Julia Barrett's World

So…I have a busy day planned.

First, a mini walk for my sick dog.

Second, a hike with a bunch of hill climbing to work the gluts and the quads.

Third, a shower prior to the haircut because it’s just what you have to do, like cleaning your house before the housekeeper arrives.

Fourth, a shower after the haircut to get rid of all the sticky little hairs that will fall down my shirt.

Oh, somewhere in there I need to link you all to my Spotlight over at the Dark Diva’s place.  They are featuring me on Monday morning, along with my science fiction romance, Captured.  As soon as they send me the link I will post it.  Feel free to search their spotlight in the meantime.  They’ll be featuring some great authors this week.  http://ddrreviews.blogspot.com/

Fifth, guess what…head shots!  A friend of mine is a photographer and she will be making me look all perty.  She knows I hate having my picture taken so she’s promised I will look gooooood!  I trust her totally.  One of these days you won’t have to look at a cartoon avatar of me.  I’m really stressing out about what to wear..

For a fun read, check out Samantha Gentry’s blog – she’s one of my fellow Cobblestone authors.  Her post is titled – The Internet Will Fail and 8 other predictions that didn’t come true.

http://samanthagentry.blogspot.com/

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Talk to you later!  Be good, ya’ll!  love, julia

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So Cindy Spencer Pape tagged me and now I have to figure out how to do this boyfriend blog!  Like Cindy, it’s tough because I am so stuck on my one and only, but…that doesn’t mean I can’t fantasize!

We all have our favorite book boyfriends and now you have the chance to create one just for yourself and your fantasies! How do you play? Fill out the quiz bellow, post a picture of sexy man and tag five (5) other book addicts to do the same. Don’t forget to pop to their blogs as let them know they have been tagged!
Once tagged… you have to do the same, grab the button, answer the questions, and keep it rolling! But don’t forget the picture of the sexy man! It doesn’t have to match your fantasy man, just a little eye candy for the rest of us… heheheee!

1.  Hair style and color:

I likes ‘em dark and handsome!  Gerard Butler is one who does it for me despite his short hair – love long hair on a guy too.  Anything I can thread my fingers through is okay with me!

2.  Eye color and facial features:

Oh…be still my heart!  Daniel Craig, a manly man!  ‘Nuff said!

3.  Height and body type:

Sean Connery.  Long, lean and athletic.  The perfect man.

4.  Visible age:

Gorgeous at any age!  Thank you Mr. Pitt.

5.  Bangability:  OMG!  My husband might have a fit!  Any of the above plus:

Clive Owen.  Yummo!

6.  Human or other:

Go Wesley Snipes!  Too hot to handle.  Blade….

7.  Paranormal skills:

Take me…take me now, Wolverine!

8.  Interests:

Love horses, love men on horses, love Tom Selleck.

9.  Habitat:

Sorry, Angelina.  Here we go again – Brad, in A River Runs Through It.  Montana, fly fishing, wilderness, love and loss.

10.  Special skills:

Must look good in a kilt!

And because I’m a sucker for him, I’ll add one more man just for the hell of it:

Oh Eric…

So, I’m tagging Fran Lee, Mia Watts, Stacy Espino, Katalina Leon, and C.J. Black.

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Because I am a huge fan of Tres Leches Cake

You have got to check out the recipe for Tres Leches Cake with Caramelized Bacon and Bananas.  O.M.F.G.

I don’t eat bacon, but I’m gonna make the cake and caramelize something to put on top – bananas and phacon, blueberries, apples, something.  Damn, that cake looks good!

http://projectbacon.wordpress.com/

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or, Disney does a morality play.

Ya’ll remember Bambi, right?  That sweet Disney movie that traumatized me as a five year old.  Darling Bambi, running ahead of his mother, trying to escape Man, the Hunter.  He made it home free, and then turned to look for his mother.  She was gone.  Oh.  My.  God.  I had to be carried from the theater, wailing.

Coming onto Christmas every year, I think about Bambi.  Maybe it’s because I remember Bambi’s first winter and his wonder and utter delight at the sight of snow.

You know, some historians have speculated that the author, Felix Salten, an Austrian Jew, wrote Bambi as a secret political treatise criticizing the political oppression of his day.  I disagree.  Bambi was first published in 1923, a full ten years before Hitler came to power, during a time when the Jews of Austria had full citizenship.

Other historians have called the book the first environmental novel.  Again, I disagree.  There’s no science in the book.  The story is told from the point of view of the forest’s inhabitants like a fable, like an Aesop’s Fable.   It’s pretty dark, even darker than the movie which I think is damn dark, especially for a kid’s movie.

No, I suspect Salten wrote the book because he loved animals and nature, and frankly, the man probably opposed  hunting.  The book made quite a stir when it was released, becoming immensely popular all over Europe and the United States…until 1936 when the Nazis banned it because Hitler believed the first reason to be true – that Salten had written Bambi as a political allegory about the Nazi treatment of Jews.   They burned all the copies they could find.  Damn those Nazis!

Anywho, Salten managed to escape to Switzerland, where he stayed out of Nazi hands and wrote a sequel to Bambi.  He died April 8, 1945.

Aren’t you glad you tuned in for this uplifting post?  Well, I think about a lot of random stuff at Christmas time, being Jewish and all – with a Christmas tree sitting in my living room – now that’s an interesting German tradition related to the old Norse gods, but I’ll save it for another post!

