Book Covers and Character-Casting
Last week, on Open Mic day (which I’ve decided to make a regular weekly feature on Wednesdays, by the way), I mentioned having completed and turned in the questionnaires on the books in my upcoming contemporary romance series with Barbour and that I send a file of reference images—mainly of the characters but with a few ideas for the background/setting as well—along with it.
If you’ve been hanging around here for a while, you know that I use Real World Templates for my characters, which are usually actors or actresses, with the occasional model or reality TV personality thrown in. Well, with the Matchmakers series, because these aren’t characters/stories I’ve been working with for years—as with the characters of all of my previous books—it’s been a lot easier for me to be slightly more flexible with what my characters look like. And considering that the model on the initial cover of Love Remains looked nothing like the description or images I sent them, I thought I’d try to make it easier for them by re-casting the heroines of the second and third books in the series with models from a stock image website.
There are several stock photo websites around. The one I happen to prefer using is JupiterImages.com. (UPDATE MAY 2014: This is now GettyImages.com.) I like using it because (a) I could sign up for a free user account (to be able to pull images without a watermark across them) and (b) because their search protocols are fantastic—allowing me to really hone my search for specific characteristics/keywords.
For the covers of the Matchmakers series, they’ve decided to feature the heroine on the front cover, so in my cover questionnaires for books two and three in the series, I really focused on the descriptions of the heroines.
Caylor Evans, The Art of Romance
When I first came up with the character of Caylor Evans in The Art of Romance, the Real World Template I chose for her was the American plus-size model Kate Dillon. But this was just based off of the idea of wanting her to be plus-sized and having Kate Dillon as one of the few plus-sized people in my casting book other than Emme, whom I’d already used in Stand-In Groom. Then I ran across a gorgeous redheaded plus-size model on both Nordstrom and Lane Bryant’s websites. I was able to find so many images of her conveying a wide range of emotions, and she fit more of the kind of person I thought Caylor might be.
And then I started writing Love Remains, in which Caylor is a major secondary character. And I realized that I needed to change up Caylor’s personality somewhat to create more contrast between her and Zarah. And besides, someone who lives with her grandmother who goes by the grandma-nickname “Sassy” had to have some of that sassiness rub off on her. So, since I wanted to find stock photos that, maybe, Barbour could use (they could still use stock images of someone else—that’s their prerogative), I went to Jupiter Images and did an image search for young woman–>red hair. After quite a bit of searching and refining (one person only, age 25–30—because their 30-35 year old tagged models looked more like 40–45 years old, caucasian, etc.) I ran across this picture:
There was so much life, so much personality—so much STORY—in that one picture that I knew she was the perfect template for Caylor. So I figured out which photographer/company had posted that picture and refined my search further to find more pictures of that model, which can be seen here. I decided I would still make the character larger than this model, but not so much that it would be obvious if Barbour does decide to use this model on the cover. Here’s the description I sent to Barbour, along with several images of this model:
A. Main Character #1: Caylor Evans
Age— 34Occupation—English professor at a small liberal arts college, published author
Hair Color—Red
Eye Color—Turquoise (bluish-green)
Hair Style—Short, sassy, “stylishly messy”
Clothing Style—Trendy and stylish but professional/understated
Overall Description (could include height, build, personal style, countenance, etc.)—Almost six feet tall, size 14 (which makes her about “average sized” so not too skinny but not plus-sized either). Pretty, with a big smile and twinkling, mischievous eyes. Likes to laugh. Occasionally wears reading glasses, but not all the time.
Once I had re-cast Caylor with stock images and completed my cover questionnaire (of course, my hero, Dylan Bradley, didn’t have to change—fortunately, the heroes are going to be rather blurry and in the background on these covers), it was time to turn my focus onto Flannery.
Flannery McNeill, Turnabout’s Fair Play
When I came up with the story idea for Turnabout’s Fair Play, I had one particular actress in mind: Rosamund Pike, whom many of you may remember as Jane Bennett in the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice or as Dr. Samantha Grimm in Doom or, more recently, as the vapid, wide-eyed Helen in An Education. As I started writing the character of Flannery McNeill, also a major secondary character in Love Remains, I was having a little trouble connecting Rosamund Pike with the character who was emerging on the page. I think part of the reason I was having trouble was because I also used Rosamund Pike as the template for the (minor) character of The Honorable Miss Penelope Fairfax in the first two Ransome books. So it wasn’t that difficult for me to choose to re-cast Flannery also.
