Interesting movie but nothing special.  Maybe it’s because I’m not a George Clooney swooney.  I will admit that I enjoyed him in this role, probably more so than in any other movie of his that I’ve seen.  I’ve often heard him compared to Cary Grant, an actor I do swoon over, or would have swooned over had I been alive in those days, but this is the first time I’ve seen any likeness.  Perhaps it was the understated, subtle way Mr. Clooney handled the part.  Maybe it was the expression on his face at the one climactic moment that reminded me a bit of Cary Grant in the movie, An Affair to Remember.  In any case, Up in the Air isn’t a movie that will stay with me.  Anna Kendrick, on the other hand, will.  She stole the show.

Anybody else watching basketball today?  I’m already statistically eliminated from my pool, but at least I won’t come in dead last!

Contests:  I have book copies to give away!  I’d love to hear your hooks for a romance novel!  You can win a signed hard copy of The Cougar Book – full of some fun and very sexy stories!

Have a great weekend.  julia

P.S.  Happy ipad day for those of you who plan to get yours!  Talk about the widespread dissemination and coolness of ereading!!!  Bodes well!

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Are You Over The Hill?

Rebecca over at Dirty Sexy Books, http://www.dirtysexybooks.com/Dirty_Sexy_Books/Home/Home.html posed a couple of interesting questions to her readers yesterday – Why are most romance heroines in their twenties and is thirty-five over the hill?  Here’s a direct link to the post:

http://www.dirtysexybooks.com/Dirty_Sexy_Books/Home/Entries/2010/3/30_The_Importance_of_Age.html

I thought about this question all night, and I’m kinda pissed because I had this really great post written and then my damn computer shut itself off to update some POS and I lost the post – so here I go again!

I’ve come up with some answers.  I’ll discuss them in no particular order.  First, the no-brainer…

1.  Because it sells.  Readers seem to want to read about twenty-something heroines with thirty-something heroes.  The truth is, women mature faster than men, so in my mind, there is not a great deal of difference between, say, a twenty-eight year old woman and a thirty-six year old man.

2.  Guilty as charged.  Most of my heroines tend to be between the ages of twenty-five and twenty-nine, except for Kate in You Might Just Get It, who is a forty-one year old confident, cute, sexy nurse dating a twenty-nine year old chef.  (The Cougar Book)  I looked deep into my heart and asked myself, why is this?  Well…

3.  Because in our twenties, we are not set in stone.  We are still malleable and we are risk takers.  At least some of us are – certainly our heroines are, even if they are reluctant risk takers.  In our thirties, less so.  In our thirties, most of the time we’ve discovered a pathway, a career path, a family path, a marriage path, and we are reluctant to put any of those things at risk.  I look back on my twenties and wonder how in the hell I ever survived that decade.  Jesus, I took risks, risks that I would never have taken in my thirties when I had so much to lose!

4.  As a writer, I can spin a woman in her twenties any way I want.  She is a blank slate.  I can give my heroine what I wished for myself in that decade – actually what I ended up getting at the age of twenty-seven – my hero, my true love – and my life was pretty damn dysfunctional up until then.  Maybe notorious would be a better word.  I can’t do that quite as well with a woman in her thirties because a woman in her thirties is not a blank slate.  She is full of history, mystery and in possession of a much deeper, more complex back story.

5.  I can write a story about a woman in her twenties from the perspective of what I had learned by the time I was in my mid-thirties – which is why my heroines tend to be tough survivors and unusually mature.  Most romance writers are over thirty.  My favorite writers allow their maturity to trickle down over their characters – occasionally you find the brilliant twenty-something putting out a really compelling story – usually paranormal or urban fiction/fantasy – but my favorite writers in all genres (not just Romance) tend to be old enough to have lived a little, gained some perspective and learned some valuable life lessons.

6.  Perhaps the reason romance readers enjoy stories involving young heroines is that we want to re-envision that decade for ourselves, romanticize it, so to speak.  Make it over into a period of  time when we didn’t fuck up quite so much.

In any case, I do plan to write a work for Rebecca and myself involving a thirty-six year old heroine.  First I have to finish with three other WIPs – damn it!

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I invoke the Passover Rule…

Here’s my take on life – give the bitter with the sweet.  Or sweeten the bitter with the sweet, you know…sweeten the moror with the haroset.

If I have a critical word to impart to someone…like, let’s pretend one of the new nurses I work with totally messed up her med sheet.  Should I get all up in her face and say – Hey biatch!  You totally effed up this med sheet and I wasted two valuable hours of my time fixing it so you better get your damn act together and shape the hell up! Should I approach her like that?  If I stood in her shoes, I’d smack the crap out of me.  I much prefer to approach the matter thusly – Hi Meggie, love your hair.  That cut really looks good on you and the color brings out the blue in your eyes.  Say, I noticed over the weekend that the med sheet for so and so was missing a few items.  I straightened everything out with the pharmacy and the family and re-wrote it for you.  Do you need some help with these new med sheets? They’re a bit confusing…

I bring this up because I have a friend, and she’s a really good friend, (Gentlemen Prefer Blonds), and every damn time she reads one of my books – which I always comp her – the first thing she says isn’t – Wow!  Love the cover! or Damn, girl, that story brought me to tears! or Shit, that was a hot read! It’s always like this…I started your book.  There’s a typo on page 23, line 10, or you’ve left a dangling participle on page 59, line 15, or I don’t think that word is the right word for what you’re describing.

Smack.

