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

Su Blackwell is probably my favorite of the artists. The Mad Hatter’s party is hard to beat, but so is the flock of butterflies exploding from the page.

Thomas Allen cuts up pulp covers and gives the tableaux even more humor and drama. The one below is my favorite.

Daniel Essig creates intricate sculptures using books. My favorites are probably his bridge books.

Nicola Dale cuts up the pages of books to create intricate sculptures, reminiscent of Su Blackwell’s work.

Georgia Russell cuts up book covers (and sheet music, and photographs), throwing the titles and themes of the books into stark relief.

Cara Barer takes old, outdated books, distorts them using water and other means, turns them into sculptures and then photographs them. Some of them verge on incoherence, but many of them are intricate and astonishing. The two pieces below are “Butterfly 2” and “Snowflake,” respectively.

Entry #1 Frankie O’Malley

Frankie O’Malley’s giant vulva sculptures were to make her the next Georgia O’Keefe. She couldn’t believe it when CLOCK magazine decided to cover her newest exhibit. But when BMX champion Maddox Raine saw the graceful curves of Frankie’s biggest vulva outside the art museum, he simply thought it was a wicked awesome ramp.  Suddenly CLOCK magazine has a more interesting article than just an upcoming artist.  Frankie hated him for mocking her art and stealing her publicity, but her friends knew the truth.  When Maddox rode his bike into the vulva he also rode into the artist’s heart.  Now her two best friends, estranged cousins, and precocious daughter must convince the artist and the biker of their love.  They set-up an online profile at Bikers Anonymous for ‘Pudenda-tascular Artist’ and chat up Maddox to convince him that Frankie feigned her hate.  But what happens when Maddox’s scheming fiancée, an Olympic swimmer, discovers their scheme?  Will her amorous flood coldly leave Frankie without satisfaction?  See THE VULVA WAY, in theaters this summer, to discover the climax of Frankie and Maddox’s love.  It’s a completely original film of bikes, vulvas, art, and meddlesome others sure to be the hit of the summer.

Entry #2 The Heart Shaped Box by Cella deVenus

Vanessa couldn’t believe the stipulation her uncle had left in his will! In order to collect her inheritance she would have to bike across Italy carrying a priceless art piece on her person—The Heart Shaped Box. Little does she know that the fellow cyclist she joins up with along the way is Manen Gorged, a man more interested in getting his fingers on the secret treasure in her folds than the Italian countryside. But he’ll reassess his feelings when, after an accident, he must plunge himself into the hidden cleft known as Aphrodite’s Flower to save Vanessa.

Cella deVenus spreads herself wide over every page in her first novel. Her descriptions of weeping grottos, dewy mounds, moist caves, and worshipping at sacred altars, coupled with glistening, firm gripping prose will have you aching for more. Ride this warm velvety road romance today!

“Tight, slick passages!” says Smart Bitches.

Entry #3 The Money Shot

Mimosa Pale, princess of Unholaan, is royally pissed. Named for a sissy drink and forbidden from the sun and anything fun, she slips her palace guards, dresses down and poses as a photographer’s assistant. Not just any photographer, but Jedi-journalist Jatti Hapy, the pedaling prince of the paparazzi, the man who’s made her every move a misery.

An artist with vast vision, Jatti does not agree to stay in Unholaan forever, just long enough to score a snap of the mysterious Miss Mimosa’s pristine pink perfection. Once People pays him, he’ll plunk down the cash for a camper and canvas the countryside in search of hard copy and put his Payless-shod feet out to pasture. But when a crazy mixed-up kid who doesn’t know a camera from a clusterbomb catastrophically confuses his chemicals, he cottons on his cutie is not who she claimed. And could it be? The pouting princess has been under his proboscis the whole time!

The Money Shot, a rollicking intergalactic romantic comedy inspired by Roman Holiday--- only with bikes and spaceships instead of scooters ---will tickle you from your tonsils to your toenails. Buy it at bookstores from Beirut to Bangor!

Entry #4 Cross Cuntry

Cherry Stone doesn’t think art and Mormonism are exclusive. She’s promoting premarital virginity by riding her VulvaCycle in an all-female, coast-to-coast bike race.

Actor Rod Hardy needs some attention. Wearing a wig, he’s riding as Lola Lamb on his bike, the Trojan Horse. Cherry never saw a horse with no head and such prominent ribs, but it is aerodynamic.

When “Lola” and Cherry collide, “Lola” offers to help repair Cherry’s damaged petals. Lesbians are an abomination to Mormons, but Cherry feels something for her butch competitor that she never felt for her Mormon fiancé. Maybe it’s just appreciation for “Lola’s” facility with tools.

Rod’s lust is crimped by having to tuck in his bike shorts, but he manages to convince Cherry that girly action won’t violate her vow. If “Lola” helps Cherry win the race, Cherry will let “Lola” taste her juices. Then Rod’s agent calls. Provided Rod wins the race and unmasks, he’ll get the TV condom campaign he wants.

