Hello to all my new readers! Welcome to the party. :)
I've been working on building a book universe for eight years. It didn't start out with that grand scheme in mind. It just sort of... happened.
It began with what I call Easter Eggs, those little nuggets referring to other stories that fans will recognize as my little shout-out to them, recognizing and rewarding their loyalty to my books. I got the idea from Stephen King and just kind of rolled with it. Truthfully, I love it when characters from other books pop up in new stories. They surprise me often. I hope it works the same for you, just like it worked for me as a SK fan.
But, if you're new here because later books brought you into my universe, you might need a cheat sheet showing you the reading order. It's true that when it comes to the Groupieverse, you don't know the WHOLE story until you've read all the books, because I've sprinkled that fairy dust EVERYWHERE.
The safest bet is to read by order of publication because I'm a linear thinker. Some books that are out of genre, however, won't tie into the main through-line. That is not to say that your favorite characters won't still pop up from time to time (Chasing Thunder,) but here are the books that support and define my Groupieverse:
1. Love Plus One:
This standalone romance introduces us to Shannon, Dixie and Jorge, who pop up again in the Groupieverse in Mogul, which is Book Three of the original Groupie Saga. They also show up in the Fullerton Family Saga, starting in Book 2, Entangled. Jorge comes back often because I just love him.
2. Groupie -> Rock Star -> Mogul -> Vanni.
Here's where my most beloved character, Vanni Carnevale, makes his grand introduction. He has a prequel, Vanni, which you can read first if you'd like to get his perspective prior to going in. He's a bit of a douchebag at first, so if you need a reason to root for him, you can start with his story first. It was written to work either way, however.
3. Fierce -> Unstoppable -> Epic
For those who are disappointed by my "big girl" stories starring smaller sizes like 12-16, Fierce introduces Jordi Hemphill, a size 20+ young woman who moves to L.A. to take Tinsel Town by storm. She ends up on Vanni's radar, and is swept into the Groupieverse as a result. All your favorites pop up in this series.
4. The Undisciplined Bride
This is another standalone which introduces the Bravos into the Groupieverse. Both Graham and Jace (from the Fierce trilogy) pop up to help tell this Texas tale about a bridezilla from hell and the hot Latin cook who is about to turn her world upside down.
5. Enticed -> Entangled -> Enraptured
My Groupieverse shares the stage with my Fullerton Family Saga, which is most beloved by my readers. The Fullerton family blends well with the Groupieverse, starting with Book 2, Entangled. Vanni pops up, as does Graham, Shannon, Jorge, etc. Most importantly, it introduces Alex and Jonathan Fullerton, who will come into play in later books/series. Young Jonathan will get his own romance book one day. If you've read Beauty and the Bitch (formerly Big Fat Bitch), you've already met someone who will be very important to him in the near future.
6. The Leftover Club
This is another standalone that introduces a character who will enter our Groupieverse: Meghan Lawless. Expect her to shake some stuff up when I publish Rewound, the next book in the Groupieverse, coming in 2019.
7. Southern Rocker Boy -> Southern Rocker Chick -> Southern Rocker Showdown
My southern rockers start in Texas, but by the ends of both SRB and SRC, they end up heading for the Golden Coast of California, where everyone in the Groupieverse is waiting to help make their dreams come true. Technically speaking, Boy and Chick are the same story from two different perspectives. They are not, however, a retelling of the same book. Southern Rocker Chick is most like the Danielle Steel books I grew up reading. It's about Lacy Abernathy's life, getting her to her HEA/dream come true. Jonah Riley just happens to come along and mess up all her plans.
8. Masters for Hire -> Masters for Life -> Masters Forever
This series stars L.A.'s rich and powerful, so naturally they orbit in the same galaxy as my Groupie/Fullerton Family Saga characters. Graham Baxter and Alex Fullerton actually come into play in a BIG way in Book Three, but Graham was sprinkling his fairy dust long before that. (I love that man.) It also introduces Caz Bixby, whom I love even MORE. This man is now my copilot. You'll see him a LOT in upcoming books, including one just for him. (You've already met the woman who is going to rock his world, too.)
9. Glitter on the Web -> Masked in the Music -> FFF
This series wasn't really written as a series on purpose, but the characters insisted that they all be grouped together. It starts with Carly Reynolds meeting Caz Bixby, which opens the Groupieverse even more. Each of these TECHNICALLY work as standalones, because whether or not the couple in question get together is answered by the end of their specific book, but the world they're living in is the same - so they're linked as family. (And I like that.) If, however, M/M romance is not your cup of tea, or... if the reverse is true and M/F is not your cup of tea, you can skip the story. But FFF embraces both couples, so... it'll help keep you up to speed to read them all.
10. Beauty and the Bitch (formerly Big Fat Bitch)
Likewise, Beauty and the Bitch is a standalone, but we're setting the stage here for other books coming next year, listed below:
11. Rewound -> Rebound -> Renowned (coming in 2019/2020)
Here we pick up with Andy, Vanni and Graham, as well as Carly and Eli, Rudy and Tony, and, of course, Caz Bixby. If you prefer your HEA from the original book rock solid, you may want to take a pass with these. I've had to pick up some pieces of what happened in FFF, and it will throw our favorites into chaos for a while. But that's the fun of it, am I right? When they're blown apart, we can see if their love is strong enough to bring them back together again. And believe me, there's nothing I like more than falling in love with Vanni all over again.
My next group of books will be a departure from my Groupieverse, but who knows? Maybe the characters there will find a way to interject themselves into new stories. They're minxes like that.
Watch for book 1 of the Scar Trilogy, Shattered, to publish *hopefully* by the end of this year.
That's it! I hope this list is helpful. It kinda helps me, too. The vines are growing longer with each passing year. But, just like my Barbieverse from the 1980s, these are stories and characters I love to revisit, so... I predict it will only continue to grow.
Thank you so much for reading my books and loving these characters as much as I do. Please feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you think. We writers kinda live for that sort of thing. I churn out book after book, hoping I can make a connection. When you all let me know I have done what I set out to do, that rewards me in ways mere words are too small to describe.
How can you thank someone for letting you live your dream? The only thing I can do is write even more books.
So, that's what I'm going to do.
Until next time, dream big... live large... BE FIERCE.
Showing posts with label groupie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label groupie. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 30, 2018
Thursday, March 1, 2018
25 Songs, 25 Days, Day 1: A song from your childhood
Welcome to my Month of Music! We're going to talk about one of my biggest muses this month: music. I found this fun little challenge on Facebook, where I will be playing this little game all month on my official author page. Give it a look and play along, and who knows? Maybe you'll get some free books along the way!
Music was such a huge part of my childhood it's hard to pick just one, so let's start from the beginning: the first album I bought for myself.
It was 1979 and I was at my babysitter's house. She put on an album of music I had never heard before, full of fun and bouncy music that immediately made my soul happy.
Yes, it's disco. No, I'm not ashamed of my unabashed love for it.
One song in particular captured my ear in a big way. I could have listened to it over and over and over again, just that one song. So naturally after I left my babysitter's, I had one option. I had to buy the album so I could do just that. I had plenty of records in that time, but they were mostly castoffs - except for my Monkees record which had been given to me by a friend who understood just how much I would love it. (#groupiegirl forever)
This one I bought with purpose, for a reason. I HAD to hear that song again.
"Angeleyes" is perhaps my favorite ABBA song, though I have many. Even when I was nine years old, something in my old soul must have felt a connection with the story told in the song, of a young girl who succumbed to a charming man with bewitching eyes. Ultimately she learns he's a player, because she gets to watch him turn those charms to other girls, and she has to get over her impossible crush, pick up the pieces and move on.
I've had a lot of experience with that since then, so maybe it was a harbinger of things to come. I'm all about the eyes as we know. Abs, asses, youth will change, but the eyes never do. And I'm (still) a sucker for a man who understands how to wield this power.
