Jennifer Love Hewitt and Jamie Kennedy Split
Jennifer Love Hewitt and Jamie Kennedy are over. People.com confirmed the split, offering no other details on the break-up. Hewitt and Kennedy had been dating since March 2009.
Out April 6: Just Like Me, Only Better by Carol Snow
Carol Snow’s latest novel, Just Like Me, Only Better goes on sale April 6th, and I am looking forward to getting my review copy soon. Snow is the author of some fantastic titles, such as Here Today, Gone to Maui, Getting Warmer, and Been There Done That. Be sure to pre-order your copy of Just Like Me, Only Better from Amazon, and look for my review and interview with Carol Snow.
Just Like Me, Only Better:
Ever since Veronica’s husband found the love of his life—and it turned out not to be her—she’s been a mess. It doesn’t help that she keeps getting mistaken for Haley Rush—the Hollywood starlet whose dazzling life is plastered on every magazine at the checkout line of her suburban California grocery store.
So when Haley’s manager offers Veronica a job as a celebrity double, it only takes a moment for the shock to pass before she says yes. Is it a fantasy come true or a disaster in disguise?
Ever since Veronica’s husband found the love of his life—and it turned out not to be her—she’s been a mess. It doesn’t help that she keeps getting mistaken for Haley Rush—the Hollywood starlet whose dazzling life is plastered on every magazine at the checkout line of her suburban California grocery store.
So when Haley’s manager offers Veronica a job as a celebrity double, it only takes a moment for the shock to pass before she says yes. Is it a fantasy come true or a disaster in disguise?
Interview with Shanna Swendson
Q: Why did you start writing?
I’ve always entertained myself by making up stories in my head. From there, it seemed like a natural progression into writing those stories down.
Q: I just got into your Enchanted series. I was always a fan of shows such as Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and I love reading these magical adventures. Where was the inspiration for these novels?
When I first came up with the idea, chick lit was the big publishing trend, and I loved those books that reflected the kind of life I was having as a single woman, with difficulty finding Mr. Right, bad dates, crazy bosses, and all that. At the same time, I’d just discovered the Harry Potter series. I’d always been a big fantasy fan, but hadn’t read a lot of fantasy novels that took place in modern times in more or less the “real” world, and I really loved that aspect of the series. I loved the places where the magical world intersected with the real world or where the magical people tried to hide what they really were — like the secret entrance to Diagon Alley or the mysterious Platform 9 3/4. I also liked the whimsical way the magical world duplicated many of the familiar elements of the real world, like the mail service, the school and the shops. The school parts of those books reminded me of my own school days because I am essentially Hermione Granger, and I was just like her when I was that age. I even have the bushy hair, and I was generally best friends with guys, many of whom I had crushes on even while they didn’t realize I was female. I found myself mentally merging the chick lit world and a Harry Potter-like modern magical world, and then I realized that was exactly what I wanted to read — something like chick lit that reflected my adult life, but with magic in it, or else something like the magical world of Harry Potter, but about adults. At first, it was mostly what I wanted to read, but when I couldn’t find anything like that, I decided to write it myself.
Q: I just had a guest post about first timers at a writer conference. You gave some details on your website about your first conference. What was one of the most important lessons you took away from that?
I honestly don’t remember anything from any of the session I attended at that first conference. The main thing I learned from just being at the conference was that writing was something I could do and maybe even eventually do as a job. Up to that point, being an author seemed like dreaming of being a movie star, not like something an ordinary person could do. Meeting real writers and seeing that they were just people was eye-opening. I also met editors and agents for the first time at that conference, and even chatted with them, and that taught me that they weren’t superhuman beings sitting on Mount Olympus, but that they were people who loved books and reading, just like me. It made being a published author seem like a real possibility instead of just a wild dream.
Q: You contributed an essay to Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned From Judy Blume. How did it feel to be included in that piece?
I felt so honored. I still get a thrill out of the thought that Judy Blume now might have the slightest idea that I exist.
Q: Are you currently working on any novels?
