Archive for: March, 2011

Blond for a Reason: The Blond Hero

Mar 31 2011 Published by under Heroes and Heartbreakers

I wrote a post putting forward a theory about blond heroes in romance over at Heroes and Heartbreakers. The theory is that blond is the only hero hair color that needs a reason. I’m sure it can easily be debunked, but it was fun to invent. Have a look.

ps. Fixed the spelling of blonde. Er blond. Yes, I had to learn French to get a PhD in philosophy, but to prove it, I was put in a stuffy room and made to translate large chunks of Descartes’ Passions of the Soul. Despite the title, Descartes never waxed eloquent about blond men, believe it or not.

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Operation Auction begins today: What I’ve Bid on So Far

Mar 27 2011 Published by under Blogs and blogging

Operation Auction is an EBay auction of books (many signed by the author), ARCs, critiques (query, pitch, first three chapters, etc.), adspace, lunches, a $50 GF to Amazon, a Kindle 3 and many other interesting items donated by the romance community. All proceeds will benefit Fatin, a longtime romance community member who recently lost her husband and is now raising four children on her own. The following is cut and pasted from the Operation Auction blog:

Operation Auction will be going live on Sunday, March 27th at 12:01 am PDT. We will have all items in the Operation Auction ebay store.

http://stores.ebay.com/operationauction2011

None of the items will show up until the auction is live and not all items are going up at the same time. We have divided the items as equally as possible into three batches.

Batch One will be up March 27th at 12:01 am PDT, ending March 30th at 12:01am

Batch Two will be up March 28th at 12:01 am PDT, ending March 31st at 12:01am

Batch Three will be up March 29th at 12:01 am PDT, ending April 1st at 12:01am

All listings will run for three days. The only exception is the breakfast at RT with Angela James, Jane Litte, and Sarah Wendell. Because that event is approaching very soon, it will be in batch one and be a one-day auction only.

We are going to try our best to get lists up of what items are in which batch, but with new donations still coming in I’m not sure everything will be included. There will be categories in the store to help you find the items you want.

Shipping details will be in the description of each item. Please read those carefully before you bid to see if it is US only or international.

I have already made two bids:

  1. A digital ARC of Yours By Design, by Shannon Stacey
  2. 3 signed books by Erica Orloff. I have no idea who she is, but figured this is a good chance to give a new author a try.

2 responses so far

Review: A Dash of Temptation, by Jo Leigh

Mar 26 2011 Published by under Reviews

I recently read and enjoyed Alison Kent’s The Sweetest Taboo, part of a Harlequin Blaze series called “Men to Do”, about three women readers who have become friendly online, and, after bad experiences with supposedly meaningful sex, decide to find themselves a hot one night stand. This book, published in 2003, was strongly recommended to me by Lori of I Just Finished Reading, who recently reread and reviewed it. It is out of print, but I read a Kindle edition purchased for $3.83. You can find a cheap used copy via Amazon or your favorite UBS.

The hero is Dash (Dashiell) Black, scion of the Black family and heir to the throne of Noir, an influential celebrity and lifestyle magazine, a la Vanity Fair, based in Manhattan.
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12 responses so far

Thoughts on Net Galley

Mar 24 2011 Published by under Blogs and blogging

A guest post by @sonomalass of Sonomalass’s Blog.

Recent conversations, on Twitter and elsewhere, have gotten me thinking about NetGalley. As you probably know, NetGalley is a service that helps publishers put electronic ARCs (advance reader copies) into the hands of readers likely to review books and talk them up before their release. Let me say right up front that I think this is a fabulous idea, and I’m glad that it’s starting to catch on with more publishers, large and small. The increasing number of blogs, and the widespread use of reader review functions at Goodreads, Amazon and other sites, have changed the definition of “reviewer” quite a bit. The desire of publishers to use that, and NetGalley’s willingness to facilitate it, are good things. But I think that some of the growing pains are worth taking a look at, albeit from my purely subjective perspective.

