Heroines

We’ve arrived home all in one piece, more or less. The visit with my family was nice, mostly. There was mild family drama, but then that’s to be expected since a portion of my family treats drama like a fifth food group. But over all it went well.

In the car home, we listened to almost all of Found by Margaret Peterson Haddix. Haddix is primarily a YA writer who is probably best known for her Shadow Children series about a future world where population control limits each family to two children. Third children are forbidden. The Shadow Children tells the stories of some of those third children. This new one is about a plane that arrives at an airport from nowhere. There is no record of it and it just appears at the gate. All the seats inside the plane are filled with babies. Now that those babies are adopted out into families and have reached the ripe old age of 13, someone’s sending them letters warning them that someone is coming to get them.

This leads into my title because the girl heroine in this story is the weak link in the story. She is irritating and not very likable. My irritation with her got me to thinking about my relationship with my own female characters. I wondered, did Haddix know that this character was so annoying? Is she as annoying to others as she is to me? Does anyone else want to throttle her and tell her to shut up?

Female characters have always been difficult for me to write. I have an unfinished manuscript that will probably never be finished because the driving voice in the story is the female lead. Whenever that happens, the stories just seem to fizzle out and I lose the line of the story. I’ve had other stories that were a struggle to finish because the female character boxed me into a corner, or she is a secondary voice and she is not cooperating with the telling of the story. I have three of those right now. I was zooming along on them, 12,000 words or even more and then a screeching halt. *Sigh*

I wonder why it is that female characters present a challenge for me? My guys usually drive my stories. I’ve been complimented on how my guys were very real except for all that mushy love stuff. I’ve been told that during the moments leading up to and during intimacy men do not have the lovely romantic thoughts romance writers usually give them running through their brains. But, the stories are targeted toward women and damn it we want to believe that our men are thinking sweet loving thoughts and not just focused on the tactile.

There is an upcoming movie that has made me laugh while watching the previews. It repeats exactly the advice I’ve been giving to my friends for years when they are having trouble with husbands and boyfriends. Men are wired differently. It’s not upbringing, it’s wiring. Men are visual and tactile, women tend to be auditory and cognitive in our arousal. Men are simple, and I don’t mean simple minded. They don’t complicate matters or spend a great deal of time analyzing the nuances of what someone says or does.

Maybe that’s what makes female characters such a struggle. When that female voice is talking to this female writer, we get bogged down in too much analysis and contemplation and ask too many damned questions. My guys are simple. They usually tell me the story and then I have to pull out the details from them. The ladies lose me in the minutia. I've never been a fan of drama.

And, just cause I think this is cute, and I own a Cavalier:

The Loneliest Job

A few months ago I heard Holly Black, author of Tithe and the Spiderwick Chronicles say that being a writer was the loneliest of jobs. She pointed out that even in the most regimented of cubical infested offices you at least have the knowledge that on the other side of that cloth and Styrofoam wall is another living breathing human being.

As writers, often times we do work in a situation of isolation second to almost no other profession. Unless you are part of a team, you write alone, edit alone, revise alone and in many cases suffer the pain of rejections alone. It can sometimes be hard for a non-writing significant other or family member to get it. They pat you on the back and say, "It's okay. Just write something else," or some other inane but well meaning thing.

This makes the contacts we form with other writers and with our readers vitally important. Finding a first or beta reader is a difficult job for a writer. You can't simply ask a friend. What if your friend isn't into paranormal romance and you've just whipped out the worlds best were-opossum story ever to be seen? Your friend isn't into fantasy, and you've just finished world building the most amazing place filled with dragons and fairy-folk? You've written the best CSI type murder mystery and your friend can't even spell forensics, let alone understand the science.

I have to admit I’m lucky. I belong to an online workshop that lets me put my work up for critique. The workshop is fairly diverse and we have writers, poets and artists. Some write for fun and some are more serious. But having that support is important. My first novel, Access Denied, would never have been finished if not for the support of some members of that group who kept prodding me to keep going. Don’t tell their husbands, but they all admitted that they had fallen in love with my hero, James, and were going to make sure I finished it.

My current work in progress is about two chapters and an epilogue away from being finished. What is done is in the hands of two very special betas, my SO and a friend of mine named Steve. Steve is the king of grammar and punctuation. He's also the one who tells me when my male character is acting very male. My SO is the one who reads it and tells me where it doesn’t make sense. “But why would he use magic? Wouldn't it just be easier to walk over and set the table?”

*Sigh*

Brain Dead Blog

Okay, this is a brain dead blog today. I'm so tired that all I can manage today is an excerpt and the last of my promised seven Santas.

