Bitchin' Blog Posts
May 16, 2012 | Wednesday at 11:25 am | 17 Comments
As the Washington Post reported, romance author Adele Dubois received a "notice of copyright infringement" from Google, which then removed a post from the Romance Books R Us blog based on the entry "ADELE + EXITOS."
The e-mail from Google stated, “Blogger has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that certain content in your blog is alleged to infringe upon the copyrights of others.” The e-mail lists the copyright owner as Sony, the copyright work description as “Adele + Exitos” and the “location of the infringing material” as the post by Dubois, which was removed by Google Blogger.
Who instigated the complaint remains a mystery. A “sworn statement” at the end of Google’s e-mail simply says “[private]” under the signature. The statement says, “I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.”
Adele the singer has a recording contract with Columbia Records, which is owned by Sony Music Entertainment. Although names cannot be copyrighted, they can be trademarked. And Adele is trademarked, according to the Trademark Electronic Search System.
I contacted Dubois, she explained…
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May 16, 2012 | Wednesday at 2:35 am | 109 Comments
I apologize in advance for this cover, as I know you're all going to scream. I tweeted it last week and people were hollering at me on Twitter for hours afterward. Nightmares, twitches and phobias, all awakened by a single romance cover.
It's so awful, I'm going to put a second silly cover beneath it to help sooth your ravaged psyche. You ready?
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May 15, 2012 | Tuesday at 2:56 pm | 13 Comments
It's May! My peonies are blooming, the air is flush with good smells and yellow dust, and my blue car is now a strange shade of pollen-coated green.
It's also time for the Brenda Novak Auction, which has raised over $1.3 million dollars for a cure for juvenile diabetes. The auction is going on all month - and there are a lot of really neat things to bid on. Let's go shopping!
In the Once in a Lifetime Experiences category, there's a two night stay at the Ritz Carlton in Lake Tahoe, and as I write this, the high bid is $165. WHAT? There's 15 days left, but hey, bid early bid often. There's also a 2 night stay at the Grand Palms Hotel in Pembroke Pines, Florida, and the high bid is $50 as of this moment. Hey? What's that over there? Nothing to see here about hotel stays.
There are also cruises, trips to Europe, and an African safari up for bidding. Good gravy.
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May 15, 2012 | Tuesday at 12:35 am | 18 Comments
If you loved Sarah's post entitled, "Where is the Hymen?" you will love Bonk.
In Bonk (which for months I've been referring to accidentally as Boink, God knows what that says about me) Mary Roach takes on the subject of what scientists do and don't know about sex, and how they know it. I apologize for the over-abundance of long quotes here, but they are the best way to convey the flavor of the book. Also, I'm being self-indulgent. I read most of this book in a hospital cafeteria (Mom had a hip replacement - she's all better now). Anyway, there I was, cackling madly over the cafeteria food, with no one to say, "Hey, you gotta hear this!" to. I certainly wasn't going to read these passages to my mother (although given the pain medication she was getting at the time, I doubt she would have been offended). Here's an excerpt I'm fond of from the chapter, "The Prescription-Strength Vibrator: Masturbating For Health":
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May 14, 2012 | Monday at 2:04 pm | 69 Comments
WTFery of the morning, as reported by Dianna Dilworth on GalleyCat: Brevard County Public Libraries in Florida have pulled their 19 copies of 50 Shades of Grey from the shelves.
Why?
HuffPo has a quote from Don Walker, a spokesman for the library, who said, "it's semi-porgnographic." The HuffPo article indicated that several other libraries in Florida had refused to purchase copies, but Brevard bought 19, then took them out of circulation, sending notices to the 200 or so people on a waiting list.
Library services director Cathy Schweinsberg told Florida Today: Nobody asked us to take it off the shelves. But we bought some copies before we realized what it was. We looked at it, because it’s been called ‘mommy porn’ and ‘soft porn.’ We don’t collect porn.”