While Cherry lubes her chain, Rod falls in love. If she wins the race, can he win her heart? Will he have to get a sex change and embrace polygamy? Find out, in Cross Cuntry.

Entry #5 Loose Lips

Coming soon: “Loose Lips” Starring Vajayjay Loving and Peter Cuntsmore. 

Loosinda Massengill, the critically acclaimed sculptor of the 10 foot tall vagina called “The Love Cave”, is commissioned to create a new master piece for the city’s new museum with Dicky Sackson, a new up in coming artist who’s art centers around bicycle seats and limp chains.  Dicky insists that they combine their distinctive styles to create a new symbolic statue that represents love, cycling, and brazillian waxed cooches.  He wants to put Loosinda’s Love Cave lips against his banana seat. 

But Loosinda has taken a vow to never allow a banana to slip against her lips.  As they toil in the workroom day in and day out, slowly Loosinda allows Dicky to touch her vadge and mold it, work it and even…set it on his racing seat!  Dicky wins Loosinda over with his knowledge of bicycles, sense of humor and vulva themed limericks.  It’s a special moment when Dicky opens up and shows Loosinda his purple helmet.  The training wheels come off and Loosinda rides Dicky like a Schwinn!  But will their love survive?  Will their sculpture “Ride and Grind” impress the museum committee? Watch and see!

Are you befuddled by the way payment and income in the publishing world work? Jeaniene Frost breaks it down bit by bit and explains the whole process, debunking the “everyone is rolling in dough” myth as well as the “you’ll never make a dime” myth as well. Thanks to Shae for the link.

From the “Get to the point already please?” department, MadMiss forwarded me a link to a recent article in The Times Online (UK) that wonders “why efforts to take romance out of its ghetto haven’t worked.”

You can hear the creaking of my jaw as it drops open at the opening paragraph:

Publishers are often seen as venal; desperate for sales, indifferent to art, puffing their fiction lists with substandard titles of proven mass appeal. And yet, it is not easy to sell books. A willingness to peddle repetitive rubbish isn’t enough; our vain, trash-loving, elitist souls also want to be fed; we need to feel that we are discerning readers. So the publishers must delicately exploit the middle ground between high and low.

Oh, for headdesk’s sake. The writer, one Lidija Haas, writes, “the essential story remains that of a plucky young woman, poor, or at least a misfit in some way, who struggles to make her way in the world, facing loneliness and adversity, before at last being rewarded with a conventional happy ending: successful love, and perhaps babies.” And thus I suspect Ms. Haas wouldn’t know a romance novel if she tripped over one and banged her own head on her own desk so as to empathize with mine. With such marvelously sweeping statements as “happy endings are now risky” and valuing them is a form of myopia, and “one thing holding popular romance back may be that it is aimed so explicitly at women” Haas’ article reviews five novels from Short Books, a UK publishing house that is better known for non-fiction.

It’s always nice to know that there remains a market for reviews of romance that treat the genre seriously and don’t try to lament its position in the greater scale of taste or sneer at it while doggedly trying to hold the genre to the same standards of other works of fiction. The books Haas profiles take place in some very neat locations, certainly ones that are rare for romance, such as early twentieth-century China and 1000ad Iceland (yet another clue that Haas isn’t too familiar with the actual genre).

What struck MadMiss and me as well was the sort of “Get to the point, please?” element of the article. MadMiss said, “Do they want a more broadly appealing romance novel? Do they want to turn romances into open ended novels..??? Do they place anything that has a compelling story and protaganists out of the norm [combined with a] Happy Ending in genres other than Romance?” Good questions. I have one more: anyone read these books? Are they in fact romances?

The book developed like a fascinating game of what-if: what if a woman could make her way into society in the off-season by assuming a connection to a family so scattered and fractured across the country that one person’s say-so was good enough for the rest? What if a heroine showed open and deliberate ambition for money, and demonstrated a knowing appreciation for sex despite a deeper-set fear of it? What if erotic elements were introduced to a historical romance, like bondage, domination, submission, and role playing, without those elements taking over the entire story? And what if the hero was really yummy, too?

I was flying through this story when I read it, and I can tell you where I was (the NJ Transit train in the Jersey wetlands) and what I was doing (crying) when the story fractured for me. I was so happy with so much of it, and the last tenth of it, the wrapping up of the ending and the explanation of past trauma, was so crushing that I was left despondent while the characters went off and embraced each other and their happy ending. Obviously I don’t want to give away the finale, but I’ve had a very, very difficult time getting one image out of my head, and that image is so painful that it’s spectre haunts the happily-ever-after and causes me to doubt the provenance of it, and, I know this is silly, causes me to resent the heroine for unloading that painful story on me so that I could deal with the fallout while she goes and boinks Hart into epilogues of sunsets and sparkly happiness. The resolution of the mystery within the story was a little too pat, and too easily blamed on a stock character who I wish had demonstrated more nuance, especially next to the multi-dimensional hero and heroine.  And the “Why are you so sad?” “Oh, fine I’ll tell you!” Therapy Ending just about sent me over the edge when I read the final pages. Their happy ending came at a cost for me as a reader and I wish I didn’t have to pay it.