I’m working on a book that may spawn an entirely new series, but I haven’t sold it to a publisher yet. Right now, I’m mostly writing it for fun, and then I hope it will be published. Meanwhile, I’m researching the next book I hope to write, which will be very different for me and probably rather challenging.
Q: What is your biggest personal accomplishment?
I’m pretty proud of the fact that I’ve been self-employed for eight years now and am making a living as a novelist, which is the fulfillment of a life-long dream.
Q: What is your favorite part about being a writer?
Working at home, on my own schedule, with no boss and no office politics. It’s wonderful that I can get up when I want, wear what I want and work when I want. This job offers so much freedom and flexibility. Plus, I make money for doing the things that I do to amuse myself.
Q: How long does it take you to finish writing a book?
It really depends, and the writing comes in phases that may not be connected, with multiple projects overlapping. I can generally write a first draft in a couple of months, but it may take me months before that to research and think about the story and months after that to revise the book. I guess if I crammed together all the parts of work on a book, it would take me about four or five months. Some books come more quickly than others, and some take a lot longer.
Q: What is your advice to aspiring writers?
You need to be persistent. One of the biggest mistakes I see in aspiring authors is giving up too soon — thinking that the first round of rejections means they aren’t going to make it or falling prey to vanity publishing scams and spending a lot of money to publish a book that isn’t really ready instead of getting back to work and writing something new that stands a chance of being published the right way (where the author gets paid). At the same time, you need to know when to give up — not on writing entirely, but know when to give up on a project and try something new instead of getting bogged down on something that may not ever go anywhere.
Q: What is or do you think would be your favorite place to travel?
I have two favorites. One is New York City. I love how you’re seeing an entirely different city, depending on where you go and what you do. Oddly, I’ve always been there for business or to research books, so I haven’t done the standard tourist stuff (I’ve never been to the Statue of Liberty!), but I’ve discovered a lot of fun nooks and crannies that aren’t in guidebooks. Then I also love going to England. The English countryside is gorgeous, and I love how there are walking paths all over the country, going from village to village across fields. It’s a wonderful place to escape from day-to-day life and clear your head.
Sex as a Second Language by Alisa Kwitney
Kat Miner is running out of luck. Her movie star husband has divorced her, taking off with all the money and leaving behind a son. She is struggling to keep getting acting jobs, but nearing the precious age of 40, jobs are being lost to the more youthful generation. And her mother, living across the hall from Kat and her son, won’t keep treating Kat like she is still child- giving her no privacy to have a personal life. The only thing keeping Kat from losing it all is the support of her two best girl friends, and her part time job as a teacher, teaching adults English as a second language.
Magnus Grimmson is one of Kat’s students, posing as an Icelandic foreigner struggling to learn English. What Kat doesn’t know is that Magnus is an undercover CIA agent, trying to find Kat’s reclusive father that abandoned the family when Kat was only 10. Her father is a retired CIA agent, but the agency is desperate for his knowledge on the country of Kyrgyzstan now that political wars are raging. It is now up to Magnus to get Kat on his side to help them track down her father, without letting her know he works for the CIA.
Like all good chick lit novels, Magnus immediately falls for Kat, even taking up residence in her spare bedroom. Through some steamy loves scenes, broken friendships, and our heroine finding happiness, Sex as a Second Language by Alisa Kwitney will be a delight for readers. There are plot twists thrown in at the right moments, catching readers off guard, and a happy ending for all.
Interview with Janet Gover
Q: How did you get into writing?
When I was at school about eleven or twelve years old, my teacher set us weekend homework – to write a short story. It was supposed to be one page. I wrote about twenty pages. I typed them up on my Dad’s typewriter and even made a cardboard book cover and illustrated it. This book was called Sunbeam, and featured a girl and her pony. I think my Dad still has it in a drawer somewhere.
I fully expected an A+ for the assignment. I didn’t get it (I got an A- ). It did however, convince me that writing was the best thing in the world to do.