Recently I learned the backstory of ABBA, which is a #girlpower story if ever there was one. What these two women had to do and sacrifice for their fame, and just how much it cost them, is as heartbreaking as falling for that playah with the sexy eyes. It cast even more shadow on a sad tale told through ironically upbeat music.
This molded me as an artist, I feel. I can tell my tales through sex and humor, but I'm not afraid to rip some scars raw. It is this angst that I bring to my soulful-eyed book boyfriends who have a hard time committing themselves to just one gal.
Y'all know who I'm talking about.
We all have known and loved a guy like this, but when I was nine I was still buckling in for the ride. I knew he was coming, and I knew it would hurt, but I was ready to experience it anyway if it meant I could capture that crush for just one second.
In that way, Vanni was born in thought way back in 1979.
Have a listen and feel free to share a favorite or significant song through your childhood. :)
Music was such a huge part of my childhood it's hard to pick just one, so let's start from the beginning: the first album I bought for myself.
It was 1979 and I was at my babysitter's house. She put on an album of music I had never heard before, full of fun and bouncy music that immediately made my soul happy.
Yes, it's disco. No, I'm not ashamed of my unabashed love for it.
One song in particular captured my ear in a big way. I could have listened to it over and over and over again, just that one song. So naturally after I left my babysitter's, I had one option. I had to buy the album so I could do just that. I had plenty of records in that time, but they were mostly castoffs - except for my Monkees record which had been given to me by a friend who understood just how much I would love it. (#groupiegirl forever)
This one I bought with purpose, for a reason. I HAD to hear that song again.
"Angeleyes" is perhaps my favorite ABBA song, though I have many. Even when I was nine years old, something in my old soul must have felt a connection with the story told in the song, of a young girl who succumbed to a charming man with bewitching eyes. Ultimately she learns he's a player, because she gets to watch him turn those charms to other girls, and she has to get over her impossible crush, pick up the pieces and move on.
I've had a lot of experience with that since then, so maybe it was a harbinger of things to come. I'm all about the eyes as we know. Abs, asses, youth will change, but the eyes never do. And I'm (still) a sucker for a man who understands how to wield this power.
Recently I learned the backstory of ABBA, which is a #girlpower story if ever there was one. What these two women had to do and sacrifice for their fame, and just how much it cost them, is as heartbreaking as falling for that playah with the sexy eyes. It cast even more shadow on a sad tale told through ironically upbeat music.
This molded me as an artist, I feel. I can tell my tales through sex and humor, but I'm not afraid to rip some scars raw. It is this angst that I bring to my soulful-eyed book boyfriends who have a hard time committing themselves to just one gal.
Y'all know who I'm talking about.
We all have known and loved a guy like this, but when I was nine I was still buckling in for the ride. I knew he was coming, and I knew it would hurt, but I was ready to experience it anyway if it meant I could capture that crush for just one second.
In that way, Vanni was born in thought way back in 1979.
Have a listen and feel free to share a favorite or significant song through your childhood. :)
Saturday, August 22, 2015
#SnippetSaturday - An Ode to My Love on our 14th Anniverary.
Today is a special day. Not only is it Jordi's birthday, but it is the anniversary of the day I wed my love, Steven, in 2001.
I would tell you about my love, but truth is, you've already met him in various ways throughout many of my stories. Any time any of my Book Boyfriends have made you laugh, have supported their heroines, making them believe that they could be anything they wanted to be, who deserved to be loved and romanced and valued despite what they were taught to believe by society at large, you've seen Steven peeking from behind the facade. Fun... romance... unconditional love and unyielding support? This is his fingerprint on my life. He's literally made so many of my dreams come true.
Since Steven is my idea of a HEA, he has influenced and inspired so many stories, so many characters and so many experiences that I have written in dozens of books since we met. If I get stuck on an idea, I turn to Steven, thrusting pages of raw material under his nose to get his input. Because of him, I'm not sure I would have written THE GROUPIE SAGA as truthfully as I did. When he got to the end of book one, he told me what I already knew (which is why I was stuck there, toiling over the ending.) He told me I could not end it the way I had planned because it would cheapen the characters and fall flat, and he was absolutely, positively, 100-percent right. I knew that I was breaking a few rules when I completed the novel, but - much to my surprise - this was the series that first "landed" me my first real writing success.
Honestly, I don't even know if I'd have the career I have without him, since he has been one of my biggest cheerleaders, and often financier, of this crazy, wacky dream I have to become a best-selling writer, award-winning screenwriter.
I dream big, what can I say?
Truth is, Steven is kind of the reason I dream big. I mean, I always dreamed big, but I was always afraid to share those dreams with just anyone, because I was afraid of hearing what I always heard. "Who are YOU to do anything so special?" Well, love kind of shows you how big you can dream because it shows you how truly special you are to the right people. I knew Steven was "the right people," almost from the moment we met. He's got all the nice guy stuff going on, but he's also brave enough to tell me the truth, whether I want to hear it or not. Not a lot of people do that, and the last thing I needed was yet someone else patting me on my head and pacifying me just to shut me up. Not Steven... he's always - always - endeavored to make me better, mostly because he's always believed I could do all the amazing things I wanted to do.
This is not just some biased opinion, by the way. Since he's been a voracious reader all of his life, I knew I could share my meager little stories with him from their infancy, and he could give me the critical feedback I needed to grow. When he told me I was talented enough to make this whole crazy thing work, I knew I could believe him. I started writing more, branching out to the even scarier, wackier dream of screenwriting, and pursuing opportunities I wouldn't have had the ovarian fortitude to chase without his encouraging voice in my ear, telling me I've got the goods and I can totally make it happen. He never once tried to talk me down to planet Earth, suggesting that I needed a Plan B if this didn't work. In fact, he's the one who says, repeatedly, that the best is yet to come.
This kind of has been the theme of our whole marriage.
I won't say that things have been perfect. We've had our share of hard times and pitfalls. Several notable years - which were always odd-numbered for some reason - we flew by the seat of our pants, juggling chainsaws, flaming swords, piranhas and scorpions in order to get from one day to the next. The road has been way rockier than it has ever been smooth. But thanks to my honey, my eternal Peter Pan, I've always had someone to pick me up when I fell. (And vice versa.)
We are the perfect fit. Where I'm high-strung and emotional, he's laid back and rational. We both share the same playful sense of humor, which keeps our spirits light no matter what shit storm we might be enduring at the time. And granted, there have been times of great frustration on both of our parts, but they have never shaken our core commitment to each other. We both know how lucky we are to have found each other. We'd rather be together and struggling than apart and "safe." At the end of the day, there's no one I'd rather come home to. There's nothing anyone else could ever offer me that would improve on what I have now. It's a million-dollar match without the million dollars. (But we're working on that. Take note, Universe. #powerofattraction #nameitandclaimit)
So this might explain why I became a little peeved in the early 2000s that women who looked like me in romance novels were *not* the ones walking away with Top Prize. *I* fell in love with, and caught, a Prince Charming, despite the fact I'm dismissed as "less than ideal." (I'm wording it nicer than it's ever felt, by the way.) So if *I* can do that, why was I not seeing that in the books I read? My story is just as true and just as valid as anything I'd ever read, so why was I reading about the Fat Girl who couldn't find herself a sweetie the way I had?
Especially the sweetest sweetie of the bunch, who makes me feel sexy and beautiful and valued with every kiss, every touch and every smile.
It really gave me a bad taste in my mouth regarding all those traditional romances I read growing up, the ones I thought I wanted to write. It took Steven to see that I didn't have to write about the perfect girl who didn't know she was beautiful, who was fawned over by the handsome, perfect man, who somehow deserved her happily ever after more than the normal girls, the average girls, the atypical girls, the alternative girls... the invisible girls.
