This post is part of an ongoing Blog Series on my Patreon page about all my crushes, celebrity and personal, that have contributed to all the Book Boyfriends you know and love. The celebrity crushes are free to read, but only patrons get to read the private tales (confessions.) Check it out! And if you want to read new, unpublished content weekly, think about subscribing to my patron page! Find out about book promotions, see all my new book covers, read about my upcoming projects... be a part of the process!
It’s not uncommon for me to crush on characters more than the actors who portray them. For instance, my crush was Luke Spencer, not Tony Geary. (Sorry, Tony.) I’m into David Addison, not necessarily Bruce Willis. (Although he has made me crush on more than a few of his characters.) I crush on Captain Jack Sparrow, not necessary Johnny Depp, Jack Tripper, not necessarily John Ritter, Tony Stark instead of Robert Dow-.... no, no, no, bad example. (We'll get to him later...)
If an actor is really good, the character he plays becomes another person entirely, completely unique and appealing in their own way.
Such was the case with David Bowie, Jareth and the movie Labyrinth.
Like many kids of the 80s, I saw this Jim Henson-M.C. Escher-David Bowie acid trip back in the day. It was one of the handful of movies I actually got to see in the theater, for which I am eternally grateful - as it is one of my favorite movies of all time. I'm glad I was able to experience it in such a grand and pic way.
I was a BIG fan of the Muppets when I was a kid. Like, the bestie and I watched the Muppet Show religiously. (Beaker was our favorite.)
When I moved away from my bestie in 1982, and we were forced to do most of our communication through the written word, we used Muppet stationary to talk to each other.
I pay homage to that humble start here.
By 1986, I was 16 and a little more “grown-up,” so I was ready to tippy-toe down a road that incorporated sex, rock and romance into my head-trippy Muppet fascination.
It would be years and years later before Seth Macfarlane, Robot Chicken, Seth Rogan, et al, would take all of that a bit TOO far.
Back then, we had Ziggy Stardust to ferry us across the choppy waters of adolescent curiosity. We had the Thin White Duke. We had the Starman.
We had David Bowie.
David brought an otherworldly sexiness to the antagonistic role of Jareth, the Goblin King, right down to his infamous codpiece. There was the giant hair and the unapologetic use of makeup, both lipstick AND the eye shadow that showcased his piercing eyes, one brown and one blue, an anomaly I would later learned was the result of a fight. (His eye wasn't brown at all, but permanently dilated.) Which goes to show you, what someone else does to damage you might end up being the most fascinating quality you possess.
I needed to hear that at 16. And 21. And 32. And 49...
Bowie was simply cool.
But it was the way he played Jareth with smoldering obsession that left me breathless. Luke Spencer had already primed this particular pump, I was just waiting for someone to marry it with rock music.
Add to the androgyny that Prince had already introduced and I was a goner, so much so that had I been in Sarah’s shoes (the equally girlcrushworthy Jennifer Connelly,) I might have been like, “Toby, who?” and just traded boring teen life in for being Queen of the Goblins.
It wasn't like he was going to kill him FFS, he was just going to turn him into a goblin. Isn't it a bit creasturist to suggest this was a BAD thing?
Plus all of her friends were there anyway, and her parents seemed pretty content going out and living life child-free, which is what got everyone in such a pickle in the first place.
It just would have been hard to resist, s'all I'm sayin'.
My fascination with Jareth reminded me of why vampires scare me. They will be the death of you, but they are just so appealing, compelling and seductive, you kind of jump willingly right into the web, offering yourself on a platter, ready to self-destruct for the taste of one kiss.
So, when I finally got around to writing about vampires, I decided there was really only one prototype I could use as a reference.
Today, get MY IMMORTAL for free, and see how David Bowie, or, really, Jareth, dug himself down deep into my psyche about the kind of forbidden fruit that could cost you everything.
And thank you, David, for making my coming of age a little more cosmic.
Okay, so another fun fact about me, I grew up on a steady diet of Danielle Steel and Stephen King, with a heaping helping of V.C. Andrews on the side. This probably explains A LOT. I like my love stories mired in angst, walking the line of what's accepted and what's not. I don't mind genre bending, so it's not uncommon to see me blend a couple of different elements, like love and death.
MY IMMORTAL I have classified as a paranormal romance, but it works as a Gothic love story or a tale of horror. I decided to write about vampires, but not so much to write about falling in love with one. The whole premise came to me while talking to my best friend late one night, when one of us remarked that we must have been vampires in our past lives, since we have always been constant night owls since we were kids.
