Chick Lit Plus by Samantha March

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Primping and the Opposite Sex
Chick Lit Plus

Primping and the Opposite Sex

I read an article in a women’s magazine last week that got me thinking. The article was about how women shouldn’t get too comfortable with their boyfriends or husbands. This means not being seen without your makeup on, not letting him see you putting on a face mask, or not letting him watch while you tweeze your eyebrows. You also shouldn’t wear sweatpants, women should try to be sexy when around their men. I’m sorry, am I back in the 1950’s? This article was in a popular women’s mag, and I was pretty disappointed with it. I live with my boyfriend, and there are days that I simply don’t want to put makeup on. If I’m not going anywhere and will just be lounging around the house, who says I need to have a full face on? And at night I often use cleansers or a face mask, and I don’t feel like I need to confine myself to the bathroom when I have these on. If I want to go into the bedroom to pick out my clothes for the next day, I will. I don’t care if the BF sees me. Do I think he thinks I am just naturally beautiful all the time? Um, no. He knows I wear makeup, and he knows I use products to keep my skin from breaking out. This is not a shock to him, nor should it be to any guys. And why the hell can’t I wear sweatpants? He wears sweats or basketball shorts every night, but I have romp around in lingerie every day? I don’t think so. Not only that, but the BF has plucked my eyebrows before, and I have returned the favor. We tried out the Biore pore strips- on our three year anniversary no less- to see if they worked. I don’t feel like I should have to hide parts of my life from my boyfriend just because it shows off another side of me, a side that might not always be pretty or sexy. But that shouldn’t matter. What should matter is that I know he loves me, when I wear fake eyelashes on and when I don’t.
What do you ladies think? Are you afraid to let your man see you without mascara? I think it would be exhausting to try to look and act perfect all the time around the one I love. Isn’t love supposed to be about acceptance and letting you be who you really are? With all this said, I’m not trying to say that I’m completely disgusting around my boyfriend either. I shut the bathroom door when I pee. But I don’t think that not ever being able to primp while he is looking is possible. Especially once we moved in together. I should be able to feel comfortable in my own house, regardless that my roommate happens to be my lover as well. Are you afraid to let your boyfriend or husband see part of your beauty routine? Do you wear silky PJ’s every night? I would love to her any opinions on this subject!

June 2, 2011
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Guest Post by Deborah Cloyed
For Writers

Guest Post by Deborah Cloyed

Living Life and Writing Fiction The number one question I get about the book is how much it is based on real life people and…

May 31, 2011
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In My Mailbox: Week of May 30
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In My Mailbox: Week of May 30

In My Mailbox: Week of May 30

Title: The Kitchen Shrink
Author: Dee DeTarsio
Received: From Dee DeTarsio
Synopsis: When did Lisby Shaw’s life turn into a country music song? Probably when her best friend signed her up for the debut of the new reality TV show, The Kitchen Shrink, for the ultimate life and home makeover! Unable to squirm out of this “it will be fun” opportunity, Lisby tries to juggle her upstairs-behind-the-scenes-life with her downstairs-in-front-of-the-camera persona, where everything she says and does can and will be used against her.

Hopefully, the show doesn’t find out about her fling with that hunky carpenter. Or that she and her friend smoked hootch she found in her daughter’s room. Lisby cannot believe what a freak show her life has become. At least no one knows about her crush on Sam, Sam, the Cameraman…

Lisby tries to find her way as the TV cameras capture her every move, zooming in on drama with her kids, her ex, her mom and her best friend. Stay tuned for Lisby’s extreme close-up as she becomes a jilted laughingstock on national TV. All is lost…or is it?

Title: The First Day of the Rest of My Life
Author: Cathy Lamb
Received: From Kensington Books
Synopsis: Madeline O’Shea tells people what to do with their lives. A renowned life coach, she inspires thousands of women through her thriving practice – exuding enviable confidence along with her stylish suits and sleek hair. But her confidence, just like her fashionable demeanour, is all a front. For decades, Madeline has lived in fear of her traumatic past becoming public. Now a reporter is reinvestigating the notorious crime that put Madeline’s mother behind bars, threatening to destroy her elaborate facade. Only Madeline’s sister, Annie, and their frail grandparents know about her childhood – but lately Madeline has reason to wonder if her grandparents also have a history they’ve been keeping from her. As the demons of the past swirl around her, a tough, handsome judge with a gentle heart is urging Madeline to have faith in him – and in herself. And as she allows her resistance to thaw, the pain she expects pales in comparison to the surprises headed straight to her door. With one bold, unprecedented move, Madeline O’Shea may just wake up out of the sadness and guilt that have kept her sleepwalking through life for so long – and discover that the worst thing that can happen is sometimes the very thing we desperately need.

