Squawk Radio

2006-10-03T13:35:00.000-04:00

WE ARE OUTTA HERE!!!

Please come and visit us in our new digs at: www.squawkradio.com

PLEASE NOTE: We cannot transfer membership names from the BRAVENET list on this site to our new site. So please sign up for membership over at the new place!

2006-10-02T08:46:00.000-04:00

As of October 2nd, 2006

SQUAWK RADIO HAS MOVED!!!

If you reset your FAVORITE LINK to www.squawkradio.com, it should take you directly to our new henhouse.

You may see an Under Construction sign for a couple of hours but we hope to go live this morning. Thanks for your patience and can't wait to see you in the new henhouse!

(And if anyone has trouble reaching the new site using the www.squawkradio.com, please Comment below with your problem and we'll try to figure it out. As with any transition, I'm sure we'll be putting out fires for a few days! :))

SQUAWK CLASSIC BLOG REPLAY!!!

2006-10-01T13:39:00.000-04:00

CONNIE BROCKWAY DISCOVERS THE REASON WOMEN PAST 40

DON’T WATER-SKI

I am an athletic woman. I play a mean game of tennis, swim like a fish, and lift weights on a regular basis—heavy weights. So last weekend when we were visiting friends’ at their lake cabin and their son said, “Who wants to go water skiing?” I chirped, “Hey! That sounds like fun! I’m in!” It didn’t matter that I hadn’t actually been on skis in oh, say,... oh, say... wow. Has it been that long? No matter. It’s like riding a bike.

I ignored the startled and/or amused glances of my peers. Just because they have let themselves go to hell doesn’t mean the rest of us have. Now, since I am not known for verbal restraint, I think I said something like, “Hey, just because you have let yourselves go to hell doesn’t mean that I have.”

A word here: “Friends” eat up hubris like Takeru Kobayashi gobbles hotdogs.

Forthwith, I found myself on a pair of antique water skis, bobbing up and down in a lake, buoyed by a child’s life vest so small it had to be bungee-corded together in the front. How did I know it was a child’s life vest? Were you listening? IT HAD TO BE BUNGEE-CORDED TOGETHER IN THE FRONT TO MAKE IT FIT! Geesh. Somehow twenty-five people had managed to cram onto the power boat that was going to take me “for a spin around the lake.” Don’t even ask what the horsepower of that baby was because that sort of question is plain old rude. (It was big.)

Confident, even a little cocky, I grasped the tow bar, gave a thumbs up and shouted, “Let ‘er rip!” With a roar of power, the boat leaped forward, the tow line playing out like a striking snake and, knees gentle bent, arms straight ahead, leaning back at just the right angle, I surged slowly upright; Venus arising from Zeus foaming brow. Or the Cracken, depending on one’s perspective.

Anyway, I was up and I felt powerful, athletic, ready for some S-P-E-E-D. I gave the driver the sign. At once, the motor boat clawed it’s way over the surface of the lake like a mad cat on a shag carpet and I’m in the wake, riding the silky smooth vee behind the boat . My legs are steady, my arms fine, all that core training has obviously worked because I am solid on that ride.

It is time to add a little sass to this act.

I decide to give the stodgy, snickering oldsters on the boat a little show. I bend my legs and my ski’s edge slice through the water, shooting me toward the wake. I fly over it, slowly in my moment of aerial artistry, my arms over my head to take up the slack and bang! I hit the water. I don’t even miss a beat. My pals in the boat applaud, laugh with pleasure! A few even shake their heads in wonder!

I pull in and carve another route back toward the wake and jump it and then return to the other side, and then back again. I slamom, I slice, I curve, I arc. But I am getting a little tired by now. Hell, women half my age (which would make them mere children) would be tired by now. One more wake ride and I’ll signal for the driver to return me to the shore. Over I go and this time the landing isn’t quite so flawless. I hit hard and wobble but somehow catch myself and that’s when it happened.

In the midst of almost losing my balance, I looked down. I saw my thighs.

Now the things my thighs were doing behind that boat as I skimmed over the corrugated chop of the lake's surface are best left to the imagination. Cellulite at rest is as about appealing as a body suit made out of cottage cheese. Cellulite in motion is ghastly. But cellulite that is no longer bound by strong young collagen to the dimpled layer of the dermis is, in a word, horrifying.

I looked down and saw the flesh of my legs shimmying like a sixties go-go dancer, oscillating like a can of paint in a Sherwin Williams color-mixer, rippling like the flag in Bush campaign commercial, shaking like sinner at the gates of hell, quivering like... well, you get my point. Not pretty.

I let go of the tow bar and all too slowly glided off to the side and sank beneath the concealing water. I couldn’t possibly have sank slow enough.

Some things you give up because they are no longer worth the effort to do them, like folding tee shirts or theme-sex. Some things you give up because they are simply too physically demanding, like folding tee-shirts or theme-sex. But some things you give up for purely aesthetic reasons.

We're reposting some old blogs until our new site is ALIVE! So, keep checking in today and tomorrow, hoepfully--- WE'LL BE AT THE NEW DIGS!

2006-10-01T12:28:00.000-04:00

SQUAWK RADIO MADE IT INTO THE MINNEAPOLIS TRIBUNE!

Check it out, everybody:

http://www.startribune.com/384/story/708635.html

It's so nice to have famous friends! *g*

Eloisa

2006-10-01T12:10:00.000-04:00

CHRISTINA DODD GIVES YOU HER BEST WRITING BUSINESS ADVICE

Marry money.

If it’s too late for that — you need to define yourself and your work clearly. When you sit down with an agent or an editor, you should be able to tell them specifically what you write and why your fiction will fill a need in the marketplace. For instance, “I write women’s fiction filled with the warmth and conflicts of family life. As the large number of chick lit readers raise their own families, they’ll want more depth about relationships lightened by humor, and they’re my market.” Or, “I write historical romance with a Gothic twist, and as the paranormal market grows, the Gothic will fill the gap for those readers who like a darker edge and human characters.” Agents and editors are more likely to take a chance on you as a writer if you point out the direction you intend to go. Don’t brag. Don’t be modest. Analyze what you do and be factual. Remember, if you don’t toot your own horn, someone will use it for a spittoon.

http://www.christinadodd.com

We're rerunning some of our old blogs today, keeping you entertained as we count down the minutes until we change to our new site! Tomorrow's the day, so be patient and don't panic when Squawk Radio disappears briefly. Remember, you can't keep the Squawkers down!

2006-09-30T13:04:00.000-04:00

We'll be watching for you!

ONLY TWO MORE DAYS UNTIL THE SQUAWK SITE MOVE!

If you have Squawk Radio bookmarked with the link: http://squawkradio.blogspot.com/, you'll need to change it to http://www.squawkradio.com/ to reach the new site.

In order to welcome the new and celebrate the old, we're doing our SQUAWK HOUSEWARMING with give-aways.

To the first three people who signed up on our old list, the latest book by each of the squawkers, autographed and shipped to whatever address you'd like (and don't ask me who they are yet because THAT'S A SURPRISE! and you'll have to look to see if you're one of them) then, for three lucky people who register at our new blog site, we'll be picking names from the new list at random throughout the day for the same prize and posting those winners, too!

In addition, whenever the mood hits, a squawker will pick a name from the new list for a special, special prize !! (okay, think decoder ring and remember "special" is a relative term!) So check in often to see if your name has been selected and to tell us where to ship your "significant" prize!

Finally, we're really excited about this move and we hope that when you visit the new blog, you check out the FAQs page, wander through the author's bios, and look up the events calendar. Most of all we want this to be a place you want to visit often... so here's the million dollar question? What topics, subject matter, whatever, would YOU like to see us blog about more often?

2006-09-30T10:45:00.000-04:00

TERESA POSTS A BOOK SHOPPING ALERT!

As many of you know, I think THE BRONZE HORSEMAN by Paullina Simons is the best historical romance I've read in well over a decade.

For a long time, the book's equally wonderful sequel TATIANA AND ALEXANDER was only available in Austalia and Europe. But when I got my bulletin this month, I noticed that Doubleday Book Club (www.doubledaybookclub.com) was offering both books in Doubleday hardcover editions for only $22.99 (plus shipping and handling).

Happy shopping! (And reading!)

2006-09-29T22:38:00.000-04:00

THE COUNTDOWN CONTINUES!

ONLY THREE MORE DAYS UNTIL SQUAWK RADIO MOVES TO ITS NEW COOP!

We'd also like to take this opportunity to congratulate our amazing Squawkees who made it into the Top 10 out of hundreds of entries in the Avon FanLit competition. Congrats to Sara_Lindsey, Elyssany, Mandacoll, Laura T and to Week 2's winner--Lacey Kaye!

We're all as proud as a bunch of mother hens! (And if we've missed anybody, please check in below!)

DISCLAIMER: I wanted to add that all FanLit submissions remain anonymous until a winner is announced each week so that readers and author judges have no idea who wrote what during the judging. We recognized Lacey Kaye's moniker when the winner for this week was announced but we would have had no idea that our other regular Squawkees had finaled if Santa hadn't announced it under the Comments of the blog below.

Liz on Lovin' Her Job

2006-09-29T07:02:00.000-04:00

Last weekend, JR Ward and I spoke at the inaugural Kentucky Women’s Book Festival in Louisville, hosted by Women Who Write, The Women’s Center at the University of Louisville and Spalding University’s Master of Fine Arts in Writing Program. I was incredibly pleased that they included a panel on romance novels, because this was an event attended by a lot of academics and women who normally don’t read romance, and they could have done what so many such festivals do and completely ignored the most overwhelmingly popular genre among women. Instead, they were VERY happy we joined them. And it was our chance to tell them all why the genre is so overwhelmingly popular with our gender, and dispel a lot of the clichés and erroneous assumptions about the books we love to write and read. All in all, it was a great day, in spite of the torrential rains we had. And in spite of how I’m pretty sure the luncheon speaker insulted me when she answered what I figured would be a thought-provoking question.

But I digress.

What really made the experience bloggable was that, during the booksigning after our panel, one of the women who’d been in our seminar came up to me and said, “You know, you two were the only speakers I heard this weekend who actually sounded proud of what you write. Not that everyone else sounded ashamed, but no one had the enthusiasm and obvious love for what they do that you and JR Ward so clearly have. Some even sounded apologetic for being writers.” And she wondered if that was because, as JR and I had pointed out in our seminar, romance writers work in a world of women. Almost exclusively, women write the books. Almost exclusively, women read them. The vast majority of editors and agents and publicity people working with romance writers are women. We’re just a big ol’ soup of estrogen, unpolluted by testosterone, and maybe that’s why we’re all so happy.

That got me thinking. (A dangerous activity, I know, but there you have it just the same.) I started thinking about all the jobs I’ve had in the past (virtually dozens--never let anyone tell you a degree in English makes you unemployable), and whether or not I was happier among women than I was among men. And I realized that the only other job I ever had that was on estrogen-overload like this one was when I was working for The Limited, which was what I was doing when I sold my first book. That environment, too, was dominated by females. The regional manager who worked out of our store was a man, but we never interacted with him. The stock manager was a guy, too, but, again, we only interacted with him superficially. Other than those two, it was all women, all the time. And in spite of it being retail, I really liked that job a lot.

But I liked tending bar a lot, too, and that was by no means a woman’s world. And I loved, loved, loved working at the Vogue Theatre when I was a teenager (a wonderful revival house that showed old and foreign films along with “Rocky Horror” in perpetuity), and that was a world populated by... Well. Every kind of person under the sun, a lot of them really weird.

So, ultimately, I decided that my favorite jobs had nothing to do with gender, and everything to do with being around people who are like me. With writing, I’m with other writers. At the Limited, I was with other shoppers. Tending bar, I was with other drinkers. At the Vogue, I was with other weirdoes. So probably, the reason I, at least, am so enthusiastic and in love with what I write isn’t necessarily because I’m among other women. It’s because the community of romance writers and readers attracts other people who are like me: smart, well-read, romantic, and convinced that, no matter how bad the world seems sometimes, there is hope for it. And for us.

The fact that we’re all women is just a huge bonus.

What have your favorite jobs in the past been? What do you like about the job you have now? What kind of people are you most comfortable around? What do you think are the pros and cons of being with women versus being with men?

2006-09-28T20:07:00.000-04:00

KEEP COUNTIN' THEM CHICKS!

ONLY FOUR MORE DAYS UNTIL THE BIG MOVE TO OUR NEW SITE!!!

Update: Because we love you so much, we're going to allow Anonymous posters on the new site through October. But after October you'll have to sign up as an official user of the new site. Most of you probably already frequent sites and message boards with the same policy so we'll hoping it will be an easy transition :)

Lisa on "Scar Power"

2006-09-28T07:26:00.000-04:00

Dear Friends,

Having just finished our friend JR Ward’s astonishingly visceral novel “Lover Awakened,” I’m having a little trouble leaving the gorgeously graphic, sexual, opulently violent world of the Black Dagger Brotherhood. The book reads like it has been soaked in testosterone. I love the freedom and power of Ward’s style, which tramples all over political correctness on its way through a love story that is so primally satisfying, I close the book with something akin to a post-coital afterglow.

I can’t get the hero, Z, out of my head. I’ve always had a weakness for wounded warrior heroes, and in a book of larger-than-life characters, Z makes everyone else’s suffering seem like a stroll through Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. Love him.

Especially love the scar on his lip.

If you’re a writer and you’re struggling with how to make a hero more interesting, give him a scar. It always works.

A scar is a secret story waiting to be told . . . evidence of the body’s attempt to heal itself . . . a symbol of a life that has been drastically changed.

They say scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. This physical evidence of past damage lets the reader know that the hero has suffered and is tougher for it. Is this why we find scars so compelling?

A few years ago, Premiere magazine put Harrison Ford’s face on the cover, and photoshopped away the famous scar on his chin. Readers, including myself, were justifiably annoyed. Leave the smooth-faced model boys to less discerning women . . . Harrison’s scar is sexy. Ditto Joaquin Phoenix, with the scar on his upper lip, and Sean Bean, who has one just over his left eye (which, incidentally, was given to him by Harrison Ford with a boat hook, when they were shooting Patriot Games.)

Is a scarred hero sexy to you, or is it a turn-off? Why? Who is your favorite scarred romance hero or actor?

2006-09-27T13:57:00.000-04:00

SQUAWK RADIO COUNTDOWN BEGINS!

They say you should never count your chickens before they hatch but one thing you can count on is your friends at SQUAWK RADIO. On Monday October 2nd, we'll be moving to our new site. We're going to redirect the URL so you should be able to get there simply by typing in www.squawkradio.com or using your link just like you always have.

Since we won't be on Blogger any more, you will have to sign up to post under your preferred screen name on the new site. Sign-up is amazingly easy. You can still post Anonymously if you like (or if you're just in a naughty mood ;)) but we'd love to get to know as many of you as we can. I also want to assure you that any sign-up info or mailing list info will NEVER be shared with anyone else.

We're going to celebrate this momentous occasion as we celebrate all of them--with copious amounts of tequila. Oh wait a minute--that's how Kitty Kuttlestone celebrates. We're going to throw a Squawk party with some fun giveaways so make sure and pop by our new henhouse on Monday October 2nd for a SQUAWK RADIO COOP WARMING! (Expensive gifts welcome.)

ONLY 5 MORE DAYS UNTIL THE PARTY STARTS!

CONNIE'S WORDINESS-R-US STORE

2006-09-26T20:58:00.000-04:00

I love language. I love words. I love finding just the right word for the right situation. The word that not only brings to mind a clear picture of a thing or a state, but also colorizes it with the emotion and personality of the point of view character.

No one makes better words to describe subtlties than the Germans.
Gewissenhiß? The bite of conscience! Zeitgeist? The spirit of the time. Ersatz? A replacement or substitute of inferior quality. And my favorite, Schadenfruede, the shameful and malicious joy one finds in the misery of others. Not that I've ever experienced this last but I imagine some people do...

One of the best ways to convey a person's personality is by the terms in which he thinks and speaks. Slang in particular. As a historical romance author, I compiled a twenty page thesaurus of regency slang. If I want to call some one freckled, I look up “complexion” and find “bran-faced,” if I look up “drunk” I find “foxed, jug-bitten, bosky, tap-hackled, ape-drunk, in alt, “ and “properly shot in the neck.”

But now I am writing contemporary novels and while my main characters are not teenagers or young adults, occasionally I find it necessary for one of them to make an appearance. This is when the trouble starts. I have a daughter who ought to be helpful in this area. Not so. Doodah is apparently as slang- challenged as her mother. All she can tell me for sure is that almost any word I attribute to the eighteen year old boy in the book I'm working on is wrong. “Lame,” is...lame. "Shady" is... lame, too.

What are your favorite words borrowed from another language, words you just can’t seem to translate adequately into English? And, for the love of heaven, share with me some SLANG! My teenage boy is ...lame.

2006-09-26T19:40:00.000-04:00

TERESA ANNOUNCES A WINNER...

While you're enjoying this lovely fan art piece of Portia and Julian from THE VAMPIRE WHO LOVED ME done by talented and devoted reader Lyndsey Lewellen, I would like to announce the winner of today's contest.

I decided to go for simple yet elegant, much like a vampire's attire and picked as the #10 REASON FOR LOVING A VAMPIRE: (Drum roll, please...)

10) He will never hog the mirror in the morning

Congratulations to "hha" for winning an autographed copy of THE VAMPIRE WHO LOVED ME! If you'll e-mail me your snail mail addy at: teresa@teresamedeiros.com, I'll get your autographed copy in the mail this week!

Thanks to everyone who entered! I spent the entire day chuckling! Bats in the belfry indeed!

2006-09-26T06:01:00.000-04:00

Teresa Celebrates the Publication of THE VAMPIRE WHO LOVED ME by Sharing Her TOP TEN REASONS FOR LOVING A VAMPIRE

1) You never have to worry about him coming home and saying, "What's for dinner, honey?"

2) When he says, "I'll love you forever", he means it

3) Black can be very slimming

4) No more worries about West Nile Virus with that bat flitting around your eaves at twilight

5) Instead of making the bed every morning, you can just close the lid

6) He'll never have garlic breath

7) You can spend all day at the mall shopping while he's sleeping

8) A Transylvanian henchman is cheaper than a maid or a gardener

9) When he promises to "make love to you all night," he won't roll over in fifteen minutes and go to sleep

You discerning readers may have noticed that there are only 9 TOP TEN REASONS FOR LOVING A VAMPIRE. That's because I want YOU to come up with #10! Just post your entry in the Comment section and I'll announce my favorite one at 7 PM Central time tonight. The witty winner will receive an autographed copy of THE VAMPIRE WHO LOVED ME! These are the rules:

1) You can submit more than one entry but please only do ONE entry per Comment to make for easier reading.
2) ALL Comments are welcome. Your Comment doesn't have to be a contest entry.
3) Squawkers can enter but can't win. (Sorry, Xtina!)

http://www.teresamedeiros.com

2006-09-25T22:53:00.000-04:00

And the winners of the five arcs for THE PRINCE KIDNAPS A BRIDE ARE...

Cherye Barta!

Samantha Akers!

Sarah Patrick!

lindaBASS!

Rosie Carlo!

Please email me at christina@christinadodd.com with your snail mail address and I'll get these right out to you! Congratulations and enjoy!

Warmly,
Christina Dodd

The poop from KITTY

2006-09-25T09:19:00.000-04:00

THE SQUAWKERS ARE FLYING THIS COOP!

They are moving to better digs, one with a BOOK CLUB, and a better MEMBERSHIP list, and an EVENTS calendar where you can see what the squawkers are up to -- booksignings, appearances, book releases-- as well as who and when their guest bloggers be on.

When is this happening?
Soon, very soon, barring Terri's being swept away in a flood. HOWEVER, because it may take a few days to redirect the URL (don't ask me what that is, the last "Url" I knew was a soldier in Topeka) you MAY show up here only to be told that SQUAWK RADIO is gone. It's NOT! It's just moving. TRY the NEXT DAY! Once the new site is up, the squawkers have promised presents and giveaways. But I'm not real clear on what, I just know it's not liquor. 'Cause I asked, So...that's the KITTY POOP. Now, roll call!

CONNIE REPORTS IN:
I have a trailer! I have a trailer for my first contemporary and soon-to-be released (November 7,'06) book, HOT DISH! Check out my website at www.conniebrockway.com to see it!

TERESA PROVIDES THE SCOOP!

Well, Kitty, there's only cure for Kitty poop and it involves a plastic baggie and a very large scoop.

Teresa is getting ready to celebrate the publication of THE VAMPIRE WHO LOVED ME by hyperventilating...no, wait...by hosting a terrific contest tomorrow right here on SQUAWK RADIO. So pop in to see what you can win!

And if you haven't already, there's still time to enter her September contest at www.teresamedeiros.com for a chance to win a $50 gift certificate from Books-A-Million so you can rush out and buy VAMPIRE and all of the hot October releases.

Teresa will be signing THE VAMPIRE WHO LOVED ME at Books on Main in her Kentucky hometown from 1-3 PM this Saturday September 30th.

She'll be interviewed over at www.runningwithquills.com on October 9th and will be guest blogging at http://www.wnbc.com/romance/index.html on October 16th.

CHRISTINA DODD DOES THE SNOOPY DANCE!

Late last night I got an email from Shelley Mosley, librarian extraordinaire — “Congratulations on having TROUBLE IN HIGH HEELS named one of Booklist's Top Ten Romance Novels of the Year!” That means out of the approximately 2300 romance titles released this year, the American Library Association's magazine decided TROUBLE IN HIGH HEELS was one of the top ten! Thank you, Shelley, and thank you, John Charles who gave TROUBLE IN HIGH HEELS such a wonderful review!

To celebrate, I’m giving away five copies of THE PRINCE KIDNAPS A BRIDE to five lucky people chosen from our Squawk Radio mailing list (that’s one for each winner, in case I’m so giddy with joy I’m not making sense.) You can sign up in the Bravenet box to the left of this page. So sign up now! We’ll announce the winner tonight!

To read excerpts, go to http://www.christinadodd.com

I'm autographing TROUBLE IN HIGH HEELS on Saturday, October 7, 2006, 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm
Coast Hotel
625 116th Avenue NE
Bellevue, Washington
Along with authors Susan Andersen, Jayne Ann Krentz, Katie MacAlister, Debbie Macomber, Julia Quinn, Vicki Lewis Thompson and many more! A portion of the proceeds will be donated to DAWN, Domestic Abuse Women's Network of South King County.

LIZ GINGERLY PICKS UP THE SCOOP, WIPES IT OFF, AND RUNS WITH IT

There's still time to buy my September Blaze, MY ONLY VICE, but hurry! After this week, they'll be gone. Unless you come to Joesph-Beth Booksellers in Lexington, Kentucky on Saturday, October 6th, at 2:00, where I'll be signing along with a host of other Kentucky writers, like recent Squawk guests JR Ward and Toni Blake, and frequent Squawk visitor Monica Burns. Oh, all right, I'll even include Lori Foster, despite the fact that she's one of those pesky Running with Quills people. (Hi, Quills! Love ya, babes!) And speaking of JR Ward, she and I spoke this weekend at the Kentucky Women's Book Festival on the popularity and empowerment of romance novels, to a lovely group of women who gave us a very warm response. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go finish a new Desire on which I am unforgivably far behind...

