Categories: News • The Link-O-Lator
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by Candy • Thursday, November 30, 2006 at 09:54 AM
No, I’m not talking about my alcoholic ex-boyfriend--I’m talking about the 2006 Bad Sex in Fiction Award, which was bestowed on debut novelist Iain Hollingshead. He seemed pretty delighted to be the recipient of the (dis)honor:
Hollingshead, 25, who received his award from rocker Courtney Love at a London ceremony, said he was delighted to become the prize’s youngest winner.
“I hope to win it every year,” said Hollingshead, who receives a statuette and a bottle of champagne.
Tim Willcocks, this year’s runner-up, had this to say about the prize:
Willcocks praised the Bad Sex prize as “a much better guide to a good read than those purveyors of powerful sleeping drugs, the Booker, the Pulitzer, the Goncourt et. al.”
Suh-nap!
Also: Willcocks. Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh. Cocks. (Somebody just pointed out that his name is actually Willocks, but the MSNBC article has his name as Willcocks. Somebody’s Freudian slip is showing.)
This article in the Daily Mail has some excerpts, as does this snippet in The Independent, but none of them are extensive, alas. Anyone with copies of these books want to transcribe some of the more (ahem) eloquent passages for our collective enjoyment?
(Thanks to Katie the Haiku Writing Wünderkind for the first link to the awards.)
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Categories: News • The Link-O-Lator
Categories: News • The Link-O-Lator
by SB Sarah • Wednesday, November 29, 2006 at 06:53 PM
Yet again, the question of credibility rears it’s cranky head - credibility for online book reviews, the idea that the buying & reading public would wish to have their opinion known. Egad!
Seems John Sutherland is shocked and appalled by the state of book reviewing on the web and has pitched a little fit. He sees independent bloggery and the reviewers therein as “degradation of literary taste.”
Then British novelist Susan Hill was banned from the Guardian’s book review section for daring to defending online reviewers. She received a letter from a literary editor stating that due to her position, her books will never be reviewed in that paper. Meow!
But soft! Rachel Cooke jumped into the whole kerfuffle and blasted Hill for her defense, and threw her own opinion into the fray.
So when lurker Becca forwarded me a synopsis of the whole mess, I sat up and emailed Candy, because damn, bitch smacking the Smart Bitches who review online on a blog?!? Oh, no, you didn’t.
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Categories: Random Musings • The Link-O-Lator
Categories: Random Musings • The Link-O-Lator
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by Candy • Wednesday, November 29, 2006 at 05:35 PM
Apologies to Susan for taking so damn long to get her her prize from the the truly epic personal ad contest we ran last week. (It took over 30 comments before somebody guessed the complete answer. Dude, that is HARD CORE.) Anyway, kneel, Susan, and linger there for as long as you like, until the suspense is excruciating, for we Smart Bitches hereby dub thee:
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Categories: Guess That Lonely Heart!
Categories: Guess That Lonely Heart!
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by SB Sarah • Tuesday, November 28, 2006 at 12:04 PM
Christine sent us this fine selection. And by fine I mean, “As gentle on the eyes as fine grained sand applied directly under each eyelid.”
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Categories: Covers Gone Wild! (Non-Snoop Dogg Edition)
Categories: Covers Gone Wild! (Non-Snoop Dogg Edition)
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by SB Sarah • Tuesday, November 28, 2006 at 09:07 AM
Back in the day, when I was an undergrad and grad student, I did a good number of presentations of scholarly papers on pretty much whatever topics I could get accepted by the conference’s planning committee. I’ve presented papers on using email and instant messenger to teach college composition to learning disabled students, and on themes of rebirth and repentance in Toni Morrison’s Beloved.
I’ve also had a ball of a time presenting at Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association regional and national conferences because then you’d get to sit in on sessions addressing anything from Buffy (a whoooole lotta Buffy, come to think of it, and all things Joss Whedon) to religious themes in the Back to the Future trilogy. The PCA/ACA conferences were fun because the professors and students presenting were all focusing on popular culture topics that they were interested in and passionate about, and most of the people attending were open to the idea that sometimes, current American popular culture not only enjoys but demands scholarly examination. Plus it’s fun to flex the lit crit muscles on topics like Survivor and Charles in Charge.
So I’m pretty gleeful that I’ve been forwarded some calls for papers for a book of critical essays examining Jennifer Cruisie’s novels. And more recently, snarkhunter sent me an invitation to submit for the Southwest/Texas Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Annual Regional Conference panel on “Romance Fiction: Rumpled Sheets - Romance Writer’s & Writing.” The CFP states,
We are looking for individual paper proposal submissions and/or panel proposals for this unique genre of fiction. Topics might include, but are not limited to, issues such as archetypes, the body, conformity, conventions, culture, ethnic roles, gender, genre, the hero and heroine, history, ideal female/male representations, love, myth, power, sex and sex roles, social aspects, social expectations, subversion, technology, transcendence, values, virtues.
