Tag: silly romance novels

‘Oy, Rodney’ Wins Literary Prize!

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a gripping page-turner headed for the top of the NY Times bestseller list | Romance novels, Funny romance, Book parody

Violet Crepuscular’s epic romance, Oy, Rodney, has won the Pokeweed Township Prize for Literature. The township committee has thanked Ms. Crepuscular for putting up the prize money.

But to return to the exciting story itself, in Chapter DXVI, Lord Jeremy Coldsore finally plucks up the courage to re-enter his ancestral home, Coldsore Hall, from which he has been absent several days, detained in a dungeon by the Lithping Knight Thir Lanthelot, who is actually Constable Chumley’s mother in disguise. Lord Jeremy has forgotten where he hid the spare key.

Williams the third under-footman answers the door. He has forgotten what his master, Lord Jeremy, looks like. He thinks Lord Jeremy is selling salve. “There is no one home,” he says-shutting off the sounds of frantic revelry within by shutting the door in Lord Jeremy’s face.

At this point Ms. Crepuscular interrupts the story.

“I feel it incumbent upon me to remind readers that today is November 6,” she writes. “I need hardly explain its significance!” So she doesn’t.

Return to Coldsore Hall (‘Oy, Rodney’)

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a gripping page-turner headed for the top of the NY Times bestseller list | Romance novels, Funny romance, Book parody

Suddenly we find ourselves at Chapter DXIV of Violet Crepuscular’s epic romance, Oy Rodney… without a trace of Chapter DXIII. We wonder what was in it.

“I am not to blame for chapters missing from my book,” she confides in the reader. “All faxaltation aside, the important thing is that Lord Jeremy, having made his hairbreadth escape from Mom’s Dungeon, now finds himself back in the familiar embrace of Coldsore Hall.” She hastens to add, “‘Embrace’ is a figure of speech! Us authors use them all the time.”

It might be nice if she used a plot from time to time. I just work here, what do I know? Last we heard, a burrowing rhinoceros was making a shambles of the gardens in the vicar’s neighborhood. The latest development there…

“Well shut my mouth!” exclaims Willis Twombley, the American adventurer who thinks he’s Sargon of Akkad. He and Lady Margo Cargo are organizing a safari. He points to the earth, to three or four roundish white objects. “Y’know what those are?” Lady Margo does not know. Her upholstered wooden leg is giving her trouble.

“Those,” he proclaims, “are rhino eggs! We have found the rhino’s nest! I found one in Ohio once, but there was something wrong with it. Only chickens came out of the eggs.”

“This is a calamity which no mortal flesh should have to bear,” Lady Margo says.

The chapter ends before Lord Jeremy can actually re-enter his ancestral home. This is either a stroke of literary genius or merely running out of time.

The Lost Chapter of ‘Oy, Rodney’

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a gripping page-turner headed for the top of the NY Times bestseller list | Romance novels, Funny romance, Book parody

First she lost her notes on Chief Oxyartes, whose appearance on the stage would have climaxed Oy, Rodney with a bang you could’ve heard in South Amboy, NJ (where big bangs make them nervous).

Now all of Chapter DXI, “the Dixie Chapter” of her epic romance, has gone missing.

Author Violet Crepuscular confides in the reader: “I find it necessary to confide in the reader–the gremlins have been at me non-stop! It’s enough to fulgorize you. No one ever said it’d be easy, being The Queen of Suspense! But does it have to be so hard?”

Nothing daunted, she declares her intention to proceed to Chapter DXII as if nothing has happened.

“Now I must conduct the reader to The Big Scary Woods, a little-known corner of the great forest that breathes down Scurveyshire’s neck,” she writes. No one from Scurveyshire goes there, it’s too crowded. (Strike that! Strike it, I say! She will not be permitted to steal jokes from Yogi Berra.) Actually, no one goes there because it’s freakin’ dangerous. In the barely recognizable Village of Evil dwell men and women who look enough like giant frogs to be giant frogs. (Now she’s stealing from H.P. Lovecraft! I want out of here!)

