Marilyn Monroe, the Biography, by Donald Spoto, kept me up all night.  I finished it Monday.  Couldn’t sleep after.  Reading her biography was like watching a horror movie.  I wanted to cry out- “No, don’t go in there!  Turn around!  Don’t talk to him!  Ruuuuuun!”  But no matter how desperately I wanted to intervene, the character made the wrong decision and decided to check out that mysterious and scary noise all by herself.  In the dark.  Where there be monsters.

I kept thinking about how Marilyn Monroe was the most famous actress in the world, in her day – my parent’s day.  It reminded me how my contemporary died tragically, also at the age of 36, Princess Diana, the most famous woman in the world.

Why does this happen?  As my daughter says – so they will remain forever young?  It’s just weirdly a-synchronous, if that makes any sense.

Marilyn Monroe may have been at the height of her fame before my time, but she’s always fascinated me.  I think it’s because when she’s on screen, if only for a few moments, my eyes are drawn to her and only her.  She’s a walking contradiction –  powerful and vulnerable, innocent and provocative, open and wary, full of fun and reclusive, a woman and a child – all at the same time.  And her eyes seem to look into your soul.  I think she was absolutely brilliant on screen.  Marilyn Monroe is my favorite actress of all time.

Grace Kelly is a goddess on screen, but cool, controlled, and unapproachable.  Audrey Hepburn is cute and talented, but she lacks physicality.  There was nothing earthy about either of these two actresses.

Marilyn had it all.  And she was far more intelligent, well-read, thoughtful, approachable, kind, and generous than the general public gave her credit for.  She made less money than you might imagine, far less.  She was a shy, stuttering perfectionist who never believed she got anything right.  She owned few clothes, relying upon loans from the studio wardrobe department.  She was way more messed up than I imagined, and therefore easy prey for those unscrupulous individuals who hang around super stars.  Think Michael Jackson.  She did not commit suicide.

And yet… the camera adored her.   She was ethereal.  Now I must go buy two movies I lack from my collection and every book of photographs I can find.

Who wants to read the book next?

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Some things are just sticky, you know?  Honey, syrup, melted chocolate, kids’ fingers.  Or, on the other hand, genre fiction like Lawrence Block’s dark and stark yet  luminous prose– which I rediscovered last year, or the disorientation of The Other Laura, by Cheryl Lynn.  Or Jamie’s role as ultimate archetypal romance hero in Outlander along with Claire’s annoying hemorrhoid obsession.  (Read enough of the series and you get there.  Wish I would have stopped at Outlander.)

The brawny, ancient Highlander Druids from KMM’s Highlander series.  The perfect seduction scene from Linda Howard’s Kill and Tell.  Gray Roulliard in After the Night.  Look him up.

The heroine’s palpable fear and arousal in Katalina Leon’s brilliant opening to the sensual Nobelsword.

The Walking Dead is as sticky as pine tar.  Scrub away, it ain’t comin’ off.  Good writing is like pine tar… It sticks.  Firefly stuck too.  Shiny!  So did some episodes of BSG… Sharon (Athena) having tea in her holding cell with Adama.  That episode was perfection.

I’ve read a lot of books, been reading since I was 18 months old– my dad didn’t play games or sports but he believed in reading from birth.  Many books stick, some rattle around, sort of blending together in my head.  Most books have made an impression on me, maybe not all, but most.

That is my goal, it’s so very simple.  To make an impression.  To make a reader think about a story after he or she has finished the last page, to make a reader wish there was more than, The End.

Captured is the book that makes me want to write more.  And I’d love an opportunity to add to Pushing Her Boundaries.  However, both will have to wait until I get the rights back.

What am I reading right now?  Because of two movies, I’m reading two books.  I was disappointed with the movie, The Help, but watching it I realized I wanted to know more about that era in the South.  Picked up a used copy of Coming of Age in Mississippi, by Anne Moody.  It’s a great book.  Can’t put it down.  My Week With Marilyn intrigued me so much, and I’m such a fan of her movies, that I bought a used copy of her bio – Marilyn Monroe, Her Biography, by Donald Spoto.  I’ll start reading that on my trip.  :)

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First of all, let’s get one thing straight–  I cried myself sick the day I turned 30 and I’ve refused to officially acknowledge any birthday since.  Are we clear?

