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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Smart Bitches, Trashy Books' InsaneJournal:

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    Wednesday, November 16th, 2011
    9:07 pm
    Links! And News!

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/links-and-news/

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/links-and-news/#When:21:07:37Z

    First: NEWS! The site will be going down, likely Friday and Saturday of this week, so that final preparations can be made to launch the new design. There’s a lot of databases that need to be mounted, yo. Lots of ‘em.



    Here’s a bit of inspiration for you: via Maureen Johnson’s twitter feed, A reminder about what really matters by Kirstan Hoffman:


    The books and authors who make a difference in your life are not the ones with the most credentials, the most money, or the most awards. They are the ones thatyou connected with, the ones that moved you on the merit of their prose, characters and stories. Not the ones that someone told you were good or worthy. Because the success given by others is never as enduring as the success bestowed by our own hearts.


    Her advice is for writers, but I think it also applies to readers - you like the authors you like, not the ones you are told to like or you “should” like. And that’s ok.

     
    I linked to this on Twitter but I wanted to share it here, too: suffering from sore wrists or carpal tunnel? The stretches in this video have really worked to help me out, as has rearranging how and where I sit. The stretches in the video have done a good bit to help the pain I was feeling, and to seek out other stretches that can help me out.

    Plus, the guy doing the demo is adorable and especially the part about the physicist.

    Disclaimer: that dude is no more a doctor than I am. This isn’t medical advice. It’s Boing Boing, for heaven’s sake. If you’re in serious pain, see your doctor or a physical therapist, and take good care of yourself, please!



    Liz French at RT Book Reviews reviewed EIKAL, even though it’s not a romance, and even though they don’t review nonfiction.  And, if pressed, she would give EIKAL four stars. WOW! Thank you!



    Here are some heroes, via my friend, IL#2: truckers who transport rescue animals for Operation Roger, a non profit rescue organization.

    There’s also Pilots and Paws, which links pilots and plane owners with shelters who need to transport animals to new homes.

    My own dogs, Buzz & Zeb, rode to Jersey from Arkansas in a retrofitted Winnebago that takes animals from kill shelters in Arkansas and brings them to the northeast to adoptive homes. The gentleman driving the Wiinnebago was a lot like the men described in the article - terse to the humans, but incredibly kind and patient to the dogs.

    There are some amazing men doing animal rescue out there. On behalf of my furry southern gentlemen, thanks, guys.



    Finally, if you missed it again, the site will be down for a day or two while we redesign and relaunch. So get ready for Bitchery 3.0!

     
    6:29 pm
    Bezos and Butthead: My Review of the Kindle Fire

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/bezos-and-butthead-my-review-of-the-kindle-fire/

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/bezos-and-butthead-my-review-of-the-kindle-fire/#When:18:29:04Z

    I had two questions when I opened the Kindle Fire package and started to play with the device last night:

    1. Would this device be as easy to use as the other Kindle products, the ones that come with the world’s shortest printed user guide?

    2. Who is the ideal customer or customers for the Kindle Fire?

    No, wait, I had a third question:

    3. Could I get through a device demo with Hubby on the sofa next to me without either of us saying, “FIRE! FIRE!”



    There was a good bit of Beavis and Butthead while we tried out the device, including wonderful moments like:


    “Use your finger, dumbass.” (Said while I was trying to figure out one the swipe menus that weren’t available if you tapped on them.) (Huh huh huhhhuhuhuh).

    “Where are the holes?” (Said while I was looking for the speakers.)

    Ultimately, Butthead could use this device with no problems. It’s that easy. And this is not to say that anyone who picks up a Kindle Fire is Beavis, or Butthead. I’m saying that it is incredibly simple, intuitive and easy to figure out.

    So yes, this device was indeed as user-friendly and user-intuitive as the other Kindle products I’ve experienced. And the printed user guide was super, super small.



    In fact, it’s a card tucked inside a pocket in the lid.



    And the on-screen demo is fast and easy, too.

    As for who the ideal customer of the Kindle FIRE might be, I’m still not 100% sure I know, but here’s my theory.

    The Kindle FIRE is for people who already do nearly everything on Amazon, because it is their opportunity to do more with stuff they already own, and stuff that’s easier to buy or access through the FIRE. If all the media you consume, like books, tv, movies, games, apps, etc, is from Amazon, or if you already access all of it through Amazon, then this device will make you very happy.

    As Moira Rogers Bree said on Twitter, “I am the ideal Kindle Fire customer. I’ve been buying all my music, movies, books & TV digitally from Amazon for 2 years.”

    “I’m really excited to finally have something where I can just open it out of the box and have ALL my media right there.”

    And that is exactly what happened: I turned it on, it already knew my account information, and all the books, movies, apps and recent digital media purchases I’d made were already there in the top carousel. It already knew and could access half my stuff because I buy a LOT of stuff through Amazon.

    The way I see it, in entering the tablet market, Amazon has employed a slightly different strategy than Apple.

    Back in the day, everyone wanted an iPod because it was freaking cool. And the next iPod, and the iPad, etc. Apple built the device everyone wanted, and then built software around it.

    Amazon built the service that everyone uses, and then built a device to further serve that everyone.

    So if you’re an Amazon customer, and you have a Prime membership, get free 2-day shipping and buy books, and other forms of entertainment from Amazon, this device is a tablet extension of the service and products you’ve already purchased.

    Hubby and I are very different tablet users, and so I had him with me while I tried out the Kindle FIRE. I use an iPad 2, (one with, alas, a big honking crack in it) and his main computer right now is an Asus Transformer with a keyboard dock that turns it into a laptop. He and I each have Android phones as well. So we each have our own tablet and smartphone.

    Do we need something in between the tablet and the phone? No, probably not. But do we each have a crap ton of stuff from Amazon that we read and watch and use? Oh, yes. Me especially. One thing I think the Kindle FIRE does perfectly is allow people to have their own tablet at a smaller cost than the Transformer or the iPad, with nearly the same primary entertainment foci.

    So in other words, for $199, you get your own private screen. Instead of “I want my MTV,” it’s now, “I want my own tv, and movie screen, and book, and web browser, and Angry Birds, and Twitter,” and so on. Much like the walkman allowed everyone the privacy of their own music, the tablet, and specifically the Kindle FIRE, allows people the privacy of their own portable good-looking tv and movie screen that also reads books and does a ton of other things.

    The “my personal tv screen” is a powerful thing, too. Last night Hubby and I had the tv on in the living room, but there wasn’t anything we wanted to watch, so we put on one of the music channels we like. I decided to watch an episode of “Doctor Who” that I’d already seen to test on the FIRE, and 45 minutes later I looked up to realize I’d watched the whole thing - despite already having seen it - and despite the fact that I could have just as easily put it on Netflix via the Wii on the larger tv and watched it with surround sound (which makes Doctor Who extra creepy, if that’s possible). I was very happy and comfortable watching my tv show on my lap, instead of on the large tv across the room - which was already on!

    It’s a little embarrassing but I think it’s demonstrative of the ease and appeal of the Kindle FIRE.

    As for tv shows and movies, there are a LOT of choices. I was incorrect about something last night and was corrected by Angela James this morning. I thought there was no separate menu for Children’s Videos - I was wrong. It’s beneath a swipe menu all the way to the right on the “video” tab. And there’s a pretty spiffy selection of children’s movies to choose from. TV shows, too.

    The screen is gorgeous and even the screensaver images are eye candy. I got the feeling attention was paid to what the device would look like when the screen was locked, because the images chosen are stunning.



    A few negatives:

    It is a little heavy to hold in one hand, and that’s a common complaint of mine because I have very small hands (I know) and I get ornery when I can’t comfortably hold a device on which I am reading. The iPad is also not comfortable for me to hold, but I have a case that offers me five different tilted easel positions so I can set it up just the way I want for what I’m doing and can use it without holding onto it.

    I’ve also accidentally hit the power button on the bottom a bunch of times and locked the screen without meaning to. The button sticks out just a little bit and is easy to brush with a finger without meaning to.

    Also, if you’re not using headphones and you’re watching a movie or tv show in landscape mode, the speakers are all on the left, and the sound is meh. I cupped my left hand under the speakers to project the sound forward to my ears.

    The web browser and web surfing is a slow and dodgy experience. The browser is not responsive to touch as quickly as I’d like, and I found myself on pages that I didn’t intend to look at because the tapping of my finger to close a floating window on a web page had registered too late.

    But what about reading?

    If you look at this picture, you can compare the text on the Kindle for iPad, which has a bluish tint, and the text on the Kindle FIRE. The text doesn’t seem to have a noticeable difference to my eyes, but I prefer the wider, two-page landscape method of reading on the iPad. That said, your eyes may vary in reaction and tolerance from mine. I think the screen is much better for movies and tv than for reading. I think it’s too small for me to read on comfortably, but I’ll keep trying and if my initial opinion changes, I’ll update.



    Linda Holmes from NPR’s MonkeySee said to me on Twitter that this was sort of like a “Superkindle,” and that’s a pretty good description. It is easy for those not technically savvy to use five seconds after taking it out of the box, and it takes a few minutes to find all your recent book purchases and app and tv show purchases, too, so you see everything you’ve most recently bought at Amazon. In a sense, if you’re a frequent Amazon customer, this device will ‘know’ you - or at least seem familiar to you - very quickly.

    However, I would not use this to write anything, or do anything requiring more dexterity than a tweet or a note in the margin of a book. The Kindle FIRE is not for writing or drawing, or really creating in any way, which makes me doubt it’s long-term efficacy. I cite Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus a lot when I speak to writers’ groups because of his point that many of us are no longer content to passively consume our entertainment. We are encouraged and driven to create in response to what we consume. The Kindle FIRE doesn’t yield many opportunities to create, nor can it be modified to do so - whereas with the iPad, which I find cumbersome to type on, I can connect via Bluetooth a wireless keyboard and use that to compose when I have something of some length to say (which is pretty much always).



    So, to sum up, the Kindle FIRE is great for anyone who is a frequent consumer of Amazon content and products, and, as Jane wrote neatly in her summary, it is ideal for people who consume content rather than create.

    If I had to give the Kindle FIRE a grade, I’d say it gets a B-. There’s room for improvement, and it’s not what I would think of as a book reader first, but for books and tv and movies and app usage with very light internet surfing (unless that browser gets an upgrade in a hurry), it’s a serviceable and more than adequate option at its price point.


    ETA: It is possible to root the FIRE, thanks to this link from Hubby. Also, via @RunGNC on Twitter, IFixIt did a teardown of a FIRE and found a bluetooth transmitter, specifically the Jorjin WG7310 WLAN/BT/FM Combo Module, though it’s not currently supported. But, like Prego, it’s in there. Which could mean future toothiness.
    6:29 pm
    Bezos and Butthead: My Review of the Kindle Fire

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/bezos-and-butthead-my-review-of-the-kindle-fire/

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/bezos-and-butthead-my-review-of-the-kindle-fire/#When:18:29:45Z

    I had two questions when I opened the Kindle Fire package and started to play with the device last night:

    1. Would this device be as easy to use as the other Kindle products, the ones that come with the world’s shortest printed user guide?

    2. Who is the ideal customer or customers for the Kindle Fire?

    No, wait, I had a third question:

    3. Could I get through a device demo with Hubby on the sofa next to me without either of us saying, “FIRE! FIRE!”



    There was a good bit of Beavis and Butthead while we tried out the device, including wonderful moments like:


    “Use your finger, dumbass.” (Said while I was trying to figure out one the swipe menus that weren’t available if you tapped on them.) (Huh huh huhhhuhuhuh).

    “Where are the holes?” (Said while I was looking for the speakers.)

    Ultimately, Butthead could use this device with no problems. It’s that easy. And this is not to say that anyone who picks up a Kindle Fire is Beavis, or Butthead. I’m saying that it is incredibly simple, intuitive and easy to figure out.

    So yes, this device was indeed as user-friendly and user-intuitive as the other Kindle products I’ve experienced. And the printed user guide was super, super small.



    In fact, it’s a card tucked inside a pocket in the lid.



    And the on-screen demo is fast and easy, too.

    As for who the ideal customer of the Kindle FIRE might be, I’m still not 100% sure I know, but here’s my theory.