As a protest to this, I penned my first Rubenesque Romance, LOVE PLUS ONE, in 2007, where I wrote the kind of story that I wanted to read. It was more sweet than sexy, because that's the gentle introduction into the world of romance that I wanted to make. I knew I'd have to ease readers into these waters. You may not know this, but there are readers who will bypass a book with a larger heroine because they think they would hate to read about sex scenes with larger, imperfect bodies. Sadly, many readers avoid books about atypical heroines because "it's not the fantasy," and that is why so many read romance in the first place. But see, that's the great thing about fantasy. The world is big enough for all of them, even *my* fantasy - which was falling in love and being loved in return, to be deserving of that love because she is so much more than a paper doll prototype, a true flesh-and-blood woman who wants only to be desired and chosen by the perfect man.
Way back in 1997, I landed my first agent, who shopped around an early draft of my book PICTURE POSTCARDS. Several publishers came back with the same criticism: the heroine is *too* perfect. Back then I was writing stories like I read, where authors like Danielle Steel dominated my TBR list. I bought into the hype of the standard fantasy forced down our gullet from Cinderella to Barbie to any number of popular heroines in mainstream fiction and movies: that women have to be beautiful to be loved. So I imagined what life would have been like had I been born one of the fortunate few. The reason that book failed to land an audience was because that is not my story to tell, so it wasn't authentic and fell flat. I don't know what it's like to be the beautiful girl who doesn't know she's beautiful, who lands the rich, handsome guy because of pure physical attraction. I'm the quirky, funny DUFF, whose qualities are hidden a little more under the surface. I know what it's like to fall ass backwards into love, where I question each and every suitor because I am never entirely convinced they could ever want someone like me, someone normal, someone average, someone atypical or alternative...
Someone invisible.
Enter Shannon McKenna and LOVE PLUS ONE. Shannon knows all about being invisible. As a size-12 awkward geek with an insanely perfect sister, she was used to being delegated back to the shadows, where she could write and daydream about a HEA, but never for once thought she'd find one of her very own. This is where Jake Dalton stepped in, her best friend, her biggest supporter - her Prince Charming in Waiting. Jake is patterned almost exclusively after my honey. Here are some key snippets where you'll see Steven waving from behind the words.
***
Jake infuriated her sometimes. He was so level-headed. If A happened, do B. No sweat. Well, dammit, she thought to herself. Sometimes there was some sweat.
***
“You look great,” he said. He always said that. She could be in curlers and a green mud mask and he’d say that, except he’d amend, “for an alien.”
***
The limo came to a halt in front of an outdoor recreation center. Shannon got the nagging feeling Rex was up to something dirty. When she saw the rock wall, she was certain of it.
Shannon wasn’t exactly the outdoorsy type, and there was that near pathological fear of heights thing. And she knew that Rex knew that because when Dixie had researched her show about phobias she grilled her entire staff out of curiosity, to see how common phobias were and how they affected daily life.
Despite that show, Shannon never really saw the need to tackle this particular fear. She had been very careful to cultivate an existence that didn’t move more than two feet off the ground. No high rises, no planes, no juggling act while balancing on a high wire. She even chose a ground floor apartment and worked in a one level studio. She had convinced herself it wasn’t really a phobia. It was a choice. A choice she made again and again in her life, usually through white-knuckled, hyperventilating terror.
Jake had absolutely no idea, but she had a sneaky suspicion he was about to find out.
Conversely, Jake was stoked as he surveyed the wall. He loved physical activity that tested his limits, and this was right up his alley. He listened intently and nodded with enthusiasm as their guide gave them the rundown. Shannon plastered a smile on her face, but inside she seriously fought coming unglued. She glanced up at the wall that had to be at least forty feet high, which was funny because that’s exactly forty feet higher than she wanted to go.
Before she could protest, she was trussed up in a harness and face to face with the Wall of Doom. Suddenly her arms felt like jelly and she just knew, without any doubt, that she was going to puke.
Jake had already crawled up on the wall. He glanced back at her. “Come on, Shan! I’ll race you.”
“Let’s not and just say we did,” she muttered. She tried to will herself to move but it just wasn’t happening.
“Chicken!” he called down. It was a friendly dig meant to get her up on the wall, but it didn’t work. She’d much rather be a live chicken than a scrambled egg.
The guide came over. “Everything okay?”
No, she wanted to say. Everything is not okay. Instead she made a joke, which was the Shannon way. “How strong are these things?” she asked and motioned to the harness.
He just smiled. He knew the type. He also knew if she gave it half a chance she’d have a great time and gain a new hobby.
With the patience of a saint he showed her again where to step and where to grab on. With his help she managed to make it off the ground. “Just concentrate on your next step,” the instructor told her. She looked no further than that.
It was slow going, especially with the way Jake was scaling the wall like some kind of superhero. But she didn’t feel she was doing too badly given the circumstances, and called back to the guide to say so.
That was when she realized the ground was about fifteen feet down. If she’d have stopped to think about it, it was really not that far away, just one little ol’ story really, but to her frantic mind she felt like she was on the edge of the Grand Canyon. Suddenly her heart thumped against her ribs and her limbs began to shake. She couldn’t breathe and it felt as though she might actually be having a heart attack.
She looked up, but that only gave her a mean case of vertigo. The world spun around her and all she could do was hold on.
She promptly closed her eyes and began to scream.
“Jake!”
Like a flash he propelled down to where she sprawled frozen against the wall. She was white as a ghost and shook so badly he worried she might be having a seizure of some sort. Tears poured down her face despite how tightly she clenched her eyes shut. “Shan?”
His soothing voice only made her cry harder. She shook her head. All she wanted was to get down, but she just didn’t have the guts. She may have only been fifteen feet off the ground, but it felt like she was on top of the Empire State Building.
He tried again. “What’s wrong?”
She barely opened an eye. “Heights.” It was all she could muster.
“You’re afraid of heights?” he asked, then glanced down at how far she’d come.
She nodded. “I want to get down.”
He touched her shoulder. “Okay.”
Only she didn’t move.
“Do you know how?” he asked finally.
She nodded again and cried even harder. Her hands gripped the wall so tightly her knuckles were white.
“Honey, you gotta let go,” he said softly.
She shook her head. She couldn’t even handle the thought. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can,” he soothed. “Look how far you came. Getting down will be a cinch. You’ll be on the ground before you know it.”
Intellectually she knew that, but it was another matter convincing her body. Her heart raced. She couldn’t breathe. She visibly shook as she clung to the wall. “I can’t let go.”
He placed his hand on hers. “Then hang on. To me.”
She looked into his face. He was her Jake. She knew he’d never let her down. Finally she allowed him to take her hand in his.
“Trust me?” he said. She nodded. Together they kicked away from the wall and propelled down to the ground in one jump.
***
In fact, one of the key moments in their journey was a spectacular date at the Hollywood Bowl, which, aside from the obvious embellishments, was lifted directly from my courtship with Steven, who took me to the Hollywood Bowl in one of our first dates in 1999 to see John Williams conduct the LA Philharmonic under the stars. (And yes, this means that the Star Wars theme is unofficially one of our 'songs.')
The other key scenes heavily *heavily* inspired by my romance with Steven were the ones in Vegas. Vegas is our town. We fell in love there. We got engaged there. We got married there and renewed our vows there. We both even got our first tattoos there. Any chance I have to go to Vegas in any of my books is an homage to my darling hubby.
Because of Steven, you all got Jake Dalton, Graham Baxter, Jace Riga and Jonah Riley. (In fact, it occurs to me just now that the hero I wrote in 1995, when I wrote PICTURE POSTCARDS, ultimately came true with Steven four years later, like I had ordered him straight out of a catalog. See? Law of attraction. Thank you, Universe!)
