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

Above and beyond the Hell that is moving, please note that the following has happened to Candy in the span of the last 12 hours:

- While installing her DSL modem last night, she found that not only would the DSL modem NOT connect to the Internet, but the phone line somehow got thoroughly fucked over in the process. I’m pretty computer savvy, and I didn’t do anything exotic. Plugged one end of the cord provided into the modem, plugged the other into the phone jack, and BLAMMO, instead fuck-up.

The technician will be over some time “between 1 and 5 p.m.,” or so they say. It’s kinda cool that I get to cut out of work early, but man, I’d much rather that the DSL had just WORKED, y’know?

- This morning, on my way to work, I slowed down because it was a) pitch-black, b) slippery, and c) I didn’t want to miss the intersection I needed. As a I slowed down, I heard the sound of screeching brakes, and just as I looked into the rearview mirror, BAM, someone ran into me.

The person immediately turned his lights off, which I thought was strange, but I was pretty shaken up and my thoughts were scattered. Anyway, I turned my blinker on, pulled off to the side of the road and waited.

And the car cruised on by, lights still off.

By the time I got back on the road, I couldn’t tell which car had hit me. Because it had been so dark, and because the shit-ass motherfucker had turned his lights off SO FAST, I can’t even tell you what make or model the car was, much less its license number.

(Which makes the following comment from the police so much funnier: “Why did you wait so long to call? Now we’ll never catch the driver.” DUDE. I didn’t even know what color the goddamn car was!)

Luckily, the bumper suffered only a few dings.

Unluckily, I’m anal-retentive about keeping the car in perfect condition. It’s my first new car, damn it! *breaks down sobbing* So after the DSL technician comes over, I’m driving over to the dealership to see how much it’ll cost to fix the damage.

Pray that the reaming will go gently, my pretties. Oh, and while you’re at it, feel free to wish evil, evil things on the turdburgling dickheaded cuntmonkey who ran into me.

God knows I am.

But! One bright spot in my day so far: my Amazon.com package arrived, and I now have in my sweaty little mitts the new Franz Ferdinand album (I saw them on Monday night and holy crap they were good and HOT DAMN I want to lick Alex Kapranos). Also, Lisa Kleypas’s latest.

I don’t know what it is about Lisa Kleypas books, but I have to read them immediately after I get them. Even shitty Kleypas books (and she’s written a few groaners) are finished instead of tossed to the wayside.

So yay, new music, and yay, new book to read. Good thing, too, because God knows what my Internet connection will be like all weekend. 

Congratulations, Vicki, for correctly guessing the answer for today’s personal ad contest. Who says procrastination doesn’t pay?

Kneel, Vicki, and rise as:

You should know the drill by now: Give us the title, author and heroine’s name (DON’T FORGET THAT LAST BIT OR YOU’LL CRY AND CRY BECAUSE NO HEROINE’S NAME = NO WIN) and you shall find yourselves the proud owners of a custom-made Smart Bitch title. Yay!

I will kick danger IN THE ASS
SWF, code-breaker, ass-kicker extraordinaire, seeking hot guy to have hot sex with. Commitment not needed or wanted. Don’t fuck with me. I’ll totally kidnap your ass and hold a gun to your head if I have to.

I’m finally catching up on my blog rounds after five days of little to no Internet access, and saw that I’d been tagged by Nicole.

Hear Ye, Hear Ye! Herein Be The Rules For Yon Meme!

*fanfare by pretty boys in tights and those tunics with the long, fluttery sleeves*

1. Delve into your blog archive.

2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to).

3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).

4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions. Ponder it for meaning, subtext or hidden agendas…

5. Tag five people to do the same.

OK, this is a bit tricky. The first 10 posts to this blog are closed entries as Sarah and I futzed around with the template and the inner workings of ExpressionEngine.

(One of the closed entries does contain a bit I’m particularly proud to have written; to wit: “On your knees, foolish mortals! I am the mysterious sloe-eyed Chinkie in the top left corner, and I have powers beyond your ken!")

(No, I won’t give the context to that. It’s funnier that way. Go ahead and guess what I was talking about, if you’re so inclined.)

Anyway, I’ll do the 23rd and 33rd entries, just because I’m feeling loquacious today.

The fifth sentence for Entry Number 23 (ignoring the bulleted list) is: “Hey Sarah, are you having a romance novel day?”

This was back when most of the people visiting this site were looking for trashy and/or Dominican bitches. That entry was my sad, sad attempt to drop Google a big old hint as to what our site was about. I guess that would qualify as a hidden agenda.

Entry Number 33 is a classic: PBW foamed at the mouth about reviewers, and I foamed right back. Big old rabid foam party, that entry. And sentence number 5? Well, it makes me snicker a bit: “And then right around paragraph 8, she starts losing it.”

Hey, it only takes me about 3 sentences before I start losing it. And no hidden agenda or subliminal meaning in that entry that I can see. Subtlety, thy name is not Candy.

As for five people to tag… Hmm.

Doug, Kate, Lilith, Bam and Stephen.

We moved last weekend.

OK, let me amend this sentence: We moved out last weekend, and are now deep in the process of unpacking and settling in.

I’m going crazy by slow degrees. Boxes are everywhere. The cats, after spending about 48 hours being afraid of rambunctious dust motes and Mars going into retrograde, are now having a great time at the new place. They especially love the stacks of boxes.

God, do they ever love the boxes.

Unpacking is made that much more interesting when a furry orange cannonball insists on leaping into the boxes as soon as I open them. Especially when the boxes contain pointy objects.

