Bitchin' Blog Posts
: Fun And Games
by SB Sarah | August 13, 2009 | Thursday at 9:20 pm | 49 Comments
From very alert reader Cora comes this bit of HILARITY. This month’s Mills & Boon Newsletter highlights some of their recommended titles, including Kathleen O’Reilly’s Sex, Straight Up, which is being released by M&B as Intoxicating!
That’s all well and drunken fun but… what’s this? Looks like The Virgin Secretary’s Impossible Boss got a whole new workplace problem.
OMG VIRGIN LESBIAN CATEGORY ROMANCE. WHY didn’t I think of THAT?!
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by SB Sarah | July 02, 2009 | Thursday at 8:39 pm | 5 Comments
Question: are fill-in-the-blank javascripts the most funnest thing ever? Y/Y? Y!
Thank you to the HOLY CRAP THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-THREE of you who had fun with the Smart Bitch Romantic Suspense Blurbs Gone Wild! I’ll have to hang out with Mr. Java and his script to make more fun, huh? Woo!
And now, a special message from Roxanne St. Claire:
Two hours? Just gone. Two hours laughing my ass off at those mad libs, trying to pick winners, which was flipping impossible. I loved so many of them. Here are three that really caught me because they were either hysterical or possible.
Andieg (at 12:39)
Passions Succulent Thunderheads
Tanja Cilia (at 1:25)
Passion’s Blithe Thunderstorm
tracyleann (at 2:59)
Passion’s Grizzled Tornado
Congrats folks - please email me with your mailing address, and Roxanne will send you a spicy, tornadic copy of her upcoming book, Hunt Her Down.
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by SB Sarah | June 30, 2009 | Tuesday at 3:14 pm | 352 Comments
Since I poked a little fun at vaguely religious pseudonyms, and since Roxanne St. Claire isn't a pseudonym, I thought, let's have another ARC giveaway, shall we?
Yes, we shall!
Your task: more fun with romantic suspense! Using your power of Word Knowlege, use the form below to generate a title and its tagline.
As always, copy and paste your brilliant results into the comments. Two winners will be chosen to receive an advanced reader copy of Roxanne St. Claire's next book, Hunt Her Down. 24 hours, so grab the hand of your nearest male silhouette, and run, run like the wind!
Note: the results appear in a popup window, so be ye warned.
function makeLibs3() { story = "Romantic Suspense Blank-Filling-In Madness!" + "Smart Bitches: Romantic Suspense Blurbs Gone Wild!
He " + document.madlibs3.input1.value + " his " + document.madlibs3.input2.value + " when he glimpsed her " + document.madlibs3.input3.value + " her " + document.madlibs3.input4.value + ". But can he " + document.madlibs3.input5.value + " her " + document.madlibs3.input6.value + " " + document.madlibs3.input7.value + "? Find out in...
Passion's " + document.madlibs3.input8.value + " " + document.madlibs3.input9.value + "." libsWin = window.open("","",",width=800,height=100,scrollbars=yes"); libsWin.document.write(story); libsWin.document.close(); }
Verb, past tense:…
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by SB Sarah | May 07, 2009 | Thursday at 10:51 am | 101 Comments
Behold, we have a special message from Sherry Thomas, whose new website is sleek and sexy like things that are sleek and sexy:
It so happens that I have set Not Quite A Husband—coincidentally—in a spot that is very much in the news: the Swat Valley, which in 1897 broke out in a fierce rebellion against the British, inspired by the exhortations of a certain Mad Fakir and is now, history repeating itself, a Taliban stronghold and a flashpoint of conflict between the Taliban and the Pakistani government.
The events of Not Quite A Husband—a man traveling to the North-West Frontier of the British Raj to find his former wife and bring her home, because her father lies dying in London—unfold against the 1897 rebellion. And I have the perfect movie title for the book.
ESCAPE FROM SWAT VALLEY!