Q: Where do you get the ideas for your plots and characters?
For me, this is the really magical bit of writing.
Ideas can be triggered by anything I find interesting or unusual. Some tiny thing will float around the back of my brain for a while, meet up with another idea and slowly a story starts to build. Most books are several different ideas merged into one tale.
People are a constant source of inspiration – usually without knowing it. I have a T-shirt, a gift from another writer, which says…
Be careful or you’ll end up in my novel.
That’s not far from the truth.
Q: You have a novel coming out in July, Girl Racers. What can you tell us about this book?
My brother is a rather successful amateur car rally driver. One day I was driving one of his cars… a classic 1969 Ford Mustang. Within half a mile, I was pulled over by a policeman even though I was doing nothing wrong. He just seemed to find it very strange that a woman would be driving such a car.
As a result, I decided to write a book about a girl in a sports car… well, two girls – who might break some speed limits …. and some hearts.
Q: What did you do to celebrate your first published novel?
All right – I’ll confess. The day I got the phone call saying Little Black Dress wanted to publish my first book, I cried like a fool. It might seem silly, but it was the realization of a dream for me. My partner John and I went out for dinner to celebrate. It was a Korean restaurant – lots of raw fish and chilli.
Q: What do you want readers to take about from your writing?
I write about people’s lives and emotions… their hopes and fears and desires. I would like to think that the readers will relate to some of those things. My characters (at least the good ones) always end the book in a better place than they began… and maybe that might give the readers encouragement to look towards their own positive future.
I also like to think my books will give each reader a smile – maybe more than one.
Q: I read that you have always loved horses- I as well! How hard was it training for horse shows?
In the Australian bush, horses are work more than play. I used to muster cattle on horseback. When I moved to the city, I brought a couple of horses with me, and that’s when I got seriously involved in competition.
I had a ‘real’ job as usually two horses in training at the same time. I would get up when it was barely light to work one horse before I went to work, then ride the other after I got home. What a great way to lose weight and get fit! On weekends, several of us would travel together to shows to compete. I’m not the world’s greatest horsewoman, but I did win a few ribbons here and there.
Q: You went into journalism after graduating, is that what your major was?
When I was still at school, I saw a reporter on television doing a story about a fancy beach holiday resort. I decided on the spot that was the job for me. Writing and beaches – what could be better?
I studied journalism at University, but also stumbled into sociology and political studies. My career as a reporter followed a similar path. I was a general reporter, then became a specialist crime reporter. After that, I migrated across into politics. I never did get to that beach resort.
I discovered that whatever field I was in, the best part about it was the fascinating people I met. From Presidents to policemen, movie stars, nuns, teachers to taxi drivers… every single one of them had a story to tell.
Q: You now work as a consultant with computers, how did you get into that field? And how do you find time to do that work and write novels?
The computer work arose from being a television journalist. I was a producer – working behind the scenes to make TV programmes. I was really interested in the technology that I used to do that. These days, I spend a lot of time designing computer systems to help other producers do what I did – but better and easier.
As to time – I do spend a lot of time in planes and airports. I hate both and bury myself in writing when I’m stuck there. I write in hotel rooms where the TV programmes are in languages I don’t speak. Basically, if I stop doing anything else for more than a few minutes, I start writing. Even if it’s just in my head. There’s a lot of thinking and plotting and planning goes into a book before the words get onto a page. I can do that anywhere, anytime.
Q: What would be your advice to aspiring writers?
There are two things I think are important..
You need to be determined. You’ll face a lot of criticisms and rejections, and not just when you are starting out. You just have to take it. Learn from it if you can, then keep going. I have a drawer full of rejections – they were part of the learning process. The important thing is not to give up.
You need to write from the heart. Trying to write what you think someone else wants never works – at least it doesn’t for me. Write what you want to write. Write something you believe in. That’s what makes your work shine.
Q: You have lived and traveled a little bit of everywhere! Where would you say is your favorite place to visit?
