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

I meant to link to this yesterday, but what with thinking intently about schwanstuckers and hoohahs and euphemisms therewith, I plumb forgot.

Anyway, Christina Dodd, Connie Brockway, Elizabeth Bevarly, Teresa Medeiros, Eloisa James and (allegedly, though she has yet to post) Lisa Kleypas have banded together to create a blog called Squawk Radio. They’re smart and funny, and they have the most hilarious hen backgrounds. Sarah can’t stand Eloisa James, tee hee hee.

And now I present to you.....

By the Power of Greyskull.... I HAVE NOTHING TO SAYYYYY!

Random thought: Anyone else think He-Man shooting that “lightning” from his “sword” at poor Cringer who then turns into a raging beast looks somewhat homoerotic and bestial, well, just flat-out WRONG?

I love how this page has rapidly tackled the more sultry and scintillating issues at work in romance novels - be specific, we’re talkin’ nookie! Serious nookie! I’m still giggling over the phrase “chocolate starfish.”

But - my IT department? They will be looking at the log files of accessed pages and thinking I am one depraved little woman.

So I had an idea: not that Candy or you all or even I can refrain from saying “big honking cock” or even that we should - but let us come (huh) up (huh) with a master (huh) list of euphamisms for our various actions, lest someone be unable to access our site due to our propensity for naughty talk. I figure between our collective readership of romance novels past, present and future, we can come up with plenty o’ phrases to refer to any and all sex acts.

Except that one, you know, with the goat. 

Hey, all this talk about massive schlongs has made me think about a related issue: When did oral sex become de rigueur for romance novels? Because it wasn’t always this way. I remember reading many, many books in the Good Old Days in which the heroine was lucky to have her nipple lapped at before Lord Massivecockershire rammed it home. I remember reading Special Gifts by Anne Stuart when I was 14 years old and nearly passing out because it had this incredibly graphic oral sex scene in it. I went for a while without encountering any until I picked up a Lisa Kleypas novel. Nowadays, when I pick up a romance novel, I expect to read some oral lovin’ if there’s any sex in it at all--to the extent that I feel as if something’s lacking when the heroine doesn’t get any head.

Anyone want to weigh in on this? Is my memory about little to no oral sex in old romances wrong? Was I so young that I missed the act entirely because I didn’t understand what was being described? Was oral sex the old anal sex, as in “naughty things the author is not allowed to write about because we think the public will be grossed out by its ickiness”?

So Connie Brockway is migrating from historical romances to contemporaries. Am I the only reader who has enjoyed her work in the past (I have three of her books on my keeper shelf) who’s not at all upset about this?

Here’s the thing: while I have enjoyed many of Brockway’s books, and she was an author on my autobuy list for about 5 years, I have always thought her voice was very, very modern. It didn’t bug me at all until the Bridal series was released. I read them both, and the characters and tone struck me as so modern and not-British (the characters seemed like Americans in period drag) that I gave up on Brockway entirely. This is by no means her fault, because I don’t think she has changed; I have. I have her McClairen’s Isle books still TBR, and every time I keep passing them over for something else when the time comes for me to pick something new to read.

Now that she’s writing contemporaries, though, I think I’ll have to check out her new releases again.

Monica Jackson takes on some of the covers for the top 100 romance novels at Barnes and Noble and Amazon. I laughed until I coughed. Sarah and I may be out of a job if she ever decides to turn cover snarking into a regular feature on her site.

(OK, not out of a job. Out of a hobby. A hobby that’s generated an amazing number of visitors.)