Title: Trace of Fever
Author: Lori Foster
Received: From Tricia Carr @ Media Muscle
Synopsis: Undercover mercenary Trace Rivers loves the adrenaline rush of a well-planned mission. First he’ll earn the trust of corrupt businessman Murray Coburn, then gather the proof he needs to shut down the man’s dirty smuggling operation. It’s a perfect scheme—until Coburn’s long-lost daughter saunters in with her own deadly plan for revenge.
With a smile like an angel and fire in her eyes, Priscilla Patterson isn’t who she seems to be. But neither is the gorgeous bodyguard who ignites all her senses. Joining forces to plot Coburn’s downfall, Priss and Trace must fight the undeniable heat between them. For one wrong move, one lingering embrace, will expose them to the wrath of a merciless opponent….

May 29, 2011
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Author Profile: Heidi Rice
Chick Lit Authors

Author Profile: Heidi Rice

Author Name: Heidi Rice

Website: http://www.heidi-rice.com/
Bio: Heidi was born and bred and still lives in London, England with her two sons, who love to bicker, her husband who, luckily for everyone, has the patient of Job and a hamster that looks suspiciously like a rat.
As much as Heidi adores The Big Smoke she also loves America and every two years she and her best friend leave hubby and kids (and rat) behind and Thelma and Louise it across the States (although they always leave out the driving off a cliff bit). She’s been a film buff since her early teens and a romance junkie almost as long. She indulged her first love by being a film reviewer for the last ten years. Then a few years ago she decided to spice up her life by writing romance.

It was a wild and wonderful ride to her first Harlequin/Mills and Boon novel and she’s still going strong, becoming a RITA finalist in 2008 with her second novel The Mile High Club and topping the Waldenbooks Series Romance Bestseller list twice in a row in February 2009 with her fourth book Pleasure, Pregnancy and a Proposition. She became a USA Today best-selling author with her sixth book Public Affair, Secretly Expecting in 2010, and is still basking in the glow of that one!

Titles: Bedded By a Bad Boy, The Mile High Club, They Tycoon’s Very Personal Assistant, Pleasure Pregnancy and a Proposition, Hot Shot Tycoon Indecent Proposal, Public Affair Secretly Expecting, Unfinished Business with the Duke, Surf Sea and a Sexy Stranger, Cupcakes and Killer Heels

See my review of Surf Sea and a Sexy Stranger
Visit Heidi’s Blog!
Bio Retrieved from Heidi-rice.com

May 26, 2011
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Kim Kardashian Engaged
Chick Lit Plus

Kim Kardashian Engaged

Kim K finally landed her man. After years of wanting to be married (for a second time) Kim Kardashian said yes to New Jersey Nets forward Kris Humphries, her boyfriend of six months. Kardashian, 30, let People Magazine in on her exciting news, telling them Humphries proposed to her at home in her bedroom, and had rose petals spelling out the words,” WILL YOU MARRY ME?” Kardashian’s mom/manager, Kris Jenner, was in on the surprise, and helped plan an intimate family celebration for later that evening. Kardashian told People, “I didn’t expect this at all. I was in such shock. I never thought it would happen at home, and I never thought now.”
Oh, were you wondering about the ring? Kim seems to be giving little sister Khloe a run for her money. While Khloe’s sparkler from husband (also a NBA player) Lamar Odom, weighs in at 12.5 carats, Kim beats that with, ready for it, a 20.5 carat custom designed Lorraine Schwartz engagement ring. How big will Kourtney’s ring be if she ever gets engaged? I’m not sure I want to know.

May 26, 2011
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Guest Post by Jenny Ryan
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Guest Post by Jenny Ryan

Guest Blog Post for Chick Lit Plus
Do you remember Choose Your Own Adventures? I loved them when I was little – they gave you such power when you read them. The characters’ fates were in your hands!

