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

Several different readers e-mailed to tell us about this: Amazon.com unveiled a list of the 20 Most Romantic Cities in the United States. Did they calculate the rankings based on marriage rates vs. divorce rates, popularity as honeymoon destinations, historical reputations, the amount the population invested in sex toys? No, the algorithm they used was even more comprehensive and complicated:

They tallied up how many romance novels, relationship books and sex manuals they’d shipped out to various cities and divided it by the total population.

Because books with titles like “If It’s Tuesday, There Must Be Dildoes,” “Tantric Sex for Dummies” and “The Ultimate Man’s Guide to Internet Dating” are the epitome of what “romantic” means to us as a culture.

Sarah: The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that I have at last found my dream job. I am for all intents and purposes a complete and utter epic fail at math. I can’t remember numbers much less hold them in my mind for 2 seconds so that I can do sexy things to them like divide or multiply or even add. I work in a city that’s designated with about 90% numerical addresses and do I remember a single one? Forget it. I have to write the address down and keep LOOKING at the paper.

My complete lack of mathlete-skillz notwithstanding, I totally think I should work in the Amazon statistics department. In fact, my complete lack of mathleticism DEMANDS That I work there. From the formula to determine sales rank to the derived “most romantic” list based on some fucked up sales data - it’s like Mecca. I Belong There.

Where do I sign up? Can you help, being on the west coast and all?

Candy: Dude, I can help you--not because I’m on the West Coast, but because I’m Chinese, and it’s common knowledge that we’re born knowing how to integrate and how to count in hex. (Fun fact: In a few days, I’ll be 1e years old!)

A city is declared “most romantic” because Amazon has shipped the most romances, sex guides and relationship self-help books there. Let me tell you, there’s nothing sexier or more romantic than a man giving me a copy of “He’s Just Not That Into You.” Sets my pants on fi-yahhhhh.

It’s also nice to see that the folks at DCist are still in fine form, what with the lovely assumptions they’re making about romance novel readers. Pass me the smelling salts, I declare I’m about to faint from what a dainty, desperate, horny little belle I am. Because it’s not like I ever get laid. Or have friends. Or even leave my lonely little cave. At all. Ever.

Hey, at least the cave is bedecked in red and pink satin. Fuckers.

Also, please peruse my fine collection of puffypaint sweatshirts. I’m especially proud of my “Poodles to Pamper” line.

I will admit that I was intrigued by certain trends in the data, however. The cities, by and large, seemed to be part of large, metropolitan areas, and most of them are the sites for very prestigious universities (Cambridge, Ann Arbor, Berkeley, D.C., Seattle, San Francisco, Austin). If I had to make a guess--ones not based on tired cliches, mystifying assertions (most romantic? WTF?) or horrified hand-flapping at the idea of living in a city crawling with romance readers (we’re like herpes! Once you get one, you never get rid of us! And we pop up at the most inconvenient moments IN YOUR CROTCH)--I think this is what the trends show:

1. These cities seem to have larger-than-normal populations of university graduates. And those fuckers, they read. A lot. Of EVERYTHING. I’m willing to bet that these cities would rank pretty high for literary fiction, SF/F and mystery consumption, too.

2. Large middle-class/white collar population = more leisure time for reading.

3. Somebody in the comments on DCist pointed out that the populations for these cities seem to have more women than men, which would not only make sense in terms of a bigger romance readership, but also in terms of book consumption, since women tend to read more than men across the board.

Sarah: Not to mention that many of those cities are also near larger metro areas where people work but don’t live, and thus ride mass transit or trains and whatnot. I’m sure if you track the sales of similar “big leisure” reads, such as mysteries and the like, they sell as well.

Heh - a new fun game! Draw other completely hyperbolic conclusions from the data:

Those cities probably also have a higher percentage of houses with heart-shaped beds.

Puffy paint sweatshirts just CANNOT stay on the SHELVES at even the BEST stores.

Two words: Fabio Appearance! Three more words: at the mall!

Feather boas in Alexandria: Sold Out.

Bottom line: I love anything having to do with Amazon interpreting data. It’s just the most creative use of math in the history of the world. *le heartfelt sigh*

I still am waiting for the rest of your sweeping generalizations. I’ll wait over here in my pink satin tufted settee, next to my bonbons. And hot chocolate. With my perfectly groomed white Persian cat whose poop arrives gift-wrapped in crushed pineapple and rose petals.

