Julie Anne Long

Why my electricity bills are higher this month

         Because I haven’t yet splurged for fancy cable (I have basic), my sister sent me the DVDs of the Sci-Fi Channel’s reality series, “Ghost Hunters,” for my birthday. She vowed I would love it. And as I’m generally in favor of loving things and hopeful that I will, I popped the DVDs in and parked myself on my mini trampoline (currently doing triple duty as a trampoline/coffee table/place to sprawl in my living room) to watch, and prepared to be wooed.

         I must admit it wasn’t love at first sight. “Cheesy theme music,” I mused critically, from the first moment, as I’m also into musing critically. The production values seemed pretty low, too, and the guys involved were clearly unaccustomed to being on camera, and seemed self-conscious, if charming and earnest and self-deprecating in an ordinary-schlub way. But I kept watching, and little by little I grew very fond of everyone on their team, which is known as TAPS (The Atlantic Paranormal Society). In case you don’t know the premise of the show, TAPS was founded by two guys, whom I shall call Jason and Grant (because those are their names), who work for Roto-Rooter in Rhode Island by day and investigate paranormal activity on their off hours. Both are pretty grounded family men and quite credible, and both have allegedly had paranormal experiences that launched them on this quest for answers and evidence. Using an array of cameras, thermal heat and EMF detectors, and voice recorders, they and a little team of volunteers (just about all who've had their own eerie experiences), from Wiccans to cops to paramedics to hairdressers, set out to either debunk or gather evidence of paranormal activity in various places they’re called to. And they seem to get a LOT of calls.  The whole of New England is apparently haunted. So far they’ve gone to some very cool places.

         Their work is fairly methodical and their approach professional, and they’re pretty thorough. Step one is interviewing the client, and step two is debunking/testing. For instance, through experimenting and testing they can often prove that, say, vibrations or air cross currents creating a vacuum within a house are causing a door to open by itself, and their plumbing experience often come in handy for identifying vents through which reputedly mysterious sounds or smells can get through. In one episode, they proved a rattling door was caused by a kitty cat who liked to sharpen its claws against the doorframe, and had never before been caught at it.  But for every case they accept, they set up cameras throughout the premises for an evening, douse the lights, and walk through with their EMF detectors and thermal cameras looking for fluctuations in energy and temperature (which can be evidence of paranormal activity), and after a night’s worth of investigating an allegedly haunted place, they pore over evidence, often coming up with nothing very compelling. They in fact debunk about 80% of their cases, and are very reluctant to deliver a verdict of “yep, haunted,” if they don’t have something really compelling on a voice recorder or camera.

         But when they do come up with something, it’s…holy cow.

         For instance, I just watched the episode where the Coast Guard calls them to investigate an old, reputedly haunted lighthouse that they’re in charge of maintaining. A lot of Coast Guard members had unnerving experiences there and were increasingly reluctant to visit it. TAPS went through the lighthouse with their equipment, and followed a cold spot all the way up the spiral staircase (extreme, sudden drops of temperature are apparently signs of paranormal activity, as are unexplainable spikes in EMF's), where footsteps had often been heard when nobody else was there—the lighthouse keeper continuing to do his job after death?

        And then the TAPS crew set up cameras in the areas of most reported paranormal activity(noises, etc.) in the lighthouse, including the attic, left them running, and as usual, the day after an investigation they watched hours and hours and hours of footage…yawning, scratching, seeing nothing at all for long, long stretches at a time.

         And then, suddenly, in a shot of the lighthouse attic…you see a chair slide, casually, oh, about a foot across the floor.

         All. By. Itself.

         OK, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck.

         The thing is, it’s such a little, seemingly mundane thing. It’s not a demon morphing from the floorboards, or something.  The chair didn’t do backflips, or, like, talk, or anything. It just slid a foot or so. An absolutely unmistakable foot or so, as though someone pushed it. But it was absolutely a certainty that no living person was in that room at the time. Nothing pulled or pushed the chair. And the very mundane nature of the event somehow makes it that much more eerie. I mean, you can watch that footage of the chair over and over, and still your mind has a hard time reconciling what your eyes are taking in—because what they’re taking in appears to be a violation of the basic laws of physics as we know them. And for TAPS, this is profound evidence.