It may sound corny, but my favourite place to visit is somewhere I haven’t been yet. The world just fascinates me. Every place is different and has its own special charms just waiting to be discovered. People are fascinating too – how different they are from place to place and how much they remain the same everywhere.
But – if you are going to force me to choose…
A desert anywhere for the silence and the beauty.
Any mountain for the taste of the air.
New York for the shopping.
London for the theatres and bookshops.
Sydney for the harbour.
Rome for the men (Mama Mia indeed!).
Interview with Kasey Michaels
Q: You have an incredibly touching story to how you began writing. Can you tell us what the main reason was that convinced you to start your stories?
Samantha — feel free to cut and paste from my website on that one:
When our oldest son was eight years old his kidneys failed. I had two other young children at home; I was pregnant. And here I was, on the Critical Care floor of a children’s’ hospital seventy miles from my husband, my other children, surrounded by sick children, injured children, dying children … and sleeping on a cot beside my own very ill son. For weeks on end. For nine long months, until his first transplant (and three weeks after the birth of our daughter), I performed dialysis on our son at home and in the hospital. I rode in too many ambulances, I watched too many children die, I sat, unable to sleep, in the Parents Lounge with other mothers going through their own hells – and I noticed something.
The nurses who lived with all this pain and suffering every working day, all seemed to have romance novels stuck in their pockets as they rode the elevators to the lunch room in the windowless basement. The mothers hid inside the pages of romance novels when they couldn’t sleep, knowing they could be interrupted when the words “Code Blue” blared over the loudspeaker, knowing one of those calls could be for their child. A librarian friend kept me supplied with romance novels – I had a special small suitcase for them and lugged it to the hospital with me along with my pajamas, maternity clothes, and stash of cookies.
We mothers would read, share, trade the books that kept us sane. We all lived in a real world in that hospital, a world too real; we all functioned at the highest level, because there was no choice but to function, to persevere – and we all occasionally escaped that world into the hope and happy endings of romance novels. Those moments of “escape” made it easier, never easy but easier, to deal with the real world.
I’d written my first book, THE BELLIGERENT MISS BOYNTON, just before our son’s kidney failure. It wasn’t a career move, it was just an idea I had and wrote with little thought to a career. I wrote my second book during those long nine months, staying awake all night twice a week, to scribble it in longhand at the dining room table. A Regency romance, a very funny romance, this book became THE TENACIOUS MISS TAMERLANE – and, looking back now, as I write this, I guess the word “tenacious” was, sub-consciously – a pretty good choice.
Years later I was told, by a reviewer, that she called this book her “rainy day” book, because if she felt down, she knew reading this book would make her laugh. I wrote that book for me, and for those nurses, for those mothers trying to make it through just one more night. So that’s how it really began, with that second book, before the first one was sold. It was that second book that told me, yes, you have a chance for a career here. You can do something for yourself that just might make somebody else’s day a little brighter. It sounds hokey, but that’s how it happened…
Q: You write a variety of romances, including contemporary and historical. How do you get the ideas for both genres?
I’m supposing you’d like honesty here, so I’l be honest: I have no idea how I get my ideas. I just seem to think in ‘what if.’ I’ll see something, hear someone say something…and the next thing I know, I’m scribbling on napkins, the backs of envelopes, whatever is handy. There truly are times I’d like to shut it off for a while, this idea factory that seems to have taken up residence in my head. But, mostly, I’m grateful to have it!
Q: Is there any particular book that you have written that you especially loved, either the characters or doing the research for?
That’s rather like asking which of my four children I love most, and of course the answer is that I love them all equally. I am always most involved with the next idea, the next character, but I love them all. All my books, over one hundred now, are all also my children. I’m just glad I don’t have to buy them shoes…
Q: You have received numerous awards for your work. How did it feel winning that very first award?
Thrilling and terrible. Thrilling because, heck, it’s an award, who wouldn’t want it, right? And terrible because I’m very comfortable in front of a computer … not so much in front of a huge banquet room filled with people who expect me to say something brilliant. I think I stumbled through a mumbling ‘thank you,’ and quickly took me and my boneless knees back to my seat. Has either feeling changed? Nope, not at all.