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by SB Sarah | February 19, 2009 | Thursday at 11:40 am | 94 Comments
So poor Jane Austen is now afflicted with zombies, aliens, predators, and all manner of terrible things - and here I thought Mr. Collins was pretty damn awful.
Do you get the feeling that poor Jane is getting an undue amount of paranormal attention?
What about the other masterpieces of romance fiction?
What about MORE paranormal or just plain extra more better oddity added to an already-paranormal romance?
I have two words: Hellooooo Hollywood!
Use the random Romance And More! generator created with patented Bitchenatin’® Technology to create your own blockbuster. And hook us up in the comments with any screenplay pitch blurbs you may have for your work in progress - 25 words or less, please. Best one as judged by your comments and yours truly will win a $25 gift certificate to Amazon or the bookstore of the winner’s choosing. 24 hours starting now.
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by SB Sarah | February 14, 2009 | Saturday at 6:53 pm | 11 Comments
If you’re already picking out books to put in your picture frames, just wait until you see this - the next wave in romance novel decor.
Bitchery reader Jen sent me the following:
So I was bored and made a V-day banner for my fireplace today. I took books that I was going to recycle (they were read/abused to oblivion) and cut hearts out of the covers. Then I linked them with the Bold Type On The Teaser Page.
Most of them were the normal “the heat between them was unstoppable”. Some of them were way better. My two favorites are “I want to take you to an FBI safe house” (how sexy, I swoon as I write this) and the classic “She screamed as he fell on top of her” (now that’s romance!).
I tried to take pictures up close but my camera, he sucks. Hope it brings you a smile.
I’m hoping the next time someone does one of those charity tour houses where a different designer takes a room, someone asks me and all of you to do up a room, Romance Style. That would be full of win to the power of awesome.…
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by SB Sarah | January 06, 2009 | Tuesday at 12:43 pm | 208 Comments
Back in December, New York Magazine had a neat page that featured the writing of people all over Manhattan. The reporters had approached “laptop-using strangers in Starbucks ... and asked them to show us the sentence they were working on.” Cool, huh? The results ranged from cover letters to rap lyrics to essays on gender identity. My favorite was a grad student writing a film. His last sentence: “Navy Seal (Steve).” Go Steve!
So I thought it would be fun to ask you guys: what’s the last sentence you wrote before surfing over here to the hot pink wonder palace of Bitchery? Mine was: “what’s the last sentence you wrote before surfing over here to the hot pink wonder palace of Bitchery?” (It’s not very interesting if I play along, is it?)
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by SB Sarah | October 31, 2008 | Friday at 5:35 pm | 8 Comments
Sam Hain, distant cousin of Sam Bucca, has announced a Discover New Authors program, in which four eBooks have been made available on their website “for FREE!” as they say.
Visit their site and you can download My Fair Captain by JL Langley, The Bounty by Beth Williamson, Don’t Let Go by Sydney Somers and Winter’s Daughter by J.C. Wilder. In 2009, they promise one new title every Wednesday from a new author. FREE!
Well, sort of. As I pointed out in my reply, it’s not really “FREE!” because it’s only half the book. There’s a link to buy the rest if you like it, and surely half of a book is more than enough to decide if you want to keep going or stop, with nothing lost but a little bit of time. So you’ll read the first half and wonder what happens next while evaluating whether you like it enough to buy the finale.
So it’s not really “Free.” Or even “discounted.” It’s half a book. It’s more than “sample chapters” but not entirely a “Free book.” So what to call it? I mean, not that I’m in charge of marketing decisions but I’m totally…
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by SB Sarah | September 26, 2008 | Friday at 8:39 pm | 89 Comments
Kimberly needs help: she needs you to name her cactus.
I vote “Prick.”
