I reveal to you… my new muse, Ben Jelen. My total BFF Annie Dean and I were just talking about the trouble I’ve been having smoothing out the sex scene for my WIP, Waking Kitty. My former muse, Eric Bana wasn’t working out anymore… he just wasn’t angsty enough and you guys, I watched Munich and Black Hawk Down TWICE. I needed someone… prettier… and more emo, I guess. So I thought, “What if he played the piano AND sang soulfully AND was ridiculously good-looking?” VOILA! He’s so, so, so, so pretty he makes my teeth hurt. Tim says he looks like a girl. *eye roll* Yeah? Can a girl look like this?

Anyway, Annie, we’re not as dirty as we thought. He’s 27 years old. Boo!
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There’s a kerfuffle at Karen Scott’s blog again (what else is new, biznatch? *grin*) about authors who feel personally attacked whenever they receive a bad review. Well, I’m not going to jump in and get involved in all of that. Me, I’m an author AND a reader with a lot of uppity opinions. It’s a thin line I straddle. But children, I’d rather be straddling this man, thank you very much. Haters and Lovers, let’s just all unite under a mutual admiration of the prime piece of ass that is… Brandon Routh. Want more? Click here and here.

I’m a grown-ass woman. In fact, I’m closer to 30 than I’m more comfortable with and my mother keeps telling me to dress like my age. Confession time: I don’t know how to dress my age. Shit, am I supposed to be shopping at Ann Taylor and stuff? It’d be one thing if I were working in Wall Street or something, but I’m… well, I’m an author. I work in my underwear with my hair uncombed and a bowl of ramen noodles on my stomach most of the time. Sometimes, I don’t even shower until Tim comes home from his corporate-ladder job, barges into my office, leans down to kiss me, and says, “Goddamn, you smell.” Why shouldn’t I wear funny t-shirts that crack me up when I look in the mirror? I’m a t-shirt and jeans girl. I don’t have a lot of pretty dresses or skirts… and my buddy Syd is going to shriek when she reads this, but… I only have 4 pairs of shoes, one of them a pair of really raggedy Birkenstocks. I’m just not… a fancy girl, I guess.

By the way, the picture above is not me. That is… a dude. And in case you can’t read the t-shirt, it says “My Other Ride is Your Mom” and I just bought it from Snorg Tees. Man, it’s going to go awesome with my favorite twenty-five dollar pair of ratty-ass Levi’s and my sixty-five dollar black and white Chuck Taylor All-stars, for real!

[Review by the Sexy Bitch, Annie Dean]
Grade: C-

Imagine Laurell K. Hamilton drank a bunch of merlot and wrote a novella in one sitting. Well, if she ever had, you might wind up with something like Death by Seduction.

The story starts out with a bang. I’m all into it. Two partners on a paranormal police force, secretly wanting to bone each other for years. Standard setup, but I can live with that because the opening snaps. It’s raw and livid with the potential for angry sex because Cale has been ordered to apprehend Morgan (for reasons that are never made clear). I guess maybe she’s killed too many humans or something, I dunno. But she’s an immortal death faerie (duh!) so what else would she do with humans? Cale notes that if she weren’t too small he’d have porked her long before now.

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Grade: A-

Beauty and the Beast has always been my favorite fairy tale. I just liked the idea of a beautiful, innocent young woman falling in love with a creature that is a little less than human and is more of an animal than anything. I even liked the Disney version with the dancing teacups and everything. That part when Beauty comes back to the Beast and he’s near death and she begs him not to die because she loved him and couldn’t live without him… man, gets me every time. Which is why it always pissed me off, even as a little girl, when the Beast turned into a handsome young man. I mean, it totally negates the whole “look beyond the surface” lesson of the story. Beauty fell in love with the Beast, not some pretty boy. I gotta admit, though, that I always got a kick out of Beauty staring at the transformed Beast in the end, like she’s thinking, “Who are you? I want the man I fell in love with!” Can you just imagine falling in love with someone just as he is only to have him yanked away from you and replaced with a beautiful man just because The Powers That Be can’t have a beautiful, innocent, young woman settling down with a man who isn’t conventionally handsome… someone different? But that’s a rant for another time. This retelling of Beauty and the Beast by Robin McKinley, who wrote the beautiful, elegant Sunshine, is more in the vein of the Disney version with the dancing teacups, but this time around, Beauty is a little more than a simpering fool. The Beast, on the other hand… well, he could have been a little more beastly, but he was adequately charming. And kind of boring. I wish he’d gone a little nuts at least and tore up some furniture. But he doesn’t. Sigh.

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