Excerpt for Access Denied, now available at http://www.cerridwenpress.com/productpage.asp?ISBN=9781419911330


He stood there, looking into her eyes, searching for something. She didn’t know if he found it, but in the next moment his head lowered and his lips touched hers. The soft feel of them brushing over her mouth made her head spin. She felt his beard scrape against her skin and the flesh seemed to come alive. His arm slipped around her waist and he pulled her close as he continued to press his kiss deeper. As she let her arms wrap around his chest and gave in to the need to kiss him back, she heard a piece of her soul cry out in joy and another more somber piece painfully whisper,

You had to let yourself love him. You are well and truly damned, and this time there will be no escape.

She couldn’t remember a kiss ever feeling or tasting so good. Not that there had been a lot of them in her life, but not even… well, no one had made her feel the way James was making her feel as he used his tongue to urge her lips apart. Stop this, her mind warned, stop this before you can’t stop it. But she wasn’t listening. She opened her mouth to him and felt the rough velvet slip past her lips and explore her with increasing insistence.

James’ arm tightened and his free hand rested on the slope of her hip. Slowly he brushed it up her side, over the fullness of her curves. She expected him to stop, to pull away at the reality of touching her, but he didn’t. His hand skimmed the outer curve of her breast and moved up to cradle her face. He responded to the shudder that moved through her by sighing against her lips.

He coaxed her tongue to follow his as it retreated and she eagerly complied. Brushing over the full lips, she felt the hairs of his beard scratch at her face as she tilted her head to claim the inside of his mouth. James’ body reacted with a jerk and suddenly both arms now pulled her tight to him. One hand slipped up her spine and crushed her against his chest. The other curved over her hips and pressed them against him.

James broke the kiss to draw in a ragged breath. He was looking down at her and she could see the unspoken question in his eyes. One she had never believed she would ever see again in any man’s eyes, least of all these golden spheres. He lifted his hand from her back and ran his fingers down her cheek, moving softly across her jaw and then trailing along the skin of her neck. He pushed back the collar on the flannel nightshirt and bent his head low to follow the path of his fingers with his lips. He paused, hovering next to her ear.

“Leah” he whispered her name softly and she felt the jolt of the touch of his tongue as it brushed the curve of her ear. Her body responded with a deepening of the need she was feeling for him.

But her mind reacted with fear.

Never Leah, do you understand. Never. It was her father’s voice, the only time he had ever been harsh or firm with her. A few days after she had reached menarche and her mother had explained the physical side of love to her, her father had taken her for a long walk in the woods. It is not for those like us, Leah. We do not play at love. Your sister, your brothers, your friends, they may experiment, they may play with the carnality between men and women, but not you. We are different, Leah. His fingers had gripped her arm painfully, forcing her to take her passive, easy-going father deadly serious. Head my warning, Leah. Make no mistake. Play that game and you will never know happiness.

Her father’s voice in her head broke the last of her resistance. She put her hands against James’ chest and pushed him away. He did not release her, but eased his hold to let her put some space between their bodies. She drew a deep breath and looked up into the eyes still darkened by his want. No words would come and all she could do was shake her head. James’ hands fell to his sides and he stepped away, turning from her. Standing there staring at his back, the only thing she could think to say was, “I’m sorry,” before she, herself, turned and left the room.

Standing with her back to the coolness of her closed bedroom door, she let the tears begin to fall. This was something new, something she didn’t understand. This had never happened to her before. Never had the voice in her head failed her as it did now. All her life she had spent reaching people with affection and compassion; friends, family, everyone. Each of the men who had drifted into her life these past couple of years she had handled the same. Each time she had tapped into their friendship, their warmth. She had never believed she could excite passion in a man and had never attempted to do so, instead she tried to reach his heart.

But with James her world was tumbled over. She couldn’t understand the want, the desire she had felt in him just now. Suddenly she found she could reach his body, but knew she’d never be able to reach his heart. She was the love of my life, Leah. There’s never been anyone in my life like her, before or since. You didn’t get much clearer or final than that.

And Now:

On the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me...

Seven Seductive Santas

Champaigne Santa is still my favorite, but our final Santa is rather a fine bit of eye candy. Still, I can't help but think how itchy that shoot must have been.

Have a happy holiday everyone. May your own Santas be as sweet, generous and sexy as you wish.

Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Just like Alexander, I too have terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days. Like today. I'm stuck in the media center (middle school-ese for library) because my kids are doing research papers. Normally this isn't a problem except that someone forgot and had a vase of carnations. I'm not someone with many allerergies but I have a very serious one to carnations. No other flowers. And I do mean serious, stop breathing serious.

So they are there this morning, they remove them but the damage is done. So I take my inhalers, take Benedryl and try to get through it. By third hour I'm so tired I'm holding up my head on my hand to stay upright. My tongue is still swollen and I'm talking like Elmer Fudd.

Good news? I get to do it again tomorrow. Yippee.

And now:

On the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me...

Seven Seductive Santas

Santa #6 seems to need a bit of a rest, odd for one so young. I still maintain #4 was my favorite so far. The final Santa will be sliding down the chimney tomorrow.

Measure of Healing

My second release from Cerridwen Press, Measure of Healing, comes out one month from today. So instead of a rant I thought I'd share the blurb and an excerpt.

Blurb:
Alejandro Ramirez’s Were-Cougar mother drove him out after his first transformation at the age of fifteen leaving him to seek out his human father and find the family his human side craved but that his animal side can never embrace. Now a man, he finds himself responsible for a traumatized Were-Cougar child. When he turns to the Weres for help, they send him to a human. Dr. Gabriela St. Jerome knows of the Cougars and hates them with every fiber of her being. But now she must swallow that hatred to work with Alejandro to help a Were child who has been thrown into transformation far too early by the horrific death of his mother. As they are forced together in the remote woods of the North Georgia Mountains, both find their mutual attraction overwhelming. But if Brie gives into this man and her own passions, it will cost her dearly. It will cost her her life.


Excerpt:
Brie rang the bell a second time. She could hear the sound of movement from within, still no one answered the door. There had been no visible number on the house and she had had to guess at its location by counting down from the nearest house that did have its address painted over the door. It was a law that all houses be marked but she somehow doubted that the local city hall sent many inspectors out to monitor compliance.

She was about to pull out her cell phone and try the phone number when the door finally opened and an older woman in her sixties answered. Her dark brown eyes were large and held a wary smile. The black hair was more grey than ebony and her face was tanned and wrinkled from the Florida sun. “Can I help you?” the voice carried a soft Latin inflection.
Brie removed her glasses and the woman’s eyes widened. Cursing she slipped them back on. She knew better. “I’m Gabriela St. Jerome, I’m supposed to meet Alejandro Ramirez. Is this the correct address?” She showed the woman the address written on a small slip of paper.

“You have found the right house.” The woman’s gaze was guarded. “You must be the doctor Alej said would come.”

“Yes,” Brie breathed a sigh of relief. At least she was in the right place. “I’m Dr. St. Jerome. Is he here?”

“I’m here,” the low voice rumbled from the darkened interior of the house. A man stepped up beside the woman and Brie felt her breath catch. He was impressive, the kind of man her research assistant Caroline would call yummy. But his look was wrong, good but wrong.
She frowned at him and Alejandro suppressed the urge to smile nastily. “We better let her in Mama, before she falls down from shock and we have to explain it to the neighbors.”

The older woman gave the young man a patient look and opened the screen door. “Come in Doctor, I’ll fetch you something cool to drink. Alej see that she is comfortable.” As she passed him she gave a mock scowl, “And behave yourself.”

The tall man stepped back and motioned for her to select a seat in the room. The house was comfortably furnished with well worn and used furniture. Choosing a spot on the end of the sofa, Brie perched stiffly. Alejandro was watching her unabashedly, staring almost rudely at her. Lifting her head, she stared back. He wasn’t what she expected. Most Were-Cougars did not look like this. They were tall but not abnormally so. Their hair was generally somewhere between a silvery ash blonde and a dark golden blonde depending on where they called home. And their eyes were blue.

She’d never known of a Were-Cougar whose eyes were not blue. In the wild the actual cougar kittens, Were and animal, were born with blue eyes. Were-Cougar kittens’ eyes remained blue while the animals’ eyes changed to a golden yellow-green. It was one of the identifying marks of their kind. Yet the man who stood there silently taking her measure broke most of the rules. He was tall. Six five at a minimum. His hair was dark and the eyes that seemed to be trying to see inside her were brown. Had Sister Margarite not told her he was Cougar, she would never have known. He looked human.

His eyes held hers then looked away. He was amused. And he was aroused. Good thing you’re not a Were, Princess, cause I’d certainly be getting my face slapped or clawed about now. His thoughts and the accompanying images were broadcast so that any Were could have heard him and they flitted through to her as the woman re-entered the room.

