December! Wow - the blog's been a succession of hit & miss this month, but I couldn't let Sunday pass by and not post for Six Sentence Sunday. Guess that gets addictive - to have a snippet up, and to have the many visits and comments! Thanks so much to everyone who comes over to read my excerpts, and double thanks to all who leave me comments - I've already said this, but will say it again: you totally brighten my week with your words. :)
So, this week we're back in the surgery of country doctor Jamie Gillespie, the hero from Calling Home. Remember - Margo's daughter has been taken sick to the doctor's practice, and Margo is there to pick the girl up at the end of the day (more like the evening!). She and the young doctor butt heads, when she doesn't recognise him and thinks he's a pervert trying to get close to her little girl!
But the suspicions allayed, and then Margo has another reason to squirm - Jamie Gillespie is a handsome, intense young man who brings out shifty, buried feelings inside of her. Last week, we saw how she reacted around him at first. This week, we're moving ahead in the scene. Margo is about to take Emma home, but the girl is passed out from painkillers and exhaustion. Jamie offers to carry her into the car, and this is where we find them as he settles the sleeping child in the back seat and Margo reaches in from the other side to click Emma's seatbelt:
'...
Their shoulders bumped and their heads came up at the same time—mere inches separated them, and Margo made the mistake of looking into his face.
Bathed in the soft radiance of the porch lamp that spilled in through the back windshield, his features were an arresting play of light and shadows. Suddenly seeing him so up close that she could make out the errant eyelash that had fallen on his cheekbone, she froze. Her outer shell remained immobile, while inside, a storm of uncalled-for heat and yearning warred for possession of her brain and senses.
That's a living, breathing man—a handsome, sexy creature in his own right. The red-hot memo wanted to sizzle its way all through her, but she couldn't—wouldn't—allow it....'
Catch the rest of the amazing SSS posse here - you're in for some amazing, awesome snippets!
Hope you're all having a lovely Sunday! It's dark, rainy, & cold here - aeons away from summer weather (Can you hear me crying...? No? Okay, just as well then... *grin*)
This post should've come up earlier today, but I had to go out and didn't get a chance to schedule the post beforehand. So please forgive my lateness today.
By now, you probably know I work with "real" people images, kinda like templates, when I'm writing a story. Aligning my characters on the physical likeness of a person/celebrity allows me to picture them in my mind, and this helps me with 'directing' the scenes in my head when I write them. I thus know how they move, how tall they are, their mannerisms, etc. Plus I also see their faces, which allows me to figure out their facial expressions, allows me to convey these subtle shifts in mood and gestures.
So Calling Home (A Destiny's Child Book) was no exception. Let me show you who I had in mind when I imagined this story!
Let's start with Margo Nolan, the heroine/protagonist in the story. Margo is thirty-six-years-old, looks very prim and proper, professional and aloof, as she is a forensic pathologist in London. She's got a no-nonsense expression on her face, and her colleagues describe her as an "unemotional man hiding in a woman's body" on good days, and policemen she works with often call her anything from "stuck-up, snobbish cow" to "frigid, ice-cold bitch".
In the words of Jamie, the hero, this is how he saw Margo:
"...Who was she, really, beneath the power suit, high heels, and straight blonde hair? She wore little makeup on her well-defined, elegant features, and her slender nose hinted at an aristocratic lineage. Her deep blue eyes didn't need mascara and liner to stand out as intense, and that mouth—if she bit those dark-pink lips once more tonight in his surgery, he swore he would've grabbed her by the nape of her graceful neck and kissed her ..."
And it's true that, at first glance, Margo does appear like an Ice Queen... But look closer...
There's a soft vulnerability to her features, a hint that maybe, what you're seeing is not the real woman inside, the one she hides from the world, the one who yearns for her daughter... and the love of a man...
Speaking of the "man", who is he? His name is Jamie Gillespie - he is twenty-nine-years-old, and is the village doctor in Camberry, a fictional Surrey village I imagined as the setting for this sweet romance.
Jamie is tall, dark-haired with shaggy locks, has a lean face, and has the most beautiful brown eyes with whiskey-gold flecks in the irises when the sunlight catches upon them.
And always - I do mean always! - whenever I imagined Jamie, I saw him as actor Jared Padalecki, from Supernatural. I'm a Supernatural junkie, and on Team Sam all the way... but that's not the only reason I had to - really had to! - go with the yummy Jared as Jamie.
Like Jared, Jamie is also twenty-nine, and like the character of Sam, he is a calm, quiet lad whom nothing really ruffles. He's an anchor for those around him, a knight in shining armour, a man you can count on...
And I must add, he is hunky! Come on - writing a romance hero, and I have to make a woman who has sworn off emotion fall in love with, all that requires a definite sexy hunk!
Here's how Margo describes him - on their first meeting, and then the subsequent one:
"...
Her gaze raked over him, taking in the faded, threadbare-at-the-knees jeans, the hint of a dark T-shirt under the baggy, slate-grey jumper with a hoodie that obscured his face. ...
Did his jaw tense? He moved, and the hooded cap slid off his head, to reveal his sharp, angular features and messy dark hair, no longer shadowing the dark brown depths of his deep-set eyes. ... Still not a hundred percent convinced, she squinted, and hoped the harsh planes of his face, the pointed chin and nose, and shaggy dark locks, would clue her in about him. ...