    The Kindle FIRE is for people who already do nearly everything on Amazon, because it is their opportunity to do more with stuff they already own, and stuff that’s easier to buy or access through the FIRE. If all the media you consume, like books, tv, movies, games, apps, etc, is from Amazon, or if you already access all of it through Amazon, then this device will make you very happy.

    As Moira Rogers Bree said on Twitter, “I am the ideal Kindle Fire customer. I’ve been buying all my music, movies, books & TV digitally from Amazon for 2 years.”

    “I’m really excited to finally have something where I can just open it out of the box and have ALL my media right there.”

    And that is exactly what happened: I turned it on, it already knew my account information, and all the books, movies, apps and recent digital media purchases I’d made were already there in the top carousel. It already knew and could access half my stuff because I buy a LOT of stuff through Amazon.

    The way I see it, in entering the tablet market, Amazon has employed a slightly different strategy than Apple.

    Back in the day, everyone wanted an iPod because it was freaking cool. And the next iPod, and the iPad, etc. Apple built the device everyone wanted, and then built software around it.

    Amazon built the service that everyone uses, and then built a device to further serve that everyone.

    So if you’re an Amazon customer, and you have a Prime membership, get free 2-day shipping and buy books, and other forms of entertainment from Amazon, this device is a tablet extension of the service and products you’ve already purchased.

    Hubby and I are very different tablet users, and so I had him with me while I tried out the Kindle FIRE. I use an iPad 2, (one with, alas, a big honking crack in it) and his main computer right now is an Asus Transformer with a keyboard dock that turns it into a laptop. He and I each have Android phones as well. So we each have our own tablet and smartphone.

    Do we need something in between the tablet and the phone? No, probably not. But do we each have a crap ton of stuff from Amazon that we read and watch and use? Oh, yes. Me especially. One thing I think the Kindle FIRE does perfectly is allow people to have their own tablet at a smaller cost than the Transformer or the iPad, with nearly the same primary entertainment foci.

    So in other words, for $199, you get your own private screen. Instead of “I want my MTV,” it’s now, “I want my own tv, and movie screen, and book, and web browser, and Angry Birds, and Twitter,” and so on. Much like the walkman allowed everyone the privacy of their own music, the tablet, and specifically the Kindle FIRE, allows people the privacy of their own portable good-looking tv and movie screen that also reads books and does a ton of other things.

    The “my personal tv screen” is a powerful thing, too. Last night Hubby and I had the tv on in the living room, but there wasn’t anything we wanted to watch, so we put on one of the music channels we like. I decided to watch an episode of “Doctor Who” that I’d already seen to test on the FIRE, and 45 minutes later I looked up to realize I’d watched the whole thing - despite already having seen it - and despite the fact that I could have just as easily put it on Netflix via the Wii on the larger tv and watched it with surround sound (which makes Doctor Who extra creepy, if that’s possible). I was very happy and comfortable watching my tv show on my lap, instead of on the large tv across the room - which was already on!

    It’s a little embarrassing but I think it’s demonstrative of the ease and appeal of the Kindle FIRE.

    As for tv shows and movies, there are a LOT of choices. I was incorrect about something last night and was corrected by Angela James this morning. I thought there was no separate menu for Children’s Videos - I was wrong. It’s beneath a swipe menu all the way to the right on the “video” tab. And there’s a pretty spiffy selection of children’s movies to choose from. TV shows, too.

    The screen is gorgeous and even the screensaver images are eye candy. I got the feeling attention was paid to what the device would look like when the screen was locked, because the images chosen are stunning.



    A few negatives:

    It is a little heavy to hold in one hand, and that’s a common complaint of mine because I have very small hands (I know) and I get ornery when I can’t comfortably hold a device on which I am reading. The iPad is also not comfortable for me to hold, but I have a case that offers me five different tilted easel positions so I can set it up just the way I want for what I’m doing and can use it without holding onto it.

    I’ve also accidentally hit the power button on the bottom a bunch of times and locked the screen without meaning to. The button sticks out just a little bit and is easy to brush with a finger without meaning to.

    Also, if you’re not using headphones and you’re watching a movie or tv show in landscape mode, the speakers are all on the left, and the sound is meh. I cupped my left hand under the speakers to project the sound forward to my ears.

    The web browser and web surfing is a slow and dodgy experience. The browser is not responsive to touch as quickly as I’d like, and I found myself on pages that I didn’t intend to look at because the tapping of my finger to close a floating window on a web page had registered too late.

    But what about reading?

    If you look at this picture, you can compare the text on the Kindle for iPad, which has a bluish tint, and the text on the Kindle FIRE. The text doesn’t seem to have a noticeable difference to my eyes, but I prefer the wider, two-page landscape method of reading on the iPad. That said, your eyes may vary in reaction and tolerance from mine. I think the screen is much better for movies and tv than for reading. I think it’s too small for me to read on comfortably, but I’ll keep trying and if my initial opinion changes, I’ll update.



    Linda Holmes from NPR’s MonkeySee said to me on Twitter that this was sort of like a “Superkindle,” and that’s a pretty good description. It is easy for those not technically savvy to use five seconds after taking it out of the box, and it takes a few minutes to find all your recent book purchases and app and tv show purchases, too, so you see everything you’ve most recently bought at Amazon. In a sense, if you’re a frequent Amazon customer, this device will ‘know’ you - or at least seem familiar to you - very quickly.

    However, I would not use this to write anything, or do anything requiring more dexterity than a tweet or a note in the margin of a book. The Kindle FIRE is not for writing or drawing, or really creating in any way, which makes me doubt it’s long-term efficacy. I cite Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus a lot when I speak to writers’ groups because of his point that many of us are no longer content to passively consume our entertainment. We are encouraged and driven to create in response to what we consume. The Kindle FIRE doesn’t yield many opportunities to create, nor can it be modified to do so - whereas with the iPad, which I find cumbersome to type on, I can connect via Bluetooth a wireless keyboard and use that to compose when I have something of some length to say (which is pretty much always).



    So, to sum up, the Kindle FIRE is great for anyone who is a frequent consumer of Amazon content and products, and, as Jane wrote neatly in her summary, it is ideal for people who consume content rather than create.

    If I had to give the Kindle FIRE a grade, I’d say it gets a B-. There’s room for improvement, and it’s not what I would think of as a book reader first, but for books and tv and movies and app usage with very light internet surfing (unless that browser gets an upgrade in a hurry), it’s a serviceable and more than adequate option at its price point.



     
    8:27 am
    Dear Bitches, Smart Authors Podcast: November 15, 2011 - Interview with Sarah Mayberry

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/dear-bitches-smart-authors-podcast-november-15-2011-interview-with-sarah-ma/

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/dear-bitches-smart-authors-podcast-november-15-2011-interview-with-sarah-ma/#When:08:27:28Z

    It’s podcast time again! This week we have an epic interview with author Sarah Mayberry. That’s right, all the way to Australia for our first author interview. This podcast is long - just over an hour - but It was SO fun. We talk about writing for soap operas, her own books, language differences, and the elusive qualities of Vegemite.

    Some of the sound quality may suffer a bit from time to time, but that’s not something I could correct. Blame the long distance miracle that is Skype.

    The music this week was provided by Sassy Outwater, who knows a heaping ton of musicians and finds original music for us for each episode. This week’s music is called “Forgotten” and it’s by Jason Hemmens. Forgotten is on sale as an mp3 at Amazon, or you can buy the album, Welcome to Reality, at Amazon, or at ITunes.

    Here are the books we talk about in this podcast - and some DVDs and tv shows, too!









    As for the podcast, if you like it, you can subscribe to our feed at Feedburner or at iTunes. You can also find us at PodcastPickle. If you’re really eager, you can also right-click-and-download your very own mp3 of the podcast here.

    If you have content suggestions or have feedback, email us! The email address for the podcast is sbjpodcast@gmail.com. Thanks for listening!
    Tuesday, November 15th, 2011
    8:43 am
    Popular Romance in the New Millenium: A Summary (or, Attempt at One)

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/popular-romance-in-the-new-millenium-a-summary-or-attempt-at-one/

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/popular-romance-in-the-new-millenium-a-summary-or-attempt-at-one/#When:08:43:47Z

    If you followed the #MCDROM hashtag on Twitter last week, you saw me, Jessica Tripler and Sarah Frantz trying to keep up with the presentations at the McDaniel College Popular Romance in the New Millennium conference.

    It was, in a word, brain-full.  As in, my brain is very full now. I will do my best to do a logical and cogent summary, but it may be best for those incredibly curious to wait for the issue of the IASPR journal, JPRS which promises to publish the conference proceedings.

    The conference started off with a keynote from Dr. Mary Bly better known as Eloisa James, that focused on: Where is romance scholarship right now?

    The simple answer: most of romance scholarship, from local professors to scholars from Utah, Arkansas and Michigan to Belgium, was in that room. But James’ talk focused on the state of the genre and the state of the scholarship.

    Three points that James made are still running in lopsided circles in my brain.

    1. When Food Network recently hosted a cake challenge where the bakers had to create a cake that was all about romance, the president of RWA was judging. One cake was removed from the final competition because the hero shot the heroine and she was dead (and not coming back). Obviously, not a romance. But another cake didn’t make the cut because the hero and heroine were already married, and the judge said that wasn’t a romance. The happily ever after IS the wedding.

    James pointed out that she growled at the tv at this moment, because that wasn’t her understanding of romance. In James’ opinion, RWA President Dorien Kelly dated her definition of romance by removing married people from consideration as subjects of romance - and if you’re familiar with James’ books, you know that many already-married couples are featured among the protagonists. So not even within the genre can folks necessarily agree what exactly encompasses a romance.

    2. James noticed that in the upcoming book of scholarship about the romance genre, there were articles that examined her books, but that the scholar in question hadn’t contacted her about their reading and analysis of those books, and this lack of contact surprised her. James said she wishes she could call or tweet or talk on Facebook with the authors she studies but they’re long, long loooong dead. She thinks, if I am interpreting her comments correctly, that scholarship about romance novels should include conversations with the authors, most especially since authors are so present and available in social media - which brings me to the final point that’s doing cartwheels in my brain.

    3. James noted that in a recent meeting with her publishers, both HarperCollins and Penguin (publisher of her upcoming Paris memoir in 2012) were very focused on her 75k Facebook friends and 6200+ Twitter followers, as if social media translated to dollar signs. She doesn’t believe that it does, but does think that social media has changed a LOT of what it means to be an author.

    Social media is “the commodification of the charisma of the author,” and it’s no longer nearly enough to write a book. Authors also have to be socially present on these networks, interact with readers, and in some cases, selling books themselves. Because of the affiliate code to bookstores like Amazon and BN, James knows how many copies of a book she sells through an affiliate link. Julia Quinn noted that she sold many copies of James’ book due to a recent Facebook post, and James also used EIKAL as an example, as she listed it on her Facebook page so her Facebook folks would know she was one of the authors featured. So, as she pointed out, she’s not only book marketing and book writing but book selling, as well. Yet another changing role of the author, and reformation of the genre.

    Friday morning marked the start of the conference. At breakfast there was French toast made of glazed donuts. My inner sugar-junkie about expired of complete glee.

    The best part of day was the period of time after each session. There were several long conversations of debate and challenge of ideas that didn’t necessarily become hostile. Discussion of the meaning and use of cliches, of student and administrative attitude toward the teaching of romance, and of the role of sexuality in romance could have gone on for more than the allotted time, and it made picking a table to sit at for lunch and dinner really difficult because every table had an awesome conversation going on.

    Questioning the concept of the “death of author” rebounded in each discussion, because these academics are studying books wherein author is possibly still alive and even more possibly still publishing, and probably online at that moment. While there’s plenty of argument for the separation of the text to be analyzed and the author who created it, that separation can create challenges to researchers because the author is important in some context—though she is not the sole master of the meaning(s) of the text. (I’m right now thinking that I prefer separation of the creator from the work, even when the creator is still creating and the study of the genre is so new, because I think each reader’s experience is her own, and should not be influenced or corrected by the creator of a book. But I’m still pondering that one).