ELOISA RUNS OFF WITH THE SCOOP AND THE POOP!

Eloisa is off to New Hampshire tomorrow to learn how to run a Bed &
Breakfast! Her roadtrip with the Weekend Today Show continues; Eloisa,
the Today Show and More Magazine are converging on the Colby Inn in New
Hampshire so that everyone can watch Eloisa master the fine art of
blueberry muffins. Or soothing angry guests. Or.... who knows? Wish her
luck!

LISA POOPS BY (I MEAN POPS BY!)

Lisa is busy waiting on the release of her first big contemporary (SUGAR DADDY), writing her next historical (Cam Rohan's story), planning her children's birthday parties, and generally trying to stay out of trouble. None of which is as easy as one might wish. But it's shaping up to be a great Autumn, and there's a lot to look forward to! Love to all from Lisa!

Liz Brings out the Fall Music

2006-09-24T11:00:00.000-04:00

I once read a description of the Pogues as “The Sex Pistols meets the Chieftains.” But that’s totally wrong. The way the Pogues sing about drinking, they’re actually the Sex Pistols meets the Clancy Brothers. There just isn’t another group like them anywhere. And with autumn just around the corner, I'm ready for music like this.

I’ve wanted to blog on the Pogues for a long time, but it was really, really, really hard to narrow it down to one album, because everything this band has done has been phenomenally good. So I finally settled on one of several “best of” CDs that they’ve released. And the reason I chose this one is because it includes my two favorite songs by them, “Sally McLennane” and “Sick Bed of Cuchulain.” The fact that “Fairy Tale of New York” (on which the amazing Kirsty MacColl joins them) also appears, is an excellent bonus.

The collection starts off deceptively, with “Dirty Old Town,” a slow, sad-sounding number that might lead the listener to believe s/he’d purchased an album of traditional Irish folk music. But the beauty of the Pogues is that singer/songwriter/poet Shane MacGowan turns tradition on its ear with his in-your-face, often very angry lyrics. The second song, “The Irish Rover,” picks up the pace nicely, but still doesn’t quite capture what is the truest sound of the band. That comes next with “Sally McLenane,” which combines this joyful, danceable music with lyrics about death and alienation, and then comes to fruition with “Sick Bed of Cuchulain,” whose lyrics are much more graphic: “When you pissed yourself in Frankfurt and got syph down in Cologne/And you heard the rattling death trains as you lay there all alone...”

And that, really, is the Pogues. You have music that is centuries old, the purest kind of acoustic folk ever produced in Ireland, right down to the fifes and drums. And then you have the lyrics. Yeah, Irish music can be sad and angry. But the Pogues don’t even try to romanticize the bleakness and ugliness that life can bring. “The Old Main Drag” depicts a grim world of junkies, and “Hell’s Ditch” shows us a side of prison life nobody wants to talk about.

But not all of it is hopeless, and not all of it is ugly. Some of the songs, like “Misty Morning, Albert Bridge” and “London Girl” have music and lyrics are genuinely beautiful and melancholy. And much of their oeuvre is representative of not just the Irish experience, but the human experience. (Though certainly the band is a strong voice for what its countrymen and -women have survived.) The CD is a bit uneven in the way it moves from slow to fast, so that you never quite feel like you get a rhythm going, but then, that would probably suit the Pogues just fine. I’m thinkin’ they wouldn’t want listeners to get too comfortable.

Saturday Book Blog

2006-09-23T18:28:00.000-04:00

TERESA DIGS UP SOME BURIED TREASURE ON A LAZY SATURDAY MORNING

I have to start this blog by admitting that I'm an idiot. At least 3 years ago, lovely and wise Avon author Christie Ridgway gave me a glowing recommendation for a trade paperback called THE SECOND COMING OF LUCY HATCH by Marsha Moyer. Christie glowed SO brightly about this book that I wisely went out and bought not only LUCY HATCH but it's companion novel THE LAST OF THE HONKY TONK ANGELS. So why am I an idiot, you ask? Because I let the book languish on my bookshelf for 3 years before finally picking it up to take on a long plane trip last week.

Lucy Hatch's second coming begins with the first line of the novel: I was thirty-three years old when my husband walked out into the field one morning and never came back and I went in one quick leap from wife to widow. At 19, Lucy had wed a taciturn, stoic 27-year-old farmer, believing that still waters run deep only to discover that sometimes still waters only run...well...still. For fourteen years, they were the kind of couple who had an abiding respect for each other but who rarely spoke and only made love with the lights off. Lucy sincerely grieves Mitchell when he dies but perhaps her greatest grief comes from admitting to herself that she also feels a tiny smidgen of relief.

Texas is in the very bones of this book and the grieving Lucy retreats to her hometown of Mooney, Texas to try to find the girl she lost all those years ago. As Lucy sets out to rediscover herself in a little ramshackle rental house out in the country, her family rallies around her: Aunt Dove, her "spinster aunt" and the wisest of the lot, her good looking brother Bailey, her slightly plus-sized and plus-hearted sister-in-law Geneva.

It's Bailey and Geneva who drag Lucy out of that rental house and back to her favorite teenage haunt--the local honky tonk, the Round-Up. That's where she comes face-to-face with town bad boy Ash Farrell. Ah, Ash Farrell! (Insert swooning sigh here). Although he's not a cowboy, Ash is a "cowboy hero" in the best sense of the tradition. He's a lean, tall drink of water--a carpenter (who knows how to use his hands!) by day and a singer who performs every Friday night down at the Round-Up. Women line up at the bar to vie for his attentions after each performance but the minute he sees Lucy, he "sets his sights on her." He brings her flowers, he brings her a puppy, he fixes her leaky pipes. (And no--that's not a metaphor!) His courtship and her initial resistance set every tongue in Mooney wagging.

Marsha Moyer is a master at both dialogue and characterization. I think I first fell in love with Ash when he was telling Lucy about the steeple at the local Baptist Church:

"Reverend Honeywell's got a couple of spotlights trained on it at night now," Ash said. "In case, I guess, Jesus decides to come back at two in the morning and can't see to land."

When we learn that Ash went into foster care at the age of four when they found him all alone in the house with his mentally ill mother, "sitting in the closet eating dog biscuits right out of the box," I'm ready to hand him both my house keys and my panties.

You often hear romance readers whining about how hard it is to create unique love scenes after they've written several books. Their hero and heroine have done it in the rocking chair. They've swung from the chandelier. There can't possibly be any new words left to describe how to put Tab A into Slot B, can there? After reading this book, I'm happy to discover that there are. The love scenes in this book are infused with emotion and helped to remind me that it's not the mechanics that need refreshing but the language used to describe them:

So I let myself slide under again, my mind floating somewhere between dark and light, aware of nothing but my skin under his thickened fingertips, the silken grit of his unshaved chin as it grazed behind my ears, the curve of my throat, the hollow of my collarbone. The quilt had fallen to the floor, and my nightgown worked itself into a tangle at my hips as I felt him move down over me, kissing and kissing, creating a smooth, undulating purl of response from my head to my toes.

As irresistible as Ash is, it's Lucy's voice--wry, funny, and unflinchingly honest--that truly propels the story. When her brother Bailey tells her, "I just want you to be safe is all," Lucy replies with, "My husband got chewed up by a farm machine. Safe is a word that's gone straight out of my vocabulary."

THE SECOND COMING OF LUCY HATCH is both a beautifully written novel and a fine romance. There are very few books that capture the true joy and terror of falling in love and this is one of the best I've ever read. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to pull Marsha Moyer's second book, THE LAST OF THE HONKY TONK ANGELS, straight off my shelf before my IQ drops even lower.

Judging from the number of glowing 5-star reviews on Amazon, I'm not the only one to discover LUCY HATCH. But what about you? Do you have a "buried treasure" book to recommend? A book that you adore but the world ignored? What's the best book you ever read that no one else seems to have heard of?

2006-09-22T08:12:00.000-04:00

Lisa Talks "Melanoma"

Dear Friends,

Summer may be over, but you wouldn’t know it here in Texas--the sun is still blazing like it’s mid-July. There’s not much you can do to avoid the sun where I live, so the only recourse is to wear hats and apply sunscreen to every visible inch of your body. Which, I’ll confess, I’m not always good about doing. But from now on I’m going to be far more aware of the hazards of sun exposure, because we recently had a scare involving my mother and a strange black line on her fingernail.

The line looks exactly like something that was drawn on with a pencil, thin and dark, running from the base of the nail to the tip. And even though it was unusual and a little worrisome, my mother didn’t tell anyone about it for months, just covered it up with nail polish. I think many women would have done the same--we’re all too busy, and by the time you go to the doctor, wait in the office, and finally get to see the doctor, half a day is gone.

Finally, however, my mother went for a manicure and the cosmetician told her that a black line on your fingernail is potentially a dangerous sign. There’s a very aggressive form of melanoma that shows up as a line or dark spot on a fingernail or toenail . . . most often in black or hispanic women (my family is part Mexican) . . . and it can spread very quickly to the lymph nodes. Furthermore, people have a tendency to ignore this telltale sign for far too long.

There are other reasons a black line can show up on your finger nail--it can be a sign of vitamin deficiency, a tiny burst blood vessel, or a harmless mole that has appeared in the nailbed. Fortunately for my mother and our family, the doctor thinks her finger is just fine, although they’re keeping an eye on it just to be safe.

So now my concern is for you, dear friends--if you have any kind of dark spot or line on any of your fingernails or toenails, PLEASE go have it checked out. And keep an eye on your skin in general. If you have any new moles or dark spots on your skin, check them out with the ABCD rule in mind :

A : Asymmetry. Instead of being perfectly circular, the mole is a strange shape
B : Border. The edges of the mole are ragged-looking or irregular
C : Color. The mole is changing color, either darkening or lightening, or has more than one color
D : Diameter is more than 6mm, or bigger around than a pencil eraser.

From what I’ve read, it doesn’t matter if the mole is flat or raised. But you should pay attention if it feels itchy or painful, and if it bleeds and never seems to heal completely.

I know it’s difficult for all of us, with our overpacked schedules, to take time out and take care of our bodies. But please pay attention to your skin, because you are important to your own friends and family, and to the Squawkers as well! We want you to be healthy, safe and happy.

Do you use sunscreen regularly? . . . What kind do you like the best, in terms of scent, feel and effectiveness? Do you have any good suggestions about makeup foundation with sunblock in it? Any other skin care advice you’d like to share?

2006-09-21T09:00:00.000-04:00

ELOISA, SONG-WRITER!

So...here I am in Nashville. For those of you who may have missed the earlier versions of this story, I am in the process of writing a story for More Magazine about starting second careers (I know, I know--I'm not exactly a person who needs to take on another job). Still...this seemed like fun, especially when the Weekend Today Show said that they wanted to roadtrip right along with me. So a couple of weeks ago, I signed up for a Vocation Vacation and set off for Nashville...to learn to write country music. With a little help from my friends here on Squawk and on my BB, I hasten to say. I posted the first version of my song over on my BB, and very nice people pointed out that there was supposed to be a Bridge. And one person noted that the Chorus was supposed to be the same every time. The same? My choruses were almost the same...it was more interesting this way!

So I was totally prepared for my trip, right? No! I had to buy a pair of jeans. Honestly, I haven't owned one in 10 years. After a painful enounter with a 12-year-old saleswoman in Neiman Marcus, I emerged with flared jeans -- and you can't see this, but -- they have sequins on the back pocket! Nashville, here I come!
The first thing I did was spend two days learning how to write a country song. One of the first lessons? Choruses have to be exactly the same every time! And -- who knew? -- rhymes are important! argh.

But with the help of the wonderful Bruce Berg, head of the Popular Music Department at the University of Athens, Georgia (and writer of several of Reba's Number One hits!), together with Ken Johnson, an up-and-coming young Nashville star, we managed to write a song. I say "we"--because that was another thing I had wrong about song-writing. In Nashville, songs are written in collaboration. Sitting around on the floor, writing that song was one of the most fun days I've had in years. Which is strange because the song is very sad -- I wrote it after having the news that a friend of mine has suffered a recurrence of her ovarian cancer. I started thinking about saying goodbye -- and ended up writing a love song for the person I would leave behind. Here I am in front of the astounding Bluebird Cafe, where Ken sang our song live on Saturday night. If you ever have a chance to go to Nashville, go to the Bluebird -- it's one of the most astonishingly intimate, joyful places to enjoy music that I've ever experienced.

The next day we went out to a state-of-the-art recording studio in the country and recorded the song -- with all sorts of people on the bass guitar, steel guitar, piano, etc. That resulted in a Demo CD, which will be (or is being) pitched to major country music singers. It could be that the song is too sad to be picked up, but I hope not. Here's that plaguey Chorus that cost me so much trouble:

Let's live all our lost tomorrows
In the days that we've got left
Kiss me now like midnight
Make me remember how I'm blessed
I may leave you in a whisper
When the dawn calls out my name
But I'll take your love with me, my love,
Like a photo in a frame...

The song is called "Photo in a Frame" -- that's another thing I learned from my friends on my Bulletin Board. Every song is supposed to have a Hook. So "Photo in a Frame" is my hook, and it repeats throughout the song.

So...guess where I'm going next week? To a fancy Bed and Breakfast to learn how to run a B&B! The Today Show is coming right along. I'm feeling a bit whiney -- writing a song was so much fun that I'm not sure baking blueberry muffins at dawn is going to match up.

At this point, the Today Show is scheduled for January 16 -- with a possible bump to the weekend after. My article in More Magazine (with lots of pictures) should be coming out that week as well (it's the February issue). I'll blog the news if I find out anything different. Here's a really fun part to it -- they're going to give away a FREE Vacation Vocation! So you too can head down to Nashville to write a song with Bruce!

So let's pretend you win a Vocation Vocation -- and you can go "try out" almost any job in the US, with a mentor to help you out. Where would you go? What would you do? The only curb on your imagination is that you have to be realistic -- don't say you want to be a start-up on the Yankees or a ballerina in the New York Ballet.

2006-09-20T12:53:00.000-04:00

SQUAWK PETS!

ELOISA'S KITTENS. Every once in a while, one of us has posted a picture of our pets. Today we thought we'd do something of a round-up, mostly because I am so in love with our new kittens that I'm boring the Squawkers to death talking about them. It turns out that Rosie (the little long-haired one) was separated from her mother too soon and she's not so great at cleaning herself. She does the necessities, but ignores the rest (kind of like my children, now I think of it). At any rate, Charlie finds this of great concern. He keeps himself sleek and shining at all times. So, after a week or so, he took over Rosie's toilette. He pins her down and washes her from head to foot. You can tell from her expression that she doesn't exactly love it...but she doesn't try to get free either. In fact, her expression resembles that of my 12-year-old when I'm brushing his hair.

2006-09-20T10:34:00.000-04:00

Christina Dodd Shows Off Her Pets

This is a working breed, and I recommend it highly. They’re not easy care — they require a lot of instruction, and I have to work with them every day, but as you can see, once they’re trained, they’re very useful. They’re frequently playful and cuddlesome, especially if given their favorite treat, “beer.” They have to be groomed on a regular basis, but they shed very little. Although they become grumpy as they get older, I think you’ll find the rewards of owning this particular pet far outweighs the disadvantages.

2006-09-20T10:25:00.000-04:00

THE TWO NEWEST LOVES OF CONNIE'S LIFE... Fast Eddie and Bonner

TERESA SHARES ONE OF HER FAVORITE PICS OF BUFFY THE MOUSE SLAYER...

This was the first day we brought her home. Notice the contrast between her fluffy adorability and the laser-like intensity of her serial killer eyes. She still likes to chew on my fingers.

TERESA WITH XTINA'S DARLING DOG

And since I don't have my own dog right now, Xtina was kind enough to let me share hers on a recent visit to her glorious Washington state home. Ritter fell in love with the powder blue slippers Xtina gave me and I fell in love with Ritter. I still miss lounging around on that lovely couch scratching his tummy every night!

2006-09-20T09:19:00.000-04:00

ELOISA MEETS LIBBA BRAY!

This last weekend I went to NAIBA (North Atlantic Booksellers Association) and met many people who run and work in independent bookstores--places that I generally consider to be heaven on earth.

At any rate, these lovely people had wisely chosen to give a prize to Libba Bray for Rebel Angels -- Best Young Adult Fiction of 2005.
She gave an incredibly funny acceptance speech which included an Ode to Booksellers.

I ran up and did the fan-thing afterwards. So here we are, Libba holding her plaque.

She's the nicest person in the world and if you haven't yet managed to read A Great and Terrible Beauty, and Rebel Angels (the sequel), run out to a bookstore and buy them! In my opinion, they're really adult novels -- with a coming-of-age, magic, better-than-Harry glow to them.

Liz on Her Favorite Season

2006-09-19T09:39:00.000-04:00

We’re having a nice cool morning here today, something that reinforces how fall is just around the corner. I love fall. It’s my absolute favorite season. It’s when all the best holidays happen, including my birthday and my anniversary. It means back-to-school, which I loved even as a child, and the gorgeous color changes on the trees. It means I get to pull out all my favorite fashion items--sweaters, hiking boots, flannel shirts and leather jackets--and it means fires in the fireplace inside and the chimnea outside. (I confess, I’m a bit of a pyro.) But I think the thing I love most about fall is the change it symbolizes. Change is indeed good. And fall, even more than spring, makes me feel like renewal is at hand. Not because things are beginning. But because they’re ending. And there’s something kind of comforting about that.

Beginnings can be exciting and exhilarting thanks to their wide open potential for ANYTHING to happen. But they can be scary, too, because there is so much potential for ANYTHING to happen. I’m a security freak. And, okay, a control freak. I like to know what’s going to happen, when it’s going to happen, and how it’s going to happen. And I want to know it WAY before it actually happens. Of course, that’s impossible, even when I’ve planned something down to the last detail. There’s always stuff that can go wrong--and usually does. And I’m not good at changing gears quickly. Much of life is adjusting to the unexpected. Those who can think quickly generally do fine. But those of us who want to look at every angle of a situation before acting can have a bumpier time of it.

“Once upon a time” is a phrase that can lead to an infinite number of outcomes. But an outcome itself is only one thing. Even though I love starting a new book, writing the equivalent of “Once upon a time” can make me twitchy and terrified, because I know I have so much to do and think and say after I write it. Writing “The End,” on the other hand, fills me with euphoria and a giddy sense of peace. It is final. It is immutable. It is DONE. (Until revisions. But even those come to an end. Eventually.)

I like it when things end. Even good things. I like resolution. I like it when everything finally plays out, especially if it plays out the way it’s supposed to. That’s probably why I love books and movies so much. It’s probably one of the reasons I became a writer. And it’s why I love fall. The year is ending, but I know there will be another one after it. Another one filled with the potential for ANYTHING to happen. One thing, though, will be a given next year. At the end, there will be another glorious fall. And by the time that fall arrives, I will have completed so many projects, both professional and personal. And with every project completed, I’ll be a little more complete myself.

So what’s YOUR favorite season? Why? What are you looking forward to between now and the the end of the year? And what do you like better: beginnings or endings?

2006-09-18T09:15:00.000-04:00

TERESA WELCOMES THE NEW SEASON (AND NO, SHE DOESN'T MEAN FALL ALTHOUGH THAT'S NICE TOO.)

Okay, I'm not some rabid Patrick Dempsey fan but even I have to admit he fills out those worn Levi's rather nicely on the Fall Preview edition of ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY. I guess I must be preverse because I find crochety Hugh Laurie of HOUSE to be the hottest doc in...well...the house. (Thanks Connie for the introduction! ;))

I'm always a little behind because I like to watch shows on DVD because they feel more like serialized novels to me. (Just picked up the 2nd season of LOST!) But I do insist on having my weekly fix of TWO AND A HALF MEN every Monday. (Say what you will about Charlie Sheen's personal life--his comic timing is impeccable.) And yes, I'm dying to know what will happen to Luca and Abby's baby after that nasty hostage situation on the season finale of ER. (And I will definitely be pining until January when Jack Bauer returns to interrogate my heart!)

So what's YOUR pleasure and your poison this fall? Which returning shows are you dying to watch? Are you dreaming about Dr. McDreamy on GRAY'S ANATOMY or is it those DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES who have you desperately reaching for the Tivo? Have previews of any of the new shows captured your interest or your imagination?

2006-09-17T22:06:00.000-04:00

We have picked a winner from the Squawk Radio mailing list! Put your hands together for bookfairymom@cox.net who will enjoy autographed copies of each of the three Black Dagger Brotherhood books! And thank you, JR Ward, for generously donating your time and your prizes to the Squawk Radio Squawkers!

Liz Sings the Praises of Patio Music

2006-09-17T10:11:00.000-04:00

I always associate Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass with patio parties. Remember patio parties? Before the culture of the deck took over? A square piece of concrete in the backyard, often right off the garage, became this major social center during the summer in the ‘60s. The men wore tiki shirts and the women wore capri pants, and everyone had on funky sunglasses that weren’t funky at the time, because they were in style. People sat on metal gliders and plastic woven lawn chairs and talked about Cuba and Betty Friedan and what was happening on “The Edge of Night.” And the music was totally '60s, heavy on the brass and the Nelson Riddle strings and the cheesy background vocals.

I think one of the problems with the world today is that we don’t have patio parties anymore. Decks just don’t have the same feel, somehow. They’re so much bigger, and they’re not connected to the ground, and they just don’t breed the same sort of intimacy a patio does. So with the summer winding down, I’m going to start a patio party movement in the hopes that next summer, there will be more. And I’m nominating Herb Alpert and the TJB as the official music of patio parties, because it’s so quintessentially ‘60s.

“Going Places” is my favorite TJB album because most of the music is so lively and happy and ebullient. You’ve got great classic numbers like “Tijuana Taxi” and “Spanish Flea,” which I absolutely ADORED when I was a child, and “Zorba the Greek,” which Alpert plays with amazing skill. I don’t know how he can blow that hard and that fast into a trumpet, but, man, does he sound great. Every now and then you’ve got the musicians howling with exuberance, and you realize how much fun they’re having simply being able to play the music they play. There’s “3rd Man Theme,” which is incredibly evocative of the 60s mystique, and “Felicia,” which somehow makes cheesy background vocals sound fabulous. There are strings in some places, too, but they also act as aural provocateurs that take us right back to what was both a turbulent and simple decade that will never be matched in history. And neither will its music.

