? How does La Lady keep that impossibly flimsy lilac bodice/blouse/top type thingy up over her boobs? Wild West Wig Tape??”
Posted by cecille
Duct tape, of course. I assume they have it in France. Wouldn’t know, I’ve never been there.
As usual, I laughed so hard at the comments that one of my dogs came to check on me. Thank goodness for all you funny people!
Being a smart bitch myself with a degree in English, I had to choose between 2 senior seminars: Literature of the American West or James Joyce. I chose the American West and as it happens, wrote my final thesis on the cowboy sub-genre of modern romance novels. Thank you (thank you!)for confirming that I made the right course choice. If I had spent a semester reading about Joyce’s fascination with ladies’ dukes and his lust for “Hot Carls” I might not have been able to stop vomiting long enough to graduate.
And I’m so glad to see Fred found a new flame after Daphne wouldn’t make it with him. Poor guy, when he told the gang to “split up and look for clues” all he wanted was a quickie in a cemetery.
Cover 2: obviously the only way she was going to get any guy to come near those plastic boobs was with bribery…If you touch my horribly misshappen boobies I will give you candy.
My word is ‘week86’, no wonder this year has been dragging.
Oh, I know those candy things. My dad got his own candy underweare. And no, I have not asked my mother about it LOL
And please, put some big danger signal before anything similar to James Joyce fantanstical letters in the future!!
Wow. Never thought I’d see the day when James Joyce went all Jean Genet on us. Eek.
I’d rather read a thousand poo love letters than Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man ever again.
What gets me on Cover #2 (after the plastic surgery horror story) is the NECK on that guy. It’s bigger than my thigh, and seems to start back between his shoulder blades.
Heh. Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man is one of my favorite books. I love the audio even more, read by Donal Donnelly.
In re cover #2 – they do make candy bikini bottoms … also, I understand, posing pouches for the men. And I’ve seen one of those tops being worn. By a man. Actually, he looked better than the woman(?) on that cover.
Eh? Why Malaysian? That’s so random.
Anyone kind enough to explain?
Imagine my surprise that after reading this post, I glanced to the right and saw, “Mrs. Giggles Toilet Bowl” in your blog links. (that’s east93 per the spaminator and the compass)
Showing more than the waistband of a man’s tighty-whities on a cover is just wrong. They just look, well, silly and not very sexy. Showing DIRTY tighty-whities is just oogie!
Did anyone else notice how the candy lady looks a bit more like a candy trannie? And a bored one, at that! I think I see an adam’s apple hiding under that candy choker.
And I died laughing at the Scooby-doo reference for le cow-boy, MamaNice. I think the Fred-like red kerchief is what sent me over the edge into “crying on my keyboard I’m laughing so hard” territory.
Well, let’s give another option for future covers. LOL
http://www.perlseo.com
Woo! I’m so giddy with sick joy to see Le cow-boy here at Chez Smart Bitches!
There are so many things about the cover that make me want to read James Joyce just to feel clean, not the least of which is the Fredkerchief around le cow-boy’s neck, and that he’d sooner fall into the shrubbery than let Mysterious Floating Camisole of Desire Lady take hold of his six shooter.
Vive le snark!
Babz:
Smart Bitch Candy hails from Malaysia, which was my reference when I wrote, “Candy does not fly out, neither the Malaysian nor the high-fructose corn syrup kind.”
However, if Candy DID fly out of a fake boob, I’m sure she’d do it with grace and aplomb.
Ah I see 😀
So we have quite a few very successful romance bloggers from Malaysia – and here I thought Malaysians are not big on romance books, and I get confused when, say, the last Hannah Howell book was sold out in the bookstores. Very cool, babes.
Thanks Sarah!