“No, I’m not like you but I am empathic and telepathic. Don’t worry, though, I’m actually more offended at being called Princess. I’d suggest you don’t do that again.” She straightened her skirt and accepted the iced glass from the chuckling woman. The man had a vivid imagination, she’d give him that.

Alejandro stiffened and frowned. Damn that Wolf! The least she could have done was warn him. He’d not run across a gifted human in a long time, then again he’d not been around any humans but his family for the past couple of months.

When she spoke again, it was with deep amusement. “And while we’re getting the surprises out of the way, let’s just deal with this, shall we?” Her voice was filled with impatience but he could hear the anticipatory chuckle it hid.

She pulled off her glasses and revealed a set of deep electric blue eyes. His breath left his chest in a rush. She had the eyes of a Cougar. He’d never seen a human with eyes that color and found he could only stare at her. She was laughing at him but he was too stunned to be angry, yet. Something in him was reacting to her, or to what she seemed to be, in a dangerous way.

“You should learn to trust your nose. For I, Mr. Ramirez, am no more what I look like than are you,” she sat the glass down on a coaster.

So it was an illusion. Determined to wipe the superior smile off her face he shrugged. “You may wish to rephrase that statement, Dr. St. Jerome. I am at least half of what I seem to be.” He walked over to the couch and dropped down next to her, leaning back insolently and stretching his arms out across the back. “I’m half human on my father’s side.”

Her eyes widened and it was her turn to be shocked. A Were-Cougaress mating with a human? It was unheard of. Males had been known to toy with humans and even leave behind mixed blood children but no female would ever…

“My mother was young, on her first estrus actually, when she came across my father one evening. He was a bit younger and a bit more reckless back then and had fallen asleep in his truck alongside the road.” Alejandro leaned forward and looked at her with a wicked light in his eyes. “I’m afraid he was a bit wasted. Three days later she was gone. Seven months later I arrived. And fifteen years after that, when she figured I could fend for myself, I was turned out with nothing but a few dollars in my pocket and my father’s driver’s license. She’d stolen it from him as a souvenir.”

Leaning back he spread his hands wide, “So I sit before you in the bosom of the only real family I’ve ever known. A half Were with dark hair and eyes and a traumatized kitten in his bed. Now that we’ve had our little ice breaker can we get down to business.”

And now:

On the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me...

Seven Seductive Santas.

For reasons I can't quite articulate, Santa #4 here is my favorite. He's not a ripped as some of the others, but there is something extremely sexy about this Santa and this pose. Come back tomorrow for Santa #5. He's a particularly naughty little Santa.

Do you want to win some fantastic holiday reading? If so come celebrate the Twelve days of Romance with 12 authors from Ellora's Cave, Wild Rose Press, Total-E-Bound and Cerridwen Press. Each day beginning December 8th and running through December 19th one of the twelve authors will tell what their "True love gave to them" on either their blog or website.

Collect all twelve answers and e-mail them to anny@annycook.com with 12 days of Romance in the subject line to win some great books. There will be three lucky winners. The prizes –

1st prize--6 books

2nd prize--4 books

3rd prize--2 books

All books and prize winners will be drawn randomly.

Participating authors/books:

Anny Cook Winter Hearts
Sandra Cox Boji Stones
Bronwyn Green Ronan’s Grail
Heather Hiestand Cards Never Lie
Barbara Huffert Deal of a Lifetime
Amarinda Jones Mad About Mirabelle
Kelly Kirch Time for Love
Cindy Spencer Pape Cowboy’s Christmas Bride
Brynn Paulin Fallen
Jacquéline Roth Access Denied
KZ Snow Mrs. Claws
Lacey Thorn Earth Moves

Risks to Christmas Spirit.

Nothing puts as big a crimp in Christmas spirit like shopping. Oh the stores are decorated and the music is cheerful and happy, but the rest of the experience makes being holly and jolly nearly impossible. Oh, it's more than just the crowds, the prices, the hustle and bustle, it's certain people, certain archtypes we all run into during the Christmas shopping season.




Let's start with the Middler. Parking is a frustrating task. The malls and department stores are jammed and finding a parking place within a mile of the entrance is an exercise in futility. And it's made even more difficult by the Middler. The Middler is the person, usually either a middle aged woman or two or three teenage girls in a gaggle, who are walking down the center of the parking aisle. No, not walking, meandering. You can't go around them and it would be rude to honk at them to get them out of the way. They simply make a difficult job even more difficult.