These book boyfriends are my "nice guys," the sweethearts of the pack. They don't often get the same kind of following as my bad boys, which I think is a shame. The nice guys are the ones who help you raise your children. The nice guys are the ones who offer unwavering support as you follow your dreams, who never make you question their love or commitment. They're the ones who love you during all those crappy moments where you can't love yourself, and God knows a few of my heroines had a hard time with that. To me, these are the qualities that define a romantic hero. Each and every word they uttered was inspired by my real life Prince Charming, and so I kinda love them more. Loving a bad boy is easy. Finding a good man is a miracle... and has been my fantasy since I was a hopelessly romantic pre-teen girl.
So happy 14th anniversary to my love, who made that dream come true. You are my love, my friend, my soul's perfect mate. You truly are the reason I believe in love. From this moment on... and for always.
I would tell you about my love, but truth is, you've already met him in various ways throughout many of my stories. Any time any of my Book Boyfriends have made you laugh, have supported their heroines, making them believe that they could be anything they wanted to be, who deserved to be loved and romanced and valued despite what they were taught to believe by society at large, you've seen Steven peeking from behind the facade. Fun... romance... unconditional love and unyielding support? This is his fingerprint on my life. He's literally made so many of my dreams come true.
Since Steven is my idea of a HEA, he has influenced and inspired so many stories, so many characters and so many experiences that I have written in dozens of books since we met. If I get stuck on an idea, I turn to Steven, thrusting pages of raw material under his nose to get his input. Because of him, I'm not sure I would have written THE GROUPIE SAGA as truthfully as I did. When he got to the end of book one, he told me what I already knew (which is why I was stuck there, toiling over the ending.) He told me I could not end it the way I had planned because it would cheapen the characters and fall flat, and he was absolutely, positively, 100-percent right. I knew that I was breaking a few rules when I completed the novel, but - much to my surprise - this was the series that first "landed" me my first real writing success.
Honestly, I don't even know if I'd have the career I have without him, since he has been one of my biggest cheerleaders, and often financier, of this crazy, wacky dream I have to become a best-selling writer, award-winning screenwriter.
I dream big, what can I say?
Truth is, Steven is kind of the reason I dream big. I mean, I always dreamed big, but I was always afraid to share those dreams with just anyone, because I was afraid of hearing what I always heard. "Who are YOU to do anything so special?" Well, love kind of shows you how big you can dream because it shows you how truly special you are to the right people. I knew Steven was "the right people," almost from the moment we met. He's got all the nice guy stuff going on, but he's also brave enough to tell me the truth, whether I want to hear it or not. Not a lot of people do that, and the last thing I needed was yet someone else patting me on my head and pacifying me just to shut me up. Not Steven... he's always - always - endeavored to make me better, mostly because he's always believed I could do all the amazing things I wanted to do.
This is not just some biased opinion, by the way. Since he's been a voracious reader all of his life, I knew I could share my meager little stories with him from their infancy, and he could give me the critical feedback I needed to grow. When he told me I was talented enough to make this whole crazy thing work, I knew I could believe him. I started writing more, branching out to the even scarier, wackier dream of screenwriting, and pursuing opportunities I wouldn't have had the ovarian fortitude to chase without his encouraging voice in my ear, telling me I've got the goods and I can totally make it happen. He never once tried to talk me down to planet Earth, suggesting that I needed a Plan B if this didn't work. In fact, he's the one who says, repeatedly, that the best is yet to come.
This kind of has been the theme of our whole marriage.
I won't say that things have been perfect. We've had our share of hard times and pitfalls. Several notable years - which were always odd-numbered for some reason - we flew by the seat of our pants, juggling chainsaws, flaming swords, piranhas and scorpions in order to get from one day to the next. The road has been way rockier than it has ever been smooth. But thanks to my honey, my eternal Peter Pan, I've always had someone to pick me up when I fell. (And vice versa.)
We are the perfect fit. Where I'm high-strung and emotional, he's laid back and rational. We both share the same playful sense of humor, which keeps our spirits light no matter what shit storm we might be enduring at the time. And granted, there have been times of great frustration on both of our parts, but they have never shaken our core commitment to each other. We both know how lucky we are to have found each other. We'd rather be together and struggling than apart and "safe." At the end of the day, there's no one I'd rather come home to. There's nothing anyone else could ever offer me that would improve on what I have now. It's a million-dollar match without the million dollars. (But we're working on that. Take note, Universe. #powerofattraction #nameitandclaimit)
So this might explain why I became a little peeved in the early 2000s that women who looked like me in romance novels were *not* the ones walking away with Top Prize. *I* fell in love with, and caught, a Prince Charming, despite the fact I'm dismissed as "less than ideal." (I'm wording it nicer than it's ever felt, by the way.) So if *I* can do that, why was I not seeing that in the books I read? My story is just as true and just as valid as anything I'd ever read, so why was I reading about the Fat Girl who couldn't find herself a sweetie the way I had?
Especially the sweetest sweetie of the bunch, who makes me feel sexy and beautiful and valued with every kiss, every touch and every smile.
It really gave me a bad taste in my mouth regarding all those traditional romances I read growing up, the ones I thought I wanted to write. It took Steven to see that I didn't have to write about the perfect girl who didn't know she was beautiful, who was fawned over by the handsome, perfect man, who somehow deserved her happily ever after more than the normal girls, the average girls, the atypical girls, the alternative girls... the invisible girls.
As a protest to this, I penned my first Rubenesque Romance, LOVE PLUS ONE, in 2007, where I wrote the kind of story that I wanted to read. It was more sweet than sexy, because that's the gentle introduction into the world of romance that I wanted to make. I knew I'd have to ease readers into these waters. You may not know this, but there are readers who will bypass a book with a larger heroine because they think they would hate to read about sex scenes with larger, imperfect bodies. Sadly, many readers avoid books about atypical heroines because "it's not the fantasy," and that is why so many read romance in the first place. But see, that's the great thing about fantasy. The world is big enough for all of them, even *my* fantasy - which was falling in love and being loved in return, to be deserving of that love because she is so much more than a paper doll prototype, a true flesh-and-blood woman who wants only to be desired and chosen by the perfect man.
Way back in 1997, I landed my first agent, who shopped around an early draft of my book PICTURE POSTCARDS. Several publishers came back with the same criticism: the heroine is *too* perfect. Back then I was writing stories like I read, where authors like Danielle Steel dominated my TBR list. I bought into the hype of the standard fantasy forced down our gullet from Cinderella to Barbie to any number of popular heroines in mainstream fiction and movies: that women have to be beautiful to be loved. So I imagined what life would have been like had I been born one of the fortunate few. The reason that book failed to land an audience was because that is not my story to tell, so it wasn't authentic and fell flat. I don't know what it's like to be the beautiful girl who doesn't know she's beautiful, who lands the rich, handsome guy because of pure physical attraction. I'm the quirky, funny DUFF, whose qualities are hidden a little more under the surface. I know what it's like to fall ass backwards into love, where I question each and every suitor because I am never entirely convinced they could ever want someone like me, someone normal, someone average, someone atypical or alternative...
Someone invisible.
Enter Shannon McKenna and LOVE PLUS ONE. Shannon knows all about being invisible. As a size-12 awkward geek with an insanely perfect sister, she was used to being delegated back to the shadows, where she could write and daydream about a HEA, but never for once thought she'd find one of her very own. This is where Jake Dalton stepped in, her best friend, her biggest supporter - her Prince Charming in Waiting. Jake is patterned almost exclusively after my honey. Here are some key snippets where you'll see Steven waving from behind the words.
Jake infuriated her sometimes. He was so level-headed. If A happened, do B. No sweat. Well, dammit, she thought to herself. Sometimes there was some sweat.
“You look great,” he said. He always said that. She could be in curlers and a green mud mask and he’d say that, except he’d amend, “for an alien.”
The limo came to a halt in front of an outdoor recreation center. Shannon got the nagging feeling Rex was up to something dirty. When she saw the rock wall, she was certain of it.
Shannon wasn’t exactly the outdoorsy type, and there was that near pathological fear of heights thing. And she knew that Rex knew that because when Dixie had researched her show about phobias she grilled her entire staff out of curiosity, to see how common phobias were and how they affected daily life.