Here the chapter abruptly breaks off. The five toothpaste cupcakes that she had for breakfast seem to have disagreed with her.

Jailbreak! (Oy, Rodney)

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a gripping page-turner headed for the top of the NY Times bestseller list | Romance novels, Funny romance, Book parody

Suddenly we are in Chapter DXI of Violet Crepuscular’s epic romance, Oy, Rodney. No signs of Chapter DX. Reconstructing the lost chapter from subtle hints in this one, we conclude that Constable Chumley’s mother has given up being The Lithping Knight Thir Lanthelot and gone on a world cruise; and Chumley and Jerrold Coelocanth, got into a shouting match that no one else understood.

“Ye fitthick skurn!” (That sounds nasty!–Ed.)

“Ooblz glquuwe!”

“Yar, soth varny yir buckers!”

“Mnng Cthulhu!”  And so on.

Also in the lost chapter, Lord Jeremy Coldsore escapes from Mom’s Dungeon and winds up fleeing from the hounds in a wooded tract in southern Transylvania. I am at a loss to explain how that could have happened.

Ms. Crepuscular takes a moment to speak directly to her readers, all four of them.

“I am taking a moment to speak directly to my readers,” she writes, “because I have failed to find my notes on Chief Oxyartes and am therefor unable to produce a climax and finish my book. Sometimes Brownies get into my house. Maybe they took the notes. I am on the verge of phrognostricating!”

As for what actually happens in Chapter DXI, it may be that the less said about that, the better.

 

What? No Oxyartes? (‘Oy, Rodney’)

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a gripping page-turner headed for the top of the NY Times bestseller list | Romance novels, Funny romance, Book parody

Introducing Chapter DIX of her epic romance, Oy, Rodney, author Violet Crepuscular (“the Queen of Suspense”) apologizes for having failed to introduce Chief Oxyartes.

“I am contrifusiated!” she confesses. “Chief Oxyartes would have tied the whole plot together! He would have resolved everything. Another half a dozen chapters, and I’d’ve been done! Free to go on to the next book!” (Oy, Rodney 2: The Interminable.) “Alas and alack and woe! The notes I jotted down for Oxyartes somehow wound up as the paper in my home-made fortune cookies.”

Meanwhile in Chapter DIX, Constable Chumley meets Jerrold Coelocanth, the Man with the Unpronounceable Word.

“Dith yon borda maken silphlessness?” the constable inquires.

To which Mr. Coelocanth replies, “Ygglth pkaa.” Chumley arrests him for public lewdness, even though they’re not in public. “Hir miggle mine gulph,” he would explain to Lord Jeremy Coldsore, justice of the peace. He says it anyway, not noticing that Lord Jeremy isn’t there.

Jeremy is still being held by Constable Chumley’s mother as a prisoner of love. He has scrawled pleas for help on his dinner plates and hurled them out the window to many of Europe’s most famous rivers. One washes up in Johnno the Merry Minstrel’s back yard, up against the bird feeder.

[We don’t have the rest of this chapter. She’s turning the place upside-down, looking for notes on Chief Oxyartes. I’m the editor and I have no idea who that dude is. I am reasonably sure we can get along without him.]

Rhino on the Rampage! (‘Oy, Rodney’)

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a gripping page-turner headed for the top of the NY Times bestseller list | Romance novels, Funny romance, Book parody

We left Scurveyshire last week with a rogue Indian rhinoceros digging burrows all over the place, Willis Twombley outfitting a “shikari” because an African-type safari simply won’t do, and Lord Jeremy Coldsore locked up in a tower by Constable Chumley’s mother.

Introducing Chapter DVIII of her epic romance, Oy, Rodney, Violet Crepuscular writes, “In introducing Chapter DVIII of my epic romance, Oy, Rodney, I take the opportunity to introduce both a new character–and a new dimension to the plot!”