There are enough slow numbers in the mix, like “More and More Amor” and “Mae,” to give you time to replenish the bar and mix up a new batch of mai-tais and zombies (the official patio party drinks) and bedeck them with paper umbrellas (more patio party essentials), then the music speeds back up again so you can do a little twisting by the pool. Best of all, all of it is spiced up with that “South of the Border” flavor to which Herb Alpert and the boys bring just the right amount of spice. There simply is no band like them anywhere.

Okay, okay, I admit that Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass work great for deck parties, too. Instead of Cuba and Betty Friedan and “The Edge of Night,” you can talk about the Middle East and Dr. Phil and “Lost.” But you’ll have a lot more fun if you put on a tiki shirt and capri pants and sip a mai-tai while you're doing it. Trust me.

2006-09-17T00:16:00.000-04:00

The winner for the drawing of the Black Dagger Brotherhood set will be announced Sunday night -- we have subscribers pending and I want everyone who signed up to have a chance to win this great prize! Check back to see if you're the lucky winner!

2006-09-16T10:45:00.000-04:00

J.R. Ward's LOVER AWAKENED is currently #12 on the New York Times bestseller list and #3 on the USA Today list. You can visit her website at: www.jrward.com

2006-09-16T02:45:00.000-04:00

Christina Dodd says LOVER AWAKENED by JR WARD has a real bite

I’m sitting here at my kitchen table with an unnamed friend and we’re arguing about the names in The Black Dagger Brotherhood. Unnamed says that Zsadist and Phury and Vishous, names that suggest real words (sadist, fury, and vicious) drag her out of an incredibly powerful story and are too literal. Unnamed says she prefers more subtlety. I say, “Honey, these guys are sadists, furious and vicious. It works for me!”

I love it when I’m right.

Because JR Ward has created the intricate world of Zsadist, a former blood slave, who loves a vampire aristocrat and will do anything to free her from the bad guys who have captured her. He can’t love her; his memories never release him from the old pain and humiliation … yet what must he do for a woman who’s faced the kind of torture and anguish only he can understand?

In the Black Dagger Brotherhood, the vampires are alpha heroes who search out their females and will do anything to protect them. The bad guys are lesser, soulless beings who lose everything, even the color of their hair, in their quest to serve evil. There’s a sense of cosmic planning — this is no small struggle, but the eternal brawl between good and evil. JR Ward has, from the very first book, has created a fully realized underworld of darkly erotic vampire and the lessers, and at the same time makes us deeply care about each vampire’s individual story.

I don’t want to give away any of the LOVER AWAKENED plot — the twists and turns of the story are so exciting I couldn’t the book down, and I want you to experience the same please.

So you know what? Unnamed and I are both right, because Unnamed and I both finished LOVER AWAKENED in record time. Whether you like the names or dislike the names doesn’t matter. What does matter is that the Black Dagger Brotherhood books grab you, grip you and shake you until you can’t think of anything else.

JR has promised to come in and discuss LOVER AWAKENED with us, and she’s donating autographed copies of each of the first three books to one lucky winner picked from our mailing list. So … if you have a comment or a question for JR Ward, now’s your chance. Talk to you, ask her question, and tell you how much you love her books — because heaven knows, I love them.

And so does Unnamed.

Liz Reveals How the Learning Channel Saved Her Life

2006-09-15T08:26:00.000-04:00

I was really sick last week. I mean REALLY sick. In fact, at some point last Thursday night, someone lifted me from my bed and moved me to Death’s doorstep. Then they rang Death’s doorbell and ran away. And OF COURSE Death was home and opened his door. And then Death looked down at me and said, “Whoa, Dude. You look like hell. C’mon in. I’ll pour us up a couple Hemlocks.” And I was SO sick, there was a part of me that actually thought doing hemlock shots with Death sounded like a good idea. Only one thing saved my life.

Yes. It was the Learning Channel.

Thankfully, before Death pulled me over the threshold, my husband and son came running up and said, “Sorry, Death, wrong address,” and parked me on the sofa in the family room instead. Then they put two liters of diet ginger ale and the phone on the coffee table, covered me with a blanket, and tuned the TV to the Learning Channel. Then they did the only decent thing they could do--they left for school.

The next 120 hours are a little hazy. I remember a lot of caulk and fake eyelashes, but I’m pretty sure they were on different shows. And I remember two people throwing a woman’s wardrobe into a trash can and telling her she needed to buy the right size bra, because if a woman’s in the wrong bra size, she looks like a triple rum pound cake with rum sauce. Oh, no, wait. That was on a different show, too. I think.

What I DO remember is hearing a lot of advice about how to make things better. What’s interesting is that I heard the same information from people who would probably never sit down at the same table for, um, anything. Supermodel Frederica told me the same thing about sun damage to my skin as did Miami tattoo artist Kat. And the folks on “A Baby Story” are as big on the little black dress as are Clinton and Stacy on “What Not to Wear.” (Though, admittedly, your maternity black dress won’t be quite as little as the one Clinton and Stacy might recommend.)

After five days with The Learning Channel, I learned a lot. If I wanted to flip my house this month, I could do it. If I wanted to be a cover girl, I could do it. If I wanted to host a cocktail party for twenty, I could do it. If I wanted to rebuild a ‘69 Dodge Charger, I could do it. If I wanted to become a late life mom...

Well, let’s not get carried away.

But the main thing I learned from the Learning Channel, is that EVERYthing can be fixed. Including, evidently, someone who’s at Death’s door. A door, I might add, that could really use a good caulking.

So what do YOU do to recover when you’re really, really sick? What are your favorite fix-it shows, be they home and garden or personal hygiene? If you could "fix" one thing about yourself or your life, what would it be? And what’s the best advice you ever got from The Learning Channel?

Liz on Small Towns

2006-09-14T08:01:00.000-04:00

I know, I know, when you think of Blaze, you don’t exactly think “Small towns.” Even so, my new Blaze, MY ONLY VICE takes place in a small (and quite fictional) Massachusetts town. In it, Sam Maguire, local police chief and former Boston vice cop, thinks local florist Rosie Bliss might be selling something besides flowers to the kids at the local college. So he figures he should probably take a closer look at her. And although Rosie is indeed selling something besides flowers to the kids at the local college, she doesn’t mind Sam’s closer look at all. In fact, the closer he looks, the more she likes it. Add to this a campus security head who’s more than a little Barney Fife, and sprinkle liberally with assorted colorful townsfolk, and, it goes without saying, zany antics ensue.

I love writing about small towns. Probably because I didn’t grow up in one myself. I love how, in small towns, the six degrees of separation are reduced to, at most, two. I love how everyone, regardless of their differences, can put those differences aside when the community is threatened. I love how everyone shares a common history, and they all seem to know that history really well. I love it that there are so many “characters” in small towns, because so many people in small towns are unmuddied by outside influences. I love how time seems to slow--and sometimes even move backward--the minute you enter a small town. And I love it that, where it seems like there should be no secrets in a small town, sometimes the secrets kept are HUGE.

I live in a small town now, but it’s not like the ones I write about. We don’t have a quaint town square bordered by quirky shops and cafes. In fact, we have only one retail establishment and one restaurant. Unless you count the lunch counter at the general store (yes, that’s the one retail establishment), in which case, I suppose we have two restaurants. Still, the bigger one floats on the river, which I guess is kind of quirky.

But there’s A LOT of new development going on out here, turning us into more of a bedroom community of Louisville than a small town. We have a stoplight now, and they’re building a second water tower. They’ve opened a second elementary school since we moved out here, and we have a high school now. They’re clearing fields for new developments, and they doubled the size of the firehouse. I can’t say they’re welcome changes, though, to be honest.

There are still several horse farms, however, which I can’t imagine going anywhere. And I can’t see the general store becoming a Circle K any time soon. The 300+ acres of woods behind our house are protected for the next 100+ years, so the wildlife will still have a home for a while. That’s all good to know.

Our plan when we moved out here was to stay for nine years, while our son attended the school we chose for him (K-8th grade), then we intended to move back to a more urban neighborhood, like the one we left, so he could attend the high school he’ll attend downtown. That move will come in about a year and a half. I think, by then, it will be time. I’ll miss the horses and the woods and the general store and the floating restaurant. But I won’t miss the backhoes and the dump trucks and the piles of dead trees. Small town living has been nice, while it lasted. But like so many things in life, it’s changed.

So how about you? What’s your idea of the ideal place to live? If money and career location were no object, where in the world would you live? What kind of home would you have? Why would you choose that sort of home?

2006-09-13T10:23:00.000-04:00

SUSAN ELIZABETH PHILLIPS IS BACK AGAIN!

Let me think… With Match Me If You Can now out in paperback, should I blog about the book’s hot steamy sex? (I’ve gotten more e-mail than I could ever have imagined about the so-called “balcony scene.”) Yes, I’m definitely going to blog about sex, including some other very kinky love scenes I’ve written over the years. No, wait…! I have an even BETTER idea. Let me blog about…grandmothers! Yes, that’s SO much more interesting than sex.

Okay, maybe not, but grandmothers are on my mind. First because I became one a year ago. And, second, because Annabelle Granger, Match Me’s heroine, had such a close relationship with her Nana, and I want to be exactly that same kind of grandmother. (Annabelle inherits Nana’s matchmaking business after the old girl dies.)

I didn’t have a close relationship with either of my grandmothers. My mother’s mother was born in 1864. No, that’s not a typo. She was very old when my mother was born, and my mother wasn’t exactly a spring chicken when I was born. My grandmother was a sweet lady, but I only remember that she smelled funny, loved candy, had a hump, and was really, really old. One nice memory is of her standing over her stove in the old farmhouse kitchen making me oatmeal. My other grandmother was okay, but not a real strong nurturer, let’s say. I don’t remember laughing with her or doing anything silly. One nice memory is having my head in her lap while she played with my ears.

I do lots of silly things with my year old grandson. We dance, dance, dance. I rub his feet (and his ears.) I make hysterically funny faces and obnoxious noises. And I started reading Goodnight Moon to him when he was one week old. In honor of Annabelle’s beloved grandmother, I call myself Nana, too. When he’s a grown man, I want him to have a ton of happy memories about me.

Which makes me wonder… What kind of relationship do/did you have with your grandmothers? And, as a new Nana, what do you think makes a terrific grandmother beyond lovin’ the pieces out of the grandchild?

2006-09-12T11:29:00.000-04:00

SUSAN ELIZABETH PHILLIPS PUTS ON HER SQUAWKIN' HAT!

I’m a frequent lurker and I’m thrilled to be here officially. Today, I’m thinking about blind dates…

First, however, let me announce that the paperback release of my New York Times bestseller MATCH ME IF YOU CAN is on the shelves. The book came out in hardback in August 2005 and is another of my Chicago Stars books. In MATCH ME, Annabelle Granger, a young woman with a checkered employment history, inherits her grandmother’s matchmaking business and takes on the client from hell, a super sports agent who expects her to find him the perfect wife. Unfortunately, his idea of perfect isn’t the same as hers. It’s a little like Bridget Jones meets Jerry McGuire.

Which brings me back to the subject of blind dates -- both fixing up friends and going on them yourself. Unlike my heroine Annabelle, I have a lousy track record as a matchmaker, probably because I’m not very selective. If my friends are both single and approximately the same age, that’s good enough for me.

I find it fascinating how many women have met their future husbands on a blind date. That’s how I met my husband Bill. I was a first year high school teacher and another staff member fixed us up. He was an engineering student at Ohio State. I still remember my first sight of him through the glass panes in my parents’ front door. Tall, medium brown hair falling over his forehead, jacket collar turned up, and a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. Yippee! A bad boy for Miss Goody Two Shoes! And it got better. He drove like a maniac. (My father almost had a heart attack when we pulled out of the driveway.) He came from a big, blue-collar, ethnic Catholic family. I came from a small, white-collar, very waspish protestant family. How could I help but fall in love?

That bad boy is now a loving grandpa who hasn’t smoked in at least 25 years and no longer drives like a maniac. (Well, not most of the time.) We’ve been married for thirty-five years, so I’m definitely a fan of blind dates.

What about you? Any horrific or wonderful ones? Are you a good matchmaker? Tell all!

2006-09-11T18:58:00.000-04:00

SQUAWK RADIO WELCOMES SUSAN ELIZABETH PHILLIPS!!!

Join us at Squawk Radio on Tuesday the 12th and Wednesday the 13th when New York Times bestseller Susan Elizabeth Phillips pops by the henhouse!

Susan has been topping nearly every bestseller list and every "Best of..." list since her very first novel was published. She was recently honored with the Romance Writers of America "Lifetime Achievement" Award.

I first fell head over heels in love with her work when I read FANCY PANTS lo those many years ago and I'm delighted to say that her most recent release MATCH ME IF YOU CAN (now out in paperback!) is every bit as wonderful. She sets a standard for excellence that every writer should aspire to. I literally do not read her books unless I'm on vacation because she's the only writer I know who can make me care more about the book I'm reading than the book I'm writing.

Please join us in extending a hearty Squawk welcome to the legendary SEP!

Lisa on "9/11"

2006-09-11T10:51:00.000-04:00

When a shocking event happens, it’s funny how the details of where you were and how you learned about it seem to stick with you. “More than we can bear,” was how Rudy Giuliani expressed the losses of so many people on 9/11, and the reverberations of that terrible day have not diminished. The pictures on TV . . . the personal recollections of those who lived through it . . . the families and friends who were left behind. . . the heroes who gave their lives, and the courageous workers at Ground Zero . . . all of it still has the power to bring us to tears. And that is only right, and normal. We will never forget.

My parents, my two children and I went on vacation the week before 9/11, and flew back home the night of the 10th. The next morning I woke up, turned on the news and saw the first tower burning. Immediately I called my husband Greg, who was in Vegas at a trade show, and as we were talking and watching TVs simultaneously, we both saw the second plane hit. Greg quickly hung up to try and get a rental car to drive home. No luck. He was stuck in Las Vegas for a week, which is hardly the worst place in the world to be stuck in, but all he wanted was to come home. It was a huge relief for all of us when he finally made it back.

My family knew one person who had a job at the World Trade Center--he was the son of an old family friend, and he worked for a financial firm. This ambitious young man got fired on the Friday before the 11th. He called his Dad right afterward, tearful and worried about his future, convinced that getting fired was the worst thing that had ever happened to him. It turned out that getting fired probably saved his life.

As we think about that day five years ago, and pray for those precious lost souls and those who loved them, and for the soldiers overseas, we know we must appreciate every day we have on this earth. I’m so grateful for the small, ordinary pleasures of life . . . the hugs from the children, the emails from friends . . . and all the countless things we often take for granted.

Where were you on 9/11? How did you find out, and what were your thoughts?

2006-09-10T18:43:00.000-04:00

GREAT HAPPENINGS AT SQUAWK!

In addition to the lovely and talented Susan Elizabeth Phillips blogging with us Tuesday and Wednesday, the also lovely and talented JR Ward, author of the hugely popular vampire series, The Black Dagger Brotherhood, will come for a visit Saturday during the book blog for her newest release, LOVER AWAKENED!

JR will be giving away autographed copies of the first three Black Dagger Brotherhood books to one lucky winner chosen from the Squawk Radio mailing list. So join now -- it's the sign-up on the left of your screen -- and beat the crowd!

Then join us in welcoming Susan Elizabeth Phillips and JR Ward to Squawk Radio!

2006-09-10T13:20:00.000-04:00

THE DAY THE MUSIC WAS OUT OF TUNE....

Our music maestro, our goddess of the lyric, sister of the sonata, mistress of the rolling beat -- Liz, in other words -- has been felled by a cold.

Undoubtedly she is muffled in blankets and listening to great music. Hopefully she'll be back to telling us about those thoughts next Sunday.

This is an exciting week: we have SUSAN ELIZABETH PHILLIPS as our guest squawker on Tuesday and Wednesday -- Hurrah!!!

Have a wonderful Sunday, Squawkers and Squawkettes!

2006-09-08T22:44:00.000-04:00

Connie reads The Last Kashmiri Rose

I devoured all of Dorothy Sayers’ Peter Whimsey mysteries and while Barbara Cleverly (and you have got to love the name!) isn’t Dorothy Sayers (who is?) she’s writing about the same era and her protagonist, Scotland Yard Detective Joe Sandilands, is of the same class. It’s about here that the paths diverge. Peter did his snooping in England, Joe Sandilands investigates crime occurring in India during the period of the Raj.

Cleverly does a fabulous job of sucking you into the often claustrophobic, class-conscious, and insular scoiety of the English expansionists. The world she brings to life describes two cultures living parallel to one another, as oddly interdependent as they are segregated. When they do intersect, it cannot help but result in tragedy.

I love the conceit of the book: the ragtime atmosphere transported to the exotic realms of the Raj, the English upper classes desperation to hold on to a way of life World War One saw obliterated, the heroism and/or knavery of the young soldiers. Oh, and the mystery is pretty good, too.

Joe Sandilands, about to be discharged and sent home to London, is given one last duty at an English army outpost: find out if there is anything more than coincidence in the string of deaths that have claimed the lives of five officers' wives over the course of a dozen years. Of course, there is—there wouldn’t have been a mystery otherwise, but in true Sayers fashion, the motives make the story.

Cleverly doesn’t cheat. She seeds the clues throughout the book and if her characterizations are a little broad, her story telling is crisp, fast-paced and toothsome in the best Sayers sense of the word. I can hear the English accents, the trill of laughter, feel the ennui of the jazz babies doing their best to recreate cool London nightlife in the stifling Indian heat and experience the ominous threat that stalks them.

The Last Kashmiri Rose is the first in what is currently a five books series. I’m heading to the store to pick up the next.

2006-09-08T15:37:00.000-04:00

My Imagination May Be Working Overtime but Speaking of Tom Cruise...

First, I gotta say I, too, suspect the timing of the Tom apology and Vanity Fair pics are strategic to buffing up Tom's image BUT let's look at the puzzle pieces:

1> Katie Holmes has a baby and goes missing for months.

2> Tom shows up at Brooke Shield's house weepy and remorseful over his public censure of her drug use for PPD.

3> The Walgreen's in Tom's neighborhood is seen delivering a truck load of anti-depressants to the Cruise back door. Later, reporters are told they are "for the maid."

Okay, I made up that last one but as a former sufferer of peri-partum depression (where I *couldn't* take drugs) I see the possibility for a cruel bit of irony here. I know my husband would have had me hooked up to an IV with a 24/7 drip going had it been possible. And actually, it would make me like old Tom better if I thought he had undergone a real change of heart due to empathy rather than act how he thinks the public wants him to in order to improve his box office draw.

What do YOU guys think?

2006-09-08T12:31:00.000-04:00

Christina Dodd and Nora Roberts Interview!

Nora Roberts and I were interviewed by CNN in Atlanta before my RWA speech, and the interview is posted on CNN.com. Check it out!

http://www.cnn.com/video/partners/clickability/index.html?url=/video/showbiz/2006/09/07/lapin.why.love.sells.cnn

2006-09-08T08:47:00.000-04:00

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

So Baby Suri has finally come out of the proverbial nursery closet. (And isn't she a beauty! Look at that mouth. I think she looks just like her mom! And speaking of mouths, has anyone seen the pout on Brangelina's baby? Oy!)

Despite all of their other oddities (like setting back the science of psychiatry 100 years), did anyone else think that Tom and Katie had a perfect right to keep their baby under wraps from the press? If I was a celebrity, I'd be so worried about kidnapping threats that I'd probably NEVER allow my kid to be photographed.

There has to be a compromise between making them walk around with a blanket over their head until they're 19 a la Michael Jackson with little Prince Michael and Paris Michael and poor little "Blanket" and plastering shots from their delivery all over the front of the National Enquirer.

So what do YOU think? Squawking Minds want to know!

2006-09-07T14:21:00.000-04:00

CARRIE FERON ANSWERS YOUR COMMENT QUESTIONS!

Back again! So enjoy spending time with all of you; keeps my mind off the fact that I am late in creating fabuloso titles for two mystery books. I also need to read about 10 submissions, talk to IT why our site was so late updating today, figure out how to get my expenses done, and go over some audio scripts that my wonderful assistant Tessa Woodward wrote all before meeting with an agent to discuss an author tour. Plus my daughter has to be picked up from the first day of school by 3:30 (no after school activities for the first two weeks of school -- how are single working moms supposed to survive?) So...the answer to the question how do I keep sane and organized is: I am not sane and I am totally disorganized despite being a Virgo. But I have a very charming daughter who is also very amusing, and a lovely boyfriend who shot a 69 in golf yesterday, and my authors are the best in the world. So life is good.

First the easy question. What would I buy? Probably a pair of really hot short boots. Or a new wallet because the one I have is just plain embarrassing. And then of course there is fellow editor May Chen's Black Tie Optional wedding later in the month. I have no "Optional" appropriate clothes.

The hard questions. What do we look for in manuscripts. We are looking for strong voices in our books, and I am always looking for a unique plot twist. It's so hard to surprise me since I have been reading romance books since 1969 (if you count the Children's Readers Digest version of JANE EYRE as a romance) or since 1972 (if you count THE FLAME AND THE FLOWER).

I loved the question about PG 13. Honestly, none of the Avon authors write PG 13 on every page; however, we are asking whatever you post on this site to be limited to PG 13 material. And if you really need to be more explicit, perhaps you should go the "Thistledown" route (see Eloisa James' blog on Avonfanlit.com today).

My editing style? It consists mainly of my gut reactions to items in the pages and a lot of really bad handwriting. Honestly, I just try to react to things the way a reader would. I think: would this confuse a reader? is there too much explanation? too little conflict? When I was young, my mother couldn't understand why I would read a book three or four times, but it turns out that all that rereading was just practice for what I do now.

Thanks for all your great feedback today. Looking forward to visiting again soon!

2006-09-06T16:06:00.000-04:00

IT'S BACK TO SCHOOL FOR AVON EDITORIAL DIRECTOR CARRIE FERON!

There's a definite turning point in the year, and for me it's the day the kids return to school. If you are a New Yorker like me, today may be that fateful day. I'm sending my 10-year-old off to Fifth Grade, and watching her wearing her glossy black loafers, brand new white knee socks, crisp uniform and ink free backpack that weighs more than she does makes me long for the slow days of July and August! Am I ready to oversee homework that includes protractors, compasses and graph paper?

This summer has been a great one -- especially for our authors. As you all have heard from the Squawkers about the RWA conference in Atlanta in July, I won't drone on about it, but it was fantastic. Those of you who subscribe to the Avon Newsletter are about to get a treat -- candid photos of the conference taken by yours truly. Okay, so I'm not the best photographer, but who wouldn't want to see Teresa Medeiros looking glamorous, Jacquie D'Alessandro in her Princess Dress, and several other signings including one at the famous Margaret Mitchell House? I did delete the one of Eloisa and me at the bar, I mean library. The only item I bought in Atlanta (no, not Ocelot spotted shoes) was a small mug from the Margaret Mitchell House which had a picture of the great authoress herself with the quote "I find in a moment of weakness I have written a book."