    Yet as James pointed out, researchers and scholars can’t ignore the fact that authors are talking with readers, and they are between them creating MORE text to examine. Some of the papers at the conference examined the text of author websites and author/reader communities, such as Stephanie Moody’s paper,
    “‘Convergence Culture’: Exploring the Literacy Practices of Online Romance Fiction Communities.” Others, such as Kat Schroeder, applied network theory to existing communities like IASPR and JPRS, which are focused on the romance genre, studying the connectivity and meaning behind those connections.

    I think network theory is my new favorite thing, and if I were going back to grad school, I’d be all over that. Existing forms of literary criticism are molding with new concepts like network theory to examine the books, the women who write them, and the communities of women who read them—AND the communities of scholars who study them. The scholars of the genre are studying themselves while they study. The readers of the genre are creating texts that are as valued for analysis as the works themselves. It’s rather amazing.

    Also amazing were the number of people who cited me, the site, or the Bosoms or EIKAL. That was amazing, humbling and astonishing. I spent a lot of time feeling my cheeks turning red.

    But as I mentioned earlier, it was the discussions after each session that were like brain candy. So much in one comment to ponder, especially when two individuals didn’t agree. I love to witness creativity and the creative response to text consumed, especially when that occurs in romance, among people who deploy every brain cell in their investigation and enjoyment of the genre.

    What follows are my notes, taken after tweeting or during breaks.

    Pedagogy and Teaching the Romance (morning sessions):

    Amy Burge presented a session on creative exercises she’s used that invite students to physically rearrange text of romance page created statements, interpretations and interactive analysis. She led the session for conference attendees on Friday morning (I wasn’t there yet, alas) and created visual art about romance that decorated the conference space

    Here are some pics:







    Glinda Hall from Arkansas State presented a discussion of what including romance in courses does to the classroom community. Her course from Spring 2010 was titled “Beyond Heaving Bosoms: Women’s Popular Romance Fiction” (I joined the class via Skype on the last day that semester- it was very cool). Because romances are about intimacy and sex/sexuality, her course focus slowly became about sexuality and contemporary sexual culture because the students focused on that aspect of the text. Hall created a “safe space” for examination and discussion of sex, which isn’t something easily discussed in a public forum, and managed to create candid discussions about romances, and the intimacy within them.

    The sessions on Canons and Context were eye opening not only because of the enthusiasm from the professors who taught, but the revelations about the student reactions to the courses being taught. Lessons learned:

    - Professors were sometimes more enthusiastic about teaching romance
    - Students were often hideously embarrassed about the novels, buying, or being seen reading them
    - Dr. SelingerDr. William Gleason** showed slides of the covers he provides, allowing students to hide their romances

    **My apologies: I mixed up the two presentations by Drs. Gleason and Selinger. My apologies to both!



    Antonia Losano, who due to craptastic weather, didn’t make it to the conference, wrote a paper about the experience of teaching romances at Middlebury. Her paper was extraordinary, and is summarized nicely in her abstract:


    “Sneaking it in at the end: Introducing Popular Romance into the Small College Classroom”
Mounting innovative new courses on popular culture is always challenging, but the endeavor has particular tensions in a small English department at a small Liberal Arts college. If I were to offer a course solely on popular romance, either one of the gateway courses, or a seminal survey, or the Victorian literature course wouldn’t get taught that year (and if English majors can’t get the courses they need to graduate, parents who are spending over $50,000 a year on this education start complaining). My contention, however, is that this constraint can be intensely productive for the study and teaching of popular romance, which need not be lost–it must simply be incorporated.
    Instead of being taught in a stand–alone course, romances can and should, I argue, be folded into the fabric of the academic canon. A course just on popular romance runs the risk of isolating and marginalizing the popular romance–as if we were trying to keep it from infecting the Beowulf to Virginia Woolf survey, for example. It has been my strategy to include at least one popular romance novel into the syllabus of each course I teach, encouraging students to realize that the boundaries between romance fiction and “canonical” fiction are more permeable than critics of the former would like. In this conference paper I hope to offer suggestions on ways to engage with the popular romance in academic courses within the context of literary history.


    I really enjoyed this paper, and also playing “Romance Jeopardy” with Jayashree Kamble, whose presentation focused on using romance and literary canon texts alongside one another to examine concepts such as exoticism, or on horror and genre structure. She provided copies of her syllabus and I didn’t think I’d say this about a syllabus, but it was fascinating.

    Lunch plenary:

    I admit, I was a bit wary of an hour-plus plenary over lunch (which is when I get sleepy) but oh, my stars and thoroughbreds, An Goris’ brief examination of her 400+ page dissertation was … well, I am running out of superlatives here. She outlined how she approached her study of Roberts’ novels, and why author examinations and author studies were a logical and efficient way, in her opinion, to begin the work of academic research in to popular romance.

    Goris’ dissertation focused on the paratext of Roberts’ novels, examining the way in which the covers and print matter surrounding the narrative text evolved with Roberts’ career. Goris touched on branding, the change in style of the covers, and how Roberts’ writing diverged several times from the established conventions of romance fiction at the time. For example, Roberts began writing series narratives, connected stories focused on a family or on a common adventure, creating stories that took place over thee books instead of one. Those narratives that were connected were branded to indicate their connectedness, but not at the very beginning.

    Goris’ dissertation defense is on 29 November in Belgium. It’s a public event, so if you’re in Belgium, you can stop by.

    My favorite session was probably “Our Novels Our Selves” in which Samantha Sabalis presented a Lacanian analysis of Courtney Milan’s “Proof by Seduction” and “Unveiled,” and how the heroine’s fragmented identity is restored to self-actualized wholeness by the hero’s recognition of her unified self. The ideas of hidden and dual identities are big parts of Milan’s books, and Sabalis’ analysis was insightful as to what multiple and fragmented identities mean theoretically and textually.

    In an interesting twist on the discussion of the separation of author and text, I tweeted the hell out of that paper because I thought it was so interesting, and Courtney Milan responded that she was blown away at the idea that someone was using Lacan to analyze her work, especially since her heroines regularly use false identities. 

    Jonathan Allan presented portions of his dissertation work which focused on the therapeutic uses of romance novels, or, perhaps better put, how romance novels and therapy are more related than one might think, especially in the work both do to identify ideal self and ideal resolutions and outcomes. I am really not doing justice to this paper - here, have the abstract:


    “Transference and the Popular Romance Novel”
    Jacques Lacan observes that “positive transference is when you have a soft spot for the individual concerned [...] and negative transference is when you have to keep your eye on him.” Though Lacan is talking about the site of analysis, it seems that a great deal of literary labor can and often does mimic the process of analysis both in the role of analyst and analysand. This study considers the place of psychoanalysis in reading, critiquing, and studying the popular romance novel. This paper does not seek to analyze romance readers from afar; rather what can psychoanalysis tell us about the romance novel?


    Maryan Wherry presented a feminist literary critical examination of the sex in romance - specifically the sex scenes, and how the established canon of feminist critics apply marvelously well to analysis of the sexual language of romance. As we know, sexuality in romance focuses much on the female sexual experience, both in point of view of the scene, and in the overall progress of the story. Wherry’s paper was amazing to me (seriously, I am totally out of superlatives, here. It’s becoming ridiculous) (I’m going to have to start using words like ‘badger’ or ‘exposure’) because she looked closely at the actual descriptions of the female body in sex scenes in romance, contrasting purple prose (Stephanie Laurens) (No, not the weeping furnace of her sheath) to descriptive but not purple (Loretta Chase). Wherry looked specifically at the descriptions of the female body in romance and applied concepts from French feminist critics Cixcous, Irigaray and Kristeva to the fact that romance sex scenes describing women’s bodies are likely written by women. (No, no, nothing feminist or literarily interesting about that, no, nothing to see here, please move along).

    Trying to summarize the entire conference is the verbal equivalent of me waving my arms a lot and making excited noises, as if I’d had too much sugar and caffeine and just put a Now or Later in my mouth. It was an entire day of such interesting and diverse commentary and criticism that if you ask me about it, The most I can come up with are noises of excited happiness. It’s like Good Book Noise™ except it’s good presentation noise.

    The experience of being in the room and listening to the presentations is not nearly possible to capture in bulletpoints. Being in a room of people focused on creatively examining romance in every possible direction is inspiring - and also brain exhausting. My brain was full like after a good meal. My brain says, “Nom. Sigh.”

    (Also if I’ve got any of the details wrong, please feel free to email me so I can correct them.)

    Finally, this is the decoration on the mirror in the bathroom at the hotel:
    8:43 am
    Popular Romance in the New Millenium: A Summary (or, Attempt at One)

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/popular-romance-in-the-new-millenium-a-summary-or-attempt-at-one/

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/popular-romance-in-the-new-millenium-a-summary-or-attempt-at-one/#When:08:43:19Z

    If you followed the #MCDROM hashtag on Twitter last week, you saw me, Jessica Tripler and Sarah Frantz trying to keep up with the presentations at the McDaniel College Popular Romance in the New Millennium conference.

    It was, in a word, brain-full.  As in, my brain is very full now. I will do my best to do a logical and cogent summary, but it may be best for those incredibly curious to wait for the issue of the IASPR journal, JPRS which promises to publish the conference proceedings.

    The conference started off with a keynote from Dr. Mary Bly better known as Eloisa James, that focused on: Where is romance scholarship right now?

    The simple answer: most of romance scholarship, from local professors to scholars from Utah, Arkansas and Michigan to Belgium, was in that room. But James’ talk focused on the state of the genre and the state of the scholarship.

    Three points that James made are still running in lopsided circles in my brain.

    1. When Food Network recently hosted a cake challenge where the bakers had to create a cake that was all about romance, the president of RWA was judging. One cake was removed from the final competition because the hero shot the heroine and she was dead (and not coming back). Obviously, not a romance. But another cake didn’t make the cut because the hero and heroine were already married, and the judge said that wasn’t a romance. The happily ever after IS the wedding.

    James pointed out that she growled at the tv at this moment, because that wasn’t her understanding of romance. In James’ opinion, RWA President Dorien Kelly dated her definition of romance by removing married people from consideration as subjects of romance - and if you’re familiar with James’ books, you know that many already-married couples are featured among the protagonists. So not even within the genre can folks necessarily agree what exactly encompasses a romance.

    2. James noticed that in the upcoming book of scholarship about the romance genre, there were articles that examined her books, but that the scholar in question hadn’t contacted her about their reading and analysis of those books, and this lack of contact surprised her. James said she wishes she could call or tweet or talk on Facebook with the authors she studies but they’re long, long loooong dead. She thinks, if I am interpreting her comments correctly, that scholarship about romance novels should include conversations with the authors, most especially since authors are so present and available in social media - which brings me to the final point that’s doing cartwheels in my brain.

    3. James noted that in a recent meeting with her publishers, both HarperCollins and Penguin (publisher of her upcoming Paris memoir in 2012) were very focused on her 75k Facebook friends and 6200+ Twitter followers, as if social media translated to dollar signs. She doesn’t believe that it does, but does think that social media has changed a LOT of what it means to be an author.

    Social media is “the commodification of the charisma of the author,” and it’s no longer nearly enough to write a book. Authors also have to be socially present on these networks, interact with readers, and in some cases, selling books themselves. Because of the affiliate code to bookstores like Amazon and BN, James knows how many copies of a book she sells through an affiliate link. Julia Quinn noted that she sold many copies of James’ book due to a recent Facebook post, and James also used EIKAL as an example, as she listed it on her Facebook page so her Facebook folks would know she was one of the authors featured. So, as she pointed out, she’s not only book marketing and book writing but book selling, as well. Yet another changing role of the author, and reformation of the genre.

    Friday morning marked the start of the conference. At breakfast there was French toast made of glazed donuts. My inner sugar-junkie about expired of complete glee.

    The best part of day was the period of time after each session. There were several long conversations of debate and challenge of ideas that didn’t necessarily become hostile. Discussion of the meaning and use of cliches, of student and administrative attitude toward the teaching of romance, and of the role of sexuality in romance could have gone on for more than the allotted time, and it made picking a table to sit at for lunch and dinner really difficult because every table had an awesome conversation going on.