Then there is the Princess. The Princess is the woman who has parked her cart in the center of the aisle at the department store while she looks over every single item on the shelf. Or she blocks the narrow spaces between clothing racks while she stands there pulling out each and every color and style of garment examining them. She doesn't even bother to look around behind her, it doesn't even enter her mind at all that anyone else may need anything because she is special.

Now the Princess part II is also the woman who walks up to the counter behind you and proceeds to interupt your conversation with the sales lady because she just needs to ask a quick question or she just needs to get that item right over there. If you pointed out to the Princess she was being rude she would undoubtedly be offended. She would think you were rude and unreasonable because after all, she is special and what she wanted was more important.

These people make it hard to keep the Christmas Spirit alive. They make it hard to remember to be kind and courteous. They make just being a good human being difficult.



AND NOW

One the Seventh Day of Christmas My True Love Gave to Me...

Seven Seductive Santas.

Santa #3 seems to look especially nice in his suspenders. Come back tomorrow for Santa #4

Do you want to win some fantastic holiday reading? If so come celebrate the Twelve days of Romance with 12 authors from Ellora's Cave, Wild Rose Press, Total-E-Bound and Cerridwen Press. Each day beginning December 8th and running through December 19th one of the twelve authors will tell what their "True love gave to them" on either their blog or website.

Collect all twelve answers and e-mail them to anny@annycook.com with 12 days of Romance in the subject line to win some great books. There will be three lucky winners. The prizes –
1st prize--6 books
2nd prize--4 books
3rd prize--2 books
All books and prize winners will be drawn randomly.

Anny Cook Winter Hearts
Sandra Cox Boji Stones
Bronwyn Green Ronan’s Grail
Heather Hiestand Cards Never Lie
Barbara Huffert Deal of a Lifetime
Amarinda Jones Mad About Mirabelle
Kelly Kirch Time for Love
Cindy Spencer Pape Cowboy’s Christmas Bride
Brynn Paulin Fallen
Jacquéline Roth Access Denied
KZ Snow Mrs. Claws
Lacey Thorn Earth Moves

Not so Christmasy Day

Sorry, no warm heartfelt memories of Christmases today and this blog may end up being TMI for some folks (too much information) but damn it, it's what's in my head.

The main design flaw in God's creation is the lack of a reproductive off switch. Think how useful this would be. I mean this beyond the idea of unplanned or unwise pregnancies -admit it, we all know someone who should not be allowed to reproduce. I'm talking about the unnecessary inconvenience and down right painful experience no reproducing women experience on a monthly basis.

I don't have children. I will never have children. So why on earth do I need to have a menstrual cycle? Why can't I simply shut off my uterus? I don't mind if my ovaries work -or attempt to in my case. I can use the estrogen. But why do I need a uterine lining every month that is only going to cause me a great deal of pain?

Oh, I've tried to rid myself of this menace only to be told by my doctors that since my reproductive system isn't "unhealthy" (and having Polycystic Ovarian Disease isn't considered unhealthy?) removing said reproductive system would be "elective surgery." Not covered by insurance. Bastids!

Don't mind me. No I'm not PMSing. I don't have PMS. I'm MSing and it sucks!

But now, on to more appealing things.

On the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me...

Seven Seductive Santas

Santa Nick is a cutie. Check back tomorrow for Santa #3.

Do you want to win some fantastic holiday reading? If so come celebrate the Twelve days of Romance with 12 authors from Ellora's Cave, Wild Rose Press, Total-E-Bound and Cerridwen Press. Each day beginning December 8th and running through December 19th one of the twelve authors will tell what their "True love gave to them" on either their blog or website.

Collect all twelve answers and e-mail them to anny@annycook.com with 12 days of Romance in the subject line to win some great books. There will be three lucky winners. The prizes –

1st prize--6 books

2nd prize--4 books

3rd prize--2 books

All books and prize winners will be drawn randomly.

Anny Cook Winter Hearts
Sandra Cox Boji Stones
Bronwyn Green Ronan’s Grail
Heather Hiestand Cards Never Lie
Barbara Huffert Deal of a Lifetime
Amarinda Jones Mad About Mirabelle
Kelly Kirch Time for Love
Cindy Spencer Pape Cowboy’s Christmas Bride
Brynn Paulin Fallen
Jacquéline Roth Access Denied
KZ Snow Mrs. Claws
Lacey Thorn Earth Moves

The Year With(out) a Santa Claus

I was thirteen or fourteen that year. It was the year I was baptized and the year my family lived in a small ranch style house in a neighborhood most people wouldn’t venture into during the day, let alone at night. Our street sat right on the dividing line between the territories of two rival gangs. No, this wasn’t New York, L.A., or even Chicago. It was a relatively small Midwest town who had seen recent influxes of people from the larger cities like Detroit and Chicago. With these new comers came the gangs. But oddly enough they didn’t bother us. Our street was neutral territory. And the gangs aren’t what I wanted to talk about.