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Captured

There is nothing like a great title, a title that captures your book perfectly.  Siren and I have gone back and forth, working on a title for my upcoming science fiction romance and we’ve finally, and very satisfactorily, settled upon Captured.  That one word sums up the book – a woman is not only captured by an alien trapper, she finds herself captured by her own reluctant respect and growing love for the man himself.

Usually I have no problem with titles, but the name for this work escaped me.  It was kind of weird.  Siren and I went back and forth – I sent a list of ten suggestions, they took my suggestions and sent a list of additional suggestions back.  We decided upon Beloved Captor, but like I said, that didn’t quite capture the spirit of the story.

Captured is perfect!  I cannot wait to introduce you to Mari and Ekkatt and the world of the Attun-Ra!

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Books…Books…Books

I love to read, so it stands to reason I might take up writing  Therefore, I attended the University of Iowa to become a writer and I worked with the University of Iowa Writers Workshop.  But alas, it was not to be.  When I got out of school, planning to write the next great American novel, I realized that I was in danger of starving to death!  My roommate had been in nursing school and it occurred to me that I could be a nurse – the last thing I’d ever imagined when I was growing up.  I had figured…president…astronaut…world-famous author…but as a nurse I could support myself – which turned out great since within a few years, I found myself a single-parent without any means of support aside from myself.

So writing got put off for quite a few years – lots of pretty amazing stuff intervened.  Then, one day, while hiking in a slick, rocky area, two miles from my car, I fell and pretty much destroyed my left knee.  Suddenly, I had to take a break…of sorts…from my hectic life and sit my ass down.  The first surgery failed.  For a year I wore a tight, titanium brace that stretched from my upper thigh down to my mid-calf in order to walk.  When I took the brace off, and I could only stand it about two-three hours at a time, I hobbled on crutches…this was while waiting for another surgery with another surgeon who I hoped could restore my ability to walk without artificial aids.  In preparation for the second surgery, and what we knew would be months of rehab, my husband bought me a laptop and I began to write – thus began a second career – as a Romance Novelist.

If you take a look at my pages, you’ll see some of my books listed.  Everything there, including two more, will be released in 2010, and I’ll tell you about each one of them in later posts.  Three more works of Romance/Suspense were released in 2008 and 2009 – they will be re-released with another publishing house in 2011, and I’ll be happy to talk about those too – I am very proud of those three works…They were a labor of love.  Everything I write is a labor of love.  If I don’t love it, I don’t write it.  More tomorrow!  Julia

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The List

Favorite Book – too many to name just one, but I have a tradition…every year I reread Dune, by Frank Herbert, Shogun, by James Clavell, Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott, and Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte.  I’m currently into nonfiction, biographies and George R.R. Martin’s science fiction series – A Game of Thrones.  I must say, my favorite morality play – I mean book, is East of Eden, by John Steinbeck.

Favorite Movie – McCabe and Mrs. Miller, starring Warren Beaty and Julie Christie and directed by Robert Altman.  But I love the Lord of the Rings trilogy too.  The movie that left me sobbing (besides Bambi) – Dead Man Waling with Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn, directed by Tim Robbins.

Favorite sports movie – Bull Durham.

Favorite military movie – The Great Santini.

Favorite cowboy movie – Brokeback Mountain…second favorite- The Magnificent Seven – Yul Brynner was so sexy as a bald guy!

Favorite Old Movies – lots!  The Wizard of Oz, All About Eve, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, anything with Marilyn Monroe in it..Katherine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby,  The Philadelphia Story and The Lion in Winter.

Favorite off-beat movies – Frequency, Enemy of the State, Parenthood, A River Runs Through It, Bend It Like Beckham, especially the Indian dancing part, Die Hard, The Terminator.

Favorite food – milk chocolate, after that…vegetarian spicy stuff – love me some curries!

Tomorrow – Why do I write and maybe what do I write…See ya!

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Welcome to my world…

I’m officially here, though still trying to figure out how to work all my gadgets and widgets!

If you don’t know me yet, here are a few facts:

I have an off-beat sense of humor and I love nothing more than to laugh until I cry.

I’m an animal lover and we care for  a whole stable full of creatures and they all get along – fish, foul, dogs, cats, mice, snakes, horses…we happily support an entire food chain of creatures and they all know their names…except maybe the snake.

I somehow managed to marry the love of my life, my soul mate – we first met when I was fourteen, and we have three remarkable children because I figured the best thing I could do for this crazy world of ours was to raise conscious children.

We are a bunch of sports fanatics – all sports…all seasons.  My husband is a runner, he was all-state in football and wrestling, and we hike up hills, down hills, up mountains and down mountains like maniacs.

I played softball, volleyball, basketball, soccer and aw shucks – was a cheerleader.  Love to ride horses – it’s been an obsession of mine since I was a little kid.

My son played soccer, football and now he’s into hockey and ultimate frisbee.  One daughter is as into horses as I am, she still rides constantly – she’s a real life wrangler – my youngest played softball and soccer and basketball at a very high level and she hopes to coach.

As you can tell – sports-obsessed!

Oh yeah, I’ve been a vegetarian since I was in the eighth grade!

Enough about me for now.  Next post – my books…maybe!

I love to hear from readers, romance fans, writers – subscribe to my newsletter and keep up – I’ll be getting one out soon!

Much love,  Julia

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