Today's giveaway is a super special project that changed the way I wrote because it gave me a purpose to tell the stories I wanted to tell.
And it all started with reality TV.
Back in the early 2000s, I was a bit of a Reality Show junkie. The hopeless romantic and inner Drama Queen in me gravitated to things like the Bachelor/Bachelorette and even Rock of Love, VH-1's "reality" show starring Poison's front man Brett Michaels.
Sure, he was already suitably matched and it was all for show, but a rock star seeking a romance in front of the cameras? Sign me up. And bring popcorn.
Naturally, when I revived my romance writing career in 2007, I this was where I wanted to play because it was also right around the time I was pretty damn bitter that there were no girls on ANY of these shows that resembled someone who looked like me.
Such a thing was (and still kinda is) unthinkable.
So, I decided to think about it.
This birthed LOVE PLUS ONE, my "reality" show romance starring a thicker chick named Shannon.
Shannon McKenna was an insecure mess when I found her, and how could she not be? She worked in the entertainment business which, in 2007, wasn't as body positive as it attempts to be today. Which is honestly only about 10-15% better than it was 13 years ago.
Sure, we have Lizzo, but have there been any fluffy girls on the Bachelor yet?
I have no idea. I gave up on all that after I wrote LOVE PLUS ONE. This scratched that itch so well I no longer had to watch standard casting beauties compete over guys we couldn't guarantee wouldn't dump them after the cameras stopped rolling, despite how beautiful and desirable they happened to be.
LOVE PLUS ONE is a book where I attempted to change the conversation, starring a gal who never wanted to be a part of the conversation. She was a shy, insecure writer who thought she wasn't quite yet good enough to put herself out there before the masses (cuz, write what you know.) When her creative idea gets hijacked from a duplicitous coworker, her solid Cinnamon Roll best friend (and hottie) Jake Dalton convinces her to fight for the due credit she deserved. Through a series of events, this lands the both of them in front of the cameras, starring in a dating reality show where Jake merely *pretends* to date his bestie and she works undercover as a mole to root out the best possible match.
It's love, plus one. Get it?
This friends-to-lovers tale is both sweet and romantic as Jake realizes this bounty of beautiful women around him only makes him long for the one he wants most.. and she didn't come from central casting. But it's gonna take a helluva lot of courage to cross that line, especially when you truly love the person you count on as a friend, and you don't want to ruin anything with the weirdness of rejection and unrequited love.
Still, the heart wants what the heart wants. And sometimes... it even gets it right, by wanting someone who can reciprocate those feelings.
Will they? Won't they? That's the fun of finding out. And why I love romance so gosh darn much.
This is also where we get to meet Jorge Navarro for the first time, the fairy glammother that finds the true beauty of Shannon hidden behind all her mousy layers. Given Shannon's sister was a true, classically accepted beauty, she never felt the need to compete. She wouldn't have dared. But Jorge changes all that within his silk-draped, incensed infused kingdom. He'll go on to do this many, many, many more times in the Groupieverse, cuz he's a master at it. These days, he's even doing this for royalty.
In fact, one could argue that this first book was the foundation upon which the Groupieverse was built. Not bad for a self-contained romance written as a sly social protest against rigid beauty standards, that just so happens to fit neatly within a traditional rom-com structure so you never realize I'm trying to tinker with the way you think.
It's an ambitious little baby, and I love it so.
If you haven't read it, here's your chance. Today for free, enjoy LOVE PLUS ONE.
He's an old soul. He sees world in a deeper way than most.
Nice guy or douche?
One of the nicest guys I've had the pleasure of writing. He was the first of my romantic heroes that broke through the traditional romance standard and fell for the Rubenesque heroine, even when he had a whole field of more socially acceptable beauties to choose from. He had to be the best of the best.
Favorite moment with him?
Jake and Shannon were the best of friends. They had a certain intimacy between them that only best friends can. It's a safe place where you know what the other person is thinking or feeling, you don't even have to question. See, that's what is missing out of a romantic relationship in the beginning. There's always will they or won't they? Do they or don't they? That's where the butterflies come in, when you have that glimmer of hope they feel about you the way you feel about them, but you don't really know for sure. Every now and then, though, there's this spark of something more as the friendship tries to catch fire. This was the first real moment I truly felt Jake go from her best friend to something more, because he gave ME the butterflies. It was only a split second, but it resounded inside of me like a thousand bells. Kind of like any other "first spark" moment I've ever had in real life...
They ducked inside the limo and were alone at last.
Except for the camera, but Shannon was quickly learning how easy that was to forget.
They sat close together, comfortable old friends.
“I’ve missed you,” he said. “I don’t know what to do with my nights without my favorite IM buddy.”
She laughed. “I’ve seen the video. You have plenty to keep you busy.”
He chewed the corner of his mouth to conceal his embarrassed grin. “Well, you know.”
She nodded. She knew. As much as he’d begun this journey to help her reclaim what Rex stole, he was still human.
“So what’s it like for you? I don’t get to see any tapes,” he reminded her.
Purple feathers and misplaced underwear flashed in her mind. “Thank God.”
That got his attention. “Okay. Now you have to tell me.”
Her entire face turned red as she shook her head. “No way, buster. That’s not how this game is played.”
“You know,” he said, donning his best German accent, “ve have vays of making you talk.” He held up two hands in prime tickle position, which made her giggle before he even touched her.
“You wouldn’t dare!”
He dared. He dove right in and tickled her until she was laughing so hard she could barely breathe. “Okay, okay!” she gasped. “Uncle!”
Mercifully he stopped, but he didn’t move. As she caught her breath she realized that he had her pinned against the seat, their faces mere inches apart. Time stood still as she stared into those baby blues up close. She had dreamed of being in his arms like this, but nothing compared to actually being there. She could feel every muscle as his warm, hard body pressed against her.
“Well?” he whispered with a crooked grin.
“Well what?” she whispered back, having completely forgotten the original line of questioning.
Jake seemed extremely amused. He didn’t move an inch. “What goes on at the Bachelorette Pad when I’m not around?”
“Oh,” she said. She licked her lips which drew his gaze that direction. The butterflies in her stomach clog danced their way to her feet when his eyes briefly glanced down at her mouth.
“Gossiping. Grooming. Sacred shaving rituals. You know. Girl stuff.”
He nodded, but he didn’t look as if he believed her.
And he also didn’t look like he had any intention to let her go. He held her so close she knew he could feel her tremble. Minute by minute, she grew more and more visible, not only as a woman, but as a woman who was developing feelings for a man.
“Jake,” she said softly, almost pleadingly.
His gaze drifted to her mouth and voice was warm like butter when he said, “Shannon.” She had never heard her name said like that before, from anyone, especially her best friend. It promptly turned her insides into goo.
Shannon couldn’t take it anymore, even if it had been part of their overall plan. She scooted out from underneath him to open the tiny refrigerator. “Soda?” she asked without looking him in the eye.
What do you love about him?
He's completely swoon-worthy. An homage of every romantic hero I'd ever read about or watched in a movie.
