Beyond Heaving Bosoms - The Art of the Prank

Here’s the thirteenth installment of LiteratEye, a series found only on The Art of the Prank Blog, by W.J. Elvin III, editor and publisher of FIONA: Mysteries & Curiosities of Literary Fraud & Folly and the LitFraud blog.

LiteratEye #13: The ‘Heaving Bosoms’ Interview
By W.J. Elvin III
May 8, 2009

visual-200 Last week we were wallowing around in the recent uproar in romance novel blogdom over prolific and popular author Cassie Edwards. Seems there’s something fishy about her writing, as in, some of it belongs to other writers.

Edwards has sold over ten million books. Each book, we could guess, has been read a dozen times or more as it passes along to girlfriends, sisters, cousins, used bookshops, hospitals, on and on down the line. So, conservatively, maybe a hundred million readers had a whack at noticing Edwards’ serial plagiarism, across a couple of decades of her writing career. But there was nary a peep until Smart Bitches and their posse got on the case.

And here to tell us about that discovery and its repercussions is Sarah Wendell, co-author of the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books blog and the new book, Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels.

Continue reading “LiteratEye #13: The ‘Heaving Bosoms’ Interview”

Here’s the twelth installment of LiteratEye, a series found only on The Art of the Prank Blog, by W.J. Elvin III, editor and publisher of FIONA: Mysteries & Curiosities of Literary Fraud & Folly and the LitFraud blog.

LiteratEye #12: Is That a Ferret in Your Pocket, Or Are You Just Glad to See Me?
By W.J. Elvin III
May 1, 2009

beyondheavingbosoms You’ve probably already ordered the new book, Beyond Heaving Bosoms, so I won’t go into a lot of spoiler detail. But, then again, maybe you’re new to the lusty, earth-quaking realm where the “heroine’s irresistible Magic Hoo Hoo and the hero’s untamable Wang of Mighty Lovin” collide in pulsating passion. Welcome.

This week we are looking into how the feisty Bosoms authors blew popular romance novelist Cassie Edwards out of the water. Edwards has over ten million books in print. Her unraveling involves ferrets.

Bosoms’ subtitle is: “The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels.” It’s by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan, the bright and clever brains behind the Smart Bitches/Trashy Books blog.

Their beat is the fattest fiction genre with the biggest profits in book publishing. Critically, sometimes hilariously, sometimes academically, they review romance novels and the unique and often enough weird world of romance writers and readers. It’s a world where you’ll encounter Cassie Edwards and the ferrets. Continue reading “LiteratEye #12: Is That a Ferret in Your Pocket, Or Are You Just Glad to See Me?”