Caroline Linden, author of regency historicals including A Rake’s Guide to Seduction (coming June ’08), shares with us 12 books she’d like to see someone write…
 1. An erotic inspirational. RWA has been teasing me with this possibility in their new RITA guidelines, and yeah, I don’t think I’m the only one who’s curious.
 2. A western where the heroine goes west, checks out the cowboys, and then gets back on the train to Philly or NY or whatever eastern (read, CIVILIZED) city she came from.
3. A chick-lit novel that never once uses the words Prada, Manolo, or Ferragamo. Or even references shoes. They’re barefoot the whole time.
 4. Harry Potter 6.75, where Snape and Harry come face-to-face before Snape kicks it, and duke it out. (I am sure this happens in a great deal of fanfic, etc., thanks for not sending me links to it anyway.)
 5. A lawyer hero who doesn’t practice criminal law. C’mon, those real estate attorneys need love, too!
 6. A paranormal hero who isn’t the alpha leader of his pack/tribe/coven/pod/whatever. C’mon, the lesser immortals need love, too!
 
 7. A book where Suellen O’Hara finally gets—and keeps—a man of her own (and if she hits on Rhett along the way for revenge, I’m down with that, too).
 8. A book where Rick Blaine from Casablanca isn’t walking into the sunset with Capt. Renault at the end.
 9. The Red Stiletto Sisterhood (or the White Mirror Sisterhood or whatever it should be called). Aren’t there some kick-ass female vamps out there? Ann Christopher, I’m counting on you here…
 10. A romantic suspense villain who isn’t a serial killer.
 11. A totally accurate historical romance, complete with details of bathing procedures and habits, location and style of toileting facilities, prevalence of poverty, and high infant mortality.
 12. A tale of mad-hot elf love (follow the linkie).
12. A tale of mad-hot elf love
Doesn’t What Do You Say To a Naked Elf? by Cheryl Sterling count: The elvin hero even looked like Legolas.
YES! I swear I get so excited when an author actually mentions this kind of stuff! LOL!
Oh no she di’int!
I’m curious about the erotic inspirational. . .
I want to see Harvey Birdman in an erotic inspirational.
I am pretty sure all pics were picked by Gwen… and really number 4 is sooooooo wrong whichever one of you did it.
All I know for sure is I didn’t do it. So do send all complaints to Bev.
(tee hee – got away with another one!)
—11. A totally accurate historical romance, complete with details of bathing procedures and habits…
And how awful the make-up they wore looked! Eeewwww!
And why don’t our heroes or heroines ever have morning breath? Why, for the love of Mike, do they have to kiss each other as soon as they wake up? All I can think about when I read that is “Altoids! Altoids!”
Yeah I’d really love to see Harry kick Snapes butt and I think there should be a book written about “The other O’Hara girl” Suellen just might have given Scarlett a run for her money.
Tee Hee. Too funny and too true. What is with the shoe thing? I’ve wondered about the lawyer thing myself.
Great list!
I remember reading a book where an author, not Margaret Mitchell, carried on the Scarlett story beyond losing Rhett. I’ll see if I can find the names. They were actually pretty good, if I remember correctly.
That’s why my people never have sex in the morning.
That book is called Bridget Jones’s Diary! It was a shame how the subgenre derailed into nothing but Manolos and cosmopolitans. Also, try Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing if you haven’t. (At least I think that’s the name.)
Give The Birth of Venus a try. I ran away screaming after the second time the “hero” is decribed as–my memory blanks out here, since I’ve been blocking it so hard–but he smells OMGWTFBBQ awful. I crawled back, sobbing, to the bosom of historical romances where the men smell like cedar and mint and sandalwood. Kiss me, Sebastian, with your lips of myrrh and incense.
Found it – this is a reprint. I think it came out in 1991, if I remember correctly. She gets Rhett.
AH!!! My eyes are burning!!! I did NOT send that picture of Harry Potter–Gwen, you wicked girl!
She gets Rhett.
Well, what else could she have possibly written? La la la, amicable divorce, Rhett marries a can-can dancer and Scarlett hooks up with a Yankee financier? I always felt so bad for Suellen. if my sister had stolen my man, I’d have killed her.
Doesn’t What Do You Say To a Naked Elf? by Cheryl Sterling count
Yeah, but are they SANTA’S elves?
Caroline – tee hee. I figured if he was going to break-bad on Snapes, he’d do it in the nude. Gives him an advantage.
Sherry – but you know, there isn’t anything quite so wonderful as morning sex. I love a man’s morning woody.
Whoops. Did I say that out loud?
Caroline, Caroline, Caroline … I don’t know where to begin.
Please do NOT claim innocence about that naked Harry Potter pic. 😉
I do agree that Snape and Harry needed more closure.
I am shocked, SHOCKED to discover that you want an alternate CASABLANCA ending. 😉
Lawyers in romances–I have written criminal lawyer heroes, but I want to refer you to JUST ABOUT SEX, wherein he’s a patent attorney (you really should know this already!)
Totally with you on the Western thing.
Female vamps … female vamps … Wow. I’m stumped. Ah, well. You hate vamps anyway, right? Don’t like the blood thing, I believe.
Ann
You know, I can force myself to ignore the whole kissing with morning breath in a book. But when they kiss with what HAS to be morning breath and the author proceeds to tell us how sweet tasting the H/H mouths are… that just makes me snort in disbelief! And having them sip coffee first makes it even WORSE for me because I cannot stand the taste of coffee and it would make me gag just as bad as morning breath!
Oh, wait here’s another one that gets ignored– didn’t women have hairy legs and armpits way back when? So how come the hero always describes the heroine’s legs as having skin so smooth and soft?!
For some real hot elf luvin’ click here. WARNING: SOOOO not work or kid safe!
Oh, and in Jean Johnson’s Sons of Destiny series, these people not only have toilets, they actually use them! In the 1st book, the H/H bond between repeated bouts of diarrhea. And it’s played for laughs!
In the 2nd book, the heroine wakes up and doesn’t know where the hero is, but she hears him pissin’ in the bathroom and is reassured he hasn’t left. In a another scene (and who hasn’t had this happen), the H/H are spoonin’ in bed one morning, when he slips it into her from behind. She realizes her bladder is too full to continue, so she gets up, goes and empties it, then comes back and they resume their nookie interuptus.
Further proof of Ms. Johnson’s practicality- when the heroine packs to leave her home, she makes sure to pack her cloths she uses for her periods.
I love a man’s morning woody.
See, I agree, and it’s a terrible thing to waste. Just go light on the face-to-face action, if you know what I mean.
Ann, I am still expecting kick-ass female vamps from you after all the BDB cheerleading you have filled my inbox with. Get to work, woman! You can do it! MAKE me love the bloodsuckers! (and point taken about JUST ABOUT SEX. I really should read it. A patent attorney? I’m turned on already)
That book is called Bridget Jones’s Diary!
And I do love it dearly! More more more! Just, erm, not as silly as the sequel was.
I would read the female vamps book. But I like to pretend that in Regency England there really were 85 million dukes, all of whom were part of some secret uber club of extreme machoness. It’s so much more fun than reading about, say, someone’s bout of the French pox or whatever. Also totally with you about the Harry Potter thing.