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

Holy fucking shit! I think I’ve broken all records with the lateness of my coronation for Molly, who provided the correct answer for the last Personal Ad contest we ran about a month ago. Molly! Sorry this is late. Kneel, and be ye not alarmed by the pot of warm wax and the strips of cloth we have beside us (we assure you, it only hurts for a moment), for we Smart Bitches dub thee:

Friday Videos, to send you and yours out into the weekend wonderment with one simple, comforting thought: How did we survive without YouTube?

First: from Jennie, Martha Stewart opines about nuts.

There is a longer version here, wherein a guy in the audience at about 0:21 seconds in has to hide his laughter. HA!

Bitchery reader Franziska has a request for help that made me laugh out loud.

So my husband doesn’t quite respect romance as a genre. However, in a state of drunkenness he confessed to me, that he actually read a romance novel several years ago. And he really enjoyed it! He remembers that there were pirates, the heroine was somehow affiliated with them, maybe adopted? The hero was maybe an earl and pursuing the pirates.

My husband is sure that it was a funny book and the father of the girl was stealing several items from the hero, including the hero’s mother “for safe keeping”. It was most likely part of a series, but aren’t they all? The husband thinks the author was Janet Daily, but my research was so far negative. I would like to find the books and give as a Christmas present to my wonderful husband (maybe he’ll get inspired and plays pirates with me)

When I read pirates, heroine, and earl, I thought immediately of The Windflower, but the heroine’s father didn’t steal the hero’s mother so far as I know. But wow. Find a romance for a reader’s Hubby? That’s awesome! 

Bitchery reader Liz has a seasonal request:

As you know it's Christmas time here in the U.S. which means there's an abundance of Christmas themed romance novels. I, for one, am a sucker for the Christmas romance. Unfortunately, I can't remember the last time I read one I enjoyed. There are new releases, new releases of old releases, and anthologies (last year I bought one because it had Jenny Crusie's name attached. Boy that was a mistake. Her contribution was the only worthwhile story and it still wasn't completely satisfying) (SB Sarah notes: Candy agreed with you) and for many of these I'm not familiar enough with the author to be sure if their Christmas romance is worth the price of admission.

Therefore my request is for recommendations. What's the Bitchery's favorite Christmas themed romance novel? Bonus points if it involves contrived situations under mistletoe.

Ok - so bring it on. Are there any worthwhile Christmas romances? Full length or -gasp!- short story anthologies? In that review I linked to, Candy made a point that romance short stories are really freaking hard to pull off, because it's such a tiny amount of pages in which to fit the introduction, attraction, conflict, resolution and happy ending. I have a hardback of Christmas short stories published over 10 years ago, featuring short stories by Jude Deveraux and Judith McNaught. The McNaught story is a sequel to a longer novel that features an ancillary character from the earlier novel - one way to pull off a short story is to build a lot of the backstory in another full length novel, though that does require two purchases on the part of the reader. That's not a big deal for a fan, but for someone just walking into the story, it's annoying.

Deveraux is famous for the "we were meant to be" cliché of "She's the One if she can tell the twins apart" and using that method in any length story means that one of the two protagonists has to accept that whether he likes it or not, the one who thinks he looks nothing like his identical twin brother is the one he's meant to be with - even if she's annoying or just plain crazy. Add Christmas and you've got holiday romance! Good holiday romance? Not necessarily, but holiday romance just the same.

So - what's your recommendation for Christmas-themed romances? Full length or short story - bring it on!

Bitchery reader Bettie sent me a link to yet another vagina-themed accessory: the velvet vulva purse.

Gotta love the strategic positioning of said velvet vulva on the absurdly pale and oddly-posed model’s groin, eh?

This got me thinking: perhaps the Gift of the Year might be the Vulva Turducken. Instead of a boneless turkey stuffed with a boneless duck stuffed with a boneless chicken, everyone on your gift list could receive a a crochet vulva pin stuffed inside a fluffy pussy purse nestled inside a Velvet Vulva purse - preferably the one with realistic fur trim and buckskin fringe. Because every vulva turducken needs fringe. 

Thanks to Lady Rhian, and Evil Auntie Peril, we have some jaw-dropping covers to share.

Sarah: Forget the lady and her awkward thumbs. That man needs that mirror when he next applies self-tanner and forgets his entire backside.

Candy: The dude looks hungry for more than love. No, I mean it. Take a look at that face, and then look at the way his hand is just about ready to claw off the poor woman’s shoulder.