Once again, I went to Jupiter Images and started putting specific criteria into the search protocol. And eventually I ran across the image that (I think) would be the perfect image for the front cover of the book:
Even though I hadn’t pictured Flannery with quite so much hair, once I was able to track down more images of this model (and there are tons!), I realized how much of the personality the character Flannery had already started exhibiting that I was seeing in this model’s pictures. And here’s the description of her I sent:
A. Main Character #1: Flannery McNeill
Age— 33Occupation—Senior editor at a book publishing company
Hair Color—Blond
Eye Color—Hazel/light brown
Hair Style—Long, with long layers set it in hot rollers to make it wavy, bangs
Clothing Style—Business/professional (suits, pants/blouses, trendy/fashion-conscious casual wear)
Overall Description (could include height, build, personal style, countenance, etc.)—Tall (about 5’9″), slender with a slight hourglass shape, long limbs. Pale eyebrows that she darkens slightly with makeup. Full lips.
Your Assignment
Now, your assignment for today, should you choose to accept it, is to copy the following “form” and paste it into the comment box, fill it out, then post a link to a “reference image” for the character you’ve described, like the images I’ve posted above. You can use an already existing character and you can use the image of an actor, actress, athlete, model, or something you find on Jupiter Images or SuperStock or wherever you choose to search. And if you’re not a writer, you can use a character from someone else’s book (just be sure to reference the book’s title and the author’s name to give credit where credit’s due).
A. Main Character #1:
Age—
Occupation—
Hair Color—
Eye Color—
Hair Style—
Clothing Style—
Overall Description (could include height, build, personal style, countenance, etc.)—
Fun Friday: Romance Novels that Shaped Me
I’ve mentioned many, many times on this blog, in interviews, and in conversations that I grew up reading romance novels. In elementary school, I read the “girl-and-horse” stories for a while, but by the time I was twelve years old, I was looking for the boy-meets-girl, happily-ever-after kind of stories (possibly from also being raised on movies like Cinderella and Snow White?). Since Valentine’s Day is this weekend, and since I am a romance novelist, I figured that instead of hatin’ on the day that celebrates romance, I would celebrate some of those romance novels that were influential in my life in directing me toward writing romance.
5. The O’Malley Series by Dee Henderson
These were the first contemporary-set Christian romance novels (with a touch of suspense) that I read when I returned to Christian fiction in the mid-1990s. Actually, they were the first contemporary-set romance novels I’d ever read and enjoyed! The O’Malley Series is a set of romantic suspense novels centering around the, you guessed it, O’Malley family. It’s a family by choice—they all lived in an orphanage and decided when they became adults to “adopt” each other by changing their last names to O’Malley. Each of the seven siblings is in a “helping” type of job: a police hostage negotiator, a U.S. Marshal, a trauma therapist, a medical examiner, a firefighter, an EMT, a pediatrician. Though I didn’t necessarily like the “you have to get saved before we can get married” aspect of the plot lines in these books, that wasn’t enough to pull me out of each of the stories. Each one has a sigh-inducing ending, making me eager to pick up the next book, not only for the next romance, but to see the continuation of the relationships from the previous books. I also learned a lot about crafting a contemporary romance, along with style and tone, from reading these books. It’s about time to pull them out and read them again!
4. These Happy Golden Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Up until just the last couple of years (when I got too busy), I read the Little House series every single year. I would speed through the first six books (I always skip Farmer Boy) just so that I could get to These Happy Golden Years, Laura’s recounting of her three-year courtship with Almanzo Wilder. While she didn’t write it as a romance novel, and while there isn’t really any of the standard style and language one expects in a romance novel, it’s still sigh-inducing. And it’s also a great resource for learning what courtship was like during the late 19th Century in rural America.
3. The Velvet Quadrilogy by Jude Deveraux
The first one of these four novels I read was Velvet Song, about the third of the four Montgomery brothers in medieval England—a Robin Hood–like character who happens to fall in love with a waif of a girl who’s been exiled from her home because of trumped-up charges of witchcraft against her. I read it when I was twelve years old. Yes, my mother knew I was reading it. And she sat me down to talk to me about it afterward, I’m sure assuming that I would want to talk about the steamy scenes. However, she’s since told me that she knew I was going to be a writer when I went on and on about the characters and the setting and the romance parts of the story and told her I’d skipped over those other parts. I went on to read the other three books in the series (the first, The Velvet Promise, is my favorite of the four) so many times that I’ve lost count. And I now get a good giggle over how purple the prose is in those “steamy” scenes! These books cemented in me a love for historical romances, especially medievals and eventually led me to reading Julie Garwood’s books, which I also love. But these were the first and some of the few books I still have from more than twenty-five years ago. (I also still have the original yellow set of Little House books from longer ago than that!)
