Hunks!

It's rainy and windy and cruddy out here on the outskirts of Frankenstorm, and I've got a love scene to write.  The only help for that is...

HUNKS!

Yes!  Hooray!  I got home from work today to find my HUNKS mug waiting for me.  It is from the store of the hilar Kate Beaton, of Hark! A Vagrant, who draws comics about history and feminism and Canada, sometimes all at once.  This one is my fave.  But there is no mug for the Brontes.

Anyway, HUNKS!  I think this is really going to mean a turning point in my manuscript.

Because it sure don't mean a turning point in my ability to use the daggun webcam.

Happy Couple

Early Holiday Greetings from your Fave Couple!  I know we only just met, Henry Rollins and I, but I have a feeling that in the three seconds I talked to him and shook his hand and ran a hand caressingly and creepily down his back (dang, he's got muscles) - during those three seconds I'm pretty sure he fell in love with me.  In fact, I think I am pregnant with his child.  You can get pregnant from caressing someone's unwilling back, right?

Anyway.

Do I look pregnant yet?

Yes, I am wearing the same outfit I wore to meet JR Ward.  It is my Meeting Famous People Outfit.  Although I added a borrowed jean jacket, jauntily thrown about my shoulders in a casual manner.  Also, My Baby Daddy is pretty short, but not as short as he looks in this picture.  I am just wearing Gigantic Sensible Shoes.

OK, that's it.  Just some afternoon name-dropping.  Peace!

Updates from Your Fave Author

Hi, everyone!  It's Leo Tolstoy here.

JK, it's Sarah Title.  That joke might only work if Leo Tolstoy is your fave author.  And, frankly, if LT is your fave, you probably ain't readin' this here blog.  Feel free to prove me wrong in the comments.

Also, does Pinterest have porn now?  I was googling "sexy Leo Tolstoy" to see if I could put in a funny visual joke here, and there was one potentially sexy image that linked back to Pinterest.  Should I not be clicking on random images of men's bare backs?  Even if they are very muscly?  Fucking magnets, how do they work?

Also also, just yesterday someone was telling me how much more effective bing is than google.  I don't know about that, but neither of them retrieved any sexy pictures of Leo Tolstoy for me.

Anyway, I just haven't blogged in a while, due to COPYEDITING.  Or, more accurately, due to making changes my publisher's wonderful copyeditor's suggested.  I like to think of myself as a job creator in that way.  Sarah Title: Keeping People Who Know About Grammar In Business Since Just Last Week.

Oh my gosh, my brain.  It is everywhere.  Let me just make a bullet list of updates and then you may carry on with your lives:

• I have a deadline that is happening pretty soon.  Expect more fun google searches.  
• My friend Emily did an amazing photo shoot for my headshot like, months ago.  Expect an update in about a year.
• I am reading Defending Jacob by William Landay for a book group and I am finding it frustrating in the way I find all suspense novels frustrating.  Just tell me if the kid did it or not!  This is why I read romance.  You know what is going to happen at the end, so you can just chillax and enjoy the story.  But aside from my mental problems, it is an enjoyable read.
• In the past month, I have gotten about six hundred thousand emails from twitter.  I have a twitter.  It is, cleverly, titleauthor.  Yes.  Get it?  I have not tweeted (twat?) yet.  This is making twitter upset.
• What am I going to be for Halloween?  Is this finally going to be the year for Miss Havisham?  Oh, maybe I should write a post about fave Halloween costumes of the past.  That sounds like a good thing to do instead of my deadlines.
• And, finally, this weekend I had a visit from my friend KW and her dog.  Her dog is young and does not understand about personal space:

What you can't see is that she is crushing my windpipe.  Adorably!

 OK!  Nice to see you all!  Feel free to comment so I don't feel alone in the world.  *Sigh*

No Human Male Could Write This Blog Post

I realize the week is almost over, but I am still reeling from my weekend adventures in Cincinnati.

In a word:

I'm the blurry one. 

That is not a word.  That is a picture.  BUT!  That is a picture of J. R. Ward.  It happened!!!  She signed copies of her newest Fallen Angels book (Rapture!)  for 300+ of her closest fans at a Barnes & Noble in Cincinnati, including Yours Truly.

This is what I imagine my first book signing will be like.  But with 300 fewer people.

Anyway, if you don't know what I'm talking about (as per usze), J. R. Ward writes the Black Dagger Brotherhood series and the related Fallen Angels series.  These books are, in a word, CRACK.  Honestly, you start reading one and you're all, well, I'll just see what Sarah is talking about, and then suddenly it's two weeks later and you don't know where the time as gone but there is a pile of increasingly-fat books covered with intense-staring men teetering on your bedside table and your cat moved to your neighbor's house.  (Does that sentence make it sound like the men are teetering on your bedside table?  Whatever, it could happen.)  These books, they are nuts.  She goes there, people.  Where does she go?  Wherever you imagine, while reading a book, that, no, she couldn't possibly...she does.

(And the books - especially the earlier ones - have this really strange mix of homophobia and homoeroticism that I find compellingly offensive/attractive.  Duality, people.  Anyway, she's grown into straight (ha) homoeroticism for her newest book, which is about two dude vampires who have ANGSTED OVER EACH OTHER for like six books.  Honestly, Bella and Edward have nothing on Qhinn and Blay.)

(And Ward's world has a language that looks a lot like English, but has a bunch of extra h's in it.  Look, just read them.  There's a glossary.)

OK, so what happened.  I was nervous that it would be sold out (apparently her last signing had 800 people there - that was for a BDB book), so my friend who is actually named Sarah and I got there at like 6:30 to get in line.  We were cold.  Fortunately, I am a pack rat and there were chairs and blankets in the trunk of my Sensible Camry, so we persevered.  We were nowhere near the front - that title went to the people who had gotten there THE NIGHT BEFORE - but we had no problem getting tickets.  We were also handed an instruction sheet that included the point:

• All gifts must go through Ms. Ward's Security Team. (you can't miss the guys in fedoras!)

This part was not a joke:

Fedora.  Mustache.  Joan Baez.

Despite all of this silliness, J. R. Ward was super-friendly and chatty with people.  She seemed to know a bunch of her fans from the world of J. R. Ward fandom (I believe they are called Wardens.  Yes.), and she had on a really cute jacket that she took off because it was hot.

She also curses.  A lot.  I loved it.  She said someone once asked her if she would ever write a children's book, and she said, "Have you read my fucking books?"  Which, interestingly, was exactly the same reaction she had to the question "Will there be sex in the next book?"

And her fans!  Ravenous for gigantic alpha vampire warriors!  I loved all of them instantly.  They asked her a million detailed questions about, OMG, I don't even know what.  And Ward cursed and answered most of them, but kept enough suspense that nobody knows what is going to happen in the next BDB book (except for hot man-vampire sex).

My fave part of the whole night, though, is when someone asked if there was any possibility of a television or movie deal.  Friends, the room.  It exploded!  Gasps and shouts and vile protestations!  And then, out of the hubbub, somebody shouted:

NO HUMAN MALE COULD EVER PLAY A BROTHER.

I'm not entirely convinced that the rest of the women in the room (author included) were fully aware that the characters are, in fact, fictional, but that is what makes the books so daggun cracktastic.  Filthy, cursing, smutty crack.  Love them.

Love those Brothers so much.

And thank you to My Friend Who Is Actually Named Sarah for the pictures.  Someday I will get my own picture-making device.