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

My mother and SBTB reader Susan were kind enough to send me a link to info on the Literary Review’s Bad Sex in Fiction prize. From fantasizing about foot surgeons to sex with glassy-eyed sheep with fine lashes (shouldn’t every heroine have fine lashes?!) this contest is the Bulwer-Lytton of sex scenes. Susan’s reaction: “ye, gods, and they have the NERVE to go on and on about purple prose in ROMANCE?” Amen to that!

Shouldn’t there be a romance novel’s bad sex scenes contest? Have y’all read any sex scenes that were just absolute howlers this year, in a new or recently-published book? Perhaps we need to make this a year-end event - Smart Bitches, Bad Sex contest. Not that we’re having bad sex. Smart Bitches never have bad sex!

You can read the entire excerpt, but I invite you to open this page and search for the word “pizza.” Read the entire line.

Read it again.

Savor it. 

That line could open new doors in sexual imagery. Thanks to an alert reader who made me fall off the sofa laughing by sending me the link.

Nothing like a little roadkill romance. Hmmm-hah! 

I love stories of true romance as much as I love the fictional ones. Enjoy and try not to picture the movie version, because over-production would suck all the joy and beauty out of the simplicity of this story. 

Thanks to brilliant reader Michelle, I am now dumbfounded and curious about the marketing decisions of major romance brands.

Harlequin will be offering NASCAR themed and branded romances:

NASCAR™ claims 75 million fans and says 30 million of them are women.

“NASCAR™ has one of the largest and most loyal bases of female fans of any sport in the United States and we are delighted to publish novels that will appeal specifically to them,” Harlequin CEO Donna Hayes said.

Now, NASCAR™ in and of itself is fascinating. Born in the deep South (Darlington, SC, for example, hosted the first “superspeedway” before Daytona built their speedway, though the racing itself started in North Carolina way back in the 40’s) it is a mix of down-home activities like watching car racing and tailgating, only with seriously brilliant participants. The men and women of the pit crews? Multiple engineering degrees. You gotta have some seriously mathematical smarts to be a NASCAR™ crew member - and yet many of them are life-long racing fans from small rural areas who had big brains and a desire to get advanced engineering and science degrees. So the potential for some fascinating heroes is definitely there, along with the opportunity for writers to create protagonists that break some of the rural Southern stereotypes.

But as for the Harlequin connection, are female NASCAR™ fans really an untapped demographic of romance readers? Is this a savvy move on their part or is it destined to be a big boo-boo in the history of romance? And, most importantly, is there going to be a RITA category for Best NASCAR™ romance?

Bookseller Chick has a most excellent entry up about the salubrious effects of reading Harlequin Presents while enduring the vigors of organic chemistry class. But my favorite part is right at the end, wherein she explains how to play the Harlequin Presents game:

I’ve always believe that Harlequin Presents covers can be used either to a.) make one weird blackmail note, or b.) summarize a whole new plot for the upcoming month. To do this one must first collect six Harlequin Presents. For our example we’ll use the six that came out for the month of November:

Pregnancy of Revenge by Jacqueline Baird
The Italian Doctor’s Mistress by Catherine Spencer
Bound by Blackmail by Kate Walker
Disobedient Virgin by Sandra Marton
Sale or Return Bride by Sarah Morgan
The Greek’s Bought Wife by Helen Bianchin

Do not try to make sense out of the titles. I don’t know what the Sale or Return Bride means either; it doesn’t matter. You are now going to rearrange these titles so they make a sentence (or a couple of sentences). Feel free to add in important linking words like (if, then, and, or longer phrases). Your result may look like so:

Although Bound by Blackmail, the Disobedient Virgin refused to be the Italian Doctor’s Mistress and instead chose to be The Greek’s Bought Wife. Even though he considered her to be his Sale or Return Bride, she would carry his Pregnancy of Revenge with love.

I want to play! I want to play! I’m going to use October’s titles:

Expecting the Playboy’s Heir by Penny Jordan
His One-Night Mistress by Sandra Field
The Brazilian’s Blackmailed Bride by Michelle Reid
A Scandalous Marriage by Miranda Lee
The Greek’s Ultimate Revenge by Julia James
The Spaniard’s Inconvenient Wife by Kate Walker (hehe, I initially read this as “incontinent")

Et voila:
After being His One-Night Mistress, Calliope Kourios found herself Expecting the Playboy’s Heir...and being forced into A Scandalous Marriage! But she couldn’t be The Brazilian’s Blackmailed Bride, because Calliope had a secret...She was already The Spaniard’s Inconvenient Wife. Can she find a way out of this quandary, or will she have to use The Greek’s Ultimate Revenge?

I bet you can play this game with traditional Regency titles, too. Have a whack at it, kids! It’s good, clean fun!

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Cassie Edwards Articles

• A centralized document of the Cassie Edwards texts (Rev. E, 2/21/2008, Tracks 22 Books, Added a Table of Contents)

One Big-Ass Bastard

• Bill Napoli, who’s a real sexist ass-hat
• Engaging in some friendly Googlebombing
• Another Napoli Update
• Smart Bitch Endorsed Art Auction
• WE WIN AT THE INTERNET