When I first joined NetGalley, it was because a number of people told me, “Oh, you don’t have to have a blog. They are looking for people who review on Goodreads and Amazon, too.” And that was true, for many of the publishers participating; they wanted to get buzz for certain books, so they made those books more widely available for advance review by using NetGalley. I read some good books a little early, tried some things I probably wouldn’t have paid for, and Did Not Finish several books. I also let some files expire (most eARCs are temporary files) because I just didn’t get to them within the time frame allowed. Books I finished, I reviewed on Goodreads and in my own monthly reading summary. All in all, it was a pretty good system. Now, NetGalley says it is for “professional readers,” and I’m just not sure if that’s me.

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67 responses so far

Monday Stepback: Seeking the Truly Unusual Category Romance. Got a rec?

Mar 20 2011 Published by under Monday Morning Stepback

The weekly links, opinion, and personal updates post

It’s been awhile … 17 days actually … since my last post. I was in Florida (pics below), then swamped with work, and then went away again for my son’s soccer tournament. But I’m back and ready to kick some serious blogging butt. Er, or something.

Links:

We can’t link enough to this worthy cause: a valued member of the romance community, Fatin, has lost her husband and she and her four children need our help. Visit Operation Auction to find out how to donate, make a cash contribution, or bid on a wide range of auction items (last week of March).

***

DABWAHA is the annual March Madness tourney style competition of romance novels, put on by Dear Author and Smart Bitches Trashy Books and you can click here to fill out your second chance bracket. You can also vote whether or not you fill out a bracket. And there are great prizes, like iPods and such.

Are you tired of your twitter stream being filled with #DABWAHA tweets? I feel that way sometimes, too. Here’s a potentially mindblowing tip:

When the Twitter annoys, get off the Twitter.

It works.

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28 responses so far

Friday Five: Learning from Romance, the Corporate Romance, and Hiatus

Mar 04 2011 Published by under Friday Five

Five random somethings.

1. Perhaps to counter the idea that reading romance is the cognitive equivalent of sleep, online readers often talk about how much they learn from reading romance. I have often wondered how this learning process is works, when there is so much in romance that is patently untrue — historically inaccurate, sexually and anatomically inaccurate, etc. To take the sex example, why don’t we ever see anybody online saying, “I started reading romance from a young age and I thought all penises were monstrously erect in their normal state, all women could orgasm via nipples rubbing against silk, and all orgasms are simultaneously multiple.”


I am committed to the idea that we learn from fiction, but I’d like to learn more about this process. What does the reader bring to the process of learning from fiction? If we leave it at “I learned a lot from romance”, we run the risk of replacing the hypodermic needle filled with Brain Rotting Addicting Worthless Junk with one filled with Super Terrific Relationship Facts and Sex Tips and History and Values. But the hypodermic needle model of culture, whatever the needle is filled with, is problematic from the point of view of reader’s agency.

I’m sure no serious cultural theorist ever really believed in the hypodermic needle model, and no romance reader who spends more than five seconds thinking about it does, either. I’m just wondering what a better model is.

2. Remember how I wrote Monday that I saw Goodreads as for both readers and authors (not how it *should* be, just how I *observe it to be*.)? Check out these tweets from book marketing professionals during Thursday’s #bookmarket chat on on Twitter (whole transcript here):

@Ruthseeley I think you all know I’m very bullish on Goodreads. Four million readers RIGHT THERE. I think it’s really under-utilized. #bookmarket -2:35 PM Mar 3rd, 2011

@JaneFriedman  I agree with @Ruthseeley that Goodreads is underutilized for author marketing/promotion. It’s a phenomenal community.

@candlemarkgleam @dwainsmith Find Goodreads to be VERY useful SM tool for finding books, reviews. Seems to have good response to ads, too #bookmarket -2:30 PM Mar 3rd, 2011

I wonder if folks will be looking back at the golden age of Goodreads in another year?

