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

Here in the US, the Writers Guild of America is on strike and has been since October 31, 2007. Their strike affects American television and movie production. If the strike isn’t resolved, most American tv for the coming season will be reality shows which don’t require WGA writers to script as they are “unscripted.” Yeah, they’re about as unscripted as WWE wrestling matches. Also, I intensely dislike reality television. But this isn’t about me.

The issues forcing the strike are the amount of money generated by online sales of television shows and movies, and increasing the residuals generated by television program and movie sales on iTunes or any other online vendor.

The WGA strike captains have started uploading YouTube videos to highlight the issues behind their strike, and an unreal number of actors have started making videos highlighting the importance of writers for the “Speechless” campaign to support the WGA. The Screen Actors Guild, The Teamsters, and several local outposts of the Service Employees Union, the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, the United Auto Workers union, and the sister guilds to the WGA in Canada, Greece, Australia, Great Britain, and New Zealand all support the WGA strike.

Our Friday Videos this week demonstrate support for the WGA strike, and to support the work of the writers behind the scenes of much of the entertainment I enjoy. 

You can see all the Speechless videos online at Speechless Without Writers.

Thanks to Arethusa, I read this humdinger of an article from the Guardian featuring two writers, Daisy Cummins and Julie Bindel, squaring off from their respective positions on the relative quality and contribution of Mills & Boon novels.

Daisy, who writes them, says that “The women who populate these books come from as disparate and wide-ranging economic situations as the women who read them. To say they are all mindless romantic illiterates yearning to be saved is lazy ignorance.”

Well, yes, sweeping generalizations about all women are not wise. One or more of us will beg to differ - especially those of us who (a) read romance and (b) bristle at the idea that we’re mindless illiterates. It is a lazy generalization that I’ve seen too much of, personally speaking.

Meanwhile, Bindel, who isn’t mad at the readers or the writers of the novels (who then is she so fired up about? The publisher? Mr. Mills and Mr. Boon who thought up the great business venture?) counters that, “My loathing of M&B novels has nothing to do with snobbery. I could not care less if the books are trashy, formulaic or pulp fiction - Martina Cole novels, which I love, are also formulaic. But I do care about the type of propaganda perpetuated by M&B. I would go so far as to say it is misogynistic hate speech.”

Bindel then delivers the final blow that made me wheeze and roll my eyes at the same time: “This is what heterosexual romantic fiction promotes - the sexual submission of women to men. M&B novels are full of patriarchal propaganda. I can say it no better than the late, great Andrea Dworkin. This classic depiction of romance is simply “rape embellished with meaningful looks”.

Oh, please. Can we all just take a deep breath? I’m the first to defend the genre and my deep abiding love of it, but we are talking about romance novels here. Are they a primary factor contributing to the continuation of the subjugation of women? Do women get raped because they read romance? Are they asking for it if their copy of “The Flame and the Flower” peeks out of their handbag? Is Roe v. Wade in the US teetering on the edge of being overturned because someone read “The Boardroom Sheik’s Remodeled Kitchen With a Virgin on the Corian Counter?” Hardly! Sweet weeping Moses in a steaming shit sidecar.

As Candy stated in her review of Dark Lover, the patterns of Othering and depictions of fertility are fascinating and revealing in romance novels, and certainly the genre as a whole is ripe for literature folks to uncover unstudied areas of narrative portrayal. But what does “The Roman Sword Master’s Giant Sword Of Mighty Wang” reveal about the reader and the writer of very alpha-male romantic fiction? Yes, it’s not fiction to my personal tastes, and I do find it hilarious that many writers and readers would really rather not have dinner with the buttnoid alpha bonehead hero they enjoy, but is it the end of the known world for all women that some women enjoy reading that particular storyline? Nice of Brindel to throw that caveat in there that she doesn’t blame the writers or the readers (Thanks!) but is the existence of romance fiction Keeping The Womyn Down?

Please. Women harshing on the freedom of other women to read and wank off to whatever fantasy they want is what’s Keepin’ the Womyn Down.

Greetings! You know what sucks a big wang? Being sick when you’re home on maternity leave, knowing that leave ends very soon. Lame!

So as a result I am holed up in my house, hanging out with the wee Baba, who is not so wee anymore, alternately sleeping and watching Discovery tv. Here are words of wisdom for you until I wake up enough to post something more romance-related and visually stimulating.

1. “There’s no poo in a vulva!” Dirty Jobs host Mike Rowe, palpating a cow to determine if it’s pregnant. Wise words, sir. Watch where you’re sticking that arm.