Candy: Sorry, no time for sweeping generalizations. I’m too busy masturbating while reading The Rules and imagining Fabio amortizing his hip thrusts against my womanly loins as he crushes me against the hardwood floor.

Bitchery reader Joopiter writes:

I’m a new reader to your site (thank you StumbleUpon) and going through your archives has inspired me to go find some of the old historicals that I devoured during my teenage years. There’s one that I’m blanking on and I’m hoping you or your loyal readers can help me identify it. I think I read this during high school (’90-95) or possibly earlier. What I remember

* The hero was in possession of a stolen jewel which cursed his family and maybe led to the murder of his fiancée/wife. I’m pretty sure his name was Saxon.
* The heroine was rescued from an attack on her family’s ship when she was a child and was adopted into the family of a sultan (I think) who possesses the other cursed jewels. She is tasked with getting the other jewel back and meets the hero when she dances for him when he’s a guest of the sultan. And she has a rose tattoo on her forearm that covers a scar she got during the initial attack.
* There may be a tiger involved somewhere. I have a vague recollection of the heroine hiding the rest of the jewels in her pet tiger’s collar.
* I’m pretty sure the original cover was a bright aqua blue.

I know it’s not a lot, but any help is greatly appreciated. Keep up the great work on your site!

While the change has not yet appeared on the RT BookLovers Convention webpage, Bitchery reader Kay has forwarded me some information that Romantic Times sent out earlier today. It seems they’ve added a session with Bertrice Small on research without plagiarism:

Also new to the agenda… Bertrice Small has rounded up her fellow historical romance buddies Roberta Gellis and Jennifer Blake to present a research workshop of a different kind—How to Use Historical Facts Without Crossing the Line Into Plagiarism. Bertrice feels it’s necessary for historical romance authors to know what’s acceptable and what is not when embellishing your fiction with historical facts.

My advice, if you’re planning to go to RT in Pittsburgh? GO to this session. Not because plagiarism is an important issue for any and all professional writers (which it is) or because this session is timely, topical, and clearly of present issue (which it also is) but because I’ve heard Bertrice Small speak and she is a scream. 

Bitchery reader Maria writes:

I have been racking my brain and beating up librarians all over town trying to locate a certain novel that I read in high school, the title and author of which of course escapes me.  So I am sure that my woes will be put to rest if you could post this, and then some smart-talking trashy-book reading bitch can give me what I need.

The book would most likely have been a Zebra *Heartfire* romance, or at least Zebra. (Hey, I loved those cool holograph stickers on the front of that line...I was in highschool, okay?) It would not have been originally published any later than 1995, because I graduated in 1996 and believe the book was at least a few years old when I read it. I would guess at it being published somewhere between 1985 and 1993.

The book was a historical, same era as the Pirates of the Caribbean I would guess. It featured a saucy heroine with golden-blonde hair who somehow ends up on a pirate ship with a sexy, swashbuckling captain, who (of course) seduces her. She tries to escape several times, without success, and I cannot remember much on the ending/resolution. (She may have been a duchess/governor’s daughter/etc. and he may have secretly been a “respectable gent” who was just masquerading as a pirate to get into girls’ pantaloons). Now here’s the ray of sunshine: I remember that the pirate-captain’s nickname for the saucy gal was “Dovetail.” He called her Dovetail, and I recall a scene where they are on land (most of story takes place on the boat somewhere) and she escapes, he chases her down and she falls/skids down an embankment and cuts her shoulder up on some rocks. He pins here there and hovers his mouth over her nipple, in order to molest her through her shirt via condensation. All this just to show her that she secretly wants him and he has total power over her.  (That whole captive/captor thing gets me every time...yowza!)

I was with her until the “Dovetail” part and was going to suggest The Windflower but I know the heroine isn’t nicknamed anything resembling Dovetail. Anyone know this one? 

Three, from what I hear, is a tough age. The primitive toddler has yielded to a more independent being who wants, guess what, more independence. It’s going to be a great year with our hot pink three year old, I think. I’m all about feisty independence, so three kicks ass.

Special note to Candy: You rule - thanks for three years of Hofftastic Awesomesauce.

Special note to our readers: Thank you! Thank you, thank you!

Now - You wanna win some shit? It’s haiku time! Write us up some haiku madness (5-7-5 please) of up to four stanzas that best captures our past three years, or the general hot pink madness that is Smart Bitches. Voting will go on in the comment thread, fark-style, and top three winners of votage will get prizes, including a Smart Bitch Title™ for the First Place winner.

