Julia Barrett's World

Kat says I need to promote my new book, that some readers appreciate dark truth in genre fiction.

We were talking about Come Back To Me and she said:

“I like dark too. I’ve had plenty of it myself and see the value of catharsis. The truth of darker material that transcends the situation is even if a woman hasn’t personally experienced an extreme abuse-she knows of it. It has happened to someone she knows or she sees the abuse of women in our culture. There’s a lot of darkness around us that needs to come forward and be healed. Making it into art and sharing it will be very healing to all involved.

Not only is he in the Baseball Hall of Fame, and one of the top one hundred best baseball players of all time, he’s ninety years old and he’s been married to his wife for seventy of those ninety years. Way to go, Stan the Man!

My husband provided me with the above information. He was very impressed by the longevity of Stan’s marriage.

Also, thanks to hubby’s love affair with his Kindle - I gave it to him last Chrismukah - he provided me with some additional, and very writer-pertinent information.

By his calculations, when you upload a book sample to your Kindle, you get approximately 5% of the total number of pages. He recently uploaded a sample of Something In the Air, by Richard Hoffer. The book chronicles the 1968 Olympic games in Mexico City. My husband loved the 5% he read, but when he looked at the Kindle price of $17.99, he declined to purchase the book…for about an hour. Then he bought it because he said the sample was so damn good he couldn’t resist.

His take-home message to me? Hook your reader in the first 5% of your story, especially when it comes to books on Kindle. I asked what he thought that meant…what I mean is - does this indicate that our attention span as a reading species is decreasing? Or does this mean that we have a decreased tolerance for spending our hard-earned dollars on something we likely will not enjoy? And I asked him - How many pages are you willing to give a book before you decide it’s not for you?

He and I agree that while our attention may be drawn to many things, the reason is not a decreasing attention span, but rather an increasing need to choose wisely when it comes to spending money earmarked for entertainment. And he says 5% of a book is enough to help him make up his mind. That could mean 12 pages or 40. So hook ‘em early, ladies, and reel ‘em in.

I’m one of those freaks who learned to read when I was eighteen months old and I’ve kept my nose buried in a book since. Although I’m a relative newcomer to the romance genre, my tastes vary wildly - I can flip from nonfiction to religious treatise to fantasy to works of academia to medical journals to literary fiction to poetry without a thought - you name the genre and at the very least I’ve probably dabbled in it.

Over the years, I’ve read some stinkers put out by major publishing houses, written by authors with enormous PR pushes behind them, toting big-time reviewers on their shoulders - and they’ve been wrapped in some of the most eye-catching, exquisite covers around. On the other hand, I’ve read works of elegant, beautiful prose that slipped through the backdoor of the literary scene with barely a whimper, wearing a plain brown wrapper and without any fanfare whatsoever.

What am I trying to say? It ain’t the meat it’s the motion. Does the story have substance? Does it touch my heart, wrench my gut? Does it fire up the old neurons? Do I mull the story over long after I’ve finished reading it? Is it worth a re-read and maybe a recommendation?

Reviewers have a perfect right to dislike/hate/detest any book they read, post negative reviews, take a blow torch to a book, burn it to ashes and bury it in a pile of horse manure. They can even pose the very legitimate question - is this work indicative of the books a particular pub puts out. But to trash a specific publishing house because you picked up one or two books you didn’t like? That’s ridiculous, and I make that claim as a reader, not a writer. If you want a meaningful sample, read twenty, thirty books of various sub-genres, and then, if you still think the publisher is ‘crap‘ - you can express a legitimate, informed opinion based upon a reasonable sample of the thousands of books that publisher has to offer. Hey, there are a few publishing houses I don’t respect, but that doesn’t mean I think everything they put out is crap. I’ve found damn good writers within those pubs and pointed readers in their direction without hesitation.

