Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

Romantic Times Amends Conference Schedule to Include Session on Plagiarism

While the change has not yet appeared on the RT BookLovers Convention webpage, Bitchery reader Kay has forwarded me some information that Romantic Times sent out earlier today. It seems they’ve added a session with Bertrice Small on research without plagiarism:

Also new to the agenda… Bertrice Small has rounded up her fellow historical romance buddies Roberta Gellis and Jennifer Blake to present a research workshop of a different kind—How to Use Historical Facts Without Crossing the Line Into Plagiarism. Bertrice feels it’s necessary for historical romance authors to know what’s acceptable and what is not when embellishing your fiction with historical facts.

My advice, if you’re planning to go to RT in Pittsburgh? GO to this session. Not because plagiarism is an important issue for any and all professional writers (which it is) or because this session is timely, topical, and clearly of present issue (which it also is) but because I’ve heard Bertrice Small speak and she is a scream.

Help a Bitch Out: Pirates of Condensation

Bitchery reader Maria writes:

I have been racking my brain and beating up librarians all over town trying to locate a certain novel that I read in high school, the title and author of which of course escapes me.  So I am sure that my woes will be put to rest if you could post this, and then some smart-talking trashy-book reading bitch can give me what I need.

The book would most likely have been a Zebra *Heartfire* romance, or at least Zebra. (Hey, I loved those cool holograph stickers on the front of that line…I was in highschool, okay?)  It would not have been originally published any later than 1995, because I graduated in 1996 and believe the book was at least a few years old when I read it. I would guess at it being published somewhere between 1985 and 1993.

The book was a historical, same era as the Pirates of the Caribbean I would guess. It featured a saucy heroine with golden-blonde hair who somehow ends up on a pirate ship with a sexy, swashbuckling captain, who (of course) seduces her. She tries to escape several times, without… read more »

Our Three Year Old: Spontaneous Contesting

Three, from what I hear, is a tough age. The primitive toddler has yielded to a more independent being who wants, guess what, more independence. It’s going to be a great year with our hot pink three year old, I think. I’m all about feisty independence, so three kicks ass.

Special note to Candy: You rule - thanks for three years of Hofftastic Awesomesauce.

Special note to our readers: Thank you! Thank you, thank you!

Now - You wanna win some shit? It’s haiku time! Write us up some haiku madness (5-7-5 please) of up to four stanzas that best captures our past three years, or the general hot pink madness that is Smart Bitches. Voting will go on in the comment thread, fark-style, and top three winners of votage will get prizes, including a Smart Bitch Titleâ„¢ for the First Place winner.

And now: my haiku offering. I’m not stopping at 4 stanzas, so be warned.

Smart Bitches is THREE?!
Man-titty could knock me down-
time sure fucking flies.

Mad props to Candy!
And Hubby… read more »

Need Valentine’s Gifts?

Need gifts? I love gifts - specifically gift shopping. My favorite way to put myself to sleep is to think of different people and shop for them if I have an unlimited budget and limitless ability to acquire stuff. I know, I’m weird. But it calms my spinning brain down to try to figure out HOW I might acquire, say, a genuine piece of Packers stock, let alone freak out the recipient by giving them such a thing. By the time I work out all the budgetary and logistical crazyness, I fall asleep. I am well aware that I am weird.

Anyway, every so often on my other site that is of no interest to anyone unless you really want to read about how I watched vintage 1993 episodes of 90210 at 6:30am this weekend (Donna graduated! My GOD were those people blonde! Not in a stereotypical dumb way but in a blinding-to-look-at way) I often post links to gift ideas, mostly to aid myself when I wonder what to get someone when it’s a gift-giving occasion. But since these gifts are Teh Awesome, I’m going to inflict my Gift Guiding Goodness on y’all, only this time no velvet… read more »

Using Blogs for Promotion - And Good Deeds

Can I just say that among my top ten least favorite words, the word “blog” is waaaay up near the top of the list? I don’t know if there is a more unattractive word in the English language. It’s just ... yuck.

