Archive for the ‘Music’ Category

 

It’s happened before. I wake up to find my little bungalow occupied by 4-6 strangers. My 23-year-old daughter is a big music fan and supporter of local live music. Several years ago, she used to be active promoting all-age shows in our city. Back then, we found ourselves hosting touring bands with fair regularity. As  she’s gotten older, she’s moved away from the all-ages shows, but still supports the  music scene. Last night she supported it by inviting two bands home.

 

Of course, my bungalow is so tiny, it would only accommodate one band (A Sight for Sewn Eyes). The other band (Exalt) slept in their big new van parked outside my house.

 

This is what the influx of that many extra adults in a house looks like:

 

 

So guess what I did this morning? Cooked. Two pots of coffee, a jug of OJ, 20 eggs (scrambled), a pound of bacon, some veggie bacon for the vegetarian (and my vegan daughter), and a loaf of bread. I wish I’d taken a picture of the ten of them in my tiny TV room watching spoofs of music videos and howling with laughter. It was actually nice having them. Brought back memories. And as a bonus, they carted away the remains of my Halloween candy so I won’t have to eat it. (Yes!)

 

I did take this picture of them just before they left. Well, most of them. One guy is missing (he’s sleeping in the van). My dog Chloe loves house guests, especially when they throw the Frisbee for her in the back yard. She’s in the picture too, getting a hug. And now she’s sleeping as soundly as dirt. The pretty blonde wearing the Cancer Bats t-shirt? That’s my daughter Lindsay. 🙂

 

Safe travels, guys.

Blog Hop

Welcome to the Rock*It Reads Heating Up the Holidays Blog Hop. There are 15 stops on the blog tour. The more blogs you visit and comment on, the greater your chances of winning the grand prize, a $75 gift certificate to Barnes & Noble or Amazon, and a huge collection of books from the authors of Rock*It Reads. Smaller prizes will be available at each stop along the way.

Good luck, and have fun!

 

What better way to heat up your holidays than with the hot, sexy men of our romance novels?

 

I have to have a picture of my hero in my mind before I start. Sometimes that mental picture morphs a bit as I get deeper into the character, but sometimes the physical image of him holds for me through to the end. Here are two such cases.

 

The first hero I’ll tell you about is Tommy Godsoe, a police dog handler who has been sidelined by injury, from my book Protecting Paige (Serve and Protect, #3). It was important to the story that he be quite a bit younger than the heroine, Paige, a youthful-looking single mother. I also wanted him to be very attractive, with sensual features and a slightly dissolute look. He had to be very lean, with the body of a runner (K-9 handlers have to be extremely fit). As I searched my memory banks—and countless celebrity image sites—I found the perfect match: Jakob Dylan, of The Wallflowers. Here’s a YouTube clip of Jakob (it starts to close in on his face about 42 seconds in, if you want to advance it).

 

 

No doubt listening non-stop to Red Letter Days, my favorite CD by The Wallflowers, as I wrote the book contributed to Jakob’s image persisting throughout. But when it came to creating the book’s cover, unfortunately Jakob wasn’t available. ,-) I really like this cover, but it’s an example of the compromises you have to make. I’ve yet to land a cover where the hero truly looks the way I imagine him. That being the case, what I strive to do is capture something true about the story. I think this does that nicely.

 

 

Another character whose image I had firmly in my mind was Cal Taggart, the hero from Every Breath She Takes. He’s a former champion bull rider who has retired from the rodeo to run a cow-calf operation in the Alberta foothills. Most bull riders are very compact men. The tall, rangy ones tend to get whiplashed and battered. Cal’s not especially short, but he’s compact and wiry. I also didn’t want him to look like a stereotypical cowboy. I wanted him to have a sort of edgy cool factor where you could imagine him in a leather jacket astride a motorcycle as easily as on horseback.  This time, I looked to television/film and found my model in a guy with a similar name—Callum Keith Rennie, affectionately known by fans as CKR. In fact, when I settled on my model, I decided that Cal would be short for Callum as a tribute to CKR. Here’s a Youtube homage appropriately titled “Callum Keith Rennie is Awesomeness”.

 

 

This cover was created for me by Montlake and I think they did a great job. You can’t really see a lot of detail of the hero in this picture, but they nailed the emotion.

 

 

Of course, the way I see the hero of my books might differ wildly from the way you see him, and that’s okay. That’s more than okay. And hey, if you’ve read either of those books, I’d love to know who you imagine as the model for either Tommy or Cal. Seriously!

 

Both of these guys are very lean, Tommy in a taller, rangier way, and Cal in a more compact, powerful way. But I’ve cast heroes who are as big and robust as Russell Crowe, as pretty as Jude Law, and as rugged and … well, craggy as Daniel Craig. It’s not really about body type for me. I appreciate a wide variety of men. What about you? Are you as eclectic as me, or do you have a particular look you favor? A guy who’s just your type? Let me know in your comment below. From the comments, I will draw three random winners, for the following prizes:

 

• $10 Gift Certificate
• Signed print copy of my Rock*It Reads book Guarding Suzannah, the first book in my Protect and Serve series; and
• Signed print copy of my newest release from Montlake Romance, Every Breath She Takes

 

 

Leave a comment below to enter for your chance to win!

Don’t forget to visit the other authors on the Blog Hop for more chances to win!

Kris Kennedy	Bonnie Vanak	Erin Kellison
Sharon Page	Lila DiPasqua	Elisabeth Naughton
Norah Wilson	Jennifer Lyon	Monica Burns
Vanessa Kelly	Mia Marlowe	Joan Swan
Pamela Clare	Margo Maguire	Rock*It Reads

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On my walk this morning, i saw this fabulous spider web. If you click on the image to enlarge it, you’ll see the gorgous beads of dew it’s collected.

 

 

It instantly reminded me of a verse from a wonderful John Hiatt song called “Listening to Old Voices”. Here are the lyrics to the key verse:

 

There’s a spider at my window

And she spins a web of truth

More beautiful than all these memories

And she surely is God’s artist

As she’s caught the morning dew

It’s a simple prayer that brings me to my knees

 

I wanted to send you to see a video or at least hear him sing the song, but I couldn’t find a link. For you Hiatt fans out there, I know you’re hearing it in your heads. For those of you who are not yet Hiatt fans, go find some of his music and you will be. 🙂