So I hear that MWA (Mystery Writers of America) delisted the much-maligned Harlequin over the whole self-publishing/vanity press hoopla.
Lee Goldberg writes:
Any author who signs with Harlequin or any of its imprints from this date onward may not use their Harlequin books as the basis for active status membership nor will such books be eligible for Edgar® Award consideration. However books published by Harlequin under contracts signed before December 2, 2009 may still be the basis for Active Status membership and will still be eligible for Edgar® Award consideration (you may find the full text of the decision at the end of this bulletin).
Although Harlequin no longer offers its eHarlequin Critique Service and has changed the name of its pay-to-publish service, Harlequin still remains in violation of MWA rules regarding the relationship between a traditional publisher and its various for-pay services.
Poor Harlequin, I wonder what action they’re gonna take after this? There’s a letter from Harlequin too if you can be arsed to pop over and read it.
Moving on, check out this First Page excerpt posted up at Dear Author. Basically a woman is walking round a garden in the rain, then suddenly overcome with lust, she starts rubbing her breasts against the cock of a statue. Nice. It was err… different.
Grace liked to walk the estate grounds when it rained. The white stone of the statues turned to pale grey. It was the smell of rain on stone that made her take her clothes off and rub her bare breasts on the rock hard cock of Apollo. She loved to watch the water settle in various crevices then lap it up with her tongue. It was especially pleasurable to lick between his toes also it was the perfect vantage point to admire the finely crafted sculpture.
Oh yeah, there’s an NYT best-seller right there.
In non-romance related news, it appears Tiger Woods has been nobbing several women behind his wife’s back. Jesus, when the fuck did he find the time?
Anyhoo, this article tries to estimate how much the ‘car crash’ will eventually cost him. His image is tarnished now, so a few of his endorsers may drop him like a sack of spuds.
Some damage has already been done, and when you’re dealing with stratospheric numbers like those for Tiger Woods, that’s a lot of money. Even if Woods takes a 10 percent hit on his endorsement income going forward, that’s $10 million a year, or $100 million over the next decade. A very expensive domestic incident.
The next few days will be critical in seeing if it gets worse. Where was he going at 2:25 a.m.? Why couldn’t he drive his SUV around the same fire hydrant and tree he’s avoided hundreds of times during the years he’s lived in that Florida compound? Did his wife, Elin Nordegren, smash the rear window of his Escalade in a frenzied effort to get her husband out of the wreck, or was she chasing him with the club and smashed the window in a furious rage over published reports of an extramarital affair?
Feet of clay indeed. I guess I’ll never look at him the same way again. Cheating Skank.
Woods’ race has been mostly ignored in the mainstream media and tabloid coverage of his infidelities. But the fact that Woods’ ex-model Swedish wife and the three women he is accused of having affairs with are white has not escaped attention in the black community.
On talk radio shows aimed at black audiences, Woods’ apparent preference for Caucasian women has been the subject of abuse and humour. One parody song played on the Tom Joyner radio show even asked: “The question everyone in America wants to ask you is, how many white women does one brother want?”
Similar themes have played out on other black talk shows and blogs and doubtless among many black Americans discussing the racial complexities of the case. The issue is complicated because of Woods’ mixed background and the fact that he does not define himself racially…
But, in general, America and the world have hailed Woods as a black sporting star who has broken down racial barriers. That would explain why the black community has turned on him in the past week, as the issue of black-white sexual relationships has long been fraught with controversy in the US. “We’ve discussed this for years among black women,” Denene Millner, author of several books on black relationships, told the Associated Press news agency. “Why is it when they get to this level … they tend to go directly for the nearest blonde?”
A lot of people will probably wonder why this matters, but in the black community, it just does. I wonder if Obama would have been as popular amongst blacks had his wife been white? Just a thought.
In other news, Katiebabs reports that apparently Laurell K Hamilton is bitching about “watching other shows in the genre she pioneered go on the air”. I assume she’s talking about The Twilight saga?
Wishful thinking much?
Anyway that’s all I’ve got for the moment, catch you all laterz!
sallahdog
December 7
12:52 pm
A lot of people will probably wonder why this matters, but in the black community, it just does. I wonder if Obama would have been as popular amongst blacks had his wife been white? Just a thought.
probably not, especially with black women… Of course white males would have been more up in arms too… and the racists would have been frothing… I doubt Obama would have gotten out of the primaries with a white wife…As much as we like to think we are getting past racism in this country (I know, a hoot of a idea) I think that would have been too much… Now on the other hand, if Hilary had been black and her husband white, I think it might play better… There seems to be stronger racist rhetoric against the black man/white woman, than the other way around..
sallahdog
December 7
12:54 pm
oh, and I doubt in the long run, as long as Tiger wins in golf this is going to impact his endorsements… I never thought much of him, one way or another, and still dont. But I havent seen that long term sex scandals really kill deals for sports figures…
katiebabs
December 7
2:10 pm
How stupid could a man be, who is cheating on his wife, knows his reputation should be golden, leaves voice messages and text messages on his girls’ cell phones? When you think with the dick, the brain leaves the head.
theo
December 7
2:21 pm
KB, the brain is generally in the dick, that’s why lol And what I don’t get after all these years watching it happen every month it seems, to someone in the spotlight is…
If one rises to that level, where the ‘world’ is watching one, does one suddenly forget about the lurkers in the bushes? Life becomes a frigging open book available for anyone to watch! If one doesn’t want this kind of publicity, don’t dabble in the behavior to begin with. *duh* Celebrity is a voyeurist’s playground and every celebrity, regardless of the reason they are one, is the amoeba on the slide.