    Questioning the concept of the “death of author” rebounded in each discussion, because these academics are studying books wherein author is possibly still alive and even more possibly still publishing, and probably online at that moment. While there’s plenty of argument for the separation of the text to be analyzed and the author who created it, that separation can create challenges to researchers because the author is important in some context—though she is not the sole master of the meaning(s) of the text. (I’m right now thinking that I prefer separation of the creator from the work, even when the creator is still creating and the study of the genre is so new, because I think each reader’s experience is her own, and should not be influenced or corrected by the creator of a book. But I’m still pondering that one).

    Yet as James pointed out, researchers and scholars can’t ignore the fact that authors are talking with readers, and they are between them creating MORE text to examine. Some of the papers at the conference examined the text of author websites and author/reader communities, such as Stephanie Moody’s paper,
    “‘Convergence Culture’: Exploring the Literacy Practices of Online Romance Fiction Communities.” Others, such as Kat Schroeder, applied network theory to existing communities like IASPR and JPRS, which are focused on the romance genre, studying the connectivity and meaning behind those connections.

    I think network theory is my new favorite thing, and if I were going back to grad school, I’d be all over that. Existing forms of literary criticism are molding with new concepts like network theory to examine the books, the women who write them, and the communities of women who read them—AND the communities of scholars who study them. The scholars of the genre are studying themselves while they study. The readers of the genre are creating texts that are as valued for analysis as the works themselves. It’s rather amazing.

    Also amazing were the number of people who cited me, the site, or the Bosoms or EIKAL. That was amazing, humbling and astonishing. I spent a lot of time feeling my cheeks turning red.

    But as I mentioned earlier, it was the discussions after each session that were like brain candy. So much in one comment to ponder, especially when two individuals didn’t agree. I love to witness creativity and the creative response to text consumed, especially when that occurs in romance, among people who deploy every brain cell in their investigation and enjoyment of the genre.

    What follows are my notes, taken after tweeting or during breaks.

    Pedagogy and Teaching the Romance (morning sessions):

    Amy Burge presented a session on creative exercises she’s used that invite students to physically rearrange text of romance page created statements, interpretations and interactive analysis. She led the session for conference attendees on Friday morning (I wasn’t there yet, alas) and created visual art about romance that decorated the conference space

    Here are some pics:







    Glinda Hall from Arkansas State presented a discussion of what including romance in courses does to the classroom community. Her course from Spring 2010 was titled “Beyond Heaving Bosoms: Women’s Popular Romance Fiction” (I joined the class via Skype on the last day that semester- it was very cool). Because romances are about intimacy and sex/sexuality, her course focus slowly became about sexuality and contemporary sexual culture because the students focused on that aspect of the text. Hall created a “safe space” for examination and discussion of sex, which isn’t something easily discussed in a public forum, and managed to create candid discussions about romances, and the intimacy within them.

    The sessions on Canons and Context were eye opening not only because of the enthusiasm from the professors who taught, but the revelations about the student reactions to the courses being taught. Lessons learned:

    - Professors were sometimes more enthusiastic about teaching romance
    - Students were often hideously embarrassed about the novels, buying, or being seen reading them
    - Dr. Selinger showed slides of the covers he provides, allowing students to hide their romances



    Antonia Losano, who due to craptastic weather, didn’t make it to the conference, wrote a paper about the experience of teaching romances at Middlebury. Her paper was extraordinary, and is summarized nicely in her abstract:


    “Sneaking it in at the end: Introducing Popular Romance into the Small College Classroom”
Mounting innovative new courses on popular culture is always challenging, but the endeavor has particular tensions in a small English department at a small Liberal Arts college. If I were to offer a course solely on popular romance, either one of the gateway courses, or a seminal survey, or the Victorian literature course wouldn’t get taught that year (and if English majors can’t get the courses they need to graduate, parents who are spending over $50,000 a year on this education start complaining). My contention, however, is that this constraint can be intensely productive for the study and teaching of popular romance, which need not be lost–it must simply be incorporated.
    Instead of being taught in a stand–alone course, romances can and should, I argue, be folded into the fabric of the academic canon. A course just on popular romance runs the risk of isolating and marginalizing the popular romance–as if we were trying to keep it from infecting the Beowulf to Virginia Woolf survey, for example. It has been my strategy to include at least one popular romance novel into the syllabus of each course I teach, encouraging students to realize that the boundaries between romance fiction and “canonical” fiction are more permeable than critics of the former would like. In this conference paper I hope to offer suggestions on ways to engage with the popular romance in academic courses within the context of literary history.


    I really enjoyed this paper, and also playing “Romance Jeopardy” with Jayashree Kamble, whose presentation focused on using romance and literary canon texts alongside one another to examine concepts such as exoticism, or on horror and genre structure. She provided copies of her syllabus and I didn’t think I’d say this about a syllabus, but it was fascinating.

    Lunch plenary:

    I admit, I was a bit wary of an hour-plus plenary over lunch (which is when I get sleepy) but oh, my stars and thoroughbreds, An Goris’ brief examination of her 400+ page dissertation was … well, I am running out of superlatives here. She outlined how she approached her study of Roberts’ novels, and why author examinations and author studies were a logical and efficient way, in her opinion, to begin the work of academic research in to popular romance.

    Goris’ dissertation focused on the paratext of Roberts’ novels, examining the way in which the covers and print matter surrounding the narrative text evolved with Roberts’ career. Goris touched on branding, the change in style of the covers, and how Roberts’ writing diverged several times from the established conventions of romance fiction at the time. For example, Roberts began writing series narratives, connected stories focused on a family or on a common adventure, creating stories that took place over thee books instead of one. Those narratives that were connected were branded to indicate their connectedness, but not at the very beginning.

    Goris’ dissertation defense is on 29 November in Belgium. It’s a public event, so if you’re in Belgium, you can stop by.

    My favorite session was probably “Our Novels Our Selves” in which Samantha Sabalis presented a Lacanian analysis of Courtney Milan’s “Proof by Seduction” and “Unveiled,” and how the heroine’s fragmented identity is restored to self-actualized wholeness by the hero’s recognition of her unified self. The ideas of hidden and dual identities are big parts of Milan’s books, and Sabalis’ analysis was insightful as to what multiple and fragmented identities mean theoretically and textually.

    In an interesting twist on the discussion of the separation of author and text, I tweeted the hell out of that paper because I thought it was so interesting, and Courtney Milan responded that she was blown away at the idea that someone was using Lacan to analyze her work, especially since her heroines regularly use false identities. 

    Jonathan Allan presented portions of his dissertation work which focused on the therapeutic uses of romance novels, or, perhaps better put, how romance novels and therapy are more related than one might think, especially in the work both do to identify ideal self and ideal resolutions and outcomes. I am really not doing justice to this paper - here, have the abstract:


    “Transference and the Popular Romance Novel”
    Jacques Lacan observes that “positive transference is when you have a soft spot for the individual concerned [...] and negative transference is when you have to keep your eye on him.” Though Lacan is talking about the site of analysis, it seems that a great deal of literary labor can and often does mimic the process of analysis both in the role of analyst and analysand. This study considers the place of psychoanalysis in reading, critiquing, and studying the popular romance novel. This paper does not seek to analyze romance readers from afar; rather what can psychoanalysis tell us about the romance novel?


    Maryan Wherry presented a feminist literary critical examination of the sex in romance - specifically the sex scenes, and how the established canon of feminist critics apply marvelously well to analysis of the sexual language of romance. As we know, sexuality in romance focuses much on the female sexual experience, both in point of view of the scene, and in the overall progress of the story. Wherry’s paper was amazing to me (seriously, I am totally out of superlatives, here. It’s becoming ridiculous) (I’m going to have to start using words like ‘badger’ or ‘exposure’) because she looked closely at the actual descriptions of the female body in sex scenes in romance, contrasting purple prose (Stephanie Laurens) (No, not the weeping furnace of her sheath) to descriptive but not purple (Loretta Chase). Wherry looked specifically at the descriptions of the female body in romance and applied concepts from French feminist critics Cixcous, Irigaray and Kristeva to the fact that romance sex scenes describing women’s bodies are likely written by women. (No, no, nothing feminist or literarily interesting about that, no, nothing to see here, please move along).

    Trying to summarize the entire conference is the verbal equivalent of me waving my arms a lot and making excited noises, as if I’d had too much sugar and caffeine and just put a Now or Later in my mouth. It was an entire day of such interesting and diverse commentary and criticism that if you ask me about it, The most I can come up with are noises of excited happiness. It’s like Good Book Noise™ except it’s good presentation noise.

    The experience of being in the room and listening to the presentations is not nearly possible to capture in bulletpoints. Being in a room of people focused on creatively examining romance in every possible direction is inspiring - and also brain exhausting. My brain was full like after a good meal. My brain says, “Nom. Sigh.”

    (Also if I’ve got any of the details wrong, please feel free to email me so I can correct them.)

    Finally, this is the decoration on the mirror in the bathroom at the hotel:
    8:43 am
    Popular Romance in the New Millenium: A Summary (or, Attempt at One)

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/popular-romance-in-the-new-millenium-a-summary-or-attempt-at-one/

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/popular-romance-in-the-new-millenium-a-summary-or-attempt-at-one/#When:08:43:37Z

    If you followed the #MCDROM hashtag on Twitter last week, you saw me, Jessica Tripler and Sarah Frantz trying to keep up with the presentations at the McDaniel College Popular Romance in the New Millennium conference.

    It was, in a word, brain-full.  As in, my brain is very full now. I will do my best to do a logical and cogent summary, but it may be best for those incredibly curious to wait for the issue of the IASPR journal, JPRS which promises to publish the conference proceedings.

    The conference started off with a keynote from Dr. Mary Bly better known as Eloisa James, that focused on: Where is romance scholarship right now?

    The simple answer: most of romance scholarship, from local professors to scholars from Utah, Arkansas and Michigan to Belgium, was in that room. But James’ talk focused on the state of the genre and the state of the scholarship.

    Three points that James made are still running in lopsided circles in my brain.

    1. When Food Network recently hosted a cake challenge where the bakers had to create a cake that was all about romance, the president of RWA was judging. One cake was removed from the final competition because the hero shot the heroine and she was dead (and not coming back). Obviously, not a romance. But another cake didn’t make the cut because the hero and heroine were already married, and the judge said that wasn’t a romance. The happily ever after IS the wedding.

    James pointed out that she growled at the tv at this moment, because that wasn’t her understanding of romance. In James’ opinion, RWA President Dorien Kelly dated her definition of romance by removing married people from consideration as subjects of romance - and if you’re familiar with James’ books, you know that many already-married couples are featured among the protagonists. So not even within the genre can folks necessarily agree what exactly encompasses a romance.

    2. James noticed that in the upcoming book of scholarship about the romance genre, there were articles that examined her books, but that the scholar in question hadn’t contacted her about their reading and analysis of those books, and this lack of contact surprised her. James said she wishes she could call or tweet or talk on Facebook with the authors she studies but they’re long, long loooong dead. She thinks, if I am interpreting her comments correctly, that scholarship about romance novels should include conversations with the authors, most especially since authors are so present and available in social media - which brings me to the final point that’s doing cartwheels in my brain.

    3. James noted that in a recent meeting with her publishers, both HarperCollins and Penguin (publisher of her upcoming Paris memoir in 2012) were very focused on her 75k Facebook friends and 6200+ Twitter followers, as if social media translated to dollar signs. She doesn’t believe that it does, but does think that social media has changed a LOT of what it means to be an author.

    Social media is “the commodification of the charisma of the author,” and it’s no longer nearly enough to write a book. Authors also have to be socially present on these networks, interact with readers, and in some cases, selling books themselves. Because of the affiliate code to bookstores like Amazon and BN, James knows how many copies of a book she sells through an affiliate link. Julia Quinn noted that she sold many copies of James’ book due to a recent Facebook post, and James also used EIKAL as an example, as she listed it on her Facebook page so her Facebook folks would know she was one of the authors featured. So, as she pointed out, she’s not only book marketing and book writing but book selling, as well. Yet another changing role of the author, and reformation of the genre.

    Friday morning marked the start of the conference. At breakfast there was French toast made of glazed donuts. My inner sugar-junkie about expired of complete glee.