         What moved that chair? Who knows? The Ghost Hunters don’t really try to draw conclusions, per se, though they have a vocabulary to describe various kinds of paranormal activity. All they’ll do is try to debunk as much anecdotal evidence as they can—they're very invested in being considered credible professionals in a field that suffers credibility problems—and capture evidence if possible.

         Which they then show to their clients. Now, I think we can all assume that the Coast Guard isn’t, as a rule, staffed by sissies. But you see these big guys watch the video of that chair moving, and though they’re holding their bodies very still—they’re probably pretty disciplined guys, after all—they can’t stop their eyes from bugging out. Or their Adam’s apples from bobbing in hard swallows. Drug smugglers, rough seas, they can handle. But a chair sliding across the floor all by itself? They took it with good humor, relieved that they weren't nuts after all, but admitted they didn't really feel much more comfortable about maintaining the lighthouse. :)

         Anyway, so far I've seen TAPS catch some pretty wild stuff, including video of an apparation in an old prison and a door (originally shut very tightly) opening by itself in a house in New Orleans—then closing. Twice. I have more episodes to watch, though. And most people who call TAPS are relieved to either learn that they’re not crazy (if the TAPS team has similar experiences in their house and can provide some sort of tangible evidence of paranormal activity) or that they’re not haunted—that it's just the kitty cat and their imaginations, or what have you.

        Anyway, so, yeah, whatever you make of it, Ghost Hunters is fun. J  Though now after I watch two or three episodes in a row, I have to turn all the lights on in the house, and leave them on for several hours before my nervous system and my imagination recovers fully.Which usually happens by bedtime. And so this is the birthday gift that keeps on giving...in my electric bill. LOL.

        So Halloween is coming up...anybody out there have an eerie experience of their own? Anybody else been following Ghost Hunters?

In which Julie burns a teapot and goes a little metaphor-crazy

Want to know the definition of "useless?" A teapot that doesn't whistle. Now, a few days ago I accidentally burned to a crisp one that I'd had for many years (something to do with lighting the stove and then getting into the shower and forgetting all about it). I was bummed, and I mourned for a moment or two, but being the tea junkie I am I quickly bought a shiny maroon replacement. This new maroon teapot is apparently mute. I mean, the burning smell was useful, and all, in terms of alerting me to the fact that the water had been boiled to oblivion, but I would have appreciated an earlier warning. That, after all, is the job of a te apot. And since the inside of the new maroon pot now seems to be coated with a sort of of toxic charcoal, and I can't figure out why it won't whistle, anyway—seriously, I did a few tests ensuring the spout and lid were down snugly, and there's no reason on earth it shouldn't whistle, but it won't—it's back to the store for another one. Sigh.

Many cups of tea are necessary today, because last night I fully intended to be asleep by one a.m., but the hero and heroine of my next book chose that hour to launch into a spritely conversation in my head.  It was good stuff, too—sexy, sparkling, tense. So I fumbled for my glasses and my pen and started scribbling. And as a result of that conversation, the whole book started to sort of unfurl around them: that snippet of conversation between the H&H, that moment in the timeline of the book, became a bit like the hub of a wheel, and the events leading the two of them to that moment and the events following that moment suddenly rayed logically out from it.

Or something like that. LOL.

In the past, I've used lots of different metaphors to describe my writing process. Metaphors are hard to resist, really, when you're a writer, and all. One of my most apt is the one that compares my process to an archaeological dig: you're down there on your knees, gently unearthing and brushing the dirt off of various shards of pottery, reveling in each discovery and knowing it's a crucial piece of the whole but not necessarily finding every piece in a sort of linear fashion. In fact, my books seldom proceed in any sort of linear fashion, until I'm closer to the end of the story. It's rather like...OK, it's like "Wheel of Fortune!" You choose different letters, and there they are up on the board, all out of order, suggesting a coherent phrase, but the whole process of guessing the entire phrase happens much more quickly once you have a lot of letters. LOL. (Another metaphor! My goodness!)

But so far, my process has been a little bit different with every book. Some books seem to resist extraction, and I really have to labor over them; some books all but write themselves. And in the end, I doubt any of my readers can tell one kind from the other. Kind of funny.

I can tell this new book is going to be an easier birth (ha! Another metaphor! And that's one we authors seem to like  in particular—the whole birth comparison) than some of my others.  I feel a bit giddy and hopeful, the way you do when you're presented with a clear, wide-open road to a brand new destination. (<--OK, how many metaphors is that, now??)

