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

From the Professors Brilliant comes a Call for Papers. Alas, I cannot participate, as it starts on the first night of Passover, and if I left RT early and skipped the PAGEANT OF MAN TITTY for Pesach, you can understand that New Orleans is not among my ports of breadless call either. Otherwise I’d be there with beads on.

But if you’re looking for a scholarly opportunity or a place to send a proposal last minute, have a look. 

Should you be looking to become a full-time writer of romance, I have the one web site on the internet with all the answers to your many, many questions. Well, no, I don’t. I have the exact opposite.

There’s a lot of meaningless drivel on the internet (hi there!) and most of it merits exactly zero notice, but this site is just a clusterfuck of wowser: Got the Thing in Becoming a World-renowned Writer?. The first paragraph alone may harm you, your neighbors, and possibly people you don’t even know. You might be so spellbounded by the writing that you pass out cold, particularly after this piece of advice:

You write what you read and that means you need to read a love of romance stories to get some ideas from experts before you and that’s it in the nutshell

Wait, that’s it? Really?

But the site that page links to is an even bigger treasure trove of WTF, particularly this quote:

If you’ve ever finished a great romance and thought to yourself, “Hey, I could write one of those!” there has never been a better time than the present to fulfill your dreams.

Yes. Fuck the economy. Quit your job now!

Seriously. If you’ve ever finished a great romance and thought to yourself, “Hey, I can do that!” you have one of the following problems:

a. a clearly deluded sense of how easy it is to write a great romance (hint: it is not easy)
b. an inaccurate method of evaluating that which might be a “great romance.”

I mean, sheesh, who hasn’t finished a romance novel so profound in its brilliance that it leaves you in breathless tears, and paused to think, “Nice, but I could do better.”

The Sam Hain (not to be confused with Sam Adams, or Sam Bucca) Free Kindle book of the week has been announced: Bianca D’Arc’s MaidenFlight.

Dragon menage? No way? Yes way. Three way! 

All I’m saying is, for this much money, the Kindle better harness nuclear energy to make eggs, do laundry, and drive me to work every day. Holy shit. $6,232.00 for an EBOOK?! And that’s 20% off!

I mean, I get nervous wearing nice jewelry sometimes on the subway. Imagine having a SIX THOUSAND DOLLAR ebook on the Kindle?! I’d be afraid to touch the damn thing.

[Thanks to Student Tech News for the link.]

Today is a super busy day in my world (Freebird is 3?! How the CRAP did that happen!?) but I still manage to grab 10 minutes at the laptop.

I noticed that I’m very much a mood swing reader, in that I’ll glom onto a particular type of romance, then turn radically in a different direction. For awhile, I’ve been feasting on contemporaries: novellas, suspense mysteries, humorous, but straight up contemporary. Now? Historical?! YUMMY. I deviated from the line up of the TBR pile (for which I am giving myself a very hard time) and taking a side route through an angsty historical I picked up idly one evening and believe I have been sucked into.

Speaking of, let me ask you a question: do you want to know what I’m reading right now? Like, if I’m reading Angsty Historical that jumps forward and back in time, and I’m not sure what I’m thinking of it or how I’d evaluate it since I’m still Getting Into It, do you want to know what it is? Until now I’ve felt like naming book titles when I’m not sure what I think of them yet is somehow rude or teasing, and I don’t want to be a book tease. But hey, if you want to know, I’ll mention things as I read them.

Of course, if I’m reading a file I’ve emailed to the Kindle, until I look up the sent mail file I might only be able to say that I’m reading NC_Oc_R.PDF and no, I have NO IDEA what the hell that is. It’s like blind taste testing on the Kindle sometimes, because with some e-ARCs that I have, the title/author info doesn’t appear at the top of the screen.

I’m not usually big into angsty historicals, but it’s a foggy, rainy day here, and I’m tucked into the sofa cushions reading until nap time ends, and chaos descends, so it’s fabulous.