What do you hate about him?
Like many men, he's thick as a post. He's not stupid, he just has a problem getting a clue. But he has his reasons. We see what we need to see to protect ourselves.
If you went on a date, where would you go?
The great thing about this book was that we got to go on a lot of dates together, and one thing always proved true: No matter where you went or what you did, it was better because he was completely present in the moment.
Who inspired him?
My husband mostly, because I consider him one of my best friends. He brings that humor to my life and he also never lets me get away with the bullshit, like any great friend. And, like Jake and Shannon, my relationship with Steven took me by surprise. I wasn't looking for forever when I met him, but somehow forever found me.
But there were some other influences written in. Hal inspired a lot of Jake's "zen" side. That completely in the moment thing is totally Hal.
Who might play him in a movie?
Hum, good question. How about...?
Do you have a special song that reminds you of him?
I have a song that reminds me of them.
Any "Easter Eggs" planted with this book boyfriend?
One of my favorite scenes in the book is when they head to Vegas for one of their dates, and stand out in front of the Bellagio Fountains. They are at a point where neither can tell the other how they really feel, so they think they need to be apart because that's what the other wants. I deliberately set the scene in this exact spot because standing in front of the Bellagio and hearing this song touched me so much it made me cry. The longing and agony of unrequited love.
Where can we find him?
You get to know Jake in LOVE PLUS ONE, which is free today only. He has also cameoed in the FIERCE trilogy and in ENTANGLED . Since he is Alex Fullerton's best friend and Shannon went on to produce a reality TV show with Graham, he's bound to show up anywhere, like any of my best characters.
They say you never forget your first, and boy are they right.
Jake Dalton wasn't my first book boyfriend, but he IS the first book boyfriend who would have chosen someone like me. For that reason alone, I gotta love him.
I wrote LOVE PLUS ONE in 2006/2007, as part of a "protest" against all the traditional romance novels. I had just finished reading Waiting to Exhale and I was rather annoyed that, once again, the fat chick had been used mostly as a prop. She was comic relief, who wasn't expected to live the exciting, sexy jet-set life of her thinner counterparts. She was luck to get what she got, and she knew it.
That, coupled with Danielle Steel using fat as a character flaw in one of her books, particularly couched in terms of a serious issue like domestic abuse, just rubbed me the wrong way. I was tired of not being represented in the books I read. From the time I was eleven, I was reading about "thin and beautiful" heroines who were allowed and encouraged to race towards their happily ever afters. I'd only read one book up till then that had a fat main protagonist... and wouldn't you know being fat was the biggest hurdle she had to jump. She had to change THAT in order to have all her dreams come true.
Subtly, even without the authors meaning to, I was subconsciously programmed to believe that "thin and beautiful" was the only way to get love, and if someone like me wanted a little romance, I had better hit the gym.
There's only one thing wrong with that. I had managed to find love and romance, including sex, without ever having to lose weight myself. My HEA didn't hinge on my losing weight to find a guy; it depended entirely on finding a guy who could love me regardless of what I weighed.
In our culture this is considered "unrealistic." But since I had found that, I knew that I could write that. And that's what I did.
I gingerly dipped my toe into the Rubenesque genre by making my heroine a more forgivable size-12, which is roughly the average of most American women. I knew that they could identify with Shannon, including her insecurities as she compared herself with everyone around her that wasn't a little bigger, or thick, or, dare I use the term, fat.
I put a lot of me in Shannon, which is why, by 2007, she had a lot of growing up still to do.
By no surprise I put a lot of Steven in Jake, Shannon's very best friend and one of the few men on the planet who could see through her dress size to the girl underneath.
He was the one who saw her potential and lovingly pushed her towards it, even when she was scared shitless of reaching for any brass ring.
As soon as it was polite to do so, he herded her outside on the patio for some private conversation. He was dying to hear what Dixie had said about her idea. He thought it was a lock, and he couldn’t wait to see her get the promotion she deserved.
“So. Tell me. What did Dixie say?”
She shrugged and headed toward the swing that still hung from the big tree out back.
His heart sank. “You mean you didn’t tell her?” She sent him a sheepish glance. “Shannon.”
“What? Come on. It’s a worn out idea. What’s the point?”
“Says who?”
“Says Rex, that’s who.”
Jake came over to her and pushed her swing into motion. “You mean Dogface, Lord of the Reptilian People?”
“He’s not that bad.” He grabbed the rope and put an abrupt stop to her swinging to stare at her. She shrugged and looked away. “We swapped ideas. He said it was good but he said the timing was all wrong. It’s not like he made fun of it or anything. Which is better than what I did to his idea,” she added, figuring it made her point.
Jake started pushing her swing again. “I still think you should run it past Dixie. What can it hurt?”
“Actually it hurts plenty. It took a lot of guts to tell someone I work with about my idea. I walked around all day with this big old balloon of hope, only to have it deflated.”
“Rejection is a part of life, Shan. Everybody goes through it. Even all your heroes have dealt with it. The trick is to get beyond that and find the person who says yes.”
“If I could do that I’d be married and have ten kids by now, and my mother wouldn’t have to bribe you with dinner to shove Taylor down your throat.”
He laughed. “It wasn’t that bad.”
This time she stopped the swing and glared at him. He couldn’t help grinning as he sprawled out on the lawn beside the swing. “Okay, so we both need some help standing up to the puppet masters. You go tell Dixie about your idea and I’ll stand up to your Mom.”
He was serious. And she was scared. “But what if it’s a bad idea?”
He shrugged. “Then you’re no better or worse off than you were. But if you don’t try, you’ll never know.”
She couldn’t help but smile. He was right. Like always. What would she ever do without him?
That conversation is pure Steven right there. It could have been lifted from from our lives together, in the many times he had to be my biggest cheerleader to take my own leaps of faith.
And, just like Steven, he was right there with no-nonsense straight talk to keep her on task, even if it risked hurting her feelings.
“If you don’t go back and fight for that idea, then maybe you deserve to have it stolen.”
She was shocked. “What?”
“Listen to me. I’ve known you for a long time, and there are some things I know for certain about you. You’re smart. You’re funny. You’re amazingly talented. And you’re also the biggest obstacle you face. You walk away from challenges so you never have to fail, but you can’t succeed that way either.” She turned away. He knew her too well. “Let’s face it, Shan. Producing this new show would require you to get out of your own way and put it all on the line. I think... no. I know you can do it. But until you know that too, then maybe the people who have that confidence are just better people for the job.”
Tears coursed down her cheeks. She came there for comfort, not a butt-whooping. They’d known each other for nearly a decade, and now he decides to implement tough love? “Thanks a lot.”
But Jake wasn’t falling for it. He’d held his tongue long enough. It was time to push his little bird out of the nest. “Shan, I love you.”
“No, you don’t.” It was another wail.
“Yes, I do. If I didn’t, I’d put on a hat and join your little pity party. But what you need most is to hear that you can go back to that studio, you can confront that jerk and let Dixie know the truth. She will believe you because something this good could only come from you. And it is good. And it will succeed. And you do deserve it.” Her eyes met his. “This is your chance, honey. You just have to go claim it.”
