Archives for “bad boys”

Hugh Jackman is from Australia. So is Russell Crowe. And so are a dozen other sexy actors, musicians, and artists. But the FROS-worthy Aussie who caught my eye this week is Guy Pearce, the villain for the new Ironman 3. Frankly, I’m beginning to think there’s something very special in the water in Australia. Just [...]


I have some of the most ill-behaved and spoiled dogs on the planet. If you do too, and you’re like me, you’ll appreciate the two news articles I recently found titled, Least competent Dogs: (1) A Palm Bay, Fla., police officer was sent to the hospital in February after a supposedly highly trained K-9 bit him [...]


I have a cat named Ivan who is about six years old. Ivan is an indoor cat. He got out once when he was a kitten and was gone for three days. That cured him. He never tried to get out again, and this was fine by me. One reason it was fine was my belief that [...]


I never went on one of those wild spring break trips in college.  I was not the type to sleep in my car, live on the beach.  Let’s face it.  I was never a candidate for “Girls Gone Wild.”  My idea of a wild night is more than two glasses of vino. The very first [...]


As I sit here we are expecting 6-12 more inches of the white and fluffy.  As my yard already looks like this   I’m not happy.   The first few snowfalls are so pretty.  When the boys were small a snow day was a holiday.  (They still are, but once you aren’t in school any [...]


I could hear this song in my head but I had to go and look it up to remember who sang it.  The Miracles.  Oh yeah!  And also Linda Ronstadt. Why do I care you ask?  Because we have a new baby in the family and I am very psyched.  What is it about babies [...]


A few years ago I admitted to myself that I write heroes that in all likelihood I might not marry if I met them in real life. Part of that has to do with the selectivity of fiction— in my books I can change them by the end of the book in ways that real life probably [...]


As the Superbowl this year had no green and no gold (to both mine and Karen’s heartbreak) I actually watched the commercials.  If the Packers were playing I would need the commercial breaks for important things like . . . well, you know.  But for most of the first half I could do important things [...]


Now that the holiday season has passed us by (at last!!).  I have unpacked and put away the gifts and chosen my favorite.  It is my new Keurig Coffee Maker.  For years I looked at this item in stores, considered, picked it up, put it back, didn’t get it.  Rinse, repeat. I am a coffee [...]


After a long holiday season, I got to thinking about the things people ask me to bring to the table.  The actual table.  As in food.  We all know Julia gets to bring the booze. I never get to bring the booze.  But they don’t let me bring anything difficult to make either.  IV says [...]


Some authors use photos of their characters to get an image in their heads of how these people appear.  I’ve always been the type who shied away from that because I could never find exactly what was in my head in the real world. In truth, physical descriptions of my “peeps” are hard for me. [...]


MY two front teeth are intact.  (Knock wood!)  Thank you very much. What I’d really like is for those on my Christmas list to tell me what THEY want so I can buy it without exerting any brain power.  My brain power is being drained by 1871 Kansas at the moment and not available for [...]


I’ve written in a lot of genres, but I have yet to write a time travel romance.  This isn’t because I don’t like them, because I do.  A single whiff of time travel in a back cover blurb or review and I’m there.  Same thing with movies.  Planet of the Apes, Peggy Sue Got Married, [...]


Time does fly, except when you’re eagerly awaiting something. Remember when you were a kid–for some of us this is greater stretch than for others–and everything seemed to be so far away? Your next birthday.  Christmas.  Summer vacation.  High school.  Graduation.  Being legal.  Being on your own.  All seemed to be so far out of [...]


There are certain artists who shine through.  No matter what they’re doing, there’s that certain something that  makes them recognizable to others who know them well. For instance, Stephen King wrote several books as Richard Bachman.  A lot of readers read the Bachman books and saw Steve shining through. I’ve read both Nora Roberts and [...]


For several months now I have been the proud owner of an iphone. I really splurged and got the fancy one with Siri and all that other jazz. Actually I was going to get one that was two generations old, but DH insisted I go for top of the line (which last week became obsolete [...]


My family has always been big on games.  Card games.  Board games.  Head games.  Packer games.  Brewers games.  Little league, basketball, pee wee football.  You get the drill.  Games, games, games.  Wheee. As a child, one of my favorite games was SORRY.  Maybe because my grandma would play this with me whenever I asked.  And [...]


Some years ago I was watching an old movie—I forget the name of it— and there was a scene that remains very clear in my memory. A secondary character was in the frame with the stars. He had few lines. His character’s existence was important to the plot, but not directly involved in it. Anyway, in that [...]


Regulars to this blog know that a number of us are regular watchers of House Hunters on HGTV. Recently it was revealed that the shows are scripted, that some of the houses viewed were not really for sale, and that at least one buyer had already chosen the house before the show was filmed. Oh, the betrayal! I [...]


We here at the Handeland house watch a lot of television.  Hell on Wheels, Breaking Bad, True Blood, Supernatural, American Horror Story, Boardwalk Empire . . . I could go on but I’ll refrain.  Then there are our old-time favorites.  Shows we’ve watched so repeatedly we know exactly what’s going to happen but we laugh [...]


I am just back from 9 days in Anaheim at the RWA National Convention. Yes, that was NINE days.  As I’m on the board of directors I get to go early.  Whee. However, because I was there early, and we got all our homework done, I also got to go to DisneyLand.  I’d never been. [...]


Magic Mike has a problem. The problem is that it’s a movie trying to appeal to two very different kinds of audiences: the rowdy I want to see some man candy crowd and the give me a compelling story crowd. These two different crowds choose a movie for different reasons. Magic Mike has been marketed [...]


I love the Internet.  Every day I find a new, cool website to add to my old favorites.  Today we’re going to share and share alike our favorite places to waste time and buy things. My newest time waster is: http://triviatoday.com/ You do have to register, but then you receive a trivia question by email [...]


I was talking to a longtime reader of romances a couple of weeks ago, and she told me that she was finding books sort of “meh” these days. One of the problems, she thought, was that the heroes were too “nice.” Now, “nice” is right up there with “likeable” as a word that is totally [...]


One of the questions I am asked most frequently is: “Do you write about your life in your books?”  (Although lately I am asked non-stop about 50 SHADES OF GRAY.  Sigh.)  It’s always interesting to me that people would rather believe that I actually know a few werewolves than that I could construct such a disturbing [...]