2. Persuasion by Jane Austen
This should be no surprise to anyone who knows me or has been hanging out on this blog for a while. I first read Persuasion when I was twenty-seven years old—the same age as Anne Elliot in the book. I identified with Anne in so many ways that this, Jane Austen’s last completed novel, quickly became my favorite of all of her work. Of course, it helped that I had watched the 1995 Ciaran Hinds/Amanda Root film adaptation of the story just before reading the book, so I had those images to call to mind while reading. One of the reasons why this, and not P&P, is my favorite of Austen’s works is because there’s more of Frederick Wentworth in the story—and both Frederick and Anne have more of a character arc, more growth as people, in the story. Perhaps because the characters are older, or perhaps because Jane herself was older when she wrote the story. The characterization is deeper, more intimate; the story is more tightly plotted; and the ending—well, I just got a chill sitting here thinking about Frederick’s letter to Anne . . .
I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W.
I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father’s house this evening or never.
It makes me so mad that Jane Austen wrote that and I didn’t! 😉
1. Victoria by Willo Davis Roberts
While I make no claims that this book is “better” than Persuasion or any other books out there, the reason it’s #1 on my list is because of the influence it had on me—namely, this is the book that made me start writing. I fell so in love with the characters in this book that I wasn’t satisfied with letting it end where it did. So I started writing my own “sequel” to it. But pretty soon, I got tired of writing someone else’s characters and someone else’s setting, so I started trying to write my own Sunfire Romance—I even sent them a query letter with my idea (centered around the trial of Billy the Kid in Mesilla, New Mexico, where I lived—I received a very kind thanks-but-no-thanks letter back from them). But at that point, it didn’t really matter, because I’d already discovered a love for writing that got me where I am today. And I owe so much of that to this book for igniting that fire in me.
What Does Valentine’s Day Mean to You?
With due dates for freelance projects and an overdue manuscript, I’ve barely had time to think about Valentine’s Day except to see what I had that I could quickly post here on the blog that would be timely (thus the two “articles” I posted Monday and Tuesday).
I used to dread the onset of Valentine’s Day when I worked in the corporate world. At the newspaper where I worked, because I was in the advertising department, I heard about it all the time, with Valentine’s Day advertising packages for restaurants and spas and jewelry stores and liquor stores and florists. Hearts and flowers and red and pink were all over the paper—and all over our offices. When the day arrived, balloons and flowers and teddy bears and chocolates were all over the place—in fact, one year, someone received a singing telegram in our office. The only part I liked about it was the availability of the chocolate with which to drown my dislike of the day.
Since leaving the corporate world in 2006—first to work at a small publishing house where it wasn’t a big deal (and where we worked on Valentine-themed books in July and August) and now working at home—I’m a bit more pragmatic about the day. I can ignore the commercials on TV as I fast-forward through them. I can avoid the aisle at Kroger. I can make other plans for that day (like watching the Olympics—yay!).
But I thought it would be fun to find out what Valentine’s Day means to others, in their own words. So here we go . . .
Valentine’s Day has different meanings depending who you talk to. I know those who absolutely hate the day, and I was probably one of those people during years without a special someone. But when I had a special someone, the day was more peaceful, fun, filled with anticipation instead of anxiousness. So now, 10 years and 4 children later, Valentine’s Day is a day to make my children feel special as well as a day to spend some time away from my children. Time with just me and my husband helps me remember why we decided to become an us.
~Jennifer Elerick
Since my husband and I try to love each other all year, Valentine’s Day isn’t about us anymore. That is only secondary to my quest to find the perfect Valentine’s treats for my kids to distribute to their friends at school. Measly paper mini-cards just aren’t enough to reach super-cool status in preschool and kindergarten these days. Its all about stickers, fake jewelry, candy, 3-D designs, and scratch-and-sniff. Is it worth all the fuss when at the end of the school day, all you get for your time and effort is a “Thanks Mom, you’re cool”? You bet it is!
~Dolly Chandler
Valentine’s Day means LOVE. Of course, my hubby and I always do the ooey gooey romantic evening, but just as special is that every Valentine’s Day, my daddy brings me a flower, candy, and a card, because I am HIS Valentine too! My husband has continued the tradition with our three girls, always giving them something he picked out for them so they feel super duper special and loved! I think it’s a great time to remember how much our Heavenly Father loves us as well. We are HIS Valentine most of all!
~Krista Phillips
Valentine’s Day to me means it’s only one more day until heart shaped candy is 75% off.
