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

Candy: 1. Right now, Rupert Carsington of Mr. Impossible is very, very high on the list. Besides his ability to defenestrate pesky villains with great dispatch and efficiency, he’s funny and he likes smart women. And Philip Brooks of Lightning that Lingers. He’s a biologist! Who rehabilitates baby owls! And he’s hot enough to be a stripper! And he likes bookish women! Eeee!

Sarah: 1. See this is a tough question (and I wrote it, darn it) because my favorite heros are the ones who slowly but surely fight how they feel, and a one-night stand wouldn’t do much for my impression of their hotness. Among my favorite fighting-their-feelings heroes are Anthony Bridgerton from Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton family, and Jason Fielding from Once and Always and Zach Benedict from Perfect by Judith McNaught. Especially that last one - rwow. I’m going to have to go stare at my “keeper” shelf to make sure there aren’t any heros I’ve forgotten.

And I am so embarrassed to admit this, because you are going to laugh out loud, but Magnus Erikson from Sandra Hill’s A Very Virile Viking. He’s got 11 kids, but half of them he knows couldn’t be his though he takes care of them anyway, and when they all get pushed forward in time, they have a “family meeting” to discuss what everyone thinks and what they want to do. I love Magnus.

Ok, stop laughing.

Candy: 2. Very probably Justin Vallerand of Only With Your Love. He’s an asshole, but he’s friggin’ HOT, so some torrid action while stuck in an elevator would be the perfect amount of time to spend with someone like him.

Heroine--I’ll have to say Anne Verlaine of To Love and To Cherish. I liked her so much as a character that I felt just a bit wistful that she wasn’t real.

Sarah: 2. Trapped in an elevator? Oh my. Cal from Bet Me, no question. And as for heroine, I’d want to be stuck in an elevator with Daphne from Julia Quinn’s The Duke and I. She was one of those heroines that I just loved reading about. She could stand up to all her brothers, so she could stand up to anyone.

Candy: 3. Patricia Gaffney, because we corresponded very briefly a few years ago, and she seems incredibly smart and incredibly nice. Plus I dig her books. And Jennifer Crusie, because I think it’d be fun to snark and dish with her.

Sarah: 3. Julia Quinn. I am kissing up to Quinn in this meme and it’s weird, but I once wrote her about a discrepancy in her first novel - and her reply was so nice that I would love to have her over for an afternoon.

Candy: 4. It would definitely be a contemporary comedy. My job would be cooler; I’d like to be a vet, please. My two cats would get to be animal sidekicks, the way Crusie’s pets do. Cussing and fart jokes and references to Monty Python would be a plus. Oh, and LOTS of pratfalls.

True story: coming back from the grocery store with the Very Tall Husband a few years ago, I saw a big old stick lying across the sidewalk, several feet in front of me. I told myself, “Self, watch out for that stick. I know you, and if you’re not careful, you’re going to trip your stupid-ass self and rip up your knees AGAIN. So step over the stick, not on it or under it.” And what did I do? I tripped myself on the goddamn stick so badly that I literally went flying for a couple of feet, landing face-down and with the bread and vegetables in my bag careening merrily into the street. Knees: ripped. Palms of hands: scraped. Dignity: What? I know not this word.

Luckily the VTH was the one carrying the eggs. To this day I make the VTH carry the bag with the eggs and anything else breakable.

Sadly, this isn’t even the most spectacular pratfall I’ve made to date. There was the time I was running down a sand dune in Florence (Oregon, not Italy), tripped, literally landed on my head, and cartwheeled all the way down the dune in classic head-ass-head-ass form, a distance of about 20 feet. The judges would’ve given me a 9.8 if I had only stuck the landing.

Sarah: 4. I am such a dork, but I bet it would be a paranormal comedy. Not that I’m all psychically gifted, but a story about me would be best augmented and magnified for fiction if I had some kind of cool-moe-dee power, and if not me, then certainly the dog or one of the cats.

And if not a paranormal, then definitely an historical, with me as a snarky bluestocking heiress long on the shelf because all the guys are scared of my wicked sharp brain. And along comes Lord Hubby of Cutenesshire, sdazzling with this smartness and hotness, who tells me to get over myself. And we live happily ever after.

Candy: 5. I have a hard time with questions like these because I usually can’t picture anyone in their roles other than the people I’ve made up in my head. But Eric Bana is a decent physical fit for what I picture Rupert Carsington in Mr. Impossible to look like. Whether he can pull off the character would be another question. Kate Winslet would fit Daphne, the heroine, quite well, and the characters she’s played previously are a pretty good fit for Daphne’s personality.

Sarah: 5. I was wondering the other day why more Crusie’s aren’t turned into good movies. But if I had to cast “Bet Me,” which is right now my fave of the Crusies, I’d put someone debonair and smooth-looking as Cal, like Rupert Everett, or, in a stretch, Johnny Depp (all that intelligence clearly going on in the brain there). And as Min, Kate Winslet was who I saw when I read the book originally, and even though Winslet is always held up as the “real woman sized actress,” I think Min might be bigger and shaplier than she is. Maybe Kate Dillon.