Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

As usual: guess that romance novel hero or heroine:

World famous SWF, breaking lose from longstanding emotional bondage, seeks RV-driving man, adorable kids optional but add much to plotline. Must be willing to tolerate political intrigue, mass press attention, and on-the-run lifestyle.

Longmire has added more covers!

Go now and seek the inspiration for you new piece of writing, titled Savage Love Cabbage.

Us Smarty Bitchypants have come up with an invaluable tool for all romance novel authors, everywhere: A Romance Novel Title Generator!

Yes, now you no longer have to lay awake nights trying to come up with that perfect title for your work-in-progress! This generator with its own patented Bitchenatin'® Technology takes all the stress and anguish out of coming up with a snappy title and leaves you more time to decide whether your hero's eyes are "gunmetal" or "polished flint." Go ahead, give it a whirl! If you don't like the title you first come up with, click on the button again to come up with another one. Rest assured we have ALL sub-genres covered, from paranormals to Westerns to European historicals of all sorts. And after you generate that title, you can enter in another Smart Bitch contest--this one requiring more than your page-refreshing skillz.

Your next bestseller should be titled:

The

Contest Details

1. First, keep clickin' that button until you get a title you really, really like.
2. Write a wildly romantic paragraph of no more than 200 words containing ALL the words in the title you just generated. All submissions must be headed by the randomly-generated title; those without will be disqualified.
3. Post the title and the paragraph in the Comments, or e-mail the entry to either or . Entries must be received before 10 p.m. PDT this Saturday (April 16, 2005).
4. On 10 a.m.(ish) PDT Sunday, April 17, 2005, an entry containing ALL valid contest submissions will be posted. Read through those entries, and then e-mail us your votes. Yes, the winner of this contest will be democratically-chosen. One vote per person. Comments will be disabled because we want to keep the results a surprise, plus ballot-box stuffing is a lot easier via Comments. Not that we expect a whole lot of cheating or anything.
5. You have until midnight PDT on Monday (April 18, 2005) to vote. Votes received after that time will not be accepted.
6. The winner will be announced on Tuesday morning, April 19 2005.
7. Prize will be a $10 Amazon.com gift certificate AND one of our custom pseudo-aristocratic Smart Bitch titles. Look: a title AND money!

So what are you waiting for? Generate that title and submit your entries, bitches!

At the end of my Geek Heroes post, I noted that SF provides some good geek role models. On my drive home tonight, my CD changer switched to Strongbad Sings and Other Type Hits and I was again overwhelmed with love and awe for the Brothers Chaps. And I realized, DUDE, those two guys are excellent examples of sexy geeks. They’re cute (I mean, look at the picture! So! Cute!), they’re smart, they’re talented, and they came up with catchphrases like “Burninate!” and “YOUR HEAD A SPLODE.” HOT.

So here are examples of some real-life geeks I think are attractive--guys who would almost definitely be unutterably creeped out to be mentioned in a site called “Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Novels.”

Matt Chapman: He’s the primary voice actor for almost everyone on homestarrunner.com, from Strongbad to Bubs to Homestar himself. I can’t even express to you the depths of my swoony, fangirlish delight when I saw him do Strongbad and Bubs in this interview.

Mike Chapman: Mike came up with Homestarrunner, initially a parody of crappy children’s picture books, then decided to animate the characters in Flash for shits n giggles. GENIUS.

Christian Rudder: Any of you guys remember TheSpark.com? For a few years they were one of the best Internet comedy sites around, with a real gonzo attitude when it came to their “science” experiments. When Christian Rudder, one of the editors, decided he needed to deliberately infect himself with athlete’s foot in the Stinkyfeet Project and document each excruciating moment with charts, graphs and close-up photos, a new crush was born. How many guys d’you think developed a geek girl following by deliberately fungifying their extremities? Not too many--for which the world in general is no doubt grateful.

Favorite quote from the Stinkyfeet project: “Remember how your crotch feels after a day of swimming at the beach? Right. Well, now I got a pair of crotches on the ends of my legs, and they both feel goddamn disgusting. That brings me to three crotches, total, which is right past my limit. Jesus.”

He’s now one of the founders of OKCupid, purveyor of such fine tests as “What Kind Of Thug Are You?” and “What Kind of Book Are You?”

Chris Livingston: An example of a guy who’s not a techie and not a science freak, yet still manages to pull of the geek thing. A healthy love of computer games and Star Wars always helps, as well as having friends who are techies and science freaks like Lore Sjöberg (see below).

Lore Sjöberg: He’s responsible for The Book of Ratings, whose format I unabashedly ripped off when I decided to do Lightning Reviews, AND he came up with a way to play rock, paper, scissors on-line with your friends (the script no longer works, alas and alack). I am full of the Geek Love (of the non-Katherine Dunn variety) for Lore.

Ummm, in actual romance novel-related news: I’m reading. And it’s a fun book. Only I’ve been so tired lately that I keep falling asleep two pages into the novel. And I’m working on the last two installments of the Mr. Impossible Thumbnail Theater, which will be up by this weekend. I know, y’all just peeing with excitement.

Yeah, I got nothing. I hope that the links above at least amuse. Feel free to share your admiration of real-life Internerds so I don’t feel so goddamn alone in my dorkiness. PLEASE.

Did y’all hear that sound, about an hour ago?

Seriously, that huge, vortex of sound, maybe at about 5:30 EDT?

That was the sound of Sarah being SUCKED IN to the depths of To Love and to Cherish by Patricia Gaffney. I was hooked on page 4! I am unable to think of doing anything else but reading this book. DAMN. That’s got to be some kind of record.

Now I shall be hidden in our bedroom in complete silence torn between rushing through and savoring each and every word.

Do not be alarmed if you hear that noise again. It was only good reading.