~Jason Wert
Valentine’s day to me is a day to spread love. My husband (of 19 years) and I usually have dinner out. I also try to make him some chocolate-covered strawberries. But we also think of a few others. When my husband, Drew, came back from a deployment after 9/11, he really had a heart for deployed families. As an Air Force family, we also know someone who is deployed – and have been that deployed family several times. We try to do something for those deployed families close to us by either having the left-behind spouse and children over for dinner on Valentine’s night or pass out gifts to them. Just something small for them to know others are thinking of them on this day of love.
~Kelley
Valentine’s Day. Those words sound to me like five-inch nails on a chalkboard. Some wise person–a female, I believe–gave a better name to the holiday when she called it “Singleness Awareness Day.” Amen, sista!
To some, Valentine’s means flowers. Oooh, not me, though. I do not want flowers.
To some, Valentine’s means a box of chocolate. Oooh, not me, though. I am capable of buying chocolate myself, and when I do, I buy the yummy milk chocolate, not the junk with cherries in the center. I do not want a box of chocolates.
To some, Valentine’s means jewelry…and I have no complaint about this whatsoever. Although, it need not be anything fancy–every day, I wear a worn black macrame bracelet that a guy friend gave me. Therefore, I wouldn’t be bothered by jewelry.
But, the ultimate gift for me would be from God. At seventeen, I’m boyfriendless, a fact I am actually proud of. You see, I don’t want just any guy. I want the guy. The one the Lord created with me in mind. The one who is my other half. The one who is my best friend.
Until, that Valentine’s comes that I will spend with “my guy,” I will pray for God to mold me into the girl He wants me to be. Trusting Him, I will be blessed beyond measure. So, don’t be gloomy this Sunday. Remember that God’s plan will never die like a bouquet of rose; it will be sweeter than a box of chocolates, and it will shine brilliantly for others to behold in awe.
~Courtney Phillips
Your turn. What does Valentine’s Day mean to you?
Open Mic Day
This is one of those weeks during which I don’t have a lot of time to write blog posts—or energy to think up topics. So I’m declaring today “Open Mic Day.” What do you want to talk about today? What questions would you like to ask me (about me, about my books, about writing, or whatever) or other readers of this blog? Let’s get some discussion going—it’s been awfully quiet around here the last couple of days!
Singleness Sound-off: Eight Ways to Enjoy Valentine’s Day
Another article I wrote for that magazine-writing class, at my instructor’s request due to the depressing nature of the article I posted yesterday (even though she gave me an A on that one.)
Admit it—just hearing someone say “Valentine’s Day” sends chills down your spine and makes you nauseated. Why?
Let’s see if we can figure out the root of the single adult’s hatred of this over all other holidays by looking at some commonly held views on Valentine’s Day.
- 1. Valentine’s Day is all about “couples”—probably as many people get either married or engaged on this one day as the rest of the year combined.
2. Valentine’s Day is all about romance. If you don’t have a “significant other,” it’s hard to continually be bombarded with romantic images.
3. For weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day, the first thing anyone says when entering a conversation is, “What are you doing for Valentine’s Day?” or “Do you have anything special planned for Valentine’s Day?”
4. Valentine’s Day is just a marketing ploy made up by Hallmark cards, FTD florists, and Whitman’s chocolatier, to bilk the American populace of millions of dollars in one day.
5. The whole point of Valentine’s Day is to remind me that I’m alone in this world.
If you found yourself agreeing with one or more of the above statements, you’re not alone. We’ve all been there—some have been there for a LONG time.
This year, I decided that I’m tired of giving in to Valentine’s Day negativity. I decided that I wouldn’t let Valentine’s Day have control over me any longer. I decided that I’m going to enjoy Valentine’s Day.
So, I came up with a list of ways to enjoy Valentine’s Day. It wasn’t easy. The negativity toward the holiday is engrained in my brain. Since you might have trouble coming up with a list for yourself, here are eight ideas to get you started, ranging from simple and free to complicated and exorbitant (hey, we can all dream, can’t we?).
1. Call up some other unattached single friends and plan a movie night. Bring your favorite comedy, action, horror, or suspense movie. Try to stay away from the romances—they’ll just depress you.
2. Have a “Hair and Makeup Night” to go along with (or instead of) your movie night. Get all the gals together (guys, umm, maybe this one wouldn’t work for you, but hey, whatever), buy a few boxes of hair color and pool your funkiest colors of eye shadow, lipstick, and nail polish and have a ball. Go to Waffle House afterward and see if you blend in with the crowd.
3. Pull out your favorite book from childhood and reread it. Then write a letter to the author and tell him or her why it’s your favorite book (even if the author has been dead for a long time). If your favorite book from childhood is a 1,000-page novel, you probably won’t have to read the whole thing in one night.