On a more positive note - speaking of books, check out Eliza Gayle’s blog and her 30 days of naughty excerpts. She has books from multiple pubs…we are all equal in Eliza’s eyes: http://elizagayle.net/blog/

A new-to-me blogger tagged me, which is very sweet.

http://www.sugarbeatsbooks.com/

So now I must do the following:

1) Share 7 things about myself. (Ack!)

2) Pass this award on to 15 other bloggers recently discovered. (Can do!)

3) Notifiy the recipients. (Probably can do!)

4) Link the blogger who gave this award. (Done!)

Here goes:

1. All my life I’ve been told that I prefer animals to people.

2. I love to cook and don’t mind the clean up.

3. I cannot sit still.

4. I am a science fiction/fantasy geek.

5. My favorite movie of all time is McCabe and Mrs. Miller, starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie.

6. My husband and I met at summer camp - I was a camper, he was a counselor.

7. My biggest high in this life is galloping on a horse.

Hmmmm - who shall I pass this on to? I think I’ll halve the 15 and do 8. Fifteen is a lot and eight is a lucky number.

http://www.fpreviews.com/?zx=a3a2ffe49acf2d78

http://www.pennyromance.com/

http://twillwoven.blogspot.com/

http://smartgirlsscifi.wordpress.com/

http://www.sophieoak.com/

http://fangswandsandfairydust.blogspot.com/

http://michellesramblins.blogspot.com/

http://delilahhunt.wordpress.com/

Okay, back to the real world for another three weeks.

Today/Yesterday, was/is the release of my romance/suspense Come Back To Me. Here’s the link and the blurb. I’m afraid to encourage you to buy the book because it’s very close to my heart. When it comes to this story and these characters, I’m just as emotionally vulnerable now as I was back then - ‘cuz the novel is autobiographical. TMI? Come Back To Me is dedicated to hubby, my own personal romance hero, but like the hero in my book, he wasn’t around to save me when I needed saving. I saved myself, my infant, and my mom. But enough of my sob story. I survived.

Buy link: http://www.evernightpublishing.com/products/Come-Back-to-Me-by-Julia-Rachel-Barrett.html

Blurb: Sometimes the safest path is to keep people at a distance…especially men.

Can their love withstand the demons of her past and present?

I got this sweet review for One Four All from Sizzling Hot Books: http://www.sizzlinghotbooks.net/2010/11/one-four-all-by-julia-rachel-barrett.html?zx=47e2f2da582289e3

“This is a surprisingly easy read. Julia Barrett slowly introduces us to the alternate world through the characters instead of massive information dumps at beginning of the story; and without confusing us along the way. I really enjoyed this and the world she created. The technology seems to be just a little advanced from ours, but nothing that needed to be explained. However, Lira’s country of Zhinshu has different moral and religious attitudes from ours and those of their neighbors of Khubuk. The main one to the story being that the Ruling family take three ‘consorts’ for life, presumably to help keep them and their children safe.”

Thank you so much, new reviewer Vicky!

I made the best yams for Thanksgiving. I don’t even like yams or sweet potatoes, despite the fact that they are super healthy. Every Thanksgiving I make them because hubby and one kid likes them, but I never eat them. This year I tried a completely different recipe. I saw a recipe from Tyler Florence and thought, hey, that actually sounds good if I change it up a bit. Oh! These yams are so good we’ve all been eating them today. They were the best thing about the dinner and it was a dang amazing dinner - except I’m not a huge turkey fan. I tried brining the turkey this year. I think brining is a crock. I prefer my usual soy-orange marinade. The recipe comes from Tyler Florence, but I made some changes. Here it is with my tweaks:

Whipped Sweet Potatoes

4 medium yams, cooked, cooled and peeled

1 ripe banana

1/4 cup brown sugar

6 tablespoons heavy whipping cream

Kosher salt to taste

Streusel Topping

heaping 1/4 cup brown sugar

heaping 1/4 cup flour

4 tablespoons cold butter

1 1/2 cups chopped pecans

Whip together first five ingredients. Pour into 9″ X 11″ pan sprayed with Pam. With your hands mix together brown sugar, flour, butter and pecans and sprinkle on top of yams. Bake at 375′ for 20 minutes. Enjoy!

