i'd buy the bodice-ripper books, AND the bear's retreat mugs! and, if you're looking to emulate an author(ess), try johanna lindsey. she's wonderful. funny, takes both sides of the romance, and just the right amount of bodice ripping. you go, girl!
I don't think I'd buy so much of the ripping of the bodices (pains me to see good fabric abused like that) but yes, the Bear's House Mug is necessary.
it's on.
According to my informed sources, there is a simple code regarding 'bodice ripper' books: the more nudity on the title page, the more... ehh, ripped bodices...
I actually trained my English by reading all my mother's three hundred Barbara Cartland novels. I still wonder what damage that did to me.
What a hoot. You'd write one of the best bodice rippers around. Just think what fun you could have coming up with a nom de plume....oh the possibilities!
Once upon a time at my local library I stumbled on a bodice ripper parody called Love's Reckless Rash. If you have a chance to read it, do, because it's a thing of beauty.
I had thought of writing a bodice ripper as well, but, being unclear on the concept of what a bodice actually is, I gave up. However, you are welcome to use my opening sentence, which I (immodestly)think is smashing.
"The raindrops tore at my flesh."
In reading your paragraph, yes, I got pretty lost, and then I remembered that I never could finish a single bodice-ripper. I borrowed it out of massive curiosity from a friend with hundreds, relics from her time at a Waldenbooks. However, she also lent me some Anais Nin and that stuck, though with a much more guilty undertone.
So that's a count me out on the books, in on the wicked weird mugs.
Oh, yes, please write it. It'll be perfect. And it will make you tons of money.
The nom de plume will be the best part, of course.
Go look up Die for love by Elizabeth Peters. It's a book about a librarian with the very same ambition you have just expressed, although she actually carries it through. It's a very funny book.
I just finished reading the stupidest bodice-ripper ever (which, in my defense, was camouflaged with a normal cover. No flesh, no bodices, no long-haired studs so I had no idea what it was when I picked it up. Scout's honor. Really. Cross my heart.). The book was stupid because it actually had a *good* plot, was a *good* mystery--except it was all crapped up with the most confusing male-female hystrionics imaginable. Every conversation was filled with anger and lust, no matter what the topic. How to find the murderer? Anger and lust. Who was the real mother of the main character? Anger and lust. What restaurant to go to for dinner? Anger and lust. Whose car to take to the restaurant? Anger and lust. Oy.
The Jacqueline Kirby books are wonderful. The one set at the romance novelists' convention is especially hilarious.
The textiles also need to be slightly inaccurate-- layers disappearing and reappearing, catalogs of dressing where things are going on in the wrong order or are the wrong era.
My cousin and I once each found a romance novel whose heroine had our name and some of our friends' names showed up on minor characters. It was extremely strange and rather creepy to read them.
Too hysterical!! You'll have to clue us all in on the nom de plume so we know which bodice ripping author to look for. Oh, wait! That would negate the whole idea behind the name!
Bear's Retreat - Thomas Jefferson - Whiskey Wars it is then!
Check out Jayne Ann Krentz writing as Amanda Quick, esp. With This Ring. Intelligent heroines, wickedly funny lines, and mutually-consenting cloth ripping. Any author who can dream up "Dr. Cox's Elixir of Manly Vigor" doesn't need heaving bodices on the cover.
Go for it!
Surely you've heard of Mary Bly (aka Eloise James)? She's an English professor (Shakespeare historian?) at Fordham U but secretly writes romance novels under the EJ pseudonym.
Print Q&A: http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/...ts/books/10870/
Audio interview:
http://www.npr.org/templates/
sto...storyId=4497605
I think the only way I would ever read a bodice ripper is if you wrote it. And I would. I would probably get lost in the textile descriptions (my wife picks out my outfits), but I'd still enjoy it.
how about diana tricoteur? now THAT'S a nom de plum
There seems to be a really fun sub-genre of books taking place at Romance Writer's conventions. Sarah Bird has one called "The Boyfriend School".
But really, you need to write more in the style of Jennifer Crusie. (Shoot, you practically do already!) Check out her essay "This is not your Mother's Cinderella: the Romance Novel as Feminist Fairy Tale".
http://www.jennycrusie.com/
essay...yourmothers.php
I can't tell you how many times I considered writing bodice-rippers. Simply because the money is excellent. But I can't wait for a Bear's mug! Will there be any tall ones, like in the latte size?
One name comes to mind: Amanda Cross. Or should I say, Carolyn Heilbrun. She kept that nom de plume a secret for years and years (and her colleagues at Columbia were shocked, SHOCKED, when the truth came out). And the books are pretty good too.
Why is it always the bodice that gets ripped? What about the skirt, the sleeves, the jacket or the collar? This seems to either privilege the bodice by making it the locus of the action, or de-privilege it by making it always an object of destruction. Either way, we once again see hierarchical patterns emerging in this obviously top-down approach to clothing destruction. Clearly, the bodice-ripping meta-narrative reveals much about systems of power within the textile world and warrants further study.
Another academic-turned-novelist who writes books that are shelved in Romance is Rosina Lippi, aka Sara Donati of the Wilderness books. She has a great storytelling blog, too.
Commenting by HaloScan
