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

As of 5:44pm Eastern Time, 18 January 2008, we have raised for Defenders of Wildlife and other animal charities around the world a grand total of:

$5,032.75 US

Way to go, Smart Bitch Readers!  And a big thank you to Nora Roberts, who is matching that total to $5,000.00, making the total raised in three days: $10,032.75.

And if you would like to contribute to the ferrets and other endangered wildlife, please feel free. You can also consider these Native American relief funds and charities, should you be interested in other giving opportunities:

Adopt A Native Elder - Charity Navigator Rating: Four Stars

First Nations Development Institute - Charity Navigator Rating: Three Stars

The Native American Heritage Association - Charity Navigator Rating: Four Stars

Here at Smart Bitches, we’ve examined a slew of material since last Monday, from novels to anthropology texts to poems, and we’ve discussed authors, editors, publishers, writers, scientists, ethnographers, Native Americans, and of course, Bitches.

But as Paul Tolmé pointed out in his article in Newsweek, there’s one party that hasn’t gotten enough attention.

The ferrets.

Tolmé’s article about the black footed ferret focuses on the loss of their habitat, the prairie, and the programs working to bring them back from near extinction.

The black footed ferret is officially classified by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature as extinct in the wild, though breeding and repopulation programs have been successful. Defenders of Wildlife classifies the ferrets as an imperiled species. 

And then came this morning’s email: Nora Roberts has volunteered to match up to $5,000.00 USD any donations made by Smart Bitches readers to Defenders of Wildlife, a 501(c)3 nonprofit that works to preserve not just ferrets but endangered wildlife across the US, most particularly that species much loved by paranormal romance writers: the wolf.

Are you outside the US, but want to increase Nora’s gift? Please feel free to make a donation to the local wildlife charity of your choice.

To qualify your donation for Nora’s matching gift, please email me at sarah@smartbitchestrashybooks.com with a screen cap or PDF of your donation receipt. You can block out your personal deets if like. I’ll total up the collective donations and keep y’all appraised of the totals.

Smart Bitches, Trashy Books LLC, will kick off the donations with a $100 pledge. Nora’s offer to match expires 31 January 2008, so please get your donations in by then.

Updated to add: We have cleared $1000 $1500 $2200 $4900 in total Smart Bitch Reader donations. Way to go!

Updated 18 January 2008, 6:00 pm EST: WE have REACHED $5,000.00 - and then some. Way to go Bitches!

My good buddy Schwern runs geek2geek, a geekblog that, among other things, talks about how people communicate on-line, and how we resolve conflicts. (That site kind of grew out of the “How Not To Be an Asshole” section of his “How to be a Better Programmer” talk, and really, if nothing else, I love conferences like OSCON because the people giving talks get to use LOLCAT pictures and have the word ASSHOLE up on a giant display. But that’s neither here nor there.) At any rate, I’ve been greatly enjoying his series on how text lacks empathy, which deals with the perils of communicating on-line. I’ve been thinking a great deal about my on-line presence and my on-line voice in the past week or so--more than I normally do, that is--and Schwern hit on several points bang-on, points that I think help make sense of how people have interpreted the recent kerfuffling:

If you’re like me — and the name tag says I am — when you write you hear a little voice in your head. Maybe it’s telling you to shoot the President to impress Jodie Foster (I hear she’s into Prime Ministers now), but it’s probably just your own voice speaking what you’re writing. This is fine. The trouble comes when you forget that all the EMPHASIS and STRESS and WILD HAND GESTURES and FUNNY LOOKS that are going on in your head aren’t coming out on the page. We don’t think of them much when we speak, they tend to come naturally, so it’s all too easy to not realize when they’re missing.

Our tendency is to fill in voids with our own negative emotions. (...)

can’t fix a problem unless you know about it

That’s the problem: we don’t realize there’s a problem. And it’s a hard problem to see. Going from the voice in your head to text on the screen there is no indication that anything is lost. No censor bleeping out parts. No red pen crossing bits out. No “emotions missing” icon. The loss is silent. If you’re not looking for it, you’d never know it happened.

I don’t have anything especially profound to add here, because I haven’t had time to fully sort and categorize everything I think about this issue other than “Holy crap, dude’s just expressed a whole bunch of things I’ve observed but hadn’t bothered to document coherently.” Like I said in the comments to my post on Bad Taste, I want to find ways to--well, not change my voice, but to get it across more accurately. Feel free to take the ball and run with it in the comments. GO GO GO! *blows referee whistle*

Throughout the whole Cassie Edwards internetasplosion, Candy and I have been accused of enjoying this. Nope, not really. It’s, no pun intended, serious business what we did.

But I have to admit, I’ve just had a huge giggle of glee: following the NY Times article, my mother in law looked up this here site and called Hubby with ALL kinds of questions about it. The highlight?

Hearing Hubby explain to my mother in law what “OMGWTFBBQ” is. That was one of the funniest conversations I’ve ever heard. And no, I don’t think she gets it.

Also: Note to those who have been having trouble commenting. It’s a consequence of traffic and having our site load balanced across nine servers (Thanks again Esosoft!). Your cookie gets placed on one server, then the next request you make of the server is handled by a different one, and the cookie is timed out or absent. Esosoft and Their Unbearably Awesome Tech Support Team have been working on it and it should be functional now. If you have problems, please asap. 

From today’s “Publisher’s Lunch” ("Published Daily. Except When Not.” HA.):

Children’s book author Jon Scieszka has been named our first national ambassador for young people’s literature by the librarian of Congress, James Billington. The post does not come with specific responsibilities; rather, Scieszka is expected to act as “an evangelist for reading.”

An evangelist for reading, eh? Can we have an evangelist for reading Romance? Please? I’ll do it! I’ll cast out the spirit of evil wooden dialogue and virgin widows, and bring the light of fluid prose and spicy sexual attraction to all readers and writers! And I’ll wear a really, REALLY hot pants suit while I do it? On stage?

According to the Church of Christ OldPath.com archive, “Public scripture reading is an important part of the work of an evangelist.” Well, then. I’m down. I’ll take my Count’s Blackmail Bargain out to the street - it’s 15F and feels like 3F so I better get points for braving frostbite in the name of Mantitty - and read aloud with great dramatic flair. Anyone want to meet me in Central Park at 12:30 pm? One of the characters smotes his chest, so this is perfect reading!

Anyone? Anyone? Can I get a “Amen?”