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s move on to…

Beauty and the Feast.  It’s free from April 13th-April 17th.  So it’s free from my birthday to my anniversary.  Stream of consciousness here – you see… like the British Royal Family, my husband and I are related.  I know… don’t freak out.  We weren’t aware of this fact when we met, not that it would have mattered a lick.  Our grandfathers were some kind of cousins.  My grandmother, Jennie, also an Aries, took sort of a proprietary interest in our relationship.  Unfortunately, she didn’t live to see our reunion, so I scheduled our wedding as close to her birthday as I could as a tribute to her.  My husband and I were married on April 17th in the middle of a blizzard.  Everybody got stranded in Omaha for three days.  And, of course, my husband decided he didn’t want to live in the Midwest any longer.

I do believe in reincarnation.  I have my reasons, both logical and nonsensical, but isn’t that the way of things…  One of these lives, I’m coming back as a raptor.  When Jake and I were hiking in the rain a couple days ago, I caught this juvenile golden eagle balancing on a slender branch – the branch couldn’t have been more than an inch and a half in diameter, if that.  Oh these hollow-boned creatures!  I took some photos with my inadequate wet cell phone.  He let me get within 20 yards of him.  Yes, I am most definitely coming back as a hawk.

In the meantime, while you’re waiting for me to come back as a hawk, feel free to visit my friends.

Jaye Manus has been holding my hand for weeks as we’ve worked on formatting and professionalizing (is that a word?) Beauty and the Feast.  We both wanted this book to look damn good as an ebook.  And I do believe we’ve succeeded.  Go read her boast post .  She deserves every boastful word.  She performed miracles with this book.

Author Penny Watson also has something to say about Beauty and the Feast.  She was the first person to fall in love with the original version.  It’s how we bonded– over food and sex!  This revised version is even better.  If you stop by her place on Friday, I believe she may have a few surprises for you (and read her 4/12 post while you’re there – great stuff).  Click here for the link.

Ya’ll have a wonderful weekend.  Remember – FREE BOOK!  Click Here to upload Beauty and the Feast!  If I get ambitious, I’ll bake our traditional family birthday cake, for the birthday I don’t acknowledge – a whiskey cake.  It’s everybody’s favorite cake, but it’s not what you think.  I’ll take a photo for you.  Be good and thanks for stopping by!  Julia

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A friend of mine, JW Manus, has updated and re-released a romantic comedy – Suite Assumptions.  This is one fun read, and I’m not just sayin’ that because I’ve already read it. It’s a steal at $1.99!

On her first business trip, Sandra Campbell is determined to save her beloved uncle from financial ruin. He’s old! He’s almost sixty. He deserves a happy retirement. Her plans for the perfect sales presentation are threatened when she finds herself in the Honeymoon Suite with her arch nemesis, love-‘em-and-leave-‘em Martin Stonehouse. Martin has his own agenda. He’s had it up to here with the boss’s niece. Whatever it takes, it’s time to finally deal with Sandra.

Between bad luck and crazy circumstances, and being stuck in a pink-and-green Victorian love nest with the sexiest man in Bugle Creek, Texas, Sandra’s short stay in Dallas quickly turns into the business trip from hell. Her only chance to redeem herself is to say four magic words to the one man she loves to hate.

Another friend, and one of my favorite authors, has uploaded a book trailer.  Those of you who know me know I’m not a huge fan of book trailers.  Author Katalina Leon’s is a gem, chock full of symbolism and mysticism.  Her new story in EC’s Something Wicked This Way Comes is called Asterion.  Check out this trailer, it’s gorgeous.