And now: my haiku offering. I’m not stopping at 4 stanzas, so be warned.

Smart Bitches is THREE?!
Man-titty could knock me down-
time sure fucking flies.

Mad props to Candy!
And Hubby who asks each night:
“Why are you still up?”

But I must say thanks
to you, you, you, you, and you.
And Catherine Coulter

If I hadn’t liked
‘Midsummer Magic’ so much
I wouldn’t be here.

Let’s hear it for cream!
It eases the rough passage
of our first three years.

Need gifts? I love gifts - specifically gift shopping. My favorite way to put myself to sleep is to think of different people and shop for them if I have an unlimited budget and limitless ability to acquire stuff. I know, I’m weird. But it calms my spinning brain down to try to figure out HOW I might acquire, say, a genuine piece of Packers stock, let alone freak out the recipient by giving them such a thing. By the time I work out all the budgetary and logistical crazyness, I fall asleep. I am well aware that I am weird.

Anyway, every so often on my other site that is of no interest to anyone unless you really want to read about how I watched vintage 1993 episodes of 90210 at 6:30am this weekend (Donna graduated! My GOD were those people blonde! Not in a stereotypical dumb way but in a blinding-to-look-at way) I often post links to gift ideas, mostly to aid myself when I wonder what to get someone when it’s a gift-giving occasion. But since these gifts are Teh Awesome, I’m going to inflict my Gift Guiding Goodness on y’all, only this time no velvet vulvas with feathers.

I’ve written about Ninth Moon before, back in December, but that was before I got the Full Treatment of actually receiving a package from them. Seriously - even the packaging and protective filler is part of the presentation. Heck, forget your friends, your family, all those people you work with - just order stuff for yourself. Like what?

I’m totally ordering the CD case for writing backups for a friend of mine who rarely remembers to back her ass up.

Check out that timer. I’ve been downloading Dashboard widgets up my yin-yang and not a one works the way I want, but that puppy is bad ass.

And, of course, the B.I.C.H.O.K. charm, which I looooooove. It’s awesome. With a side order of shibby.

Disclaimer: I don’t own the company or work for them. I’m just kissing up shamelessly.

While I’m looking around the store and hiding my wallet from myself (I’m scared to tell you how well that works), I’m checking out all the writing books. And I have to ask - what writing book has worked best for you? If you could give someone a book about writing, or self-motivation to write, is there one that you always refer to that changed the way you look at your craft?

Can I just say that among my top ten least favorite words, the word “blog” is waaaay up near the top of the list? I don’t know if there is a more unattractive word in the English language. It’s just ... yuck.

But there’s no way that another term will supplant what is already a cemented part of the English language, so I will attempt to make my peace with the unappealing nomenclature, and move on to discussing What Blogs And That Wild Wooly Internet Can Do by Way Of Helping You Promote Yourself. Don’t crap yourself at this one, but Jane, Candy and I submitted a proposal to RWA National about that topic, and alas we are not on the docket. I promise we had a much nicer title than that one, but either way, our discussion about how to use the internet and blogs as self-promotional tools of the wunderkind variety will not be part of the national program. Feel free to accost me in the hall and ask my opinion, though. I’m more than happy to talk. But you knew that.

And, hey, let’s talk now. There’s all kinds of innovative promotion going on right now, from the viral marketing prize giveaway to the altruistic publicity launch for an author who can’t take care of that aspect of her career right now.

First: Ann Aguirre’s Grimspace Juggernaut wherein you answer a quiz, get yourself a badge for your own blog, and win a chance to get a slew of prizes, from a big honking gift card to Barnes & Noble to a free copy of her new novel, Grimspace. Now, that’s pretty clever - there’s a huge audience for quizzes and memes and whatnot - and a huge audience of people who love them some free stuff, and free books. Pretty basic tools, as well - something immediate (the quiz) fuels follow up (the giveaway) and participants get something and the potential for something more, while the source, the author, gets a bit more buzz about her book. Smart smart smart and also, given the quiz questions, really freaking fun.

Then, there’s the hugely altruistic and fantastically awesome aspect of blog publicity: blogs are easy and active, and most often linked together into small knots of common interests. That makes for a perfect opportunity for generosity, such as doing someone else’s publicity to help them out when they can’t manage that part themselves.

