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

There are, if you hadn’t noticed, a LOT of RWA chapters. They’re everywhere. And they often host conferences, and those conferences frequently take advantage of local amenities to entice folks to come on down and learn about romance writing, the industry, you know, all that fun stuff. So - New York City? Allure of the big city and you know, that publishing industry thing everyone talks about. New Jersey? Hey. There’s PLENTY of ALLURE in JERSEY! (I kid - the Jersey conference is awesome.)

But by far the most creative chapter conference I’ve encountered? Florida Romance Writers’ Fun in the Sun Conference . Hey, if you’re based in Florida, why not? Three day cruise to the Bahamas? Agents, editors, writing sessions and a bar that’s open late at night? And not to mention the part where it’s warm? And in the sun? As a potential business expense?

Word. That’s a brilliant idea for a conference. 

As per Dear Author’s post today - congrats to Emma aka Meredith - for winning the Gather.com First Chapters Romance Writing Competition. She wins a $5000 advance from Simon & Schuster and her book will be published by S&S’s Pocket Books division. Her book The Shadow’s Kiss will be released in spring 2008. You can read chapters 1 and 2 on Meredith’s Gather.com page.

Second place went to Starr Toth, for her entry Trust Me, which will be published next fall. You can read her chapters online, too.

Way to go Emma & Starr!

Here at Smart Bitches, we are all about Tiki Barber. What’s Tiki doing now that he’s retired? What kind of car does he drive? What major literary awards does he present, and what color tie does he wear?

I haven’t found a great picture besides this one, but check it out: behind some author named Nora Roberts whose book Angels Fall won the Quill Award for Book of the Motherfriggin’ Year , there’s Tiki Barber. Looks like his tie is burgundy, no?

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. 

Doris Lessing has won the Nobel prize for Literature. An 88 year-old self-educated writer, she is the author of an absolute monster load of books, exploring themes ranging from Communism, socialism, feminism, and Sufism. Ultimately she explored science fiction - the basis of a good bit of criticism from Harold Bloom as to her selection as this year’s Nobel Laureate. (Imagine the top of his head blowing off if a romance author won! HA!)

Lessing defended her choice of genres by saying, “What they didn’t realize was that in science fiction is some of the best social fiction of our time.”

Though I’m not a reader of much science fiction, I have to say, “Damn skippy, ma’am.” Congratulations!