Last but oh so not least, A Game of Thrones returns to my screen– I don’t know about yours but it’s definitely going to be on my screen– Sunday.  Oh.  Yes.  Here are some previews of this coming season:

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/watch-9-clips-from-game-of-thrones-season-2-with-cersei-tyrion-daenerys-a-dragon

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From In Plain Sight….

Marshall:  Patience, grasshopper.

Mary:  Suck it, sensei.

I read a post earlier today all about marketing (author marketing) on a go-to site.  But I could not disagree more with the author’s take on marketing.

I read a post within the past month, dang, can’t even remember any longer where I read it or who wrote it, but the blogger discussed how he’d entirely forgotten that he’d scheduled his KDP Select free promotion, hadn’t done any promo, any marketing, yet his sales skyrocketed after the promotion ended.  Thank you, Lord.  At last, someone else who’s not obsessed with marketing.

I have cut back on the promo over the past year – I don’t do the like me stuff or the follow me stuff or the buy me stuff or the vote for me stuff.  You can like me or dislike me, follow me or not, buy me or not.  I’m not going to ask you to vote for a book you probably haven’t read.  Free will, baby.  It’s up to you.  Blog tours, interviews and reviews can be valuable, and I love hosting new-to-me authors and old faves.  But I personally haven’t noticed a resulting bump in sales after a blog tour or a review.

I love my readers, and I thank everyone of you for reading my books.  It’s that simple.

Judith Brile says this:

“Here’s one of the secrets of a successful author: Five percent of the author’s time goes into the creation of the masterpiece—the remaining 95 percent will go into marketing and support of it over a period of time. Ninety-five percent!

“Your book journey is similar to an iceberg—your completed and published book is just the tip of it … it’s all the marketing effort under the surface that needs to be created, implemented and supported that leads to success. It’s what successful authors know … and what naïve and newbie authors need to know. The 95 percent factor.”

J. W. Manus has this to say in response:

“Call me old fashioned or even lazy, but I do not believe all that mad marketing sells many books. It’s nice to believe that writers/publishers can manipulate readers through marketing campaigns. I DO believe, and know for a fact, the system can be gamed. What I actually think about all this is the same thing that I’ve always thought, write a great story and then write another and don’t freak out about marketing and promotion. I think the key is having one’s name out there. That’s where social media and blogs and websites and all that other stuff is useful. But for selling a single title? I don’t buy it for a moment. 

“The trouble with marketing is that no one really knows how it works or why it works when it does, so it’s actually more like the lottery where there just enough big winners to get everybody excited and salivating.

“Personally, I think writers should focus on what they do they best and make honest efforts to connect with readers and keep writing and keep putting books out there. Some books find big audiences and some books find small audiences, and who knows why? Nobody knows. So why drive yourself crazy thinking about it?

“The urge to Do Something, Anything! is as old as the writing profession itself. Slow sales are disheartening, but they aren’t the end of the world. The nice thing about ebooks is, they’re around for forever (whatever that might end up meaning) so if the magic of right place/right time occurs, there the book is, available.

“Funny things happen in publishing. They always have. A book or an author might chug along quietly for years, then SOMETHING happens and suddenly it’s overnight success time and everybody races to emulate whatever it is the book or author had been doing all along.

“I try not to think much about marketing advice. 99% of it is pure hooey and the 1% that actually does anything worthwhile can be done quietly and without much fuss. Mostly it irritates me because it tends to put writers into panic mode, which causes them to act like nitwits or obnoxious spammers, and that’s sad. It makes a lot of money for the “gurus” pushing it, though, so I doubt we’ll see the end of them any time soon. (did you notice how the Book Shepherd blamed the authors for not trying hard enough? Never once entertained the thought that all that marketing bullshit was, um, bullshit?)

“I do suspect (and greatly hope) the Era of the Blockbuster is coming to an end. And none too soon. A book beloved by readers, even if it is only a handful of readers, is a worthy book. I am sick and tired of those books being called “failures” because they don’t hit best seller lists.

“Write your best, keep the books coming, connect with readers honestly, and you’re a success.”

(I don’t know about you, but I sure feel better.)

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