2. From Freezair, a link to a Japanese game that invites you, as Freezaid said, to “defend your household and title from your dead husband’s relations--slappy-fight style!” You’re the widow and you have to slap the shit out of your dead husband’s horrible relatives to defend your right to the house and the family title. If you’re frustrated at the holiday season of nonstop family get-togethers, this could be a great stress reliever.

3. “Whether the vision of your home is warm and casual or cool and sheik, Olde Paint™ will be an ideal marriage to your own personal tastes.” - Ad for Anderson Floor’s new Olde Paint™ flooring collection (I’m remodeling my kitchen - OMG shoot me).

I have to say, my vision of my kitchen SHOULD be cool and sheik. I was going for green and low-environmental-impact, but that’s so 2007. And really, doesn’t “Cool Sheik” scream 2008? Now I have to figure out the best way to design a kitchen on a “sheik” theme. Bedsheets? Harem pillows for seating at a low table? Buxom kidnapped English aristocrats being held against their will in opulent bathrooms?

Perhaps every room of the ultimate Smart Bitch house should have a romance novel theme. The kitchen is obviously sheik-only. Baba’s room could be a secret (hence, secret baby) and the bathroom in which we’re attempting to potty train Freebird would obviously be “the Big Mis(s).” This could be fun - like a charity design house on hallucinogenic drugs! 

I blogged obliquely about this book two years ago. I am a judgmental douchebag--I admit this up front. But as Sarah noted in her review at Romancenovel.tv: I’M OUTIE? A massive thug says “I’m outie”?

No. For the love of everything Alicia Silverstone, no.

And this particularly choice turn of phrase always kills me when I look at the first page: “advanced degrees in violent crime.”

Pray tell, sirrah: Where, perchance, may I obtain an advanced degree in violent crime? No, before we even address that burning question: what would an advanced degree look like? Would an MFA be a Masters in Fuckin’ yo Ass (up)? Can you get PhD’s in, say, Violating Your Parole Like A Dumbshit, or Roid Rage (with specializations in Pointless Property Damage or Kicking The Crap Out of Your Girlfriend), or Mini-Mart Robbery Gone Bad?

And I won’t even go into the names, because really, that’s like shooting fhish in a bharrehl.

For these reasons and more, I avoided reading the book. Look, I told myself, if a book can give me about three hours’ worth of riffing material from the first two pages alone, will I be able to get my internal smart-ass to shut up enough to allow me to read through the goddamn thing?

The answer, surprisingly, was “yes.” Dark Lover is nothing if not compelling. It’s also, well, crap. Hooray for compelling crap. We loves us some compelling crap over here in Smart Bitch Central. The grade is essentially an average of my enjoyment (about a B-) and the writing (D throughout, verging on D- in spots). But but but! Ward deserves daps for the Mary Sue joke towards the end of the book. It single-handedly saved this from falling over in to the dreaded D territory.

Lucinda Betts, Mistress of Websurfing, forwarded me Time Magazine’s 10 Questions for Nora Roberts, wherein readers asked her questions. My fave? How do you react to critics who say romance novels are trashy?

Why, you send them to this website, of course. Heh heh.

And, a link that has nothing at all to do with the previous one, a link from the Daily Mail courtesy of Janice, which features advertisements from the 50’s and 60’s that are breathtaking in their sexism. I find my self staring at the woman who’s getting a rather startling spanking because she didn’t “store-test” her coffee for freshness. What does that mean, exactly? She didn’t fire up a portable percolator in the aisle and covertly crack open a can? That ad is unsettling, too. It’s a mile past “cute” well into “discomforting” territory. Not even the argyle socks help that image out.

That said, I bet a cover artist will harvest that image for a future BDSM cover very very soon.

I don’t have much time to dedicate to leisure reading nowadays, alas--I need to get through readings about personal jurisdiction and promissory estoppel before I can allow myself the time to read stories about virgins learning the joys of buttsecks or homoerotically charged gangsta-wannabe vhampyre thugs. (Oh, if only those homoerotic shitkicking Ludacris-lovin’ vhampz would learn about the joys of buttsecks with each other--those books would become so much better--well, I’d like ‘em better, at any rate.) I do, however, have as much time as ever to listen to music, and I’ve discovered several excellent bands in the past month or so.

One of them is the Archie Bronson Outfit; I got Derdang Derdang a couple of weeks ago, and it’s compelling stuff. Two songs in particular have captured my attention: “Cherry Lips” and “Dart for my Sweetheart.” I’m going to talk about “Cherry Lips” today and save “Dart for my Sweetheart” for tomorrow--and I swear this is related to romance novels. F’real. Just keep reading.