This woman has no mercy on her readers.

And so we meet Johnno the Merry Minstrel’s long-lost cousin, Jerrold Coelocanth, best known as “the Man with the Unpronounceable Word.” And if you think that’s bad, you should hear him try to say “hypoteneuse.”

As he enters the great public square of Scurveyshire Village, he exclaims, “Fbthhiw!” A statue of Mr. Spock falls off its pedestal. We are at liberty to wonder what it was doing there in the first place.

Meanwhile, his desperation increasing by the hour, Lord Jeremy continues to write messages on dinner plates and throw them out the dungeon window to various notable European rivers. Today it’s the Danube. “Alas, poor prisoner of love!” he caliphritates. (Take that, Mr. Spell-Check! Thought you knew it all, did you? Got that one past you, though, didn’t I? … Okay, I feel better now.) He has forgotten to include the dungeon’s address in his messages.

Next: The Return of Chief Oxyartes

The Burrowing Rhinoceros (‘Oy, Rodney’)

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a gripping page-turner headed for the top of the NY Times bestseller list | Romance novels, Funny romance, Book parody

Violet Crepuscular introduces Chapter DV of her epic romance, Oy, Rodney, with an extensive list of flaws in her neighbor, Mr. Pitfall’s, character. “He’ll eat your toothpaste sandwich cookies and then just leave you!” she laments. “Or else he’ll just stick around and bug you!”

So much for Chapter DV.

In Chapter DVI, while the American adventurer Willis Twombley is still organizing a safari, the rhinoceros has again crept out from under the vicar’s backyard wading pool and returned to digging burrows all around the property. Twombley would see the brute if he only turned around!

“Someone’s going to fall into one of those burrows and break a leg!” excalibrates Lady Margo Cargo, who already has one wooden leg (upholstered) and would rather not have two. “Quick, darling–there it is!”

Twombley can scarcely conceal his disappointment. “Gol-durnit, honey-child! That ain’t no African rhino!” He wipes the tears from his weather-beaten cheeks. “Hell’s bells, that’s an Indian rhino! Which means I can’t use this here safari: gotta send ’em all home–” some of them have come all the way from Zanzibar, they’re that desperate for work–“and recruit Indian men for a shikari!”

“Couldn’t you just…er… shoot the rhino, now that he’s here? Oooh, he’s digging up my gladiolus! Will you please just shoot the bloomin’ rhino!”

Twombley floxerizes. “No can do, dearie! The rajahs get mad if you shoot their rhinos without their permission. Gotta find the rajah and square it with him. And then go about hiring new bearers and beaters.”

Lady Margo screams (they heard her in Detroit), “There are no flaming rajahs in Scurveyshire!” The chapter ends before she can have full-fledged conniptions.

A Captive Heart (‘Oy, Rodney’)

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a gripping page-turner headed for the top of the NY Times bestseller list | Romance novels, Funny romance, Book parody

Introducing Chapter DIV (pronounced “div”) of her epic romance, Oy, Rodney, Violet Crepuscular continues to describe the extensive preparations made by Willis Twombley, the American adventurer who thinks he’s Sargon of Akkad, for a safari which, in all likelihood, will never venture out of sight of the vicar’s back yard.

He has forgotten why he’s organizing the safari in the first place. Lady Margo reminds him, “It’s to get rid of that rhinoceros that burrows under the vicar’s wading pool.”

“Better hire us some cavalry, too, then,” he replies.

Some of you surely noticed that the title of this chapter was supposed to be “A Captive Heart.” This refers to Lord Jeremy Coldsore, held as a “prisoner of love” (Oh, great scott!) by Constable Chumley’s mother, who leads a double life as Thir Lanthelot, the Lithping Knight. “I am getting better!” she confides in the reader. “Last year it was a triple life! But I am no longer Bomba the Jungle Boy.”