So as I get the book really underway, I'll probably only blog twice a week or so, maybe three times. I'll have to see how that goes.  I have to get out of the house every now and then, too, so young boys can hit on me. :) 

Man, the weather is crazy gorgeous this week. A sky so blue and brilliant it hurts the eyes, day after day of soft warm sun that's already out in full force when I wake up, an extreme rarity. Usually the sun has to fight through the fog, and the fog usually wins. If it wasn't for the guy with the jackhammer tearing up a nearby street I'd be out on the patio writing. I tried spending some time out there, but I think the vibrations started to loosen my teeth. LOL.  I'll stay inside and work in the warm office instead,with the cat sprawling upside down on the rug nearby. 

(And just for fun a little while ago, I leaned out my bedroom window and took a photo which includes part of the wall of the building, the balcony of the house next door, and the blue sky. It looks a little darker in that photo, but it really is quite an incredible blue. There's your blue sky, Kathy K.  LOL.)

On majestic, leaping mackerels and other (better) poetry

(Note from Julie on Tuesday the 17th: Visit me again at Romantically Inclined today!  I'm talking about the "ingredients" that go into making a romance author.)

A few years ago I went to a poetry reading event at a small but groovy nightclub in San Francisco. Now, poetry events are always a bit risky, because you never quite know what sort of poetry you'll be subjected to. To this day, in fact, the friend who accompanied me to this event remembers the poet who compared his phallus to a majestic, leaping mackerel. And though I remember this, too (sadly, it's a rather difficult image to shake), I remember another poet even more vividly: a very good-looking guy who read an admittedly sexually explicit but beautiful poem in a voice that could have melted a brick. (Reading poetry aloud well can be tricky, too.) I listened to him, caught up in the details of his poem, but because I can never help myself, I had to look around for reactions. And every woman in that place was riveted. I mean, heads were pointed quite fixedly at the stage, jaws were slack. Quite a few men were riveted, too. In fact, I think we all would have willingly followed that poet home. I remember thinking: this is a man who pays attention.

And that's the potential, mysterious power of poetry. In The Secret to Seduction (TSTS) the book after Ways to be Wicked and the final book in my trilogy, my hero, Rhys Gillray, the Earl of Rawden, is a scandalous poet known at The Libertine, and he's just that sort of poet—the kind women fling themselves at. Because he quite simply…knows.

Because of TSTS, and ever since it turns out Edgar Allen Poe is one of my Dead Celebrity Soulmates (and most of your guys's, too, it would seem—scroll down a few blogs if you don't know what I"m talking about), and because our frequent blog visitor Diana mentioned that one of her favorite poems was Poe's "Annabelle Lee," I've been thinking about poetry, and my favorite poems.

When I was in fourth grade, I won a softball for my skillful recitation of a Robert Louis Stevenson poem. (I have no idea why the prize was a softball. I was not an athlete then any more than I am now.) I still know that poem. And other poems have stuck in my memory over the years, too. Many years ago, the lead singer of my first band told me a limerick that begins, "There once was a buxom young lass" and contains the phrase "when she banged them together they played 'Stormy Weather,' " but I can't tell you the rest of that limerick, because it's absolutely filthy. Hilarious, mind you. But filthy. Of course, to this day I know it by heart.

But I do have more dignified favorite poems. I recently went trolling the web for them, and spent a little time pleasantly drugged by beautiful words. I thought I'd share a couple of those old favorites. Both of these poems are relatively short, deceptively simple, and devastating for different reasons. Both are essentially love poems, and manage, in different ways, to capture the dizzying enormity of love andthe everyday wonder of it, and how the world simply ends when you lose it.

The first, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's, still knocks me out when I read it, even though the opening lines are of course so well known they've become virtual cliché. But those first four lines just…blow me away. And then there's W.H. Auden's poem, often referred to as "Stop All the Clocks," which leaped into the contemporary limelight as a result of "Four Weddings and a Funeral" some years ago, because it was read aloud at the funeral mentioned in the movie's title. Both are worth reading if you haven't read them in a while.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (#43, from Sonnets from the Portuguese)

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

And here's W. H. Auden's:

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

So those are your poems for this week. :)

How about you? Do you have a favorite poem or poet? Have you ever memorized a poem? Have you ever written poetry? Do you go out of your way to read poetry now? Know any good limericks? :)

P.S. Visit me at Romantically Inclined today, too.  I'm talking about money. :)

