Stop the presses: Harlequin titles reveal our — by “our” I of course mean “women’s” — evolutionary coding and psychological desire for … wait for it, wait for it … You sitting down? Good.

We prefer to mate with “a physically fit, financially secure man who will provide the resources needed to successfully raise a family.”

In other news, ice is slippery, water is still wet, and those silly romance readers are once again looking for fantasy men. Pah.

NONFICTION
Advice/Relationships
Co-founder of SmartBitchesTrashyBooks.com Sarah Wendell’s EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT LOVE I LEARNED FROM ROMANCE NOVELS, to Sara Kase at Sourcebooks, by Daniel Lazar at Writers House (world).

Woo hoo! The book will look at different stages of relationships and how romance novels can serve as guideposts to people navigating normal relationship stuff. One thing that has always ticked me off is the accusation that reading romance novels gives women unrealistic expectations of real life, and I love having the opportunity to dismantle that hogwash page by page. I’ll be reaching out to authors, referring to scenes and books, incorporating real situations that people face – and I hope revealing more of the awesome women and men who write and read romance.

Glee- I has it. Lots of it!

Romance novels can teach you that romance itself is not merely a single gift or a gesture, and it sure isn’t just knockin’ boots. Romance doesn’t even guarantee a happy ending—anyone who has been through a bad breakup can tell you that, myself included. It’s not chocolate or hearts, diamonds or roses, yachts or airplanes. It’s not the gesture itself that creates the romance. It’s the motivation behind the gift or action, no matter what time of year it arrives.

I have no idea why the stylesheet doesn’t load at that site when I look at it – but the words are there, so enjoy.

She and I had a lengthy email conversation about book trailers – I’m convinced that unless there’s a unique hook or angle to the trailer itself, book trailers that are only about the book itself are only interesting to other authors (who are told they Must Have One). (Note: you do not have to have a book trailer.)

From that conversation, Miller quoted me talking about live action trailers featuring actors who were singularly unattractive to me:

Mind-blowing science fiction about nanotechnology or interplanetary travel is pretty hard to reproduce on your Flip HD, and affordable actors seldom measure up to the gorgeous heroines and heroes of romance. As Sarah Wendell, a co-founder of the Web site Smart Bitches, Trashy Books and coauthor of “Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels,” told me in an e-mail, “as a reader and shopper for genre fiction, I’ve never been swayed to make a book purchase based on a trailer … A few have featured actors so unattractive to me I was totally turned off.”

There have been some great book trailers in romance – many of which created by the authors themselves on a minuscule budget. But most of them leave me uninterested, and I have never purchased a book because the trailer was amazing. They may lead me to look up an author whose trailer is creative and witty, but they’ve never made me think, ‘I MUST have that book.’

First, from the New Haven Register:

Willig is not surprised by either the popularity of the course (80 applied for 18 spots) nor the willingness of the university to endorse it. The genre has been embraced by academia for years, early on by Eric Selinger at DePaul and Sarah Frantz at Fayetteville.

“The two of them have been instrumental in the movement to treat romance novels as text in their own right, rather than a sociological construct,” says Willig. “The trend was to treat romance novels only as interesting as to what they told us about the readership. They weren’t being looked at in terms of structure, theme and the usual critical literary apparatus.”

Then, at the Yale Herald:

It was, however, very surprising to see my suitemate come home from the Yale bookstore with books with titles such as Regency Buck, The Accidental Duchess, and to top it all off: Beyond Heaving Bosoms; The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels. It wasn’t so surprising to see her with all those books, especially after the time she dragged me along to an erotica writing workshop (side note: erotica and romance novels are two different genres, but romance novels often contain erotic imagery), but the fact that the books came from the Yale bookstore and were to be read for course credit made me confused, jealous, and hot.

8. SB Sarah. One of the founders, and seemingly the current primary blogger, at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, Sarah Wendell is fearless and opinionated and puts her chin out every day to do one of the toughest jobs a lady can assign herself, which is to challenge people’s preconceptions and prejudices about culture. In Sarah’s case, she writes thoughtfully and hilariously about romance novels, dumping on the worst cliches and celebrating the writers who find ways to make a difficult genre interesting.

She’s also become very knowledgeable about e-books (which are perfect for romance readers), and wrote wisely and well about the new FTC guidelines for bloggers. Nothing warms my heart like a stereotype-buster, and nobody busts the stereotype that women who read romances are dumb, unthinking, or anti-feminist quite like Sarah.