By no surprise, he doesn't take it on the chin when she ignores his advice and tries to hide in the shadows where she thinks she belongs.
Shannon finally opened the door to Jake’s persistent knock. Her hair hung in tendrils outside of the normally tight ponytail she wore. Her glasses were askew. She wore a pair of sweat pants that looked as though they’d never actually seen a drop of sweat, and her stylish ensemble was topped off with a well-worn pair of slippers that looked like bear paws.
“I take it you didn’t go back to the studio.”
She snorted. “What gave it away?”
He was confused. “I don’t understand. What changed your mind?”
She shrugged as she lumbered back into the apartment. He’d never understand, so it was pointless to explain. She had every intention of going to work the next day and claiming her idea, but a nightmare ended up changing her mind. She dreamed that she’d gone back to work and strutted right to Dixie’s office, but when she opened the door she stood on the edge of a hundred-story building, teetering right on the edge. The whole world watched from below as she lost her footing and plummeted toward the ground.
She had jerked awake in her bed, in the throes of a panic attack unlike anything she’d ever experienced. The dream had merged all her worst fears into one epic nightmare. It took a whole gallon of ice cream to calm her down.
Clearly the dream was an omen. And she was no longer convinced that her dreams were worth pursuing if that was the cost of their coming true. “Does it matter?” she finally asked, though she really didn’t expect an answer.
Jake followed her into the apartment. The scattered debris made it look like a Chinese restaurant had exploded in the middle of her living room. “Apparently not,” he sighed as he watched her flop down on the couch and grab her remote.
He grabbed it just as fast and turned off the television he suspected hadn’t been off in at least two and half weeks.
“Hey! I was just about to find out if Carly and Sonny were going to get back together.”
Soap operas, he thought with a groan. It was definitely time for an intervention.
“You have ten minutes.”
“Before you turn back into a frog?”
“Before I pick you up and carry you into the bathroom and plop you in the shower.”
“You and what army?”
He loomed large over her and she shrank back into the sofa. This man had muscles and ate his spinach. “I was kidding.”
His face remained stern. “Well, I’m not. You’re going to go take a shower and I’m going to drive you to the studio. We’re going to get your job back.”
She shook her head. “Forget it.”
He shrugged. “Suit yourself.” With his two strong arms he effortlessly lifted her up like a bale of hay, despite her very loud protests and wiggling.
“Jake!” she squealed from her precarious perch atop his shoulder. “Put me down!”
He shook his head and held her tighter as they maneuvered the tight hallway heading toward her bathroom. She clutched door frames and scraped her fingernails along the wall to put a halt to their journey, but Jake was a man on a mission.
Toiletries went flying and he pulled the curtain back with one hand, using the same hand to turn on her shower. It was a shot of icy cold water that sprayed over both of them. “My clothes!”
“Smell as though they could use a washing too,” was his blithe remark. “Besides. Do you really want to be naked right now?”
She shook her head emphatically. Aside from her doctor, men didn’t generally see her naked. She felt no need to tarnish such a pristine record.
“Either way works for me,” he said as he handed her a bar of soap.
After a comedy of errors, both Shannon and Jake end up cast for the reality show she had gone to fight for. He'd be the bachelor on this new dating show, and she'd be the "mole" inside the girl's house, to weed out the bitches and pick the right match for Jake.
They knew going into it that there could only be one choice.
“No. Nope. Nada. No way.”
Jorge and Jake watched Shannon vigorously scrub the layer of makeup Jorge had previously applied with such care. No matter how much beauty he tried to plaster on her face, the ugly truth was that she was not ready for prime time television. It was impossible.
“Don’t hold back,” Jorge remarked. “Tell us how you really feel.”
“How do I really feel? You want to know how I really feel? I feel like a gigantic jerk, that’s how I feel. I belong behind the camera, not in front of it. Dixie’s crazy if she thinks I’m going to willingly go on national TV.” That was the total opposite of invisible, and it just would never do.
“It’s up to you,” Jorge replied. “But I think you’re missing a huge opportunity.”
“Oh yes. The opportunity to make a fool of myself doesn’t come along every day. Just every other day.”
“Slow down. Think about this for a second. Rex stole your idea. This is your chance to steal it right back.”
That stopped the scrubbing. Momentarily. “What do you mean?”
“He’s a producer, but this is unscripted, reality television. That means once those cameras roll, you guys would be the ones in control. Whether the show is good, or whether the show flops, is completely up to you.”
She considered it for a nanosecond. “Regardless.” She took a deep breath and sank back into the makeup chair. “Do you realize how idiotic I’ll look next to the swimsuit models he’s probably already cast?”
Jorge came to stand behind her and run his hands through her recently styled hair, fluffing and primping. “You will look like most of the women who watch the show, which will be a first for reality TV.” None of them could argue that point. “Who would you root for if you were watching? And wouldn’t that just chap Rex’s ass?”
She nodded, but then shook her head. Even with his masterful touch with her hair, with the makeup gone she looked way too plain and unbecoming to pass for a hopeful bachelorette.
“You know, Dixie offered me this gig but I turned her down. I didn’t want to work with Rex. But if you decide to do it, I’ll be there in a second. How’s that for an offer you can’t refuse?”
“It’s very nice,” Shannon conceded. “But even you can’t fix what Nature missed.”
He stood back and crossed his arms. “Excuse me?”
She swung around in the chair. “Okay, maybe you can. But we’re talking a full-time commitment.”
He just smiled and swung her back to the mirror. “Then I’ll move into the bachelorette pad for a few months. Tell me where there’s a down side.”
“But it isn’t fair to Jake,” she motioned to her still silent friend. “He doesn’t want to a part of a televised meat market.”
Jorge laughed. “Oh yes. Surrounded by twenty adoring females. It’d be hell.”
Jake just smiled. Although he wouldn’t have chosen this for himself, he thought the idea had some merit. Not to find a mate, necessarily, but to see his friend finally take her destiny into her own hands.
And if he had to date twenty lovely women to facilitate that… it was a dirty job but someone had to do it.
“Jake?”
He shrugged it off. “Like I’ve always said, Shan. Life is full of lessons. It’s a—”
“Learning experience,” she finished for him. She sighed. “So what would we have to do?”
Jorge hopped up on the counter and they all leaned in together. “I think we can all agree that we don’t trust Rex.”
Both Shannon and Jake answered immediately. “Right.”
“So you can’t necessarily control how he edits the show. But the money is on who the bachelor will choose. And that is very much in your control.”
“So who do I choose?” Jake asked.
A light bulb appeared at once over Shannon’s head. “Me.”
Jorge smiled. “By Jorge I think you’ve got it. What better Cinderella story for a Just Dixie audience?”
Jake and Shannon shared a look. This could actually work.
But something happens when the light shines bright on someone so used to living in the shadows. It changes the way she sees everything... including her best buddy, Jake.
They sat close together, comfortable old friends.
“I’ve missed you,” he said. “I don’t know what to do with my nights without my favorite IM buddy.”