We were very poor that year. Not just “things are tight” poor, but “the cupboards are bare” poor. We often ate only one meal a day because there was very little food. Breakfast or lunch had to be scrounged from left-overs in the fridge or were limited to buttered toast with government surplus butter and the twenty-five cent loaves of white bread from the day old store. The recession of the 80’s was hurting everyone. Almost no one we knew still had a job as most of the plants in town had closed down. Our small town lost General Electric, Hyster, Caterpillar, General Motors, Quaker Oats and even our Chuckles plant. (Remember the little gummy candies in the pack with assorted flavors? My grandmother worked for 30 years making those things. But that’s another story.)

Christmas? No way. We kids knew how bad things were and we didn’t even talk about presents. As the oldest of the kids I knew that while some of the younger ones still thought Santa would remember them, they were in for a big disappointment.

One day my stepfather came home from helping a friend who hauled off people’s trash to help earn extra money. That day he came home with the back of the truck filled with scrap lumber. He called us out to help unload it and I thought he was crazy piling up old pieces of wood. That night after my siblings had gone to bed, he put on his coat and went outside. He came in with an armful of wood. Now I was sure he was crazy.

He cleared off the table and laid it out. With a pencil he began drawing a pattern on a piece of cardboard. It took only a few minutes for me to be enthralled watching. I love woodworking. I love the smell of the wood, the feel of it, how it smooths itself and how the creations take shape. If I’d have been a boy, I’d probably have become a carpenter. After letting me watch for about a half an hour as he used his scroll saw to cut out the patters he looked up at me. After a long pause he handed me the piece he’d cut out and a piece of sandpaper. “If you’re going to watch, you might as well help.” And I did.

That December I helped him make doll cradles for my sisters and a rocking horse for my brother from the bits and pieces he had scrounged from other people’s trash. We stained them, painted them and lined them with scraps of a garish blue velvet that had also been salvaged. I helped my mom sew little mattresses. I helped my stepfather glue yarn my grandmother gave us to the horse for a main and a tail. The same blue velvet lined the rocking horse’s saddle. We kept all of this hidden during the day and pulled it out at night to work on after everyone was asleep.

A couple of days before Christmas, my mother stood in line at the Salvation army and picked out a couple of second hand dolls. She brushed their hair, cleaned their plastic bodies and my grandmother sewed simple little dresses for them from scraps. On Christmas Eve I helped arrange these treasures under the tree and went off to bed. There would be nothing for me the next day when I awoke, but it felt so very good to know the younger kids would awake to find that Santa hadn’t forgotten them after all.

When morning came I followed them into the living room. I couldn’t completely suppress my disappointment that there would be no gift for me, but I tried hard not to let it show. To my amazement there was a rectangular wooden box sitting under the tree. It had been pieced together from strips of wood, stained a dark walnut color and the words “Holy Bible” had been burned into the top and outlined with gold paint. I lifted the lid to find the same blue velvet lining and a white Bible. I didn’t care that the Bible had been bought cheap because someone had ordered it with their name and not picked it up. I didn’t care that the name on it wasn’t mine.

My father had left my mother and me before I was two. He never had any contact with me and I could pass him on the street today and never know. All my life I had felt the void. But in that moment I realized the man sitting on the sofa smiling smugly was trying in every way he knew how to be a father for me. I realized that despite all the problems we had, he thought of me as his daughter. He and I had worked into the early hours of the morning on the kids toys. This gift meant he had stayed up even later to finish this for me.

Santa Claus came that year to our house. He didn’t just bring dolls, cradles and a rocking horse. He brought us a father.

On the Seventh Day of Christmas My True Love Gave to Me...

Seven Seductive Santas

Be sure to check back here each day for the next seven days to see all seven seductive Santas!

Do you want to win some fantastic holiday reading? If so come celebrate the Twelve days of Romance with 12 authors from Ellora's Cave, Wild Rose Press, Total-E-Bound and Cerridwen Press. Each day beginning December 8th and running through December 19th one of the twelve authors will tell what their "True love gave to them" on either their blog or website.

Collect all twelve answers and e-mail them to anny@annycook.com with 12 days of Romance in the subject line to win some great books. There will be three lucky winners. The prizes –

1st prize--6 books

2nd prize--4 books

3rd prize--2 books

All books and prize winners will be drawn randomly.