So...is it a weak moment for any of you? Would you like to try your hand at creating a scene? The time: Springtime, London, 1815. The setting: The Duchess of Alderman's annual ball. To be uninvited means you should go off to the country and rusticate forever...

Where can you add to this scene? Over at

http://www.avonfanlit.com/ Of course, you don't have to actually write if you're not so inclined. You can participate by voting on the best entries or just discussing on the message boards. But most of all this gives you another opportunity to connect with fellow romance fans and authors. Plus we are giving out some great prizes including: a shopping spree at Saks (Zebra striped shoes perhaps?), an opportunity to meet with the Avon Editorial Staff, and even a chance for a development deal at Fox.

It's going to be fabulous -- I can't wait to see where the story goes this fall! Maybe there is a reason to look forward to the cooler weather!

If you have any questions about the editorial life in general or the Avon FanLit contest, just wave your hand in the air and teacher (a.k.a. Carrie) will call on you!

2006-09-06T12:34:00.000-04:00

SQUAWK RADIO WELCOMES AVON BOOKS EDITORIAL DIRECTOR AND VICE-PRESIDENT CARRIE FERON!

Carrie Feron will be with us tomorrow September 7th to chat and share a few details about Avon's exciting new FanLit contest. Whether you're an aspiring writer or a devoted reader, FanLit (www.avonfanlit.com) has a job for you and some fabulous prizes! (Think of it as romance's version of AMERICAN IDOL.)

Carrie spent her teen years reading romance and now she edits it. She's known for her success in publishing women's fiction, including bestsellers Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Teresa Medeiros, Christina Dodd, Elizabeth Lowell, Kathleen Woodiwiss, Laura Lippman, Meg Cabot, Dorothea Benton Frank, Kathleen Tessaro and Oprah Book Club author Pearl Cleage. She's been at Avon for 12 years, where she has seen the Avon Romance program become the country's foremost publisher of romantic fiction.

Please join us in welcoming Carrie back to Squawk Radio!

2006-09-06T08:01:00.000-04:00

Teresa Gives You A ROMANCE WRITER'S GUIDE TO A HAPPY MARRIAGE

I know what you're expecting. A lot of suggestions that contain the words "moon", "june" and "croon" along with instructions for sprinkling fresh rose petals on your sheets and taking long walks on a moonlit beach. But having been married 22 years now (Yes, I live in Kentucky. I COULD have married when I was 12 just like I COULD have written my first book when I was 5.), I'd like to give you some more practical advice. Whether you've been married 3 years, 33 years, or have just spotted the guy you think you'd like to marry sitting in front of you in your freshman English class, I hope you can put these tips to good use.

1) Lower your expectations and accept responsibility for your own happiness. This may very well be the key to happiness in ALL things in your life. How many times have we wailed, "He/My Job/My cat just doesn't make me happy!" Well, guess what? It's not anyone else's responsibility to make you happy. You're not perfect and neither is he. But if you can learn to embrace his flaws and teach him to find yours endearing ("She snores like a freight train. Isn't that adorable?"), then happiness will be within your grasp.

2) When you first get married, try to put a 100 miles and at least one river between you and both of your families. This isn't always possible but if it is, it will give you a chance to establish your identity as a couple and a "family" without well-meaning interference from either set of in-laws. It also helps you learn to depend on each other instead of running home to mom and dad whenever you have an emotional or physical need to fulfill.

3) Practice the 3 C's--caring, commitment, compromise. Without these 3 qualities, it's difficult to have any sort of successful relationship. My husband and I learned a lesson about commitment the very first year of our marriage. (You'll never have worse or stupider fights than your first year of marriage! We once threw our Precious Moments wedding cake topper into the garbage can to "symbolize the destruction of our marriage".) We were having one of those utterly ridiculous fights when one of us tossed out the dreaded "D" word. It scared us both so badly that we vowed to never again speak of divorce, no matter how bitter the disagreement. If you know you're committed to working through every problem that arises, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. (Of course there are special dispensations for infidelity, abuse or other transgressions of trust.)

4) Never stop dating. Ah, this is where the rose petals and moonlit walks on the beach come in! I know it can be hectic if you're both working and there are small children and not a lot of money, but a simple Friday night movie or dinner date (even if it's 5 for $5 night at Arby's!) can help to remind you of why you fell in love in the first place. There's nothing more painful than two people with empty nest syndrome who suddenly realize they've become strangers over the past 20 years.

5) Make your kids the spokes of your marriage, not the hub. If you think of your marriage as a giant wheel, picture you and your husband at the center of the wheel with the kids revolving around you. There's no greater gift you can give your children than two parents who love and respect each other.

6) Never stop laughing either with each other...or at each other. This is why it's so important to marry a man with a sense of humor. Marriage can be great fun, especially when you're married to your best friend. I still giggle when I remember how my husband forgot to reverse the blade on his beard trimmer and accidentally shaved off half of his eyebrow. (It wasn't the mishap that was so funny, but his reaction--"Don't look at me! I'm hideous!" You'd have thought he was the Elephant Man!)

7) Ask for help when you need it. This is a tough one for men. It's usually a lot harder for them to commit to seeing a counselor without coercion or threats. (Don't be ashamed to use either!) The common mantra is "it takes two to improve a relationship" but the truth is that we each have tremendous personal power to effect change so don't be afraid to seek help for yourself if he goes all caveman on you.

8) Be aware that you can still get "crushes" after you get married. There should be a red flag next to this tip. The trick is to recognize the difference between "infatuation" and "abiding love". My heart still lights up every time my husband walks into a room but it's very easy to believe that once the initial "sparkle" of your first attraction deepens to a glimmer that you've "fallen out of love" or "grown apart", which can make you prey to the attentions of that cute guy in your office. If this were true, we'd all have to change mates every 6 months just to keep the adolescent thrill alive. If you find yourself experiencing a "crush" that seems irresistible, then be ruthless about removing yourself from the situation, even if that means changing jobs. I can promise you that 6 months down the road (about the time you'd start noticing your crush's back hair and his annoying tendency of talking through his nose), you'll be glad you did!

9) Never take each other for granted. One of the fundamental tenets of cognitive therapy is that "feeling follows action", also known as "fake it 'til you make it". My husband never goes off to work without a little note tucked in his lunch that says, "I love you" or "You're my hero" or "You're my forever love." Not a day goes by that he doesn't send me an e-mail that simply says, "I love you" or "I missed you". Sometimes we tend to treat strangers with more kindness and courtesy than we treat those who share our homes and our lives.

10) And along those same lines, Recognize and cultivate romance in the small things. I'll never forget an Ann Landers letter I once read. A woman was writing to tell Ann her husband was never "overly affectionate". He didn't reach out for spontaneous hugs or hold her hand in public or say "I love you" with any regularity. But he made sure her car had regular tune-ups and every single week without fail, he brought her a bag of her favorite candy. It wasn't until after 35 years of marriage and his death that she realized that every time he handed her that bag of candy, he was saying, "I love you." I thought of this at the Star Trek convention a couple of weeks ago when I was sitting in a cold, drafty convention hall and my husband showed up with two things--my sweater and a bag of dark chocolate M&M's. I just smiled up at him and said, "I love you, too."

So how about you? Can you share your wisdom with us? What is the best (and the worst!) relationship advice you ever got?

2006-09-05T00:57:00.000-04:00

LET’S TALK ABOUT SEX – PART DEUX

I’m back. And as promised, here’s more about sex!

People also say to me, “Toni, why are women reading so much erotic stuff these days?” And I say, “Because Sex and the City showed them they could!” That’s oversimplifying, of course, but in a nutshell, our society is changing, for the better, I think. Yeah, sure, the downside is that we have 12-year-olds taking their fashion and life cues from Britney Spears and that’s scary – but we also have a bunch of women who not only recognize that they want to read about sex, but they’re doing it – reading about it! And maybe having better sex because of it! Erotic lines are popping up like dandelions in Spring, which is super cool for writers like me, and super freeing, I bet, for all these female readers!

Another question people ask frequently these days, because my book is launching the Avon Red line, is “Toni, when did you give up writing romance for erotica?” At first, I said, “Huh?” but then I realized Avon is marketing the line as “erotica.” So, for the record, for anyone who’s wondering, my Avon Red books are tee-totally romance, just very sexy ones. If you’ve read my past books, SWEPT AWAY has pretty much the same level of sensuality and erotic content.

So, you’re now asking, what is the Red line all about then? Is it romance? Is it erotica? Well, I can’t exactly tell you it’s “erotic romance” or “erotica” because you might define these terms differently than I do or than Avon does – one downside to the erotic trend in novels is that all the terms are getting redefined on a daily basis and no one knows exactly what they mean except in their own mind. But, that said, I can tell you that Red is publishing a pretty wide spectrum of steamy books. My own books are super-sexy and, by my personal definition, erotic, but I keep a close focus on the romance. Some Red titles, I’m told, lean more toward erotica, more toward Ellora’s Cave type books – which can be romantic yet also highly graphic in terms of situations, language, etc. I personally like that Avon Red is open to different kinds of erotic books because that will, hopefully, mean it’s an imprint that won’t become too homogenized and narrow in focus. In fact, I’m betting if you’re a reader looking to “dabble” in erotic offerings that the Red line would give you a good sampling of what’s out there right now.

I’d love to hear comments from people who have been reading some of the erotic books on the market these days. What do you like about them? Is there anything you don’t like about the offerings? How do YOU define erotic? And here’s a question that I, as an author in this sub-genre, really want feedback on – Are you getting bored with it yet? Are there too many erotic books out there? Do you think the trend will come and go? Or are you chomping at the bit for more and think you’ll always enjoy steamy reads? (I’m hoping for the latter, of course, ‘cause a girl’s gotta make a living ; ) )

Many thanks to the Squawk ladies for so kindly inviting me to blog. Nothing I like quite so much as talking about sex – unless, of course, you’re a smarmy man who thinks it means I’m digging you, ‘cause – newsflash – I’m not ; )

Visit Toni's website at http://www.toniblake.com!

2006-09-04T23:19:00.000-04:00

LET’S TALK ABOUT SEX, BABY

When my dear friend, Elizabeth Bevarly, invited me to be a guest blogger here in Squawkland, I was, needless to say, honored. But then I had to think of a blogworthy topic. So I’m goin’ with sex ; ) Sex sells, you know – especially right now. It’s all the rage in the romance market. And people generally like sex. I know I do, and I bet you do, too : )

If current trends in the romance market are any indication, women are loving sex these days, which is cool, because it happens to be a pretty big element in all of my novels. In fact, my latest, SWEPT AWAY, is the first single title novel launching the steamy new Avon Red line, like, right now, today (and at a bookstore near you!)

People say to me, “Toni – what’s a nice girl like you doing writing about sex all the time?” I grew up in the Bible belt, people, and I still live there, so sometimes it’s an issue. Sometimes old ladies scowl at me. Sometimes smarmy men look at me as if writing about sex equals wanting to have it – with them. Can I hear a chorus of “Eeee-ewwwwe”s?

But here’s why I write about sex. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t write about it because I think it’s frivolous and giggle-worthy. I write about sex because I think it is trés important in a relationship and trés important to who we are as women. And I think a whole lot of the female identity is somehow tied up in how society has treated women and sex.

When it comes right down to it, women’s sexual history in the United States can be summed up like this: You’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t ; ) When I was growing up, you were supposed to be a nice girl. Now you’re supposed to be a sex kitten. Or that’s what I gather when I watch the E! channel anyway. Thing is, I kinda don’t think most of us are either/or. I think we can all be nice girls and sex kittens and about a gazillion other things in between. Thus, in my books, I really strive to create heroines who personify this – women who are embracing their sexuality but also have a heck of a lot more going for them than just that.

Okay, I’ve gone all feminism on you, haven’t I? I really didn’t mean to – honest. Later his afternoon, in Part 2 of my blog, we’ll get back to the sex. Not the feminist part of it – just the good, hot stuff ; ) For now, though, feel free to share your thoughts on what you’ve read so far. Do you believe sexy romance novels can qualify as feminist literature? Or do you think I’m deluding myself? Or maybe you think I’m just getting way too serious because you read romance purely for the fun of it? Let me know – I want to hear what you’ve got to say.

Liz Welcomes Toni Blake to Squawk Radio!

2006-09-04T21:56:00.000-04:00

I met Toni Blake through Ohio Valley Romance Writers, the Cincinnati Chapter of RWA. It was :::mufflemuffle:: years ago. Like, lots of years ago. Like I think we were in fourth grade or something when we met. The first thing I noticed was that Toni has really great hair. Then I noticed she has really great clothes. Then I noticed she totally gets the whole accessorizing thing. At some point, I also discovered she's a really talented wordsmith and a truly wonderful friend. Since that first meeting in Ohio, she's become my regular breakfast buddy at every RWA National conference and my favorite writer every time she has a book out. (She's also got this fabulous pair of boots I covet most shamelessly.)

Anyway, that's the unofficial bio. Here's the official one:

Toni Blake knew she wanted to be a writer from the age of ten, when she announced it to her mother over the breakfast table, then promptly proceeded to write her first novel, nineteen notebook pages long. Toni continued writing as she grew up, but it wasn’t until much later that she seriously pursued her dream. After having over forty short stories and articles published in literary and writing publications, Toni discovered romance novels in 1995 and knew immediately that this was what she was supposed to write. Since then, Toni has sold books to Kensington, Harlequin, Warner Books, NAL, and is currently writing for Avon. She has also been a recipient of the Kentucky Women Writers Fellowship and was a nominee for the prestigious Pushcart Prize for literary fiction. Toni lives in Kentucky with her husband and enjoys traveling, genealogy, various crafts, and, of course, reading.

See? I TOLD you she's talented. So be sure and stop by Squawk Radio tomorrow (or later today for those of you on the other side of the International Date Line--you know who you are) for a visit with Toni Blake!

ELOISA'S HAPPY LABOR DAY!

2006-09-04T12:03:00.000-04:00

It's Labor Day. You know what that means? That means we're supposed to celebrate the fact that we're workers. That we LABOR. Because we do! In honor of Labor Day, I decided to make up a list of all the things that I labor at around the house. Then I made up a list of all the things that my husband labors at in the same place. I figured I would use the list to start a conversation about labor -- and how the household was not my favorite laboring venue.

It turns out that I'm not doing 90% of the work! In fact, it's looking like 50/50. Seriously. DH is triumphant. I'm in shock.

So I made up a list of all the other things I labor at. I'll give you the short version: I'm Director of Graduate Studies at my university, I start teaching Shakespeare and Popular Culture tomorrow to a load of undergraduates, I write romances, I write articles and as of this week, I'm a song writer (back from Nashville, where my song was recorded--more on that at a later date--it was WONDERFUL!).

Oh.

Forgot one thing.

I'm a mother.

Wait!

Forgot another.

I'm a wife.

Is it my imagination, or are American women laboring harder than we ever had before? To be fair, I remember my mother doing work around the house that I would never dream of--say when the pipes froze and she would actually bring in water from the well. To me, that's pretty much like taking over Buffy's job.

So what do you all think? Are American women working harder than we ever have? How many jobs do you have?

Or are we just complainers, and if we time-travelled back to the 18th century we would be lying around utterly exhausted?

2006-09-03T11:27:00.000-04:00

THE SQUAWKERS (Elizabeth Bevarly, Lisa Kleypas, Connie Brockway, Eloisa James, Teresa Medeiros and Christina Dodd) ARE OFF LOLLING ON A BEACH SOMEWHERE, SWIMMING AND WATERSKIING! TO ALL OUR FAITHFUL READERS - HAVE A WONDERFUL HOLIDAY!

(Connie, give me that d*#mned camera!)

Christina at work, Go eat some corn on the conb, Christina!

2006-09-03T11:24:00.000-04:00

Before she leaves, Teresa realizes she needs a tan!

A photo of Connie sitting on her can.

Elizabeth applies suntan lotion to her bodacious legs!

As always, Lisa is the best dressed Squawker on the beach!

Even at the beach, Eloisa mingles graciously with her fans.

Guest bloggers Toni Blake, author of SWEPT AWAY (September 5), and Carrie Feron, Avon Books executive editor (September 7), drop by for some fun and sun!

The Squawkers pose for a group photo.

Xtina is suitably punished for sharing untouched photos on the blog.

Lisa on "The Thorn Birds"

2006-09-02T06:56:00.000-04:00

Dear Friends,

This is the question that separates the women from the girls--who among us remembers watching The Thorn Birds miniseries the first time it aired?

1983. I was only twelve years old . . . okay, eighteen years old . . . and it was the heyday of the television miniseries. The big, melodramatic, splashy, deliciously over the top spectacle, the EVENT that no one wanted to miss. And The Thorn Birds, starring Richard Chamberlain and Rachel Ward, was the mother of all miniseries. Very few book to film transitions have ever preserved the spirit of the original work so well, but I think this lavish production, even with the big eighties hair and big eighties TV acting, nailed the essence of a love story that infuriates, arouses, fascinates, and ultimately breaks your heart.

The book that engendered this series was published in 1978. It is a sprawling, visceral Australian saga by Colleen McCullough, who shows her characters no mercy as she reveals every aching detail of their humanness. Five decades of the Cleary family are portrayed as they work, suffer, survive, die, rut, fight and above all, love. But the engine and driving force of “The Thorn Birds” is a remarkable affair between Meggie Cleary and Father Ralph de Briccassart, the ambitious and handsome priest who loves her.

Although Meggie believes for a while that she is competing against God Himself for Ralph, she eventually comes to realize her romantic rival is Ralph’s ruthless ambition. Across the span of years they steal days, hours, moments with each other, compelled by helpless sexual need and star-crossed love. As they try to forget each other, Meggie marries Luke O’Neill, a stockman, while Ralph goes to Rome and becomes a Cardinal. But nothing can stop their affair from resuming, resulting in a shocking chain of events that leads to a powerful ending.

As a reader, I can’t help wondering, would Meggie and Ralph find happiness if they ended up together? It’s difficult to imagine this pair snuggling in domestic tranquility, enjoying the ordinary moments of life, any more than one can imagine Cathy and Heathcliff doing the same. These characters exist to yearn for something they know they can never have . . . and it is this intense desire, seemingly never to be fulfilled, that is the DNA of romance. Here are McCullough’s famous last lines of The Thorn Birds :

“The bird with the thorn in its breast, it follows an immutable law; it is driven by it knows not what to impale itself, and die singing. At the very instant the thorn enters there is no awareness in it of the dying to come; it simply sings and sings until there is not the life left to utter another note. But we, when we put the thorns in our breasts, we know. We understand. And still we do it. Still we do it.”

Colleen McCullough wrote well-known and wonderful novels before and after The Thorn Birds, but this will probably remain her definitive work. It is a book to be read in privacy, the words bleeding across the page as if they came not from the author’s head but from an open vein. In my opinion, McCullough never came close to writing anything so primal again . . . and she didn’t have to. The Thorn Birds, her blazing achievement, was more than enough.

Have you read The Thorn Birds or watched the miniseries? Loved or hated it? Has there been some other star-crossed love story that touched your heart even more?

2006-09-01T10:07:00.000-04:00

CONNIE REVIEWS “LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE”—no spoilers

2006-09-01T09:40:00.000-04:00

Ever been to a movie you unequivocally enjoyed and yet were a little wary of recommending it to acquaintances? Maybe this reticence comes from my experiences with moves like “The Royal Tannenbaums” or “Two Days in the Valley” where after I said, “Wow! I loved this movie! You gotta see it!” the people I referred it to were sending me cancelled movie ticket stubs along with requests for reimbursements.

So it is with “Little Miss Sunshine,” one of my favorite movies of this year. It’s got everything working for it that I like in a movie: an ensemble; a cast built around a plot rather than a story manufactured for a star; a quirky, serio-comic set of characters; perfectly detailed and seriously flawed group interactions; clean, real dialogue; and a heart as big as all outdoors.

The plot revolves around the bitterly dysfunctional Hoover family, nominally headed by Richard (the utterly perfect Greg Kinnear) a failed motivational speaker aggressively trying to force his Steps to Success down everyone’s throat, including his family— all of whom have their own quirks and faults. Toni Collette is perfect as Richard’s wife Sheryl who has been struggling to bring home the bacon while Richard pursues his dream and is consequently now barely speaking to Richard. Alan Arkin plays Richard’s father, living with them since he was kicked out of his retirement community for his heroin habit. Also in the house are Sheryl’s teenage son (Paul Dano) from a previous marriage, a kid so deep in the throes of teen angst he’s taken a vow of silence to escape his family (and believe me, teenagers or not, you’d want to, too!), and Sheryl’s brother, played by the extraordinary Steve Carrel, a gay Proust scholar on suicide watch after a failed romance with a grad student.

The only thing the Hoover family can agree on is that the youngest of the family, pudgy six year old Olive, and the only member of the family who has yet to acquire any serious baggage (despite the best efforts of her father in a cringe-inducing scene in a breakfast joint.) By a fluke, Olive, who is obsessed with beauty pageants, has been called in as a last minute replacement in the Little Miss Sunshine contest (“something to do with diet pills.) In a family that regularly watches dreams shrivel and die, all the members come together to make sure that little Olive’s doesn’t.

The Hoovers don’t have a sou, they can’t get along, they are all dealing with extreme disappointments –mostly of their own manufacturing, their transport is an antique VW bus, and they’re running late but by God, they are determined Olive is going to get her shot. What emerges is a story about a family who, despite their pre-occupation with “winning,” are at their core human and humane, with a sweetness and commitment to one another that is a joy. The ending, I have to say, made half the audience I saw this with cheer.

So, yeah, okay. Go see it. But don’t send me your ticket stubs if you don’t like it!

2006-08-30T23:30:00.001-04:00

CHRISTINA DODD unCOVERS THE VERY BEST OF THE WORST

The advantage of having the most famous cover mistake in history (CASTLES IN THE AIR, the heroine has three arms, and if you want to know how this happened, read my article at http://www.christinadodd.com/castles.php ) is that when another author gets socked with a bad cover, everyone — booksellers, authors, readers — rushes to tell me about it. Now I’m not talking about bad covers from publishing companies who are working on a shoestring budget. I’m talking about covers that come from multi-billion dollar corporations with professional art departments operating with huge budgets … who just happen to blow it once in awhile.

For instance, here’s my friend Heather MacAllister’s alien baby cover.

And her one-legged heroine cover.

And her, “I’ve got fat legs, silly boots, and a skirt that barely covers the essentials,” Spanish cover.
Heather’s been gifted with more than her share of really horrific covers.

But my friend Susan Mallery, who used to write as Susan Macias, has had a few whoppers, too, notably FIRE IN THE DARK, her western historical with the naked rubber man in the water with, if you look closely, a floating orange penis. Or a trout that got really intimate, but in that case, why is he smiling?

I was with Susan when she got the cover in the mail … I’ll never forget her outburst of maniacal laughter. It was sort of scary.

When I worked at the bookstore, I stopped cold when I saw a hero who looked like Mr. Rogers. And no disrespect to Mr. Rogers, I thought he was great, but I never wanted to be a really close neighbor, if you know what I mean.

