What do you think?



ETA: here's another one!

We all know that heroines are subjected to a more stringent code of behavior than heroes. The hero sleeps with the entire cheerleading squad, he's a woobie who hasn't found the right woman to reform him yet. The heroine sleeps with two men, neither of which are her true loves, and she's a whore. And so forth.

But one thing I noticed lately (yeah, I can be a bit slow) is how it seems acceptable for romance heroes to neglect the children from their previous marriage. You have read romances, I'm sure, where the hero is either too busy drinking and whoring while his children either run wild or remain silent in some kind of traumatized despair... until the heroine steps in to become everyone's mother and bring happiness back to their lives. But heroines who are stuck with children or stepchildren from previous marriages are always doting and loving types who often forgo career and everything else to raise these children on their own. The message is quite disquieting, especially if this happens in a contemporary romance - real men don't need to bother with kids, while real women must be perfect mothers. 

I wonder why this is the case. Is it because taking care of the kids is still considered the woman's responsibility in this genre? 

 Linking to Datalounge is a tricky affair, so I'll just mention that at the moment there is a thread called "When Did Severe Plastic Surgery Become a Problem in Hollywood?" and it's an interesting read. I've never thought of it, but I think these guys are right.

Plastic surgery has been around forever in Hollywood, but those who did go for it seem to look far more "natural" and attractive than those who go for it today. Compare, say, Jaclyn Smith and Michelle Pfeiffer to the plastic and unnatural looks of those lion-like women with big puffed-up lips, scary sharp cheekbones, and such. It did seem like in the past you want to enhance or improve aspects of your face while today it's more about warping your face into something else altogether. Is it because there are too many hack plastic surgeons around or is it because those scary-looking enhancements are considered sexy nowadays?

Reading this article, I'm a bit confused. I thought those Japanese girls like their men to be girly (or "grass-eaters" as they are called in the article)? But now they want their men to be more manly and making lots and lots of money? But failing to find those men, they now revert to samurai fantasies?

The thing is, those guys in the video game mentioned, Sengoku Basara 2, aren't manly by any long shot. I should know, I love that game and I played it often on my PS2, and the two main guys in that game, the fictitious versions of Date Masamune (the guy in blue in the image on the article) and Sanada Yukimura (the guy in red - he displays the mental capacity of a child despite his battle prowess, and therefore he's the designated bottom in way too many slash stories featuring these two), are as much from your local friendly bishonen blue ghetto as they come. And needless to say, these girls that are fans of that game just want to see those two get it on. So when this article holds those two as an example of guys these women consider "manly samurais", color me confused.

I think these Japanese girls need to sit down and really figure out the kind of men they consider attractive!

You may have read my review of Malaysia's first ever GLBT anthology, Body 2 Body.

At any rate, I've been reading on the publisher blog that no local (Malaysian) print media is willing to review or even mention that book in fear of repercussions from our Godly Heterosexual Government. Since the book is available on Amazon, and therefore folks abroad can purchase a copy of Body 2 Body, I had this idea that perhaps getting the book reviewed on some online GLBT review sites can help spread the word about this anthology. It's not that I am friends with the publisher - I'm not - it's the principle of the whole thing; I'm quite annoyed that this anthology is not getting any support from the local people! I mean, come on! 

I wrote to the publisher asking whether it's okay if I pass the free copy I received from him to some GLBT review site, but the publisher decided that he would bear the cost and I should just send him the details on where to send review copies.

Okay, so now I need to know where the big GLBT review sites are. I hate to be crass, but given that the publisher is an independent one with limited funds, and considering the delivery fees to US or UK, I need to know the biggest ones as opposed to small blogs that not many people visit, so that the book can get some good exposure even if the review is negative. I'm not familiar with GLBT review sites, which is why I'm posting this, heh.

So, anyone knows any popular GLBT review sites that accept submissions? This book is not romance, it has some Malaysian-flavored elements but I think folks abroad can appreciate them all the same. Let me know and I'll drop the owners an email if I need any information from them.

PS: Let's not turn this into a competition to see which GLBT review sites are the best out there. In fact, just email me with your suggestions at mrsgiggles at gmail.com if you are uncomfortable with commenting publicly on this blog.

The NaNoWriMo buttons are really cute and I want the red one, heh heh heh. So if I join NaNoWriMo and cut and paste all my reviews to submit as my "work", will I qualify to earn the button?

Of course I can just steal it, but that won't be nice...

 http://bradleyturner.com/blog/?p=24

 First we had Wuthering Heights repackaged with a Twilight-ish cover, but that's not enough for HarperTeens. Now Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice gets a similar treatment with red and white roses on a black background as well as a tagline: "The love that started it all". Then we even have William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet (the original unabridged version, I guess) getting the treatment, with a red flower in a black background and a tagline, "The Original Forbidden Love..." 