Whistling in the dark

         So I took a blog break to address line edits for THE SECRET TO SEDUCTION, which were followed by a beast of a headache, which I’ve finally vanquished. If you suspect that one caused the other, you may be onto something, but there’s no proof, really. However, I did manage to go out for inexpensive and delicious Indian food over the weekend, followed by a stop into a local café where you can occasionally catch live, free music. It was dark and not very crowded in there, ideal conditions for music watching (at least for me these days), and in an odd twist of fate, the band playing—comprised of three adorable boys, all in plaid shirts, two of them wielding guitars (one of which was used solely for percussion), one wielding a bass—were called the Makepeace Brothers. Like Susannah Makepeace, the heroine from BATS. A sign? I wondered. Of what, if so?

          I’d never seen them before, but I liked the Makepeace Brothers. I always like the kind of close harmonies only siblings seem to be able to achieve (like the Everly Brothers, or the Beach Boys), and the music was sort of…folksy, world beat-ish. A little too cheerful for my usual tastes, perhaps. Unfortunately, one song featured whistling, and the audience was entreated to whistle along. (Oh, I think not.) And during the break, one of the band members actually came up behind me, gave my arm a little squeeze said something along the lines of, “I noticed you watching us.” I tell you, you have to love a bold youngster. And by young, I do mean bright-eyed and dewy-cheeked and I suspect I could have almost-but-not-quite have been his mother. Then again, it was dark, so who could really tell? But get this: His name was “Connor.” Now…that’s even stranger, given that the hero of THE RUNAWAY DUKE is named Connor. Another sign? Of what? That I need to get out more? That's what I'm thinking.

          So did anyone else do anything fun this weekend? And what are some of your favorite ways to get rid of a garden-variety (yet beastly) headache?

Who's your Dead Celebrity Soulmate?

So I hope you’ve all recovered nicely from our dance party and are now ready to learn who your Dead Celebrity Soulmate is. Actually, this is a quiz recently sent to me, and it’s very timely given the question Auriette asked during our dance party earlier this week: If I could invite five people to a dinner party— any five people, real or fictional, living or dead—who would they be? Wow! I thought. When you can cherry-pick your dinner party guest list from an entire universe of choices—when history and your imagination are your only limits—to whom would you serve your Chicken Piccata? (That’s what I always serve my guests, anyway.) You can read about who I invited to my fictional dinner party in the dance party comments below, but as per usual, this question only got me asking myself more questions: what if you didn’t just dine with a historical figure. What if you could date a historical figure?

         For instance, the other day I got an email from my sister, and it contained two sentences I never in my life expected to read side by side: “Have you seen the new images of George Washington? Hubba hubba!” Seems they’re recreating more accurate images of George for display at Mount Vernon, as the images of him with which we’re most familiar—like the one on the dollar bill—are apparently the least flattering and least accurate. George apparently was “a vibrant, athletic man.” Our first president, in other words, was a babe.

          I’ll confess to once developing a serious crush on Thomas Jefferson after I saw the movie version of the musical 1776 when I was much younger.  Ken Howard played him, and Thomas Jefferson sang and danced in the movie, as did John Adams and Ben Franklin and the rest of our founding fathers. Boy, after that movie, I really thought Thomas Jefferson was a stone cold fox. I also saw the movie of Jesus Christ Superstar at some point in my crush- susceptible early childhood and fell madly in love with Ted Neely, who played Jesus. This seemed all wrong, but it seems at that point my criteria for developing a crush on a historical figure was singing and dancing. 

          As for more recent non-singing-and-dancing crushes, I still have a sort of retroactive crush on Richard Feynman, the Nobel prize winning physicist who also played the bongos, experimented with sensory deprivation chambers, helped solve the mystery of the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion, and was basically the first person to envision nanotechnology (little teeny computers, etc.), among millions of other interesting things. Look at that photo of him at that link. Doesn't he seem like a fun guy?

          So first take the quiz to find out who your Dead Celebrity Soulmate is (mine is apparently old E.A. Poe, the guy up there in the graphic), and then…if you're not happy with him...which historical figure would you like to share an intimate little dinner (meaning wine, footsie under the table) with this weekend?

The Morning After!! And we have a winner...