But the cover I’ve been saving as the piece de resistance is a book by Maggie Price.

Take a look at this. Check out the expression on his face. Then note the title …

BWAHAHAHAHA!!!

So obviously collecting cover mistakes has become my hobby. Have you heard of any more? Let me know, and I'll post as many as the ones I can! (I guess the gorgeous Italian cover that spelled my name wrong seems minor now, huh?)

Heather MacAllister sent me this one:

Check out the position of his body and her legs and ... that cover is mind-blowing!
AHAHAHAHAHA!
Okay, I'm going to hell for that pun.

Thanks to suec for calling my attention to this cover:

Lucky? You have to be kidding!

And I have the newest Susan Mallery cover:

Which one is the girl???

A cover from Maureen Child:

She says, "LOVE the awful covers on the blog today!! Thought I'd throw my 'hat' so to speak into the ring.........this one--the poor heroine will be waiting to be a mom forever. He has no lower body.................."

Hey lookie here, Liz--Teresa popping in here with your DONOVAN'S CHANCE cover! (Thank goodness I have the entire Elizabeth Bevarly collection--all 80 gazillion books!) And I have to say that I think you just have a dirty mind because the thing coming out of that guy's pants looks much more like an extra from SNAKES ON A PLANE. It definitely has eyes and it's about to nip the heroine's hand! Click on the pic for a closer view (if you dare!)

Liz on Family Memorabilia

2006-08-30T08:28:00.000-04:00

I was over at my mom’s last night, and she gave me something she’d come across while going through some old stuff she’d found. It was a recipe for buttermilk biscuits, something that is fairly commonplace in my family. But this one, she knew, would interest me, not just because it was written down by my great-grandmother, who died when I was fairly young, but because of the final ingredient: “Lard (size duck egg).” Even better, on the other side of the card, because the original recipe was for 42 biscuits (as was needed for a family of 19), my grandmother pared it down to 18 biscuits, and her final ingredient is: “Lard size of walnut.”

I’ve officially designated this card, with both my grandmother’s and great-grandmother’s handwriting and whimsical instructions, A Bevarly Family Heirloom, and it has gone into the Heirloom Box. Mine is a family of few heirlooms (obviously), mostly what Flannery O’Connor called “good country people” on both sides until my parents’ generation. (And yes, with a bit of a surreal, dark side, just like in the short story of that title.) I have a few pieces of inexpensive jewelry that belonged to my grandmother and her mother, some blueprints from machinery that my grandfather designed between the two World Wars, a WWII ration book with a few pages of coupons left, an old arithmetic book, and lots of photographs. Save the jewelry, it’s all ephemera, which, come to think of it, is fitting for a writer.

I don’t know how I became the Keeper of the Family Heirlooms, but what few we claim have all seemed to find their way to me. Even my father-in-law’s WWII journal is in our keeping, though my f-i-l is still very much alive. But I love having all these bits of everyday life from previous generations. They were commonplace (even throwaway, some of them) items to my ancestors, but they tell me so much about those people. They tell me even more about where I come from myself.

I just hope I leave something behind for my descendants that’s as enchanting as a recipe quoting duck eggs. Yes, I’ve written books, but I’d like for my son’s children’s children’s children to have something a bit more personal. So maybe I should tuck something of myself into the Heirloom Box before it’s too late. But what?

Wait, I have it. The perfect piece of ephemera to remember me by. It’s a drawing of me as a chicken, sporting a lovely purple muff...

So has anyone else stumbled onto any old family treasures lately? What’s your favorite piece of family history to pass down to the next generation? What piece of your own everyday life do you think would say the most about you to your descendants?

COUNTRY ELOISA SAYS 'HI DARLINGS!'

2006-08-29T07:25:00.000-04:00

Things have got pretty crazy since that day a few weeks ago when I posted a plea for help with writing a country music song. For people who may have missed that blog, I'm on my way to Nashville this Thursday to meet a country music producer and spend the weekend developing a country song, written by moi. Then next month I'm going to New Hampshire for a weekend at a bed&breakfast to learn about starting a B&B.

Both weekends are courtesy of More Magazine, which asked me to write an article on starting a second career (being as I am just the person to take on another career *g*).

At any rate, back last Spring when I happily agreed, I thought it would be easy and fun to write a country song. Ha. Can we say hubris here? Months later, I posted a plea on Squawk for help writing a song that had just one line "You say I'm desperate and I think you may be right."

Well, a few weeks ago, the picture changed again! More emailed and said that the Today Show was interested in coming along with me and watching MY song be produced. Not only that...the Today Show is going to roadtrip right along with me to New Hampshire as well!

Since then, things are escalating in an alarming way. I'm putting up pictures here of a Nashville establishment that airs new music, especially new songs... the idea now is that if THE SONG (as if it being referred to in emails) is ready to go on Friday night, it is going to be performed live in the Bluebird Cafe! Not only that, but we have a genuine singer coming to the studio for two days to develop the song and do the singing! (They did ask me if I wanted to sing at the Bluebird....I couldn't even manage a squawk of laughter at that notion.)

So: can we count the ways to get nervous here? I do finally have a song. My first shot at it (the line quoted above) was pretty cerebral. I thought about what a country song should have in it -- pick-up trucks, love, desperation and a twang -- and I tried to write one with those things in it. My second attempt used everything I've learned from writing romance. If you don't write about something that is absolutely real and true to you -- the book (or the song) fails. I have a friend whose ovarian cancer just recurred. I woke up in the middle of the night, thinking about her. We were in Venice, and water was lapping all around me, and I started imagining saying goodbye to my children and my husband.

Yes, I am going to Nashville with a total sentimental tearjerker of a song, written in the bathroom in a Venetian hotel so I didn't wake anyone up (can we get farther away from the blue hills of Kentucky?). Here's one of my verses -- if you want to read the rest, I posted it on the BB on my website. I hasten to say that my friends on the BB have given me lots of suggestions, so I'm rewriting today and adding things like a hook and a bridge:

By next summer's sweet days,
I'll be a photo in a frame.
A memory in the night,
No more than a name.
Will they remember how I loved them?
Will you tell them for me?

It has been forcefully suggested to me that I didn't write a country song -- it's more of a folk song, or possibly just a poem (there's nothing like the Squawkers to tell it like it is!). Well, the good news is that I'm not going to Nashville with just one failed country/folk/nothing song.

The wonderful writers on my BB wrote a song together -- so I'm taking that! Plus, some incredibly talented women wrote their own songs, and I'm taking those as well! First thing on Thursday, the song producer (who is responsible for one of Reba McIntyre's number one hits!) is going to choose one of those songs for production over the weekend. I think it would be wonderful if it were the group song! So, for your musical pleasure -- TA -DA! THE GROUP SONG (various lines written by Eloisa, Terrio, Beth, Rose, Janga, PJ, Ms. Meow, NH, and Diana, with help from other friendly voices):

DESPERATE

You say I'm desperate and I think you may be right
But regrets or not, I'm going home with him tonight
I'm so sick and tired of being all alone
Crying to my girlfriends for hours on the phone.
Call me reckless, but when there's nothing left to lose, a woman will take chances to outrun the blues.

Chorus
All I've ever wanted is a man of my own...
To wine and dine and dance with,
Reach out to every morning
Day by day build a home

He came to me this evening, like lightning on the bay
With a smile like the sunrise of a brand new day
You say I'm desperate and I think you may be right
But regrets or not, I'm going home with him tonight

Chorus
All I've ever wanted is a man of my own...
To wine and dine and dance with,
Reach out to every morning
Day by day build a home

I feel like a sinner
I need to fall on my knees, fall down now and pray
But not tonight, cause tonight I'm gonna play
Though I am a gambler Lady Luck has never loved
Something in his sunrise eyes
Says tonight I may have luck I’m gonna play
And just hope come morning, he's here to stay

BRIDGE

Morning comes…mmm I reach across the bed
All these thoughts runnin' through my head
Will he look as good in morning's light
As he did last night in my bar hazed sight?!?
My sheets will be rumpled and I won't know his name.
My hand’ll touch his cold pillow and I’ll know it turned out the same.
You say I'm desperate and I think you may be right
But… For tonight I'll tell my conscience to go home.
For tonight I'll forget my fear of love and try it
For tonight, I'll stop crying all alone
Tonight I'll find a cowboy of my own.
You say I'm desperate and I think you may be right
But regrets or not, I'm going home with him tonight

Chorus
All I've ever wanted is a man of my own...
To wine and dine and dance with,
Reach out to every morning
Day by day build a home

You say I'm desperate and I think you may be right
But regrets or not, I'm going home with him tonight

It's a wonderful song! To be honest, I'm totally freaked by the idea of a Today Show crew following me around Nashville, and then around New Hampshire -- and then there's going to be a live segment on the show itself in January or February! But I would be even sicker to the stomach about my lack of song-writing credentials...except I don't have to be. I don't know how to say this as strongly as I feel it: my life is so much richer for the community of friends who have grown around Squawk and around my BB: friends who have come together and given me a song so that I don't have to go to Nashville with nothing more than a weepy little poem masquerading as a song.

The older I get the more I realize that life would be incredibly difficult without my girlfriends -- whether they're friends through the internet, or my university, or my writing life.

Let's have a celebration of girlfriends! When's a time that your particular posse saved your life -- did a group intervention to keep you away from the wrong guy, or wrote you a song to go on TV with, or....

2006-08-28T00:39:00.000-04:00

Christina Dodd asks WHO WOULD YOU SLEEP WITH?

My college-age daughter was just home for a visit before school started. We were listening to my iPod, to the soundtrack from RETURN TO ME. It includes a lot of really romantic songs, most of them sung by Dean Martin — if you’re not familiar with him, the man had a warm, relaxed style. Plus one of our favorite movies is BELLS ARE RINGING starring Dean Martin, and in his youth, he was one fine man — tall, dark, handsome, with a wonderful brooding face and charm oozing from every pore. The combination of good looks and that warm (did I mention warm?) easy voice made me confess, “I would have slept with him.”

To which my daughter said, “Yeah, but I would have to say I’d prefer Paul Newman. Not just any Paul Newman, though. Paul Newman at the exact moment when he made THE LONG HOT SUMMER, when he was on-screen with those fabulous blue eyes and his boxer shorts with his perfectly sculpted chest and those thighs …” She sort of went into a coma at that point.

Until I pointed out my mother, her grandmother, always said that Paul Newman could put his shoes under her bed anytime. And quite frankly, he could cook his spaghetti sauce in my kitchen anytime.

Yes! Yes! I know. I’m happily married. Not only that, but Dean Martin is dead and Paul Newman is seventy-nine and has been married for almost sixty years.

But these affairs aren’t real affairs. They’re the imaginary, guilt-free, “a hot guy transcends generations and reality” affairs. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about, because you know you do.

Johnny Depp, anyone? Jake Gyllenhaal? Johnny Depp? Sean Connery? Johnny Depp? Colin Firth? Russell Crowe (in Gladiator)? Johnny Depp? Gerard Butler? Johnny Depp? Pierce Brosnan? Johnny Depp? Harrison Ford (in Indiana Jones) (or Star Wars)?

Johnny Depp?

If you could have an imaginary, guilt-free, “a hot guy transcends generations and reality” affairs — who would you sleep with?

Only one per customer, pls.

Liz Gets to the Root of American Music

2006-08-27T10:36:00.000-04:00

I know Bruce Springsteen is someone everyone here has heard about, and I figure a lot of people already have this CD, and I had actually planned to blog on a different CD today, but, well, I listened to this in the car this week and was totally blown away and just HAD to blog on it immediately.

When I first saw “We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions” in stores, I had two immediate thoughts. First, “Why the hell is Bruce Springsteen covering Bob Seeger songs?” and two, “I don’t remember Bob Seeger recording ‘We Shall Overcome.’” Yes, I am, at times, that stupid. Of course, I quickly realized it’s not BOB SEger (with one e) he’s covering on this album, it’s PETE SEEger (with two es). But even though I grew up in the 60s, I was never all that familiar with Pete’s music. (My Dad, as big a music lover as he was, was a staunch conservative, so never would have allowed “protest music” into our home.)

Nevertheless, SO MUCH of the music on this CD is familiar to me, because my mom, having grown up in rural western Kentucky, sang a lot of them to me when I was a kid. Both “Buffalo Gals” and “Froggie Went ‘a Courtin’” are lullabies, as far as I’m concerned. Others, like “Erie Canal” and “Old Dan Tucker” were also staples in elementary school music class. (I was delighted a few years ago when my son’s class performed “Old Dan Tucker” in a school music program.) In fact, it was my mom’s sister, my Aunt Bonnie, easily the most musically gifted member of our family (perhaps the ONLY musically gifted member of our family) who sent the CD to me, telling me she hoped I liked hearing the music of their childhood.

Oh, I do. I really, really do.

But even hearing these old, wonderful songs again wasn’t what blew me away. What blew me away was the way Bruce surrounded himself by musicians who are masters of American music. All kinds of American music. There’s a definite bent toward pure, New Orleans jazz, but there’s also bluegrass and gospel and folk. And what’s really cool is that, hearing this album all in one sitting, you see how many similarities all these styles share, and how they all influenced each other. You also hear remnants of the music brought to this country via immigration so many years ago, which also influenced these styles. “Mrs. McGrath” is an old Irish folk song I’d never heard before (and Irish folk was such a huge influence on Bluegrass), and it actually made me burst into tears while I was driving, so sad are the lyrics and so hauntingly does Springsteen sing it. There are other places in other songs where the violins and accordians sound eastern European or Russian. It’s just an incredible conucopia of music that is a feast for the ears. And Springsteen's craggy voice gives it an even greater earthiness than it already has, and makes more authentic what has always been a common people's music.

As Springsteen states in the liner notes, the CD was recorded live, on three separate days, in a barn on his farm. The group didn’t rehearse together beforehand, so the album is, very much, just a bunch of great musicians getting together to create great music. When you listen to the CD, you feel like you’ve traveled a hundred years or so back in time, from the city to the country, to a dusty old barn where a band of wandering musicians is setting up to perform in exchange for their supper. So pull up a chair and enjoy. There will be dancing, too.

Saturday Book Blog with Liz

2006-08-26T09:13:00.000-04:00

I’ve been pretty stressed out this week. I sent off two new proposals recently, which means I’m out of contract on both types of books I write. In other words, I’m officially without a job until I have another offer, and there’s no guarantee anyone will hire me, particularly at the wage I need to support my family. That makes me a tad edgy.

I’m also working on revisions for another book, which is kind of like tearing down a room you spent months building and decorating in a way you thought would be gorgeous, but you’ve suddenly discovered the foundation isn’t sound, and the colors don’t match, so now you have to go make repairs on something you thought was done. That makes me a little frustrated.

Clearly, it’s time to light the lavender-scented candles, brew a cup of Tension-Tamer tea, and break out THE TAO OF POOH.

I discovered this book in college through a professor’s recommendation and still have my original copy. The pages are yellowed and warped, there’s a big water stain on the title page and a coffee ring on the back cover. Clearly, I’ve read it A LOT. It’s a sweet, wonderful little book that can be read in an evening, and it never fails to ease my worries, at least for a little while.

It’s hard to reduce Taoism to brief enough terms for this blog, but as described in my DICTIONARY OF PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION (yes, I have one), the Taoist “conquers by quietism, letting go, standing in harmony with nature.” The philosophy encourages people to live in and work with the world as it IS, without trying to change it. To go with the flow. To be happy simply by virtue of waking up every morning and drawing breath.

To author Benjamin Hoff, nowhere is this philosophy better illustrated than it is in A. A. Milne’s much loved Bear of Little Brain. As the back cover of THE TAO OF POOH states: “While Eeyore frets, and Piglet hesitates, and Rabbit calculates, and Owl pontificates, Pooh just IS.” Through a fictional dialogue between himself and Pooh Bear (with other characters from the Hundred Acre Wood wandering into the conversation here and there to further make his point), Hoff shows us that Pooh is happy because he goes through life without questioning or having expectations or trying to effect change to suit his needs. He finds contentment through the simple experiences that surround him everyday, is happy just to be in the Hundred Acre Woods with his loved ones.

It should be obvious that that's what makes a life complete, but sometimes I forget that. Writers aren’t usually viewed as workaholic control freaks, but I’d wager that the vast majority of us are exactly that. The need to control, I think, is part of what drives us to write. We can’t change our reality and the people around us, so hey, we’ll just create a world and people we CAN make do what we want. That’s all well and good for writing books. But when it comes to real life, we need some reminders that we can’t be responsible for everything, we can’t change the world to suit our needs, and we have to make the best of what our real world is.

THE TAO OF POOH is my reminder that my world, with all its faults and inconveniences, has much to love, and that there are experiences all around me that can bring contentment to my troubled mind. Listening to the wind in the trees. Feeling the thrum of a cat’s purr as I rub her under her chin. Snuggling with my husband and son on the couch. Hearing Dizzy Gillespie play “A Night in Tunisia.” Sipping a cup of Tension Tamer tea surrounded by the scent of lavender candles. It's my reminder that, even if I never write another word that pays a bill, I’ll still be surrounded by the most important things in life.

So who else has read THE TAO OF POOH and wants to weigh in? Do you have a book you turn to in times of turmoil that you know will make you feel better? What kinds of things do you do when you fear you’re nearing the end of your rope?

2006-08-25T07:14:00.000-04:00

IT'S KITTEN DAY AT ELOISA'S HOUSE!

My seven-year-old daughter has been promised a kitten for the entire summer -- said kitten to arrive once we returned from Italy. So...yesterday was our first day back. We all woke up at 4 am with jet-lag -- but jet-lag did not stop the enquiries about the kitten. No, sir!

So the family bundled into the car, practically at the crack of dawn, and went out kitten trawling.

Here's our first catch of the day.

Her name is Rosie. She's unbearably sweet and cuddly. She purrs all the time and loves to wrap her paws around your hand and give you a bath.

And here's Charlie! You know how it is...one thing lead to another, and Charlie was reaching his little paws through the cage at the Humane Shelter, begging to be taken home.

Charlie has been a revelation to me. He purrs All The Time. All the time! He's utterly boneless and apparently lives to be loved. I never knew cats came with so few neuroses (all my previous cats have been models of various psychological ailments, though very dear). He doesn't seem to care much for playing, or leaping at imaginary mice, or baring his claws at my furniture.

We had planned to raise our kitten to be a deathless warrior, leaping from tree to tree and attacking the neighboring bird and mouse population. After all, my previous cats loved being outdoors. But this morning we had a family meeting and decided that perhaps these two kittens should just be indoor felines. The problem is Charlie. None of us have any hesitation saying that if a car came up to Charlie, Charlie would run to meet it...purring. Ditto for a big dog or a fox.

Charlie loves the world, and that tiger gene seems to have gone missing with him. Rosie spent a respectable two hours under the bed before crawling out and deciding to explore her room. Then she curled up on the end of my daughter's bed to sleep...waking her owner up at 6 am by switching her tail on her nose. In other words, respectable cat behavior. Charlie slept on his back, one leg in the air, spawled in the middle of a bright pink carpet. No curling up, no hiding, no attempt to look like an intelligent feline.

I know I'm not alone in falling in love with a small animal the moment it entered your house (or bounded into your hands). But the animals I've loved before have all been respectable examples of their breed -- whereas Charlie is definitely a mutant gene. Anyone else have a cat, dog or other animal who defies the breed?

2006-08-24T06:24:00.000-04:00

TERESA SINGS, "VULCANS AND FERENGI AND KLINGONS, OH MY!!!"

Last Wednesday 15,000 STAR TREK fans and one lone romance writer beamed down to Las Vegas to celebrate the 40th anniversary of STAR TREK in all of its incarnations.

The Las Vegas Hilton was the perfect host hotel because it also contains Quark's Bar and the $100 million dollar STAR TREK Experience museum and rides.

These two little lovelies are Tasha Yar and Lt. Data. Their owners had matching uniforms. (I say "uniforms" because when I went up and complimented a particularly ferocious looking Klingon on his "costume", he glared at me and barked, "Uniform!" I slunk away, thankful to be alive.)

You can always find a hot date (with a Gorn) at Quark's Bar in the STAR TREK Experience at the Hilton! The STAR TREK museum and Borg 4-D ride there are absolutely amazing. I rode with a young man in full Starfleet uniform. When the Borg descended on us, he pulled out his phaser and started firing right along with the actors. I felt much safer with him there although I'm sure the actors were thinking, "What the $#@!" I screamed like a maniac when the Borg Queen sent her 3-D probe after me at the exact moment something poked the back of my seat. Then the bottom of your seat starts to goose you, making you wonder exactly where you're going to get probed!

I finally found a way to get my husband to smile in a photo! Pose him with the still breathtakingly gorgeous BarBara Luna, who played captain's woman Marlena Moreau in the classic STAR TREK episode "Mirror, Mirror." Barbara was one of the warmest and most gracious stars there. We visited her table every day and she never once made us feel as if we were stalking her. (Although of course, we were.)

Here I am posing with a charming Andorian couple. (I'm the one in the middle.) The hardest adjustment in leaving the hotel and heading for home was that I didn't see a single Klingon or other alien at the airport!

FAVORITE NON-TREK RELATED MOMENT came during Armin Shimerman's Q and A session. (If you don't remember Armin as Quark on STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE, you may remember him as Principal Snyder on BUFFY.) When he was asked what it was like to guest star on CHARMED recently, he paused for an awkward moment, then said, "Well, let's just say that they hired those three actresses to play witches for a reason." I had the pleasure of meeting Armin outside the hotel after his talk and he was absolutely delightful. (Probably because I told him he did the impossible by making a Ferengi sexy!)

FAVORITE TREK RELATED MOMENT

When Grace Lee Whitney who played Captain Kirk's lovely young yeoman Janice Rand told me I looked enough like her to have played Janice Rand. (Yes, being Captain Kirk's yeoman is my lifelong dream!) Kim Darby was also there and had some wonderful anecdotes about working with John Wayne in TRUE GRIT.

The Klingon woman is one of the actors from the STAR TREK Experience but these other two terrific guys are Sisko and Picard replicas. Aren't they gorgeous in costume...um...I mean, in uniform?

FAVORITE ROMANTIC MOMENT

Snuggling with hubby while the legendary fountains at the Bellagio erupted to the theme from SOMEWHERE IN TIME, one of "our songs". I've never been to Vegas before and it was NOTHING like I expected. Hotel/Casinos like the Bellagio, the Venetian, the Luxor, Paris, the Excalibur and New York, New York are on such an immense scale that I just walked around with my mouth hanging open most of the time, thinking, "Gee, Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas any more!"

Here I am being assimilated by the Borg. Reistance is indeed futile!

My pride and joy! Finally William Shatner discovers someone he can't upstage in a photo op! (And no, this isn't a wax figure and yes, he was sitting down and I was standing up.)