    The best part of day was the period of time after each session. There were several long conversations of debate and challenge of ideas that didn’t necessarily become hostile. Discussion of the meaning and use of cliches, of student and administrative attitude toward the teaching of romance, and of the role of sexuality in romance could have gone on for more than the allotted time, and it made picking a table to sit at for lunch and dinner really difficult because every table had an awesome conversation going on.

    Questioning the concept of the “death of author” rebounded in each discussion, because these academics are studying books wherein author is possibly still alive and even more possibly still publishing, and probably online at that moment. While there’s plenty of argument for the separation of the text to be analyzed and the author who created it, that separation can create challenges to researchers because the author is important in some context—though she is not the sole master of the meaning(s) of the text. (I’m right now thinking that I prefer separation of the creator from the work, even when the creator is still creating and the study of the genre is so new, because I think each reader’s experience is her own, and should not be influenced or corrected by the creator of a book. But I’m still pondering that one).

    Yet as James pointed out, researchers and scholars can’t ignore the fact that authors are talking with readers, and they are between them creating MORE text to examine. Some of the papers at the conference examined the text of author websites and author/reader communities, such as Stephanie Moody’s paper,
    “‘Convergence Culture’: Exploring the Literacy Practices of Online Romance Fiction Communities.” Others, such as Kat Schroeder, applied network theory to existing communities like IASPR and JPRS, which are focused on the romance genre, studying the connectivity and meaning behind those connections.

    I think network theory is my new favorite thing, and if I were going back to grad school, I’d be all over that. Existing forms of literary criticism are molding with new concepts like network theory to examine the books, the women who write them, and the communities of women who read them—AND the communities of scholars who study them. The scholars of the genre are studying themselves while they study. The readers of the genre are creating texts that are as valued for analysis as the works themselves. It’s rather amazing.

    Also amazing were the number of people who cited me, the site, or the Bosoms or EIKAL. That was amazing, humbling and astonishing. I spent a lot of time feeling my cheeks turning red.

    But as I mentioned earlier, it was the discussions after each session that were like brain candy. So much in one comment to ponder, especially when two individuals didn’t agree. I love to witness creativity and the creative response to text consumed, especially when that occurs in romance, among people who deploy every brain cell in their investigation and enjoyment of the genre.

    What follows are my notes, taken after tweeting or during breaks.

    Pedagogy and Teaching the Romance (morning sessions):

    Amy Burge presented a session on creative exercises she’s used that invite students to physically rearrange text of romance page created statements, interpretations and interactive analysis. She led the session for conference attendees on Friday morning (I wasn’t there yet, alas) and created visual art about romance that decorated the conference space

    Here are some pics:







    Glinda Hall from Arkansas State presented a discussion of what including romance in courses does to the classroom community. Her course from Spring 2010 was titled “Beyond Heaving Bosoms: Women’s Popular Romance Fiction” (I joined the class via Skype on the last day that semester- it was very cool). Because romances are about intimacy and sex/sexuality, her course focus slowly became about sexuality and contemporary sexual culture because the students focused on that aspect of the text. Hall created a “safe space” for examination and discussion of sex, which isn’t something easily discussed in a public forum, and managed to create candid discussions about romances, and the intimacy within them.

    The sessions on Canons and Context were eye opening not only because of the enthusiasm from the professors who taught, but the revelations about the student reactions to the courses being taught. Lessons learned:

    - Professors were sometimes more enthusiastic about teaching romance
    - Students were often hideously embarrassed about the novels, buying, or being seen reading them
    - Dr. Selinger showed slides of the covers he provides, allowing students to hide their romances



    Antonia Losano, who due to craptastic weather, didn’t make it to the conference, wrote a paper about the experience of teaching romances at Middlebury. Her paper was extraordinary, and is summarized nicely in her abstract:


    “Sneaking it in at the end: Introducing Popular Romance into the Small College Classroom”
Mounting innovative new courses on popular culture is always challenging, but the endeavor has particular tensions in a small English department at a small Liberal Arts college. If I were to offer a course solely on popular romance, either one of the gateway courses, or a seminal survey, or the Victorian literature course wouldn’t get taught that year (and if English majors can’t get the courses they need to graduate, parents who are spending over $50,000 a year on this education start complaining). My contention, however, is that this constraint can be intensely productive for the study and teaching of popular romance, which need not be lost–it must simply be incorporated.
    Instead of being taught in a stand–alone course, romances can and should, I argue, be folded into the fabric of the academic canon. A course just on popular romance runs the risk of isolating and marginalizing the popular romance–as if we were trying to keep it from infecting the Beowulf to Virginia Woolf survey, for example. It has been my strategy to include at least one popular romance novel into the syllabus of each course I teach, encouraging students to realize that the boundaries between romance fiction and “canonical” fiction are more permeable than critics of the former would like. In this conference paper I hope to offer suggestions on ways to engage with the popular romance in academic courses within the context of literary history.


    I really enjoyed this paper, and also playing “Romance Jeopardy” with Jayashree Kamble, whose presentation focused on using romance and literary canon texts alongside one another to examine concepts such as exoticism, or on horror and genre structure. She provided copies of her syllabus and I didn’t think I’d say this about a syllabus, but it was fascinating.

    Lunch plenary:

    I admit, I was a bit wary of an hour-plus plenary over lunch (which is when I get sleepy) but oh, my stars and thoroughbreds, An Goris’ brief examination of her 400+ page dissertation was … well, I am running out of superlatives here. She outlined how she approached her study of Roberts’ novels, and why author examinations and author studies were a logical and efficient way, in her opinion, to begin the work of academic research in to popular romance.

    Goris’ dissertation focused on the paratext of Roberts’ novels, examining the way in which the covers and print matter surrounding the narrative text evolved with Roberts’ career. Goris touched on branding, the change in style of the covers, and how Roberts’ writing diverged several times from the established conventions of romance fiction at the time. For example, Roberts began writing series narratives, connected stories focused on a family or on a common adventure, creating stories that took place over thee books instead of one. Those narratives that were connected were branded to indicate their connectedness, but not at the very beginning.

    Goris’ dissertation defense is on 29 November in Belgium. It’s a public event, so if you’re in Belgium, you can stop by.

    My favorite session was probably “Our Novels Our Selves” in which Samantha Sabalis presented a Lacanian analysis of Courtney Milan’s “Proof by Seduction” and “Unveiled,” and how the heroine’s fragmented identity is restored to self-actualized wholeness by the hero’s recognition of her unified self. The ideas of hidden and dual identities are big parts of Milan’s books, and Sabalis’ analysis was insightful as to what multiple and fragmented identities mean theoretically and textually.

    In an interesting twist on the discussion of the separation of author and text, I tweeted the hell out of that paper because I thought it was so interesting, and Courtney Milan responded that she was blown away at the idea that someone was using Lacan to analyze her work, especially since her heroines regularly use false identities. 

    Jonathan Allan presented portions of his dissertation work which focused on the therapeutic uses of romance novels, or, perhaps better put, how romance novels and therapy are more related than one might think, especially in the work both do to identify ideal self and ideal resolutions and outcomes. I am really not doing justice to this paper - here, have the abstract:


    “Transference and the Popular Romance Novel”
    Jacques Lacan observes that “positive transference is when you have a soft spot for the individual concerned [...] and negative transference is when you have to keep your eye on him.” Though Lacan is talking about the site of analysis, it seems that a great deal of literary labor can and often does mimic the process of analysis both in the role of analyst and analysand. This study considers the place of psychoanalysis in reading, critiquing, and studying the popular romance novel. This paper does not seek to analyze romance readers from afar; rather what can psychoanalysis tell us about the romance novel?


    Maryan Wherry presented a feminist literary critical examination of the sex in romance - specifically the sex scenes, and how the established canon of feminist critics apply marvelously well to analysis of the sexual language of romance. As we know, sexuality in romance focuses much on the female sexual experience, both in point of view of the scene, and in the overall progress of the story. Wherry’s paper was amazing to me (seriously, I am totally out of superlatives, here. It’s becoming ridiculous) (I’m going to have to start using words like ‘badger’ or ‘exposure’) because she looked closely at the actual descriptions of the female body in sex scenes in romance, contrasting purple prose (Stephanie Laurens) (No, not the weeping furnace of her sheath) to descriptive but not purple (Loretta Chase). Wherry looked specifically at the descriptions of the female body in romance and applied concepts from French feminist critics Cixcous, Irigaray and Kristeva to the fact that romance sex scenes describing women’s bodies are likely written by women. (No, no, nothing feminist or literarily interesting about that, no, nothing to see here, please move along).

    Trying to summarize the entire conference is the verbal equivalent of me waving my arms a lot and making excited noises, as if I’d had too much sugar and caffeine and just put a Now or Later in my mouth. It was an entire day of such interesting and diverse commentary and criticism that if you ask me about it, The most I can come up with are noises of excited happiness. It’s like Good Book Noise™ except it’s good presentation noise.

    The experience of being in the room and listening to the presentations is not nearly possible to capture in bulletpoints. Being in a room of people focused on creatively examining romance in every possible direction is inspiring - and also brain exhausting. My brain was full like after a good meal. My brain says, “Nom. Sigh.”

    (Also if I’ve got any of the details wrong, please feel free to email me so I can correct them.)

    Finally, this is the decoration on the mirror in the bathroom at the hotel:
    8:41 am
    SBTB/DA Bestsellers List: 3 - 9 November 2011

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/sbtb-da-bestsellers-list-3-9-november-2011/

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/sbtb-da-bestsellers-list-3-9-november-2011/#When:08:41:00Z

    The good reviews and the good prices, they are the stuff of magic. Or, sales, at least!


    Red by Kait Nolan [Kindle | Smashwords | BN | GoodReads] 

      Dead Girls are Easy by Terri Garey [Amazon | Kobo | BN | WORD Brooklyn]

    All They Need by Sarah Mayberry [Amazon | Kindle | BN & nook | Kobo | WORD Brooklyn  | AllRomance | Harlequin.com] 

    The Windflower by Laura London [Sharon & Tom Curtis] [Amazon |  BN] 

    Edge of Sight by Roxanne St. Claire [Amazon | Kobo | BN]

    Heart of Steel by MelJean Brook [Amazon | Kindle | BN & nook | Kobo | WORD Brooklyn]

      Heartstrings and Diamond Rings by Jane Graves [Amazon | Kindle | BN & nook | Kobo | WORD Brooklyn]

    The Heart Breaker by Nicole Jordan [AMZ | BN] 

    Hot Head by Damon Suede [Amazon | Kobo | BN | AllRomance] 

    Nobody’s Angel by Patricia Rice [Amazon | BN]



    So what are you reading this week? Anything awesome set your brain on fire this past weekend? Share share!

     
    Monday, November 14th, 2011
    4:00 pm
    Heavy D and the Hero

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/heavy-d-and-the-hero/

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/heavy-d-and-the-hero/#When:16:00:02Z

    I started this post on 25 October, and put it aside because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. In mid-October, I put Heavy D’s “Now That We’ve Found Love” on my running mix and was thinking about the song and how much I liked it (and Heavy D) while I was out one day. Heavy D died unexpectedly on 8 November at age 44, and the news headline made me remember this post and that I’d never finished it. While I’m still not sure that I made every point I wanted to make (my train of thought while out running moves long the lines of Huh. Heavy D. Romance heroes. Why not heavy D heroes? …. Squirrel! Treebranch… manhole cover. Hi doggy! …. Romance heroes. Huh? ) I am still thinking about this topic, and wanted to ask your opinion.



    While listening to Heavy D tell me about how he’s found love, I got to wondering whether we’ll ever see heroes who don’t fit a physical ideal - a super hard muscular one. There are built heroes and slender heroes, but even the slender heroes, once they take their shirts off, are described in such a way that almost always mentions muscles.  I’ve read runner heroes and swimmer heroes and the absolutely physically astonishing Navy SEAL heroes, whose muscles have muscles of their own. The image of romance heroes is pretty darn sculpted much of the time.

    Many hero descriptions include specific mentions of broad chests, narrow hips, defined arms or abs, or all of the above. In some romances, it seems like the heroine was undressing the Incredible Hulk, what with some of the descriptions that made the hero seem larger than life.