And it’s YouTube to the rescue so you can know what the hell I’m talking about with this band. Crappy compressed files cannot do justice to their sound. I highly recommend listening to them on a decent stereo system with the volume on LOUD. The video for “Cherry Lips” isn’t all that great, either, so close your eyes or read through the rest of this article as you listen to it.

“OK, Candy,” sez you, “Your taste in music is brilliant and all (as is your taste in just about everything, but that just goes without saying), but what does this have sweet-fuck-all to do with trashy books? Because really, we read this blog mostly so we can blather on about romance novels and romance novel tropes, not so’s you can inflict your musical preferences on all and sundry.”

Aha, sez I, that’s true, but see how I cleverly tie this song to romance novels and the bitching thereof!

“Cherry Lips” caught my ear because of a certain raw intensity in their sound, and as I listened and got caught up in the lead singer wailing “It’s so fun to love someone, just try try to get get over it,” I thought of Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, and how that book managed to capture that same sort emotional pitch, both from the way Nick and Norah feel about their exes, and in the way they feel about each other. (Insofar as the musical preferences for fictional characters can be ascertained, I think the two kids would appreciate the Archie Bronson Outfit.)

You know what? I miss that intensity. Not just any sort of intensity; I’m talking about the delicious angsty tastiness of loss--or the strong possibility of loss. We romance readers know there’s an HEA waiting for us, which serves as both limitation and comfort. That doesn’t necessarily mean the story is de-fanged. We may know that the hero and heroine will end up with each other, but that doesn’t mean that the author can’t create one hell of a Black Moment for us. The trick isn’t so much convincing us that they’ve really, truly lost each other--the trick is convincing us that the characters are convinced that they’ve really, truly lost each other, and giving us a glimpse of the hell they’re going through.

I’m not really getting this big, satisfying black moment with the romance novels I’ve read lately. Part of it’s because most of the romances I’ve read in recent months haven’t been especially good. But that dark “Holy shit, I’ve fucked it up and I’m not sure it’s fixable and OH GOD WHAT DO I DO?” moment is either absent, or so contrived it makes me laugh instead of commiserate.

And that’s the other thing. The Black Moment is incredibly easy to fuck up. The tried-n-true method for Ye Olde Bodice Riperre was the Big Misunderstanding, which, if done well, can be satisfying, but more often than not just burnssss, oh god it burns. The Big Secret, the Big Misunderstanding’s subtler, less shouty, less stupid cousin, has often been employed to good effect, too. And then there’s also the “Hero Becomes a Raging Asshole Because of Past Trauma,” which can also be good, but can also result in burnination. There’s this sweet zone in which the Black Moment is near-magical and engulfs us in the drama of the situation; outside this zone lies limp, ineffectual pathos on one side, and comic melodrama on the other.

Most of my favorite authors are very, very good at writing Black Moments. Laura Kinsale, Sharon and Tom Curtis, Patricia Gaffney and Golden Age Lisa Kleypas… Actually, it’s funny to refer to Kleypas that way, when she’s so young--but there was a time in the early to mid 90s when every book she released was excellent, and she wrote the hell out of those Black Moments. Everyone remember that scene in Dreaming of You when the whore visits Sara and tells her what Derek did? Yes, it’s kind of contrived and a touch melodramatic, but admit it, you cried like a bitch. (At least, I did.) Her more recent releases are somewhat more polished than those twelve-year-old books, but they’re not intense in the same way. And I miss it. *tiny tear*

Anybody else notice this dimming in intensity of the Black Moment, too? Anybody want it back?

Bitchery Reader Pennifer sent me this HABO request, and I seriously had to read it twice because it was SO AMUSING OMG LIKE DAMN HELL WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST:

Given the incredible success rate of the bitchery at helping people re-discover long lost favourites, I thought I would add my request.

It’s a book I read 10-12 years ago (but it may have been older than that) and the heroine was called Charity or Chastity or something like that. It was set in America in the 1500s/1600s (I’m sorry, my American history is pretty rusty). I do remember the highlights of the plot, though. The book starts with the heroine living with her cousins or distant family of some sort, who were Puritans. Her cousin forced her to have sex with him, and she was put on trial for witchcraft, because the cousin said that she tempted him. The judge sentenced her to something (death? maybe?) because she was so darn beautiful that she must have been a witch. On her way to her punishment she was rescued by a highwayman, who happened to be rescuing a friend who was also sentenced to death. She sexes up the highwayman, then runs away from him and ends up on a plantation, where she falls in love with the owner. The owner is devoted to his wife, and so resists our heroine’s wiles, even though there is something funky going on with the wife (there was some business in here about a green dress, although I cannot for the life of me remember what the relevance of it was).