Despite that show, Shannon never really saw the need to tackle this particular fear. She had been very careful to cultivate an existence that didn’t move more than two feet off the ground. No high rises, no planes, no juggling act while balancing on a high wire. She even chose a ground floor apartment and worked in a one level studio. She had convinced herself it wasn’t really a phobia. It was a choice. A choice she made again and again in her life, usually through white-knuckled, hyperventilating terror.
Jake had absolutely no idea, but she had a sneaky suspicion he was about to find out.
Conversely, Jake was stoked as he surveyed the wall. He loved physical activity that tested his limits, and this was right up his alley. He listened intently and nodded with enthusiasm as their guide gave them the rundown. Shannon plastered a smile on her face, but inside she seriously fought coming unglued. She glanced up at the wall that had to be at least forty feet high, which was funny because that’s exactly forty feet higher than she wanted to go.
Before she could protest, she was trussed up in a harness and face to face with the Wall of Doom. Suddenly her arms felt like jelly and she just knew, without any doubt, that she was going to puke.
Jake had already crawled up on the wall. He glanced back at her. “Come on, Shan! I’ll race you.”
“Let’s not and just say we did,” she muttered. She tried to will herself to move but it just wasn’t happening.
“Chicken!” he called down. It was a friendly dig meant to get her up on the wall, but it didn’t work. She’d much rather be a live chicken than a scrambled egg.
The guide came over. “Everything okay?”
No, she wanted to say. Everything is not okay. Instead she made a joke, which was the Shannon way. “How strong are these things?” she asked and motioned to the harness.
He just smiled. He knew the type. He also knew if she gave it half a chance she’d have a great time and gain a new hobby.
With the patience of a saint he showed her again where to step and where to grab on. With his help she managed to make it off the ground. “Just concentrate on your next step,” the instructor told her. She looked no further than that.
It was slow going, especially with the way Jake was scaling the wall like some kind of superhero. But she didn’t feel she was doing too badly given the circumstances, and called back to the guide to say so.
That was when she realized the ground was about fifteen feet down. If she’d have stopped to think about it, it was really not that far away, just one little ol’ story really, but to her frantic mind she felt like she was on the edge of the Grand Canyon. Suddenly her heart thumped against her ribs and her limbs began to shake. She couldn’t breathe and it felt as though she might actually be having a heart attack.
She looked up, but that only gave her a mean case of vertigo. The world spun around her and all she could do was hold on.
She promptly closed her eyes and began to scream.
“Jake!”
Like a flash he propelled down to where she sprawled frozen against the wall. She was white as a ghost and shook so badly he worried she might be having a seizure of some sort. Tears poured down her face despite how tightly she clenched her eyes shut. “Shan?”
His soothing voice only made her cry harder. She shook her head. All she wanted was to get down, but she just didn’t have the guts. She may have only been fifteen feet off the ground, but it felt like she was on top of the Empire State Building.
He tried again. “What’s wrong?”
She barely opened an eye. “Heights.” It was all she could muster.
“You’re afraid of heights?” he asked, then glanced down at how far she’d come.
She nodded. “I want to get down.”
He touched her shoulder. “Okay.”
Only she didn’t move.
“Do you know how?” he asked finally.
She nodded again and cried even harder. Her hands gripped the wall so tightly her knuckles were white.
“Honey, you gotta let go,” he said softly.
She shook her head. She couldn’t even handle the thought. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can,” he soothed. “Look how far you came. Getting down will be a cinch. You’ll be on the ground before you know it.”
Intellectually she knew that, but it was another matter convincing her body. Her heart raced. She couldn’t breathe. She visibly shook as she clung to the wall. “I can’t let go.”
He placed his hand on hers. “Then hang on. To me.”
She looked into his face. He was her Jake. She knew he’d never let her down. Finally she allowed him to take her hand in his.
“Trust me?” he said. She nodded. Together they kicked away from the wall and propelled down to the ground in one jump.
In fact, one of the key moments in their journey was a spectacular date at the Hollywood Bowl, which, aside from the obvious embellishments, was lifted directly from my courtship with Steven, who took me to the Hollywood Bowl in one of our first dates in 1999 to see John Williams conduct the LA Philharmonic under the stars. (And yes, this means that the Star Wars theme is unofficially one of our 'songs.')
The other key scenes heavily *heavily* inspired by my romance with Steven were the ones in Vegas. Vegas is our town. We fell in love there. We got engaged there. We got married there and renewed our vows there. We both even got our first tattoos there. Any chance I have to go to Vegas in any of my books is an homage to my darling hubby.
Because of Steven, you all got Jake Dalton, Graham Baxter, Jace Riga and Jonah Riley. (In fact, it occurs to me just now that the hero I wrote in 1995, when I wrote PICTURE POSTCARDS, ultimately came true with Steven four years later, like I had ordered him straight out of a catalog. See? Law of attraction. Thank you, Universe!)
These book boyfriends are my "nice guys," the sweethearts of the pack. They don't often get the same kind of following as my bad boys, which I think is a shame. The nice guys are the ones who help you raise your children. The nice guys are the ones who offer unwavering support as you follow your dreams, who never make you question their love or commitment. They're the ones who love you during all those crappy moments where you can't love yourself, and God knows a few of my heroines had a hard time with that. To me, these are the qualities that define a romantic hero. Each and every word they uttered was inspired by my real life Prince Charming, and so I kinda love them more. Loving a bad boy is easy. Finding a good man is a miracle... and has been my fantasy since I was a hopelessly romantic pre-teen girl.
So happy 14th anniversary to my love, who made that dream come true. You are my love, my friend, my soul's perfect mate. You truly are the reason I believe in love. From this moment on... and for always.
Thursday, February 5, 2015
Dangerous Curves Ahead
Sports Illustrated made headlines today when it was announced they would feature their first plus-sized model in a bikini photo shoot. They selected the luscious Ashley Graham, pictured below:
I was already familiar with Ashley. When I was researching size-16 girls for my GROUPIE novel to have a physical representation of the Every Woman, I found several gorgeous models who didn't fit in the size 0-4 media sweet spot. The average size American woman is size 12-14, though the models we are shown (in addition to being ridiculously photoshopped,) are much smaller than the average American woman, weighing 23% less.
As someone who has been considerably larger than "average," it really started to stick in my craw that most of the heavier chicks I read about in fiction were depicted as the funny comic relief, the sad sack wallflower, or worse - the eager virgin who has never been kissed. Since this was never my experience, I wanted to write stories that starred women who looked a little more like me and a little less like whoever is starring in the latest movie based on a Nicholas Sparks book. Some might consider this a niche market because thin women don't want to read about fat girls finding love. Not sure why, considering I've read hundreds of books about thin women finding love and it was perfectly fine.
It was particularly empowering though when I started reading books by those authors who dared to color outside the lines, casting atypical heroines in romance novels. It inspired me to cast all kinds of women in my books, with a focus on the plus-size perspective since, y'know, write what you know.
One of the reviews of GROUPIE came from an admitted plus-size woman who voiced her skepticism that a size-16 woman could have both a hot rock star and billionaire media mogul fighting over her. It made me sad. Sadder still when I realized that "Can a good man love a size-16 woman" was a major search criteria to bring people to my blog. My goal, from my very first "Rubenesque" romance, was to make every girl/woman who read my book believe that she was worthy of her very own Happily Ever After without changing one damn thing.
See, that's not a message that we hear day after day. Our media bombards us with this idea that we have to change who we are to gain love and acceptance. Gray hair? Dye it. Wrinkles? Botox it. Full hips? Spanx 'em. Tiny boobs? Here's a pushup bra. Blemishes? Here's some makeup. They will find anything, from rough feet to wimpy eyelashes, to sell you a a product/magazine or service. For women, maintaining their sexual desirability is part of their job. And we've just all kind of accepted it as the way things are, even when it fucks with our daughters enough to start dieting at age 8.
