Dungeons and Dragons Romance novels; How Roger Deakins uses color in "Skyfall"; Nightmare mushroom

When it comes to paperbacks, I love a good gimmick. These 1983 Dungeons & Dragons romance novels have gorgeous stepback covers and choose your own adventure narratives. Thanks @BGSU_PopCultLib @stegan for introducing me to these! See thread for more... pic.twitter.com/gUjBKSHiP0

— Rebecca B (@arkhamlibrarian) December 2, 2019

And of course each heroine must choose between two lusty love interests... pic.twitter.com/Rom6DBJeG2

— Rebecca B (@arkhamlibrarian) December 2, 2019

My mother wrote this. The heroine Chandelle is named after my sister. She wrote all of her other 200 books as Jean F. Blashfield but TSR insisted she write this under the more feminine “Jeannie”. She hated it.

— Dr. Black's Medieval Remedies (@WinstonEBlack) November 10, 2021

(I saw a few at Amazon and ebay.)

And how does the Shanghai sequence close? With a foreshadowing of the palette of the following sequence in Macau! pic.twitter.com/8FvuQevEAu

— Devan Scott (@SadHillDevan) November 11, 2021

(From a long thread.)

A member of one of the mushroom ID Facebook groups I’m in shared a photo of a porcini he found that is literally the length of his backpack and the diameter of my bicep at its base, I know I say “literally” a lot so I asked if I could share the photo, and pic.twitter.com/Zcn6FxqiYl

— Jeeyon Shim 심지연 (@jeeyonshim) November 9, 2021

#gbbo free from week is a cake inspired by the graph that gave me hope we could be free from covid (from the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine trial). Things are still complicated, but we would be in a much worse place without vaccines. pic.twitter.com/4crgxFW7hJ

— Dr Emily Thornton (@emilyethornton) November 9, 2021

Ars looks at "An Innocent to Tame the Italian," a Harlequin romance about hackers

Ars:

This week, my wife and favorite librarian Paula brought home a new acquisition specially for me: An Innocent to Tame the Italian, a recent book from the Harlequin Presents imprint. Author Tara Pammi's previous books—which include Sicilian's Bride for a Price and Sheikh's Baby of Revenge—share a somewhat politically incorrect leitmotif of foreign sexual intrigue. If you're wondering: no, romance novels are generally not my speed.

But the back-of-the-book tease for this work declared otherwise:

For brooding tech billionaire Massimo Brunetti, a cyberattack on his company is unacceptable. After tracking down the savvy Manhattan hacker, he's stunned to find gorgeous genius Natalie Crosetto. Yet naive Nat isn't the saboteur. To uncover who she's protecting, Massimo returns to Italy—with Nat playing his fake fiancée! But this untamable Italian might have met his match in innocent Nat, who challenges him... and tempts him beyond reason!

"You had me at cyber," I told Paula.

Via.

"Trump Temptation: The Billionaire & The Bellboy"

$2 at Amazon:

He was a billionaire, I was a bellboy, can I make it anymore obvious?

It all started one fateful afternoon in summer of 2012. I was working as a bellboy at the Trump Hotel in Hong Kong on an internship program. This was my first time in a big city. It was all I could have ever dreamed of, and more. But little did I know, it was all about to change.

By Elijah Daniel:

i'm going to get drunk tonight and write an entire donald trump sex novel like 50 shades of grey & put it on amazon tomorrow i swear to god.

— Elijah Daniel (@aguywithnolife) January 21, 2016

Link roundup

1. "ESPN Has Lost 7 Million Subscribers The Past Two Years"

2. "It costs $300 to move a 40-foot container from Rotterdam to Shanghai, which is barely enough to cover the cost of fuel, handling, and Suez Canal fees. Here’s some more context. Let’s say that you want to travel for a year; it’s cheaper to put your personal belongings in a shipping container as it sails around the world than to keep it at a local mini-storage facility."

3. There's a large selection of "mail order bride"-themed romance novels at Amazon.  Via.

4. Day 3 of black friday sales at the BBTS is Star Wars, including the Star Wars Black Scout Trooper with Speeder Bike for for $22 instead of $44.

Monica Seles is a romance novelist now

You can buy The Academy: Game On at Amazon:

The Academy is an International Sports Mecca for teen athletes. There are only two ways in. Deep pockets or enough talent to score a scholarship.

Young tennis star Maya's dreams have finally come true when she earns a scholarship to The Academy. Plucked from her small town, Maya moves to the sports training facility/boarding school to (hopefully) start the beginning of her pro career. But Maya's fantasy of The Academy doesn't quite match the reality. Because where there are hot, talented teens, there's a lot of drama. Meet the players: 

Nicole: A tennis star who feels threatened by Maya (but she'd never admit it).
Cleo: Maya's rebel/punk roommate who is nearing the top of the golf world.
Renee: The gorgeous swimmer with enough money to buy her way into The Academy.
Travis: The son of The Academy owner--perfectly groomed to be the next NFL star.
Jake: Travis' younger brother--the bad boy to his brother's good.

(Bolding from the official description.)  Via.

"Q&A: The Women Who Write Dinosaur Erotica"

NYM:

Why dinosaurs?

To truly answer this question, I’ll have to go all the way back to when I first started writing erotica, a little more than a year ago. I was complaining to a co-worker one day about how I was having trouble making ends meet with my crappy job and my bills from college. (I had a day job at a supermarket alongside going to school. Christie worked as a tutor and went to school.) My friend told me about an article that detailed the self-publishing boom that was going on and about how E.L. James had made a fortune self-publishing her erotica. Thinking that I could write my own erotica, I went home that night and learned about all the self-publishing platforms that were available at that time.

...

I did some research and found that a subgenre called “monster erotica” was starting to get popular.

...

I started getting burned out. I toyed with the idea of quitting and going back to work. But one day, I was walking and I thought about the movie Jurassic Park. My perverse mind immediately went to my work, and I pictured dinosaurs having their way with women. I died laughing. I was about to dismiss these thoughts as the workings of my freaky mind, but then I had an epiphany. Dinosaur erotica was something new

...

We don’t want to get into actual numbers, but let’s put it this way: Combined, Christie and I make more money than our friend who has been working as an engineer at Boeing for a few years

Romance novels with cowboys and vampires

The Cowboy and the Vampire and Blood and Whiskey available at Amazon.

Women running away from houses

Book covers from the blog Women running away from houses. Via.

*Previously: Headless women on romance novel covers.

*Buy Writing a Romance Novel for Dummies at Amazon.

Motive: Secret Baby

Harlequin romance novels have very specific titles