Brevard County Public Libraries don't collect porn. But since there's no established definition of what porn is, particularly for a library, I took a closer look at their collection to ascertain the items within their collection that I knew included sexually explicit…
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May 14, 2012 | Monday at 11:47 am | 20 Comments
Heads up: the Nora Roberts series about the MacKade brothers is $2.99 digitally for a limited time, along with a few other Roberts novels:
The Fall of Shane MacKade by Nora Roberts * $2.99 * A | BN | K | S | ARe The Return of Rafe MacKade by Nora Roberts * $2.99 * A | BN | K | S | ARe The Heart of Devin MacKade by Nora Roberts * $2.99 * A | BN | K | S | ARe The Pride of Jared MacKade by Nora Roberts * $2.99 * A | BN | K | S | ARe (SBTB Grade: B) Spellbound by Nora Roberts * $2.99 * A | BN | K | S | (Short Story) Unfinished Business by Nora Roberts * $2.99 * A | BN | K | S | ARe Bear Meets Girl by Shirley Laurenston * $3.99 * A | BN | K | S | ARe Reforming Lord Ragsdale by Carla Kelly * $2.99 * A | BN | K | S |
This series is described as Bewitched meets Murder, She Wrote and I am SO curious…
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May 14, 2012 | Monday at 9:08 am | 26 Comments
I started this book last Saturday morning while my kids were at swim lessons, and I was in a dark, humid, and loud indoor pool on uncomfortable bleachers.
I did not notice any of those things once I started reading. This book is amazing: confident and clever, funny and touching, and wonderfully done.
This book is a simultaneous story - Mayberry's Harlequin Blaze, Hot Island Nights ( A | BN | K | S | ARe ), takes place at the same time with two separate characters. Is there a name for that style of storytelling? I know Twin of Ice and Twin of Fire and the Julia Quinn duo Mr Cavendish I Presume and The Lost Duke of Wyndham employ the same method. What's it called, dovetailed stories? Hinged stories? Entwined stories? I am sure it has a proper name but darned if I can find it. Anyway.
The story opens with Violet at a formal event with…
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May 14, 2012 | Monday at 4:23 am | 10 Comments
Awhile back, I was contacted by Beth, a library science student, about doing a school project. She needed to create an annotated bibliography, and wanted to know if I'd like to be her "client" for the project: "I am taking a course called Search and Discovery, which is a fancy name for using and evaluating online research tools and databases. Our final project for the course is to compile an annotated bibliography for someone with a research need."
I fail to see how this could possibly be a bad thing. Beth has piles and piles of databases at her fingertips, and I have piles and piles of nosy questions about romance readers, research and scholarship, so why the hell not, right?
I asked Beth to define an annotated bibliography for those of you who might not be familiar with the concept:
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May 13, 2012 | Sunday at 4:14 am | 7 Comments
Books on sale, books with good reviews, and books that a lot of folks are talking about online make up our bestseller list this week - like magic, isn't it? Amazing!
The Governess Affair by Courtney Milan | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo | ARE Bared to You (A Crossfire Novel) by Sylvia Day | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo | ARE What She Needs by Anne Calhoun | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo | HQN | ARE Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady by Kate Summerscale | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo | Brook Street: Thief by Ava March | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo | HQN | ARE The Long Shot by Ellen Hartman | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo | HQN | ARE Regency Pirates: The Pirate Next Door by Jennifer Ashley | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo | ARE The Boy Next Door by Meg Cabot | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo | ARE Dangerous Secrets by Lisa Renee…
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May 12, 2012 | Saturday at 12:32 pm | 7 Comments
Maria is looking for a book she read a very long time ago - and this HaBO may be quite tricky:
I have the plot of a book I read ages ago stuck in my head, but I cannot remember either author or title. It is set in Australia (possibly New Zealand, but I am pretty sure it's Australia). The heroine's fiance elopes with her best friend shortly before the wedding. The best friend was also about to marry someone else, the hero. Hero and heroine decide to get married for practical reasons: he is about to land a big contract to work for a year in a tropical island-kingdom, but it is a very conservative place and they won't give him the job unless he is married, she has no job (she has left her home town and her job (as the town librarian, I think) because of the humiliation of being jilted and she needs to get away.