A reincarnated vampire... with a delightful idea FULL of possibilities. That got the ol' brain working. How exactly WOULD a vampire be reincarnated? And to what point and purpose would a cursed soul get another chance to human? By dawn, I had the entire story in my head, ready to go.
I wrote it first as a screenplay, so it is no coincidence if it reads like a movie. I adapted it to book form for my first Nanowrimo, which I live-blogged on Myspace. (That should date it for ya.) The story has changed a lot since I gave birth to it in 2004, but the core story remains as poignant to me as ever.
I wrote it the year after my first husband died, so needless to say I was processing through a lot of stuff. Like most Gothic tales, it reads like a tragedy, but that's kind of the most beautiful thing about it. Not so surprisingly, it was inspired heavily by this song...
...which had become my song for Dan from the moment I first saw the video. Needless to say that the story itself is quite gray, in that there's a lot of murky emotion to wade through. Life and death. Sex and pain. Destiny and cursed reality. Motherhood. Childhood. Loss. Chasing down and confronting more emotional demons than I can count. And love. Powerful, overwhelming love. A love so strong it can penetrate the very fabric of time - and death - itself. A love so powerful that it makes all the other stuff worth it.
This isn't an easy read. It's a bloody and broken read. It was me at my weakest, trying to be strong. I have a lot in common with Adele.
Coming up with Nicholas wasn't that difficult to do. He had to be so compelling and so appealing that I myself couldn't say no to him, even as I contemplated the unthinkable - that my lead hero was a cold, bloodsucking killer. Vampires scare the shit out of me, more than any other lore, mostly because they compel you to your own death. You walk to it willingly because they are so seductive. These themes keep me twisted as a Scorpio. So I did what a lot of young writers tend to do. I cast someone in his place.
Of course this eight years before Barnabas Collins. I was also a few years off when I mentally cast Jim Carrey in my movie about the devil, two years before he got to play God. I suppose this means my instincts are good, even if my timing sucks.
Speaking of sucky timing, the character of Thaddeus Dragomir was HEAVILY inspired by David Bowie's Jareth from Labyrinth. In my dreams, he definitely would have played the part.
Hey, I dream big. That's what I do. This was also the first project I rewrote to include a part for Hal Sparks, which was kind of fitting. His debut album with his band Zero 1 ended up providing a lot of music for my mental soundtrack, adding to so many songs I can't even hear anymore without thinking of this story and the key scenes that they inspired. Like Nicholas's songs for Adele...
Adele's songs for herself...
(That last one hurts, too. The Grim Reaper is a fucker.)
And then there are Adele's songs for Nicholas.
And yes, I realize that song was used for another vampire love story, but trust me. The lyrics fit my story to a tee.
Like I said... I'm ahead of my time.
Still, Hal wins the prize with not one but four songs that fill in the quiet parts of my story. It's really kind of eerie. Sweetheart that he is, he gave me permission to use one of these songs for the official book trailer:
I actually had to upgrade his casting from Vincent, who I added just for Hal, to Michael. It's a priest, but it's not like he hasn't played the part before.
But thanks to this gorgeous, gorgeous song, Hal is as integral to this project as anything else.
So what can I tell you about Nicholas other than that? Not much. He is a man of many secrets, with the revelations unveiled slowly in the book. It's complicated, like life is complicated. Like love is complicated, and death, and goodbye...
All I can say is that he made it worth it, every bit as much as Dan made love worth it to me. And he is the reason I fearlessly told this story, and am proud to call it my own. His short life became the reason that I decided to go for broke and live the life of my dreams, one I had only dreamed about with him. And since then, I've made that dream come true in ways we never could have imagined when we were living out of our car so many years ago.
So check out MY IMMORTAL. It's free to read through Kindle Unlimited, but it is also available free for everyone on Amazon today only. I can only hope it means as much to you that it does to me.
It's official! I'm going to be attending the Book Bash in Orlando, Florida, June 29, 2013, joining some of your favorite writers for a one-day-only, epic book-signing event! It's my first public appearance so I'm pretty psyched about it. I honestly can't wait to meet everyone. So come out and get your book signed, and be on the lookout for a new release coordinated for this event! (It should be fierce! ;) )
If you haven't purchased any of my paperbacks yet, that's OK. We're going to be bringing some for sale. But since I'm brand new at this, I'd like to ensure that you get the titles you want by taking a poll of which books have the most demand. So let us know which titles you want to purchase so we can have enough on hand! (Check all that apply!)
Last year I published my paranormal romance "My Immortal," a story about a troubled young woman who finds the purpose for her future tied up in the secret of her past. She grows up believing she is corrupted and undeserving of love, so her entire existence is crafted around earning her right to even exist. She does this mostly through her journalism career, where she tracks down the scourge of the earth and rights all the wrongs that occur int he world around her.