3. Romance Trading Cards. What will you do with yours?

4. Corporate romance

Today, while thinking about ways to lengthen the time between DNR orders and a patient actually coding, grading student bibliographies on narrative medicine, packing for Florida, and taking a tour of our local women’s health center (Going to do some volunteer stuff for them. Don’t we all have to do something right now to protect women’s reproductive rights and well being?), I’ve been reading snatches of the very interesting Escaping the ‘Time Bind: Negotiations of Love and Work in Jayne Ann Krentz’s ‘Corporate Romances’”, The Journal of American Culture, Volume 33, Issue 2, pages 92–106, June 2010, by Erin S. Young:

Just to share a quote or three:

In Fantasy and Reconciliation: Contemporary Formulas of Women’s Romance Fiction (1984), romance critic Kay Mussell describes Kathleen Woodiwiss’ The Flame and the Flower (1972) as ‘‘a story of sexual and exotic adventure or domestic melodrama in a heightened and exciting setting’’ (38). The uncontested favorite of Janice Radway’s Smithton readers,1 this novel marked the development of the romance formula from ‘‘the purest and simplest romantic type’’ to the more plot-detailed and erotically explicit ‘‘bodice-ripper,’’ epitomizing the archetypeof romance fiction for contemporary nonreaders of romance.

Perhaps I should have just said “nonreaders” in Wednesday’s post?

As early as 1982, romance author Jayne Ann Krentz introduced new ‘‘corporate’’ elements into the conventional romance. Novels like A Corporate Affair and A Passionate Business not only contained working protagonists, but also centralized the work environment as the setting in which romance blossoms and gains form. Krentz developed a recognizable formula that has been utilized by other contemporary romance novelists. By now, the corporate romance genre has matured with a discernible set of key characteristics apparent in (1) the characterizations of the protagonists, (2) the type (and cause) of the conflict between hero and heroine, and (3) the narrative resolution of the conflict.

Corporate romances, in their focus on flexible capitalism as the primary social condition that requires negotiating, appear to be inoculating against the major evils of a capitalist society. A different resolution is offered to eradicate the effects of the ‘‘time bind’’ on professional and personal life. The ‘‘couple facade’’ enacted in all of these novels becomes real; heroines who, for reasons related to work, must spend the majority of their time with their business partners (instead of their families) are absolved of guilt, because these business partners are transformed into family members (i.e. husbands).

Did you ever think of “corporate romances” as a distinct subgenre? Do you have a favorite corporate romance? I have a very clear fave: Julie James’s Practice Makes Perfect.

5. Can you tell from how I phrased the last item that I am stressed out? Thus… Hiatus: heading to Disney tomorrow. I know from experience that this is not the kind of vacation that leaves time for blogging or *cringe* even reading. But it will be warm and fun.

I’ll be back the week of the 14th. With a tan. And a few extra pounds from eating too many Mickey Bars. :)

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When the romance genre was born…

Mar 02 2011 Published by under Genre musings

The Flame and the Flower, published by Avon Books in 1972, is widely considered the first modern romance novel*. I was thinking about how many blog posts I have read — recently — that feature a reader who wants to try the romance genre, and picks up Woodiwiss. Not because she wants to begin at the beginning of the genre, but as representative of what romance is today. Or how many articles in mainstream media refer to romances as “bodice rippers”, a term used by the publishing industry in 1972 to distinguish the new romance genre from the gothic novel.

I don’t mean to offer a Whig view of the genre’s history – that anything newer must be better. I make no claim about the relative literary merits of Woodiwiss versus the supposed “glorious present” of Roberts, Kleypas and Quinn. It’s just so odd to me that folks could think a mass market, pop culture phenomenon has not changed with the culture and the reading and buying public. If you wanted to get into video games, would you look for PONG?

So I came up with a totally nonexhaustive and idiosyncratic list of things that were different in 1972.

When the genre was born …

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52 responses so far