Well now, that covers quite a bit - but sad I am to notice no specific invitations to discuss the scholarly ramifications of postmodern mantitty! There are plenty of romance novels that invite critical analysis, though.
It’s been awhile since I’ve attended any college conferences, but I know a good number of the readers here are either in school, teaching or professor-ing, or building a base of published scholarly articles that address romantic fiction. Have there been more papers and panels that talk about romance, or is romance still mainly appearing only in the pop-culture conferences and the RWA regional and national conferences? And if you were writing a critical essay on a romance novel, what would you write about?
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Categories: Random Musings • The Link-O-Lator
Categories: Random Musings • The Link-O-Lator
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by Candy • Thursday, November 23, 2006 at 11:29 AM
My friend Katie, who’s this freakish Platonic Ideal of the geek babe (she likes science fiction! and comics! and role-playing! and video games! and she’s a CHEMIST!), recently decided she’d summarize her opinions of all the Nebula Award winners she’d finished reading in haiku format.
C’mon, the sheer geek-fu of that has to strike you speechless. I know it did me.
The results were even more awesome than I expected (the haiku for Neuromancer is especially doubleplus awesome), and with her permission, I’m sharing them with you. Yeah, I know, they’re not reviews of romance novels, but SF/F is still considered plenty trashy by many circles, and lord knows Katie’s one of the smartest bitches I know. Ennn-joy.
Nebula haiku
Plentiful as falling rain
But less poetical.
by Candy • Wednesday, November 22, 2006 at 01:14 PM
Last week, Maili made a most interesting post about assumptions other people make about readers who are attracted to romance novels and romantic stories, and why cynics, in particular, are ill-suited to reading romance novels.
by Candy • Wednesday, November 22, 2006 at 11:07 AM
Sarah: Candy, are these covers that should be outlawed? Because I can think of a few reasons why this cover should be sent away to the pen:
1. Bad Mullet - that’s 4-6 years right there.
2. SHE has a mullet, too! Another 6 year sentence.
3. Her SKIRT is a mullet as well - short in the front, long and doofy in the back. That right there, that’s a mullet trifecta and a crime against humanity. Lock ‘em up and toss the key. Life sentence, no possiblity of parole.
Candy: If we started outlawing mullets on romance novel covers, we’d have to co-opt Antartica for a new prison colony, and the glare of the sun reflecting off all that oiled man-titty would accelerate the melting of the ice caps even further, and then the emperor penguins would be well and truly fucked, instead of mostly-kinda-fucked like they are now, and is that what you want, Sarah, is it? WHAT DO YOU HAVE AGAINST THE ADORABLE EMPEROR PENGUIN, I ASK YOU?
Candy: This is getting to be a refrain, but I’m going to repeat it until this simple truth is internalized: there’d be a lot less tenderness if only you’d use lube during buttsecks.
Sarah: Look, the poor dear is gesturing at two other places that are far less tender for his outlaw passion, but yet he heads for the highway. The tender outlawed-in-29-states highway. Poor thing.
Sarah: The Outlaw’s Woman looks like she’s been ridden hard and put away wet, if you get my meaning. Emaciated bubble-breasted women with bored looks on their faces? She’s had more than one outlaw in her womanhood, if you know what I mean and I think you do.
Candy: I have the feeling this woman has more than a passing acquaintance with santorum. That might be the source of her distracted expression, actually. “Did I wash the sheets last night? Or didn’t I? Dammit, next time I need to remember to use a towel.”
Candy: How apropos that we were just talking about Squicky Romance. “In this touching episode, young Maribelle finds out just how deep her father’s love runs for her.”
Heh. It occurred to me that it’d be amusing if somebody created a show called Touched by a Cop. Really wrong, but amusing. And to make it even more wrong, the first guest star could be Mostafa Tabatabainejad.
Sarah: Why in the name of outlawed buttsecks is a jheri-curled Prince Charles on the cover of a romance novel?!?
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Categories: Covers Gone Wild! (Non-Snoop Dogg Edition)
Categories: Covers Gone Wild! (Non-Snoop Dogg Edition)
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by Candy • Tuesday, November 21, 2006 at 11:35 AM
Right, so I’m trolling for covers for snarking on Amazon.com, and I stumbled across this review of Patricia Gaffney’s Outlaw in Paradise (which is admittedly one of her less stellar efforts, as her conscious attempts to write funny tend to be):
“It’s ok but not as captivating as a Madeline Baker or Katherine Kincaid book.”
DUDE! Dissed! “Not as captivating as Madeline Baker.” Oucccchhhh.
At least the reviewer didn’t say “Not nearly as good as Connie Mason.”