I’ll be the first to admit that the romance genre is not kind to the beta hero. He usually fills the role of comic relief or sidekick.

However, the beta hero is a film favorite. I’ve fallen for any number of self-effacing, insecure, nebishy beta heroes in film.

She’s Out of My League - Kirk gets Molly, but his sensitive best friend, Devon, steals the show.

Zombieland - Columbus gets the girl. Remember…double tap.

Knocked Up - Ben Stone, one of the biggest betas of all hooks up with Alison Scott. Definitely an example of the beta getting the hot girl.

Superbad - McLovin’ - need I say more?

Napoleon Dynamite - perhaps the first of this generation’s beta heroes.

Kick-Ass - Dave Lizewski dons tights and gets the girl.

Risky Business - One of the orginal, starring a young Tom Cruise, his gaggle of geeks, and Rebecca De Mornay.

I Love You, Man - Paul Rudd almost always plays the beta who gets the girl.

Pretty much every Ben Stiller movie involves the beta getting the girl. The beta in question may not always be Ben Stiller, but still…

Since I don’t have lots of time to watch movies, I’d love to hear about your favorite betas. I’m having trouble coming up with a beta in a romance novel who is the protagonist and not a supporting character.

In other quick news: Cobblestone Press has a great contest running through Friday the 26th - http://cobblestone-mainstreet.com/afterdark/?p=268

And I have a new release, Come Back To Me, with Evernight Publishing. This story is not for the faint of heart, but I think it’s beautiful. http://www.evernightpublishing.com/products/Come-Back-to-Me-by-Julia-Rachel-Barrett.html

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my friends!

love, Julia

and why.

1. Jamie Fraser of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander. Jamie Fraser is the gold standard. He is the man by which I measure all fantasy men. Is Jamie a nice guy? Let’s think about this. Yes and no. When it comes to sex, he would never resort to force. If you recall…no wait, let’s just say that Jamie believes in saving himself for the right woman/marriage. Yet, he sees nothing wrong with resorting to corporal punishment, aka Claire’s behind, when Claire’s actions endanger their group. He fights and kills when necessary and without hesitation to protect what’s his and the people he loves and he does not suffer any pangs of conscience. Above all else, Jamie is a pragmatist. He’s courageous, competent, complex, cunning and loyal. He’s compassionate, but he’s not nice. One of the reasons Jamie works so amazingly well as a romantic hero is that a man like this could really exist. I know because I’m married to a man like him.

2. John Blackthorne from Shogun, by James Clavell - a work of literary/historical fiction with a poignant, tragic romance thrown into the mix. I know this book isn’t a romance novel, but the relationship between John Blackthorn and Mariko is quite possibly my favorite romance of all time. I cry every single time I read the book. John Blackthorne is another man thrown into life-altering circumstances and he does what he has to do in order to survive. Like Jamie, he too is a pragmatist. Killing leaves a bad taste in his mouth, but he’ll kill without hesitation when necessary. He knew they were all afraid of him, even the Captain General, and that most hated him. But that was normal, for it was the pilot who commanded at sea; it was he who set the course and ran the ship, he who brought them from port to port….At sea the pilot was leader, sole guide, and final arbiter of the ship and her crew. Alone he commanded from the quarterdeck. That’s heady wine, Blackthorne told himself. And once sipped, never to be forgotten, always to be sought, and always necessary. That’s one of the things that keep you alive when others die.

3. Some of my favorite bad boys spring from the mind of Karen Marie Moning - Daegus MacKeltar in The Dark Highlander, Adam Black (oh my god yummo) from The Immortal Highlander, and my personal favorite, Cian MacKeltar from Spell of the Highlander. Each of them is an Alpha Male to the enth degree and by no stretch of the imagination do I consider them nice. These are dangerous men, but they would never harm their women and that combination makes them very, very sexy in my eyes.