So how are you all doing this morning?? Feeling any Cyber Dance Party, um, after-effects? There's a steaming hot cup of coffee for you over there to the left, if you need it. And a little Alka Seltzer over to the right.  And some soothing, hangover-friendly music down below, should you choose to avail yourself of it. I found one straggler asleep in the bathtub this morning—she was using the shower curtain as a blanket, and snoozing like a baby—but I packed her into a cab, and now the place is really empty. I had a fabulous time, but I'll confess to being a tad...well, let's call it wobbly....today. Thanks again for coming, everyone!! I'm going right back to bed after I post this.

So one of the tremendously useful things I learned when I was in the corporate world was how to create a magical Excel macro that will choose a random winner  for me, and this is how I arrived at the winner of my entire library of books (all four of them! DUKE, THIEF, BATS, and WTBW!) and the pearl and diamond earrings (which, mind you, are significantly smaller than the image in the blog post below, but still quite pretty). So are you ready??  Are you awake? Can you bear the anticipation?? Everyone start a drum roll up please... (but gently!! The throbbing heads, you know)....

And the winner is......

Ruby!!!

Stand up and take a bow, Ruby!!  Everyone applaud her...but again, gently. A light patting of the hands will do. Ruby, send me an email with your address (put "Blog Party Winner!" in the subject line, which will help me find you quickly), and I'll send all the swag off to you.

So I hope everyone has a fabulous week, and I hope the dance tunes linger in your head for a few days and the good times linger in your heart. :) I'm going to take a blog break for a day or two, probably, to recover. LOL. So here are some quiet, hangover-friendly tunes, because co-hostess Toni Blake reminded me of the wind-down tunes often played at the end of parties, and it cracked me up thinking about it. There's some Nick Drake and Jeff Buckley, whom I've loved passionately for years, and it's funny how both of these songs keep cropping up on TV on "House" or  the "O.C." or Volkswagen commercials. There's the lovely song (named for Psalm 40) U2 used to play at the end of every show as they left the stage, so it has great memories for me. There's Eddie Vedder's version of a Beatles's song, Toni's favorite and one of mine, too, because I couldn't get The Beatles' version. And then one of my current favorite songs by Elbow. All quite, quite soothing. LOL. So long for now, kittens.

Hallelujah  (Jeff Buckley, written by Leonard Cohen)

40 (U2)

You've Got To Hide Your Love Away  (Eddie Vedder)

Pink Moon (Nick Drake)

Powder Blue (Elbow)

Welcome to the "Get Wicked!" Cyber Dance Party!!

A LATE MONDAY NIGHT NOTE FROM JULIE: Talk about a great party!! I had a blast today! You guys really know how to help a girl celebrate. And a few people have crashed on top of the pile of coats in the guest bedroom—I can hear the snoring from here—and we're finally starting to run a bit low on the Cyber Dom Perignon, but the doors to this party don't close until 6 p.m. PDT Tuesday the 3rd, so if you haven't had a chance to dance or to try the hummus, come on in!)

Happy October kittens, and welcome to our Cyber Dance Party!! So what are we celebrating? Two joyous things: the release of WAYS TO BE WICKED, the second book in the Holt sisters trilogy, and the fact that I get to write a new series (for Avon!) when I’ve finished the trilogy!! Yay! Right below this blog is our soundtrack for the party, so go ahead and scroll down, read the instructions, and by all means start dancing—there might even be a song dedicated to you (if you requested one earlier)!! (Both listening and dancing are optional, but I discovered recently that my own blog reading experience was greatly enhanced by “Private Idaho,” so I have to recommend it.)

And even though there’s actually a great little song down there called “Ways to be Wicked,” this particular song is our theme song for the day:

  Our dance party theme song

(Napster will probably let you listen to one song without registering, but registering is cinchy. Scroll down to find out how.)

Anyway, so, my talented Avon Red author buddy Toni Blake has asked me a variety of questions both relevant (about Ways to be Wicked) and utterly trivial (just the kind I like), and I’ve posted answers to them below, so welcome to a very random interview. LOL. There’s a photo of me and Toni dressed up for a different kind of party over there, just so you can remember what we look like, but that’s not the dress code for this particular party. I mean, I’m not even going to tell you what I’m wearing right now. Let’s just call it “comfortable” and leave it at that. I can do The Pony in it. And the Cabbage Patch. That's what really matters.

