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

Over at SexyWhispers, the bold-face-heavy blog of WhispersMedia, they are giving away an OhMiBod vibrator to a random commenter between now and December 21 who tells them why they want the dial-an-o-gasm device. 

So, if you were to give or get a vibrator as a gift this holiday season, which one would it be? An iBod, as I like to call them, or a different toy? 

Our auction ended, and the lucky winner is SkipperRedBall, who won with a bid of $305.00 US.  Congratulations Skipper, and please contact me asap so we can get your ad running.

And thank you as well, because the proceeds from our ad auction will be donated to the American Red Cross. 

Bitchery reader Gabby has a big challenge for y’all: identify this book based on the excerpt chapter she read in the back of a book. It is ON!

I’ve been checking your site everyday for quite a while now and I know how helpful you guys are at finding books. I have one that I’ve been trying to find for ever with no luck.

It was only an excerpt in the back of a book so I only got to read the first chapter. I think it was set in colonial America, where there were a lot of bandits and stuff. The heroine was a bit homely and she worked in a jewelery store. She was extremely competent and the owner of the store trusted her. There was another girl who worked in the store. She was drop dead gorgeous but not the sharpest tool in the shed. I think she might have been a bitch as well.

Anyway, the hero comes along and he is all handsome and sexy. He charms the pretty girl but I think he also flirts with the heroine as well. He looks at all the jewelery and ends up stealing a necklace. The heroine sees it and does something that sounds an alarm. Then all hell breaks loose with the officials coming in and arresting the man.

The heroine in infatuated with the hero whilst resenting him at the same time. The only other thing that I remember is the hero actually getting away with the necklace despite getting arrested. Or at least I think he did. He winked at her and she almost swoons or something.

I don’t think there’s a lot of information there but if you could help me out I would be so grateful!!

I almost thought it sounded like Jude Deveraux’s “Wishes,” except I don’t think Nelly works in a jewelry store. And the competitive beauty is her sister. So that’s not it. 

As Jane mentioned on Dear Author, DA, SB moi, and the Dr. toting masterminds at Teach me Tonight will be reviewing Virgin Slave, Barbarian King by Louise Allen. In the wake of the romance = the-patriarchy-is-keeping-me-down (and also hid my bag of chips) in the Guardian last week, it seemed like the only fun and spanky thing to do. Dr. Frantz gets mad props for the idea.

Well, I’ll be reviewing, and Jane will be reviewing. The Drs. of Luuuuurve™ will be nitpicking the shit out of the book, and spoiling it every which way until it begs for more, please, sir and ma’ams, but either way - it’s going to be loads of fun.

I’ve already informed the lot of them that from now on, I wish to be known as the Barbarian Virgin. 

Thanks to Anonymous M (similar to Tenacious D only more anonymous and further down in the alphabet) for this link - I have not laughed so hard at a movie preview in a long, long time.

Happy two days after Hanukkah.

Note: I fully expect this trailer to disappear for violations of whatever-the-fuck, so lemme know if it’s all gone too soon. 

I really am very very sorry. There is no way the following picture will avoid hurting your feelings, and addicting your brain to staring endlessly at the wonderment. Thanks to Colleen Gleason for the image, which comes from NessyRenay’s photobucket. (Heh. That sounds kinky.)

Ahoy there!

We Smart Bitches are hosting a quick charity auction on eBay to benefit the American Red Cross’ efforts to help folks in the US midwest. We are offering the new adspace for one single advertiser for the rest of December 2007. You can read the full text at the auction page, but it bears repeating here, since who is going to troll eBay looking for Bitches (other than me)?

If you win, you get the new adspace all to yourself for the duration of 2007, and design fees, should you need help, will be waived. All proceeds from this auction will be donated by Smart Bitches, Trashy Books LLC to the American Red Cross and designated for the shelters and relief effort in the US Midwest, where ice storms made a hell of a mess.

If you have any questions, or want to tell me I’m a total freakshow because I won’t let you advertise your Elmo site, Otherwise, bid early, bid often.

Bitchery reader Jen writes:

After seeing all the success you people have at ID’ing books, I have one for you.

This was when I was still sneaking books from my mother’s reading, but before I got smart enough to start writing my favorites down (because she doesn’t like to re-read books, and I do).

The book is a Regency-era Romance and it happens in a city.  The hero is investigating… something.