The story picks up when our heroine Adele is tracking a serial killer attacking innocent children in her town. The sheer heinousness of the crimes infiltrates her troubled dreams, which have always been a landmine of unmanageable emotional debris. She comes to find that solving the latter may actually be the key to solving the former, especially when it seems that the killer is striking closer and closer to home.
As she spirals emotionally out of control her path crosses with a beautiful and charming stranger - who sees her in a way she never has dared to see herself. He offers her romance and she finds herself pulled toward this man who feels strangely familiar though they only just met. Nicholas Sterling awakes something in Adele that she never thought was possible.
He even manages the impossible: he brings her peace. He chases away her lifelong torment of nightmares and offers her a protection she never before thought she needed.
Meanwhile her lifelong friend Michael watches on as this smooth operator swoops in to romance a woman he has loved from afar since they were children. She put up her walls against the love she long ago recognized in her best friend's eyes, leaving him to find solace in the priesthood as he was kept at the fringe of her world. Now another man has crossed the threshold almost immediately, leaving the stalwart Michael bereft and unsure what to do to protect her.
In this stark juxtaposition of terror and romance, Adele finds herself falling in love while she's falling apart. She meets a cryptic stranger that lets her know she is far more connected to the killer than she would fear from her psychic dreams. It soon dawns on her that her connection to Nicholas is not a coincidence. Their love is too powerful to be new...she finally realizes it is an echo that reaches back centuries.
It is a love that ultimately demands everything. Though she long believed she had to fight for a purpose, Adele had been born with a purpose. Only she can bring an end to the reign of terror this killer has brought upon her town. She has to take a stand and possibly lose everyone she loves most in the world, to sacrifice against an evil that has risen from the ages - even if it costs her the love of more than one lifetime.
In "My Immortal" I explore the idea of soul mates and the immortal nature of love. I did this because of my own journey to love through loss, and dedicated this book - rightly so - to my first husband, Daniel. His fingerprint left an indelible mark on my life that reaches far beyond the clutches of death.
I did this using the immortality of vampires and toyed with the idea of how reincarnation can redeem even the most vile among us when the last act of life is to save the life of the one you love. I hope you enjoy. <3
The first (and obvious) reason would be because I myself am a plus-sized woman. The go-to advice for any writer is to write what you know, but for many years I always wrote about the women I used to read about in other popular books. I mimicked Danielle Steel in creating blindingly beautiful women that every man wanted. My first version of "Picture Postcards"* was written in this way way back in 1996, whereupon publishers promptly rejected the work because the character was out of reach for being "too perfect."
I wrote two more romances before I finally decided it was time to write about someone a little more like me, which I did with "Love Plus One." And to be totally honest with you, it was the most fun I ever had writing a romance novel.
What made me sit in the chair initially, however, was that I was hacked off about the typical romance novels I read that glorified the thin, perfect heroine and cast any pudgy girl as the comic relief. If she got any guy it was usually someone who was like her, i.e. overweight and without a lot of options. That's not to suggest he's any more or less worthy of her, or not a great catch himself. I have always considered Dan Connor the most perfect husband of all time. But why can't we get the hot guys too? Where's it written that the super hot guy WON'T fall in love with an amazing woman who just so happens to be heavy? In my books, just like in my life, I show our options are limitless. We can get any guy we want... even the super hot guys who make all the girls turn to butter.
I refuse to settle for stories that suggest anything else.
Though I loved her while I was a teenager, Danielle Steel shot to the top of my shit-list when it came to this kind of literary condescension. I can't remember the book but I do remember that she used fat to make a character less sympathetic. I believe it was in a book where she tackled the serious issue of domestic abuse, which of course immediately offended me as a woman, a domestic abuse survivor and a fat person.
It dawned on me there weren't enough heroines out there who looked like the average American woman, much less looked like me. I figured we all needed a voice. Instead of the rare book that spoke about how fat girls needed to lose fat because it was the big challenge in their lives, I wanted them to know that even if they didn't lose weight and get to a "perfect size", they could be loved perfectly for who they are.
In that respect it became a feminist issue at its core. You don't see this message of total value represented in the media. Instead of finding beauty in a woman beyond some numbers on a scale, we put a woman's value on hold until she can deal with the weight.
I can't count how many times I heard the well-meaning but double-edged compliment, "You'd be so pretty if you just lost weight."
Thanks?