Sarah: That majestically erect and pressed tie pointing downward, and the jauntily-posed champagne bottle cause me to ask one very obvious question:

Why is the executive wearing a prep school jacket?

Candy: Sweet sassy Moses in a sidecar, they’re not even trying for subtext any more, are they? I suppose I should be thankful there’s no rocket taking off in the background.

And what an odd duo of books to group together. I can’t help but think: is the executive’s secret the fact that he’s carrying the cowboy’s baby? Dude, I’d totally read a hermaphrodite secret baby cowboy romance. F’real.

Sarah: That right there? That’s a Rhinestone Cowboy. Just check his jeans ‘cause he’s wearing a glittery thong-tha-thong-thong-thong.

Candy: The guy doesn’t strike me as a cross-dresser so much as he tweaks my serial-killer-with-a-serious-foot-fetish alarm. 

Bitchery reader Erin asks for help with this book, which she’s weary of describing to confused employees at bookstores:

The book takes place in the mid-late 1800s either in the Colorado or Texas territory and the heroine is a female doctor.  Her father has some standing in the town if I recall correctly and somehow she is pushed into a marriage with a wealthy man, who I believe is a British Lord that has headed west to put down roots and develop a farm/ranching/something of that nature.  The two start off at odds due to their preconceived notions of one another and the hero’s difficulty dealing with his wife’s profession.  I also remember a particularly emotional scene where the hero is angry with his wife for being out all night as he was very worried about her and when she finally comes home it’s with the news that the baby she went to deliver didn’t make it.  I believe this was part of the turning point in their relationship and when he begins to support her more staunchly.  Of course, they eventually accept one another and truly fall in love.

Based on when I read this book and its setting, I’m betting that it was a mid-90s book probably through Avon or Zebra/Kensington.  I seem to vaguely remember a clinch cover (shocker, I know), maybe with a pink and yellow cover and blonde heroine?  Please help me as going into every used paperback bookstore I can find and describing this is beginning to get embarrassing.

Sounds rather powerful, if sad. Anyone recognize it? 

Norman Mailer has won the Bad Sex Award! What a marvelous honor for some truly amazing writing:

So Klara turned head to foot, and put her most unmentionable part down on his hard-breathing nose and mouth, and took his old battering ram into her lips. Uncle was now as soft as a coil of excrement. She sucked on him nonetheless with an avidity that could come only from the Evil One - that she knew. From there, the impulse had come. So now they both had their heads at the wrong end, and the Evil One was there. He had never been so close before.

The Hound began to come to life. Right in her mouth. It surprised her. Alois had been so limp. But now he was a man again! His mouth lathered with her sap, he turned around and embraced her face with all the passion of his own lips and face, ready at last to grind into her with the Hound, drive it into her piety.

Wow. “Her piety.” That’s a new one. I hope I don’t see that again. 

Oh, I am on pins and needles. Or pricks and nipples. Why? Because, thanks to Tania and Elizabeth, I know the Literary Review’s Bad Sex in Fiction award will be presented today. Why is this not televised?! In HD?!

This year’s entries are just marvelous in a way that makes you want to cross your legs and contemplate things like chastity belts. According to TheBookseller.com, Passages from Winterson’s The Stone Gods, Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach and Ali Smith’s Girl Meets Boy, among others, were all deemed to qualify. The prize aims to ‘draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it.’”

The Guardian has some great excerpts, including my fave, from Will by Christopher Rush, which starts out: O glorious pubes! The ultimate triangle, whose angles delve to hell but point to paradise.

My brain keeps trying to set that line to the tune of “O, Canada!” Sorry, Canada.

Well, nothing. If try I write in Spanish the words as come from my mouth and change them directly into English without moving them, the style will be very different. If I write directly in English, the rhythm, the cadence of the words is unique entirely from my brain attempts to translate.

If I write directly into English, which is my native language, the sentences are different. If I write in Spanish without reordering the words for an English reader as I did above, there are marked differences in the prose.

Such is the difference in languages. And my example isn’t really that good. That difference in word order, cadence, and rhythm is difficult to convey without involving dialectical words that make me twitch. Joanna Bourne, on the other hand, has got language down cold.

The heroine of The Spymaster’s Lady, Annique Villiers, is French. The book is written in English even when the characters are speaking French. Or German. Some of the characters speak English of varying dialects and accents. The book itself is in English - and yet you can tell the difference when the characters switch from language to language, sometimes before Bourne notes that change in the narration.