They marry and go to the tropical island, where the marriage becomes real, they…
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May 12, 2012 | Saturday at 12:25 am | 14 Comments
Sarina is looking for two books she read a long time ago:
The first one was a Mills & Boon or harlequin or something (the cover had been torn off) and in it the hero and the heroine are at a costume party at a historic house when they get they get transported back in time via a painting. He bets his watch at a poker game and gets them some money, then they pretend to be a married couple. They can't leave until they solve the mystery of who murdered someone in the house they got transported back in time. I read it in highschool, so it would have been published before 1998. The one thing that always stuck in my head is that they have sex in a rocking chair.
The other one I'm much fuzzier on, it was one of the first I would have read, and it was tattered when I read it, so published pre 1997 I think. It was set either in Salem or somewhere salem-ish, and all I…
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May 11, 2012 | Friday at 12:26 pm | 6 Comments
Brigid asked for a recap of the event I was part of last Wednesday night, Edgy Moms in Suburbia, so here's my wrap up of the evening - with a LOT of links to books I want to buy, so be ye warned. They're not romances, though, so at least that's something.
I drafted my essay (or entry or article or whatever it was I was trying to write) about four or five different times, trying to figure out what the hell was edgy about me (I am not edgy. I am very rounded in all my parts), and ended up making a few key realizations, which was the focus of what I read/said. (I write up notes and then end up talking to the audience and forget to look at what I wrote. Sheesh).
1. "Edgy" is something that is defined externally. If you're doing something, it's normal. People observing you would be more likely to define something you do as "edgy." I don't think I'm edgy at all either way.
1.5 If you look up "edgy" on Urban Dictionary, "to keep…
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May 11, 2012 | Friday at 7:49 am | 2 Comments
Thanks Sveta for the nudge that reminded me I'd written all this out and not posted it. MY BAD. Sorry!
The winners of a digital copy of The Long Shot are:
Sally
Nadia
Alex
AKD
riwally
Amy
Gabriel
ReadingPenguin
Carrie Gwaltney
SarahA_B
Fiona Morrigan
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May 11, 2012 | Friday at 4:19 am | 7 Comments
From Petra comes this very silly and marvelously costumed commercial from New Zealand. As Petra says, "This is the ad for DB breweries in New Zealand. Although it shamelessly encourages the stereotypical dumb male - it never fails to crack my shit up. "
Link!
Those are some of the most glorious 80s haircuts and fashions I've beheld in recent weeks - not that I see a lot of 80s fashion, though I did see a pair of stonewashed pleated jean shorts on someone in Times Square and I did a double-take. Next it's peg jeans and scrunchy socks, right?
I hope your weekend is filled with all your favorite beverages and potent potables, and, if you're into that kind of thing, majestic mullets, too!
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May 10, 2012 | Thursday at 3:35 am | 6 Comments
This review was written by Phyllis Laatsch. This novella was nominated in the "Best Romance Novella" category. 
The summary: When law secretary Nell Rose is snowbound with a handsome stranger, keeping her New Year's Resolution becomes nearly impossible. Why swear off men when a romantic weekend with a reclusive writer seems to be the ideal way to ring in the new year?
And here is Phyllis' review:
A legal secretary gets stuck in a ditch in a snowstorm on New Year's Eve, just as she's making resolutions to avoid men, go back to school, etc. She trudges up to an isolated house and is let in by a famous author, who can't figure out if she's the stalker who's been sending him crazy letters.
The sparks between the hero and heroine were amazing. They really got each other, though they didn't want the same things out of life in the beginning. They acted on the attraction awfully quickly, especially since the heroine had just sworn off men. And yet,…
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