Thanks to Jackie Kessler for the heads up - today is “The Liar’s Diary Blog Day.” Patry Francis, the author of The Liar’s Diary, has been diagnosed with a horribly aggressive form of cancer, and she’s doing the utterly exhausting appointment-followed-by-appointment thing, and can’t promote the softcover release of her novel as much as she’d like.

So a bunch of bloggers, publicists, agents, and publishing masterminds are banding together to mention the book today - among them Jackie Kessler, Jennifer Weiner, and Neil Gaiman.

All participants are asked to merely mention the book and link to the purchase page on Amazon.com.

That’s pretty freaking fabulous, and I hope it works. 

Dr. Sarah Frantz, Professor of Awesome, has forwarded me a very cool request: help her build her syllabus!

I will be teaching a course at NC State’s Continuing Eduction program called Encore! (exclamation point necessary, of course).  I teach for six weeks for 1 1/2 hours a week.  The students are mainly female, all at least over 50 years old, probably up to about 85.  Last year I taught Austen and was apparently a huge hit.  They’re begging me to teach again this year and I said I’d do it if I could do romance novels and they said, ‘Fine, please, anything,” so that didn’t work as a way out.

So, I need four or five romance novels that I can teach to older Southern women of a certain age. [SB Sarah says, “That would be: not really our age."] I figure a Georgette Heyer, if I can find one in print that I like, and an SEP, probably It Had to Be You, as it’s my personal favorite.  I’ll probably have a week with some RWA-NC members coming to visit (hopefully), including Virginia Kantra.  Then what?  I’ve got an older historical (Heyer) and a contemporary romantic comedy (SEP).  Maybe a suspense (Kantra?)?  An erotica (bwahahahahaha--yeah, I don’t think so)?  An asshole hero?  An inspirational?  Any suggestions?

Just thought the bitchery might be able to help me with my syllabus.

So! We need romance recommendations for a continuing education syllabus geared for women of a certain age. Bring it! 

Courtesy of Michelle Styles here is a much longer profile of Ida and Louise Cook, who used profits from Ida’s Mills & Boon novels to rescue Jews from the Nazis. The Telegraph did an extended article about them last July. 

Reader Raha asks for your help identifying this one. Me? I haven’t a clue. I also freak out that I can’t find my keys while I’m driving my car, and have to remind myself that they are, in fact, in the ignition. But that’s just me.

I think the heroine is named Megan Halliday and she was married to hero’s younger brother named Eric, a boy-genius violinist. She has a tragic past (raped by her ex and lost the baby) .The hero is a count and I think named Curt Von something.. he is a widower and has a daughter. I think the book is set in Vienna, Austria.

Basically the premise of the book is the heroine inherits a land after her husband’s death and the hero is worried that she might sell it to the developers. So he invites her over and she eventually ends up falling in love with him and gifts the deed to his daughter.

I vaguely remember it to be named something like sound/music of love , but could not recall the actual title and author.. Appreciate if some one could help.

Today’s Cool Person of the Day: Ida Cook, who wrote Mills & Boon under the pseudonym Mary Burchell. According to the article in yesterday’s Guardian, Cook and her sister were huge opera fans who, under the cover of being opera groupies, snuck in and out of Germany before WWII to smuggle the valuables of Jewish families to safety. Later, Cook began writing Mills & Boon novels to fund their activities, and helped 29 people escape the Nazis.

The mild-mannered spinsters became expert smugglers, regaling border guards with tales of the previous night’s performance, switching labels in fur coats, and wearing real diamonds with outfits so dowdy that customs officers would presume the jewels were paste.

Ida Cook and her sister, Louise, were named among the Righteous Gentiles by Yad Vashem Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority in Israel.

Thanks to azteclady and Ms. Anon who forwarded me the link. 

Diane, Viscountess Thrusston, and Kay, Equally Awesome, both sent me big huge ass boxes full of category romance. Seriously, I wanted to find a shrink ray so I could reduce myself by 60% and dive into the box of books and swim around with joy, papercuts be damned. So much reading! In so many various plot options! There’s secret babies, cowboys, sheikhs, private investigators, a late night talkshow host who swears up and down he’s a vampire… I’m so giddy I want to take a week off and do nothing but read old school category romances. There’s even some seriously vintage Betty Neels in there, which I’ve never read before. The women in the cover art have BIG GIANT ANIME-ESQUE EYES and the ends of the pages are red with that dye that totally comes off on my hands. I’m so happy I may plotz. Thank you, Diane! Thank you Kay!