But there’s no way that another term will supplant what is already a cemented part of the English language, so I will attempt to make my peace with the unappealing nomenclature, and move on to discussing What Blogs And That Wild Wooly Internet Can Do by Way Of Helping You Promote Yourself. Don’t crap yourself at this one, but Jane, Candy and I submitted a proposal to RWA National about that topic, and alas we are not on the docket. I promise we had a much nicer title than that one, but either way, our discussion about how to use the internet and blogs as self-promotional tools of the wunderkind variety will not be part of the national program. Feel free to accost me in the hall and ask my opinion, though. I’m more than happy to talk. But you knew that.

And, hey, let’s talk now. There’s all kinds of innovative promotion going on right… read more »

A Very Special Help a Bitch Out: Build Dr. Frantz’s Syllabus!

Dr. Sarah Frantz, Professor of Awesome, has forwarded me a very cool request: help her build her syllabus!

I will be teaching a course at NC State’s Continuing Eduction program called Encore! (exclamation point necessary, of course).  I teach for six weeks for 1 1/2 hours a week.  The students are mainly female, all at least over 50 years old, probably up to about 85.  Last year I taught Austen and was apparently a huge hit.  They’re begging me to teach again this year and I said I’d do it if I could do romance novels and they said, ‘Fine, please, anything,” so that didn’t work as a way out.

So, I need four or five romance novels that I can teach to older Southern women of a certain age. [SB Sarah says, “That would be: not really our age.”]  I figure a Georgette Heyer, if I can find one in print that I like, and an SEP, probably It Had to Be You, as it’s my personal favorite.  I’ll probably have a week with some RWA-NC members coming to visit (hopefully), including Virginia Kantra.  Then what?  I’ve got an older historical (Heyer) and a contemporary romantic comedy (SEP). … read more »

More on the Cook Sisters

Courtesy of Michelle Styles here is a much longer profile of Ida and Louise Cook, who used profits from Ida’s Mills & Boon novels to rescue Jews from the Nazis. The Telegraph did an extended article about them last July.

Help a Bitch Out: The Sound of Romance

Reader Raha asks for your help identifying this one. Me? I haven’t a clue. I also freak out that I can’t find my keys while I’m driving my car, and have to remind myself that they are, in fact, in the ignition. But that’s just me.

I think the heroine is named Megan Halliday and she was married to hero’s younger brother named Eric, a boy-genius violinist. She has a tragic past (raped by her ex and lost the baby) .The hero is a count and I think named Curt Von something.. he is a widower and has a daughter. I think the book is set in Vienna, Austria.

Basically the premise of the book is the heroine inherits a land after her husband’s death and the hero is worried that she might sell it to the developers. So he invites her over and she eventually ends up falling in love with him and gifts the deed to his daughter.

I vaguely remember it to be named something like sound/music of love , but could not recall the actual title and author.. Appreciate if some one could help.

Cool Person of the Day

Today’s Cool Person of the Day: Ida Cook, who wrote Mills & Boon under the pseudonym Mary Burchell. According to the article in yesterday’s Guardian, Cook and her sister were huge opera fans who, under the cover of being opera groupies, snuck in and out of Germany before WWII to smuggle the valuables of Jewish families to safety. Later, Cook began writing Mills & Boon novels to fund their activities, and helped 29 people escape the Nazis.

The mild-mannered spinsters became expert smugglers, regaling border guards with tales of the previous night’s performance, switching labels in fur coats, and wearing real diamonds with outfits so dowdy that customs officers would presume the jewels were paste.

Ida Cook and her sister, Louise, were named among the Righteous Gentiles by Yad Vashem Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority in Israel.

Thanks to azteclady and Ms. Anon who forwarded me the link.

Many Thanks!!

Diane, Viscountess Thrusston, and Kay, Equally Awesome, both sent me big huge ass boxes full of category romance. Seriously, I wanted to find a shrink ray so I could reduce myself by 60% and dive into the box of books and swim around with joy, papercuts be damned. So much reading! In so many various plot options! There’s secret babies, cowboys, sheikhs, private investigators, a late night talkshow host who swears up and down he’s a vampire… I’m so giddy I want to take a week off and do nothing but read old school category romances. There’s even some seriously vintage Betty Neels in there, which I’ve never read before. The women in the cover art have BIG GIANT ANIME-ESQUE EYES and the ends of the pages are red with that dye that totally comes off on my hands. I’m so happy I may plotz. Thank you, Diane! Thank you Kay!