The coolest thing about this being the 40th anniversary was that there were stars from every STAR TREK show, including a rare appearance by Scott Bakula from ENTERPRISE. Some of the highlights were: Brent Spiner (Data) and Jonathan Frakes (Riker) verbally sparring on stage; the gorgeous Connor Trinnear (Trip from ENTERPRISE) in a really great gray t-shirt trading barbs with Dominic Keating; Robert Picardo (the Doctor) and Ethan Phillips (Neelix) doing a reading of HOUSE CALLS, a one-hour play that takes place after VOYAGER'S return to earth. Garrett Wang and Tim Russ (also from VOYAGER) were simply hilarious together and it was a special thrill for me to see Michael Dorn (Worf). (When I thanked him for being there as I was getting his autograph, he looked up at me and purred, "It's my pleasure" in that incredible deep voice and I nearly swooned!) All of the captains from the shows were there except for THE NEXT GENERATION's Patrick Stewart and any time you can get Shatner and Nimoy on the stage together, it's pure magic.

MY TWO MOST CHOKED UP MOMENTS

When Majel Barrett Roddenberry, Gene Roddenberry's widow and the "first lady of STAR TREK" (she played Nurse Chapel in the original series, Lwaxana Troi in THE NEXT GENERATION and the voice of the computer in all of the series and movies) rolled by in her wheelchair and everyone in the audience spontaneously rose to their feet and began to clap.

Watching a young African-American couple in original series uniforms gazing up at a spectacular new print of all 5 STAR TREK captains. I looked up at that picture with them and I saw Captain Kirk, Picard, Jonathan Archer AND African-American Commander Benjamin Sisko from DEEP SPACE NINE along with STAR TREK's very first female captain, Kathryn Janeway from VOYAGER. I realized in that moment that the message Gene Roddenberry first set out to deliver in 1966 is just as relevant today as it was forty years ago--There is still hope for a bright future and there can be a place for all of us in it.

So if YOU could attend a convention and meet the stars of any TV show or movie, past or present, which one would it be???

2006-08-23T18:31:00.000-04:00

HERE IT COMES AGAIN!

Ya know, I'm getting tired of dragging out this champagne bottle every week but those pesky Squawkers just won't quit hogging up all the slots on the New York Times bestseller list. So Congrats to:

Lisa Kleypas who will spend her FOURTH week in the top 15 of the NYT list at #11 with SCANDAL IN SPRING!!!

and

Christina Dodd who will spend her THIRD WEEK on the NYT list at #19 with TROUBLE IN HIGH HEELS!!!

Is it just me or is anyone else getting sleepy? Zzzzzzzzzzz........

Lisa on "Things We Need To Know"

2006-08-23T05:48:00.000-04:00

Dear Friends,

Of all the books I want to buy at the moment, the one at the top of my list is Nora Ephron’s “I Feel Bad About My Neck.” Everything Nora Ephron writes is worth reading and makes me feel better about myself and life in general. In fact, now that I think about it, there must be some cosmic literary resonance attached to the name Nora, conferring both excellence and financial success on all writing Noras. (Note to self : give serious consideration to changing pen name to “Nora Kleypas”)

The wonderful first chapter of “I Feel Bad About My Neck” includes Nora’s advice on “What I Wish I’d Known.” Here are some of her words of wisdom :

--Buy, don’t rent.

--Anything you think is wrong with your body at age thirty-five you will be nostalgic for at the age of forty-five.

--You can order more than one dessert.

--If the shoe doesn’t fit in the shoe store, it’s never going to fit.

I have been so inspired by Nora’s words of wisdom, that I have to share some of my own hard-won advice :

--There is no point in making cookies from scratch when the pre-made refrigerated dough is so good.

--Those too-small jeans in the closet are just taking up precious space. If you do lose enough weight to get back in them, you deserve to buy a new pair.

--Drink coffee without guilt.

--Make school lunches the night before.

--Hug often.

--Never say “I told you so”--it never helps and usually only antagonizes someone.

--Invest in as many pairs of great black pants as you can afford.

Since I’ve learned so much from you over the past year, dear friends, I would love to hear any advice of yours on the topic of “What I Wish I’d Known”. What are your small but significant truths about life?

CONNIE VS MOTHRA!!!!!!!!!

2006-08-22T08:53:00.000-04:00

This weekend we visited friends. We headed south which, from Minnesota, is pretty much anywhere else in the contiguous United States, and once again it was borne in on me why I don't live "south." Because Mothra and it's Mothra-spawn live "south."

Now, I'm not generally a coward. I've fed bats by hand at the Wildlife Rehab Center; casually relocated snakes from one area of the yard to another; barely blinked when a mouse ran over my foot (alas, sometimes in the house) and while I'm not going out of my way to pal around with spiders, I generally have a "live-and-let-live" attitude. But when it comes to beetles or centipedes or ANYTHING with a crunchy exo-skeleton and soft, liquidy interior that chitters and skiddles and brrrrrr! I'm phobic. Hate 'em. Will go a hundred feet out of my way to avoid them. And yet, there I was Sunday night on a dimly lit porch in Missouri face to face with this ....thing called a Cicada. Ever seen one of these?

Gawd! They are roughly the size of a transport flier, louder than a tornado siren and they attack! I kid you not. They leap at you and take flight, skittering and buzzing and ew!

I have no trouble admitting to you all that I screamed. Loudly. Until my husband, knight in shining armor that he is, came onto the porch, scratched his head, bent down and picked the ***er up! I kid you not.

Civilized woman by day; blood-thirsty enemy of all things with a carapice by night, I started chanting, "kill it, kill it, kill it" but no, he picked it up and threw it over the rail into the grass so that it could live to terrify another day. But not me. The next morning we hightailed it back to Minnesota where the winters might be a tad long but they don't harbor the sleeping forms of mothras...

So this leads me to wonder...got any phobias you want to share? Anything set your skin crawling or jump-start your breathing into over-drive?

2006-08-21T07:01:00.000-04:00

TOP TEN WAYS TO TELL TERESA IS A GEEK

1) Her china cabinet is filled with STAR TREK plates instead of china

2) She can admit she's a William Shatner fan without blushing

3) In the original version of her novel A WHISPER OF ROSES, Morgan MacDonnell was a Klingon

4) She thinks Sean Astin as Samwise Gamgees is a plump little hobbit love muffin

5) One of the Christmas trees in her house is decorated ONLY with talking Star Trek ornaments

6) Instead of seeking therapy for her problems, she lies on the couch and pretends she's talking to Counselor Deanna Troi

7) If she had her very own holodeck, she would spend all of her time re-enacting her favorite romance novels and never come out

8) Her cat is named "Buffy the Mouse Slayer"

9) She owns all 3 seasons of LAND OF THE LOST on DVD and once had imaginary friends named Will and Holly

10) She can't respond to your Comments today because she's flying back from the STAR TREK 40th Anniversary Convention in Las Vegas!

So do we have any other self-professed geeks out there? Are you a closet geek or do your friends suspect your secret identity? And what first converted you to geekdom? Was it STAR TREK? STAR WARS? BUFFY? Or that sexy THING on the cartoon version of THE FANTASTIC FOUR?

Liz Offers a Miracle of Music

2006-08-20T10:52:00.000-04:00

Marshall Crenshaw appeared on the music scene in the early 80s during a rockabilly revival that was all too brief. He was so associated with that movement, in fact, that he was even tapped to play Buddy Holly in the movie “La Bamba.” A lot of people consider him a one-hit wonder for his song “Someday, Some Way,” which is certainly a catchy little ditty, but a stream of albums since his first one have illustrated a range of talent that goes way beyond catchy little ditties. My favorite of his, however, is this CD, “Miracle of Science.”

There’s just such a nice maturation of his talent on this CD, both musically and lyrically, possibly because he took a five-year break between it and the album before it. There’s still an enormous pop influence, but it’s more soulful, and much of the guitar totally rocks. There are touches of country in songs like “Who Stole that Train off the Track?” and hints of the blues in the ironically titled “Laughter.” And there’s the cool, 60s guitar-sounding “Theme from Flare Gun,” which could have been performed by the Ventures. Another visit to the 60s comes in his even cooler cover of “The In Crowd.”

Thematically, too, there’s a movement away from lighthearted romance to the deeper emotions of relationships and how they feel to people who have been through them. There are songs of unfulfilled expectations, dashed hopes, even heartbreak. That’s not to say the CD is a downer. On the contrary. There are happy numbers, too, in songs like “A Wondrous Place” and, yes, a couple of catchy little ditties, like “What Do You Dream of?” And it’s all capped off by “There and Back Again,” a song about reminiscence with which anyone past the age of young love can identify, and which leaves the listener with a wistful smile (and more than a few happy memories).

I like Marshall Crenshaw, too, because he’s one of those artists who keeps doing this because he loves it, and because it’s what he’s good at. Since that first CD, and that one hit, he’s never been at the top of the charts, and nobody much talks about him. But he keeps putting out quality work, and he keeps touring, and he keeps writing songs, because that’s what he DOES. It’s something a lot of us in the book writing business can also relate to. You do it because you love it, and you hope someone else will, too. Me, I love it.

Thanks, Marshall.

2006-08-19T10:30:00.000-04:00

This blog is going up late -- because I couldn't finish the book. That is...I could have finished The Eight any time in the last week, but I kept slowing down and making myself savor it.

To be blunt, there are many romantic suspense novels that sound wonderful but that I can't read. I really don't like blood. I don't like to think that there is a weirdo crouched in the bushes outside my house thinking that I am his mother or his lover or a witch and planning to do nasty things with a knife. Basically, I don't care for men who choose to spend their lives killing women, and I don't want to spend time between the pages of a book with them, any more than I would choose to do so in my normal life.

But that doesn't mean I don't love thrillers. They just have to be the right kind, the kind that are Not TOO Real. Too real, for me, is some weirdo hiding outside the 7-11. Not too real, for me, is a thrilling novel that involves huge leaps in scientific or technological knowledge. In which the good guys are fighting to prevent the end of the world or unfathomably large consequences along those lines.

You guys already know that James Rollins writes this kind of book. Some people say that Dan Brown does as well, but frankly, The Da Vinci Code was just too full of strange coincidences for me. Then a friend steered me to this book.

Katherine Neville's The Eight has (according to the cover) been a best-seller in every country in the world and listed in Spain as one of the ten best books ever written, so I guess I came to the party late. But really -- this is an amazing book. It weaves a bit of science, a bit of math, a bit of chess, a wholloping amount of suspense, some gorgeous descriptions of places ranging from New York to Algeria to 18th century France. There's a love story in there too -- between a brilliant chess genius and the heroine.

I can hardly describe it, but it involves a worldwide search for a chess set whose inscriptions hide a secret of such tremendous power that its formula, once deciphered, would literally change what it means to be human. The world would change almost as an afterthought.

The book is absolutely fantastic! If you're a fan of fun, literate, not overly intellectual but definitely smart, thrillers -- go get The Eight. You'll love it. The one comment that I am compelled to make is that it was Katherine Neville's first book. Consequently she put in a bit too much of "Little did I know that as I drove up the whatever..." I can forgive her that because her plot is so intricate, her prose so beautiful, and her ideas so scary. The whole book reminded me of a Mary Stewart novel -- (I am absolutely certain that Neville must be a fan!) -- but it's a Stewart novel grown to four times its length.

If you happen to be a Stewart fan, as I am, run to the store! Any one know of other thrillers along these lines that I should read? Because (sob), I just finished The Eight..

Eloisa

Lisa says "Fare Thee Well, Metro."

2006-08-18T08:34:00.000-04:00

Dear Friends,

Last week Greg took me to see Talladega Nights : The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby. Like everyone else in the audience, I laughed until I nearly caused myself physical harm. I adore Will Ferrell, and--argue with me if you will--I think there is something sexy about him. He looks like he would be fun. No matter what character he plays, even when he’s villainous, sneering or egomaniacal, there is a bedrock of sweetness and regular-guy manliness beneath the posturing.

Among the many moments of standout silly fun in Talladega is a scene in which Ricky Bobby thinks he’s on fire after a racetrack crash, and he careens wildly across the screen, back and forth, in his underwear. Part of the comic hilarity of the scene is the fact that Will Ferrell has an ordinary man’s body. He’s not fat--in fact he’s very nicely proportioned IMHO. However, we have all become accustomed to the ultra-groomed, excessively toned physique of movie actors such as Brad Pitt, who doesn’t have a six pack but a twelve pack, so “normal” is almost startling. And funny.

Unlike Brad and other touted movie studs, Will is not waxed, plucked, shaved, moisturized, gym-honed, pumped-up, fake-baked and highlighted. He’s got a big, slightly hairy, real guy body.

Nice.

And I’m not the only one who thinks so. Apparently filmakers, critics and many others have been surprised by women’s positive reactions to Will Ferrell’s real-guy physique. My speculation is that women are tired of the metrosexual. We’re tired of men who have more cosmetics and lotions and hair products in the bathroom than we do. I think women harbor a suspicion that a metrosexual might spend more time in bed admiring himself than his partner . . . and if he’s that conscious of his own grooming, he’ll certainly be hyper-aware of ours.

Will wouldn’t care if your legs were shaved. Will would do whatever you wanted, and make you laugh in the process. Will knows how to play, and how to be a man. Picture Brad in “Troy”, and picture Will as Ricky Bobby, and be honest . . . which one would be more concerned about your needs than his own? I mean, even Superman had to go off with his spit curl and his blue tights and “find himself” for five years while Lois worked as a single parent.

So tell me your thoughts . . . do you prefer Metro or Manly? What do you think of as real manliness? And just how many beauty products should a man be allowed to keep in the bathroom cabinet?

2006-08-17T00:41:00.000-04:00

CHRISTINA’S FIRST AUTOGRAPHING

When a writer gets that wonderful call and finds out her first book is going to be published, one thought springs to the forefront of her mind — how can I use my talent to improve the world for all mankind?

AHAHAHAHAHA!

Sorry, that’s absolutely absurd. Or at least it was in my case. I thought — what if no one comes to my first autographing?

But then, I’m shallow. To me, an autographing seemed like the ultimate high school popularity contest, and please note — people who were popular in high school are too well-adjusted to be writers. (The lone exception to this is author Susan Kay Law, who was an honest-to-Pete perky, blonde cheerleader, but I don’t hold it against her in any way. Really. Not at all. The skinny little blonde snot.)

Of course, even then I knew equating autographing success with popularity was nonsense. I worked part time in an independent bookstore for about five years before I was published, and saw some of the biggest authors in the business come to the store to autograph. Most of the time, we had a great turnout, but sometimes, for no apparent reason, none of our customers would show. Autographings are a random, odd experience for everyone — but, gee, I didn’t want to be random and odd. I had been that in high school. I wanted to be huge. I wanted to be successful. I wanted everyone to know I’d published my first book, CANDLE IN THE WINDOW! So I did the right thing — I begged my boss at the bookstore to give me my first autographing.

Ninety books sold! Seventy people — the people who had been my customers! Flowers! A cake frosted like my cover!
I probably forgot thirty names while I was signing, and learned an author always asks every person how to spell her name (Gan — who knew her name was Georgeann?) It was wonderful!!!!

Since then I have driven three hours across Texas with Barbara Dawson Smith to speak to a readers’ group at a bookstore only to discover the readers’ group was a figment of the bookstore owner’s imagination and the bookstore only sold used books, and we couldn’t even sell a single used copy. I have signed at Wal-mart when it was a hundred and fourteen degrees outside and the only thing any customer wanted was to tell me her kid barfed back by mens’ underwear. Since my first book was published, it’s been fifteen years and thirty books, and I’ve never had as good a booksigning — or a moment as gratifying and as empowering — as the moment I experienced at Carol’s Book Corner in Houston in 1991. That autographing is one of the coolest, most gratifying moments of my life.

So what moments do you remember that marked a turning point in your life? Your graduation? Your wedding? The moment you squeezed that kid out of your loins and held her/him for the first time? Or that private, special moment that no one else has experienced but proved to be a turning point in your life?.

CONNIE DISCUSSES RITUALS--BUT NO SACRIFICES

2006-08-16T11:58:00.000-04:00

I have begun my next book. Again. Actually, for the fourth time. But this time it’s going to stick. How do I know? Because once more I caved in to superstition and performed the Begin the Book Ritual and it's always worked before. And no, contrary to popular belief this does not involve my throwing my thighs on the altar of Hershey’s kisses by eating a 2 lb bag in one sitting as has been Someone's unkind suggestion. My ritual is much more arcane and a good deal less flavorful.

First, I clean my altar, er, desk. I gather together all the heaps of paper that have accrued on since my last Begin the Book Ritual with the intention of going through them and dealing with each and every one. Soon enough this gets boring so I settle for stacking them in piles sorted by weight and size.(An aside: I’ve noticed that almost all invoices are printed on flimsy paper while dental cleaning reminders come on high grade linen. Dentists! What a racket!) Then I move the piles to the floor in an unused corner of the office--which is not always easy to find-- where they’ll sit for a few months until one of the dogs starts shredding them and at which point I will file them all away in a file labeled “FILE THESE!” I have lots of like labeled files.

Next, I take all the trinkets, photos, tschatskes and doodads off my desk and spray everything with some pathogen in an aerosol can. Then I smear this around with a piece of David’s tee shirt which well may have been a whole tee-shirt a few minutes previously to this but which now has given up the ghost in the service of Connie’s Ritual. There are worse causes.

After the smearing, I carefully dust each little trinket from my desk, sometimes humming a little ditty as I go, sometimes crooning fondly as I recall the circumstances by which they came into my possession. Mostly I wonder why I have so much crap on my desk.

As soon as the desk is clean, the real work begins. I don my high-priestess robe which may, to the uneducated eye, bear a startlingly resemblance to a cheap acetate robe from Chinatown. And then, the piece de resistance: my Incan thinking cap which, to the uneducated eye, bears a startling resemblance to a felt chicken hat. That's it; I'm ready to contact My Muse.

They say a picture’s worth a thousand words...so here you go. Connie on the cusp on inspiration.

It worked, too! I am well on my way to chapter three and feeling confident. And when I do start to waver? Well, there’s always the Incan thinking cap...

How about you? Are there any rituals you perform before you start a project? Are you a spring cleaner? A fool for holidays? Do you do something special the day you send your kids back to school? (I still cleave fondly to my bottle of wine under the pergola—”even though my kid’s in college. I tell the neighborhood moms I’m doing it for them!)

2006-08-15T13:57:00.000-04:00

TERESA ASKS, "WHERE DO YOU LIKE TO DO IT?"

I know Russell Crowe is supposed to be a voracious reader but I'm not sure if the pic to the left is intended to promote reading or be a cautionary warning against smoking in bed.

I will say that it did get me thinking about where I like to read (Yes, Connie--among other things). Unlike some of you, I'm not coordinated enough to read in the bathtub. If I tried, I'm afraid the only result would be a very wrinkled me and a swollen, sodden mass of wood pulp that used to be a book.

In the summer I love to curl up on this divine divan in our sun room. I've coveted a divan ever since I was a little girl and I saw an illustration in LITTLE WOMEN of Jo March reclining on her attic divan on a rainy day, eating a juicy red apple and reading a novel. (Unfortunately I'm more likely to be stuffing my piehole with a bag of dark chocolate M&M's.) It's so relaxing to be reading with a gentle breeze drifting through the windows or the rain pattering down on the metal roof. Of course the real challenge is resisting the temptation to lay the book aside and snuggle down for an afternoon nap!

In the winter I nest in this oversized chair in the corner of our living room away from the TV. It was the wall-to-wall bookshelves that sold me on this house and there's something terribly comforting about glancing up and seeing all of those other books glowing softly in the light--some already well-read and loved, others just waiting to be discovered. And the best thing about this chair-and-a-half is that there's exactly enough room for me and at least half a cat!

When I was a child, my dad used to cook a big breakfast for us every Saturday morning. And my official job while he cooked was...to stay in bed and read! I still remember how cozy it felt to be tucked into bed reading HALF-MAGIC or THE PRINCESS BRIDE while the sound of my daddy's whistling and the succulent aroma of bacon wafted up the stairs.

There are some books you always remember because of WHERE you read them. (Hospital waiting room, anyone?) I first read THE HOBBIT on a sunny Saturday afternoon while sitting cross-legged at the very top of a fire tower at Pennyrile State Park with the forest stretched out below me as far as the eye could see. (I could almost see the Eagles come swooping over the horizon to save the battle and the day!) I read ROOTS when I was 13 during a long car trip to Disney World. And I finished Stephen King and Peter Straub's THE TALISMAN on the way home from a vacation in Massachusetts with Phil Collins singing, "Take Me Home" as the perfect accompaniment to the final moments of both the trip and the book.

So when and where do you like to read the most? Do you read in bed before you go to sleep? Do you sneak a peek at work? Do you like to read outdoors? Do you curl up in a favorite chair? And do you tend to associate certain books with the moments and places in your life when you first read them?

2006-08-14T09:26:00.000-04:00

What Liz Didn't Do on Her Summer Vacation

My son goes back to school a week from today. My husband’s classes at the preschool officially begin a week from tomorrow. That means we have ONE WEEK--this week--to do all the things we haven’t yet done on our summer vacation that we’d planned to do. So let’s see now. Let me check the list. What’s left?

1. Visit my brother and his family in Florida. (All of us.)

2. Clean out the basement and garage. (All of us.)

3. Paint the deck and front porch. (All of us.)

4. Go to King’s Island. (All of us.)

5. Camp out in the backyard. (Hubby and son.)

6. Plant an herb garden. (Son and me.)

7. Take cooking classes. (Son and me.)

8. Read all six Harry Potter books. (Me.)

9. Lose another fifteen pounds. (Me.)

10. Paint and artfully stencil kitchen cabinets. (Me.)

11. Write sweeping, 800-page family saga unlike anything written before. (Me.)

12. Write dazzling movie screenplay that will make Orlando Bloom show up at my front door weeping with gratitude for its creation, and begging me to not just sell it to him, but for twice the usual rate for a first-time screenplay writer, and insisting I star alongside him. (Me.)

Okay, so maybe I was a tad optimistic in my summer planning. It wasn’t like I didn’t get ANYthing done. I planted about ten pots of marigolds. (Only to have them all spontaneously combust when the temps hit the 90s and stayed there.) And I finished the last book of the OPUS quartet. (Though by the time I got it in, it was two months late.) I lost ten pounds prior to conference. (Though two have already crept back on.) We went to a family reunion in South Carolina. (Wherein it was hammered home yet again that yes, in fact, it IS only our branch of the tree that’s, um, bent and, ah, twisted.)

And hey, it's not like I can't put all these things on my fall to-do list, right? I'm absolutely positive that, by December, my son and I will be cooking Chateaubriand with herbs we plucked from the pots under our newly painted cabinets, and Orlando will be knocking at my front door.

So what did everyone else NOT do on their summer vacation? What grand plans have you seen fall by the wayside when time--or disinclination--prohibited their fulfillment? What one project do you wish you had TIME to complete?