She laughed. “I’ve seen the video. You have plenty to keep you busy.”
He chewed the corner of his mouth to conceal his embarrassed grin. “Well, you know.”
She nodded. She knew. As much as he’d begun this journey to help her reclaim what Rex stole, he was still human.
“So what’s it like for you? I don’t get to see any tapes,” he reminded her.
Purple feathers and misplaced underwear flashed in her mind. “Thank God.”
That got his attention. “Okay. Now you have to tell me.”
Her entire face turned red as she shook her head. “No way, buster. That’s not how this game is played.”
“You know,” he said, donning his best German accent, “ve have vays of making you talk.” He held up two hands in prime tickle position, which made her giggle before he even touched her.
“You wouldn’t dare!”
He dared. He dove right in and tickled her until she was laughing so hard she could barely breathe. “Okay, okay!” she gasped. “Uncle!”
Mercifully he stopped, but he didn’t move. As she caught her breath she realized that he had her pinned against the seat, their faces mere inches apart.
Time stood still as she stared into those baby blues up close. She had dreamed of being in his arms like this, but nothing compared to actually being there. She could feel every muscle as his warm, hard body pressed against her.
“Well?” he whispered with a crooked grin.
“Well what?” she whispered back, having completely forgotten the original line of questioning.
Jake seemed extremely amused. He didn’t move an inch. “What goes on at the Bachelorette Pad when I’m not around?”
“Oh,” she said. She licked her lips which drew his gaze that direction. The butterflies in her stomach clog danced their way to her feet when his eyes briefly glanced down at her mouth.
“Gossiping. Grooming. Sacred shaving rituals. You know. Girl stuff.”
He nodded, but he didn’t look as if he believed her.
And he also didn’t look like he had any intention to let her go. He held her so close she knew he could feel her tremble. Minute by minute, she grew more and more visible, not only as a woman, but as a woman who was developing feelings for a man.
“Jake,” she said softly, almost pleadingly.
His gaze drifted to her mouth and voice was warm like butter when he said, “Shannon.” She had never heard her name said like that before, from anyone, especially her best friend. It promptly turned her insides into goo.
Unfortunately for Shannon, she realizes that she's falling for handsome, hunky Jake, her steady bestie for ten years, around the time she has to fight 20 more women for his heart. And not just any women. We're talking *reality dating show* women. To say she stands out is an understatement, particularly to the other girls.
Jake wasn't having that either.
Kayleigh found Jake still sitting in the room with a perplexed look on his face. “Hey, you. Why are you in here all alone?”
His gave her an absent-minded answer. He had other things on his mind. “Shannon just left.”
“Ah.” Kayleigh entered the room and took a seat beside Jake. It was her spot, she’d decided, and she was going to do everything she could to be there. “You know I passed her in the hall and she seemed upset. Did you two have a fight?”
He gave a quick shake of his head. The thought was ludicrous. He and Shannon never fought.
They also never kept secrets, which was the hardest part of this new situation. Neither one could be honest about what they thought or felt. They were putting on an act, every single day, which felt completely unnatural for their ten-year friendship.
Jake realized then that he could ask Kayleigh’s insight. She’d been at the house. Maybe she knew what was eating Shannon.
“Did she say something?”
“She didn’t really have to say anything,” Kayleigh explained. “She mentioned that the date did not go well, but didn’t elaborate. We all kind of decided that meant it really didn’t go well.” She waited but Jake gave nothing away. “You’re very sweet, you know that?”
“Is that so?” he asked, but the absent question was inherently rhetorical.
“Being so nice to someone like Shannon,” Kayleigh expounded.
That got his attention. “Someone like Shannon?”
Kayleigh sensed that she had to broach the subject carefully. “You know. Someone who isn’t very well suited to you.”
His eyes narrowed as he studied her. He and Shannon had been thick as thieves for ten years. How could anyone think that they weren’t suited for each other? “And why isn’t Shannon suited to me?”
For the first time since she met him, his easy-going manner evaporated. Kayleigh laughed, and hoped to put him at ease. “For instance, you love the outdoors. You’re athletic. You’re adventurous. She’s… not.”
He waited. She was trying to say something, and suddenly he really wanted to know what it was.
“You’re a great guy,” Shannon continued. “You didn’t want her to be among the first to go. You even give her individual dates. But it’s not like you’re actually going to fall in love with her.”
He sat back and searched her face. Had he really been toying with the idea she might be the kind of girl he’d like to keep seeing after the show? “Why not?”
Kayleigh decided once again to change tactics. She leaned toward him. “Because you’re going to fall in love with me.” She gave him a winning smile that begged for a kiss.
He did not oblige. “It’s much too early to decide that,” he reminded as he stood. “Let’s get back to the party.”
Kayleigh left that room with a lot less confidence than when she entered.
Suffice it to say, Jake Dalton is one of my most swoon-worthy men, the first of my many "Good Guys." If you want a sexy romp with a cocky douche bag, this isn't that book. Read my GROUPIE or MASTERS sagas instead.
But if you want to know what it means to fall in love with your best friend... Jake's your guy.
They ended their evening with one last dance, and when the final notes of the music echoed away, they stood in the circle of one another’s arms, locked in each other’s eyes. Her heart thundered in her chest as she wondered if he was thinking about kissing her as much as she was thinking about kissing him. The moment was perfect. It was romantic. It felt just as right, at least to her.
He wore an unreadable expression on his face, one she’d never ever seen before, so it was frustratingly hard to tell how he felt about it. Her hopes began to climb when his hand cupped her face, with one thumb absently caressing her full bottom lip. “What?” she finally said in a breathless whisper.
“I made a mistake a couple of weeks ago,” he said at last, his low, soft voice bouncing off of her tightly drawn senses.
Her eyes fixed on his mouth. Thanks to her dreams, she could already imagine what it would feel like to kiss him. And even if it was only an act for the viewing audience, suddenly it was all she wanted to do. “What was that?”
“I gave away something I should have saved for the perfect moment. For right now. For you.”
Her breath caught as she realized that his head was lowering towards hers. The minute his mouth opened over hers, she was a goner. Her lips parted like they had in her dreams, unconsciously, with a wanton gasp, and fireworks exploded in her brain as his tongue meshed at once with hers.
It took her a whole second to process what was going on. It was real! Jake was kissing her! And not just a I-kinda-like-you-so-I-think-I’ll-kiss-you kiss. With Jake clutching her tight, his hand weaving into her hair to crush his mouth against hers, it felt more like I-wanna-kiss-you-so-bad-it-physically-hurts kiss. Whether it was for the show, or the ultimate fuck-you to Rex, didn’t seem to matter. Instead she focused on how his tongue tasted like wine as he conquered her mouth in ways her limited imagination just couldn’t picture. She practically swooned against him and he held her tight in his strong arms.
They were breathless when he finally broke apart. Seconds passed as they stared at each other. Finally his face broke apart in a lopsided, self-satisfied grin. “Now that’s a first kiss that counts.”
