For those of you tightening your belts, even if you A) don’t have any need to do so but you are anyway (yay, you!) or B) don’t have any notches in your belt ’cause it wraps around twice already (it’ll get better!), go here:

Save $1,000 in 30 days. I follow this guy regularly.

I probably should’ve tweeted this, but I’m still trying to figure out exactly what its purpose is.

The Mysterious They say that contemporary romance (you know, without vampires, shapeshifters, werebeasts, ghosts, phantoms, and mimes) is dead. Yeah, I know. ’Swhy I wrote one. Sorta.

I have a very low tolerance for romantic suspense, paranormal romance makes me roll my eyes, and m/m doesn’t float my boat (although I can tolerate it in menage). Give me alternate reality or steampunk or post-apocalyptic or anything that could happen, and I’m good to go. Better yet, give me contemporary.

Okay, so in doing my part to save the whales–uh, er, straight heterosexual contemporary romance (because “straight contemporary” is taking on a whole new connotation these days), I’m going to plug the competition: Flat Out Sexy by Erin McCarthy, as reviewed on Dear Author.

Obviously, I haven’t read this puppy, but I plan to when it comes out and so I’m going to plug it in advance. Why?

I’m dying for a straight contemporary that’s more than 150 pages long (i.e., category length). That’s a snack (and besides, I stocked up on early ’80s Carole Mortimer Harlequin Presents at the thrift store Saturday). Okay, it’s 304 pages, not exactly a feast, but it’ll do in a pinch. I want to support straight heterosexual contemporary the way I want to support independent publishing.

Plus, the heroine is a cougar (not the werecat kind) and we could all use a few more cougars in romance.

But she’s not my guilty pleasure.

It’s Carole Mortimer of Harlequin Presents circa 1979 through, oh, I guess around 1986.

No, really. I was still impressionable, Kathleen Woodiwiss and Rosemary Rogers and Bertrice Small and Valerie Sherwood and Johanna Lindsey notwithstanding. They were historical and well, that didn’t apply. Plus, I had to work at reading those novels. They obliged me to look up all the $50 words they used that I didn’t understand and forced me to soak up all that historical detail. I did very well on my vocabulary tests and in history class because of them.

So forget the 5 queens of ’80s bodice rippers (and hey, Romancelandia, don’t froth at the mouth at that because that’s when they were, indeed, bodice rippers) and their propensities toward, well, bodice ripping, it’s from Carole I got my taste for the forced seduction, the almost-asshole alpha (’cause you know in the end they get redeemed by the ingenue and you read the whole book just to get to the redemption), and the May-December romance. I mean, really. Was there ever a Carole Mortimer novel that didn’t feature a 36-year-old hero and an 18-year-old heroine?

I have never been successfully or completely deconditioned or reprogrammed. Blame her. It’s not my fault.

Really.