Knock that oiled chest-baring ab-master off the cover, and substitute something more professional and perhaps boring, and I promise you, linguistics students could study this narrative as a representative work on how to accurately portray the differences in languages and dialects without actually USING those dialects. English poses as French, as German (which is its cousin anyway), and as variations of itself, and the depth of talent in just that part of this novel alone is astonishing.

Seriously, I haven’t even gotten to the plot part yet and I’m ready to build a shrine to Bourne just for her prose. The best example that I enjoyed the most I can’t share because it gives away too much of a plot twist, but the voice of Annique is one of the most unique and elegantly crafted that I’ve come across in romance.

I was so curious about report readers in romance, I emailed an editor who was kind enough to answer my questions but asked that I leave names out of it. So! Mysterious Anonymous Editor tells me everything I want to know about report readers, and I figured I'd share it with y'all.

Can you tell me more about report readers? What do they do, and what are you looking for in a romance report reader? And how did Cassie Edwards get past the report reader?

M.A.E.: Basically, readers review manuscripts for an editor. Different publishers probably do things very differently, I am sure, but in my experience, they are primarily used to review full manuscripts that an editor would like feedback on. I personally would never just take a reader report as a reason to sign or reject a book -- I would review at least part of it myself first. I primarily find it helpful as it weeds out the heinous and mediocre, and allows me to devote the little time I have to review the better submissions.

As for what the reports actually are -- that varies greatly from editor to editor. Some of the reports can be quite formal and analytical, others can be more casual. I personally like a casual, chatty style -- I guess because what I am editing is popular fiction, I want a typical reader reaction to it. I don't mind snark in my reports, and if something is so bad it is an offense to mankind, I want to be informed of it. In my experience, reports can be as long as 3 to 5 pages, or as short as a paragraph. Mostly, what I want to see in a report is what the reader thinks of the story, WHY they think that, and specific examples of any problems they see in the manuscript. If they like the manuscript, it is also helpful to know what it is that they like about it as well.

As to how Cassie Edwards sold to begin with...that is a mystery for the ages. Once an author is signed, readers are no longer used. Maybe her editor had a Native American fetish, maybe she likes really bad prose. Maybe she had just said to herself "Self, you know what I really need to publish? Really tacky Indian romances. Why, what is this submission on my desk? Passion's Savage Wind? This is perfect!"

Are there people for whom reader reporting is their full time job?

M.A.E: I have no clue what other publishers pay, but I do know it is a lot of work for little money. As far as I know most people do reader reports on a part time basis -- it would be awful hard to make a living at it, that's for sure!

I'm completely fascinated like the noob I am with the report readers who look over manuscripts and write up brief reports on whether they should see the shelves. It's like a secret society that mans the first gate of publication before the Greek tycoon's virgin mistress can moon the gatekeeper long enough to distract him and run through where the rest of the romances waiting to be published pound on the door kept by the editorial assistant, and shove each other aside so that Lord Dinnae Ken's kilt flies up and shows off his boy howdy to Viscount Hawkenscresterfield, who frowns thoughtfully and adds a line to his secret blog because he traveled through time to 2007 where Jessica Inez Sarah Michelle Jenkins (aka JISMJ.blogspot.com) showed him the internet and he really didn't need a Viscountess after that.

Bitchery reader Jana has few details but needs some help:

I was so excited when I discovered the "Help a Bitch Out" column and I'm hoping you or the readers can clear up a mystery for me! I sadly have little details about the book in question but have noticed that this hasn't stopped you guys before!

Here's what I know....(or what I think I know!). I think this book has to be the first in a series. I'm thinking it's a group of sisters and I remember a tussle on the beach that was the dramatic finale of the book...This is what leads me to think it's a series....I believe one of the "sisters" leaves with a pirate? I'm thinking this could be a Victoria Alexander or Christina Dodd? I'm dying to re-read this book and also to continue on if it IS a series! Help!!!

Tussle on a beach - I assume it's not From Justin To Kelly. At least, I hope not.

If you’re busy playing Free Rice, you might need to make sure you know that these 9 words do not mean what you think they mean. Bonus feature: how much of a dick are you if you use them wrong? They’ll tell you.