Participating Authors/Books:

Anny Cook Winter Hearts
Sandra Cox Boji Stones
Bronwyn Green Ronan’s Grail
Heather Hiestand Cards Never Lie
Barbara Huffert Deal of a Lifetime
Amarinda Jones Mad About Mirabelle
Kelly Kirch Time for Love
Cindy Spencer Pape Cowboy’s Christmas Bride
Brynn Paulin Fallen
Jacquéline Roth Access Denied
KZ Snow Mrs. Claws
Lacey Thorn Earth Moves

And don't forget to check out eMuse online literary magazine. The December issue is out tomorrow, Dec. 15th. See www.emuse-zine.com for original fiction, book reviews, poetry and art.

If That’s True, Why Aren’t Things Changing?

Coming on the heals of my last blog, I couldn’t help but comment on this.

I read a poll result on AOL today that made me stop and ponder. The poll asked men what they found attractive in woman and focused on the question of weight and body type. As anyone who has ever seen a magazine, billboard, newspaper, televisions program or movie knows society tells us that the perfect beautiful woman, the “supermodel” is a size 0, while in the days of Cheryl Tiegs and Christy Brinkley they were a size 8.

A size 14 woman, the average size for an American woman today, is told she is a “plus-size.” Marilyn Monroe, the icon all over the western world for beauty, glamour and sex appeal was a size 14. Today they’d be plastering pictures of her on the front of magazines talking about how “fat” she was and how everyone was on a death watch because she was so fat she was going to die.

According to the poll on AOL today, 80% of men said they prefer a voluptuous, curvy woman. Only 5% say they found the supermodel-thin women attractive.

That’s great. That’s wonderful. But it’s not the first time we’ve heard this. Polls have been saying for years now that men don’t want these thin, half-starved women, they want a woman who has all the curves, softness and fullness of a woman. They want Marilyn Monroe not Kate Moss.

What I don’t understand is if this is true, why haven’t the advertising companies, the fashion magazines, the Hollywood machine and all the others who glamorize the pencil thin female responded? Why is this still the pervasive image in our society? Is it because men say one thing in the polls because it’s politically correct and yet put their money down in a different direction? Is it because the advertising companies, fashion and entertainment industries are trying to shape public opinion and just keep trying?

I have a feeling it’s neither of those. I have a feeling that we women need to look at ourselves for this one. Men are saying we are sexy when we are full-figured and curvy. The media says we are beautiful if we are emaciated and you can count our ribs. Which message are we buying? Which message are we putting our money behind? The latter. How many of us have joined gyms because we “wanted to get healthy” or because we wanted to lose weight to look better? Be honest. How many of us plunk down hundreds of dollars each year for the creams and ointments that promise to make us young and beautiful forever?

I know I’ve said this before, but it’s true. Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a beer belly, bald-headed, and excess body hair and still think they are damned sexy. I’m just saying, maybe we need to look at who we’re listening to about what makes us beautiful and how sexy each of us is.

Do you want to win some fantastic holiday reading? If so come celebrate the Twelve days of Romance with 12 authors from Ellora's Cave, Wild Rose Press, Total-E-Bound and Cerridwen Press. Each day beginning December 8th and running through December 19th one of the twelve authors will tell what their "True love gave to them" on either their blog or website.

Collect all twelve answers and e-mail them to anny@annycook.com with 12 days of Romance in the subject line to win some great books. There will be three lucky winners. The prizes –

1st prize--6 books

2nd prize--4 books

3rd prize--2 books

All books and prize winners will be drawn randomly.

Participating Authors/Books:

Anny Cook Winter Hearts
Sandra Cox Boji Stones
Bronwyn Green Ronan’s Grail
Heather Hiestand Cards Never Lie
Barbara Huffert Deal of a Lifetime
Amarinda Jones Mad About Mirabelle
Kelly Kirch Time for Love
Cindy Spencer Pape Cowboy’s Christmas Bride
Brynn Paulin Fallen
Jacquéline Roth Access Denied
KZ Snow Mrs. Claws
Lacey Thorn Earth Moves

And because it's my blog and I can, a little self promotion:

Access Denied
Jacquéline Roth

In Sanctuary the Committee controls everything, food, healthcare, housing, information and even love. The Committee’s life guides match the single residents for three month compatibility assignments. Everyone gets ten chances to find true love or at least an acceptable partnership. There is something special about Leah Bradley. She has the unique ability to reach out and really connect with the people in her life, but if she’s so special why is she facing her seventh assignment? From the moment she meets James he makes it clear he grants no one access to his life or, especially, his heart. Brooding and sad, he carries a darkness inside of him that swallows another part of him every day. What’s worse, he seems to want it this way. Leah slowly loses her hope and her heart. But just when James begins to see Leah the way she truly is, he’s forced to ask himself one question: Does the Committee really have happily-ever-after in mind?