Emmy
December 7
6:38 pm
This.
Although…his wife’s modeling pics are smoking hot. Just goes to show that even if you’re a supermodel, your ass still gets cheated on like the rest of us. That’s my excuse for not working out this week, lol. Why bother, when looking like a supermodel doesn’t bring happiness? Might as well stay fat and full of the good food.
jane
December 7
8:23 pm
The more I learn the less sure I am that this is behind his wife’s back. I’m not buying that he could have got away without the wife knowing with so many women – we’re up to ten now. No she knew and their marriage was probably a business deal. Maybe she had started to fall for him and started to get mad about his tom catting.
jane
December 7
8:30 pm
Oh yeah and his wife wasn’t a supermodel. She was a nanny who did some modelling on the side, part time.
Venus Vaughn
December 8
12:51 am
What sallahdog said. I don’t think the white community would have cottoned on to Obama if he had a white wife either. America’s just not that smart yet. (smart = not racist)
Ann Bruce
December 8
2:31 am
Since Woods will likely hit the $1 billion mark in 2010 whether or not he returns to the PGA, he might not care too much.
Ebony
December 8
2:40 am
Most of the Blacks I’ve spoken with could care less about what happens with Tiger. He doesn’t own up to his Black heritage anyway. For some odd reason, he probably felt he was beyond getting caught. Not only did he get caught by his wife, but he’s ruined his reputation. I wonder if it was all worth it to him. This whole saga makes for a great novel. The mistress was okay with the wife, but when she found out about the other women he was cheating on her with, she felt compelled to share the voice mail with the media.
Maili
December 8
2:22 pm
@Ebony
He did, but not in a way many liked. He didn’t fully “own up” to being Asian American, either, but so what? It’s his right.
~~ this is not directed at you, Ebony. Just a whiny rant from me after reading so many comments at different sites about Tiger Woods’s mixed race heritage ~~~
I don’t even like the man, but honestly, when I see people making negative comments about him for refusing to simplifying his mixed heritage to a single ethnicity, I get pissed off. What business has anyone? Why right has anyone to force a mixed race person to take a side?
If we have to be technical, he’s more Asian American (a half – 25% Thai and 25% Chinese) than African American (a quarter). Even so I still don’t see why he – or any mixed race person – should choose. If he publicly self-identified as African American, we should accept and respect that. If he publicly self-identified as Asian American instead, we should accept and respect that. If he doesn’t want to self-identify, we should accept and respect that as well.
People like Obama chose to self-identify, good for them. People like Woods who refuse to take the easiest way, good for them as well.
I’m truly sick and tired of people trying to define Tiger Woods or any mixed race person’s racial identity.
In fact, I’m so fucking tired of people’s blatant cheek of deciding what a person’s race is or deriding the person if the person refuses to agree with they think he or she should self-identify as.
I wish people could just back the fuck off. He’s publicly stated he doesn’t want to self-identify just to please or satisfy people who want to pigeon-hole. He has every fucking right to that.
Phew. I feel better now. Sorry about that. I have been seething last few days from overhearing people making crazy generalisations (“Mixed race people have no morals, do they?” and “That’s why people shouldn’t ‘mix’, you know?”) and seeing those comments online.
Of course, it still doesn’t change the fact Tiger Woods is a skanky slut, tho. 😀
AztecLady
December 8
4:47 pm
What puzzles me is why we–general we, the “public”–expect people who reach a certain level of mastery or renown, to be above human frailties like every one else.
It’s not, in most cases, as if they started life in such exalted positions (though even then, they are as human as the person next door).
Is Tiger Woods or Lance Armstrong less of an amazing athlete because of his behaviour vis a vis his family/wife/whatever?
Short answer: no.
(And before anyone else brings him up: do not put what’shisface Vick in the same class–there is criminal disregard for life and there is lack of morals/stupidity/etc. and the two are not to be equated.)
Plus, what Maili said, up to an including the f-bombing throughout 😀
Carolyn
December 10
12:45 am
@ Maili,
I’m afraid Ebony is closer to the truth of the matter than you are. After all, Tiger Woods is a man who delights in telling racist jokes about Black people to White people (remember the old Esquire magazine article?). It takes a special level of denial and self-hatred to go there.
But hey, somebody else wrote about this a lot more eloquently than I can. Check out http://wearerespectablenegroes.blogspot.com/2009/12/tiger-woods-addiction-to-white-women-or.html
Venus Vaughn
December 10
2:15 am
re: Tiger
I think that kind of self-hatred is learned at a parent’s knee.
I’m not saying it excuses him, but that kind of attitude takes a long time to work itself out of a generational system. (Like, some people are still obsessed with the slave mentality -both blacks and whites- and it’s been how many generations since that wasn’t a reality?)