The heroine I remember more clearly.  She gets “hunches” that oftentimes come true.  In one part of the book one of the villans gives her something to drink that makes her sick and maybe helps her hunches get better.  I seem to remember cards in the scene.  The heroine also happens to invest a sum of money in a ship that she thinks will give her good returns when it comes back, and when it doesn’t come back in time means that she is put in an awkward situation that might be the reason that she is thrown together with the hero.  At the end of the book the ship comes back and she gains financial freedom, and thus doesn’t have to work for the hero anymore, and the subsequent parting has him (I think) realizing how much of an ass he’s been.

Other details… I think there’s sex in a carriage.  Or at least he pulls out at the last moment and cums on her thighs and then they have to get out of the carriage and she’s walking around with a sticky mess.  I’m fairly certain that she might have been a virgin.

The hero may have had a limp.  The book may also have been part of a series.  The bad guy’s may want the heroine to be part of their plan.  Someone takes morphine in the book, and it’s not one of the main characters.

There’s also a part where the hero tells her to stay behind, or tells her she shouldn’t go “investigating” into the villains house when they are there for some reason and she doesn’t listen.  A scene afterward has them running over a lawn.  Maybe.

I hope these details work.  I think I’ve built the book to be better than it actually was, but I would still like to read it.

I have to confess: after the hunches and the drugging and the villainy, getting to the part where he spooged man pudding on her thighs in a carriage and then she walked around IN the wet spot had me laughing harder than I care to admit. Because… whoa. That is some fucked up mess right there. So, who can guess this one?

Author Louise Allen, whose books were mentioned in the Guardian article about the relative oppressive qualities of Mills & Boon, has written a a rebuttal of her own in the Guardian today,.

Ms. Allen, should we ever meet, I shall treat you to a frosty beverage, because your comments as follows made me grin like I just got free chocolate:

Bindel says: “I do not believe in blaming women for our own oppression. Women are the only oppressed group required not only to submit to our oppressors, but to love and sexually desire them at the same time.” So, as a feminist, she believes that while reading or writing these “novels that perpetuate gender stereotypes” we cannot even take responsibility for our own actions.

Sorry, Ms Bindel, but among the freedoms I insist upon as a woman is the right to my own fantasies. I do not read fiction I find distasteful, and I don’t write it either. How about updating your research for 2008 by reading another 20 Mills & Boon novels? Modern ones.

Thanks to Michelle Styles for the link!

Ok, ok, I lied. All that advertising we sell? Goes to pay the bill for the private investigator (a hardened crusty man - read into that whatever you like - with a heart of gold) who has been tailing Candy through her first semester of law school. And look what we found upon review of his dossier:

Sarah: Oh dear! Someone dressed Candy in charmeuse, (a most sweaty fabric, poor dear) permed her hair within an inch of her life, AND sent a neckless woolly mammoth lumberjack after her. Unless that’s her con law professor and the beard is symbolic of the precarious state of gay rights in the US as threatened by constitutional amendments against gay marriage. In which case… nah, still awful.

Jane: The final score is that she can’t get away from him fast enough, but his arms and his wild woolly facial hair are holding Candy so tight that you cannot tell where her permed ringlets ends and his bushy beard begins.

Sarah: More charmeuse? Dude. WTF is going on in that law school? Now Candy is posing as a Lana Turner wannabe with a man-jaw, trying to probe the briefs of a man whose head is much, much too small for his body. Perhaps she’s writing his will, which allows me to snicker like a 5th grader while I type the word “testator.”

Jane: I’m fairly certain that charmeuse during test taking is only allowed for those individuals whose names end with a three or a four and whose first names are some derivation of a rabbit, i.e., Muffy Turner III so if this is indeed Candy, she must have changed her name.  It’s the rules.  In this test however, it is important to note that the size of the guy’s nipple and areole is about the size of her palm so either she has the tiny hands of those Chinese children who stitched together her charmeuese nightgown or he’s had some botched plastic surgery.  Also, what is with the tea towels over her hip?  Is it to hide some ugly stain caused by the mishandling of roses during foreplay?

Sarah: Awww, yeah, NOW we’re talkin! It’s finals week, and Candy has flung off her clothing in favor of… long strips of corrugated cardboard. And invited a substantially malnourished judge to bring his gavel into her steamy chambers.

Jane: You can tell he’s a judge because they are so uptight that they even wear jeans into the sauna.  I smell a lawsuit for not clearly warning what a person should wear in a sauna.  Two waffle weave towels are okay but denim is not. 

Bitchery reader Amy asks for romances set in Canada - the Definitive List.

