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

Thanks to Harlequin, keeper of all the magical ebooks I could ever want ever omg more please, I have a weekend giveaway - woo hoo!

Today Harlequin is launching “Historical Undone:” short historical romances, the way-back-machine version of the Nocturne Bites stories, if you will.

If you’d like to test drive a Historical Undone title, drop a comment below, and three winners will be selected randomly to win a coupon code good for one free Undone title from now until 30 November. Here is some sexy fine print:

Each coupon code can be used once and should be inputted at Checkout after the customer has put the Undone title of their choice in their shopping cart. They are redeemable at http://www.eBooks.eHarlequin.com

*fans self* Woo!

Plus, the nice people with the coupons at Harlequin (Hi nice people!) have also asked that I let y’all know that during the month of November, they’ll be hosting an Afternoon Delights special: every day in November, several Spice Briefs and Nocturne Bites, along with the four Undone books available now, will be just 99¢. Check out this extremely convenient URL for more details and your 99-cent selection.

I’m kind of a fan of the shorter romance eBooks, because when I have time to read on my lunch break, I can finish one in under an hour. I read the first Noctune Bites, Racing the Moon while I had lunch one day, and finishing a romance before it was time to clock back in was quite satisfying.

So, if you’d like to test drive a title from the Historical Undone series, let me know - drop a comment from now until midnight Sunday EST, and if you win, it’s shopping time!

Sam Hain, distant cousin of Sam Bucca, has announced a Discover New Authors program, in which four eBooks have been made available on their website “for FREE!” as they say.

Visit their site and you can download My Fair Captain by JL Langley, The Bounty by Beth Williamson, Don’t Let Go by Sydney Somers and Winter’s Daughter by J.C. Wilder. In 2009, they promise one new title every Wednesday from a new author. FREE!

Well, sort of. As I pointed out in my reply, it’s not really “FREE!” because it’s only half the book. There’s a link to buy the rest if you like it, and surely half of a book is more than enough to decide if you want to keep going or stop, with nothing lost but a little bit of time. So you’ll read the first half and wonder what happens next while evaluating whether you like it enough to buy the finale.

So it’s not really “Free.” Or even “discounted.” It’s half a book. It’s more than “sample chapters” but not entirely a “Free book.” So what to call it? I mean, not that I’m in charge of marketing decisions but I’m totally pondering this like it’s my business. Hm. A Big Fat sample? More than your standard free sample? Tapas: somewhere between a free sample and a whole entree?

Then it came to me: Francium.

Hope your costume, your candy haul, and your evening of trickin’ and treatin’ are a regular festival of awesome! Here, have some Muppets!

Perhaps you want to be a big name author. Scratch that - a Big Name Author, an author of such prominence that maybe your books feature a distinct font that identifies you and you alone. Maybe you have your own fragrance. Maybe you want to have a backlist that can wrap around the earth sixteen times, or books that display your name larger than title itself. Maybe you want to be such a Major Player that people stop and take notice when you do something, like having the Associated Press notice when you announce that you’re starting a blog.

Seriously. There are sixty-eleventy botrillion blogs on the internet, but when Danielle Steel starts one, major press outlets take notice.

Wow. That right there is some authorial prominence at work. I mean, Stan in accounts payable probably started a blog ten minutes ago, and no one’s loaded that page but him.

Steel decided, according to the AP article (seriously, Hillel Italie has the greatest job in the history of the universe), to start blogging because her kids are grown up and she doesn’t have to worry so much about their privacy (good on you, Ms. Steel. Well played). Plus she wants to “communicate with my readers in a more informal way.” Considering that her first entry is all about age, and that she’s at a bad age but so is everyone else and yet everyone should enjoy the age they are right now, I’m not sure what the message was. I’m chronologically 33 and I’m enjoying my age just fine, but I’m still confused as to what the point of all that was. Hi, you’re not old! Thanks!

Ah, well. It doesn’t matter. She is probably not reading this here site, or any of the other romance blogs I adore, if this quote is any indication:

But she will play nice on her blog.

“I want it to be friendly and positive” she says. “I have seen some of the blogs being highly critical about people and highly nasty. I don’t like that in life; it’s just not necessary. Life is hard enough without being sour on top of it.”

Well, let’s break the champagne bottle on the SS Welcome to the Internet. A note Ms. Steel: mazel tov on the new blog! It’s definitely a tool in the arsenal of communicating directly with readers. But please note a key definition of terms: the “blog” is the entity itself, the web site that contains all the individual writing. It’s the sum, the whole, the entire collection. It’s the book, if you will. The individual pieces of writing are “entries” or, maybe “chapters” or even “pages.” So when you say, “And thank you for reading my first blog” you are mixing it up a bit and kinda sound like a noob. Nitpicky, I know, but when the AP notices when you’re blogging, you work the terminology right. Welcome to the party. 

Bitchery reader Alyc writes:

This is more general than the regular HaBO, so it may not qualify. Here’s the deal: I’m a sucker for a good Eros/Cupid and Psyche retelling. My hazy memory tells me I have run across a few in my time, but the new version of the TV show has got me yearning to read a few good Cupid stories. I’m certain the readership here would be more than able to recommend some.

To narrow things down a bit, what I like about the story is the god/mortal dichotomy—pshaw! Who reads about Dukes when you’ve got gods to play around with? I also tend to prefer historicals over contemporaries, but I’ll dip my toes in contemporary waters for a good Eros and Psyche tale.

Five words come to my mind: I can has Jeremy Piven?