For bonus wacky funtimes, if you check out the very first review of the book, you’ll see it was written by no other person than...Jennifer Crusie.
by Candy • Monday, November 20, 2006 at 01:04 PM
What is it about taboo relationship structures that trip our Sex-O-Meter so hard?
I was thinking about romantic relationships with set-ups that make us uncomfortable, but that speak strongly to many of us regardless. Boss-secretary. Aristocrat-servant. Guard-prisoner. Abductor-abductee. Guardian-ward. Hell, even stepfather-stepdaughter--I’d be lying if the mind-boggling and outright wrongness of the relationship in Karen Robard’s Morning Song wasn’t one of the primary titillations that kept me turning the pages.
For me, part of the appeal lies in the inversion of power and relationships, not to mention the frisson of disquieting sexiness inspired by the violation of social taboos. What I can’t figure out is: why do certain power relationships pique my interest, while others just gross me the fuck out? I’m not particularly interested in romances in which the brutal, forceful Greek tycoon forces his secretary to marry him, and we find out later it’s all an elaborate revenge ploy because the secretary’s father was secretly behind the downfall of the tycoon’s father’s second cousin’s hot-dog-on-a-stick franchise, but oh dear lord I have a weak spot for guardian-ward romances, which, as far as it goes, are even more disturbing.
And then, as I’ve explained before, I really enjoy the masochistic pain-pleasure of a high-stakes love story. Love and romance are high stakes, to be sure, but when you’re putting your professional and personal reputation on the line, when the love you hold for the other is forbidden and you have to resist as hard as you can because this love won’t just change your lives, it has the potential to tear apart the fabric of your existence (that’s right, motherfuckers, how do you like that melodramatic bit of phrasing?)--well, I’d just like to say “Hell YES,” and “More, please.”
And then that made me think about the proliferation of sub-genres and specialized niche romances, and I came up with the idea of a new romance novel line that categorizes its stories in a different way: Slightly Squicky Romances. Looking for a story about stony-hearted guardian and the feisty ward who finally melts his defences away? What about a stepbrother falling in love with his stepsister? Hey, how ‘bout that footman falling in love with his mistress--or his master, for that matter? Or do you desire to read about the whirlwind romance between the math professor and the brilliant college student for whom he was the senior thesis advisor? Then look no further than Slightly Squicky Romances, where the relationships are always kinda wrong, but also oh so right.
by Candy • Friday, November 17, 2006 at 12:40 PM
Yes yes, once again, ‘tis time for another Personal Ad contest, whereby the first commenter to guess the correct answers to the book title, author’s name and heroine’s name (REMEMBER THE HEROINE’S NAME FOR ALL THAT IS HOLY OR THE PRIZE WILL BE SNATCHED FROM THEE) will get a too-bitchin’-for-words Smart Bitch title.
SWF, daughter to a notorious female rake and aristocrat fallen on hard times, seeks steady, stodgy male to love and to comfort, in sickness and in health. Am not at all interested in tall, dashing, repressed musician types with a taste for danger and the challenge of seducing the unseduceable, and especially not if you’re impecunious and estranged from your father. No no no. Your blandishments will not work on me, not even if you corner me in the rose garden...or the maze...or my bedroom.
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Categories: Guess That Lonely Heart!
Categories: Guess That Lonely Heart!
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by Candy • Friday, November 17, 2006 at 12:10 PM
Jennifer Crusie weighs in on Miss Snark’s entry about Anne Stuart. Woo damn! There is some righteous smackdownage in that there entry. Sarah and I had the following e-mail exchange after reading it this morning:
Candy: I love Jennifer Crusie with all of my body, including my pee-pee.
Sarah: That’s a lot of love. Do you love her with your clue cake?
Candy: Jenny Crusie doesn’t need clue cakes. She spits on your clue cakes. She stomps on them with her fabulous, fabulous shoes.
Sarah: I bet clue cake tastes like bad grocery store two-day-old ugly-frosted cake and isn’t very nice to look at either. So she should stomp on it.
Candy: Dude, nobody likes clue cake, not even when it’s real clue cake, as opposed to ersatz clue cake baked by an anonymous chef.
by SB Sarah • Friday, November 17, 2006 at 10:38 AM
When Candy and I get going about bad, bad romance cliches, the boardroom romance is way up there in the list of Top 5 Plotlines We Love to Hate, But Also Make Us Cringe.
There’s a whole slew of work-romance plots out there, from Expecting the Boss’s Baby to Expecting the Boss’s Baby: The Babies of Doctors Circle, to Having Her Boss’s Baby: Positively Pregnant—and even the succinctly titled retro treasure, Boss’s Baby. Even without the babies we have Boardroom Mistresses and hey, even Baby in the Boardroom. There was even a line of Harlequin romances subtitled The Corporate Bridegroom.