2006-08-13T13:50:00.000-04:00

It's time to break out the exploding champagne bottle again!

Congrats to LISA KLEYPAS and SCANDAL IN SPRING for being #10 on the New York Times bestseller list this week and to CHRISTINA DODD and TROUBLE IN HIGH HEELS for claiming the #20 slot.

You do all of us Squawkers and Squawkees proud!

Liz Jazzes Up the Sunday

2006-08-13T10:49:00.000-04:00

Since I’ve been rocking the music blog for the last few weeks, I figure it’s time to do something a little jazzier today. And yes, I know the band Chicago didn’t exactly make their name as a jazz band. But. They are a BIG band, loaded with horns, and they were definitely influenced by jazz, so it was inevitable, I think, that they eventually recorded an album of big band music. Nevertheless, they injected the old standards with the Chicago standard and sound, invited other artists like Gipsy Kings and Joe Perry and Paul Schaffer to play along, and what they created was a really cool CD.

It goes without saying that the album opens with the song “Chicago,” which has been immortalized by many a crooner. But somehow, it feels more intimate coming from a Chicago-based band. What I love, though, is that Chicago didn’t rely on the usual songs that other big band collections seem to focus on over and over again. They pulled out some fabulous songs that are too often overlooked. Among others, “Caravan” (I absolutely adore that song), “Blues in the Night,” Goody, Goody,” and, my personal fave, “Sing, Sing, Sing.”

That last, performed with Gipsy Kings, is worth the price of the CD. Who knew that guitars could be so jazzy? Oh, right. Jazz guitarists. We associate the guitar with rock ‘n’ roll way too much. It’s definitely a jazz instrument, too. Which Chicago illustrates beautifully. Again and again and again.

There’s just not a bad song in the entire collection, and it all feels so fresh while being so familiar. I love it for long drives and entertaining friends. Though it’s nice for jitterbugging, too.

2006-08-13T09:12:00.000-04:00

ROBYN L WINS AUTOGRAPHED VIRGINIA KANTRA BOOK HOME BEFORE MIDNIGHT!!!

Robyn, if you'll send me your snail mail addy at: teresa@teresamedeiros.com I'll forward it on to Virginia so she can send you the book. Congratulations Robyn and thanks to Virginia for popping by to visit with us and thanks to all of our wonderfully eloquent Commenters!

Saturday Book Blog

2006-08-12T07:00:00.000-04:00

Teresa Gets CLOSE-UP with Romantic Suspense Author Virginia Kantra

I'm sure it's a carry over from my years of reading Victoria Holt, Phyllis A. Whitney, Mary Stewart and Barbara Michaels but I've always adored romantic suspense. To me, there's nothing sexier than romance spiced up with a delicious dollop of danger. (THE BIG EASY anyone?)

I also don't believe it's any accident that many of my favorite suspense authors started out writing category romance (Silhouettes and Harlequins). Authors like Tami Hoag, Tess Gerritsen, Linda Howard, Jayne Ann Krentz, Nora Roberts and the incomparable Anne Stuart were all trained as masters in category romance who excelled at never letting the suspense aspects of their stories overwhelm the romance.

So you can imagine my delight when I recently discovered another category author who has crossed over into single title suspense. Virginia Kantra is a 6-time RITA finalist (vying with me for the RWA Susan Lucci award!) Her first single title suspense CLOSE-UP was a finalist this year for Best Romantic Suspense Novel.

CLOSE-UP starts with one of my favorite premises. Two desperate strangers on the run (in the gorgeous mountains of North Carolina no less!) Jack Miller, a suspended cop, is hidden outside a survivalist cult's compound hoping to rescue his abused sister when photographer Lexie Scott comes tumbling over the compound's wall and falls practically into his arms. Lexie has no way of knowing if this massive and muscled man "dressed like a nightmare out of Soldier of Fortune" represents her salvation or her doom. Especially after he tackles her and essentially takes her hostage.

At first Jack dismisses Lexie as a "fluffy little blonde", but her courage and good humor quickly win both Jack's respect and ours. I loved that Lexie wasn't Rambo. She's never ridiculous but behaves like any real woman thrust into a surreal situation, which makes it so much easier to identify with her. You can visibly see her gaining strength and confidence with each trial they face, especially as she is forced to guard a secret that could very well destroy their growing love.

Using a survivalist cult as the villains of the story felt really fresh and was a welcome break from the plethora of serial killers who have overpopulated romantic suspense for the past few years.

Kantra also writes "to die for" action sequences without ever forsaking sensual tension. When Jack is forced to cover Lexie on the forest floor to hide her from their pursuers, you can almost feel his hot breath on the back of YOUR neck. If you like Alpha heroes who can call a woman "babe" without being condescending, then Jack is your man! The action climax of the book left me breathless with tension and excitement and desperately wishing I could see it on the silver screen.

I have to finish by giving Ms. Kantra the highest compliment of all: Reading her for the first time made me feel like a kid who'd just discovered Mary Stewart. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go shop for some of her category romances...

When I approached Virginia and told her she was going to be featured on Squawk Radio today, she graciously agreed to give away an autographed copy of her new romantic thiller HOME BEFORE MIDNIGHT to one of our lucky Commenters! She'll be popping by later on so if you have any questions or comments for her, just jot them down in the Comment section. And tell me, who are YOUR favorite romantic suspense authors? Do you prefer straight suspense or does it make you shiver with delight when romance spices up the danger?

Click here to visit Virginia's website.

CONNIE BROCKWAY DISCOVERS THE REASON WOMEN PAST 30 DON’T WATER-SKI

2006-08-10T20:46:00.000-04:00

I am an athletic woman. I play a mean game of tennis, swim like a fish, and lift weights on a regular basis. So last weekend when we were visiting friends at their lake cabin and their son said, "Who wants to go water skiing?" I chirped, "Hey! That sounds like fun! I’m in!" It didn’t matter that I hadn’t actually been on skis in oh, say,... oh, say... wow. Has it been that long? No matter. It’s like riding a bike.

I ignored the startled and/or amused glances of my peers. Just because they have let themselves go to hell doesn’t mean the rest of us have, I thought then I think I said something like, "Hey, just because you have let yourselves go to hell doesn’t mean that I have."

A word here: Friends eat up hubris like Takeru Kobayashi gobbles hotdogs, especially friends that feel they have been insulted by the hubrisee. And I don't care if it's not a word so don't write me about it.

Forthwith, I found myself with my feet in antique water skis, bobbing up and down in a lake, buoyed by a child’s life vest so small it had to be bungee-corded together in front. How did I know it was a child’s life vest? Were you listening? IT HAD TO BE BUNGEE-CORDED TOGETHER IN THE FRONT TO MAKE IT FIT! Geesh.

Somehow twenty-five people had managed to cram together on the power boat that was going to take me "for a spin around the lake." Okay, maybe there weren’t twenty-five but that boat was packed with my friends, most of them no longer looking very friendly. Don’t even ask what the horsepower of that baby was because that sort of question is plain old rude.(It was big.)

So there I am. Confident, even a little cocky, I grasp the tow bar, give a thumbs up and shout, "Let ‘er rip!" With a roar of power the boat leaps forward, the tow line plays out like a striking snake and, knees gentle bent, arms straight ahead, I surge slowly upright; Venus arising from Zeus's foaming brow. Or the Cracken emerging from its lair. Your choice.

Anyway, I am up and it feels fine. Good, even. I am powerful, athletic, ready for some S-P-E-E-D. I give the driver the sign. At once, the motor boat claws it’s way over the surface of the lake like a mad cat on a shag carpet and I’m in the wake, crusing in the vee. My legs are steady, my arms are steel, all that core-training is obviously paying off because I am solid.

It is time to add a little sass to this act.

I decide to give the nay-saying, stodgy, snickering oldsters in the boat a little show. I bend my legs, and my skis' edges slice through the water, shooting me toward the wake. I fly over it, slowing in my moment of aerial artistry, my arms over my head to take up the slack and bang! I hit the water. I don’t even miss a beat. My pals in the boat look stunned. I can see wide eyes. Then some of them begin to laugh with pleasure! A few of the women shake their heads in wonder!

I pull in and carve another route back toward the wake and jump it and then return to the other side, and then back again. I slalom, I carve, I slice, I curve, I arc. And I am getting a little tired by now. Hell, women half my age (which would make them mere children) would be tired by now. One more wake flight and then I’ll signal for the driver to return me to the shore. Over I go but this time the landing isn’t quite so flawless. I wobble but somehow catch myself and that’s when it happened.

In the midst of almost losing my balance, I look down. I see my thighs.

Now the things my thighs were doing as I skimmed over the corrugated chop of the lake surface are best left to the imagination. Cellulite at rest is as about appealing as a body suit made out of cottage cheese. Cellulite in motion is ghastly. But cellulite that is no longer bound by strong young collagen to the dimpled layer of the dermis is, in a word, horrifying.

I looked down and saw the flesh of my legs shimmying like a sixties go-go dancer, oscillating like a can of paint in a Sherwin Williams color-mixer, rippling like the flag in Bush campaign commercial, shaking like sinner at the gates of hell, quivering like... well, you get my point.

I let go of the tow bar and glide off, sinking beneath the concealing water. I couldn’t possibly have sank fast enough. The laughter from the boat, my friends' wide-eyes , their shaking heads, it all took on a different aspect as I slowly disappeared under the water's surface.

Unhappily, one can only hold one's breath so long. But by the time I was forced to come up for air I had come to a decision.

Some things you give up because they are no longer worth the effort to do them, like folding tee shirts or theme-sex. Some things you give up because they are simply too physically demanding, like folding tee-shirts or theme-sex. But some things you give up for purely aesthetic reasons. My thighs on water skis is one of them. Theme-sex is another.

You don't want to see me in a Bo-Peep outfit, either.

How about you? Have you ever flashed your past to your great regret? Boasted of a skill you somehow misplaced? Squeezed into a dress you just knew made you look like a triple –threat fox only to see photos later that challenged that belief? Tell me. Share my humiliation. It’s cathartic.

2006-08-10T14:27:00.000-04:00

SQUAWK RADIO ALERT II!!!

THIS JUST IN!!! LIZ BEVARLY UNEARTHS ANOTHER CANDID SHOT OF CONNIE ON SKIS!!!

2006-08-10T13:21:00.000-04:00

SQUAWK ALERT!!!

Unbeknownst to Connie, a lurking paparazzi caught her most recent escapades on the water skis! (The cellulite isn't as bad as you described, Connie, but you might want to do something about those whiskers...)

2006-08-10T01:34:00.000-04:00

Christina Dodd Un-Covers the Truth

I recently received an email that said, "I get embarrassed when reading books with graphic ‘Fabio-ish’ covers with half naked people displayed. Please give your books more of the ‘Oprah Book Club’ style covers - please!"

I haven’t written her back. I don’t know what to say. The truth is — authors have little to say about the covers that go on their books. And there’s a chance that that’s a good thing, because authors are notorious at not knowing what’s going to work on the market. We understand words really well. What appeals visually is a whole different can of worms.

For instance — the first time I saw the cover for IN MY WILDEST DREAMS, I cried. I thought it was awful — bland, boring, the kind of cover that could kill my career. Well, guess what? It was my first New York Times bestseller, stayed on the charts for four weeks and topped out at seven.

Now, I will admit, it’s a good book (she said modestly), my re-telling of the Cinderella-like Sabrina story, and every reader loves it (I’m steeped in modesty). But when I saw the book on the shelves, I realized I was wrong. What looked bland on my kitchen table proved to be a great cover on the racks. It “popped.” When so many books coming out each month, it turns out that’s what works. “Pop.” A color and a style that catches the eye.

Authors are also looking for covers that clearly attract the right audience. The cover for THE PRINCE KIDNAPS A BRIDE clearly proclaims it’s a historical romance — the pastel color is feminine, the painting is softly impressionistic, her hair style is old-fashioned, and the ruffles are, um, ruffly. The cover for TROUBLE IN HIGH HEELS clearly proclaims it’s a contemporary romantic suspense — the color is bold, the photography is stark, the shoes are modern and sexy, and the spill of jewels suggests intrigue.

Sometimes a publishing company creates a cover that, um, doesn’t exactly fit the book. For instance, THE GREATEST LOVER IN ALL ENGLAND is being re-released and given its first new look since 1994. Now, GREATEST LOVER is an Elizabethan — think “Shakespeare in Love.” It’s a beautiful cover — but does this say Elizabethan to you?

Some readers truly do want an “Oprah Book Club” style cover — unfortunately, that’s false advertising. Romance is never included in the Oprah Book Club, and the readers who would pick up a book with that cover would be highly indignant to discover a romance inside, and the romance readers who would enjoy the story would never pick it up. On the other hand, how many readers who would like romance never pick one up because, like my reader, they would be embarrassed to read books with half-naked people on the cover?

So tell us what attracts you to a cover. Be honest. We don’t want your politically correct answer. We want to know what catches your eye when you peruse the book racks, what you’d rather die than buy, and whether picking up a book with a cover that give you the wrong impression drives you to shriek and throw it against the wall.

INTRODUCING...COUNTRY ELOISA

2006-08-09T03:15:00.000-04:00

Everybody here knows I have two careers, right? By day a tough-grading Shakespeare professor, by night a oh-so-nice writer of romances?

Well, More Magazine thought it would be fun to ask me to write an article on taking on a second career -- but with a twist. They want me to check out THIRD careers! And write an article about it. When this was initially approved, I was happy as a clam. I know loads of women who envy me for having a second career, and who would like to dump their work in the insurance company/Walmart/bank and find something more fun, more creative and more along the lines of Eloisa. Seriously. Women tell me that all the time (especially professors, sadly enough).

Anyway, More asked me to go on a couple of Vocation Vacations and write them up. This company runs a great program in which you try out your new career under the careful eye of a mentor. I got to choose from a huge list. Some were easy to cross off. Dog Training I signally failed to do with our darling, pee-around-the-house Milo. I can barely get myself dressed, so Fashion Designer seemed like a stretch. A bed and breakfast sounded like fun -- I signed up for that. And then I needed one more, so in a fit of...I don't know what...I signed up for -- wait for it:

COUNTRY MUSIC WRITER.

Back then, my thinking went along these lines: Hey, I know how to write about love, right? And there's plenty of time to figure it all out: I have all summer!

Have you noticed that I do not write Sunday music blogs? Liz does. Occasionally Teresa, owner of thousands of CDs, does. There's a good reason.

Last night I dreamt over and over that I was on my way to Nashville (because--gulp--that's where I'm going in early September: to meet a record producer and show him my--gulp--SONGS!). In my dream, I kept missing the plane. I would show up wearing nothing but a white towel, or without underwear, or without my computer. Finally I woke up and faced my demons.

I need to write a country western song.

NOW.

I will leave the abyss of my knowledge of country music to your imagination. I will say that I really liked the movie Nine to Five and I once saw Keith Urban in a hotel and thought he had amazing shoulders.

In the middle of the night I came up with one line.

YOU SAY I'M DESPERATE AND I THINK YOU MAY BE RIGHT.

hmmm.

Help! Help oh brave community of Squawkees! If you know anything about music! Here's my questions:

What's your favorite country music song and why? Can you put 2-3 lines of it in the comments? How long do you think the refrain should be? If that was your first line, above, what would the second line be? If you really know something about music: is a person supposed to count out the syllables of a music line, the way you do when writing a sonnet? (Why wasn't Sonnet Writer one of the company's possibilities?)

And finally, has anyone ever walked into a situation as unprepared as I am -- and what happened to you??

Can you believe that I got an email from the music producer talking about STUDIO TIME? HEEEEELP!

If you have the country western writing bug yourself, check out my Bulletin Board under Writing Stuff (http://eloisajames.net/board/index.php). Anyone who wants can pitch in on a group-written song. Who knows? Maybe that song will make it on the charts!

2006-08-09T01:06:00.000-04:00

Eloisa's Next Gig!

Hey, maybe if she makes it into the Pussycat Dolls, she'll invite the other Squawkers to join her!

Liz Goes in Search of Heroic Underwear (since obviously, some heroes don’t think of this stuff themselves)

2006-08-08T07:24:00.000-04:00

I love starting a new book, which is what I did yesterday. Not just because it’s so much fun getting to know new characters. And not just because of the limitless possibilities for where the story might go. And not just because starting a new book means I must have recently finished another one--though, granted, that part is pretty sketchy on account of how quickly I forget the dregs of despair into which I am forced to descend before I can finish the...

Where was I? I forgot...

Oh, right. Why I love starting a new book. One of the main reasons I love doing that is because of all the Googling I get to do to uncover the things I need to uncover about my characters’ jobs and working environments and the places where they live and all that stuff.

Hello, my name is Elizabeth B., and I am a Google-holic.

I’ll Google pretty much anything. Often just for the hell of it. There is no better way to procrastinate writ-- Uh, I mean, there is no better way to flesh out a story with vivid detail than to Google every last aspect of it. For instance, yesterday, as I was writing about my new hero for the first time, I realized I needed to know what brand of underwear he wears. Yes, there is actually a relevant reason for knowing this, something that’s an integral part of both his character and the scene. Really. There is. I mean it. It’s true. It IS. So off to Google I go, to look at men’s underwear. Two words, and two words alone can describe my journey.

Oh. Baby.

If you’ve never gone to Google images and entered the words, “men’s underwear,” I encourage you to do so now. Go ahead. I’ll wait. I’ll hum “Stairway to Heaven.” No, really. Go have a quick look. Hmm, hmm, hmm... La la la... Buy-ing the stair-way to Hea-eh-vun. Are you back yet? No? Oh, right, you got hung up on the turquoise and black number from metroplex.typepad.com. Yeah, that one gave me pause, too. Okay, finish up. Remember, you can always go back on your lunch hour. Or later tonight, when you’re home alone. With a nice, um, snifter of brandy.

And me? Well, I think the next thing I need to know about my hero is where he spent his last vacation. Knowing him (and his underwear, which I do now, intimately), it was probably some nude beach in South America. Guess I better get Googling.

Okay, your turn. ‘Fess up. What’s your favorite way to procrastinate while you’re at work? What weird/fun/disturbing things have you discovered by Googling something you were sure would be totally innocent? What else can we Google for fun and profit? I, ah, I need some vivid details to help me flesh out this new book, ya know...

2006-08-07T02:01:00.001-04:00

CHRISTINA DODD PUTS ON HER OLDEST BROWN SWEAT SUIT, GOES SHOPPING, AND RUNS INTO EVERY PERSON SHE’S EVER MET

C’mon, you know you’ve done it. You wake up with PMS and figure you’ll make an emergency run to the grocery store for chocolate, even though you look like hell — but who cares, you never see anyone there who knows you? And you meet your minister, your fifth grade teacher, the guy you’re secretly in love with and you’ve dreamed about for years, and a TV news anchor there to report on overweight American adults and for some reason, he films you, clutching your one-pound Hershey bar and snarling.

Not that this has ever happened to me.

Yeah, right.

So the other day Scott and I went to Costco to get a corporate card. We spend a lot of money there (“Can you help us carry that twenty-gallon jar of dill pickles out to the car? Put it right next seventy-five roll package of toilet paper.”) and figured the corporate card, which refunds some tiny part of your purchases, would pay for itself. The trick is, I’m the corporate entity and Scott wanted me there in case they questioned it. And he assured me my whole job would be to stand there while he filled out the form and coughed up the fee.

Now let me stop for a minute and point out that being an author provides a fair amount of anonymity. People sometimes know your name (“I think my sister's aunt's girlfriend's roommate has read you.”), but they never know your face. So I went schlepping into Costco without a drop of cosmetics on my sweaty face and, well, I’d been working in the yard so I hadn’t had a shower and I was wearing this grubby shirt and jeans with dirt on the knees and a gimme hat to cover my weird hair.

Are you getting the idea?

So Scott fills out the form and the girl who’s putting it into the computer says, “Christina Dodd? I’ve read Christina Dodd.” She looks at me and says, “Are you Christina Dodd?”

My first thought is to duck below the counter, sit on the floor and hug my knees. But I’m an adult. I should act like an adult. My mom said so. So I say, “Yes, I’m Christina Dodd.” That starts quite the kerfuffle. The girl introduces me to everyone behind the desk, and they all act delighted and say stuff like, “Do we have any of your books here?” (They actually did, but I didn’t realize it at the time.) I give out pens (Christina Dodd, Cool Suspense, Hot Romance, www.christinadodd.com) and sign autographs. And I know as soon as they have a minute away from the service desk, they’ll race to my website, look at my photo and say, “Hey, that woman today wasn’t Christina Dodd. Christina Dodd wears make-up and has hair that doesn’t stick straight out around her ears.”

While I was at Costco, I did the only thing I could do — I acted with dignity and grace. In the car, I did what any woman would do — I blamed my husband. (“Stand there while you fill out the form because NOBODY WILL KNOW?! Are you CRAZY?! What color is the sky IN YOUR WORLD?!”)

So share all the lovely moments when you got caught looking less like your usual gracious self and more like your psycho twin sister, and how you responded. Did you chat and pretend nothing was wrong? Did you apologize for the way you looked? Or did you move away from your home, never to return?

Let’s chat while I pack all my books and call the moving van.

Liz Presents a Musical Wake-Up for a Quiet Sunday

2006-08-06T11:28:00.000-04:00

It is a remarkable CD that can contain songs both funny and troubling, but such is the nature of Punk Rock sometimes. The Offspring, a California Punk band finishing up their second decade of music-making, are actually a discovery of my husband’s, but their album, “Smash,” made it onto my iPod almost immediately after he purchased it. I love Punk for its raucous sound and in-your-face attitude. But when it’s also intelligent, insightful and socially relevant, I’m blown away.

The Offspring blew me away on first listening. I love it when that happens.

I just don’t know how they manage to make such disturbing subject matter so much fun to listen to. In the song, “Bad Habit,” the bad habit in question is a road-raged driver’s propensity for shooting people. Gee, and I thought biting my nails was a bad habit. And then there’s the song about gang violence, but it bears the innocent-sounding title, “Come Out and Play.” And “Self-Esteem” is about a guy who can’t manage to leave his emotionally abusive girlfriend, which should make the song tragic, but it has some funny lyrics like, “I took her back and made her dessert.” And there’s the ska-influenced “What Happened to You?” that makes me want to dance, dance, dance, but it’s about a junkie who’s one step away from the grave.

How can I be listening to all this stuff and still have such an enjoyable experience? I guess because the music is intelligent, insightful and socially relevant, AND it’s powered by some truly righteous guitar chops. Ironically, the music is prefaced by a first cut that features a smooth-talking announcer who tells the listener it’s time to “sit back and relax.” Then the Offspring launch into “Nitro,” and the listener knows it’s going to be a while before s/he’ll be relaxing again. Even after the CD ends, relaxation is still a good ways away, on account of it’s going to be a while before the listener’s brain can escape the hard-driving, thought-provoking music.

