Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

Erotic Link-o-Lation

Colette Gale gave me a heads up (HA!) about her appearance at the In the Flesh Erotic Reading Series with Jane Lockwood (HA!). Seems they’ll be reading excerpts from their erotic novels Thursday night along with several other acclaimed erotica writers at the Happy Ending Lounge (HA!) on Broome Street in Manhattan. Book giveaways, ahoy. And folks reading about dirty doings with naughty parts. Man, if it weren’t six years out of my life to get in and out of Manhattan from Jersey, I’d totally go.

But instead, I’ll sit around and check out the kid’s meal toys from Sonic. Seems my friend DB’s wee children went there for dinner recently, and her son’s kid meal toy caused quite a ruckus - see for yourself. That bad boy (HA!) lights up!

Now I know it’s most likely supposed to be one of the phalanges, but come on (HA!). That’s not at all what it looks like. I wonder if they vibrate?

Mazel Tov on another Smart Boy!

A few days late - but mazel tov and congratulations to Smart Professor Sarah Frantz, who had a baby boy on 10 October. Baba O’Riley and I say welcome to the world, and we’re so looking for a play date.

Best First Line

The voting over at RT’s American Title contest has started, with the Best First Line competition: take a look at the finalists.

Which do you like? I’m torn between Out of Sight and, oddly enough, Out Of Sight, Out of Mind.

And, while I’m on the subject, what’s your favorite first line of a romance novel?

To be honest, I usually don’t notice the first line, though I was struck by Eloisa James’ first line of An Affair Before Christmas (due out in December this year):

Ice hung from windowsills with a glitter that rivaled glass, and new snow turned the sooty streets to rivers of milk.

A bit of a mixed bag of imagery, but snow turning streets to rivers of milk? I dig that, partially because I’m hoping for big ol’ snowfall this year and when there is enough snow on the ground, the analogy is apt (and I won’t mention the subtle sexual undertone of the image, either).

What about you?

Romance Novels in Four Words

Some people contend that the premises for most great speculative fiction can be summarized in one sentence. We here at Smart Bitches like to go a bit further than that: we maintain that the premises and plot points for the best (and worst) romance novels can be summarized in four words. Feel free to play along at home and try to guess the the novels we’re talking about, and provide a four-word précis for your own favorites in the comments.

Virgin royalty spontaneously lactates.

Unwilling wife? Use cream!

Ehxtra Hh’s? Anghsty Vhampires!

Chicken Marsala, great shoes.

Victorian miss loves ninja.

Not retarded; just deaf.

Not retarded; stroke victim.

Hedgehog saves the day.

Soon she’ll settle in.

Rape rape rape. Virgin!

Not really a whore.

Preserve virginity with

The widow’s a VIRGIN!

Scarface finds true love.

Who is the daddy?

Evil twin = true love. (OK, so this one is sort of cheating a little with the word requirement.)

Cross-dressing captain’s crew? Buttpirates.

Conscientious objector is virgin.

Her mom: Hester Stanhope.

No memory? No problem!

Synesthetic musician seduces ingénue.

Jewboy loves shiksa aristocrat. (Alternatively: Love and bubonic plague.)

Her trauma? Scarred legs.

No… read more »

Whoa. Holy Crap. Or, “HI there, PC Magazine readers!”

So Candy and I were chatting and on a whim I checked our stats to see where folks are coming from, and while Candy was ranting about Portland traffic, I started hyperventilating:

Seems PC Magazine picked our site as one of their top 100 staff favorites.

*wheeze*

We’re on the same list as Daily Kos and Cute Overload?

*WHEEZE*

Now that is COOL! OMG! SQUEEEE!

So hello there, PC Magazine readers. Welcome to our hot pink celebration of romance novels. Enjoy your visit - and if you’re looking, these are the F reviews. Enjoy! (Psst- this one is my favorite).

A Smart Bitch Interview with C.L. Wilson

I get a good number of “Have you read…?” questions about new books but when I am asked repeatedly if I’ve read an ARC for a specific book, then I know there’s buzz ahoy. I encountered a lot of “Have you read…?” from publishing folks, both during and after the RWA national about C.L. Wilson’s books, and like the nosy Bitch I am, I chased her down for an interview shortly after I finished Lady of Light and Shadows.  I got all up in her business about world building, websites, writing and whatnot, and she was gracious enough to put up with my nebby self.

Sarah: I’m curious about the linguistic sources of the Fey words - in a lot of ways, the vowel pairings and sounds seem similar to Hebrew, especially in contemporary transliteration. Was that intentional? Or is it just me? What’s your source for fantasy language development?

C.L. Wilson: Unintentional.  I just love putting words and sounds together, always have.  My background in languages has been primarily as a student of them.  I took a number of years of French in school, some German, and started to teach myself Japanese. (This was back when I actually… read more »

Where’s Waldo? He’s in the Winner’s Circle!

Congratulations to Brandyllyn, whose review for Where’s Waldo was the winner by a considerable margin in our 2007 Banned Book Week Review contest.

To all who entered: thank you for the excellent reviews and for generating a great discussion on why books get banned, and what we as readers and book lovers can do about it.