Shannon couldn’t speak as she nodded. Her whole body was flushed. “Jake,” she started, though she had no idea what thought could possibly follow.
Instead he bent his head towards hers and lightly kissed her on the tip of her nose before he rested his forehead on hers. “Thank you,” he whispered.
“For what?” she whispered back.
“For the best date so far.”
As for who I'd cast, it'd have to be someone who was rugged and strong, like a rancher should be. He'd have to have the zen of an old soul, which you could see the minute you looked into his eyes, which would immediately put you at ease. He can't take himself too seriously. He'd have to be romantic and kind and accessible, but with a strong code of honor what it meant to be to be a man... and how that translated into his treatment of women.
Basically I'm open to suggestions. To me he's simply Jake, and I love him every bit as if he were real.
Fortunately, thanks to my own HEA, he totally is. I see him every time I look into my husband's blue eyes. And since you can't have him (sorry, I don't share,) I gave you Jake.
You're welcome.
LOVE PLUS ONE is free to read through Kindle Unlimited. Today only, everyone can download a copy.
Join me and let's fall in love with one helluva bachelor.
It’s day nine and if you’re on schedule or thereabouts, you should have written just a smidge over 15,000 words so far. For a 50,000-word book, this would land you around the beginnings of Act II, where you will be writing the bulk of your story. You’ve got your beginning, you likely know your ending, now you just need to bridge the two together with all the tension and suspense your reader needs to keep turning the page to find out what’s going to happen next.
Hopefully you know, but it’s possible you won’t.
Two things might be happening here. Best case scenario, you’ve done the prep work, you’ve written the setup and now you’re being pushed along by the momentum of your story. It’s still work to develop it slowly, word by word, but opportunities are growing right from the page, allowing you to craft scenes that build naturally and organically through the development of your characters.
Worst case scenario? You’re staring at the vast wasteland of Act II wonder what the hell you need to write next to meet your word requirement.
These next few chapters will deal with that, with suggestions that you can use to cross this chasm. The next 25,000 or so words that make up Act II can be quite intimidating. It stretches out in front of you, all these pages to fill with all these words you’ve yet to find. This is a daunting task, even if you’re prepared for it.
This chapter will show how using your individual perspective as a human will help you mine for material as a writer. In other words, when you pull your hair out in Act II wondering what the heck you’re going to do, I say that you do what another person can never do: Do you.
Let’s face it. The old adage, “There’s nothing new under the sun,” often applies to the stories we tell. I write romance, so, Boy Meets Girl hasn’t changed a whole lot throughout the millennia. It’s all about the quest for a happily ever after with the person of your dreams. This has held true for as long as I’ve been reading romance.
Even though modern characters are often hooking up (often and enthusiastically) before their happily ever after, which wasn’t that common in the 1970s and 1980s when I started reading romance, the whole reason we turn the page is to find out if that boy gets the girl for real and forever.
How a writer does this is key, especially if he or she wants to be remembered. Stories kind of blend together after a while, thanks to the glut of material that has been written over the years. Many of these have already exhausted practically every trope known to the genre.
Whether you’re writing a book about a marriage of convenience, a surprise baby, some billionaire boss who walks the line between dominant and controlling, or a vampire who has fallen in love with a mortal, best friends who find love, worst enemies that find love, cowboys, bikers or forbidden bad boys, most of these tropes have been mined well in some form or fashion by authors before you, to varying degrees of success.
Thousands of those books are published every year about all those things. Some might even eerily mirror what you’ve decided is a beyond-brilliant idea that no one else has ever done anywhere.
Parallel development is real, and it’s hell.
You can play around with the plot a bit, just to toy with convention, in your attempt to stand out from the pack.
“Hey, did I mention that in my story there’s a purple hippo dancing the merengue?”
“No kidding. I’ve never heard of that before.”
Your plot is important. No doubt about it. But what’s more important is the filter through which you see your plot. See, that’s what the other authors can’t write, even if they wanted to. You bring to the story a certain perspective. If you’re successful conveying that in your books, then anyone who reads it will be able to see the world, for a short time at least, through your eyes.
So how do you do this? How do you … do you?
You start by telling a story only you can tell. Temptation is strong to chase trends when developing a plot, because it feels like a way to either make easy money or a chance to get read by a larger audience. This is what everyone clamors to read, so clearly you have the best shot to break in by enticing them with a similar story all your own.
If you want to catch this “express,” it’s totally your prerogative. You take a risk blending in with the other authors who might be following suit, who have a larger fan base, who have more experience, who will stand shoulder to shoulder in front of you, obscuring both you and your book as the express whizzes by in a second, chasing that trend until it dissipates into a cloud of smoke when The Next Big Thing rolls around.
You’re going to have to work extra hard to be seen, no matter if you ride a trend or not. My advice? Don’t worry about the sale right now. Consume yourself instead with the passion to tell the story only you can tell, even if it echoes those books that came before it.
Why are you the author who absolutely, positively has to write this book?
This is an important question to ask yourself. When it comes to the sale, much later on, the reader will be asking the same question. “I’ve already read about a shape-shifting vampire who falls in love with a billionaire cowboy alpha, but marries her worst enemy out of convenience because she’s hiding a secret baby from her stepbrother. What makes THIS book so special?”
You do. You make it special.
You may write a book because you fell in love with that particular trope and want to take it for a test drive yourself. This way you aren’t swept along with the tide of someone else’s vision. You can do what you want, say what you want and have what you want, your terms.
Maybe you’ve read a lot of books about that subject simply because you enjoy revisiting the fantasy. You may read a book about a rock star and decide, “Hey. Yeah. That’d be fun,” and create your own little fairy tale as a result with all the things that turn you on.
When I wrote GROUPIE, there were already bookshelves full of successful, bestselling rock star romances, including a few notable indies. That wasn’t new. Hot rock stars, and the hapless, star-struck “good girls” who found themselves falling for their swagger, have provided common breeding ground for many a writer who wants to delve into the fantasy of falling for a musician/singer/rock star.
The reason the trope exists at all is because many women have this fantasy, and have since they first mooned over posters on their wall of whatever rock star that sparked their desire to go from groupie to girlfriend.
We didn’t just want to listen to the songs. We wanted to be the subject of them.
The good news here is that pursuing this kind of timelessly popular storyline means you’ll have a better chance finding readers for your material. Instead of it being a “trend” that pops up out of nowhere and takes the reading world by storm, these are tested plot devices that can hook the reader just on concept alone. You have a built-in reader base just dying to get their hands on another juicy rock star book.
The bad news is that popular tropes tend to exhaust every type of plot in existence because you are tasked with doing what other people haven’t done, lest you be skewered for copying another book or another author.
Plagiarism is every bit as real as parallel development. Unlike parallel development, however, it’s not about who does it best. It’s about who created it first. Guard yourself, and guard other writers, too.
There’s nothing to gain proving that you can do what they do. You build your career doing what they can’t do.
Eager readers will skim your blurb and decide in an instant if this has enough originality to hook them, or if it’s just like every other generic rock star book on the market. They’re not going to pay $2.99 or more on an e-book they’ve already read, by authors who have already earned their loyalty by writing good books.