But even better than the vintage way back machine in two boxes of awesome? THE COVERS. It’s not just vintage, it’s veeeentage.

It’s such an interesting change of pace here at Smart Bitches: for once, Sarah is the one getting all cussy and indignant, and I’m the one who’s feeling more mellow and contemplative.

One of the more irritating yet predictable reactions I’ve seen after the whole Cassie Edwards kerfuffle has been the idea that because it concerned romance novels, the issues surrounding unattributed usage don’t matter because, hey, romance novels are recycled drivel to begin with. They’re all the same, anyway, the argument goes; How can you even tell one of them has copied another book? None of them express a single original thought.

I saw this in an extended slapfight in one of the many, many comment threads when the Edwards story first broke (I can’t, alas, remember which thread it was), in which some clueless twat attempted to claim that all romance novels plagiarized to one extent or another (OH EM GEE THE UNORIGINALITY IT BURNSES US PRECIOUSSSSS). And I saw it again when I read Jane Henderson’s comment ("In the romance genre, it’s sometimes hard to tell one author from the next") on Urban Fantasy Land.

There seems to be some confusion regarding the status of ideas in copyright law. You can’t copyright a plot or an idea. You can only copyright the specific expression of that plot or idea as recorded in some sort of tangible form. Think about the nightmare of attempting to nail down and legislate a plot or idea for a story. How specific would you have to be before you could declare something unique enough to copyright?

“An angst-ridden story about a vampire falling in love with a human.”
Dude, if you can copyright that and collect a small fee every time somebody published that story, you could have your own giant pool of gold coins to swim in, Scrooge McDuck-stylee. (Side note: doesn’t that sound like a painful idea to you? Because it always has to me.)

“An angst-ridden story in a contemporary setting about a vampire warrior falling in love with a human woman.”
OK, that’s a little bit more specific, but c’mon. (Also: goddamn, think of all those germs on all those coins. There is a reason why we call it “filthy rich.")

“An angst-ridden story in a contemporary setting about a vampire warrior with superfluous Hs in his name falling in love with a human woman who eventually heals his pain.”
You guys know exactly what I’m talking about now, but really, it’s entirely conceivable that somebody, absent any influence from JR Ward, might write a vampire romantic comedy about a vampire named Hhoratio who used to be a warrior but is now a chartered accountant for Dark Yet Comic Reasons falling in love with the babe in IT, who, as it turns out, is a former superhero but turned to systems administration to hide from her Dark Yet Comic past. (I suppose you can circumvent the germ thing if you insist only on newly-minted gold coins. Still sounds horribly painful, though. Gold is heavy, and hard compared to our tender, tender flesh.)

And going back to an old point I’ve made: Yanking plots, plot elements and ideas may not be illegal, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re ethically in the clear. Novelty of ideas is paramount in academic research, which is why using somebody’s framework or idea without acknowledgment is a form of plagiarism. Fiction, however, has a lot more leeway. Academic research is concerned with exploring a new idea, refuting an old one or expanding on the body of knowledge of an existing one; fiction is more about grabbing an idea, making the idea your little bitch and creating an entertaining story along the way. Not to say there haven’t been books that were rip-offs, but you have to work a lot harder before people legitimately cry foul. So yes, that means plots and premises sometimes become repetitive. It can sometimes mean they share significant elements in common. But fiction is about the individual re-working and expression of those ideas; God is quite literally in the details for this one. Henderson, in my opinion, was over-reaching juuuuuust a tad in her statement that Marr’s work was a knock-off of Hamilton’s Fairies who Fuck Merry Gentry series; God knows her assertions made the article much more scandalous. I mean, seriously, if we’re going to say “books about human females being tempted by fairies” is an idea unique enough to engender infringement issues, J.R.R. Tolkien’s estate might as well sue every high fantasy novel, ever.

In fact, I came up with a table showing you how repetitious plots and premises can get in fiction. It’s by no means comprehensive--I got tired partway through (and I also didn’t bother covering mysteries, horror or SF)--but I think you get the idea.

Courtesy of Jeaniene Frost who sent me much linkage, avast! A story so delicious, you’ll stick your own foot in your mouth.

Reporter Jane Henderson of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch posted on her St. Louis Today book blog an entry that has made a lot of people reach for their high blood pressure medicine. In her entry Laurell K. Hamilton knock-off for teens? she discusses a galley she received of Melissa Marr’s Ink Exchange, a YA paranormal novel about a teen who gets a tattoo and finds herself involved with the Faerie Court. Marr also wrote the highly acclaimed Wicked Lovely.