Loose ID Bids on Contractual Assets of Triskelion

From a number of different sites comes this news:Loose ID has bid on the contracts held by bankrupt Triskelion:

If successful in their bid, Loose Id, LLC will release the majority of contracts at no cost to the authors who entered into them.

In a few cases, new contracts will be extended to the author from LooseId in lieu of the Triskelion contracts. If an author chooses to reject the offer made them, their contract will be released by Loose Id, at no cost to the author.

So, if successful,  LooseID gets dibs on the contracted works originally negotiated with Triskelion, and can either offer a new contract or release the author to allow them to shop that work elsewhere - if I’m reading that correctly. This does not seem like an altogether bad thing for authors whose unpublished manuscripts were held as part of Triskelion’s assets.

The Library of Congress Tells You How to Shelve Your Dildoes

From Bitchery reader Abigail, we have… well, I’m still chuckling. A friend of hers who is a librarian sent her a clipping from the new Library of Congress Subject Headings. It seems dildoes can be subdivided in the most curious of ways:

Geographically?!

Mine Till Midnight by Lisa Kleypas

Candy once said that Lisa Kleypas is her romance novel crack, and I can see why. Even as my brain questioned the possibilities and the circumstances of a happy ending for the two protagonists, I smiled and read along anyway, because her historical romances are comforting and happy in the way that soft flannel and hot cocoa are reassuring. I know the story isn’t going to demand too much of my brain or toss me into a hot maelstrom of overblown emotional angst.

I wouldn’t call Kleypas novels my crack, however. More like my brain candy. But not candy like “Oh, it’s 3pm and I’m starving and in the grocery checkout and hey that Twix bar from God-knows-how-long-ago looks pretty tasty” candy. More like Cadbury imported (random trivia: Hubby’s favorite Cadbury bar is called “Whole Nut” and he can’t eat one without giggling like a 12 year old boy). Or those really rich sweet candies made from real sugar and not high fructose corn syrup - the kind that are swirled into really fragile lacy shapes and come wrapped in individual bits of… read more »

Help a Bitch Out: Dress Buying Captain? Ahoy!

Bitchery reader Christine seeks your assistance:

I read this book probably five-ish years ago.  It was an historical set I believe in Maine or another north-eastern state sometime in the 1700 or 1800s.  The captain of a merchant ship makes a marriage of convenience with a young woman through the help of a parish priest or some such religious type person.  The hero needs someone to watch over a nutcase older female relative at his home while he’s away on the ship and the heroine needs to get the hell out of her sister’s (?) house because her husband has been trying to make the moves on her.

The heroine only has gray second hand clothes to wear which bugs the hero.  When he’s away merchanting, he buys a bolt of gray-blue fabric (because it matches the color of the heroine’s eyes) for her to make a dress out of but then he ends up giving it to his mistress who he of course declines to sleep with anymore.  He then purchases a yellow dress and matching hat and brings it back to the heroine, but the nutcase older female relative (who incidentally is a klepto and ends up stealing… read more »

My Melon, Let Me Show You It.

From the Fish in a Damn Barrel department, we have oily mantitty holding translucent melons - aka, the coming-soon listings for Ellora’s Cave. Man. Too many melons, too many man titty. The mind, it boggles.

I hope there are no small, urm, caves in those melons, considering where most of the models are positioning their jack o’lanterns.

Friday Videos: Principal Firebush!

Thanks to Mel Francis we have this week’s Friday Video, which isn’t so much about romance novels but totally cracks me up. Guess which part? You’ll know it when you see it.

Lord of the Fading Lands, and Lady of Light and Shadows, by C.L. Wilson

I’m sure you’re all tired of my griping about series books and how I get to the end and realize it’s not quite over - and turn into a whiny pissypanted pain in your ass reviewer. So what did I do when I realized that Lord of the Fading Lands was a series? I waited until I had the second book, Lady of Light and Shadows and read them back to back. Ha! Even though the series continues past book 2, I at least have a more complete story arc to reflect on.

Because Lord and Lady are really two halves of one book, the plots blend into one another in my brain. And in my brain they are resting happily, giving me plenty to stew on as I think back on the story. The two books contain fragments of a Cinderella story mixed with other legends and tales. The layering of myths, themes, and pieces of fairy tales and archtypes is both familiar and unique, and in… read more »

Help a Bitch Out: Handsome Man, Orphan, and Nefarious Rapist Ahoy!

Bitchery Reader Susan wrote:

I’m a fairly new reader to your website, and when I saw the “help a bitch out” category, I could not resist. I read a book back in my angsty adolescent days, and I cannot, for the life of me, remember what the title of it is!  Here is the description:

A young woman (who is, apparently, of marriageable age) is orphaned, and left a great deal of money by her parents. Unfortunately, the money is left in the hands of an unscrupulous man (cannot remember his name) who is to hold on to it until she turns a certain age. Well, Unscrupulous Man tries to rape Orphan Child-Woman in order to force her to marry him (I guess he adheres to the “You poke it, you own it” crap), so he will get the money when she turns of age. She manages to escape, but only after languishing and whimpering for a ridiculously long time, while he arouses himself (I think he was old, it was set in the days before Viagra). Orphan Child-Woman runs away, and starts a home for girls somewhere in a distant village/town (I think it was a home for ravished… read more »