That said, there is no doubt that Dahl wields some serious talent, both in her use of imagery (Janet quoted one scene I read at least three times to re-experience its art) and her development of fascinating characters who grab you by the chin and yell, “Pay attention! I’m different and I’m awesome!” Too often I find myself reading historical romance characters that I can classify as ‘Yet-Another’ : yet another ingenue, yet another tortured rake, yet another drunken abusive parent. Dahl demonstrates her familiarity with historical tropes and the confidence and skill to play with them in such a manner that her name is one I’ll recognize and gravitate to every time I see it on a bookshelf. Even if the heroine ripped my heart out and handed it to me, and even if I was pissed as hell at the heroine for doing so, I have to give Dahl credit: she made me feel heights of benevolent pleasure for the protagonists, and agony over their pasts. To borrow a phrase from the esteemed theologians All 4 One, “She’s got skills. Makes me wanna scooby-doo.”

According to Bitchery reader Elizabeth, Gaia Online members can receive avatars as part of their membership, and then have the option to decorate them with accessories. The monthly collectibles are “rare items you can get only be donating money to the website.”

Elizabeth tells me there’s multiple poses should you wish to indulge in the romance avatar:

...along with poses showing you holding a romance novel, you can give your avatar glistening skin (I shit you NOT), a “romantic breeze” (rose petals"), a “portrait of passion” (an interesting border), a “romantic sunset” background, wild windswept hair, or, the BEST PART: you either get Beresford, a “lusty” regency-era scoundrel with shirt wide open and feathered hair, leaning over your avatar, Fabio-style, or Heloise, a female character with heavy bosoms who kneels at your avatar’s feet and looks up adoringly.

There’s an image that accompanied the newsletter which you can see here (caution: popup), and while it’s not entirely a bad pastiche of romance covers from Days Gone By, there’s a few errors that betray the artist as not a TRUE fan of romance.

Nice nuclear explosion and accompanying phallic lighthouse on the parapet. But no nuclear explosion would be so close to the hero’s posterior, lest the art send a subtle message that Sir Beresford has a bit of a gas problem and a predilection for beans. Further, Beresford’s shirt is unbuttoned AND untucked. Impossible! FOR SHAME GAIA ARTISTS. FOR SHAME.

Then there’s the heroine. She’s bent over backwards, which is good, and she’s wearing a shockingly unnatural shade of pink - also good - but she doesn’t have requisite o-face. She looks...repulsed. Bitter, even. Like she’s looking into the sun while eating sour gummy worms. Her clavicle is about to eat her, if the ruffle doesn’t get her first. And given the position of her back, her hips, and her legs, I’m not sure she has a pelvis. This will make the red hot lovin’ something of a challenge.

I have no idea what to say about the smaller icons pictured on the right, except that the one with the bloody eye patch looks disturbingly merry and is wearing a LOT of eyeliner.

Anyone out there a Gaia member? Which one are you, the dude or the lady? 

The degree to which authors in many genres are asked to serve as spokespeople for their books, marketing themselves as much as the book itself, is profoundly, in my opinion, bizarre to the point of being fucked up. But in the latter part of the last century, the romance novel authors who received the lion’s share of press were also those who lived to some degree that opulent fantasy lifestyle - or appeared to, anyway. Barbara Cartland and Danielle Steel come to mind. One dripping with pink and pearls, the other pictured in jewels and couture in her posh flat with art in the background.

So if authors are called upon to market themselves as well as the work, is it such a jump for a publisher to have a preference in conduct for that author? I’m not saying it’s appropriate or that it’s not profoundly insulting, but in the current marketing atmosphere, it doesn’t seem like this clause is coming out of nowhere.

But on the other hand, shouldn’t a publisher know better than the cast all its authors according to a stereotypical mold according to genre? Do the mystery writers have to wear trenchcoats and carry magnifying glasses when they go on tour? Are the romance writers going to get upper east side apartments or at the least a big string of pearls (literally, not figuratively!)? What about erotica writers? A no clothing clause? Holquist mentioned the same in her email to me, and I shudder to ponder the erotica author clause.

The Guardian article mocks the entire concept of the clause based on the number of titty-licious stars whose fame has led to contracts for children’s books, from Jordan to Madonna. But the part that really caught my eye:

Publishers often flirt with the idea that sanitisation equals success, presumably copying an American business model, and this is utterly, utterly wrong.

Agreed, ma’am. Utterly agreed. Meet you at the pub.