Yesterday I was going through some old photos with my son, and he saw this picture of me.
He didn't see a fat girl there, but I sure did. I was doing everything I could to change myself from the age of 14 on, often with disastrous, though typical, results. I virtually dieted myself into obesity simply because I could never accept that girl in that photo as being perfectly fine the way she was.
Tragic, that.
Some will couch this shaming bullshit under the heading of "health," pointing to the War on Obesity as reason enough to shame family and friends by reminding them they're too fat. For the most part, however, the level of disgust, disrespect and downright vitriol towards plus-size women is based on one universal message: You're-Just-Not-Fuckable-Enough.
In 2014, Meghan Trainor (size 12) released her song, "All About That Bass," which was essentially an anthem for any girl who felt lesser than because of her size.
You know I won't be no stick-figure silicone Barbie doll/
So if that's what you're into then go ahead and move along
Y'know, no hard feelings. You're not into me so I would never be into you. It's not the end of the world. There are more fish in the sea - for both of us.
But if you want to see how people respond to a woman owning her curves and giving other women permission to think they're perfect "from the bottom to the top," then look at the comments for the video:
Some folks don't take kindly to the fact you're not doing everything you can to attract them to you, regardless if you know them, know anything about them, would be interested anyway.
So I fully anticipate that the Haterz will be out in full effect to rail on how showing a woman who isn't 23% underweight somehow promotes an unhealthy lifestyle, when no one gives a good goddamn what the health is of a woman who falls in the "normal" size range. It's all part of an overall system that works to keep us women divided and tearing each other down.
I realized this earlier when reading the comments on my Facebook Author page for the Sports Illustrated article. Everyone was so stunned that this beautiful curvy goddess was being treated as a plus-size. And why shouldn't they be surprised? At a size 16, that's an inch or two away from the average, which really doesn't make her "plus" at all.
That is, of course, unless you're listening to the fashion industry, who starts their plus-size models at size 6. To put this in perspective for you, here are some familiar faces that would quality as "plus-size" by this standard:
Christina Hendricks, who wears anywhere from a 10-14, putting her squarely in the "average" range, is continually praised for her courage to "flaunt" (i.e., not conceal) her ample curves.
In fact, the only thing more controversial than Sports Illustrated introducing a plus-size bikini model is deciding what plus-size actually means. From what I can tell judging it, like in life, rests in the eye of the beholder.
But it got me thinking, what is plus-size anyway? I mean, there's no minus-size, is there? We can be too big, we can be too small, but we're only isolated as a separate group when we're overweight. What is the purpose of separating "plus-size" from "average/normal," other than to divide and - in a subtle way - degrade the woman who just wants to buy a new shirt. They used to call us "queen-sized." Now we're just plus-size, and we're supposed to jump with joy that the closer you are to the more normal sizes you are, the better chance you have being featured as a progressive "plus-size" model for the industry.
Anything else encourages an unhealthy lifestyle, and that's just irresponsible. We have to homogenize the media with a certain standard of beauty to discourage those who might be tempted to gorge themselves and become a statistic.
As we all know, that approach has been working flawlessly so far.
OR... we could celebrate women in all their shapes and sizes for the sum of their attributes rather than condemn and isolate them over some arbitrary number on a label.
You can read GROUPIE free from Amazon, All Romance Ebooks, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, iTunes and Kobo.
I was already familiar with Ashley. When I was researching size-16 girls for my GROUPIE novel to have a physical representation of the Every Woman, I found several gorgeous models who didn't fit in the size 0-4 media sweet spot. The average size American woman is size 12-14, though the models we are shown (in addition to being ridiculously photoshopped,) are much smaller than the average American woman, weighing 23% less.
As someone who has been considerably larger than "average," it really started to stick in my craw that most of the heavier chicks I read about in fiction were depicted as the funny comic relief, the sad sack wallflower, or worse - the eager virgin who has never been kissed. Since this was never my experience, I wanted to write stories that starred women who looked a little more like me and a little less like whoever is starring in the latest movie based on a Nicholas Sparks book. Some might consider this a niche market because thin women don't want to read about fat girls finding love. Not sure why, considering I've read hundreds of books about thin women finding love and it was perfectly fine.
It was particularly empowering though when I started reading books by those authors who dared to color outside the lines, casting atypical heroines in romance novels. It inspired me to cast all kinds of women in my books, with a focus on the plus-size perspective since, y'know, write what you know.
One of the reviews of GROUPIE came from an admitted plus-size woman who voiced her skepticism that a size-16 woman could have both a hot rock star and billionaire media mogul fighting over her. It made me sad. Sadder still when I realized that "Can a good man love a size-16 woman" was a major search criteria to bring people to my blog. My goal, from my very first "Rubenesque" romance, was to make every girl/woman who read my book believe that she was worthy of her very own Happily Ever After without changing one damn thing.
See, that's not a message that we hear day after day. Our media bombards us with this idea that we have to change who we are to gain love and acceptance. Gray hair? Dye it. Wrinkles? Botox it. Full hips? Spanx 'em. Tiny boobs? Here's a pushup bra. Blemishes? Here's some makeup. They will find anything, from rough feet to wimpy eyelashes, to sell you a a product/magazine or service. For women, maintaining their sexual desirability is part of their job. And we've just all kind of accepted it as the way things are, even when it fucks with our daughters enough to start dieting at age 8.
Yesterday I was going through some old photos with my son, and he saw this picture of me.
He didn't see a fat girl there, but I sure did. I was doing everything I could to change myself from the age of 14 on, often with disastrous, though typical, results. I virtually dieted myself into obesity simply because I could never accept that girl in that photo as being perfectly fine the way she was.
Tragic, that.
Some will couch this shaming bullshit under the heading of "health," pointing to the War on Obesity as reason enough to shame family and friends by reminding them they're too fat. For the most part, however, the level of disgust, disrespect and downright vitriol towards plus-size women is based on one universal message: You're-Just-Not-Fuckable-Enough.
In 2014, Meghan Trainor (size 12) released her song, "All About That Bass," which was essentially an anthem for any girl who felt lesser than because of her size.
You know I won't be no stick-figure silicone Barbie doll/
So if that's what you're into then go ahead and move along
Y'know, no hard feelings. You're not into me so I would never be into you. It's not the end of the world. There are more fish in the sea - for both of us.
But if you want to see how people respond to a woman owning her curves and giving other women permission to think they're perfect "from the bottom to the top," then look at the comments for the video:
Some folks don't take kindly to the fact you're not doing everything you can to attract them to you, regardless if you know them, know anything about them, would be interested anyway.
So I fully anticipate that the Haterz will be out in full effect to rail on how showing a woman who isn't 23% underweight somehow promotes an unhealthy lifestyle, when no one gives a good goddamn what the health is of a woman who falls in the "normal" size range. It's all part of an overall system that works to keep us women divided and tearing each other down.
I realized this earlier when reading the comments on my Facebook Author page for the Sports Illustrated article. Everyone was so stunned that this beautiful curvy goddess was being treated as a plus-size. And why shouldn't they be surprised? At a size 16, that's an inch or two away from the average, which really doesn't make her "plus" at all.
That is, of course, unless you're listening to the fashion industry, who starts their plus-size models at size 6. To put this in perspective for you, here are some familiar faces that would quality as "plus-size" by this standard:
Christina Hendricks, who wears anywhere from a 10-14, putting her squarely in the "average" range, is continually praised for her courage to "flaunt" (i.e., not conceal) her ample curves.
In fact, the only thing more controversial than Sports Illustrated introducing a plus-size bikini model is deciding what plus-size actually means. From what I can tell judging it, like in life, rests in the eye of the beholder.
