by Candy • Thursday, November 13, 2008 at 02:00 AM
When Sarah and I e-mail each other, independently and within minutes of each other, and pick exactly the same poem as our top choice for our Burma Sauce contest, you know it’s got to be good. And really, who can resist gratuitous parodies of The Eye of Argon? Not us.
So the wining entry, from Kaishai:
When Grignr wants
To bone a lass
He spills this on
Her rounded mounds of globular pale posterior flesh shining like unto two grand luminescent moons only slightly less craggy.
Burma Sauce.
Kaishai, and let me know your address. The $20 giftcard should be winging its way to you soon.
Kaishai’s literary genius aside, Sarah and I voted to include these poems as strong contenders and worthy of honorary mention:
LadyRhian:
The only sauce
I dare give father
Since he began
to dom in leather
Burma Sauce
Jennie:
About those Bhrothers, oh so fine…
Steamy sex scenes – make them all mine!
Wherever their Bhlack Dhaggers go
Thoughtful Bhrothers in the khnow bring
Bhurma Shauce!
Sphinx:
His lady shied
From backdoor blisses
But who’s to blame
If his aim misses?
Burma Sauce
WryHag:
See him wink?
You get the point.
Sauce it up
And hear him oink!
Burma Sauce
Amy Lane:
If there’s burning
In your anus
A drop of sauce
Will ease the pain-us
Burma Sauce
Thanks to all of you who played along! If there were ever any doubt about the ability of the Bitchery to come up with an inordinate number of jokes about anal sex in doggerel form, well, those fears have been put to rest.
by SB Sarah • Thursday, November 13, 2008 at 01:15 AM
I have a few rules for gift giving, the first being that I put a good amount of thought into the gift I give, and the second that I do not ever, EVER give someone something that suggests they need improvement, or that there is something wrong with them. I don’t like gifts that might possibly hurt feelings, and I’m a big fan of the non-tschotske gift, because gifts that ultimately take up space and require dusting are not necessarily gifts I enjoy as a recipient.
I love experience gifts, too - for Hubby’s birthday one year I drafted an itinerary of all things he loves, from donuts for breakfast to baseball games (and the only team at home that day was a few hours away, so I incorporated driving on country roads in our convertible as part of the gift) to good food and wine at dinner that evening. I packed a change of clothes and surprised him with the dinner, if I remember correctly.
Either way, I love gift giving, even when the budget is tight and the options are limited. So Tuesday’s Publisher’s Lunch caught my eye as they discussed Random House’s new campaign to promote books as holiday gifts this year. In a mandate from CEO Markus Dohle, a task force (NOOOOOOO NOT A TASK FORCE NOOOOOOOOO!) was formed to create the “got milk campaign for books,” encouraging buyers to give books as gifts this year.
The ad campaign will reach the NYT Book Review, the New Yorker, and a crapload of other places, including Facebook and YouTube.
Smart, thinks Sarah. Very smart. But hmm. Book giving, as we discussed here when I brought up books that provide comfort and respite from difficult times, can be very challenging if one doesn’t know the taste of the gift recipient. As Jennifer Crusie once said to me during an interview for The Book (which isn’t due out until April 2009 so alas, I can’t plug our book as The Perfect Gift unless you’re buying for Mother’s Day. Or, “Your Mother” Day) there are some readers who absolutely cannot suspend disbelief for some circumstances in a romance. Some readers will not stand for paranormal activity, and others can’t handle historical romance for other reasons, but the point is apt: it can be tough to pick the right book, let alone the right romance for someone if you don’t know them well. You have to know what plots they are willing to suspend disbelief for, and which they are not. I don’t know that much about many of the people on my gift list, really, and their grasp and rejection of various realities and fictional worlds is certainly not part of my getting-to-know-you questioning.
I have bought books with varying levels of success for people in my world, including Hubby who is a rather picky reader, and my father who only likes books that weigh about 5 lbs. and are about the intricate minutiae of dead people, preferably Civil War generals. But if I were to apply Random House’s “Books = gifts” campaign to the romance genre, what books would I pick? Are there guaranteed romances that make great gifts for people, from those you know intimately to those you work with? Hell, can you buy a romance for people you work with or is that sexual harassment given the likelihood of nookification within the cover?
Plus there’s the added danger of the attitude toward romance. Even the fans of another much-maligned genre whip out their battering rod of condescension when examining romance within the sci-fi genre, so giving another person a romance novel as a gift might backfire in a multitude of ways - most of which will reveal more about the recipient than the gifter, if you ask me. (Note to io9: people whose genre is dismissed as a house built of Spock ears shouldn’t throw stones. Just sayin’.)
I can think of specific people whom I would happily mail a romance as a gift, among them my sister, who reads romance, and several of my friends, who read it as well.
But while I’ve been sitting here pondering which romance novels I’d give as gifts to people who may not read romance, I’ve come back again and again to the same thought. I’d be more likely to give bookstore gift certificates than actual books, allowing the recipient a true blissful experience, more potent than one of those massages with the hot flat rocks: the gift of guilt-free book shopping, book selecting, and book owning.
by SB Sarah • Wednesday, November 12, 2008 at 03:15 AM
In a failing economy, it becomes essential to any business to recycle and to seek alternative means to cut costs. Such as? Stock imagery! Hey, when you find a hot image with expansive man-titty, you work that for all it is worth. For example?
But wait, there’s more! It seems Silhouette has discovered that they can also use all the heads that were chopped off from all those headless cover illustrations, and invite those poor lost craniums to gallivant about their covers. How charitable! How fortunate, particularly for Bonnie Vanak!