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by SB Sarah | April 02, 2008 | Wednesday at 2:18 pm | 23 Comments
A Bitchery reader forwarded me this query for what may be the best (I hope) April Fool's book search inquiry ever from the RRA listserv. Enjoy - and try not to feel the limitless bottom of despair when you are 2/3 of the way through reading it and realize, it could be a real romance you read one time.... A patron has requested help in identifying a book that she read "during the springtime in Europe on the banks of a famous river." She can't remember which river, but says it comes up frequently in crossword puzzles. (I don't suspect this part matters much anyway.) The book is the story of a young woman named something like Kate or Katherine or Karen whose normal life in the Midwest (or possibly West, but definitely not the eastern seaboard) is changed forever when her father goes missing overseas (the mother disappeared in K's childhood, although the patron cannot remember if this was because of death, or an affair, or something else). Following the lead in a mysterious note, K goes in search of her father, accompanied by her chaperone (who is a little person) and her cat. One of these companions talks,…
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by SB Sarah | March 23, 2008 | Sunday at 9:01 pm | 22 Comments
I had five minutes to read the funnies today - which is rare and also completely excellent - and today’s “Frazz” made me grin. I know a lot of writerly motivational sites have various running or driving analogies for the process of writing, from driving in total darkness with your low beams on to ultra marathon running.
Sometimes reading is like that for me - the running part. I try not to read while I’m driving. Sometimes I run shabbily as fast as I can just to get to the end because I just want to know what happens. Sometimes I set a slower pace and force myself not to go to fast because the pace heightens my reading enjoyment. And sometimes I have to walk down the stairs backwards when I’m done because the book is following me around for days afterward. What books are like that for you?
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by SB Sarah | January 18, 2008 | Friday at 7:00 pm | 25 Comments
Robena sent me an email and her sig file cracked me up so hard, I asked where she got it. Turns out, all the succinct hilarity of her sig file is available for every novel at Book-A-Minute Classics. Need to know a summary of a classic novel? Go there. Laugh much.
I’m partial to this one:
The Collected Work of Jane Austen
By Jane Austen
Ultra-Condensed by Christina Carlson and Peter da Silva
Female Lead: I secretly love Male Lead. He must never know.
Male Lead: I secretly love Female Lead. She must never know.
(They find out.)
THE END
Plus the Printed Edition and the Secret Edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is a hoot, too.
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by SB Sarah | November 15, 2007 | Thursday at 5:55 pm | 23 Comments
There are so many romance reader stereotypes that we fight against: we’re dumb. We wear sweatshirts embossed with puffy paint kittens with really big sad eyes. We’re in the midwest of the USA. We buy mindlessly because we’re dumb. And we’re dumb. And prone to repeating ourselves.
And we Smart Bitches know that’s horsepucky.
But there is one romance reader stereotype that needs to be addressed: we’re sexually repressed creatures. We need our romance novels to give us ideas of what sex is like because we can only accept it within the confines of a romance. Orgasm? What’s an orgasm? The dance as old as time? Dude. Sounds crusty.
Adding to all that sexual repression we try so hard not to talk about, we also have NO IDEA what to buy ourselves for the holidays. With Hanukkah sneaking up and spanking my ass on December 5 (WTF, yo? Can the holidays just STAND THE HELL STILL FOR ONCE!?!) and Christmas and Kwanzaa and New Year’s all lined up behind it, there’s a lot of gift giving potential for us sexually stifled readers of romance.
Now Jane over at DearAuthor has been writing the gangbusters hellagood guide to…
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by SB Sarah | October 27, 2007 | Saturday at 10:04 pm | 21 Comments
Behold! There were over 50 entries in the Nora Roberts Quiz of Gigantic Awesomeness, but only 8 people got every answer right. And the first one to email a complete and entirely correct ballot of answers is: StacieH4. Her answers came in hours after the quiz went live - I was impressed. So - Congratulations Stacie! Well played.
Want to know the answers? Of course you do - and Taylor Reynolds is going to help me, because she was guessing out of left field and her answers made me snort water up my nose.
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by Candy | October 16, 2007 | Tuesday at 2:24 pm | 63 Comments
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…
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