But it got me thinking, what is plus-size anyway? I mean, there's no minus-size, is there? We can be too big, we can be too small, but we're only isolated as a separate group when we're overweight. What is the purpose of separating "plus-size" from "average/normal," other than to divide and - in a subtle way - degrade the woman who just wants to buy a new shirt. They used to call us "queen-sized." Now we're just plus-size, and we're supposed to jump with joy that the closer you are to the more normal sizes you are, the better chance you have being featured as a progressive "plus-size" model for the industry.
Anything else encourages an unhealthy lifestyle, and that's just irresponsible. We have to homogenize the media with a certain standard of beauty to discourage those who might be tempted to gorge themselves and become a statistic.
As we all know, that approach has been working flawlessly so far.
OR... we could celebrate women in all their shapes and sizes for the sum of their attributes rather than condemn and isolate them over some arbitrary number on a label.
You can read GROUPIE free from Amazon, All Romance Ebooks, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, iTunes and Kobo.
Saturday, November 3, 2012
Before you read my books, there's something you should know.
I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel. I'm a heart-breaker and I don't care much for rules n' such. Being an independent writer, this means I don't have a big publishing house telling me how to mash my stories into neat little boxes to fit happy reader expectations.
I get to be raw. I get to live on the edge. I get to take left turns without rewriting my entire story to satisfy a crowd.
In my PRETTY IN PINK, Duckie would have gotten the girl.
I would want it no other way.
This puts me in a bit of a pickle when it comes to genre romance, since there are certain reader expectations a writer can only ignore at his or her own risk. I like the idea of falling in love book after book, story after story, but I don't like the idea that they all have to fit a basic A-B-C plot. There's no straight line in love and romance, and I like to explore every road that gets me there, even when (especially when) I need to color outside the lines to do so. So... I can either write formulaic, happy fairy tales... or I can get down and dirty with a little romantic realism and make love happen where I least expect it.
In other words, do I write to sell books, or write books I would love to read?
What to do... what to do?
I like to be real in my work because I think that makes things more interesting. I write flawed characters because I enjoy the struggle to mold them into something we can all care about and root for. Sometimes they mess up. Sometimes they mess up big-time.
Sometimes they don't even have the audacity to be ashamed about it.
In the case of GROUPIE/ROCK STAR, which hit the best-selling list in the Kindle Store for Women's Contemporary Fiction this week, I write about a polyamorous bad boy rocker. His addiction to attention and sex wreak havoc on his relationship with a quote-unquote normal girl who had the misfortune of falling in love with him even when he couldn't offer her anything - much less an exclusive commitment.
He's like any other commitment-phobe, only with plenty of opportunity to indulge his more primal, lustful nature to keep him at arm's length with the world. He makes no promises, he just takes what he wants when he wants it, damn the consequences. In other words... he's truly a bad boy rocker, collecting a jar of hearts right along with the notches on his bedpost.
Y'all watched Rock of Love. You feel me. When you love someone famous, he's already in a relationship with the entire world. You go into it with the idea you're going to share him on some level. That's just the way it is.
His dual nature of being a romantic hero and an opportunistic player makes him loads of fun to write. I get to tear him down, I get to build him up. He's quite pliable because he's unpredictable. He could be a one-dimensional cheater who doesn't really care about women (see PICTURE POSTCARDS,) but instead he's that wounded bad boy who needs to be loved so much he feels unworthy of the attention at his core. He wrestles with his love of women, his love of love and romance and with the idea he will never live up to anyone's expectations. So he self-destructs like many bad boys so many of us have found ourselves loving despite ourselves. And, if we're really young and naive, we want to save them - we want to be The One who turns it all around through nothing but indefatigable will. Hence why my heroine can't let him go, even when she meets someone older and more stable, who is willing to give her his world.
Just like my heroine Andy, I - and the readers who have come to love this story - flip-flop between sexy, dangerous Vanni and stable, gentlemanly Graham all the way through the saga. This is especially true in book two (ROCK STAR) where I get into why Vanni is so wounded. This happens as he messes up everything and sinks to an almost irredeemable level, along with everyone else who make mistake after mistake trying to force the hand of fate to deliver their own happy ending.
I am unabashed and unashamed as I keep that HEA (happily ever after) on a stick out in front of us all while I crowbar Vanni especially into the romantic hero people want him to be from the beginning.
(He's a fixer-upper. What can I say?)
As such, Groupie/Rock Star - while *technically* a romance novel centered around this main relationship - breaks a ton of "rules" along the way.
So before you invest the $5.99, here's some things you should know.
If your need for a HEA is more important than the road to get you there, you probably shouldn't buy this particular bundle. These are the first two parts of a long-suffering trilogy. It comes with a lot of angst as we all wait patiently for resolution through the first two WTF-cliffhanger novels included in the bundle. I wanted to write the HEA at the end of GROUPIE, honestly I did. But Vanni wasn't ready. And I couldn't bring myself to pretend he was. It's taken me a lot more time to shoehorn any of this into a story that offers a satisfactory payoff no matter if you're on Team Vanni or Team Graham... but the third won't be out until at least February. If you're all about the "money shot" at the end of every book, save yourself time and money and read my rocker-fantasy short SAN FRANCISCO SERENADE instead.
If you hate "cheaters" and triangles, GROUPIE/ROCK STAR isn't for you. I know many who read romance want the "fantasy" and not "reality" - but the fact that the world of celebrity comes with a different set of rules is what made me WANT to write about it. If I'm going to write about a bad boy rocker, I'm going to lay it all bare... the good, the bad, and the ugly. In fact, the "cheater" criticism kind of amuses me, to be honest with you. Technically he's not really a cheater since he's not really promising exclusivity. I make no bones about it from the very beginning, in the very first chapter he is introduced. He came with a warning label, and these are the rules Andy accepts to be in the relationship. So if you need this guy to be more of a one-woman man than an unapologetic sex hound, save your money.
If you need a writer who caters to some paint-by-numbers formula to writing a romance novel, you should probably stay away from my books entirely. I can't always promise a HEA. Some have it. Some don't. Some are sweet. Some are tragic. Some are scandalous. And I'll never say which is which, because like River Song I believe life is more fun without spoilers. That's just how I roll. I'm a slave to the story, and can only produce what I would ultimately buy/believe when I, as the first reader, have it revealed to me. As an Indie, I have that luxury, which means I'm only going to sell the stories I myself would be happy to read.
And I don't like things tied up in a neat little bow every time. I like the emotional angst, the stomach-churning, toss-the-book-across-the-room, curse-the-writer, cry-and-wail and sometimes the not-know-how-it-all-turns out roller coaster of it all. I like ambiguity, I like WTF moments, and I like realism. I like getting down and dirty with flawed characters who aren't always likable, but somehow manage to be compelling anyway.
Love 'em or hate 'em, if you made it to the end of the book I've done my job.
Let me put it to you this way. I've been reading Harlequin novels almost as long as I've been watching soap operas. I don't remember many specific story lines from the HEA books, but I can recite Luke and Laura's push-and-pull history verbatim. I'm a Scorpio, tried and true. I like dark/gritty/naughty so I am unafraid to dig in the dirt.
You should have seen what my Barbies were doing in the 80s. It was scandalous. Cheating was the very least of what my characters would do.
Through my teen years I inhaled equal parts V.C. Andrews and Danielle Steel. I fed off of angst/drama/controversy/taboo that followed character over one specific relationship. I liked being uncomfortable and sad and strangely titillated when the story called for it. I trusted my writers to lead me wherever they wanted to go.
As a reader, as a writer, I believe story is king. I submit to it, heart and soul. I don't care about rules. I like not knowing where I'll end up. I love being surprised and having my expectations turned on a dime. As such I'll never be content to confine myself within the rigid structure of a white-cover romance novel. I want to dance across the line of what is expected and what is accepted.
People have said I'll have a hard time finding an audience because of this, especially with all the genre-hopping I'm known to do, but I don't think that's true. Each book comes with its own audience, one that can appreciate its virtues (and flaws) individually. I think there are people out there who are like me, who want to see stories delivered in a frank and honest way, even when I unearth the rotting corpses of societal taboos.
