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

From the Fish in a Damn Barrel department, we have oily mantitty holding translucent melons - aka, the coming-soon listings for Ellora’s Cave. Man. Too many melons, too many man titty. The mind, it boggles.

I hope there are no small, urm, caves in those melons, considering where most of the models are positioning their jack o’lanterns.

From Lovelien we have the following two fabulous submissions. And by submissions we mean… oh never mind.

Sarah: There is no doubt that this fool met Fortune, received one wish, and said, “I want to be bigger.” Only he didn’t specify where. That man could lactate. In fact, he might be doing so now.

Candy: The only thing that can outshine his man-titty is his bling. Seriously, look at that fucking gold chain. It’s bigger than my thumb! As Sarah’s hubby noted, if he lived in New Jersey, his name would almost definitely be Tony. Or maybe Ant’ny. Not Anthony. Ant’ny.

Candy: Remember back when Björk did that dead swan dress thing? Oh, that kooky Björk. It was horrifying, but kinda cute--which, when it comes down to it, is a pretty nifty encapsulation of Björkishness.

Somebody needs to tell this dude that it’s just horrifying and not even remotely cute when he does it with a) tapeworms, and b) wears it on his head.

Sarah: If the bleached out, glued on, polyester dreadlocks didn’t make you snort, the cover text will sneak in and spank your eyeballs till they begs for the mercy. Golden seduction? King of CUPS? I need to go lie down now. That’s just too much.

Lovelien suggests that the look they were trying for was along the lines of Jason Momoa:

And let’s be honest. If he were on erotica covers? I’d have to add on to my house to find room for them all. Because DAMN. *fans self*

And from Rachel we have this fine work of… something:

Sarah: From the “Obscenely Obvious Art Department” we have this brainfart of a cover. With three strings of pearls. Come on now! String of pearls?! Why not just call the book “Here be lots of sex and jism!”

Sadly, given the baby face, giant cranium, and muscular bulk of dude #1, I’m not sure the ‘roids will allow him to achieve gem production. There ain’t nothing spicy in his briefs.

Rachel says her favorite part is “the guy in the background who seems to be saying, “So, uh, guys? Threesome? Right? I mean, you said we were having a threesome tonight, so I just figured...no, it’s cool. I’ll wait.”

She’s right - he doesn’t look romantic or even sexy. He looks annoying like that guy who always wanted to copy your answers for the health test.

Candy: Egad! Never has a potential threesome looked more vanilla and boring. Any minute now, the guys are going to attempt to jockey for the anal sex position because they’ve never...you know...put it there before. And then their penises will accidentally touch. And then they’ll laugh nervously and continue with their business, but secretly, they’ll always wonder if that brief inter-penis touch made them gay.

A few weeks ago, we brought you Cover Makeovers, the Johanna Lindsey edition, wherein a team of five flamingly homosexual cover art specialists are hand-picked to overhaul the...wait, CRAP, the expiration date on that joke was 2004. At any rate, in our first edition of Cover Makeovers, we looked at the evolution of the pièces d’art gracing the masterworks of that Doyenne of Bodice Rippery, Johanna Lindsey. Up on this week’s chopping block: that Beldame of Heaving Bosoms, Catherine Coulter.

Let’s play Spot the Theme with the older covers, shall we? Let’s look at these covers, especially the first two, and ponder what similarities there may be. I wonder what they could be? Hmmmm.

Look at the hair! And that eyeshadow! FIERCE! But really, it’s the little touches that make these covers magical. Take the swan in cover numéro deux, for example. Is it:

a) Zeus in disguise, being a pervy voyeur and enjoying a little vicarious what-what-in-the-butt;

b) an innocent bird flushed (hur hur hur) out of its comfortable nest because all these scantily-dressed people with terrible eye makeup and enough hairspray to ignite all of Sudan insist on having buttsecks right on top of it;

c) a visually punny indicator of the fowl (HUR HUR HUR) perversions afoot; or

d) a metaphor for the hero’s long, skinny penis?

I’d vote for (c), but in all honesty, (b) is the most likely answer.

(I wonder if ornithologists noticed any disruptions in swan nesting patterns in the late 70s and early 80s? Because there were a lot of swans on these goddamn covers. I mean a lot.)

The cover re-makes, while a great deal more tasteful, are also a great deal more boring. Look at them:

These covers probably paint all the walls of their houses colors like “eggshell cream” and would clutch at their pearls in shock at the very idea of non-consensual sex involving the hero jamming cream up the reluctant heroine’s hoo-hoo as both foreplay and lubricant. ‘Tis a sad fact but true: the older covers, while hilariously bad, at least provided a modicum of truth in advertising.

Up next on the chopping block: Loretta Chase, whose Indian name could easily be Eternally Cursed with Covers Featuring Greasy Men With Dodgy Hair. Stay tuned!

We’ve discussed many, many romance covers, and last year we held a contest to challenge the Bitchery to come up with a better cover than, well, many of the ones we’ve snarked! We provide the copy, and y’all design the covers. Last year’s contest yielded some beautiful covers, and the winner of the Amateur division ended up freelancing for a few presses when her cover won the contest. We can’t promise job offers for all winners, but hey, a lotta publishing folks read this site.

But then again, maybe we can! We here at the Bitching HQ have decided that we need to help out Mrs. Giggles’ new publishing enterprise, Trixy Lion ePublishing. Mrs. Giggles, she needs covers. And titles. So, as with last year’s contest, here’s the deal:

Candy and I shall provide you with cover copy. You design the cover based on our copy.