I'm all for getting Edward-obsessed middle-aged women and teenage girls to read more, but I just have to laugh at the same time at such shameless exploitation of the current state of the young adult market. Is Bram Stoker's original Dracula is too naughty for this crowd? You'd think it would be a natural progression to reissue that one next with some flowery black background cover. 

1. It is not Dear Author's fault that your forums are dead. Yes, those ladies that eventually formed SB and DA made that exodus years ago, but that was a long time ago, wasn't it? It's not like AAR had no opportunities to rejuvenate those forums.
2. I'm pretty sure AAR has plenty of reviews that could rival anything "mean" from the blogs. Remember that review of Connie Mason's book by Marianne Stillings, the one with a horse that changed gender halfway? The reviews for any of Kylie Adams's books? Let's not pull a revisionist history and assume that AAR has always been a counter to Mean Girls out there.
3. Posting your stats everywhere and trumpeting all the time that the site is still popular sort of come off as desperate. But that's just me, I guess.
4. Constantly starting threads that complain about blogs, threads that are nothing more than thinly-veiled support groups for regulars to huddle and insist that their website is still the best out there, also comes off as a pretty desperate action to me.
5. If you take offense at being called "readers with conservative taste", maybe it helps to not use your target's perceived sexual lifestyle to insult that person. Gee, and I wonder where that "conservative readers" impression came from...
6. If you take offense at something that is said about you on those mean blogs, it helps to not post like a damaged gerbil. Being anonymous while accusing your target of being an anonymous coward, waving the First Amendment thing, screaming about being bullied when people point out that you're behaving like a fool... you know, all this could very well give people the impression that you are a has-been desperately trying to seek attention and remind people that you're still around.

Okay, so maybe the fault lies in a handful of shrill and irrational gerbils in the AAR forums who just won't shut up about  the evil blogs. Maybe the management abets them. I don't know, I don't care, and after reading some of the things they said about me, I'm not interested in being fair. All I know is this: I used to enjoy and respect AAR, but right now, it's very embarrassing to see them behaving like Norma Desmond in throes of self-deluding hysteria.

I get this impression that some of them still could not get over DA's history with them, and they probably still blamed Jane, Sarah, Candy, and the rest for drawing away most of the folks with them to those blogs. But that was long ago? If AAR fades into the background while SB and DA get the spotlights in the media, that's not the fault of the those blogs. It's the fault of AAR, for choosing to ignore developments like epublishing that happened in the last ten years, to treat anything not related to "big publishers" like dirty stepsisters, and to still act as if it's forever 1999 in AAR.

Oh, I'm sure someone from the management will start waving their stats and saying that they have sixty bazillion visitors in the previous month so they are still relevant et cetera. If that is the case, why are they behaving like this?

PS: I'm not the online BDSM expert. A better candidate for this title would be Dr Sarah G Frantz. But given how insular the AAR screechies are in their forums, I'm not surprised they got this detail wrong! 

I'm quite amused by how Love You Divine jumped the gun and apparently reported author Erastes's Speak Its Name review website to the FBI for pirating an ebook. Read the whole thing here.

This is the part of the publisher's email that amuses me greatly:

As the Publisher of loveyoudivine Alterotica, this post concerns me greatly. Since neither myself nor the author requested a review for this title from you, and you plainly state that you acquired this copy for free, we consider this Ebook Piracy.

The whole misunderstanding could have been cleared up with a simple email correspondence, but I guess Love You Divine would rather bring out the blazing guns and make a point, whatever that point is! 

This reminds of how back in the old days authors would accuse me of either being an American pretending to be a Malaysian or making up the review because they didn't send me those books for review and, you know, backward countries like Malaysia and Singapore certainly do not stock up on books, oh no. As if I am incapable of buying those books myself, how silly.

And this does prove Jane's point in her recent controversial-with-some-people article on Dear Author about how readers (and reviewers) of ebooks do deserve some benefit of the doubt instead of having publishers and authors viewing them suspiciously all the time as pirates. I can only speak for myself here, but I won't have spent so long doing this if I didn't love books and know better than to upload ebooks somewhere for people to grab for free. If you guys feel that I have done something funny, a simple email asking for clarification, instead of a cease-and-desist email, would be nice.

"I haven't read the book but here is why I think it sucks..."

"I will never read such a book, here is why I think the book sucks..."

The above two kinds of comments are the biggest reasons why I'd never allow comment function to be implemented in my reviews. A negative review will turn into a maelstorm of stupidity when people begin making wild speculations about a book they have never read. When they do that, it completely invalidates the negative review, making it come off like an outlet for people to take potshots at something they haven't or will not read. Nobody will take the negative review seriously. This will also make me feel like the ringleader of a silly coven of hags. I will have to delete such comments and tell them to take their haw-haw to somewhere else, and then those people will come back howling about the First Amendment (haw, haw) and censorship and Nazis and concentration camps, and on and on.

