What Would You Say on Your Car?

A few years back I wrote a book featuring a rock-climing hero (The Thrill of it All) who, to the heroine's dismay, wore throughout the book a series of T-shirts with questionable slogans. I have to say I had a great time with those shirts. In another scene, the heroine is outside the hero's bar and inspecting bumper stickers pasted all over the car of one of the bar's patrons. MEAT IS DEAD, read one. CARPE GENITALIA read another.

Bumper stickers can tell us a lot about a person. Beyond what they say, it's interesting to note what someone chooses to tell the world. They're will to announce their political views, their college alma maters, all number of things. Only one of our cars has bumper stickers on it. Our old Cabriolet has one that reads: Lemon Ave. Leo Leopard on Board (referring to the school mascot of Lemon Avenue Elementary, which my sons attended) and another that says, Back Off! Goddess on Board with smaller type beneath that advises Read Anne Stuart's Books! (A fabulous idea, by the way.)

But today, today I saw a car with a bumper sticker that claimed the woman driving was a Cloth Diapering Momma.

Wow. Why? Maybe it's been too long since I was dealing with diapers and baby-centric decisions, but I cannot for the life of me understand why someone would want to make this claim about themselves. Doing a quick investigation on the web, hoping to find a replica of the sticker, I came across another: Sexy Dads Diaper with Cloth.

Oh-kay. You find me a man willing to put this on his car and I'll sell you some beautiful Arizona beachfront.

It did get me thinking that our other cars (you don't want to know why we have FOUR) need some bumper stickers. What would I like to tell the world? Hmm. I've been getting some grateful fan mail recently. Maybe I'll have one made up that says: READ ROMANCE...YOUR HUSBAND WILL BE GLAD YOU DID!

Scrotum Scrotum Scrotum Scrotum

I don't remember being one of those kinds of kids who would immediately do what they'd just been ordered not to do. You know, if my mom said, "Don't touch the stove," then I wouldn't instantly touch the stove.

But that some school librarians are talking about banning a Newbery award winning book because it uses the word "scrotum" in the opening pages...well, you see how I've reacted. The Newbery award is one of the most prestigious awards in children's literature. The scrotum in question is the scrotum of a dog, and the protagonist overhears the word. A rattlesnake has bit the aforementioned dog in the aforementioned place.

Good God, librarians! Even if you don't have those things that go inside a scrotum, at least find your spine! Or your brain. Scrotum is a clinical term. The situation in this children's story is not sexual. Let's not foster fear of body parts. Please.

I have to go out now. I have a book to buy and a word to mutter to myself over and over and over and over.

Wearing a New Hat

I apologize for not posting in a while…I have a good reason and a bad reason. Good reason: The manuscript-in-progress is going well! Bad reason: Surfer Guy (my husband) discovered that a disc in his back has re-ruptured. While this doesn’t cause me any pain (poor Surfer Guy is suffering) it is distracting as we contemplate his next move. Two surgeries in three months sucked and he’s not ready to be “filleted” again as he puts it.

However, writing and angsting have never stopped me from reading, so I thought I’d put a different hat on and write a brief book review for Lisa Gardner’s latest, Hide.

Gardner’s books have become an auto-buy for me, even at hardcover prices. She’s just so damn good at keeping me on the edge of my seat. I have an easy test for this: If a book can keep me focused while I’m reading on the stepmill machine at the gym (instead of timer-watching), then it’s good. Gardner can do one better. I’m actually sorry when my time is up because that means I have to shut the book…at least long enough to get home and shower.

In her latest book, Gardner revisits a character, Bobby Dodge, first seen in Alone. This is one of my favorite elements of Gardner’s books. While she doesn’t have a recurring sleuth, she’ll circle back to characters from previous novels. You don’t have to have read Alone to appreciate Hide, but I’d suggest you start there. In Hide, Bobby is now a state detective and is called in to work a case with the Boston PD. Six bodies have been found in an underground pit on the site of an abandoned mental hospital and when one of the dead is identified by name in the news, a young woman calls to say she is very much alive…

I’ve been an avid mystery reader all my life and I’m pretty good at figuring out the who in whodunits. Not with Gardner’s books. There are twists, turns, and twisted minds, none of which are predictable, yet all that come together to make a satisfying, suspenseful read. And there’s romance… But that’s done well too. Characters don’t take time out of detecting or fearing for their lives in order to have a romantic dinner or take in a movie. They don’t suddenly have sex while bullets are flying. It’s subtle, believable, and makes you only root for the characters more. So…I highly recommend!

Do you read outside of romance? Are you a mystery/suspense fan like me?

Book Budget...Are You Nuts?