...
She came face to face with him, having to tilt her neck back to see his features.
And what a picture he presented. If she'd thought him hunky in the dark, the light of day shed flattering clarity on the chiselled cheekbones and angular jaw, highlighted the sharp relief of the aquiline nose. His eyes gleamed in the pale sunlight; the radiance of the soft rays picked up flecks of whiskey-gold in his chocolate-brown irises. A light breeze brushed his chocolate-brown hair, the dark locks in the kind of disarray that suggested he ran his fingers through them often. ..."
This is the image I worked with for most of the book - Jamie is a casual-clothes type of bloke, young, seemingly carefree of his appearance (and definitely not a metrosexual!)
And for those of you Supernatural junkies out there, here's a clip of the yummy Jared as Sam - these pics vary of him between his early to late twenties, over the course of the 1st to 5th-6th season.
And at 5:52 on the vid, you can see the "Sam smile", that I'm totally in love with, and that I had to have Jamie do as well. Margo describes the smile as "...His was the most beautiful smile she had ever seen. His lips stretched, the corners of his eyes crinkled, and his whole face radiated brightly as starlight in a pitch-black sky. How that was possible, she had no idea, and in truth, she didn't want to know. ..."
Now, Calling Home is the story of the forensic pathologist, the village doctor... and the tween girl who brings them together!
She is Emma Milburn, the daughter of Margo's heart, the baby she was bringing up like her own before Fate snatched her away... to give her a second chance at motherhood when Emma turned 11 and tragedy struck in the girl's life.
Emma is portrayed as a devilishly mischievous redhead with a huge attitude, and for her, I always had actress Conchita Campbell in mind.
This is what Emma looked like to me:
And the other important character in the story is Robbie Barnes, who happens to be one of Margo's oldest friends, and Emma's biological dad. Robbie will step into the picture and this will create complications between Margo and Jamie.
I remember watching actor Rob Estes on CSI: Miami, and I knew instantly he was to be Robbie, the "... Good for nothing, rich layabout who'd gotten Cora [Emma's mother, & Margo's best friend] pregnant and who'd wanted her to have a termination. A child had not fitted into his plans, let alone a steady girlfriend. ..."
So there you have it - the round up of what the people in Calling Home are supposed to look like!
I've been on pins and needles for a few days now, waiting to get the final cover for my December 5 sweet romance novel, Calling Home!
So... here it is!
I'm totally in awe of this amazing cover designed by the talented Fiona Jayde. She embodied everything I wanted the cover to portray - a dreamy feel, all in nuances, and then the couple on there could actually be the characters in the book. That's how close the resemblance is.
I was waiting for the cover to reveal a bit more about this book, which comes out in 2 weeks, on December 5, 2011, with Noble Romance Publishing. The book is also the first in a themed series titled Destiny's Child, where in every book, a child brings an unlikely couple together.
Here's the blurb for Calling Home (A Destiny's Child Book):
Forensic pathologist Margo Nolan is described as a cold, unemotional man hiding inside a woman's body. Clinical and rational, the ice queen persona is only a facade to protect herself after she has lost the one thing she has ever longed for: Emma, the daughter she brought up like her own.
When tragedy strikes in Emma's life, Margo is the only one who can step in... to become the stand-in parent to the 11-year old! Clueless about children, family life and anything that should involve her heart, Margo is at a loss.
But she need not worry - sexy and easygoing, and much younger, village doctor Jamie Gillespie is here to help the heart-thawing process.
And if you want to read more about the story, check out the amazing interview Jessica E. Subject did with me. We focus on Calling Home and there are even pics of how I imagined Jamie and Margo!
Come take a look!
I had one hell of a day yesterday. Today was better, but still not out of the woods.
Now what does an author of romance do when feeling down/needs a pick-me-up? She goes looking for the hero, of course! Except, sometimes, we need the fantasy to really get us flying high. That's when we fall on the current hero, the man we're writing about, whom we're two-thirds in love with already, and whom we're convincing the heroine to fall in love with completely.
My current WIP is a category romance featuring an analytical heroine who meets the bloke-next-door and push coming to shove, has no other option but fall for this man when he comes to the rescue of this different kind of modern damsel in distress.
Like many authors, I have an 'inspiration' for each hero, and this one is no exception. The man in question is... the sexy, hunky, yummy Jared Padalecki. Yes, I'm a Supernatural junkie.
So scroll down and enjoy. There's something for every taste and every level of 'liking' of this handsome hunk.
If you're pressed for time, the goodies in a short vid (the iconic Supernatural towel-only shot is on at 1:15!
If you've got time for more... :)
Intensely hot:
Getting on the dark-er side (Supernatural fans adore...) And at 5:52 on this vid, you get the Sam smile *swoooon*
And what the hype about Supernatural's Sam is all about... The man himself talks!
And finally, this one is traying into not safe for anything but personal, private viewing pleasure... The vid's embed code has been disabled but this is better watched, ahem, in private... More sexy Jared, in the love scene with the werewolf, and the towel shot... :) And when you do watch this one, listen to the song. That's my love theme for the current WIP (more on that in another Tidbit Tuesday posting!)
So I hope this made your day, and made the rest of the week bearable *wink*