Recently, I began writing a “Choose Your Own Adventure” of sorts: Every week I post a chapter of a chick lit novel-in-progress and post it online. The chapter always ends with two choices — should Katie do A or B? The readers pick their favourite, and the choice with the most votes dictates how I’ll start the next chapter.

When I started, I didn’t know I’d end up writing a Choose Your Own Adventure. Initially, I just thought I was writing a character sketch.

One day this past winter I was outside shoveling the walk. As I shoveled, a character appeared. Her name was Katie, she had wanted to be an artist, she had wanted to have adventures, she had wanted an exceptional life. And yet she was single, in an office job, with a mortgage she’d never planned on and a wardrobe entirely too full of cardigans. While I heaved snow off my sidewalk, I came up with a scene of her daydreaming at work. I knew there was potential there. I threw the shovel down, went inside, and started to write.

After about 1,000 words I got stuck. I thought about calling my sister; she always has great ideas when I get writers’ block. But I knew my friend A would probably have an idea, too. And my friend K — and T. All of these women had told me that they, like Katie, aren’t happy with their lives. “It’s like I fell asleep and woke up inside someone else’s dream,“ one friend had recently confessed. I knew the feeling.

There are so many people who share Katie’s story — a whole lot of us who aren’t sure how we ended up where we are, and aren’t convinced it’s where we should be. I knew this could be my audience. I decided I would post the story online, so that all these kindred spirits could meet Katie. And I had this flash of inspiration — I had to let the readers tell me what to write next. After all, it’s a story a lot of us are living. We might as well tell it together.

From a writer’s perspective, this is a challenging experiment. So much of writing is about isolation and creating intimate experiences with the characters. When writing a traditional novel, you share your drafts with a trusted group of confidantes, but when you work in the open, without an editor, and you publish instantly, and then you let the readers tell where you should take the story (often in a direction you hadn’t been expecting) — it’s a whole new way to write.

From a reader’s perspective, this publishing platform allows the readers to direct the narrative. Women, especially chick lit readers, love discussing the worlds inside novels. I’m creating a new kind of reading experience where readers get to give feedback about what they’d like to happen to the characters they are becoming invested in. It’s a whole new way to read, as well as a new way to write.

So how long will I write this story for? I can’t tell you that. How will it end? I can’t tell you that, either. Not because it’s a secret — it’s because I don’t know. I can’t make outlines, I can’t make plans. I can’t tell you if Katie will fix her leaking basement, I can’t tell you if she’ll fall in love, if her alcoholic sister will sober up, if she’ll put on that art show she’s been dreaming about. I hope these things happen, but it’s not really up to me. It’s up to all of us to decide her fate.

Join me, Katie, and the rest of the community at youweregoingtobefantastic.blogspot.com.

Jenny Ryan is a librarian, improv actor, and snack food aficionado living in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

May 24, 2011
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In My Mailbox: Week of May 22
Updates

In My Mailbox: Week of May 22

In My Mailbox: Week of May 22, 2011

Title: Love and Freedom
Author: Sue Moorcroft
Received: From Choc Lit
Synopsis: New start, new love. That’s what Honor Sontag needs after her life falls apart, leaving her reputation in tatters and her head all over the place. So she flees her native America and heads for Brighton, England. Honor’s hoping for a much-deserved break and the chance to find the mother who abandoned her as a baby. What she gets is an entanglement with a mysterious male whose family seems to have a finger in every pot in town. Martyn Mayfair has sworn off women with strings attached, but is irresistibly drawn to Honor, the American who keeps popping up in his life. All he wants is an uncomplicated relationship built on honesty, but Honor’s past threatens to undermine everything. When secrets about her mother start to spill out …Honor has to make an agonising choice. Will she live up to her dutiful name and please others? Or will she choose freedom? From the best selling author of Starting Over, this novel has great charm and a cast of unforgettable characters.

Title: Confessions of a Call Center Girl
Author: Lisa Lim
Received: From Lisa Lim
Synopsis: Madison Lee is a fresh college grad, ready to take on the world of print media. But she has zero luck landing a job. Unemployment is at ten percent and on the rise. Desperate and left with no other options, she accepts a position as a service rep at a call center in Pocatello, Idaho. At the Lightning Speed call center in Spudsville, Maddy plunges into the wild and dysfunctional world of customer service where Sales is prided over Service and an eight hour shift is equivalent to eight hours of callers bashing her over the phone. Oh sure, the calls are bad. But Maddy manages to find humor on the phone and off the phone. And with all the salacious drama behind the calls, there is never a dull moment at the Lightning Speed call center.
Lately . . . Maddy has been pining for her smolderingly gorgeous co-worker Mika Harket. Now things are heating up on the phone–and elsewhere. Don’t hang up on this novel. Working at a call center has never been this garish . . . or this delightful.