Last year, the Offpsring released a greatest hits CD which is way up on my To Buy list. They get some decent play on Satellite Radio, and everything I’ve heard by them has been much like the fare on “Smash,” funny and smart with enough of an edge to make you cringe a little for smiling while you listen, most notably “Pretty Fly for a White Guy” and “Why Don’t You Get a Job?” Hey, as long as the Offspring are making music like this, I’d say they’re not only pretty fly for a bunch of white guys, but they do their job quite nicely, thanks.

KITTY THANKS THE SQUAWKEES IN ATLANTA

2006-08-05T11:49:00.000-04:00

Wow. My head hurts. What day is it?

Okay. The Squawkers wanted me to express their appreciation with a bouquet of flowers.
Right. Flowers. i.e. Dying Plants.

"No way" says I. "These women deserve better. How about a bouquet of top grade tequila?"

"No way," say the Squawkers. Kill joys.

So as a compromise, I'm posting this candy bouquet. Because even though liquor is quicker, candy is dandy. I know. It would be so much better if it actually arrived at your door.

CHRISTINA DODD SAYS "THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES -- AND THE CHICKENS":
Thank you to Sarah in Aggieland for the croqueted chickens. (I can say honestly -- that's not a sentence I've ever written before.)
Thank you to PJ for the chicken chocolates! (Ditto.)
And a special thank you to the writer from Oklahoma who gave me her pen after my speech because I was signing books but didn't have a pen. It's a great pen given at the perfect moment and I greatly appreciate it. I've been signing books all over Seattle with it.

CONNIE THANKS ALL THE KIND SQUAWKEES

Mostly for letting me stick squawk pins on them but also to

Sarah for the chicks (darling, aren't they?)
PJ for the chocolates
Melissa for the luncheon get together
Molly for surprises yet to come

and all the other sttendees who made the ATlanta conference feel lik an old home week!

CHRISTINA IS ABASHED (and braindead):
MELISSA! How could I forget to thank Melissa? She was so wonderful on all counts!
And MOLLY -- I hardly got to meet you, but Connie has been praising you to the skies!
Thank you both.

2006-08-03T18:26:00.000-04:00

THE SQUAWKERS DISCUSS THEIR WRITING PROCESS

Okay, Kitty Kuttlestone was originally supposed to introduce this blog but to be honest--we can't find her. That's right. She's gone missing and no one has seen her since Atlanta. Now my theory is that she ran off with one of those cute bellhops or took a drunken tumble off the 46th floor balcony, clutching a bottle of tequila in one hand and a foam chicken in the other. But since no odd smells have been reported from the atrium area of the Marriott, we're holding out hope that we'll see her again someday, either on the "other side" or on the side of a milk carton. (Although a carton of Camel unfiltered cigarettes might be more appropriate.)

I'm left to ask the Squawkers this question without the usual Kitty-like flair--So what exactly is your writing process? How do you start a book and how (in the name of all that's holy) do you finish one? And how long does this magical journey usually take?

LISA REVEALS THE SECRET HANDSHAKE
I'm not trying to disclose Kitty's private business, but . . . did anyone else see her with that group of aspiring male cover models after the awards ceremony Saturday night? From what I could tell, she was telling them she had some influence with the art department, and . . . well, I'm not going to repeat everything I heard, but I saw them all getting into the stretch limo with Kitty. I'm just saying I think it's going to be a while before she resurfaces.

Back to business . . . my writing process . . . hmm. Generally, my plots come from the two characters I've put together. So I work a lot on what kind of hero would be an effective balance for my heroine, or vice versa, and what conflicts would arise from their differences. I might as well use "Scandal In Spring" as an example . . .Daisy is a mischievous, romantic daydreamer, Matthew is a worldly, practical-natured businessman. Building from there . . . Daisy would never want to marry a cold work-oriented man like her father, Matthew loves Daisy but can never reveal a secret from his past that is eventually going to destroy him, and he doesn't want to drag her down with him. As extra conflict, I threw in all the questions and objections of a group of secondary characters, who are all very involved with the two characters. Some are on Daisy's side, some are on Matthew's side.

So there you have it . . . the basic character-oriented conflict. Then the more difficult work of plotting begins . . . figuring out what kinds of events will:
A) illustrate and define the conflict
B) undermine the character's goals
C) change their minds and hearts about each other

and often I throw in
D) challenge them as a couple to show their strength together

There is a very silly but fun "goose" scene early on in the book, that shows a lot about both their characters : a big angry Greylag goose has his leg tangled in some fishing wire next to a pond Daisy has been fishing at. Daisy wants to rescue the goose (here we see her compassion) Matthew does not want to help but finally agrees (we see how difficult he finds it to refuse her) and as they work together, we see Matthew's patience and resourcefulness, Daisy's first recognition of her own attraction to him, and the fact that they both share a similar sense of humor.

My actual writing process is simple . . . my work for the day isn't finished until I've written at least 1000 words, and when I have tight deadline, I extend that to 2000 words. I am such an undisciplined person about everything but my writing. And flossing. With teeth like mine, you have to floss.

One other thing : because of my children, I usually get up at four or five in the morning to write in absolute quiet. It is so difficult at first, but it is GREAT because you're usually so tired you don't get in the way of your own writing, if you know what I mean.

TERESA GIBBERS ON HYSTERICALLY ABOUT HER PROCESS

Process? I'm supposed to have a process???!!! After 20 years and 17 books, now's a fine time to tell me! This is what I do. I write a book, celebrate, then panic when I realize I have to write another one. Oh wait, you want specifics, right? Okay--the first thing to come to me is usually the hero and heroine's names. Next up is their personalities. THEN I come up with a plot. And I've always required a BIG PLOT because that's the skeleton I build my story on. I like Backstory, Characters Who Meet As Children, Big Hooks, Masquerade Balls, Amnesia, Evil Twins, Stolen Kisses, Shocking Revelations! Which means I usually start out with about a dozen scenes that I "know". Each scene I "know" usually leads to 3 or more scenes that come as a pleasant surprise to me.

I'm a perfectionist with a very stringent internal editor. (Yes, I edited this blog 6 times.) So it usually takes me 6 months to write the first 200 pages and 6 weeks to write the last 200 pages. There's a reason for that. It's called DESPERATION. Once that deadline clock starts ticking, I'm able to knock that nasty internal editor off of my shoulder and the story starts pouring out of me. And the strangest thing of all is that those are the pages that usually require the least editing! It makes me nervous to talk about process because I'm one of those writers who prefers not to analyze the magic and the mystery of what we do. I can say that I've always ascribed to the Jill Landis theory of writing--"I can write a book in 6 months. It just takes me a year to do it."

WHILE CHRISTINA CALMLY SAYS...

I hate it when Kitty goes missing. She always comes back looking like a tom cat after a night on the prowl. Smelling like one, too. Euw.

What is my writing process?

You mean… on this book? The one I’m writing now? Because my process changes depending on how well the book is progressing, how close the deadline is, what the book is about, how I hold my tongue…

Characters are easy. Dialogue is easy. Plotting is hard. I come up with a great concept and about the first two-thirds of a plot, then want to finish with, “And a miracle happens here and the hero and heroine get together.” But writing a synopsis requires more than that and whether my editor wants to see one or not (I’ve worked with both kinds of editors), I always write a synopsis. It makes me focus, manipulate events to the proper climax, and once I start the book, I know where I’m going and that makes me write faster.

Once I start writing, I don’t write for eight hours. I can screw around for eight hours. My goal is ten pages a day, every day. I don’t always succeed— if I did, I’d write six books a year and my agent would be one happy man. But I do write quickly— as Teresa said, the work done quickly seems smoother than the stuff I sweat over. It’s not fair, but there it is. If I get stuck, and I often do, one thing works for me. I take my laptop or my alphasmart (a light text-input device with no email capacity, a godsend to a dithering author) and I write someplace else. If I’m writing in my office, I move to the library. If I’m writing in the library, I move to the deck. If I’m writing on the deck, I move to my bedroom. Why does this work? I have no idea. But it does. Changing locations seems to jog my brain, and I’m off and running again. And I don’t always write in a linear manner. If a scene that occurs later in the book comes to me fully realized, I write it right then and insert it later. My final comment— writing is hard, but I love my job. It's the thing I do best, and I treasure that.

AND LIZ WOULD RATHER EAT CHEESE PRODUCTS (speaking of smelly Kitty)...

Writing process...writing process...writing process... I feel like I should recognize this term “writing process.” But all I’m coming up with is a box of Velveeta. Oh, wait. That’s a different kind of process, isn’t it? We’re supposed to be talking book production, not food production.

I'm sorry, but I have no idea how to write a book, even thought I just turned in number fifty-three. All I know is that, at some point (generally when I realize how quickly the bank account is shrinking), I get this nebulous idea of two people in some kind of vague situation where hazy stuff is happening. Situation. That’s where I always start. Not a plot. Not characters. A situation that demands to be snowballed into something more. Then, somehow, from somewhere, characters emerge to populate this situation. From there, I gradually get some inkling of what’s going on with them. Or think I do, anyway. Almost always, they steer me into false directions before I finally realize they’re just yanking my chain (usually about three-fourths of the way through the book). Then, and only then, do I know itÂ’s time for drastic measures.

I get into the bathtub and I put a washcloth on my face.

Yes, something about the water and the feel of terry cloth (or maybe just being naked, which, let’s face it, puts us at our most vulnerable) generates the A-ha! moment I need to realize, “Oh. It’s not this thing that my !@#$%ing characters have been leading me to believe for !@#$%ing MONTHS. It’s this OTHER thing that I’ll now have to go back to page one and make revisions for. Those !@#$%ers.” You’d think I’d learn not to listen to my characters. But learning evidently isn’t part of my process. (There’s a lot to be said for Velveeta.)

ELOISA KNOWS WHERE KITTY IS! (DID ALL OF YOU KNOW ABOUT THOSE AMAZING OVER-SEAS FACE LIFTS????)

Anyway...surgery excitement aside, my process is most in my head. I spend a long time thinking about the world in which I'm going to set four books (think one to two years). It seems endless to me: I wake up in the middle of the night with conversations in my head; every book I read with an interesting character I consider a variation thereof; every movie auditions in my head for a setting, a plot twist, a great situation.

Finally I start writing the first book. Then I write very very fast. If at all possible, 20 pages a day. I know it sounds like a lot, but much of it is absolute dreck. But there's something (for me) about going over 10 pages that drives me into exhaustion-related creativity. Almost always large chunks of the first 10 pages have to be cut and the second 10 pages makes it through with relatively little editing -- this may be my version of Terri's writing process.

Then if at all possible, I put the book aside for 2-3 months. Let it brew. Collect comments from people like editors, husbands and research assistants. Then attack it again. Strangely enough, today is the day that I start revision Desperate Duchesses (coming in April). Wish me luck!

CONNIE TAKES THE MYSTERY OUT OF WRITING A BOOK

Something strikes me as funny or absurd or terrible. It can be a situation or a character.

For example in the kinda soon to be released HOTDISH, the genesis for the book began with a butter sculpture at the Minnesota State Fair. It was so rife with possibilities. All I needed to do was figure what that butter head sculpture really meant and not just to one person (the heroine who's face was being sculpted) but to a number of different people, I started dovetailing their stories together to make a bigger story. It took about half a year before I "writing" but every day, sometimes every hours, the story was evolving in my head-- ideas being played with and discarded, new options being considered.

In AS YOU DESIRE, I began with a character, a die-hard romantic who does not see the hero under her very nose. I then tried to think of what a young woman would consider the ultimate romantic image and , of course, the idea of a shiek riding along the desert dunes immediately sprang to mind. So then I fit Eygpt story around that concept, using Eygpt as a backdrop and trying to determine why the hero (Harry-- the most unromantic name I could think of) would want my heroine not to see his "true nature." Again, that part took months. The story grew around a character I found appealing. Who hasn't known someone so smart they're dumb?

So there you go. Easy, yes? ha ha

Ha ha ha ha

HA HA HA HA HA!

2006-08-03T14:48:00.000-04:00

ELOISA on THE WORST JOB OF YOUR LIFE

Back in high school, I was desperate for money. I was also desperately in love with the under-chef at DeToy's Dinner Club. One thing led to another, and before long I was a waitress at the Dinner Club. It still comes back to me sometimes in the dark of night, with a shudder.

First of all, there was a costume. I think we were supposed to look faintly like Swiss maidens--who knows? Anyway, the uniform was a gathered, off-the-shoulder white shirt with a short black twirly skirt.

Fine. At that point in my life I actually liked my knees and I could handle it. BUT...it was a Supper Club in the rurals of Minnesota. Translation: no liquor license. Hey, no problem. the intrepid owner came up with a list of drinks, came them fake names, and kept the liquor in the back (for people who "belonged" to the supper club, get it?).

So if a customer asked me for a Red Ruby Tomato, I was supposed to remember that what he really wanted was a lemon drop martini. Well, not really because they didn't have lemon drops in Minnesota back then, but you get the idea.

Well, put together my hideous memory, my unfailing ability to be distracted by my favorite cook, and the truth that I was new to waitressing anyway -- you have it. The worst job of my life. The job in which I was the most incompetent and caused the most distress to customers (who couldn't complain outloud when I brought them the wrong drink because the police chief always ate out with his wife at the supper club). They retaliated in the tipping area, which means that it was also the least well paid job of my life.

How about you? What was your low -- and why?

2006-08-03T10:16:00.000-04:00

LISA KLEYPAS AND SCANDAL IN SPRING ARE #9 ON THE NEW YORK TIMES LIST!

And #9 on the USA Today List!

Lisa's a rocket, and we at Squawk Radio salute you!!!!

YAY!!!

2006-08-02T16:32:00.000-04:00

Christina Breathes a Sigh of Relief

In the last months, some people who shall remain unnamed actually suggested that I whined — a lot — about giving the luncheon speech at the Romance Writers’ conference. But this is, of course, nonsense. I do not whine. I express my concern.

I was just REALLY concerned. The first conference I went to, in Dallas in 1987, the speaker was Mary Higgins Clark. If you ever get the chance to hear her, run, do not walk, to the nearest chair, park yourself and listen hard, because she’s the best speaker I’ve ever heard, and I’ve heard some good ones. She told the story of her life — married young, five children, widowed, writing in between life experiences (“Grist for the mill,” she called it), finally getting published at the age of (if I remember correctly) fifty and of course going on to be a #1 New York Times Bestseller. She made me realize that most people don’t get their first book published, that writing takes training, work and dedication, and that maybe I’d never be a #1 New York Times bestseller — maybe I’d never get published — but if I loved the craft, I had to try. She inspired me and I’ve never forgotten that seminal moment.

Consequently, I’ve realized how important the job of speaker at the RWA conference is — the speaker can literally change a writer’s attitude and life.

So when I got the call to speak at RWA — put yourself in my shoes. Imagine how flattered I was. Imagine how terrified I was, because I’m really a frightened public speaker. And no matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t say no — being invited to speak at RWA is a huge honor. So I spent six months being REALLY concerned, writing the speech, practicing the speech, polishing the speech, trying to find a desert island with no phone or internet … you know what helped me most?

My friends. They let me whine — er, be really concerned — they told me over and over I would do a great job, they scarcely suggested I was being incredibly self-absorbed (well, maybe they did, but I was too self-absorbed to notice), and at the conference, one of our dear Squawkers, J.Perry, gave me one of the most touching tributes I’ve ever had. She said, “I love your work so much you could burp the whole speech and I’d still enjoy it.”

She brought a tear to my eye. Okay, it was a tear of laughter, but I do treasure the compliment.
So thanks to everyone who encouraged me, and thanks to everyone who heard me and praised me so kindly afterward.

Has anyone else ever survived an ordeal that required nerves of steel and a whole lot of help from your friends? What did your friends do to get you through?

2006-08-02T01:57:00.000-04:00

Christina Dodd Tattles on her Father-in-Law

As my husband always says, “You can pick your nose, but you can’t pick your family.”

Ain’t it the truth.

But as with all women, relationships, both romantic and familial, fascinate me, and I keep writing stories about families that lose each other, then fight to get back together. TROUBLE IN HIGH HEELS (now on the shelves) is the start of a brand-new contemporary series about five half-brothers, sons of one father and five different mothers, who have to solve the mystery of their father’s disappearance and his missing fortune. Oh, and it’s a hot romance, too, very fun to write.

How do I think of different stories with such a similar theme? My dears, think of your own family, about how many people there are, how diverse they are, and the famous — or infamous — anecdotes that are told about them. I don’t have to make up stories. I just recycle the ones I know.

To celebrate the publication of TROUBLE IN HIGH HEELS, here is the most notorious legend of my husband’s family, a tale that will live forever in infamy.

My father-in-law was in the Navy in WWII, worked hard all his life, and is a respectable, retired, eighty-three year old citizen. He plays golf five times a week, bowls once a week, reads voraciously, and is, to put it politely, a character. Everyone in the family adores him.

Why am I presenting his credentials? Because, once upon a time, he was a dumb kid. I know this because I knew his mother, and like every mother, she used to tell stories about him. Or should I say — on him.

Heh, heh.

When Tom (or Tommy, as Grandma called him) was about fourteen, it was the depths of the Depression, they lived in a very small town in the mountains in Idaho, and he and his younger brother Bob and their older cousin were desperate to make some money to help out the family. So they contracted with the cemetery to dig a grave. The ground was former river bed, rocks and sand packed as hard as cement, and the boys dug and sweated and only managed to get a couple of inches into the earth. So their older cousin looked in the caretaker’s shed, came out, and said, “There’s dynamite in there. I know how to use dynamite.”

(Christina pauses to allow every mother, every father, every former kid experience the full horror of this statement … and mentally fill in the details.)
Of course Grandma didn’t see the actual explosion — in fact, in this very small town, she didn’t even hear about the event for years, which speaks volumes for how much she was loved — but as she told my husband and me, “I can just imagine the bodies flying out of the graves.” I guess it wasn’t quite that bad, but the resulting hole was so big and round the undertaker had to build a wooden frame so they could lower the coffin into the ground. Not surprisingly, my father-in-law said, “They never offered us the job again.”

The photo is my father-in-law showing us the exact grave he "dug" -- and please note the size of the tree. He claims the explosion "aerated the roots."

Sure, Tom. Pull the other one.

C'mon, now's your chance. What is the most infamous story in your family? What horrible thing did your husband/daughter/you do that makes strong men blench and women cover their eyes? It can't be as bad as blowing up a graveyard ... can it? Can it???

Lisa squawks about "Scandal In Spring"

2006-08-01T08:52:00.000-04:00

Dear friends,
Well, Scandal In Spring is finally out, and I am delighted by the reaction of readers so far! I have come to feel such fondness for these four wallflower characters, who encompass many of the characteristics of the Squawkers. As many of you know, I have written this series as a celebration of female friendship, and I think that’s the most evident in Scandal In Spring, which has many ensemble scenes.

If you read Devil In Winter, you probably noticed the kissing scene between Daisy and Cam Rohan, which I included because I planned to pair the two of them in Scandal In Spring. However, sometimes characters don’t always behave as we authors would like them to! I found as I was plotting Scandal that there wasn’t enough tension and chemistry to sustain Daisy and Cam through an entire novel, and my editor and I agreed to approach Daisy’s story from a brand new perspective.

The problem was, the best chemistry comes from pairing characters who are very different (like Evie and Sebastian) and unfortunately Daisy and Cam were too much alike. Both are romantic, imaginative, out-of-the-mainstream characters. Daisy needed someone to anchor her. I realized that in past books, I had created some real tension between the Bowman sisters and their father, who is unromantic, business-minded and very cold natured, and that Daisy’s worst nightmare would be to marry someone like him.

Which gave me the idea--Daisy’s father would decide to marry her off to his right-hand man, Matthew Swift.

Then I started to have some serious fun, conceiving Matthew as a kind of ugly duckling who turns out to be a swan. You see a lot of historical heroines like that, but rarely historical heroes. (Connie did this brilliantly in "My Dearest Enemy.") But every time Daisy interacts with Matthew, he surprises her. Unlike her father, Matthew appreciates Daisy's whimsical, colorful, romantic nature. And it turns out that Matthew has been secretly in love with her for years.

Daisy and Matthew are younger characters than the ones I usually write, and I think this gives the book a fresh, lively feeling. And because of Daisy's innate sweetness, it seemed the love scenes had a lightness, maybe even cuteness, rather than my usual torrid ones.

One thing no one has noticed yet is the unusual name of Lillian's daughter in this book--Merritt--which is a tribute to the late and dearly loved romance author Emma Merritt. I had the privilege of meeting Emma and having dinner with her about a week or so before she passed away several years ago, and I found her to be a gracious and graceful woman--a true lady.

If you have any questions or comments about Scandal In Spring, my future novels, etc, please don't hold back! I'll answer them in the most non-spoilerish way I can. It's so good to be back from conference and be able to visit with you again!

MORE PICS FROM THE SQUAWKEE LUNCHEON!

2006-08-01T06:54:00.000-04:00

2006-07-31T18:57:00.000-04:00

Here’s the photo of my wonderful friends who sat at my table at the luncheon and supported me so much through the whole conference while I sweated the speech. From left to right: Geralyn Dawson, Lisa Klepas, Connie Brockway, Susie Kay Law, Christina Dodd (the only person in the whole great photo who partially has her eyes closed), Eloisa James, Teresa Medeiros, Elizabeth Bevarly and Heather MacAllister. I love having glamorous, successful, exciting, interesting, witty friends who are also the nicest people in the world!

2006-07-31T17:58:00.000-04:00

AND MORE PICTURES!!!

Here are the Chicks Who Lunch at the Pacific Rim Restaurant. That's Lisa sitting on the nest of carrots in front of Connie and Xtina.

Here's a close-up of Lisa. (Note the tiara.)

Here's Teresa schmoozing with the gorgeous Susan Elizabeth Phillips and Jacquie D'Alessandro in her spectacular princess dress. (Please note alligator purse with magic wand.)

Here's Teresa with Squawkee regular and Dorchester author Sandy Schwab. Sandy brought Teresa delicious gummy's and a cat calendar all the way from Germany!

Here's Teresa and Eloisa resplendent in white at a signing at the Waldenbooks in the CNN Center.

Here's the glowing Jacquie D. with her adored and adorable husband. She always said she married him because he looked like Donny Osmond so she coaxed him into crooning a verse of PUPPY LOVE to Teresa! They were definitely the cutest couple at the prom that night!

Here's Teresa and Liz at the Librarian's Tea with Eileen Dreyer and Librarian Extraordinaire Joanne Hamilton-Selway. Festive tea cakes and witty librarian conversation were savored by all! (But don't ask Joanne about the cab ride, okay?)

Resident beauty and make-up expert Lisa prepares Xtina for her moment in the spotlight as luncheon speaker.

Teresa and Connie on RITA night. (Did I mention how fabulous Connie's hair was?)

Pictures!

2006-07-31T17:41:00.000-04:00

christie and heather

shield your eyes, kids