(Graceful Curtsey to Lucinda “Lady Linkmaster” Betts)

And, thanks to Kai, I have an article that’s more favorable than most about a romance writer, Jane Porter, and her life in Hawaii. It’s partly an ode to the peaceful laid back life of Hawaii, and certainly a bit more complimentary than many other newspaper articles toward the writing of romance. Hard hitting journalism, though, it is definitely not.

Does make me want to go live in Hawaii for awhile, I must say.

And speaking of tropical wonderment, thanks to the many Bitchery readers who forwarded me the news that the Knight Rider sequel movie may not suffer for lack of Hofftastic Hoffness. Sir David of Hasselhoff is in talks to join the cast. Oh, thank heaven. I couldn’t bear a Knight Rider movie without appearances from the chest pelt of Hoff.

But is that all the Hoff News? NO! Thanks to Bitchery reader Lang, I have news from Variety that The Hoff is going to star in a new show that follows “the fictional dark and twisted trials and tribulations of an international icon as he navigates Hollywood and the world of dating after divorce.” No, really, I’m not making that up.

As Lang rightly noted: “he’s at the level of parodying himself.” That is a measure of star quotient right there: are you big enough to be your own parody? If you think about it too hard, your brain starts to weep.

We shall have to celebrate the premier with a plush sculpture of The Hoff? C’mon. You know you want one. Thank to Bitchery reader Cynthia, there will be a LOT of wearable Hoff in the future of everyone I know this holiday season.

Bitchery reader MplsGirl asks for help with a romantic story she read in fifth grade. Seriously. I barely remember fifth grade itself, much less what I read. Now I'm sitting here pondering my fifth grade teacher's name. Not a clue.

But MplsGirl, she remembers these details of the story that set her on the path of historical romance fandom:

As a 5th grader I came across a romantic story in the library that I've always wanted to find again. It's old--written pre-1970s I would guess; the hardcover book looked ragged and worn when I read it in 1984. It was completely tame as far as romance novels go, but it was one of two books that led me on the path to becoming a romance reader for life. I have zero ideas about the title and author.

Set in either England or Scandinavia, might be Vikings, definitely is sword-wielding knights or warriors, set in a castle.

About a nobleman's daughter--I think she has long blond hair and is 12 or 13, probably--who is betrothed to a knight and she must prepare for the bethrothal ceremony where she has to walk down the aisle with a chalice filled with wine and they both sip from it.

She has sisters, her mom and sisters help train her for the ceremony. Told from the girl's POV, though I don't think it's first person.

The story is mostly about her learning of the betrothal and her fear, preparation for the betrothal ceremony, how scared she is that she'll screw it up, hopeful that her future husband is nice/attractive, etc. (Like I said, it's tame.) She's freaked out about spilling the wine as she walks down the aisle.

Can't remember if it ends at the ceremony or if they get to know one another. Not even sure if they kiss one another in the book. Have been curious about finding this book for a long time now.

The memory of this book is part of what got me hooked on historicals as a teenager--I scoured the library a few years after I first came across it, reading anything medieval, viking, knight-related in the hope of coming across it.

Any help the SB community can provide would be much appreciated.

The Guardian’s article written by a reader report writer - the person who reads books for evaluation by a publishing house - gave me a LOT to chew on.

1. I hadn’t realized but am not surprised that American places market well overseas but not in the reverse - people in Europe, as the article says, will read about divorce in northern Jersey, but people in America will not read about divorce in the Jersey Islands.

Well, except me, that is. I’d love to read about anything set in the Jersey Islands. Or more specifically, romance in any interesting locale, especially those that speak English but aren’t England or the US. Canada! Why aren’t there more romances set in Canada?

2. English is a dominant language that beats down other languages. It’s true. JaneDrew’s signature file made me giggle so hard I have to share it: English: A language that lurks in dark alleys, beats up other languages, and rifles through their pockets for spare vocabulary. HA! And not only is English a linguistic bully but it’s a cultural bully on the international book marketplace, too. Even I fall prey to it - I just said I wanted to read romances set in other locales besides London and the US where the language is English.

This isn’t because I have some bias against other languages; it’s merely that writing in English when the setting and everything around it are in another language becomes hard to present with any degree of accuracy without becoming annoying.

3. This is the part that really tickled my brain: report readers have an opportunity to potentially keep books off the shelves. Whoa. I had no idea. So who is Cassie Edwards’ report reader, or is she such a guaranteed sell that she doesn’t have one? Are there report readers for romance? How does that work? Are you one?