And when you’re done reading our interview, go ahead and ask me any question at all! About writing, about Ways to be Wicked, about what I plan to have for dinner. Whatever you want. Everyone who participates today will get a Party Favor—a signed bookmark! (Send me an email with the words “Party Favor” in the subject line after you comment, and include your address!), and one random commenter will win a GRAND prize: my entire body of work—well, four books—and a lovely pair of pearl and diamond earrings. I’ll announce a winner on Wednesday. I’ll leave this blog rolling for two days, I figure.

Thanks for coming! Come on in, kick off your shoes (unless you dance better in those spike heels) mingle, have a cyber finger sandwich, sip some cyber Dom, dance a little, grill me!! Let’s get this party started!

Toni: WAYS TO BE WICKED takes place in a bawdy London theater setting. That’s totally cool, and makes me think of Shakespeare in Love and the more recent Stage Beauty, even though I know the time period is different. What inspired this fabulously fun setting?

Truthfully, the setting just sort of happened, and it was all Beauty and the Spy’s fault. [Beauty and the Spy is the first book in the trilogy; WTBW is the second; The Secret to Seduction is the third]. I was writing the part of the story where Kit and Susannah are researching the truth about Susannah’s past, and they wind up at the White Lily, a bawdy theater in London. And who should be inside when I (figuratively speaking) pushed open that theater door but the theater’s owner, Tom Shaughnessy? I was half in love with him as I wrote him—I mean, strangely, I felt like I already knew him—and I was having so much fun writing those short scenes at The White Lily that when Tom walked offstage, so to speak, I wanted to follow him. I knew he had to be my next hero.

And once I was there in the theater setting…Well, I love contrasts: I loved creating a hero who is devil-may-care, cheerfully unapologetic about his reputation as a lady’s man, and utterly committed to something that seems frivolous on the surface—the bawdy shows at the theater—but who also happens to be determined and ambitious and a little bit dangerous, because he’s survived on the streets and he’s earned everything he has the hard way. I love the gaiety of the theater shows contrasted with the offstage antics, jealousies, ambitions and heartbreaks of the characters.

And my primary goal when I’m writing is to entertain myself, because truly, if I’m thoroughly engaged in the story—amused, aroused, worried on behalf of my characters, living the story with them—I figure my readers will be, too. And in general, in life, I'm entertained by variety and little surprises, which means I love unusual heroes and heroines and fully developed peripheral characters and unique settings, so I was quickly captivated by the possibilities a theater presented, particularly in the Regency period.

  WAYS TO BE WICKED was the #1 bestselling historical romance at BN.com AND reached #30 overall at BN.com before it was even released! That rocks! Did you do anything to celebrate?

I did! I had some carrot cake.

Have you seen Jennifer the Spider lately? Or do you feel she’s moved on to some other windowsill by now?

Jennifer sent a postcard—she’s living outside, beneath the back stairs. She’s not bitter about her eviction. And there are more flies out there by the garbage cans than there are in my office (I’m sure you’re all very happy to hear that), so she has a lot more to eat. [Note to the uninitiated: Jennifer, and spiders in general, starred in a blog a few weeks ago.]

My current book, SWEPT AWAY, takes place on a deserted island. I dedicated the book to my husband, saying if I had to pick someone to be stuck on an island with, I’d choose him. If YOU had to be stuck on an island with one other person, who would you take?

Superman. Because that way he could fly both of us right OFF that damn island. (The word “stuck” troubles me, you see. It implies a protracted period of time withou t sanitary facilities— this is a “deserted” island, right?—and the need to eat things like shellfish to survive, and I’m allergic to shellfish.) Or…wait! I know! Elastic Man! Because he could stretch aaallllll the way out across the water to make a bridge to the mainland, and I could walk across him all the way home, and—

All right, all right. I know you’re looking for an answer as sweet as yours, Toni, and as I’m a romance author, I ought to be able to come up with something, so hang on, hang on…Wait—got it!! I’d like to be stuck with the man of my dreams…only, when we’re first stranded, I wouldn’t know he was the man of my dreams, and he wouldn’t know I was the woman of his. We’d spend our time on the island figuring it out, because God knows we’ll need something to do while we’re stuck there, besides fending off predators. In between falling in love, I’ll probably carve Scrabble tiles out of driftwood. This man will have a fantastic vocabulary, and will also be able to make both a radio and an IPod from a coconut.

I wouldn’t mind being stuck with Tom Shaughnessy from Ways to be Wicked, either. He knows lots of good bawdy songs, so we probably won’t be bored. Or your hero of Swept Away, for that matter.