Title: The Summer We Came to Life
Author: Deborah Cloyed
Received: From Eric @ Planned Television Arts
Synopsis: Every summer, Samantha Wheland joins her childhood friends – Isabel, Kendra and Mina – on a vacation somewhere exotic and fabulous. This year, it’s a beach house in Honduras, but for the first time, their clan is not complete. Mina lost her battle against cancer six months prior, and the friends she left behind are still struggling to find a way to move on without her. Before the trip ends, the bonds of friendship with her living friends, the older generation’s stories of love and loss, and Samantha’s glimpse into a world far removed from the one in which she belongs will convince her to trust her heart.

Title: One Bird’s Choice
Author: Iain Reid
Received: From a friend
Synopsis: Meet Iain Reid: an overeducated, underemployed twenty-something, living in the big city in a bug-filled basement apartment and struggling to make ends meet. When Iain lands a job at a radio station near his childhood home, he decides to take it. But the work is only part time, so he is forced to move back in with his lovable but eccentric parents on their hobby farm. What starts out as a temporary arrangement turns into a year-long extended stay, in which Iain finds himself fighting with the farm fowl, taking fashion advice from the elderly, fattening up on a gluttonous fare of home-cooked food, and ultimately easing (perhaps a little too comfortably) into the semi-retired, rural lifestyle. A hilarious and heartwarming comic memoir about food, family, and finally growing up, One Bird’s Choice marks the arrival of a funny, original, and fresh new voice.

May 22, 2011
2 Comments
Author Profile: Cathleen Holst
Chick Lit Authors

Author Profile: Cathleen Holst

Author Name: Cathleen Holst

Website: http://cathleenholst.webs.com/
Bio: Born and raised in Atlanta, Cathleen is a bona fide”Georgia Peach” with her feet firmly planted in the South. She grew up playing on the lawn of Stone Mountain park, beneath its famous carving, strolling the sidewalks of historic downtown Stone Mountain & Tucker and loving every minute of it. Despite whisking a few of her characters off to glamorous places like New York, she has no intention of relocating herself to a city where good ol’ fashioned sweet tea isn’t readily available. Perish the thought!
However, she would have her boarding pass in hand in a New York minute for a shopping trip off Rodeo Drive.
Cathleen currently resides in a small suburb of Atlanta with her husband, three children and two rambunctious dogs. She is also unabashedly obsessed with all things Superman. And when not reading or writing you’ll likely find her watching more television (usually Superman related) than any one person should, eating chocolate and then running countless miles to negate the effects of the creamy devil.
Her writing influences include Fannie Flagg, Beth Hoffman, Helen Fielding, Sophie Kinsella, and Lindsey Kelk.

Titles: Everleigh in NYC

See my review of Everleigh in NYC
See my interview with Cathleen!
Bio Retrieved from cathleenholst.webs.com

May 21, 2011
2 Comments
Author Profile: Laura Dave
Chick Lit Authors

Author Profile: Laura Dave

Author Name: Laura Dave

Website: http://www.lauradave.com/
Bio: Laura Dave was born in New York City in 1977 and grew up in Westchester County. She attended The University of Pennsylvania, where she graduated with a BA in English, and The University of Virginia, where she earned her MFA. While in school, Laura received several awards for her writing including The AWP Intro Award in Short Fiction.
Laura is the author of the acclaimed novels “The Divorce Party” and “London is the Best City in America.” In addition to writing books, Laura has also worked steadily as a journalist. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Glamour, Self, Modern Bride, Redbook, ESPN the Magazine, and The New York Observer, as well as on NPR’s All Things Considered.
In 2008, Cosmopolitan Magazine named Laura a “Fun and Fearless Phenom of the Year”, calling her “an inspiration” to young women.

Currently: Laura lives in southern California, where she is at work on a new novel.

Titles: The Divorce Party, London is the Best City in America, and The First Husband

See my review of The First Husband
Bio Retrieved from lauradave.com

May 19, 2011
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