Far too many fashion designers treat the female body as nothing more than a human hanger for their clothes. Curves are vilified. Models have run the general gamut of looking like prepubescent boys to underweight, sickly drug addicts during the ill-advised "heroine chic" era. Anyone who has any kind of flesh at all is treated like a hero for attempting to make her career as a model, and we pat ourselves on the back for giving her any kind of platform, like we're doing her a favor.
It's gotten so bad that models who wear a size 6 may be considered "plus-sized." To put that in perspective, according to her dressmaker Marilyn Monroe was 36-23-37. A size 6 at Victoria's Secret is 35.5-27-37.5.
How does the fashion industry feel about a size 6?
Technically this is still a small according to VS standards, but according to an ABC report a couple of weeks ago that is where many modeling agencies start their plus-size model criteria.
The women the fashion world uses to make us buy their product, whom they exalt as the ideal, weigh 23% less than the average women. And we support this ideal every single time we buy a magazine.
In today's culture Marilyn Monroe would be smeared on the cover of the tabloid magazines; paparazzi would wait in the bushes to get unflattering photos of her backside to sell copies of their rag-mags IF she'd even be famous at all.
Things have changed a bit in standards of beauty and sex appeal since Marilyn's generation.
What kind of message is this sending our girls? It's telling them they have to start dieting at age 8, that's what. To be beautiful, to be loved, you have to be super skinny.
And please don't misunderstand. I'm not saying heavier girls are prettier than skinnier girls. I'm just saying they're not UGLIER. We all can be beautiful, no matter what size we wear. We just have to believe it *INSIDE.* Where we fail as women, and as a society, is we give that power over to everyone else.
Let's face it, our standard of beauty is set by the media. If a woman gains weight, she is subject to scrutiny and her press is generally negative. If a little 13-year-old like X-Factor's Rachel Crow loses 15 pounds she's lauded as a good role model, even though most of her extra weight was that awkward result of how her body was adjusting to adolescence.
But in our country the very worst thing you can be is a fat woman.
You see the sob stories on talk shows where they pick that one girl who never got a date because she was too fat (when really that has more to do with an absence of self-esteem, rather than the presence of some extra cellulite.) We ride the sofa while watching outrageous competitions like The Biggest Loser, somehow "inspired" by dramatic, rapid weight loss that is medically cautioned against.
Typically you are supposed to lose about 1-2 pounds a week for sustainable weight loss... but it's so bad to be overweight in our country the weight has to come off RIGHT NOW or else you're just a useless pile of blubber that doesn't even count as a whole person.
This results in these sort of fad/crash diets that only make us FATTER. It is by no coincidence that a country that makes billions (with a B) in the diet industry is also one of the most obese in the world.
(Note that the obese person in question in the above photo is - surprise, surprise - a WOMAN.)
Despite the fact that 34% of Americans are obese, you can be discriminated against for employment and generally mocked in the media as the last socially accepted bias. Even shows like "Mike and Molly," which star plus-sized actors who find love with each other, the main concept of the series was how fat is funny.
I've been on the losing end of that all my life, so I can tell you it's nowhere near funny.
Over the years I've discovered that anyone who mocks or shuns a fat person for being fat, or judges them harshly because of it, has pretty big issues of his or her own. It's as hateful as any other bigotry... and as unfounded. Just because you know I have extra weight doesn't mean you know me.
It doesn't make me lazy. It doesn't make me stupid. Most of all it doesn't make me desperate. Anyone who judges us by these skewed caricatures robs themselves of seeing us as the beautifully flawed and wonderful three-dimensional human beings we are.
Frankly... it's their loss.
Which is why I got out some aggression in "Love Plus One." If you've ever carried an extra few pounds and other girls turned into catty little jerks because of it... this book is for you.
There's some ugliness going on, but it's not what you may think you look like in the mirror. It's the disdain and condescension you get from others who think you're somehow lesser than because of the size dress you wear.
The only time you become lesser-than is if you believe it. These do not have to be your standards.
And, even more importantly, you can raise your standards in regards to anyone else. If they can't see past your weight to see how much you can contribute, your talents and your skill, your devotion and your dedication, then they don't deserve a place in your life in the first place.
Those are superficial, shallow people who would never see you as a person no matter what you do. If it's not fat it'd be some other little quirk or trait that would prompt them to stuff you in a box so they don't have to bother with getting to know you AND being responsible for their side of the social contract.
A person who can be bigoted for one reason can be bigoted for any reason, but you can rise above them.
This is the "moral" if you will that I addressed in my book. Find your value beyond all that petty, immature behavior and only invest yourself in those willing to do likewise.
They're out there... and they're worth finding.
I don't always take the self-esteem issue route. In "Groupie" my heroine was proud of her curves and knew how to use them. She understood not every guy would appreciate it but she wasn't about to change herself or make herself feel bad because of the superficial standards of someone else.