I may change my mind if we can have a system where people below a certain level of intelligence will be automatically barred from commenting, but until then, I'd stick to the old ways, thank you very much.

In summary, my opinion is this: comments on discussions - fine. Comments on (negative) reviews - too much trouble, not worth the effort.

Can you stop playing Taylor Swift's You Belong With Me now, thanks? Hearing it for what seems like 300 times every hour is enough to make me want to write Kayne West a love letter. 

Adam Lambert AMA appearance, Brian May's public support, a soundtrack contribution to a big turd (but still big nonetheless) of a movie, Details "I Lyke Gurls" photoshoot, Rolling Stone cover before that, lots of media hype from EW and such... and still debuting only at #50 on Billboard Hot 100. 

Compare this to David Archuleta of last season hitting #2 with Crush and selling three times as much as Adam's single, and David Archuleta had nowhere the hype that Adam had. 

Bad song choice? Or just a case of hype outstripping actual interest of the public in his music? 

Oh, and while Adam was on Oprah and AMA, poor Kris made a guest appearance at some football game and radio shows. Guffaw.

Whenever anyone blogs about race in romance, dozens of dozens of people will show up to agree, lament about the lack of diversity in romances, rage at people who disagree with them, write long thesis entries using words like "entitlement", "privilege", "ethnocentrism",and such... I wonder - what are they reading when they are not busy complaining about the genre?

I'm curious. The last I see, we have authors of AA romances complaining about segregation and low sales. We have half-Asian authors complaining that their books sell poorly when they use a Chinese-sounding pseudonym on the cover. And then I see all these wonderful, enlightened, and righteous people - most of whose nicknames I am seeing for the first time in those discussion threads - agreeing about the sorry situation. Something has to be done!

You know, something is missing here. If there is an amazing audience of enlightened people online clamoring for cultural diversity in romance, then how come so few AA romances are reviewed, and when they are reviewed, there is hardly any comment left by readers? Why aren't these enlightened and oh-so-wonderful commentators reading those books and commenting in those reviews? Why do so many of them seem to show up only when there is a race wank to be had, only to disappear once the fun has ended?

Am I missing something here?

Final CD cover art. Opinions? I think it will be nicer if they Photoshop in some nose studs and lip piercings.

http://www.votefortheworst.com/20091027/adam_lambert_your_entertainment_cd_cover

Why would someone read a book clearly titled erotic romance and then complain that the sex tropes are icky? Especially when we are talking about common tropes here - threesomes, double penetration, BDSM, et cetera.

I'm reading a thread on AAR (I know, it's AAR forums, a bastion of conservative readers), where this reader talks about tearing apart - literally, or so she claims - a Maya Banks book due to the sexual elements that she found objectionable.  Here's the thing: when I read an erotic romance, I expect sex scenes that push the envelopes. In fact, due to the ubiquity of the tropes, some elements in erotic romance now seem tame to me. I've talked in my reviews about the Neighborhood BDSM Sex Club Just Around The Corner That Everyone, Even Your Granny, Knows About, for example. Or how every hero or heroine is now running a brothel without encountering legal complications. Or how two men can happily decide, "Yay for fisting!" and go at it without copious preparation involving lube and what not. Or how double penetrations can always take place spontaneously, without any hitch or even a "Uh... my back's killing me, how about a change of position?" Or how a woman can service more than two men in one night without breaking a sweat and experiencing any discomfort. But at the end of the day, these are what make erotic fiction what they are.

Erotic romance should be risky. They should challenge the reader as much as they arouse. That's the whole point of erotic fiction. You start reading, you get off, and you have fun. 

Reading an erotic romance while expecting the author to conform to your comfort zone is a ridiculous concept, because the author cannot read your mind and tailoring an erotic romance to the most basic denominator means that it would turn out to be vanilla rather than erotic. There should be more than missionary positions in erotic romance. THAT'S THE POINT OF THE WHOLE GENRE!

Therefore, when reading a book by any erotic romance author, the reader should be aware that there is a chance that she may be squicked or offended. And when this happens, it may not be because the author is a bad writer, she writes "trash", or she is secretly an amoral slut. YOU could be the problem here. YOU do not find the fantasies erotic. This doesn't mean that you are "wrong" to find the fantasies icky. It just means that the erotic romance has failed to click with you. Move on, pass the book to someone else who enjoy the sexual fantasy, and go read something else. Like a non-erotic romance story. If you open an erotic romance expecting to pass judgment on the characters' sexual behavior or the "acceptability" factor of the sexual scenes, then you probably shouldn't be reading that genre in the first place.

PS: Sorry for the tone, but I'm a bit tired of erotic romances becoming the punching bag of every other person in the genre.