All of these workplace humpity-hump-humpings make me cock an eyebrow. Hasn’t anyone heard the wisdom of, “Don’t get your sausage where you get your bacon?” I mean, many workplaces (and I’m not speaking from personal experience since I while away my hours eating bonbons while wearing those feather-boa shoes with impossibly high heels and also I never blog about work) have specific rules about workplace relationships. And come on now: three out of five pregnant boardroom mistresses agree, boinking in the conference room is a bad, bad idea.
But then I was watching tv last night, and it struck me how many shows are about (a) workplaces, particularly if those workplaces have to deal with death, crime, guts, gore, or all four, and (b) how many have romances up, down, right, left, and in between (especially in between) the characters. I caught a commercial for an upcoming episode of The Office wherein two characters are going to - hold on to your hats - start a relationship.
I got to pondering, because I was half-asleep on the bus this morning, about American workaholic culture, and how those of us who work in offices spend 8 to 10 and possibly more hours a day with the same group of people. Some folks spend more time with those they work with than the person they’re married to, and not because they want to maintain that arrangement, either. So is the workplace romance still a forbidden temptation, or is it more accepted and I’m just an old married throwback who met her husband in high school and… well, hooked up with him at a summer camp where we were both working so technically, I guess I did have a workplace romance.
Are there any romance novels where the protagonists work together and the romance actually… works? I know Candy has a special place of love for The Real Deal, which is a workplace setting. Anyone got any hot workplace action to recommend, literary or otherwise?
by SB Sarah • Tuesday, November 14, 2006 at 04:56 PM
Lilith Saintcrow was kind enough (?!) to scan this image and email it to us. I borrowed her subject line for this entry. I’m not sure if I need to say “Thank you” for the scan, or “Oh, God, pass me the eyewash station.”
Sarah: As Lilith pointed out to me, the tattoo and the clutched sword are painfully difficult to miss, as is the collarbone and Adam’s apple of ye olde heroine on the left there.
Add to that the stupid eyepatch and the oddly long sideburns on both of them, and never in my life have I wished so hard for a horse to trample two people.
Bridgett sent us this scan, thank you kindly.
Candy: Remember that part in Coming to America, when Prince Akeem (Eddie Murphy) and Semmi (Arsenio Hall) are in the nightclub, auditioning babes for the prince, and one of the babes is Arsenio in drag, who then says something like “I’d love to break you apart” in this incredibly husky voice?
Yeah, I’m flashing to that moment when I look at this babe. She’s awfully...assertive-looking, isn’t she?
Sarah: I am transfixed by that man’s satin pants, and am wondering if he’s off to fight for my rights. I’m going to have to assume it’s a uniform of some sort. It can’t be a voluntary fashion choice on his part: satin is unforgiving on all people, but very much so on those with saggy ball sack syndrome.
Candy: Regency Buck: Darling, I...I hate to tell you this, but what I feel is...is this love that Dare Not Speak Its Name.
Regency Miss: Oh, my darling, I thought you’d never tell me. *whips off mask* I love my horses that way, too!
And finally, Jay just about trampled my last remaining strength with this submission: the “Coming Soon” placeholder for Changeling Press.
Sarah: I don’t know if it’ll be soon, since from the looks of it he hasn’t figured out how to bend his fingers yet.
Candy: Coming soon? Since when did plastic gain the ability to orgasm?
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Categories: Covers Gone Wild! (Non-Snoop Dogg Edition)
Categories: Covers Gone Wild! (Non-Snoop Dogg Edition)
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by SB Sarah • Friday, November 10, 2006 at 10:49 AM
I have a question: I’m reading an ARC set in, I believe, the Regency or close to it, and I’m confused about linguistics.
When did the American English dialect and pronunciation remove itself from any similarity to British English such that Englishmen might complain about an American woman’s “grating accent?”
Wikipedia puts the split at about 1725 so it would make sense that a book set in the Regency or shortly before or thereafter could conceivably feature remarks to linguistic difference. Continued searches of the Wiki reveal that there’s plenty to say about the differences between Brit English and US English - and Australian, Canadian, New Zealand, Scottish, Asian, Caribbean, South African, Liberian, and Jamaican English, but not a great deal of detail that I found about WHY and WHEN these differences occured.
It’s been many years since I studied the history of the English language, so I’m rusty on my history - and I’m not even sure we covered the why of the split, so maybe it’s another linguistic unknown, like the direct cause of the Great Vowel Shift.
So I could be wrong in thinking the dialectical difference might not be so great, and that a character could realistically complain about the way an American sounds when in a ballroom in London. And I’m not one of the historical sticklers who is going to pitch a fit about such things; I’m just curious.
But on a related note, it does make me wonder - have there been any historical misfits in your fiction? Or, things that you thought were wrong that turned out to be correct?