I never set out to compete with authors like Jasinda Wilder or S.C. Stephens, both of whom had published massively successful rock star romances by the time I wrote mine. It was irrelevant to me what they had written, because I wasn’t chasing after them to make some quick money.
I wrote GROUPIE originally solely for my own enjoyment, and my own therapy.
When I decided to write a rock star book, the popularity of it played a pretty small part in my development of the plot. I wasn’t out to write something that someone else had written. Instead, I decided to insert myself all over that book, since that was what was missing from all the others.
What do I find sexy about this particular trope?
For me, it’s all about the angst. I had no real desire to write some episodic sex fest tied up in a neat little bow at the end, domesticating the bad boy after hundreds of pages of good lovin.’
That type of story didn’t work for me. It didn’t excite me. It didn’t turn me on. I didn’t find it a realistic enough plot to sell to myself, so I knew there was absolutely no way I could sell it to anyone else.
Because of my own unique life experience, I’ve danced pretty close to the forbidden flame of celebrity thanks to my exposure to several fandoms. I’ve met musicians and singers. I know several personally. I’ve seen their world from the back of darkened dive bars, where fidelity often goes to die.
I grew up a groupie, no doubt about it. But the closer you get to your idols, the less they shine. They become human. Mere mortals. Flawed, just like everyone else. Sometimes even more epically so, considering that performers experience life ratcheted up to levels of intensity most of us can only imagine.
That’s what makes them so darned sexy.
It is the very same thing that makes them dangerous, which makes them even sexier.
This is what made me want to write about them, and this was why I believed I was the only writer who could pen this particular story.
Yeah, it’s sexy to be pursued by a rock star… but what if you actually got him? What then? What’s the conflict? The juicy, angsty, can’t-stop-turning-the-page conflict? It’s not so much about the happy ending for me. If my couples get a happily ever after, they have to work for it. Then, and only then, is the reward that much sweeter.
Conflict should entice you to write your book, since that’s the reason you tell your story in the first place. Boy meets girl? Whatever. How does boy get girl? That is the story.
That, by the way, is often the question that drives Act II. It’s the question everyone wants answered, so they keep turning the page. If you’ve done your job properly, you will have enough conflict in Act II to carry you all the way to the climax and resolution in Act III.
I had plenty of material to mine when I sat down to write GROUPIE. At the time I was ovaries deep in a fandom, where I had the rare and often regrettable opportunity to peek behind the curtain of fame. I saw the opportunities and excess available to people in that world, particularly when they were successful. I got to see where public image and reality collided, often with disappointing or devastating results. I also got to see, first hand, what people were willing to do to get closer to those who actually were successful. This can prove to be a toxic, explosive combination.
When I found it turning things upside down in my world, I did what I always did. I decided to write about it.
I had no intention whatsoever to write some fluffy little romance that just so happened to star a rocker. I wanted to tear down all the illusion around celebrity like tissue paper, to talk about what it was like to fall in love with someone who needs the love of the entire world, who will never completely belong to any one person, and you're expected to be okay with that because he’s a rock star. It’s a crazy, mixed-up world that turns fairy tales on their ears.
This is what spoke to me in 2011.
Since I couldn’t write about what I was going through, I decided instead to craft a fictional story and put my characters through even worse stuff. The more extreme, the better. I took what I knew to be true and just added liberal splashes of Ginger everywhere. The first and most important part of that, I put myself in the lead character, even though I, personally, had never pursued or landed anyone famous.
I, personally, didn’t dream of a happily ever after with a rock star, because at that time I was 100% certain that was impossible. You can get him into bed, that's no trick. Building a worthwhile relationship with someone who needs and wants the adoration of fans the world over is much, much trickier. This complication not only ended up driving the plot for the first book, it spawned two more.
Since I’d already decided to take a detour with the message of the book, I decided to make my lead a little more unconventional as well. I felt it was unrealistic to turn a bad boy rocker into a devoted, faithful boyfriend, so I did what everyone else thought was unrealistic as well.
I used a woman of size to attract him in the first place.
I came of age in the 1980s, so I was part of that inaugural MTV generation. I watched music videos all night long till my eyeballs bled, so I was pretty familiar with the kinds of girls who typically attracted rock stars. I’d seen Bret Michaels and the women he tried to romance on “Rock of Love.” I knew the deal.
I simply didn’t care about the deal. Not one tiny, teeny weeny, itsy bitsy little bit.
What I brought to that story was my own unique perspective. By 2011, when I wrote this book, I had come to the conclusion that being one of the many ports of call for these scandalous rock stars wasn’t that far removed from being “the fat girl.”
For those of you unfamiliar, there are certain men in this world that treat women differently based on their size. To the world, they set the standard of what kind of woman they deem worthy to be their companion, with beautiful women on their arm at every opportunity. Behind closed doors, however, they seduce all the weirdoes and freaks they’d never be caught dead with in public, just because they can.
I knew something about that, thanks to my own history. I was all too familiar with the kinds of guys who would sleep with you because the opportunity presented itself for an easy score, only to be publicly linked with girls more socially acceptable as a mate.
And, just like far too many “fat girls,” groupies will accept these crumbs eagerly and happily because the opportunity to get with a hot guy who acts like he wants them just doesn’t come along every day. If you’re backstage with your idol, and he decides to take you back to his hotel for a little sis-boom-bah, you’re going to freaking go, consequences be damned.
If the guy is truly an asshole, then he’ll test the limits with you, just to see how much he can get away with, simply because you’re so desperate for his attention. The stories are legendary, and disheartening.
It’s almost as if these kinds of guys resent you for having to settle for you, so they make you pay even while they get their rocks off. They’re doing you a favor, so you get to do them a few favors too, including all the other stuff that girls with standards wouldn’t do.
Some rock stars are notorious for this kind of despicable behavior.
It was as natural as breathing to cast a fat girl as the “groupie” in question – the sweet, innocent good girl who just had the misfortune for falling for a rock star’s act. Their entire purpose on the planet is to attract you with their song. Many are masters of this, who make women fall in love with them on the regular.
Who they love in return, we don’t always know. We only see what they want to show us. This is part of the appeal, which is why getting them behind closed doors is so enticing. We need to figure out what part of their act is real, and which part is fake, and how – exactly – we can fit into it.
Since this was my show, I cast it with a size-16 heroine, a real downhome Tennessee girl who didn’t give a rat’s ass if someone didn’t like her because of her size. Ultimately this was what attracted the rock star in question. Confidence is sexy. She dared to show him she wouldn’t be an easy conquest, regardless of her size or the fact she saw him for the first time when he was up on stage and she was down in the audience. This attracted him even more.
Conflict is never easy. And that was the conflict that drove the story. The more she made him chase her, the more he wanted the conquest. When she finally caved, that’s when the true second act began. That’s when I explored the themes I wanted to explore, such as being careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.