She then gets taken away from the plantation by pirates, and ends up with the head pirate, who of course, is having an affair with the plantation owner’s wife. The head pirate decides to pimp out the girl, and her first customer is the highwayman, which makes her happy but pisses the pirate off, because she’s his twoo wuv. Eventually, the pirate takes her back to the plantation, because she keeps going on about the insipid owner, but then she has an epiphany and realises that it’s the pirate she loves, but he won’t have anything to do with her by this stage. So, she basically emasculates him in front of his crew, taunts him with her nekkidness and then they live happily ever after.

I would love to find out if this book is as insane and hilarious as I remember it being, because that right there is a lot of sexxoring. Any help would be greatly appreciated. You can imagine doing a google search on variations of “pirate highwayman puritan” is turning up some freaking weird crap and not really helping me find this book.

At first I thought she’d conflated (2 sips!) at least two books, maybe three, because that book is crazy lettuce with a delicate dressing of moonbat. But if it’s real, oh MAN. That’s just epic. 

I’m back on Romance Novel.tv today, talking about Dark Lover. The text says I’m talking about Lover Unbound, but that was later. We filmed this right after I finished reading Dark Lover, and hadn’t engaged in reading the continued and growing traihn wrehck that is the rest of the series. That first one, it was the crack. And I talk about racial ambiguity and homogenization of romance and how few interracial couples there are in mainstream romance.

Candy is going to post her review here, since technical difficulties prevented us from appearing together when we filmed those segments. So stay tuned. 

Bitchery reader adb is impressed with your sleuthing abilities - and asks for your help identifying a book she read when she was 12:

It was a really, really weird book in that it had two distinct subplots. There was the cute romantic comedy subplot, which I remember more clearly, and the weeeird space-opera-y lasers 'n' spells subplot. I can't remember which was the "main" plot, or even if they shared airtime, but the spacey one had something to do with finding the long-lost prince or princess or something of this kingdom that was falling apart. The hero was the one who was involved in all this, and the heroine was the one who didn't know about it (though she eventually found out).

The story flipped between the hero and the heroine's viewpoints. The first time they met, they hated each other. (Of course.) Then the hero went back to his house and realized that he'd fallen madly in love with her and was really angry about it. Then they somehow met later at a fantasy/sci fi convention (oooh, meta!) and wacky things happened, and somehow alien porn was involved. The alien porn sticks in my mind for some reason. The hero's ex-girlfriend popped in, but she was nice and not meddlesome like most exes are, and she was also involved in the long-lost-prince part of the plot. Then some Horrible Magical Sickness befell the heroine, and the hero wigged out because he'd realized that she was his True Luuurve, and some stuff happened that I forget and she got better and they got married and raised ducks. In a pond in their kitchen. The End. Oh, and they found the prince in the end, I'm pretty sure.

The really neat thing that I remember is that the heroine was really average-looking. She was fat and wore glasses, and she was a tough little cuss in general. That's all I remember, though.

Average looking with magical sickness and ducks? Not-your-typical-heroine? COOL. Anyone remember the book?

Nope, no cloth vulvas today. While perusing this month’s RWR, I saw an ad that used my two weaknesses in advertisements: Really Nice Fonts, and an invitation to thank people who don’t often get thanked, like your critique partner, agent, mentor, publicist, or editor, etc.

Ninth Moon specializes in gifts for the ‘inspired writer,’ and I have to admit, I dragged Hubby over to the laptop to show him some fantastic gift ideas should he be drawing a blank, like my favorite, the B.I.C.H.O.K. charm, which totally cracks me up.

So, need gifts for a writer you know and love? I haven’t ordered anything so I have no idea how easy or supportive the process is in terms of customer service, but they win points for unique product line and a well-designed website.

JaneDrew, recent winner of Barb Ferrer’s Name That Character contest, is a grad student in medieval/early modern European history, and, as she says, “yes, that DOES make reading historical romances as difficult as it sounds....”

How difficult, I asked? What are you top most egregious historical inaccuracies?

The reply was so funny I had to share with you. Enjoy!

Jane Drew says:

Oh, boy… horror stories of historical inaccuracy… tricky question; I actually haven’t even tried to read a medieval romance in years; too many attempts to slog through the morass of shiny knights, distressed damsels, oversexed Saxons, and brawny Highland-types with excessively large.. err.. sporrans. 

The main problem is that the vast majority of medieval or Renaissance romance are the Middle Ages filtered through nineteenth century Romanticism (which is basically the actual Middle Ages shorn of all the naughty bits and dredged in sparkles).  So I’ve kind of blocked it all out by sheer force of will, selective amnesia, and the occasional blunt object (of course, now my roommate wants me to start reading them. And blogging about it. But that’s only because she’s evil).