Somewhere out in the blogosphere a reader mentioned having a "book budget." I was both amazed and envious. A book budget? Someone can stop themselves from buying a book that looks enticing?

I thought I might find a little control when some of fave authors went into hardback. At first I told myself, I'll wait until it's released as a paperback. I will. I held onto this thought for five minutes. Two. Okay, it whizzed through my gray matter like a pinball and then was sucked into the black hole that houses the part of my intellect that concerns itself with financial issues. Result: I cannot stop myself when there is a book available (even hardback) from such fabulous writers as these:

Susan Elizabeth Phillips. Her new book (Natural Born Charmer) is out February 6! I'm counting down the days.

Deborah Smith. I ordered her latest Belle Books release (The Crossroads Cafe--it's trade PB) and was going to save it for Christmas Day. I've already established I have no will power, right? I read it (and loved it) immediately.

Janet Evanovich. Even a "between the numbers" Stephanie Plum book like Plum Lovin' and the new series starring "Barney" Barnaby (Metro Girl, Motor Mouth).

J.D. Robb (Nora Roberts): I'm a complete Eve and Roarke fan. One of the happiest times of my romance reading-life was when I picked up Naked in Death (the first in the series) after she'd already written something like 8 subsequent books. I could go on a complete glom! What joy. Innocent in Death is coming out February 20.

Do you budget your book buys? And which authors/books would you forego your Wheaties for?

Reading with My Eyes Closed

The other day, my sweat buddy Tracy was on the Stepmill with a portable DVD player that she watched while she exercised. That was pretty impressive, particularly as it was a Pilates tape (would that count as double the calories?) she was reviewing for a class she teaches at the gym.

Of course, many people listen to their iPods while the exercise. I don't--I read a book or a magazine. But, brace yourselves, I hate housework. (Hah. You probably love it, right?) However, I've found a way to make it bearable. No, it's not quite reading with my eyes closed, but it is reading while dusting, vaccuuming, washing floors. I download books onto my computer and I have wireless headphones that work downstairs, upstairs, and even all the way to the garbage cans at the side of the house.

Audio books, unfortunately, are not cheap. They can run toward $30 a pop. I tried out audible.com and received two free trial books (yeah) but haven't been back because their prices are so steep. Great selection, though. Now I'm visiting soundsgood.com and for less that $20 a month, you can download two books. If you look for unabridged titles, two books lasts me through a whole month of housecleaning.

I just finished listening to Elizabeth Lowell's The Wrong Hostage. Excellent book, and a really good one for listening (I like books with a lot of action while I'm doing housework). Next up is Meg Cabot's Size 14 is Not Fat Either. I can't wait to hear how her very humorous tone is done. That can be important...the narrator's take on the book. I listened to one guy who did all the female parts in a creepy falsetto that made me want to kick his butt. I think women narrators do a much better job at the male voices than men do with the females.

So what about you? Have you listened to a book?

Males Are Weird

But I didn’t need to tell you that, did I? However, I bring this up because it's something that occurs to me over and over as I'm the only female in a household of the XYs.

Males are weird from the get-go, but at some moment they go completely off the charts.

Case in point: My teenage son had been talking for months about a new game system he wanted (I don’t listen, we have three game systems and surely Big Bad Dad aka Surfer Guy will put his foot down). But Son 1 is smart, always has been, and before he turns to Dad, he has convinced his little brother that they will share the system. Yes, the two will pool their money and buy it themselves. This is very smart, because little brother, Son 2, isn’t teenager-ish yet. He’s short and cute and still doesn’t need anything to smell sweet. Not to mention the curly blond hair and the blue eyes. He is sent in to appeal to Big Bad Dad, who caves like a sandcastle stepped on by a toddler.

All right. Fine. Then it comes to the On-Sale Date and Son 1 makes the odd request that he doesn’t want to go out on Saturday night and if any of his friends ask, back him up that he has to do some family thing. Okay. (I should have made that stick and tell him the “family thing” was a complete clean-up of his room, but I missed that opportunity.) I figured he didn’t want any of his friends to horn in on his big chance to stand in line, thus perhaps being competition to get one of the few Wiis that were available in November.

Yes, it was the Wii.

The sons got the Wii early Sunday morning, that first day. They love the Wii. We discover I am good at Wii bowling. You can use the Wii to surf the net on your TV. We are all contented Wii people for weeks.

Until my son’s friends came over ten days ago. We’ve had the Wii almost two months and these friends have been over many times in that period. And I make some comment about why don’t they break out the Wii. Son 1 is aghast.

The friends stare at me in surprise.

HE HAS TOLD NO ONE HE HAS THE WII!