My experiences crafted the plot. My unique perspective as a woman of size developed my heroine, and my own personal tastes with my own idols, fallen and otherwise, crafted my hero. Because of this, he wasn’t that much of a hero at the start. He was a douche, who just wanted–needed–the whole world to love him.
Just like that, I did what other rocker romance writers couldn’t do. I did me. I wrote what I saw from my own life experience. Not only did I craft characters based on people I knew in real life (Iris is real, y’all, and she’s every bit as awesome as she was in the book,) but I used stories I had heard from other fans to inspire all sorts of sexy, or even scary, scenes that placed one brick upon the other, setting up a story, flushing it out, bit by bit and piece by piece, until you had a book that only I could have written.
Likewise I used some rather negative experiences I had encountered in fandoms to create the villain, with a crazy stalker who didn’t recognize or respect boundaries. Unfortunately I had more experience with those types of girls than anyone who doesn’t actually get in front of an audience to sing should ever have to. To this day I can’t read the Talia parts of the first book. I did my time with all that in real life. It’s over now, and I’d rather keep it contained to chapters I can skip. The poison has been sucked out, and I plan to keep it that way.
GROUPIE wasn’t a Nano project, but it probably could have been. The words came fairly quickly because I was scraping the infection out of my own soul when I wrote them. I couldn’t control the chaos I was forced to deal with on a daily basis back then, but I could control the story. That drove me to the computer day after day, to see what Vanni and Andy were up to next. Even when they frustrated me, I knew the end game, so I had a destination locked in to help me keep going.
The same could not be said for the real life events that inspired me to write the book. I was mired tits deep in uncertainty, especially not knowing whom I could trust.
If you’ve read GROUPIE, you probably see how that influenced the work.
And that’s kind of the point. If someone knows me, they can pick up any single book I’ve read and pinpoint exactly where I’ve placed myself like my own little Easter egg.
In THE LEFTOVER CLUB, a story about the oft-explored trope of unrequited love, I crafted a plot around another curvy girl who came of age in the 1980s like I did. I told the story in a series of flashbacks, from the 1970s to the 2000s, where my character Roni led a life often very similar to my own. (Big surprise, right?)
I wasn’t out to write an autobiography. I kind of, sort of did that for Nano in 2006, when I started out crafting a story using two core memories that had guided my life (for good or bad,) and ended up writing my own memoir instead.
That book is so raw and revealing that even though it’s complete, it’ll never be released.
Not every book you write will be. Some will be just for you. The others you leave like little nuggets of immortality you can leave behind as part of your legacy. That was what THE LEFTOVER CLUB really was to me. It was the opportunity to leave pretty big chunks of me and my life behind, so it will serve as a memorial to those experiences long after I’m gone.
I took my personal experience of growing up as a “fat girl” in the 1980s, and all that meant when it came to interacting with the opposite sex, and turned the knob up to 11. From the first kiss to the run-in with the gym teacher, my own experiences were tweaked and adjusted to fit right into my story. Through my characters I relived some of my childhood by using the same house I grew up in, the same music I listened to, the same movies and TV I watched. Even relationships I had with my childhood friends were immortalized in some way in the book.
As long as these things are remembered, we will live on forever. And that’s a pretty amazing thing.
It was also a scary thing. Though I had a wealth of memories to mine as I crafted my scenes, I found things got a little too real sometimes, particularly when Roni did stupid stuff. I had grown past that awkward teenager and unhappy twenty-something wife and mother who realized, too late, that her happily ever after wasn’t going to work out exactly like she had planned. Going back to revisit it was painful. And tough.
THE LEFTOVER CLUB was so not a Nano project, and in fact took me about six months to finish, with a two-month break right in the middle so I could write another project in another genre altogether. I had the material. I had the outline and the plot. I just lost my nerve. It took me months to get back into it and finagle it into something I felt was worth publishing.
It ain’t always pretty, but it’s 100% me.
Even my first “Rubenesque” romance, or romance novel starring a woman who is heavier than what was considered the norm, had me all over it. It had to, that was the reason I planted my ass to write it in the first place. There was a particular kind of book I wanted to read, and in 2007, it was pretty damned hard to come by.
This left me only one choice. I had to write it.
I was beyond done reading about all the thin, beautiful girls who found love by virtue of being so beautiful. Is it really that hard for a man to fall in love with a beautiful girl? From the books I’ve read to the movies and TV shows I’ve watched, that’s kind of happening all the time. Isn’t that the ideal in our world?
While it’s a story, it’s not the story, as proven by the fact that I myself had been romanced, wood, married and loved, even though I was *gasp* a double-digit size. What else could I do but put myself and my experiences right smack dab in the middle of LOVE PLUS ONE, which mixed “best friends,” “fish-out-of-water,” “fame/celebrity,” with a splash of “cowboy” thrown in for good measure.
I even made my heroine a writer. Sometimes I’m not even all that subtle how much Ginger I add to the plot cocktail, which in this case centered completely around an atypical beauty who had to compete for love in a public forum where everyone, including her, assumed she'd lose.
Even this book has my specific fingerprint all over it. Countless writers write writing books, but only I can write a book about my personal journey, which features Nano prominently in my growth as a writer, which established the foundation for my career as an indie. This isn't just about getting you through the month of November. This is giving you the tools you'll need to navigate the waters I've already sailed across, which will hopefully make the ride a little less choppy for you.
It it also serves to document my career as well, which further establishes my brand. That is why this book has what no other book on the subject will. Me.
They tell you to write what you know, but trick of getting that advice right is knowing which word to emphasize. Write what you know. Write what you think. Write what you feel. Write what you’ve experienced.
You… do you.
Trust me, the second you do that, the words will fly as long as you’re brave enough to let them.
This is your job as an artist. The reason that your story is different is that it comes from you. It’s shaded in with your own personal palette of experiences and perspectives that no one else can convey but you. Your stories are your opportunities to do that. If you’re looking for inspiration, you needn’t look any further than your own life. Work through the crappiest stuff and immortalize those little nuggets of truth that will shade in your manuscript with hues of authenticity only you can provide.
If you’re stuck right now, staring into the abyss of Act II, then turn your focus inward. Figure out how you can relate to your characters, and how your own life experiences might have crafted them to be the way they are. Use those experiences. Put your characters through some of these same paces. Watch what they do when you have the courage to insert a little bit of yourself into them. This will make them real and three-dimensional, which will make them more appealing for a general audience once you’re ready for one.
Now, we can’t really talk about individuality here without addressing the tendency for writers to chase trends. Like I mentioned above, every now and then a book will blow up in the marketplace and an avalanche of copycat books will flood the market as a result as everyone races to cash in on the gravy train before it zooms on past.
This is particularly true in romance, where readers are more attached to trope than to your personal experiences. “Hey, do you guys know where I can get a book where [fill in trope here].” Or, “Hey, I really love books about [fill in trope here.] Know where I can find one?”
Individuality is still highly regarded, but there’s a comfort in reading books that satisfy an itch left behind some crazy wild ride the reader never even knew they wanted. They can't get enough. They never want that feeling to end. Hence why trends exist in the first place.
