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

Thanks to the many, many people who forwarded me the Fail Blog’s salute to three-handed romance. I have a special love of that cover - that chick is my avatar. Why? The only thing better than having a third hand would be the magical ability to conjure up more hours in the day. Three hands?! OMG PLZ.

So! A contest is born! Take that fabulous cover and LOL-caption it. Certainly we can do better than “FAIL,” because certainly, while it’s an artistic fail, as a matter of promotional opportunity, for Christina Dodd, it was utterly full of win.

Your quest: take the cover, and LOL Caption it. You have 24 hours, and can post them in the comments or post links to an image hosted elsewhere. If you do post them here, please don’t make the image more than 325 pixels wide, please. Vote for your favorites in the comments, please, and then we’ll have a vote-off for the top 3 over the weekend.

Grand Prize? The book itself, of course! One pristine, fabulous copy of the three-handed woman adorning the cover of Christina Dodd’s Castles in the Air. Second prize: $20 to the online bookstore of the winner’s choice, and third prize will be $10 to the online bookstore of the winner’s choice.

Ready, set, go! Copy of the art is below the fold for your downloading and LOLing pleasure.

Over at the LA Times book blog, Carolyn Kellogg examines the dilemma of cover art, and making sure that literary fiction novels sell ... perhaps at the expense of being taken seriously from a visual perspective.

Citing evidence such as GalleyCat’s side by side comparison of Sue Hepworth’s Zuzu’s Petals, and Bookninja’s contest to recast classic novels to appeal to popular markets like “romance, chick lit, thriller, scifi, fantasy, celebrity kids, etc”, Kellogg’s entry follows a 7 October article in The Independent that questions whether authors are being asked to “dumb down” their work to appeal to a larger readership.

For those of you observing Yom Kippur tonight, have an easy fast. 

I wanted to draw attention to Jane’s chilling post on the meaning of voting in the context of the status of individuals in other countries.

As for me: I already voted. (Yes, huge relief. PHEW.) I don’t as a rule trust the voting machines in any location, particularly since every time I’ve voted there’s been a different machine from a different manufacturer. So I am a permanent absentee in the state of New Jersey (sounds like a paranormal romance plot, doesn’t it? Permanently absent, but still there). My #2 pencil and I voted this weekend. One down, only a few million to go.

Back to your regularly scheduled romance novel banter. 

I try to make sweet monkey love to my treadmill in the afternoons when I can, and while doing so I am usually reading and half-listening to whatever music I find on the upteen-thirty music video channels on my cable lineup.

And what to the corner of my eye should appear but a video directed by...Stephenie Meyer? From a genre I call “whine-rock” comes Jack’s Mannequin, and a host of rather obvious images that are the visual equivalent over overly-sweet candy. Hearts! Lots of them! Oy, says I. People’s article has a quote from the band’s singer-keyboardist stating that the video has a whimsical, other-worldliness to it.” Oy, again, says I.

I don’t have a lot of time at the ‘puter to do the full on Google-Fu, but I’m pretty sure that the floating pale corpse-like person near the end is the actress from Twilight.

Wanna see? Have a look & listen:

Now - the real question: what romance authors ought to be directing music videos? I mean, come on now. Five minutes with the Author Talk ladies and Aerosmith would have a KICKIN’ video.