Locking him up in a room while I unpack results in the Unholy Howls of Much Grief and Mournfulness. Seriously, he makes it sound as if I’m beating him with a rubber hose. Forget sparing the neighbors all that noise--MY nerves can’t take it.

The upside is, I’ve become quite the accomplished cat tosser. I can now scruff, lift and launch in one smooth motion.

Anyway, that’s why I’ve been mostly absent the last week or so. Things are calming down. Sort of. I still have to sort my clothing and I have yet to unpack my 20 boxes of books (I don’t think all my other stuff combined took up 20 boxes), and one of the old bookshelves finally gave up the ghost, so I have to assemble a new one, but otherwise, the rooms are beginning to resemble living spaces instead of a replica of downtown Manhattan made from cardboard and Rubbermaid Roughneck tubs.

A sign of returning normalcy is that I’m browsing through the book section again when I go grocery shopping instead of powering through and grabbing only what I need because I need to go back NOW NOW NOW AND UNPACK GAAAH. I saw Passion by Lisa Valdez at the store yesterday, and I had to stop and check it out because I’ve heard so much about it.

I read the first couple of pages--the book starts with a letter--and I was struck by something. I’ll excerpt little bits of it below; let’s see if you noticed the same thing I did.

My Dearest Abigail,

What news I have! I hardly know how to tell you--you, my dearest and most trusted confidante, my girlhood friend and sister of my heart--you, who did warn me so directly and honestly what might happen were I to let my heart rule my head. (...)

I, Lucinda Margarita Hawkmore, am with child! A fact, I know, that in and of itself is not entirely remarkable. But wait, dearest, for here comes the revelation that will lift your brows ceiling-ward. [goes on to explain that she’s preggers with the OMGHOT gardener’s baby]

Now, my dearest, you mustn’t chastise me. As you know, I am completely devoted to my new lover, Lord Fentworth. And because I have already borne a Hawkmore heir, George, in his usual compliant, husbandly fashion, shall accept this child as his. (...)

With all my love,

Lucinda

Post Script: I know I can rely upon you to burn this letter.

So did you guys notice what I noticed? To be fair, this is a problem that’s endemic to romance novels in general. Hell, a lot of popular fiction in general.

I’m talking about spelling everything out in excruciating detail for the reader.

In that letter--a letter to an intimate acquaintance, providing scandalous, extremely private news--the letter-writer not only tells the recipient of the letter how exactly she’s related to her, but gives her full name, her husband’s first name, his title, the fact that she’s borne him an heir, the name of her lover and his occupation.

All this information being provided in one fell swoop--information that the recipient of the letter knows already? Kind of annoying.

In fact, if the letter is so sensitive that the letter-writer wants the recipient to burn it, wouldn’t she refer to things more obliquely instead of spelling everything out? Before the story even begins, I’m snapped out of the fictional scenario because if nothing else, I didn’t see why the declaration of the name would’ve been necessary. In fact, I would’ve loved having to guess which of the main characters is the bastard child later down the road.

When authors do this, I feel the same way I do when the people at the bank or the store start speaking extra slowly and clearly with me once they see that I’m Chinese, even though I speak and understand English just fine.

In short: I feel condescended to. I feel like the author has assumed certain things about my capacity to figure things out by myself, and I resent that.

The problem is, a lot of romance novels do this ALL THE TIME.

Another example:

How often have you seen foreign words being used, only to have the same word in English repeated immediately after?

Why the hell would the characters say something twice in a row, especially when they know the word in English in the first place? If understanding the foreign words is crucial to the plot, then make the meaning of the word obvious in its context, or provide a glossary at the back, or even have a character say “ENGLISH, MOTHERFUCKER. DO YOU SPEAK IT?”

But this awkward translation on the go? Fuck that shit. It’s not just unrealistic, it’s distracting.

Or how about all those times when there’s a Big Revelation, and the author goes into agonizing detail and spells everything out for you? Doesn’t matter if it’s the killer being unmasked or a Clarification of Misunderstood Lurve. Typically, the characters have an a-ha! moment, and words like “Of course, it all made sense now,” or “Now, thinking back on it, she suddenly realized that...” preface a lot of internal musing that snaps all the puzzle pieces in place neatly.

Argh.

The most egregious example of this sort of thing, however, isn’t actually part of a book per se. It’s the back cover blurb for Archangel by Sharon Shinn, which gives away EVERYTHING that’s gradually revealed to us, bit by bit, over the course of three books.

I read the back cover blurb for that book, and immediately felt the urge to slap the asshole who’d approved it. A huge part of the fun of the Samaria series was slowly putting the puzzle pieces together, and suddenly realizing exactly what the oracles did and how they communicated with God. Thanks to one measly paragraph, the joy of putting that puzzle together? Shot to hell.

All because some buttmunch somewhere probably decided that people wouldn’t be able to figure it out.

Part of the reason why I love books like For My Lady’s Heart is because the author takes the exact opposite tack: she assumes that we’ll be able to puzzle shit out on our own. Dialogue in Middle English? Hey, why the hell not? And no glossary, either--at least not for the first edition. It’s sink or swim, baby.

So, yeah, much as I love romance novels, I have to say: there’s a definite dumbing-down-for-the-masses vibe I get from many of them.

Oh, by the way? I realize I do some of these things when I write fiction. It’s part of what frustrates me so much about my own writing, and why I thought that last chapter of The Book of Angels was awkward and info-dumpy.