Maybe you can make money from this. Maybe you can’t. It still depends on you and what you bring to the table. If you're a brand new writer or an unknown, I don't know if it's all that much, since bigger names often ride trends as well.
I once picked up a book from a bestselling writer that had all the people in my particular corner of the book world going absolutely bugshit over the release of its sequel. I decided to read the book to find out what all the fuss was about, but gave up on it fairly early in. When I was telling my best friend about it later, and told him about what had happened until the spot I stopped, he told me that it was almost identical to another popular book, a much bigger seller than the one I had abandoned. (And I knew it was a bigger seller, because I had heard of that book and that author outside of the romance world.)
It floored me to think that two such identical books could not only be released, but sell as much as they did.
This might suggest to new writers that all you need to do to become a successful, bestselling writer is to follow trends that are already on the market.
Anyone can do that. People do it all the time. Some are successful. Most are forgettable.
I challenge you not to follow trends, but to set them. It’s not the easier road, not by a long shot. But if you want a career of any importance, it is what you have to do. Otherwise your book falls into the stack with all the other wannabes that may sell some copies, it may even sell a lot of copies, but you will always be considered second to the book that started the trend in the first place. It’s up to you whether you want to win a gold medal, or if you’d be happy coming in second, third, fifth, twentieth down the list. Of the two books I mentioned, I only knew the author of one, who was light years more successful than the second simply because her book broke ground. She used her own personal fantasy and preferences to drive the story. As luck would have it, this turned out to be a latent fantasy for millions of readers worldwide. They ate it up. It changed the book world as a result.
The second one? It sold books, usually to an audience that would have bought/read them anyway. The first book was such a juggernaut that people who didn’t read at all were grabbing a copy. I'll let you figure out which one was the first (and so far only) one to make it to the screen for an even wider audience.
That is the power of individuality.
“But Ginger, how am I supposed to predict a trend?”
That is the question, isn’t it? The sad truth is that no one can. No one knows what will work until it does. Every single release is a gamble. Remember the stats on show business? Out of ten movies, only one is a blockbuster. But all ten are pitched, written, produced, filmed, distributed and marketed as if they’re going to be “the one.” You don’t know which is which and won’t know until it lands in front of the audience and they decide your winner for you.
The audience alone decides for itself what will soar and what will fall flat. The only thing you control is writing the strongest book you can, that only you can.
Take control of the only thing you can. Do what other writers can’t do. Do you.
Started First Draft: November 9, 2015 10:15am PST
Completed First draft: November 9, 2015 12:41pm PST
Word Count of first draft: 3,638
Began first revisions: November 9, 2015 01:35pm PST
Completed first revisions: November 9, 2015 2:12pm PST
Began second revisions: November 9, 2015 04:46pm PST
Completed second revisions: November 9, 2015 6:01pm PST
Updated WC: 5,329/35,724
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.
Like I said in the April Newsletter, I will be revising some of my older books for re-release. This starts with my novel, LOVE PLUS ONE, which was my best-selling title before the GROUPIE phenomenon hit. It remains a personal favorite of mine, so I was excited to get back into it and dig around. I also discovered there were some missed opportunities first time around. When you are a young writer, you tend to dance up to the line and then stop. Experience will take you tap-dancing right over that line, and that's where the true mastery comes in.
Needless to say, I'm excited to bring it to you all dressed up and purty. It even has a new cover.
LOVE PLUS ONE is where we meet Jake, Shannon and Jorge for the first time. If you've read the GROUPIE, FIERCE or FULLERTON FAMILY trilogies, you're already familiar with these characters. Here's your chance to get to know their story and see how the books in my universe all fit together.
LOVE PLUS ONE will be exclusive on Amazon for 90 days before I bring it back to Barnes and Noble, Apple, et al, so I can offer you discounts and freebies through Amazon. If you are a blogger who wants to review it, send your request to admin@gingervoight.com for a copy.
Here are the author notes on the book. Enjoy!
I wrote LOVE PLUS ONE as a protest of sorts. I’ve been plus-sized since elementary school, and even though I didn’t see any protagonists or heroines in contemporary romantic fiction that looked like me, I still managed to have a fairly active love life almost from the time I decided I wanted one.
Yet if I found any overweight characters introduced in romance novels, they generally played second fiddle to the protagonist. Their extra weight proved fodder for comic relief or a negative characterization tool, making the female less sympathetic.
Eventually I woke up to this subliminal message that suggested one had to be perfect to be romanced by the handsome prince charming, but not before succumbing to it myself.
In 1995 I finished my first “romance” novel, PICTURE POSTCARDS. I had leaned heavily on this ‘standard,’ mirroring all those stories I had read as an impressionable young girl. I made my protagonist blindingly beautiful and perfect in every way – physically speaking – because I bought into the notion that was what it took to find love in a romance novel. Imagine my surprise when I was told by publishers that she wasn’t relateable. It was a fair criticism given I couldn’t relate to her either as I had never had the experience of being blindingly beautiful or perfect in every way. I wrote what I thought would “fit into” the romance genre, rather than out of my own experiences, and this rendered my protagonist one-dimensional.
Ultimately I shelved the project, but the critique stayed with me. I wasn’t sure how to “write what I know” when my experiences with romance didn’t resemble anything out of a paperback novel, no matter how many of them I read. Yet I knew what love was, I knew how to manage long-term relationships. How was I supposed to convey this in my own voice, when most books out there spoke a completely different language?
Like LOVE PLUS ONE’S heroine, Shannon, I had to step out of the shadows and discover my voice was one that deserved to be heard. My stories were worth sharing – and were completely relatable for the average American woman, who resembles size-12 Shannon more than the beautiful, perfect (read: slender) heroines I had always read about.
By 2007, when I wrote LOVE PLUS ONE, I was ready to tackle a protagonist who wasn’t so perfect, since I myself was imperfect. I wanted to show what my experiences were finding my own prince charming, where I would find love and acceptance from a romantic hero who could love me for all my traits, not just some number on a scale. I also vented about all those back-biting beauties who played nice to the fat girl for their own self-serving purposes. Many felt I was no threat to the men they wanted to pursue and therefore easily discarded – and this proved especially toxic when I dared to believe I could get the guy in question.
Shannon’s insecurity that I describe in the book has also come to represent my own unsteady steps toward this acceptance in my own mind. I dared to stand against mainstream media and proclaim that girls who are imperfect, who represent those outside the norm, can be beautiful, can be desired, and can be loved.
That is Shannon’s journey in LOVE PLUS ONE, but it was ultimately mine as well. Apparently it is a message that resonates; it is the top selling book I’ve published, nearly double that of my second best seller. The most rewarding part of the process is when a reader tells me how much the book touches her, and how much she relates to Shannon’s journey.
I’ll let the Danielle Steels of the world write about thin, blindingly beautiful heroines. I prefer those heroines who are beautifully, wonderfully, imperfect. They’re much more fun to write. And I’m convinced they are completely lovable, because I love them completely.
Here's some music to set the mood, it factors into a key scene later on in the book. ;)