Available Now at Cerridwen Press

Coming January 17th :

Measure of Healing
Jacquéline Roth

Alejandro Ramirez’s Were-Cougar mother drove him out after his first transformation at the age of fifteen leaving him to seek out his human father and find the family his human side craved but that his animal side can never embrace. Now a man, he finds himself responsible for a traumatized Were-Cougar child. When he turns to the Weres for help, they send him to a human. Dr. Gabriela St. Jerome knows of the Cougars and hates them with every fiber of her being. But now she must swallow that hatred to work with Alejandro to help a Were child who has been thrown into transformation far too early by the horrific death of his mother. As they are forced together in the remote woods of the North Georgia Mountains, both find their mutual attraction overwhelming. But if Brie gives into this man and her own passions, it will cost her dearly. It will cost her her life.

Excerpts for both books available at http://www.jacquelineroth.com/

A Little Tough Love

I really hate when someone begins a sentence with the words “I don’t mean to make anyone angry…” Yes you do. You just don’t want them angry at you. So I won’t begin this little bit of tough love by apologizing for it in advance.

This may seem an odd thing to be irritated by, and I wasn’t at first, but the more I thought about it the more ridiculous it became. I was shopping Sunday afternoon for a Christmas gift for my mother. Like me, my mother is a plus-size woman. I was in one of my favorite clothing shops, Catherine’s. I love Catherine’s. The clothing there is from designers who are truly designing for us big girls and not just little people’s clothes cut bigger. Let’s face it, no matter how cute that tight belly shirt and the low rider jeans are on a young miss, once you crest a size 16 you should probably rethink it. But the clothes in this store are elegant and classy and if you watch the sales, affordable.

However…

While shopping I noticed a rack of clothing marked with sizes 4-12. I was completely befuddled and wondered if they were expanding or if there had been a mistake in ordering. Surely 4-12 was not now considered plus-size. As I pulled a pair of size 12 jeans from the rack to examine them I realized these were not size 12. An examination of the sign on the rack revealed that these jeans were “right sized”.

What is “right sized”? Well according to the signs it is a way of resizing plus-size clothing. That size 12 had a 56” waist. That means it was the US size equivalent of a 34W. These were plus-sized clothes that had labels declaring them in single and lower double digit sizes.

Right sizing? Hell no. It’s vanity and some serious self-deluding. Let’s face it ladies, those of us buying that right sized size 12 haven’t seen a size 12 in a very, very long time. Do you really think you’re fooling someone with the size 12 label?

I look at it this way. This is my body. It requires only minimal maintenance from time to time and nothing on it is broken. It ain’t the prettiest model on the showroom floor but it gets me where I’m going. The most important part of this being that it is mine. I’m a size 34W. Would I like to be a size 12? You bet your backside I would. Is that going to happen because someone changes the label in my jeans? No. It will happen when I have the self-discipline and motivation to take care of the issue. (And a bit of help for the PCOD wouldn’t hurt.)

So let’s reboard the reality train. Stop being so worried about the messages you are getting from society about your body that you start trying to fool yourself. It won’t work. You always know when you’re lying.


Do you want to win some fantastic holiday reading? If so come celebrate the Twelve days of Romance with 12 authors from Ellora's Cave, Wild Rose Press, Total-E-Bound and Cerridwen Press. Each day beginning December 8th and running through December 19th one of the twelve authors will tell what their "True love gave to them" on either their blog or website.

Collect all twelve answers and e-mail them to anny@annycook.com with 12 days of Romance in the subject line to win some great books. There will be three lucky winners.
The prizes –
1st prize--6 books
2nd prize--4 books
3rd prize--2 books

All books and prize winners will be drawn randomly.

Participating Authors and books:

Anny Cook Winter Hearts
Sandra Cox Boji Stones
Bronwyn Green Ronan’s Grail
Heather Hiestand Cards Never Lie
Barbara Huffert Deal of a Lifetime
Amarinda Jones Mad About Mirabelle
Kelly Kirch Time for Love
Cindy Spencer Pape Cowboy’s Christmas Bride
Brynn Paulin Fallen
Jacquéline Roth Access Denied
KZ Snow Mrs. Claws
Lacey Thorn Earth Moves