A friend and I were discussing the usual settings for romance novels and we suddenly wondered if there are any romance novels set in Canada (most particularly in Nova Scotia). I would love to see a book about the Canadian Mounty’s Secret Baby. Does anyone know of anything like that?

Personally, I want to know when will there be erotica about the ever-mounting Mounty? And when he arrives at That Crucial Moment, can there be an “Oh, CANADA!” joke? Because, well, it’s awesome? 

It’s a big Monday in my world - I’m back at my job, as opposed to home with Baba O’Riley in my slippers watching public television in HD. So since I’m wearing shoes and socks as opposed to slippers and have on a completely matching and professional-looking outfit, of course my brain, it is not focused. It’s been largely in “WTF?” mode all day.

So all that is a long way of saying, “Oops. I forgot.” My head, and 3/4 of my cleavage, are on Romance Novel tv today, talking about series books, and what I like about them, and what I don’t.  I talk with my hands a lot, too. Why do I do that? No idea.

Either way - enjoy.

It might just be me and the books that cross my lap, but I’ve read a lot of books, historicals specifically, that explore the tension between a hero and heroine of differing classes. From Kleypas’ Secrets of a Summer Night to her latest Mine Till Midnight to Campbell’s Claiming the Courtesan, crossing the class boundary is a big part of the plotline - and a basis for reviews questioning whether the happy ending can be believable if the protagonists are from either side of that boundary.

But either way, all the big kids are doing it. The upcoming Cynster book, Where the Heart Leads, from Stephanie Laurens, features a pair of aristocratic protagonists, with a secondary pair from the working class assisting them in their case. Crossing class barrier seems to be a hot target for establishing tension between protagonists, and I had an opportunity to ask another author playing with that source of tension all about it. So being the nebby wench I am, I took it.

Julia London’s latest book, The Dangers of Deceiving a Viscount is the third book in the Desperate Debutantes trilogy, and features a heroine who is of the upper class, but who is forced to masquerade as a seamstress in the home of a Viscount - he of the dangerous deception. The heroine, Lady Phoebe Fairchild, has been working as a seamstress and gown designer to support her family, and becomes one of the most desirable modistes in London. When she is blackmailed into going to the Viscount of Summerfield’s country home to create gowns for his sisters, said viscount asks her to be his mistress.

Based on that description, as I haven’t yet read the book, I had to bug Ms. London about the secret profession, the class boundary, and writing in general. Like I said, I’m nebby as all hell.

Here at Smart Bitch HQ, we’re expensive bitches. We mail out prize packages all over the world, we host our website and buy our domain name, and we spend money on things like drugs, hookers, and Hasselhoff. And in order to keep our pimp hands strong, and our Hassel-habit going, we offer advertising. We honestly didn’t think it would be that big of a deal, but hello, large stick of Clueless, please, beat me on the head.

As of right now, the large ad space on our sidebar is sold out for 2008. The whole damn year and we aren’t even there yet. Plus we’re taking reservations for the smaller rotating ad space, and have some folks booked through late ‘08 as well.

So! What to do for folks who clamor for the opportunity to pimp their wild selves on the hot pink wonderment that is Smart Bitches? Candy and I put our heads together (virtually - putting us in the same state can cause tectonic shifts or bad attitudes or something equally bizarre) and came up with a solution:

Starting Jan 1 2008, we’re going to offer a second larger adspace for your pimpin’ pleasure. The ad space will be 200 px wide by 300 px high, and will be on the sidebar with the other ad spaces.  However, instead of featuring one ad per month, we’re going to sell the space in 1-month increments, and rotate two, and only two, ads in that space per month. The price will be $75.00 US a month.

We’re taking reservations now. Please email First come, first served. Your mileage may vary. Not valid in countries whose names end with “Steve” ("Stan" is acceptable). This offer brought to you by the number 6, the number 9, and the letter B.

The last erotica set in space that I read involved heroes who can psychically rip the heroine’s clothing off if she is The One, and something involve nipple stimulation during orgasm that causes her to lay an egg. Clearly whatever space planet they were on had gravity because the question of weightless sex never came up (hur hur).

But thanks to Bitchery reader Jen, I’m now pondering sexual positions at zero-gravity, because apparently some lucky astronauts were the “guinea pigs” in a nookie-in-space experiment. Dude. I’m not sure I’d be willing to go all the way for my job were I a government employee.

However, you can’t deny - that’s some seriously ripe (hur hur) plot basis for hawt erotica.

ESPECIALLY if the experiments involved 2 lithe astronaut men and some weightless buttsecks. Because what-what-in-the-butt + zero-Gs = WIN!