Today, she’s published an article about the surge in popularity of Amish-set romance: Romance novels set in Amish country are growing apace:

“It’s a huge, huge, huge trend,” says romance blogger Sarah Wendell, co-author of Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels….

And that low-tech lifestyle creates a small-town atmosphere, which has deep appeal for readers who may find Wi-Fi-only connections emotionally isolating. “Even within your own neighborhood, you feel alone,” says Jane Little of the influential romance blog Dear Author. In an Amish inspirational, “we’re all one big family,” she says.

“Here you have this agrarian society that is closed to outsiders right in the middle of the Northeast,” says Wendell. “It’s both historical and contemporary.”

I reviewed an Amish-set book a few months ago, Cindy Woodsmall’s The Hope of Refuge, and gave it a C. The themes were fascinating but the religious revelations came far, far too easy.

I don’t think the Amish fascination will decline any time soon, though it eventually will. As complex and connected yet distant as our lives are now, revisiting that type of simplicity in fiction is a curious and compulsive indulgence for many readers.

I had no idea until Genevieve from Tango emailed me – but I LOVE the intro from GLO :

While we’re guilty-as-charged chick-lit aficionados, we haven’t dappled in romance novels much beyond the Twilight series. Yet, we were so enamored by this defense of the genre that we’ve added a few to our spring reading list. Check out the slideshow of Harlequin romances, left.

Yay! More curious readers? Win!

Stop the presses: Harlequin titles reveal our — by “our” I of course mean “women’s” — evolutionary coding and psychological desire for … wait for it, wait for it … You sitting down? Good.

We prefer to mate with “a physically fit, financially secure man who will provide the resources needed to successfully raise a family.”

In other news, ice is slippery, water is still wet, and those silly romance readers are once again looking for fantasy men. Pah.

She and I had a lengthy email conversation about book trailers – I’m convinced that unless there’s a unique hook or angle to the trailer itself, book trailers that are only about the book itself are only interesting to other authors (who are told they Must Have One). (Note: you do not have to have a book trailer.)

From that conversation, Miller quoted me talking about live action trailers featuring actors who were singularly unattractive to me:

Mind-blowing science fiction about nanotechnology or interplanetary travel is pretty hard to reproduce on your Flip HD, and affordable actors seldom measure up to the gorgeous heroines and heroes of romance. As Sarah Wendell, a co-founder of the Web site Smart Bitches, Trashy Books and coauthor of “Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels,” told me in an e-mail, “as a reader and shopper for genre fiction, I’ve never been swayed to make a book purchase based on a trailer … A few have featured actors so unattractive to me I was totally turned off.”

There have been some great book trailers in romance – many of which created by the authors themselves on a minuscule budget. But most of them leave me uninterested, and I have never purchased a book because the trailer was amazing. They may lead me to look up an author whose trailer is creative and witty, but they’ve never made me think, ‘I MUST have that book.’

8. SB Sarah. One of the founders, and seemingly the current primary blogger, at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, Sarah Wendell is fearless and opinionated and puts her chin out every day to do one of the toughest jobs a lady can assign herself, which is to challenge people’s preconceptions and prejudices about culture. In Sarah’s case, she writes thoughtfully and hilariously about romance novels, dumping on the worst cliches and celebrating the writers who find ways to make a difficult genre interesting.

She’s also become very knowledgeable about e-books (which are perfect for romance readers), and wrote wisely and well about the new FTC guidelines for bloggers. Nothing warms my heart like a stereotype-buster, and nobody busts the stereotype that women who read romances are dumb, unthinking, or anti-feminist quite like Sarah.

I have fainted with the power of the compliment above. Gracefully, of course, and my skirt didn’t fly up and reveal my shapely ankles or anything. HOLY CRAP. Thank you, ma’am.