That is the writer I've always wanted to be, whether I sell hundreds or thousands of books... or millions. I apologize for none of it.
You may not like some of the twists and hairpin turns I take you on. And I may not always give the characters what we want for them, but I can promise I'll always give them what they need. Most of all... I promise to make the ride worthwhile for those who embrace the total abandon of story. We're in this together, you and I.
We may not get there in one piece (or one novel,) but we'll get there... together.
Happy reading.
I get to be raw. I get to live on the edge. I get to take left turns without rewriting my entire story to satisfy a crowd.
In my PRETTY IN PINK, Duckie would have gotten the girl.
I would want it no other way.
This puts me in a bit of a pickle when it comes to genre romance, since there are certain reader expectations a writer can only ignore at his or her own risk. I like the idea of falling in love book after book, story after story, but I don't like the idea that they all have to fit a basic A-B-C plot. There's no straight line in love and romance, and I like to explore every road that gets me there, even when (especially when) I need to color outside the lines to do so. So... I can either write formulaic, happy fairy tales... or I can get down and dirty with a little romantic realism and make love happen where I least expect it.
In other words, do I write to sell books, or write books I would love to read?
What to do... what to do?
I like to be real in my work because I think that makes things more interesting. I write flawed characters because I enjoy the struggle to mold them into something we can all care about and root for. Sometimes they mess up. Sometimes they mess up big-time.
Sometimes they don't even have the audacity to be ashamed about it.
In the case of GROUPIE/ROCK STAR, which hit the best-selling list in the Kindle Store for Women's Contemporary Fiction this week, I write about a polyamorous bad boy rocker. His addiction to attention and sex wreak havoc on his relationship with a quote-unquote normal girl who had the misfortune of falling in love with him even when he couldn't offer her anything - much less an exclusive commitment.
He's like any other commitment-phobe, only with plenty of opportunity to indulge his more primal, lustful nature to keep him at arm's length with the world. He makes no promises, he just takes what he wants when he wants it, damn the consequences. In other words... he's truly a bad boy rocker, collecting a jar of hearts right along with the notches on his bedpost.
Y'all watched Rock of Love. You feel me. When you love someone famous, he's already in a relationship with the entire world. You go into it with the idea you're going to share him on some level. That's just the way it is.
His dual nature of being a romantic hero and an opportunistic player makes him loads of fun to write. I get to tear him down, I get to build him up. He's quite pliable because he's unpredictable. He could be a one-dimensional cheater who doesn't really care about women (see PICTURE POSTCARDS,) but instead he's that wounded bad boy who needs to be loved so much he feels unworthy of the attention at his core. He wrestles with his love of women, his love of love and romance and with the idea he will never live up to anyone's expectations. So he self-destructs like many bad boys so many of us have found ourselves loving despite ourselves. And, if we're really young and naive, we want to save them - we want to be The One who turns it all around through nothing but indefatigable will. Hence why my heroine can't let him go, even when she meets someone older and more stable, who is willing to give her his world.
Just like my heroine Andy, I - and the readers who have come to love this story - flip-flop between sexy, dangerous Vanni and stable, gentlemanly Graham all the way through the saga. This is especially true in book two (ROCK STAR) where I get into why Vanni is so wounded. This happens as he messes up everything and sinks to an almost irredeemable level, along with everyone else who make mistake after mistake trying to force the hand of fate to deliver their own happy ending.
I am unabashed and unashamed as I keep that HEA (happily ever after) on a stick out in front of us all while I crowbar Vanni especially into the romantic hero people want him to be from the beginning.
(He's a fixer-upper. What can I say?)
As such, Groupie/Rock Star - while *technically* a romance novel centered around this main relationship - breaks a ton of "rules" along the way.
So before you invest the $5.99, here's some things you should know.
If your need for a HEA is more important than the road to get you there, you probably shouldn't buy this particular bundle. These are the first two parts of a long-suffering trilogy. It comes with a lot of angst as we all wait patiently for resolution through the first two WTF-cliffhanger novels included in the bundle. I wanted to write the HEA at the end of GROUPIE, honestly I did. But Vanni wasn't ready. And I couldn't bring myself to pretend he was. It's taken me a lot more time to shoehorn any of this into a story that offers a satisfactory payoff no matter if you're on Team Vanni or Team Graham... but the third won't be out until at least February. If you're all about the "money shot" at the end of every book, save yourself time and money and read my rocker-fantasy short SAN FRANCISCO SERENADE instead.
If you hate "cheaters" and triangles, GROUPIE/ROCK STAR isn't for you. I know many who read romance want the "fantasy" and not "reality" - but the fact that the world of celebrity comes with a different set of rules is what made me WANT to write about it. If I'm going to write about a bad boy rocker, I'm going to lay it all bare... the good, the bad, and the ugly. In fact, the "cheater" criticism kind of amuses me, to be honest with you. Technically he's not really a cheater since he's not really promising exclusivity. I make no bones about it from the very beginning, in the very first chapter he is introduced. He came with a warning label, and these are the rules Andy accepts to be in the relationship. So if you need this guy to be more of a one-woman man than an unapologetic sex hound, save your money.
If you need a writer who caters to some paint-by-numbers formula to writing a romance novel, you should probably stay away from my books entirely. I can't always promise a HEA. Some have it. Some don't. Some are sweet. Some are tragic. Some are scandalous. And I'll never say which is which, because like River Song I believe life is more fun without spoilers. That's just how I roll. I'm a slave to the story, and can only produce what I would ultimately buy/believe when I, as the first reader, have it revealed to me. As an Indie, I have that luxury, which means I'm only going to sell the stories I myself would be happy to read.
And I don't like things tied up in a neat little bow every time. I like the emotional angst, the stomach-churning, toss-the-book-across-the-room, curse-the-writer, cry-and-wail and sometimes the not-know-how-it-all-turns out roller coaster of it all. I like ambiguity, I like WTF moments, and I like realism. I like getting down and dirty with flawed characters who aren't always likable, but somehow manage to be compelling anyway.
Love 'em or hate 'em, if you made it to the end of the book I've done my job.
Let me put it to you this way. I've been reading Harlequin novels almost as long as I've been watching soap operas. I don't remember many specific story lines from the HEA books, but I can recite Luke and Laura's push-and-pull history verbatim. I'm a Scorpio, tried and true. I like dark/gritty/naughty so I am unafraid to dig in the dirt.
You should have seen what my Barbies were doing in the 80s. It was scandalous. Cheating was the very least of what my characters would do.
Through my teen years I inhaled equal parts V.C. Andrews and Danielle Steel. I fed off of angst/drama/controversy/taboo that followed character over one specific relationship. I liked being uncomfortable and sad and strangely titillated when the story called for it. I trusted my writers to lead me wherever they wanted to go.
As a reader, as a writer, I believe story is king. I submit to it, heart and soul. I don't care about rules. I like not knowing where I'll end up. I love being surprised and having my expectations turned on a dime. As such I'll never be content to confine myself within the rigid structure of a white-cover romance novel. I want to dance across the line of what is expected and what is accepted.
People have said I'll have a hard time finding an audience because of this, especially with all the genre-hopping I'm known to do, but I don't think that's true. Each book comes with its own audience, one that can appreciate its virtues (and flaws) individually. I think there are people out there who are like me, who want to see stories delivered in a frank and honest way, even when I unearth the rotting corpses of societal taboos.
That is the writer I've always wanted to be, whether I sell hundreds or thousands of books... or millions. I apologize for none of it.
You may not like some of the twists and hairpin turns I take you on. And I may not always give the characters what we want for them, but I can promise I'll always give them what they need. Most of all... I promise to make the ride worthwhile for those who embrace the total abandon of story. We're in this together, you and I.
We may not get there in one piece (or one novel,) but we'll get there... together.
Happy reading.
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