Henderson finds the similarities between the book - despite not actually having read Marr’s novel - and Hamilton’s Merry Gentry story startling.

Herein begins what I think of as The Hat Trick of Stupid Things Written in One Entry and One Comment. Hold onto your feet, folks.

Of course the cliche is that ‘imitation is the sincerest form of flattery’ but where does flattery end and copyright infringement begin? The book’s jacket even looks like the photos on Hamilton’s books.

Shit, if plots involving faeries are all infringing upon one another, especially in the legally sharp mind of that reporter, imagine the future wasteland of legal action to be enjoyed by each and every story featuring a vampire: “Your character sucks blood! MY Character sucks blood! YOU SUCK AND YOU ARE GOING DOWN, BEEEEYATCH!”

And the covers are similar? They do resemble the Jean Butt trend - except that Marr’s cover isn’t a jean butt so much as a shoulder. And doesn’t resemble the Hamilton cover as much as it does other YA books attempting to market a seductive tale to the YA market.

But wait we’re not done. Not satisfied to toss around the words “copyright” and “infringement” with such abandon as to make a barrister blush, Henderson goes on to say:

Another issue: A lot of parents might not think this series should be marketed to 12-year-olds, as it apparently will be. There’s a lot of difference between a 17-year-old girl and a 12-year-old girl.

On the other hand, most of the popular series being marketed to teen girls seem to involve beauty, sex and lots of designer purses. Maybe fantasy tattoos and paranormal love interests are no worse.  I’m not suggesting that books lead girls down the path to teen pregnancy. But with the sexualization of girls starting so young in all facets of culture, should parents speak up about what they see?  Thoughts?

Wow, did you miss that jump? Let’s recap in slow motion like we’re a sports show: This book with a 17 year-old protagonist may be marketed to 12 year old girls, just like many other popular series for young readers that feature slightly older protagonists. Speeding up past beauty! Sex! Designer purses! Fantasy Tattoos and paranormal love interests! And then we come to a SCREECHING HALT AT TEEN PREGNANCY! Whoa!

Holy. Shit.

Man, that was a Could Have Been An Interesting Question About Teen Sexuality blindsided by some WTF-tastic non sequiturs. Oooh, ooh can I try? Can I? Here’s mine! “Are book covers for YA novels more sexy and dark in imagery now? Yup. Sure are. Have prom dresses been skimpy and over-sexualized since I went prom dress shopping 15 years ago? Sure have! So are YA novel covers reflecting a sexualization of young people that’s been a standard for years? Possibly - but then, the novels often depict consequences or at least some healthy dose of reality for that sexual exploration, whereas mere images just contribute to the glamour of it. But then, I actually read YA novels, so I don’t know what I’m talking about at all.”

And the finale to this jaw drop of a newspaper book blog entry: Lindsay York Levack of the blog UrbanFantasyland sounds off like merde and mon dieu on Henderson’s request for “Thoughts?” by nailing a 5 point list that knocks the extraneous bullshit off Henderson’s entry, and addresses the points Henderson attempts to make about YA, sexuality, cover images, faerie tales, and writing. York Levack ends with a pointed, “Do your homework.” Well played, Ms. York Levack.

Melissa Marr, the author, commented on that entry and said that, surprisingly, she did have input to the cover art, and thinks that it’s an “iconographic image that ties to the plot.” Further, Marr says,

Interestingly, the idea that a fully clad, not sexualized girl with wings is similar to LKH’s covers does confuse me a bit. No bare midriff or legs, no scanty attire–instead it’s a face and upper back . . . Hmm. To each his/her own, I guess.

Another well played for you, Ms. Marr.

And for you, Ms. Henderson: NAUGHTY CORNER! No Cookie! Why?

We have two titles to give out today, one that is long overdue.

To Sula, who identified in one shot the correct answer to the Help a Bitch Out Regency Time Travel - With Boobies. Well played, Sula! Kneel, and receive your Smart Bitch Title™.

And to Diane, who correctly identified this week’s Guess That Lonely Heart - indeed, it was Jill Levin from Lorna Michaels’ Season of Light. A Harlequin SuperRomance featuring.... JEWS! WOOO! Kneel, Diane, and arise with Sula a member of the Smart Bitch Peerage.