Q: How long does it take you to finish a novel once you’ve gotten an idea for the plot and characters?
In the beginning (back in the Stone Age…
Q: How do you enjoy spending your free time?
I don’t understand that expression: free time.
Q: Do you have any “guilty pleasures?”
M&Ms, definitely. I could not produce a word without chocolate. I buy them in the giant economy size and keep them in a cookie jar on my desk. I’m so ashamed…
Q: What are some of your favorite books?
It’s easier to list favorite authors, I think. I’m a voracious reader, and once I discover an author I pray he/she has a huge backlist, then devour it. Lee Child, Jonathan Kellerman, Michael Connelly, Harlan Coben, Tami Hoag, Carl Hiaason — name a ‘thriller writer,’ and I’m there. Georgette Heyer, definitely. Terry Pratchett is way up there — I read his books over and over and over again, and always discover something I’ve missed, another “level” to his writing. I only read romance when I’m not writing it; otherwise I can’t enjoy it just for the pleasure of reading. There are too many great romance authors out there for me to even begin to list them.
Q: What would be your best advice for aspiring writers?
Read. Then read some more. I wrote my first book after realizing two things. 1, I would get to the bottom of a page of a book I was reading and know what was going to be on the next page, and 2, I would read a book and think, “No, I would have done this…and this…” It’s difficult for a writer to truly get submerged in a book, because we read critically, watching style, how the author handled a plot twist, etc. When I find myself lost in a book, not looking at it clinically but simply drawn in, then I know I’ve found an exceptional writer and I will read the book for pleasure, then read it again to try to figure out why I was able to suspend my disbelief and simply enjoy.
For aspiring romance authors, the natural answer is to join RWA. This is where you will find kindred spirits (who understand things like writing in your pajamas and/or talking to the people who live in your head). My other advice would be to worry less about what you’ll put on your website and how you’ll design your bookmarks and other promo than you do about writing a book a publisher will buy. It’s great to know about the nuts and bolts of the business — but don’t put the cart before the horse; first, learn your craft. I’m also not a huge fan of writing contests, only because many aspiring writers seem to take entering contests to the extreme, get too much feedback, too many varying opinions from contest judges, and suddenly the book is a “book by committee,” no longer your own idea, your own work — and the joy disappears. Don’t write for contests — write for you.
Q: What is or do you think would be your favorite place to travel?
I’d be up for going anywhere in the world, were it not for my abject fear of flying…
Fitness Gadget- The Gruve
As I was reading this month’s issue of Shape magazine, there was a featured gadget that I believe I just must have. It’s called The Gruve, and it is an activity monitor that tracks your daily calorie burn. But it’s so much more than that. When you start your day out, there is a red light on the device and when you hit your calorie burning goal for the day, the light turns green. You can also set it up so that it will remind you to get up and move around if you have been stationary for too long. This is a feature that I really like, as I sit behind a desk all day. I could really take advantage of a beeper telling me to go take a walk around my office. And the best part- you can set up a personal webpage to be synched to your Gruve, and watch your progress daily!
It may seem a little pricey- The Gruve runs about $150, but if you think of all the benefits you will receive plus a webpage, I think it is a pretty good deal. I think this will be my next fitness purchase, and will be sure to tell everyone about it! You can get more information on this device at myhealthyreflections.com.
Mario Lopez to be a Dad!
Mario Lopez is ging to be a father! The Extra host confirmed to People.com that his girlfriend, Courtney Mazza, is expecting this fall. This will be the first child for both. Lopez, 36, and Mazza, 28, met in 2008 when Lopez starred in A Chorus Line on Broadway.
Eric Dane & Rebecca Gayheart Reveal Baby Name
Eric Dane and Rebecca Gayheart are finally revealing their newborn baby’s name. The proud parents, who welcomed their first daughter last week, named their new bundle Billie Beatrice, People.com has reported.