This is the confidence that made her sexy to a rising rock star; the guy every other girl wanted but she managed to snare. (You go, big girls!)
In My Immortal I gave my character an standard of beauty that crossed over centuries. What would make her the most prized and beautiful woman in the 1800s helped her keep modern men at bay. It would take a love that defied death itself to teach her she was indeed worthy of all good things even though she thought she wasn't. (This, by the way, had nothing to do with any extra weight.)
Believe me, someone out there will find you attractive even if the society around you tries to make you feel like a failure because you commit the crime of being fat. In my books it's usually more than one guy. In the last 25 years I have been single a grand total of two and a half years. And if I wasn't dating or married (and even if I was) there were those who were interested aside from my spouses.
I had a few "frenemies" both thin and fat who resented me because of it. They just couldn't figure out how someone like me got the things they somehow couldn't.
I didn't let fat stop me. I didn't let it stop me from getting a job, getting a man, having a family, or most importantly... being happy even when the world around me didn't think I had any right to be so. (This included members of my very own family.)
Do people still look at me like I'm a failure? Of course. But I don't live my life to their standards. If I did I would not have raised two AMAZING men to adulthood, been married to two of the most wonderful men on planet Earth and made the life of my dreams a reality.
Maybe I had to work a little harder but it only made me appreciate it more.
And now I can turn all that into stories for other women and girls who wondered, like I did when I was 16, if I would ever find someone to love. The answer is yes. Look in the mirror and start there.
So far the response has been overwhelmingly positive, which is part two of why I decided to pursue the genre: there's an audience for it. My two romances, "Love Plus One" and the revamped "Under Texas Skies" are my biggest sellers thus far, which proves there is a market for this sort of thing and I'm quite happy to be the one that provides it. It prompted a rewrite of nearly other story so that I can cast dynamic, diverse women of size in roles I previously only reserved for the thin and beautiful because I thought that was what the audience wanted.
What the audience wants is someone genuine they can believe in, and so I leave a little bit of me in every single heroine. It's as honest and real as I can possibly make it.
(And should I write a story where the size is not mentioned, it's because I don't consider it worth mentioning in the context of the story.)
I proudly write fiction with plus-sized heroines because despite what the world around you wants to tell you, you're perfectly lovable just the way you are. Modern media may make you the butt of the joke, the supporting character, the long-suffering best friend... but I believe you deserve top billing as the leading lady. And I give you handsome, romantic leading men who appreciate you for ALL of who you are, not just candy for their arm.
And it is my honor to give you a chance to shine.
*"Picture Postcards" is due for a rewrite and release in 2012 as a Rubenesque romance fairytale.
These vague words had haunted reporter Adele Lumas for nearly as long as she could remember, in fractured dreams where she was pursued by an unknown but threatening entity. She believed the disturbing phenomenon a by-product of her mental ailments, such as schizophrenia, where hushed voices plagued her waking life as much as the monsters in her dreams tormented her.
This, compounded with the devastating events surrounding her origin, kept Adele in a lonely cocoon where she had but one purpose: she tenaciously pursued every human monster that dared rear its head in her small Massachusetts town.
Things take a turn for the worse when Adele begins to have different dreams, where she is no longer the hunted. Instead she stalks children in a relentless pursuit of blood. As disturbing as these dreams were, nothing could have prepared Adele for the shocking discovery that the victims in her dreams were real children being systematically hunted by a mysterious serial killer who would drain their tiny bodies of blood, and then steal them from the grave.
Her sanity is ultimately questioned when she encounters the killer face to face and she realizes the killer isn’t human at all. It is a vampire… and it is getting much too close for comfort by attacking those who are close to her.
As Adele struggles to maintain her perspective in this impossible situation, a beautiful man enters her life and makes her feel anything but odd or weird. He makes her feel beautiful, desired… loved. It was the first such time in her life where she even entertained the idea of romance, mostly because there is a connection to this man she cannot explain. Even more disconcerting, it is almost impossible to resist – as though she and this stranger are tied together by an unbreakable bond.
Adele begins to piece together the puzzle, which suggests she has a connection to the vampire in ways she could have never imagined. Painful revelations force her to reckon with the ominous request of her dreams. What is she willing to do for love?
And who is she willing to sacrifice?
“My Immortal” is a paranormal romance that blends vampire lore with reincarnation, which explores the idea of soul mates and sacrifice. Written by author Ginger Voight, “Love Plus One,” “Under Texas Skies,” it blends her two loves of the romance and horror genres into a sensual, spooky suspense.