     For fun, I searched Google:Books for romance author names, like “Catherine Coulter” or “Kathleen Woodiwiss” alongside the word “muscles” and looked at the sample text that appeared.

    “His muscles were well honed to a vibrant hardness.” - A Season Beyond a Kiss, Kathleen Woodiwiss, 2001.

    “The full length of her thigh was pressed to the granite-hard muscles of his.” - The Flame and the Flower, Kathleen Woodiwiss, 1972.

    “The shirt lay open to the middle of his muscular chest, revealing sun-bronzed skin…” - The Elusive Flame, Kathleen Woodiwiss, 1999.

    “He was well made, looked to be as strong as Prince, her grandfather’s most vicious wolfhound, his muscles stark and hard.” The Penwyth Curse, Catherine Coulter, 2003.

    And it’s not just the romance authors whose careers have spanned decades who I searched for. I was curious about some of the more recent popular authors, too, in my highly and completely un-scientific searching.

    “His chest was pure muscle, the kind that came from fighting thoroughbred horses for mastery, day after day. Even in the waning light, she could see that his shoulders were enormous, his arms rippled with muscles as he loosely held the reins. He was turned to the side, slightly away from her, so she could see how the muscles marched down his broad back.” The Lady Most Likely, Julia Quinn, Eloisa James, Connie Brockway, 2010.

    “He undid the buttons on his shirt and peeled it off, revealing a tight white T-shirt that showed off his firm chest muscles.” Something About You, Julie James, 2010.

    “His chest was tanned, sculpted muscle, sprinkled with golden hairs. Not big, bulging muscles, but the muscles of someone who did physical work every day, hefting tanks around and lowering boats into the water…” - Crazy for Love, Victoria Dahl, 2010.

    And of course:

    “His abdomen was ribbed as if he were smuggling paint rollers under his skin. His legs were thick and corded.” Dark Lover, JR Ward, 2005.

    I could keep going, but you get the point. The heroes, they are muscular. And not just Down There.

    I don’t meant to call out these authors as if they’ve done something wrong in their descriptions - they haven’t. Not at all. One of the odd things is that the cover model might not match the hero’s appearance - his hair or eye color, for example - but the muscles will probably match up in strength and definition.

    The funny thing about that super, possibly superhuman, physique: it takes a lot to maintain it. Yet these super-muscular heroes aren’t going to the gym in every chapter, despite the fact that keeping those hardened and sculpted leg muscles and all those washboard/paint roller/eight pairs of parked Volkswagen Beetle abs requires regular maintenance. All that gym time would cut into the wooing time. And the business time, too. (Question: Was there a Regency GNC, selling protein powders and weight gain shakes for all these heroes back then?)

    Anyway, these authors are successfully writing the heroes we read about, and continue to read about, ostensibly giving us, the readers, what we want: really finely sculpted specimens of manly manhood with extra muscles of manfulness on the side (and back, and legs, etc).

    There seems to be a very wide chasm between the depictions of heroes in romances, and men like Heavy D, and other men of size. Or just men of different sizes. I mean, come on, Heavy D found love, right? He sang about it (over and over and over. Seriously that song has, like, 14 repeats of the chorus). Heavy D was a stumbling, bumbling overweight lover (though I have NO idea why he’s dancing in a raincoat in that video).

    And most men don’t match that described muscled ideal. Men gain weight in different places than women - often in the stomach area (though for some reason as they age, many men lose their asses. Where the hell do they go, anyway?). Most of the fathers and husbands I know are not super muscly. They aren’t physical ideals as defined by the romance genre, but they are, some of them, pretty hot. And their wives and partners and girlfriends love them.

    If part of the underlying message of romance is that the hero and heroine aren’t idealized images of perfection, and are instead two people with human flaws who are perfect for each other, why are the heroes continually ripped and cut into muscled ideals? I know the muscular descriptions are ways to reinforce the virility of the hero, but are there other models of heroic proportion we could embrace as readers?

    We’re seeing more heroines of different sizes, slowly but surely. Would we accept a hero who isn’t muscled and physically ideal?

    I would like to think so. Have a look at this Tumblr blog of romance authors posting pictures of their real-life husbands and partners: Romance Authors Present: The Sexiest Men Alive. Some of them are truly adorable and gorgeous and funny (I love the expression on Daisy Harris’ husband’s face).  But these are real men with real bodies, many without the stark hard muscles of rippling, granite-hard hardness.

    So do we want to cross that chasm between the romance depiction and the shaped varieties of they actual human male body? What descriptions would we as readers welcome, and conversely, what would repel us?
    Saturday, November 12th, 2011
    8:44 am
    GS vs. STA: Characters With Chronic Conditions

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/gs-vs.-sta-characters-with-chronic-conditions/

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/gs-vs.-sta-characters-with-chronic-conditions/#When:08:44:08Z

    I have an anonymous request for a “Good Shit vs. Shit to Avoid” list:


    Like many of us, I cope with things by reading about them, and I love
    finding a book about someone who has problems similar to mine and is able to
    thrive. I was recently diagnosed with a chronic condition that will almost certainly affect the rest of my
    life. It’s not fatal, and it’s not degenerative, but it is likely to lead
    to some level of physical disability in the future.

    I am thus wondering about books with heroines who are physically
    disabled. I know there are books with deaf/Deaf heroines (I thoroughly
    enjoyed Tessa Dare’s Three Nights with a Scoundrel), but I’m
    primarily interested in reading about women with physical
    limitations—damaged legs, missing arms, confined to a wheelchair, suffering
    from multiple sclerosis, etc. One-eyed race car drivers need not apply.

    There are heroes with war wounds, but I’ve encountered very few heroines
    with similar disabilities. My taste is kind of narrow—I love Julia Quinn,
    Tessa Dare, Loretta Chase, and most Lisa Kleypas for historicals (I have
    read Seduce Me at Sunrise, btw, and I’m just thinking I’ll go back
    and reread Win’s story…). I love Victoria Dahl (historicals and contemp),
    Jenny Crusie, and Nora Roberts. I much prefer fluff to angst, and I’m not
    really all that into paranormal romance, though I’m always willing to give
    things a shot.

    I thought maybe the Bitchery could help me out here.


    My first thought is Whisper Falls by Toni Blake, which features a heroine with Crohn’s Disease, among the Most Unsexy Chronic Ailments Ever, who doesn’t get better magically by the end of the book.

    But I don’t recall any heroines with chronic, potentially debilitating problems like MS or fibromyalgia, for example. Do you know of any?
    Friday, November 11th, 2011
    4:37 pm
    Friday Videos are Not Work Safe

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/friday-videos-are-not-work-safe/

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/friday-videos-are-not-work-safe/#When:16:37:05Z

    Via Dawn comes this hilarious video that is truly not work safe, but utterly amazing in its…cheek. Dawn says, “I found this in a comment section on a Regretsy post. The post was the breast cancer video and several people left comments bemoaning the lack of a self exam video with hot girls. A commenter found this (and posted it in the comments with out warning anyone about the possibility of coffee-spitting).”

    It’s below the fold, y’all.


    Link.
    Thursday, November 10th, 2011
    8:18 am
    Classic Romance - Which One First? Julie Garwood Edition

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/classic-romance-which-one-first-julie-garwood-edition/

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/classic-romance-which-one-first-julie-garwood-edition/#When:08:18:09Z

    Julie Garwood is a romance author whose books often are mentioned along with my very favorite noise, “Good Book Noise.” There are MANY of them, too! She used to write historicals, and now her focus in on romantic suspense. So if you’re looking at Garwood’s books and trying to pick one to read, it can be daunting.

    My favorite Garwood’s are all historicals. I love The Bride like nobody’s business, and could re-read that book any time, even when I have 2 minutes before the world ends. My copy is in two large pieces. I think it might be time for another copy. Or some duct-tape, as I love the gold cover. It was my standard for what bridal gowns should look like, ever since I read that book as a young teenager.

    So, let’s build a recommended list, shall we? We’ve done lists for Jude Deveraux and Johanna Lindsey. Let’s do a Garwood list, shall we?

    Which Julie Garwood novel would you recommend first? Which would you pass to a curious reader? Feel free to recommend both historical and romantic suspense, as those are two very different genres!
    Wednesday, November 9th, 2011
    8:01 am
    Pamela Clare, Romance, State Law, and Women’s Rights

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/pamela-clare-romance-state-law-and-womens-rights/

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/pamela-clare-romance-state-law-and-womens-rights/#When:08:01:52Z

    I was having a completely unrelated email conversation with author Pamela Clare this past week when I learned something rather amazing that she did, and I wanted to share this with you. Here’s another answer to anyone who says that romances are all the same, and they are all meaningless fluff.

    Romance novels can and have had an impact on the real world, and Ms. Clare’s an example of that. A journalist by profession, she’s the author of the I-Team romantic suspense series. Last year, she wrote a law that passed in Colorado last year banning use of shackles on female inmates giving birth while imprisoned.

    This story is amazing. Seriously, my jaw hit my desk. But please be aware, before you click for more, that there are some brutal stories in Clare’s account about women in labor in prisons in the US. Unflinchingly brutal. Be warned. 

    Clare: The law I wrote bans the use of shackles on inmates during labor and delivery. (Yes, women giving birth are chained to their beds WHILE being kept under guard.) I’ve covered women’s prison/jail issues extensively for more than 15 years and broke a number of sickening — truly sickening — stories regarding the abuse of inmates.

    Some of the highlights were folded into UNLAWFUL CONTACT, one of my I-Team books. There are four real investigative stories folded into that plotline. One of them involved the neglect of a pregnant inmate, who went into labor a month prematurely and was ignored, made fun of, and left alone in her cell IN LABOR for about 24 hours. It wasn’t until the next day when a guard noticed that she was in distress that she was taken to the hospital, where her perfectly healthy baby girl was stillborn.

    To add insult to this woman’s profound injury — she was in prison on drug charges — she was kept chained to her hospital bed during labor and delivery. So imagine giving birth to an unnecessarily dead baby while chained to the bed like an animal and getting no pain relief. She gave birth, her baby was put on a slab (where she remained for a few months as the inmate couldn’t pay for a funeral), and the inmate was taken back to prison. (I cannot fathom dealing with the scope of that loss locked in a 9x9 cell while bleeding from giving birth.)

    I learned that the practice of chaining women in labor to beds is commonplace. Last year, only 8 states banned the practice. Although some states had Department of Corrections that had policies regulating the use of shackles, all jurisdictions in a state have their own policies (city police, county sheriff, etc.) UNLESS there’s a state policy governing the practice throughout the state.
    I wrote UNLAWFUL CONTACT and included a fictional happy ending where the senator hero from EXTREME EXPOSURE gets a law passed banning the shackling of inmates in labor and during childbirth. I took all my research to my favorite pet lawmaker, a man, who said he didn’t see what the big deal was. He was no longer my favorite lawmaker. Ptttth.

    Then I did nothing for a while.

    But it ate at me so very much and that pretend catharsis from the end of UNLAWFUL CONTACT really made me want to make it happen.

    So… Last year, I came up with a pretext for visiting the prison midwife and interviewed a bunch of pregnant and postpartum inmates. The story I wrote was supposed to be about their cool new prenatal program, but really I was sneaking around doing research on the shackling issue. I uncovered MORE hideous stories.

    This shit haunted me at night. Truly, I had nights where I felt sick. You’re getting a vague outline; I had faces, names, whole stories.

    I wrote an article about it, then took that article and all my research to the Senate President. Within 5 minutes of listening to me plead with him to do something to stop this, I had his permission to craft a bill, which he agreed to give late-bill status despite having told lawmakers that no new bills would be introduced.

    I’m not a lawmaker, obviously, but once I had his guarantee of late-bill status, I found a WOMAN senator (yes, thank you) who took the bill I wrote, introduced it into the Senate, and carried it through. I wrote all her talking points. I also testified as the expert witness at all the hearings on the subject.

    When the bill cleared the final hurdle in the last House committee, I was sitting next to several inmates whose stories I had covered. One of them was the woman who’d lost her baby. She reached over, took my hand, gave it a squeeze, and there were tears pouring down her face. (And now I’m getting teary-eyed remembering it.)