4. The last example from romance literature, but not the least, another dangerous man who borders on overbearing in an irresistibly appealing way - Gray Rouillard from After the Night, by Linda Howard. Irrepressibly Alpha, I want to smack him and tangle tongues at the same time. Gray Rouillard is one unforgettable, not very nice, hero.

A few examples of popular alpha males who play not nice guys.

5. Clint Eastwood in nearly every movie he’s been in.

6. Rhett Butler in the movie version of Gone With the Wind.

7. John Wayne in the movie, The Searchers.

I would love to hear some of your favorites.

Happy Thanksgiving tomorrow! I’m taking the day off. Coming Friday - beta/gamma heroes!

And thank you for the amazing comments - they are brilliant!

Or why the movie, Predators, watches like a romance novel reads.

As viewers, we are quite literally dropped into the middle of the action. And I do mean dropped. A good romance does the same thing - the story begins in the middle of our hero’s or our heroine’s life, often in the midst of a difficult, dangerous, unpleasant, life altering situation. We generally aren’t given the entire back story in the beginning - i.e. from birth to present day. The back story unfolds as the plot progresses, often via dialogue, sometimes with nothing more than a nod of the head or a look.

In Predators, the closest we come to back story in the beginning is when our unlikely and nameless hero asks our somewhat more likely and equally nameless heroine if she’s IDF. I know what IDF is…look it up if you’re not sure, I don’t want to spoil too much of the movie. That simple question gives us significant glimpses into the back stories of both - we now know what she is and what she does to some extent and what her history might be, and we know that he’s familiar enough with the IDF to use nothing more than the initials, IDF, without hesitation. That fact alone hints strongly at his background.

Every character in Predators is an archetype, and none fits the typical hero archetype, far from it. Yet each character, like the archetypal hero in Joseph Campbell’s book, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, must follow a classic heroes’ journey - descend into the depths of hell, face his or her inner demons, and either conquer them or die trying. We use archetypes in romance all the time.

Adrien Brody’s character, we don’t learn his name until the very last scene, is amoral. (Names aren’t important here, archetypes are.) He’s competent, courageous, single-minded, decisive and discerning - everything we love in our Alpha Males, but through most of the film, his only concern is his own survival. For him, there is no moral high ground. He is not compassionate, self-sacrificing or sympathetic, yet he’s honest, straightforward, matter of fact, clear-thinking and therefore, compelling and appealing in the exact same way the hero of a romance novel is. The question is, in the end I think, can he show some empathy, not kindness mind you - this man is not kind - but empathy. Adrien Brody’s interpretation of the role brings to mind the words Faye Dunaway uses to describe Robert Redford’s character in the movie, Three Days of the Condor. She says, paraphrasing here, “Your eyes…they aren’t kind, but they don’t miss anything.” Robert Redford is the hero in that movie. Like Adrien Brody in Predators, he isn’t kind, but neither is he deliberately cruel. He does whatever he deems necessary to survive…sometimes he’s not so nice, but yes, he too does the right thing in the end.

I have to admit, I like my bad boys. Since this post is getting long, tomorrow - my favorite bad boys and if there’s time, a few of the beta heroes I adore.

Some of my favorite romance heroes cannot by any stretch of the imagination be considered nice guys.

(notice I say my favorites so you won’t think I’m dissing yours)

Arrogant? Yes.

Hot stuff? Absolutely.

Testosterone laden? Positively oozing from every pore.

Protective and possessive of those they care about? Without question.

Nice guys? Probably not.