We have two divisions: Amateur and Professional. If graphic design, art, or covers for hot man-titty romance are your professional occupation, you’re no amateur. But! There shall be two sets of prizes.

The Rules

1. No copyrighted images. (We don’t want to get bloody suuuuued!) You can use stock images, or make your own.
2. You must submit 350x500 images, along with a thumbnail of 88 x 125.
3. You must submit your image in one of the three web-recognized formats (.jpg, .gif, or .png). No photoshop documents - they’re bloody huuuuuuge!

The Deadline

Your images must be emailed to Sarah AND Candy by Friday, September 14 2007.

The Prizes

Winner, which will be tabulated by Smart Bitchery Vote, will receive a $50 gift certificate to Amazon.com, and mad pimpage on our site if you have a website of your very, very own. Plus, we’ll send you some books with really, really hot covers. Srsly.

And now, your inspiration:

Our subgenre for this year’s TRixY Lion cover contest is…

A little while ago, Bookslut ran a very entertaining feature on children’s book covers featuring wizards, complete with various makeovers. I figured we here at Smart Bitch Central could shamelessly rip off this idea pay homage to this idea and talk about some of the classics of our genre and how their covers have evolved. First up on the chopping block: that doyenne of hearts and savages and thunder and savagely thundering hearts, Johanna Lindsey. For extra bonus funtimes, swap around the titles and covers. Hell, swap around the individual words! They’re astonishingly interchangeable. Brave the Wild Rogue! A Heart so Savage! Gentle Thunder!

Savage Thunder

This cover, perhaps more than any other, is THE classic Lindsey cover. It has that red-haired chick in a mildly creepy supplicant pose, suggesting that Humjobs Are Imminent--or maybe that crotches will be bashed with fatal force against foreheads. Difficult to tell sometimes. It has some kind of random animal freaking the fuck out in the background. And it has Fabio. Wearing Uggs. With hair dyed black--presumably because that makes him look Indian--and flowing in the wind, except in this case, the wind seems to be coming from below and directly behind him. A thundering savage, indeed. I read this book when I was seventeen years old, and to be honest, I can’t remember a goddamn thing about it other than the sex-on-a-horse scene (she wakes up! On horseback! And she’s coming like a rocket! And then they have crazy screaming balls-out sex on a galloping horsie!) and the cover. Hey, I was a horny teenager. What the hell do you expect me to find most memorable about a Johanna Lindsey novel?

And the re-make? Let’s take a look, shall we?

What the hell? From Little Blowjob on the Prairie to Little House on the Prairie. Surreal. Also, deeply deceptive of its contents. Much as the previous cover makes me cringe, it at least accurately conveyed what you found within. That cover smacks you on the face and proudly proclaims “Feisty redhead heroine alert! You’ll probably want to smack the shit out of her before the book is over! Lots of sweaty, dirty, OMGHOT sex! Indian dude with massive chip on his shoulder! There will be lots of yelling, both when they argue and when they screw like horny, horny weasels!”

The new cover says, rather sedately, “I am a family saga. There are two sisters. And lots of descriptions of the brutal winters. One of them marries a preacher who turns out to be an alcoholic. The other one--the plain one--injures her leg, loses her faith in God, and finds her faith again when she adopts a starving urchin.”

This cover’s much less embarrassing to cart around, but I gotta say, I kinda prefer the old one.

A Heart So Wild

Ahhh, the When Vampire Cowboys Go Gay cover. So much love. So much gauntness.  So much inexplicable posturing--I mean, tango is sexy and all, but why in the fuck are they practicing right by a roaring campfire? One of the classic conundrums of our time.

We go from that bit of pulp camp to:

Ah, yes. I remember this phase of Johanna Lindsey covers. For a while, all her reissues had these huge, lurid flowers on them, and then they were plain with the occasional paint splatter in the background--I like to think of them as the half-assed Jackson Pollock phase of Lindsey covers. They were by and large inoffensive, but also boring as hell, though if I remember correctly, these often had mantitty-licious stepbacks. If I had to choose, I’d say this one makes me less embarrassed to cart around in public, but this isn’t by any means a good cover.

Brave the Wild Wind

If there’s one thing you can learn from this cover, it’s that you can stick two hot, mostly-naked people in a raging torrent of radioactive goo, and it STILL won’t make it sexy. Years from now, the woman’s going to be popping out two-headed kittens and children with their organs on the outside of their bodies, and she’ll be sobbing with regret into her oatmeal. Why did she take that modelling job in college? Why? Whyyyyy?

We go from that piece of strangeness to:

Holy bloated pink horsies, Batman! That horse is straight from a “Where Are They Now” special on My Little Pony. After the Saturday Morning cartoon series, after the insane merchandising, after the mobs of adoring girls, obscurity hit Chocolate Stallion hard. He developed a nasty coke habit, was forced to get a bleach job, and started posing on romance novel covers. How the mighty have fallen.

This re-issue manages to be both more discreet AND more hilarious than the old one. That takes talent.

Gentle Rogue

The cover change for this book is perhaps one of the most whiplash-inducing re-work of all time. But as with all things, you can basically categorize it using a LOLCat dichotomy.

That up there? Visible Buttsecks.

The new cover?

Invisible Buttsecks.

That’s all for now. Stay tuned for next week, when we take on Catherine Coulter. Try not to pee yourself with anticipation.