    I cannot tell you what that meant to me.

    SB 193 passed late in the session with a single NO vote from an asshat from Colorado Springs. Colorado became the 9th state to ban the shackling of pregnant inmates.

    Our law contains a few unique things that I wrote in based on inmates’ experiences. It requires the prison/jail to allow a member of the medical staff to be on hand when a post-partum inmate is strip searched on her return to the facility. The horror stories of women with stitches in their vaginas being made to squat and cough while guards told them they didn’t care how much it hurt are hideous to hear.

    Also, the law requires the state to make a public record of it every time they use some excuse to shackle an inmate during labor — and that provision is to allow nosy bitch journlists like me to check and see how often they’re making use of the “but she’s really dangerous” clause to ensure they don’t abuse it.

    And that is the nutshell version of it. The bill passed.

    I’ve been sharing what I did with women in other states in hopes of getting laws in all 50 states. We’ve jumped up to 12 now I think that ban it. Pennsylvania followed Colorado.

    So it’s a case of real life going into my book, the book offering a happy ending I wanted in real life, and then I went out and (it still amazes me) made that happen. As a result, I was awarded the Society for Professional Journalists “Keeper of the Flame” Lifetime Achievement Award this year.



    The complete account of the bill, and the before and after of what its passage means for women inmates in Colorado can be found at the Boulder Weekly site.

    I am struck by the fact that writing a fictional happy ending wasn’t enough. Clare not only wrote a happy ending into her books, but went on to write the bill that banned ankle shackles on pregnant inmates. That is amazing. High fives to you, ma’am. 

     
    8:01 am
    Pamela Clare, Romance, State Law, and Women’s Rights

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/pamela-clare-romance-state-law-and-womens-rights/

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/pamela-clare-romance-state-law-and-womens-rights/#When:08:01:15Z

    I was having a completely unrelated email conversation with author Pamela Clare this past week when I learned something rather amazing that she did, and I wanted to share this with you. Here’s another answer to anyone who says that romances are all the same, and they are all meaningless fluff.

    Romance novels can and have had an impact on the real world, and Ms. Clare’s an example of that. A journalist by profession, she’s the author of the I-Team romantic suspense series. Last year, she wrote a law that passed in Colorado last year banning use of shackles on female inmates giving birth while imprisoned.

    This story is amazing. Seriously, my jaw hit my desk. But please be aware, before you click for more, that there are some brutal stories in Clare’s account about women in labor in prisons in the US. Unflinchingly brutal. Be warned. 

    Clare: The law I wrote bans the use of shackles on inmates during labor and delivery. (Yes, women giving birth are chained to their beds WHILE being kept under guard.) I’ve covered women’s prison/jail issues extensively for more than 15 years and broke a number of sickening — truly sickening — regarding the abuse of inmates.

    Some of the highlights were folded into UNLAWFUL CONTACT, one of my I-Team books. There are four real investigative stories folded into that plotline. One of them involved the neglect of a pregnant inmate, who went into labor a month prematurely and was ignored, made fun of, and left alone in her cell IN LABOR for about 24 hours. It wasn’t until the next day when a guard noticed that she was in distress that she was taken to the hospital, where her perfectly healthy baby girl was stillborn.

    To add insult to this woman’s profound injury — she was in prison on drug charges — she was kept chained to her hospital bed during labor and delivery. So imagine giving birth to an unnecessarily dead baby while chained to the bed like an animal and getting no pain relief. She gave birth, her baby was put on a slab (where she remained for a few months as the inmate couldn’t pay for a funeral), and the inmate was taken back to prison. (I cannot fathom dealing with the scope of that loss locked in a 9x9 cell while bleeding from giving birth.)

    I learned that the practice of chaining women in labor to beds is commonplace. Last year, only 8 states banned the practice. Although some states had Department of Corrections that had policies regulating the use of shackles, all jurisdictions in a state have their own policies (city police, county sheriff, etc.) UNLESS there’s a state policy governing the practice throughout the state.
    I wrote UNLAWFUL CONTACT and included a fictional happy ending where the senator hero from EXTREME EXPOSURE gets a law passed banning the shackling of inmates in labor and during childbirth. I took all my research to my favorite pet lawmaker, a man, who said he didn’t see what the big deal was. He was no longer my favorite lawmaker. Ptttth.

    Then I did nothing for a while.

    But it ate at me so very much and that pretend catharsis from the end of UNLAWFUL CONTACT really made me want to make it happen.

    So… Last year, I came up with a pretext for visiting the prison midwife and interviewed a bunch of pregnant and postpartum inmates. The story I wrote was supposed to be about their cool new prenatal program, but really I was sneaking around doing research on the shackling issue. I uncovered MORE hideous stories.

    This shit haunted me at night. Truly, I had nights where I felt sick. You’re getting a vague outline; I had faces, names, whole stories.

    I wrote an article about it, then took that article and all my research to the Senate President. Within 5 minutes of listening to me plead with him to do something to stop this, I had his permission to craft a bill, which he agreed to give late-bill status despite having told lawmakers that no new bills would be introduced.

    I’m not a lawmaker, obviously, but once I had his guarantee of late-bill status, I found a WOMAN senator (yes, thank you) who took the bill I wrote, introduced it into the Senate, and carried it through. I wrote all her talking points. I also testified as the expert witness at all the hearings on the subject.

    When the bill cleared the final hurdle in the last House committee, I was sitting next to several inmates whose stories I had covered. One of them was the woman who’d lost her baby. She reached over, took my hand, gave it a squeeze, and there were tears pouring down her face. (And now I’m getting teary-eyed remembering it.)

    I cannot tell you what that meant to me.

    SB 193 passed late in the session with a single NO vote from an asshat from Colorado Springs. Colorado became the 9th state to ban the shackling of pregnant inmates.

    Our law contains a few unique things that I wrote in based on inmates’ experiences. It requires the prison/jail to allow a member of the medical staff to be on hand when a post-partum inmate is strip searched on her return to the facility. The horror stories of women with stitches in their vaginas being made to squat and cough while guards told them they didn’t care how much it hurt are hideous to hear.

    Also, the law requires the state to make a public record of it every time they use some excuse to shackle an inmate during labor — and that provision is to allow nosy bitch journlists like me to check and see how often they’re making use of the “but she’s really dangerous” clause to ensure they don’t abuse it.

    And that is the nutshell version of it. The bill passed.

    I’ve been sharing what I did with women in other states in hopes of getting laws in all 50 states. We’ve jumped up to 12 now I think that ban it. Pennsylvania followed Colorado.

    So it’s a case of real life going into my book, the book offering a happy ending I wanted in real life, and then I went out and (it still amazes me) made that happen. As a result, I was awarded the Society for Professional Journalists “Keeper of the Flame” Lifetime Achievement Award this year.



    The complete account of the bill, and the before and after of what its passage means for women inmates in Colorado can be found at the Boulder Weekly site.

    I am struck by the fact that writing a fictional happy ending wasn’t enough. Clare not only wrote a happy ending into her books, but went on to write the bill that banned ankle shackles on pregnant inmates. That is amazing. High fives to you, ma’am. 

     
    Tuesday, November 8th, 2011
    9:57 pm
    I’ll Be on BetterTV on Wednesday

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/ill-be-on-bettertv-on-wednesday/

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/ill-be-on-bettertv-on-wednesday/#When:21:57:17Z

    I went to BetterTV to tape a segment that will air this Wednesday, and depending on your local channel it could be at 4am or something.

    BUT I am SO curious how it turned out because the hosts, JD and Audra, we pretty complimentary about the genre - JD in particular. I believe there is a HELL YEAH holding the lighter moment, unless they edited it out. It was a very fun segment to tape.

    Anyway, if you want to watch, check your local listings in the drop down box at the top of the page and see if it airs in your state. In New York/New Jersey, it airs at 3am, so the DVR and I have a date. A somewhat nervewracking one.
    2:00 pm
    New Nora Roberts Covers from InterMix

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/new-nora-roberts-covers-from-intermix/

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/new-nora-roberts-covers-from-intermix/#When:14:00:53Z

    InterMix asked if I’d be willing to help unveil the new Nora Roberts covers for the digital release of the O’Hurley’s series.

    The Donovans are being unveiled at Nora’s Facebook page while the Cordina’s Royal Family covers are being revealed at USA Today’s Happy Ever After blog. (Hi ladies!)

    When I saw them, I got to thinking about how covers have changed, and how the covers for categories being re-released in digital format don’t resemble the original covers at all. They are so, so different. From what I have learned from different self-published authors who have designed their own covers, one of the focuses of a digital cover is that it’s legible and distinct at different sizes, including the tiny little tile that’s displayed on eInk readers when all the books are displayed on a shelf, for example. So the title and name must be clear - I don’t think anyone is missing that these are Nora’s books! What’s fascinating to me is that they do not show people at all. Have a look: the new covers are on the left, and the older Harlequin covers are on the right.


    Here is the new and original cover art for Dance to the Piper [Amazon | BN]:



    I’m going to go out on a limb and say that that isn’t dancing happening there on the right. And on the left, is that Lincoln Center?

    Also, as an aside, I found this at the Tower Books site, and I’m not sure what the hell is going on in this cover art from Thorndike Press:



    I think she’s dancing with an attack banana.

    ETA: According to McVane on Twitter, that *might* be a picture of a traditional Korean dancer, though I have no idea if Korean dance plays a part in this book, or why the cover art is such an awkward and somewhat disturbing angle!


    Here’s the new and original covers for Skin Deep [Amazon | BN]:



    That doesn’t look…safe. On the right, I mean. Kissing on a bannister on a cliff overlooking LA? I think that’s LA. I think that’s LA on the left, too.

    Only it appears she’s missing his mouth and aiming for his nose. Uh oh.



    And finally, here is the cover for Without a Trace [Amazon | BN]



    This is going to drive me nuts all week. Who does that guy on the right look like? Part Robert Stack part… someone else. As for the redesigned cover, I read three different plot descriptions but didn’t get a sense of where this book takes place. One review mentioned Casablanca, so perhaps that explains it.

    To quote Winnie the Pooh, “Oh, bother.” The price for the digital re-releases appears to be $6.99 as of right now. I hope that price comes down, but I’m also not sticking my head in a large urn of honey and holding my breath until it does.

    Have you read this series? What do you think of the new covers? Do you like the older ones, if only for the fabulous hairstyles (and pink jackets. I really like that pink jacket on the Skin Deep cover)?

     
    2:00 pm
    New Nora Roberts Covers from InterMix

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/new-nora-roberts-covers-from-intermix/

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/new-nora-roberts-covers-from-intermix/#When:14:00:13Z

    InterMix asked if I’d be willing to help unveil the new Nora Roberts covers for the digital release of the O’Hurley’s series.

    The Donovans are being unveiled at Nora’s Facebook page while the Cordina’s Royal Family covers are being revealed at USA Today’s Happy Ever After blog. (Hi ladies!)

    When I saw them, I got to thinking about how covers have changed, and how the covers for categories being re-released in digital format don’t resemble the original covers at all. They are so, so different. From what I have learned from different self-published authors who have designed their own covers, one of the focuses of a digital cover is that it’s legible and distinct at different sizes, including the tiny little tile that’s displayed on eInk readers when all the books are displayed on a shelf, for example. So the title and name must be clear - I don’t think anyone is missing that these are Nora’s books! What’s fascinating to me is that they do not show people at all. Have a look: the new covers are on the left, and the older Harlequin covers are on the right.


    Here is the new and original cover art for Dance to the Piper [Amazon | BN]:



    I’m going to go out on a limb and say that that isn’t dancing happening there on the right. And on the left, is that Lincoln Center?

    Also, as an aside, I found this at the Tower Books site, and I’m not sure what the hell is going on in this cover art from Thorndike Press:



    I think she’s dancing with an attack banana.




    Here’s the new and original covers for Skin Deep [Amazon | BN]:



    That doesn’t look…safe. On the right, I mean. Kissing on a bannister on a cliff overlooking LA? I think that’s LA. I think that’s LA on the left, too.

    Only it appears she’s missing his mouth and aiming for his nose. Uh oh.