Witness the evidence:
by SB Sarah • Wednesday, November 12, 2008 at 01:55 AM
The new design for the Romance Writer’s Report, official publication of the RWA, is pretty freaking sweet. I’ve taken to calling the issues by the stock image used on the cover (which is usually overlaid with text from a female writer of romance literature, like Austen, or, in the case of this month’s issue, Bronte) so the following commentary is from the Fishnets Issue.
There’s two articles of note that I wanted to give a hearty ‘WOO HOO!’ about. First, Carrie Lofty penned a rather lovely article entitled “The Trials and Triumphs of Unusual Historicals,” and aside form the general rocking-ness of the article itself, many of the individuals she cites as sources for her examination of alternative settings for historical romance are .... bloggers. WORD TO YOU LOFTY LIKE WHOA. Jayne from Dear Author, KristieJ from Ramblings on Romance, and Azteclady, who blogs over at Karen Knows Best are all cited, with URLs, alongside authors like Gaelen Foley, Jade Lee, and Sandra Schwab, which makes me so giddy I squealed while reading. Way to go, ladies, and well done Lofty, using readers with big voices to discuss a topic we frequently debate: the future and potential of romances that aren’t set in the Regency - something that readers often mention they want more of, myself included.
Then, Eilis Flynn wrote an article titled Snappy Comebacks, or, “What to say when some douchenozzle disses your romance again.” I mention it because the original article which inspired this one was published in the RWA eNotes, which, impartially speaking, is the best damn e-newsletter in the history of the universe, bar none.
The article is a hoot because it reveals the technicolor crap comments authors have heard, from party guests to coworkers to media. I was particularly enamored of this one:
Patricia Rice refused to be manipulated by a radio host. “I had a radio interview once at 6:00 in the morning,” she explains, “and when the smarmy host asked if I’d read a passage from one of ‘those scenes,’ I read one describing the hero’s hand.”
I hope the hero had big hands. With long, firm fingers.
But Michele Stegman, author of Fortune’s Foe, makes a point that I hadn’t thought of - and I spend a good amount of time telling people which lake to jump in should they be dissing the romance:
“...When you meet a new couple, one of the first things asked is often, ‘How did you two meet?’ You already know the couple is together. What you’re hoping for is a good story.... In a romance, you always get a good story.”
It’s a nice spin on Nora Roberts’ perennial assertions that romance is about the journey to the happy ending, not the happy ending itself, and focusing on the ending discounts that journey. Way to go Flynn and Lofty for a job well done.
by SB Sarah • Tuesday, November 11, 2008 at 05:52 PM
From the Professors Brilliant comes a Call for Papers. Alas, I cannot participate, as it starts on the first night of Passover, and if I left RT early and skipped the PAGEANT OF MAN TITTY for Pesach, you can understand that New Orleans is not among my ports of breadless call either. Otherwise I’d be there with beads on.
But if you’re looking for a scholarly opportunity or a place to send a proposal last minute, have a look.
PCA / ACA National Conference: New Orleans, April 8-11, 2009
(Conference info: http://pcaaca.org/conference/national.php)
CALL FOR PAPERS: Romance Fiction
We are considering proposals for individual papers, sessions organized around a theme, and “special panels” featuring authors or editors. Sessions are scheduled in one-hour slots, ideally with four papers or speakers per standard session.
Should you or any of your colleagues be interested in submitting a proposal or have any questions, please contact one or both of the area chairs (see below). Please feel free to forward, cross-post, or link to this call for papers.
We are interested in any and all topics about or related to romance fiction: all genres, all kinds, and all eras.
Some possible topics (although we are not limited to these):
--Individual Novels or Authors
--New Directions in Romance Scholarship (historicist, formalist, post-colonial, queer-theoretical, etc.)
--Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Romance, and same-sex love within predominantly heterosexual texts
--Genre-Bending and Genre-Crossing authors and texts (erotic romance, SF romance, chick-lit, urban fantasy, highbrow / lowbrow crossover texts, etc.)
--African-American, Latina, Asian, and other Multicultural romance
--Young Adult Romance and Chick-lit (series, novels, authors, communities)
--Category Romance (its past history, recent and forthcoming lines, changing demographics, etc.)
--History of Romance Fiction and its major subgenres (major authors and texts, turning points in the development of the genre or any subgenre)
--Romance and Region: places, histories, mythologies, traditions
--Romance on the World Stage (texts in translation; romance manga; non-Western writers, readers, and publishers; local, national, and multinational publishing)
--Romance communities and the Romance Industry: authors, readers, publishers, websites, blogs
If you are a romance author or editor and are interested in speaking on your own work or on developments in the romance genre, please contact us!
As we did last year in San Francisco, the Romance Fiction area will meet in a special Open Forum to discuss upcoming conferences, work in progress, and the future of the field. Of particular interest this year: the new International Association for the Study of Popular Romance (IASPR) with its affiliated scholarly publication, Journal of Popular Romance Studies (JPRS)!
Submit a one-page (150-250 word) proposal or abstract (via regular mail or e-mail) by November 15, 2008, to the Area Chairs in Romance:
Eric Selinger
Dept. of English
DePaul Univ.
802 West Belden Ave.
Chicago, IL 60614
773-325-4475
eselinge@depaul.edu
Darcy Martin
Women’s Studies
East Tennessee State University
(423) 439-6311
martindj@etsu.edu