But even better than the vintage way back machine in two boxes of awesome? THE COVERS. It’s not just vintage, it’s veeeentage.

On Ideas, Repetitiveness and Copyright Infringement

It’s such an interesting change of pace here at Smart Bitches: for once, Sarah is the one getting all cussy and indignant, and I’m the one who’s feeling more mellow and contemplative.

One of the more irritating yet predictable reactions I’ve seen after the whole Cassie Edwards kerfuffle has been the idea that because it concerned romance novels, the issues surrounding unattributed usage don’t matter because, hey, romance novels are recycled drivel to begin with. They’re all the same, anyway, the argument goes; How can you even tell one of them has copied another book? None of them express a single original thought.

I saw this in an extended slapfight in one of the many, many comment threads when the Edwards story first broke (I can’t, alas, remember which thread it was), in which some clueless twat attempted to claim that all romance novels plagiarized to one extent or another (OH EM GEE THE UNORIGINALITY IT BURNSES US PRECIOUSSSSS). And I saw it again when I read Jane Henderson’s comment (“In the romance genre, it’s sometimes hard to tell one author from the next”) on Urban Fantasy Land.

There seems to be some confusion regarding the… read more »

Knock offs and Knocking It Off Already

Courtesy of Jeaniene Frost who sent me much linkage, avast! A story so delicious, you’ll stick your own foot in your mouth.

Reporter Jane Henderson of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch posted on her St. Louis Today book blog an entry that has made a lot of people reach for their high blood pressure medicine. In her entry Laurell K. Hamilton knock-off for teens? she discusses a galley she received of Melissa Marr’s Ink Exchange, a YA paranormal novel about a teen who gets a tattoo and finds herself involved with the Faerie Court. Marr also wrote the highly acclaimed Wicked Lovely.

Henderson finds the similarities between the book - despite not actually having read Marr’s novel - and Hamilton’s Merry Gentry story startling.

Herein begins what I think of as The Hat Trick of Stupid Things Written in One Entry and One Comment. Hold onto your feet, folks.

Of course the cliche is that ‘imitation is the sincerest form of flattery’ but where does flattery end and copyright infringement begin? The book’s jacket even looks like the photos… read more »

A Double Coronation Ceremony

We have two titles to give out today, one that is long overdue.

To Sula, who identified in one shot the correct answer to the Help a Bitch Out Regency Time Travel - With Boobies. Well played, Sula! Kneel, and receive your Smart Bitch Titleâ„¢.

And to Diane, who correctly identified this week’s Guess That Lonely Heart - indeed, it was Jill Levin from Lorna Michaels’ Season of Light. A Harlequin SuperRomance featuring…. JEWS! WOOO! Kneel, Diane, and arise with Sula a member of the Smart Bitch Peerage.

Guess That Lonely Heart: You Have Eight Days

OK - it’s late here on the east coast but it’s Lonely Heart time. Name the heroine, the book’s title, and the author’s name, and you get Le Smart Bitche Title.

Young advertising hotshot, home in Ohio for the holidays, seeks man from way back to sweep my off my feet. You’ll need to light my candles for eight crazy nights before I head back to New York.I’ll pitch you my ideas while you try to sell me on the idea of happily ever after. I’ve got great expectations for your chances to steak a claim on my heart.

Help a Bitch Out: White forelocks and mystery babies

Raina writes:

I was told to check yall out for memory lapses such as mine. I read this book a very long time ago and would very much like to read it again, if only I could remember. This is the description I have been posting everywhere I can think of.

"Teenagers get together in high school and wind up falling in love, parents and another girl get in the way and they break up. The girl leaves town and finds out shes pregnant. The story is in the future tense with flash backs from the past. The woman winds up coming back to town and gets back together with her old flame. he has a kid from another marriage and doesn't find out about his first child til towards the end. the thing that connects both father and sons is that they all have a streak of whit in their hair. the book is probably from the early 90s"
If you know what this book is or somewhere else that could help me out it would be much appreciated.