Another desert island question, but this one is more abstract and philosophical: You’re stuck on a desert island with one other person, and you have to choose one of the following: someone you love but who doesn’t love you in return OR someone who loves you but who you do not love. We’re talkin’ romantic love here, by the way. Which do you choose – the person you love or the person who loves you?

Oh man. I LOVE this question! My mind just sort of spasmed with happiness at the sheer philosophical torment of it all. LOL. But all it does is lead to more questions: is there HOPE of your love being returned? Because hope is a very bright, sustaining thing, whereas the potential for guilt and regret and irritation—stemming from knowing you’re stuck with someone who loves you but whom you’ll never love in return—can be quite wearing and uncomfortable. Me, I’m comfortable with yearning. And hope. I know how to yearn and hope. I write romance, after all. But I’m uncomfortable with making people uncomfortable or unhappy. LOL.

Then again, the entirely unfamiliar circumstance of a desert island might bring out entirely different qualities in the stranded people, uncovering new reasons to love or not love. See?? The possibilities are endless.

To give a short answer, it would probably be easier for me to be the one who loves, rather than the one who is loved, but this bears an ENTIRE blog post worth of discussion, probably.

A last desert island question: You’re stuck on a desert island and you can take 5 books. What are they?

On day three of being stuck on the island, I’ll discover that one of the five books is a magical, inflatable book. When rubbed just the right number of times, it will turn into a very sturdy dinghy which will carry me away from the island, and the other books will also be magical books, each of which will turn into brand new books the minute I finish reading them. This way I won’t get bored as I float back to the mainland, because I’ll have lots to read. I read fast.

Don’t get me wrong. I mean, I like islands, and all. It's just that words like “stuck” and “trapped” make me all squirmy. Plus, I have work to do back on the mainland. I have a new series to write!

Or maybe I should choose very thick books that I can burn for fuel if necessary, or to cook the wild beasts I caught with my bare hands. Or maybe they should be five blank books, so I can write and write and write brand new stories. :)

Ok, kittens—pause a moment in your booty shaking and ask me questions! But remember I'm on the West Coast, so I'll be joining you around 8 or 9 a.m. San Francisco time. But don't feel like you have to wait for me! Feel free to get it started, and I'll make a grand entrance. LOL.

The "GET WICKED" Cyber Dance Party Playlist!

Okay, Kittens! Here's our soundtrack for the day! And I confess it skews a little 80's, because that was just plain hard for me to resist, but we do have a variety of stuff in there, all designed to get your moneymaker shaking. Or at least to get your head sort of bobbing along.  (Please don't sprain anything.)

So, we're hearing these songs courtesy of Napster, and I think they'll let you listen to at least one song without registering—when you click on a song, you'll be taken to the Napster site, where you should hover for a moment, and a second later a smaller window will pop up and play your song. But registering is easy, quick, and free. Here are some quickie guidelines:

1)  First, enable Pop-up windows for Napster.com, if you have your pop-ups turned off.

2) If you're registered, go to Napster and sign in. Or if you haven't yet registered, go here and choose a user name and password. 

3) Once you're signed in, come back and start dancing!!  Whee!

And because I'm just so thoughtful, I thought it might be helpful to provide a little glossary of 80's Dance Moves to refresh your memory.

Here are the tunes, ladies.

Play That Funky Music
(Wild Cherry)

What I Like About You
(The Romantics)

Private Idaho
(B-52's)

Let's Get It Started
(Black Eyed Peas)

Been Caught Stealing
(Jane's Addiction. Julie's favorite!)

I Melt With You
(Modern English)

Mony Mony
(Billy Idol)

Head Over Heels
(the Go-Go's)

Step On (Happy Mondays)

Ways To Be Wicked
(Lone Justice. Great song, not all that danceable. But the title!)

Vacation
(The Go-Go's. For Diana and Karen!)

Love Shack (The B-52's. For Kevin!)

Groove Is In The Heart
(Deee-Lite. For Michelle!!)

Brick House
(The Commodores. For Christy!)

Honky Tonk Badonkadonk
(Trace Adkins. For Haven!)

You Sexy Thing
(Hot Chocolate. For all of us, because clearly it's about all of us.)

It's Raining Men (The Weather Girls. for Magda!)

Just Like Heaven
(The Cure. For Karen!)

It's My Life (Talk Talk. For Melissa!)

Goody Two Shoes (Adam Ant)