     

    And finally, here is the cover for Without a Trace [Amazon | BN]



    This is going to drive me nuts all week. Who does that guy on the right look like? Part Robert Stack part… someone else. As for the redesigned cover, I read three different plot descriptions but didn’t get a sense of where this book takes place. One review mentioned Casablanca, so perhaps that explains it.

    To quote Winnie the Pooh, “Oh, bother.” The price for the digital re-releases appears to be $6.99 as of right now. I hope that price comes down, but I’m also not sticking my head in a large urn of honey and holding my breath until it does.

    Have you read this series? What do you think of the new covers? Do you like the older ones, if only for the fabulous hairstyles (and pink jackets. I really like that pink jacket on the Skin Deep cover)?

     
    8:53 am
    Caption This Cover: Absent Asscrack Winners!

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/caption-this-cover-absent-asscrack-winners/

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/caption-this-cover-absent-asscrack-winners/#When:08:53:12Z

    The absence of buttcrack yields only the finest in creativity! Time to announce the winner of our latest “Caption That Cover” contest, where you plumbed the depths of humor without reservation. Alas, this poor woman will not be saved by anything, particularly not any backdoor action.

    Honorable Mentions go to:

    CK for “Shut the back door!”

    azteclady for “Which part of “do not enter” you didn’t get?”

    Lucy Woodhull for “Felicity’s jonesing for an asshole.  Can a girl get a butt butt?”

    RH Rush for “He would have loved to be in her ass, savin’ her life—but sadly, it appeared she was destined for certain death.”

    Darlynne for “Dammit, first my wallet, then my keys, now my asshole. Where is this stuff going?”

    Allison for “My mama always said I couldn’t tell my ass from my elbow…”

    VandyJ for “After all this time, Barbie was still a tease, all talk, no place for action.”

    and Sarah W for ““Other girls like to act holier than thou.  Felicity Jones has to.”

    Our first runner up is Cathy KJ for, “The newest release from the mother hen of cloaca erotica.”

    And the winner of a $25 gift card to the bookstore of her choosing is: Tina M for the entry (heh):

    Flex Seal liquid rubber seal.
    She used it on:
    
Roofs

    Gutters
    
Pipes

    Skylights

    and much, much more!


    Tina, email me at sarahATsmartbitchestrashybooksDOTcom to claim your book-shopping winnings! Congrats to the winner, the runners up, and thank you to everyone who entered. SNERK. Or, didn’t enter, as it were.
    Sunday, November 6th, 2011
    7:14 am
    SBTB/DA Bestsellers List: 25 October - 1 November 2011

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/sbtb-da-bestsellers-list-25-october-1-november-2011/

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/sbtb-da-bestsellers-list-25-october-1-november-2011/#When:07:14:40Z

    Good gravy, I write about The Windflower and enough copies are purchased through our affiliate code (which measures 3rd party purchases even if no commission is earned) that it makes the top 10 list. I so hope that book is digitized for re-release some day. And if you bought a copy, I hope you’ll let you know what you think! That book rocked my brain.


    Venus in Blue Jeans by Meg Benjamin [Amazon | Kindle | BN & nook | Kobo | WORD Brooklyn  | AllRomance]

    The Windflower by Laura London [Sharon & Tom Curtis] [Amazon |  BN] 

    Bad Karma by Theresa Weir [Amazon | Kobo | BN | AllRomance | WORD Brooklyn]

    Dead Girls are Easy by Terri Garey [Amazon | Kobo | BN | WORD Brooklyn]

    Darkfever by Karen Marie Moning [Amazon | Kindle | BN & nook | Kobo | WORD Brooklyn  | AllRomance] 

    Wildstar by Nicole Jordan [ AMZ | BN] 

    A is for Alibi by Sue Grafton [Amazon | Kindle | BN & nook | Kobo]

    The Heart Breaker by Nicole Jordan [AMZ | BN]

    Tender Feud by Nicole Jordan [AMZ | BN] 

    Heartstrings and Diamond Rings by Jane Graves [Amazon | Kindle | BN & nook | Kobo | WORD Brooklyn] 



     
    Monday, November 7th, 2011
    8:59 am
    Red by Kait Nolan

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/red-by-kait-nolan/

    http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/site/red-by-kait-nolan/#When:08:59:48Z

    Whenever I read a first person YA novel, I feel like I need to state in the review that it is first person, and the narrators are telling the story to the reader in each chapter directly. I know that drives some people bananas, though it doesn’t bother me. But be ye aware: this is first person narration from the hero and heroine’s point of view.

    Awareness aside: Holy, holy crap, I really enjoyed this book.

    Plot summary ahoy! Elodie Rose has just moved to town, and is keeping a big ol’ secret. She’s on the cusp of turning into a wolf, which means, according to her family history and all the evidence she has at hand, she’s going to go absolutely nuts and kill everyone in her path, including her father. She’s cursed. She and her father are doing everything they can think of to delay that violent change, so Elodie lives a live of near seclusion. They moved to a new town, they changed their names, and her father chose a place near a huge park so that if they have to run they can head into the forest and leave no trail. Elodie’s father and Elodie herself are highly-trained search and rescue team members, and have exceptional survival skills in the wilderness.

    Sawyer is the son of a researcher who has come to town to study the integration of a wolf pack in the forest. Elodie was so enticed by the opportunity to be a research assistant for the summer, she lied to her father about her job, and when her new internship brings her into near-daily contact with Sawyer, she’s unsettled and furious with herself for deviating from her father’s very careful plans to keep her safe.


    The way in which the story reflects back on itself, on the Red Riding Hood mythology, on the ideas of coming of age and of innocence gave me a lot to think about since I read this book, and while I was reading it, too. There were times when the allegory was heavy handed. For example, there’s a whole explanation from Elodie about the original red riding hood myth, and how it’s come to be a story about virtue and virginity and resisting sexual temptation. But the origin of the myth in Elodie’s world rests with her ancestors, female werewolves who were frequently tempted or mated to human men. Each of the women in her family tree were werewolves. It was a curse afflicting only women, and the change to wolfyness manifests at puberty - exactly at the same time as reproductive maturity.

    So even though Elodie tries to separate the mythological meaning and the myth itself, this story also operates as an allegory for virtue and temptation: Elodie’s mother left a note that was delivered to her dad when she turned 13 that detailed how Elodie was going to change, and that any contact with males would accelerate that change. Right. Hormones. Got it.  Any contact with males would turn her into a scampering ho, only substitute “werewolf” for scampering ho.

    The time Elodie spends in the woods (a very neat parallel, especially since at one point they hunt for a cabin in those woods) (no grandma, though, sorry) with Sawyer both adheres to and subverts the messages of virtue in the fable. Elodie thinks she has to resist Sawyer, because any contact, particularly sexual contact, with males can trigger her werewolf, change her in to an animal with no control over instincts and urges.

    In other words: Oh. I see what she did there.

    But conversely, Sawyer suspects she is different, possibly like him, and isn’t sure how to approach the subject without revealing too much about himself. It’s not just a statement that hornypants are ok and girls and boys both have them. Sawyer knows she is different, she is unique, and she is like him, and he can’t figure out how because what he should recognize about her isn’t present. And once he figures things out, he isn’t sure he should be the one to tell her the truth.

    Again: see what she did there?

    I really enjoy werewolf stories because I think they explore anger and lust and rage, and the consequences of allowing extreme behavior in humans and potentially excusing it by tying it to a bestial entity coexisting in the body of what appears to be a human. In this book, like many others, the characters talk about their wolves as a being in their bodies that they have to control, and Elodie’s struggle with control and fear of losing control and then hurting or killing someone is part of the tension that supports the story. Her struggle with a growing and powerful and passionate side of herself is something that scares her deeply, and she’s been taught to fear that part of herself from many trusted people.

    Again again: see what she did there?

    The switching narration, with alternating chapters narrated by Sawyer and Elodie, worked for me because I had a very clear understanding of what was motivating each character, and why they were struggling with themselves and their attraction. It wasn’t a book wherein too much was revealed by the narrator. They didn’t know everything and want to tell the reader all about it. There was enough of a mystery surrounding the characters that I wanted to know what was going to happen - and I liked the glimpse into how each character thought. Their voices are distinct enough that I could tell the difference between them without the chapter headings giving me a heads up (heh) as to which person was narrating.

    Elodie’s character was amazing. She tries as much as possible to Not Stand Out, to be anonymous, easily overlooked and invisible. She wears muted colors, she goes from home to school and back again, and her father exercises tight control over her life to keep her “safe.” The assumption is easily made by other people in the town that her dad is overprotective of her - but it’s not because he fears other people. I think it’s more because he fears his daughter and what will happen if she changes due to the influence of other people.

    Picturing Elodie hiding in plain sight, making herself invisible and trying to suppress what makes her extraordinary is a feeling I remember from high school, when many people didn’t want to stand out or be noticed for the wrong reasons. Yet Elodie’s entirely normal feelings are for an entirely different reason, and the use of the werewolf side of her forcing her to grow up and own herself made her struggle to be unnoticed and unbothered seem all the more real.


    What. The. Hell. Am. I. Doing?

    I was half numb with shock as I unlocked the door and headed for the kitchen to start something for supper. This was stupid .I was acting like a normal girl with a normal crush on a cute guy. It wasn’t just stupid, it was dangerous. Both to him and to me. It wouldn’t matter if he was a hulking giant of a guy if I wolfed out. Strength was nothing against razor sharp teeth.

    I’d spent the last four years of my life doing everything in my power to avoid that eventuality. And here Sawyer comes and wrecks my “all high school boys are morons and assholes” rule to live by in just over twenty-four hours, such that I’d gone an accepted a ride to work and was looking forward to it.


    She’s trying to deny who she is so she won’t be noticed, and she’s trying to deny herself what she wants so she won’t be tempted. Sure, no problem.

    I had a lot of empathy for Elodie. I also had empathy for the parents in this story, who are basically good people who are worried about their kids for valid reasons. There are scenes that are the werewolf teenager version of “I’m not worried about you in the car. I’m worried about all the other drivers in their cars.” Only instead of cars it’s other things that are dangerous to wolfish teens. The parallels and mirroring of real and common emotions for parents and teenagers is smart and very engaging.

    My only problem was the degree to which it was easier for Elodie to accept Sawyer and the possibility of their relationship than it was for her to accept herself. Her acceptance of their relationship seemed too easy and convenient after all the emotional struggle of the preceding chapters, and that ease and sometimes cloying nature of their time together made their relationship less satisfying after all the OH NO I SHOULDN’T build-up.

    The limited cast of characters made it rather easy to pinpoint who the villainous ones were, but the fact that the characters realized after I did didn’t bother me. I never thought they were stupid - which can be a problem with first person narration, especially at times of emotional and distraught perspective. Even though I knew before they did, the fact that I guessed first didn’t lower my opinion of any of the protagonists, and their narration, while scared and stressed, didn’t make me think, “COME ON NOW AND I MEAN IT.”

    So why a B+? I was so absorbed in this book while reading it, I couldn’t stay away and I wanted to check out of everything I was doing so I could go finish it. I think of this as “glue” and have referenced in other reviews when a book is “sticky.” This book is quite sticky. Be ye warned. But the heavy-handed didactic passages of allegory and really obvious parallel, especially the parts about nature and suppression of nature, hit me over the head with the giant spoon of plot infodump: HERE. HAVE AN ENORMOUS SERVING OF WHAT THIS SCENE REALLY MEANS. Plus the fact that Elodie and Sawyer accept their fierce attraction to one another with only a little drama seemed convenient while Elodie was struggling throughout most of the book to accept herself meant the drama didn’t balance.

    But even though those parts annoyed me, I was fascinated by this book. The storytelling and the layers of meaning and the multiple ways to view what was happening in the story made this incredibly fun to read, and I have recommended it several times to people already. I think that part of what draws readers to YA and YA romance is that emotions are overwhelming and scary, even if you’re an adult, and that feeling of being overpowered by your emotions coupled with the secrecy of teenage life makes for some compelling reading. In this particular case, both of those elements are present and strong in the story, and when combined with allegory and a recasting of a well-known myth, it’s delicious.



    This book is available from Kindle | Smashwords | BN | GoodReads
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