This is on my mind for two reasons - reason one: the hero of the book I just finished (oops! Finished Reading!) is a nice guy. He’s a flat out nice guy and he’s sensitive. When I describe him as sensitive, I mean sometimes, well pretty much all the time, he acts, talks and thinks (vis-a-vis internal dialogue) like a woman. In other words, I read him as a female character. From my perspective, at best he’d be a really good guy friend or a brother. Except he’s less protective than a brother because this character is so sensitive. He spends an inordinate amount of time nursing hurt feelings and he keeps giving the heroine space whereas a not so nice guy would think to himself, she doesn’t need space, she needs me. ME. ME. ME. Depending upon the quality of the writing, I’d probably agree. I liked the character, but I sure as hell wouldn’t fantasize about him because that would be exactly like fantasizing about my brother…if I had brother…ewww.

Hey…there is nothing wrong with fantasizing. I don’t only fantasize about romance, I fantasize about hero stories and mythology and scifi - have since I was a little kid. Don’t knock internal fantasy. I think it is the mother/father of creativity, the crucible in which our stories are mixed and melded.

Reason two: I just watched Predators last night - the updated Predator. I really liked it. Nobody is a nice guy. Yet there is a hero, an alpha male who stands head and shoulders above the rest. He’s competent. He’s a survivor. He’s arrogant and has little use for human frailty. He does not suffer pangs of conscience, but neither is he sadistic or cruel. In the end, he does what every romance hero/alpha male does - the right thing, the good thing. At first I thought Adrien Brody was miscast as an unlikeable, not nice, alpha male hero, because I can’t help but remember him in his genius role as Wladyslaw Szpilman in the movie, The Pianist. But he filled some big alpha shoes, and he did it convincingly.

Tomorrow - Why Predators provides a perfect vehicle for the archetype of an Alpha Male, and a few other not-so-nice Alpha Males in romance literature.

Hubby: “That make me big happy!”

A Wish in Time, by Laurel Bradley - A short novella of time-travel romance. Lovely.

The Poet of Loch Ness, by Brian J. Corrigan - Two men who care deeply for the same woman. Poignant.

Mariette in Ecstasy, by Ron Hansen - An unusual work of fiction about the sensual nature of spirituality and religion.

Birth of the Chess Queen, A History, by Marilyn Yalom - Interesting if you enjoy reading about the history of women and power.

Warprize, Warsworn and Warlord (The Chronicles of the Warlands), by Elizabeth Vaughn - A romantic fantasy at it’s best. I didn’t want this series to end.

The Charm Stone, by Donna Kauffman - A fun, silly, light-hearted contemporary romance. The perfect pool-side read.

Here are some pics of one of the wilderness parks where Jake and I walk. This is the more open park. He gets to run through open meadows now that the fox tails have calmed down. So now you know one of the reasons we do it. This weekend I’ll take pictures at our other favorite park.

Vicky is one of my readers. Her comment on my awesome post was just awesome!

Her husband, Don, offered some excellent additions to my hubby’s suggestions. What would a romance hero, an Alpha Male and former Marine say upon seeing a woman with a nice asstribute:

I’d like to be both…well, maybe popular as far as my books are concerned. When an author writes books she wants nothing more than to have them read. Every single time someone reads one of my books, I feel a simultaneous/serendipitous thrill. I’ve had a surprising number of works published this past year and I’m not quite sure how I did it and I don’t know if I can do it again. But…I do have a number of on-going projects so we shall see. Some of my author friends put out a book a month. I have no idea how they manage.

***In the meantime - I have 17 unconfirmed email addresses on my newsletter list. I’m so glad you want to hear from me! Once you sign up for the newsletter, you will receive an email asking you to confirm that you want to subscribe. You must confirm or your email address is automatically deleted. If you have subscribed and have not received a confirmation letter, please email me at Julia@JuliaRachelBarrett.net and I’ll try to get you signed up.***

Oh, the High Priest Imhotep, Arnold Vosloo, from the movie The Mummy (Brendan Fraser), was on NCIS last night. I just love seeing totally cool actors in cameo roles, and NCIS is must see TV for me, as is The Walking Dead. Talk about edge of seat TV viewing!

Okay, maybe tomorrow I’ll have more interesting things to talk about.