I have fainted with the power of the compliment above. Gracefully, of course, and my skirt didn’t fly up and reveal my shapely ankles or anything. HOLY CRAP. Thank you, ma’am.

My response is now up over at Huffington Post’s book section: Pride and Prejudice and Pedantry. An excerpt:

In response, I refer to that book he holds in such high regard, “Pride and Prejudice”, by Jane Austen:

“You have insulted me in every possible method. You can now have nothing farther to say.”

A shabby, patched-up survey of books with no curation involved, let alone curiosity, does not an expert make. I invoke Smart Bitch Law #1: Thou shalt not diss the reading material of another person merely to elevate one’s own. By doing so, thou art passing the buck, and verily thou art being a douchebag.

I worked on this entry for days – and am very pleased that folks seem to like it.

She quoted Dr. Eric Selinger, editors from various publishing houses, and me:

o the “Twilight” series, taken as a whole, fulfills readers desire for desire itself, and ultimately for a happy, and romantically sustainable ending.

“I think romance is popular in particular right now because happy endings, or even a happy future, may seem so scarce,” says Sarah Wendell, one of the bloggers behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.

She adds, “It’s reassuring and affirming to read with the belief that no matter how bad the obstacle is, how awful the present may be, there will be a happy ending wherein everything works out.”

But for now, in “New Moon,” it’s all about the yearning, and for desire junkies, the movie has spawned at least two real life “impossible love” counterparts.

Obviously, our email exchange had more, but column inches are column inches. I do love that Smith looked at the element of the movie and of the series – forbidden love and yearning that might not be satisfied – without looking down her nose. Well played, ma’am!

Indeed, Sarah Wendell, an administrative assistant in Manhattan who blogs about romance novels, said that although she used the iPhone to read while on a coffee or lunch break, she still used her Kindle during her one-hour commute from New Jersey.

For long reading sessions, she said, the iPhone is “a small screen, and my eyes would start to hurt, even though I crank the text up to grandma or great-grandma size.”

Author Shannon Stacey and fellow blogger Keishon Tutt were also quoted, though my look at the iPhone as a reader counters theirs. They prefer one device that does everything and like reading on the iPhone. I don’t – for one thing, the iPhone is so small it hurts my eyes after awhile, and for another, I prefer to have one device that does one thing for reading. With so much other stuff on board, I’m more likely to be distracted. Reading is a complete cessation of multi-tasking for me, and I like the single-use device for that purpose.

Of course, I bought my Kindle refurbished and used a few gift cards to bring the cost down; without those factors I wouldn’t have paid that much for Kindle II: Matzoh Man.

Really, Publisher’s Weekly, “promiscuous” is the best you could come up with? What kind of sexist crap is that?

I’m quoted on the topic of DRM and the absence of the reader’s needs and wants when it comes to development of digital reading tools:

Romance readers and publishers remain sharply divided on the question of encryption and digital rights management (DRM), however, and many consumers continue to hold out for a low-priced e-reader and a single standardized format. “Sadly, the reader is often the missing element in the development of books and devices,” says Sarah Wendell, a romance blogger at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. “Whether it’s DRM security on the books themselves, or devices that have some but not all of the features we prefer, time and again manufacturers and publishers are standing between the reader and her book.”

Carina will be offering DRM-free e-books, delighting readers who want content to be immediately and perpetually available and easily shared. Other publishers are concerned that infinitely replicable books will destroy their bottom line. “Kensington will only deal with retailers that use DRM,” says Steve Zacharius, president and CEO of Kensington Publishing. “The authors have dedicated their lives to writing a book and deserve to earn a royalty from every copy that is downloaded. The slight inconvenience that might exist to the reader in having to put up with DRM is worth the effort to make sure that the e-publishing business is a viable model.” Wendell says that inconvenience not only discourages readers but reduces valuable word-of-mouth promotion: “We can’t say to a friend, ‘Oh, my gosh, you have to read this—here, borrow my copy.’ [Readers and bloggers] are the newest marketing and promotional team for an author, but our ability to share the very thing we love most is hobbled because we are seen as potential thieves and pirates.”

“Slight inconvenience” – sounds like someone who’s never wrestled with DRM and a device that won’t authorize itself not matter how many times you ask nicely.

Breathtaking awfulness of the headline aside, reporter Rose Fox did an amazing job of interviewing Angie, Jane, and me, and as usual I’m proud to be quoted alongside them, as they are some knowledgeable women who rock the digital world.