In other news:  I’ve decided to risk the two a.m. newt face dropping.  It’s a trade-off.  Either I risk a newt or I put up with three cats playing whack-a-mole on my bed all night.  I’ll take my chances with the newt.

I’ve developed a major girl-crush on author Donna George Storey, whose short story, Comfort Food, is near mine in The Cougar Book.  She doesn’t know it yet, but I’m going to interview her because she is interesting as all hell.

Last but not least – I love this commercial and until Lindsay Lohan filed a lawsuit, it never occurred to me to associate her with it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEXZ2hfD3bU

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Yeah, some days it’s like that!

Rebecca at Dirty Sexy Books wrote a genius piece back on February 23 entitled -

The Ten Biggest Mistakes Authors Make On Their Websites.

You can check it out here:  (and I asked her permission to quote her, thanks Rebecca!)

http://www.dirtysexybooks.com/Dirty_Sexy_Books/Home/Entries/2010/2/23_The_Ten_Biggest_Mistakes_Authors_Make_on_Their_Websites.html

The first mistake she mentions is the lack of a website.  I have to agree.  In this internet age I’m shocked when I try to find information about an author and her books and google turns up bupkiss!

The second mistake?  No blog.  She’s right – every single day isn’t necessary but a once a week would be nice.  I do get frustrated when I hope to hear what other authors are up to and they have a site, but the last post was a year ago.  Where are you, my friend?

Uh-oh, the third mistake is to bury our stuff under a nest of links.  Guilty as charged?  I try to keep my links to the side but sometimes I wonder if I have too many – but I love those links!  Each one means something to me.  I’ll try to keep in mind, simplify and minimize!

Fourth – link bait for bloggers – Ladies, we need a hook so bloggers find us interesting, you know, like a freebie, a short story that ties into our upcoming release, a freebie for readers and fans.  Okay – workin’ on it!

Five – ignoring your website – that kind of ties in with Mistake Number Two.

Six?  A picture of myself?  Are you effin’ crazy?  I have deep and abiding personal reasons for NOT having a photo.  I do have an icon.  I know it’s not exactly me, but my icon is a smiling redhead, like me!  If you read Captured, you know what I look like and you know what kind of potty mouth I have.

Seven is very important, IMO.  Mistake Seven – They don’t promote anyone but themselves.    This one is of such significance that I think I’ll quote it in its entirety:

Your website is one of your best marketing tools, and so this statement might seem counterproductive, but don’t always talk about yourself.  That’s right, talk about other books, places, and people too.  It’s uncomfortable to visit a site that sells itself too hard, so to avoid that trap, spend some time promoting your favorite authors.  I love to visit Charlaine Harris’s website because she blogs about what she’s reading every few weeks.  Maybe you’re wondering, what if I read something that stinks like a road-kill skunk?  Then preserve your reputation and don’t mention it (let an asshole like me stomp on it), but be sure to give props to the books that you DO like.

Mistake number Eight – We forget to mention and/or link to the reviewers who review our books.  Rebecca suggests a separate review page that contains links to all our book reviews.  Again – workin’ on it!

Number Nine – Author’s don’t interact with their fans.  Well, I do and most authors I know do.  My fans are precious to me.  If they take the time to comment or email me, I will reply.  I’ve been on the non-receiving end.  I’ve written to authors to tell them how much I enjoyed their books and I never hear, so…their books come to mean less to me.  On the other hand, when an author responds, his/her books come to mean a great deal more.

Last but not least – Number Ten – We don’t offer a high-resolution image of the cover.  Sorry, my website won’t always support a high res cover image and I suck at sizing.  Some authors are really savvy.  They know exactly how to fix these things and they are on my most admired list.

I am terrible when it comes to taking advice – stubborn, headstrong, impulsive, but Rebecca has made some excellent points.  I’m trying to learn how to learn when it comes to this blogging stuff.  Thanks!

In other news – Beauty and the Feast - waiting for your recipes and go visit with the delightfully irreverent Chris and her kitties at Stumbling Over Chaos to see how to win a copy.  http://www.stumblingoverchaos.com/

Brynn Paulin is hosting me over at Wednesday Wonder Writers:  http://brynnpaulin.blogspot.com/

Stop by!

Author Donna George Storey has a great little novella in The Cougar Book – Comfort Food.  I have a copy of the book to give away, signed by me cuz I have a story in there too – great minds think alike!  Speaking of websites, here’s hers -

http://www.donnageorgestorey.com/

Okay, done for the day!  Julia

P.S.  Just finished:  Game Change.  Just started:  The Lady in the Tower.

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A quick note and I’ll stop by later!

Captured is up on Amazon and available for download on your Kindle.  Go for it!  My hubby did!

http://www.amazon.com/Captured-Siren-Publishing-Classic-ebook/dp/B00371V7WO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267807147&sr=8-1

Remember the contest – I want your sexiest recipes!  Oh…and I received my hard copies of The Cougar Book yesterday.  It’s fabulous!  Anyone want a signed copy?  Leave me a recipe and you could win one of those too!  This book is hot!  My story, of course, is hot and sweet, ‘cuz, you know, it’s kinda like me.

Releases:  Out of the Shadows, by Cammie Eicher, the first in the Shadow Ancient series,  Resplendence Publishing. This vampire romantic suspense creates a new mythology of vampires, and features a dark and sexy vampire hunter forced to protect the Ancients’ child of prophecy — and the woman who eventually must choose between her love for him and her promise to protect the newborn.

Buy Link: http://www.resplendencepublishing.com/

Check out Cindy Spencer Pape, she tagged me!  http://cindyspencerpape.blogspot.com/

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