What’s up with that? This was one of the most coveted items of the 2006 holiday season and he hasn’t spilled the beans to either his best friend or his new girlfriend. Ah-hah! Might that be it? Might he be afraid she’ll see him as some nerdy, techy, video game-playing geek?

And has she really failed to detect that's who he really is inside that 6’3” of basketball- and volleyball-playing body?

I don’t know the answer. I only know that males are weird and that his girlfriend is now cleaning his clock at Wii tennis and Wii baseball. Hmm. Maybe that’s the answer. He does hate to lose.

I hope you have some odd male behavior to share!

Are there any Fakes in Romance Fiction?

I think my friend Lily has anointed herself Keeper of the Breasts (maybe because she did that 3-day Walk for the Cure as I mentioned above), because yet again she pointed out to me another of our acquaintances, a young mother, who recently had breast augmentation. She happened to be working out beside another young woman who also had the procedure. Now this is not a chi-chi workout studio. This is a suburban gym. So it occurred to me, particularly as I’d just heard an ad on the carpool-friendly radio station about choosing breast implants, that augmentation has gone mainstream.

It’s no longer the sole provenance of actresses, models, and those rich-and-weird girls? creatures? who are featured on MTV’s "My Super Sweet 16" (by the way, if you’ve yet to have kids, don’t watch this show, it will make you want to remain childless, heck, maybe celibate in case of an accident, for the rest of your life). And Lily’s info also made me think about heroines in romance novels, because I’d just fleshed out (oops, excuse the pun) a secondary female character in my manuscript-in-progress and I know she has implants. I don’t think any readers will blink an eye.

But what about the lead females in our books? I read a lot, and widely, and I couldn’t recall a heroine with anything fake beyond highlights. Okay, so no Regency miss is going to have undergone rhinoplasty, but I couldn’t think of one main character in contemporary romance who’d had a nose job, let alone liposuction or any other plastic procedure (I wrote a secondary hero who’d had a facelift…so I’m not talking about the second lead).

Now that I’ve made the claim, I’m sure someone will chime in to prove I’m wrong (please do!), but it’s interesting to think about. In real life, I don’t care what choices someone makes, whether it’s waxing their eyebrow arch or moving on up to a D-cup. Obviously most of us love a makeover story (starting with Cinderella) but do we draw the line at pretty dresses and not something more drastic than a diet? Do I want the female star of a romance novel to be a “natural?”

I think I do, because I think I want her to find love before enhancement. It’s my fantasy, after all. What about you?

Good News = Good Eats?

I received some good news yesterday (the sales of Not Another New Year’s are going strong and it made the USA Today bestseller list for the second week in a row) along with the encouragement to “go celebrate!”

Why is it that the first thing I think of celebrating with is food?

Truly, that’s what I did. My mind leaped to, “Hmm…okay, what should I have to eat?” What’s up with that? Is it normal to think a celebration=cookies, a candy bar, a nice bottle of wine and those yummy cheese squares I like so much?

So to put off deciding how to rejoice, I dragged on the tight jeans (did they ever fit not-so-snugly around the waist? I’m thinking not.) and went to Costco for dog food. I bought a new Stephanie Plum book and the lastest Traveling Pants book. Hah! There’s a celebration for an avid reader like me. Shouldn’t that be good enough?

Except later, my husband (aka Surfer Guy) brought me a glass of our usual (cheap) wine. And I had a few Cheez-its, which are not yummy cheese squares, but are at least the right shape. After I took care of the dinner dishes, I had a couple of dark chocolate-covered caramels left over from New Year’s. They don’t count if I was standing up while I ate them, right?

So I had some “bad” food. But the problem is…none of it was as satisfying as the foods I really wanted to celebrate with. And now I feel guilty for all the extra calories. I told all this to Tracy, the personal trainer, who responded “Get thee to the gym, girl!” adding the dreaded words, “Double cardio.” (That’s when you jack up your metabolism by doing some sort of cardio exercise for 30-50 minutes in the morning and in the afternoon.) But pina colada-sipping Cynthia kept it real by rolling her eyes and reminding all of us that “please, celebration is not adding an extra mile to your run.”

But am I the only one with this weird connection between happy news and eating? Chime in if you have any celebration rituals. Even if it’s making chocolate chip cookie dough and eating all the raw batter until it makes you sick (not that I’ve ever done that or anything.)

Take a Look Around!

Welcome! I'm just arranging the lounge chairs under the striped cabana. The pool looks lovely. The waterfall is spilling from the hot tub into the deep end, and even though it's January, the jade plants are blooming. Their pink flowers smell sweet and they're attracting golden bees and quick-flying hummingbirds.

Take a few minutes to enjoy and soon I'll have a new topic for us all to have fun with!