Jeremy would love to escape, but his cell is way high up in a tower that wobbles dangerously whenever there’s a wind. To keep his will to live, he writes poetry on his dinner plates and tosses them out the window to the River Rhine.

Here I sit in this miserable dungeon,

Waiting for someone to bring my lunch in.

Here Ms. Crepuscular indulges in an aside to the reader. “I have been blamed for the defects in Lord Jeremy’s poetry,” she writes. “Ignorant readers consistently scaphanize these verses. Well, pshaw on them!”

Doing It Right (‘Oy, Rodney’)

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a gripping page-turner headed for the top of the NY Times bestseller list | Romance novels, Funny romance, Book parody

 

Introducing Chapter DIII of her epic romance, Oy, Rodney, Violet Crepuscular (“The Queen of Suspense”!) writes, “Introducing Chapter DIII of my epic romance, Oy, Rodney, I can’t help mentioning that in writing an epic romance one is apt to encounter crabs and nay-sayers among the readership. They send me catty letters. They beshrewvinate me with nasty emails. You’d be amazed, how many so-called readers don’t think anybody in Scurveyshire needs a properly equipped safari! But let us join the American adventurer, Willis Twombley, as he organizes a safari to deal with the rhinoceros that burrows under the wading pool in the vicar’s back yard.”

[Editor’s note: Aaaaaaghhh!]

Twombley asks to borrow a considerable sum of money from Lady Margo Cargo.

“What for?” she preguntalates. [Grrrrr!]

“Askaris,” he explains. “Don’t go anywhere in Africa without ’em. You never know when your safari’s gonna be attacked by cannibals, slave-traders, ivory poachers, or just plain unfriendly natives. Gotta have plenty of armed askaris.”

“But Jeremy–we’re not in Africa!”

Yes, you read that right: she called him Jeremy. Sometimes she calls Jeremy “Willis.” She continues to labor under the impression that they are one and the same person.

“Tell the rhino that!”

“Oh, Willis! You’ve got an answer for everything!”

[Editor tries to escape out the window. Sill is smeared with toothpaste. He is unable to identify its brand or flavor. Tune in next week for a resumption of the story.]

Willis Twombley’s Safari (‘Oy, Rodney’)

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a gripping page-turner headed for the top of the NY Times bestseller list | Romance novels, Funny romance, Book parody

Introducing Chapter DII of her epic romance, Oy, Rodney, Violet Crepuscular delves deeply into Willis Twombley’s preparations for a safari. The reader will recall that a rhinoceros has been seen coming out from under the vicar’s backyard wading pool; it is feared that the unpredictable beast will terrorize all of Scurveyshire. The rhino has also been seen digging a burrow that extends back under the pool.

Ms. Crepuscular offers a spirited defense of her art. “In my spirited defense of my art,” she writes, “I utterly reject, contemn, and floccinate all those who have taken it upon themselves to assert that rhinoceroses never burrow, I must be thinking of chipmunks or woodchucks.

“Fie! They should all get cooties! A murrain upon them! Notice that not one of those ingrates–” she means her readers–“ever even mentioned poor Lord Jeremy, held prisoner by Constable Chumley’s mother, the Lithping Knight Thir Lanthelot!” [Challenge to readers: Go ahead, I dare you–read that last sentence aloud, to anybody.] “How quickly they forget! How little they care!”

Getting back to the safari (if we can!), the first thing Twombley does is hire a guide. This is inexplicable to me, but I suppose Ms. Crepuscular, the Queen of Suspense, has some dark suspenseful design in mind.

“I’d also like to hire an interpreter,” he soliloquizes, “in case we run into any of those tribes that don’t speak Swahili.”

“No one around here speaks Swahili!” Lady Margo protests.

“Bags of beads and glass jewelry always come in handy, too,” he muses.

Stay tuned. This could actually get silly.