4. Grab that book off the nightstand you’ve never gotten around to reading, draw a hot bath, pour yourself a glass of wine (or whatever you like to drink), put in that Dean Martin or Yo-Yo Ma CD (you must have something that doesn’t shake the dust off the rafters in your collection), and RELAX. There’s nothing good on TV on Valentine’s Day anyway.
5. If you live in an area where there is guaranteed to be snow on the ground on February 14, get all of your friends together to build snow forts and then have a snowball fight. Warm up afterward with homemade hot chocolate and marshmallows burned over a fire (or over candles if you don’t have a fireplace).
6. Plan a scavenger hunt. In Nashville, we have a great downtown area where there are multiple restaurants, clubs, and other entertainment places that draw crowds at night. This can also be done at a mall, amusement park, or other place where people congregate. Gather up two or three digital cameras to send out with the teams and make sure the batteries are new for the items on the list which will require a picture for proof. Other items can be gathered and brought back with the pictures. Then come up with your items. Some suggestions are:
- – Picture and autograph of someone who can juggle
– A flower
– Picture of a man (not a team member) pretending to propose to someone on the team
– Four business cards—from different people
and so on.
7. Take the day off, jet down to the Florida Keys, and indulge yourself in a day of the royal treatment at one of the many exclusive spas down there.
8. Go to the florist or the grocery store and buy flowers and a vase. Go to your favorite place to buy candles and buy at least two tapers along with candlesticks (if you don’t already have some). If you don’t have any nice dishes, go to Target and purchase a nice plate, bowl, and glass from their open stock tableware. Buy some cloth napkins and a tablecloth, too. Call your favorite restaurant. Ask them if they do carry out orders. Order your favorite meal. Dress your table with the above items, arranging the food attractively on the plate. Sit down and enjoy your favorite meal. Then watch Fatal Attraction to remind yourself that there are worse things than dining alone on Valentine’s Day.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I’ll actually be working (editing or writing) and watching the Olympics this Valentine’s Day. What will you be doing?
Singleness Sound-off: When Will It Be My Turn?
In “honor” of Valentine’s Day being Sunday, following is an article I wrote in 2002 for a Writing for Magazines course I took in college.
Me next! Me next!
Have you ever experienced that feeling? It’s an emotion I associate with P.E. class in elementary school where we all stood in a line while the two team captains for kick-ball chose their teams. Every time a name was called, I hoped to hear mine next, but it didn’t usually get called until after everyone else was chosen. After a few years, I gave up on the idea of being chosen anything but last—not just in P.E., but in life. My mother always told me that one day, when that “special someone” came along, I’d get to experience what it’s like to be chosen first.
I’m still waiting on my turn. The disappointment associated with the “my turn syndrome” was learned early in my life, although, it doesn’t usually bother me that I’m still single at my age. However, I start to feel the onset of the “my turn syndrome” as soon as Kroger takes the Christmas candy and decorations down and replaces them with heart-shaped boxes of chocolate and oversized teddy bears.
In second grade, I remember the shoeboxes we decorated for the annual Valentine’s card exchange. Each child was given a list of names of all of the children in the class with a note on the top to instruct our parents that we were to bring a card for each child in the class. I got Mom to take me to Safeway where I picked out a box of small cut-out Looney-Toon cards. When I got home, I dumped them on the table and sorted through them, setting aside the potentially embarrassing ones to give to girls and the more innocuous ones to give to boys. I had to be very choosy because there was one little boy I liked; his card had to be just perfect.
The next morning, with all of the cards sealed in their little white envelopes, I found it hard to concentrate during the morning, too excited about the party I’d looked forward to all week. I eagerly hoped to find a special card from that same little boy with maybe an extra little note written on it, like I had done on his.
Party time finally came. I was excited as I went around depositing cards into every classmate’s box. We weren’t allowed to open the cards at school—we had to take them home. I could hardly wait. Had he given me a special Valentine? For the second time in as many days, a box of Valentines got dumped on the dining room table as soon as I got home. I counted them… twenty-three. But I had prepared twenty-eight cards last night, one for every other student in the class. One of the five that I didn’t get was from him… the little boy I liked.
This was my first experience with the “my turn syndrome” and the first time I realized that everything I had been programmed to believe about Valentine’s Day wasn’t true. Of course, childhood disappointment is offset with the hope that my turn will come in the teenage years.
Since most TV shows in the 1980s showed romance blossoming when a girl was in high school, I hoped my turn was soon to come. In eleventh grade, I was assigned a locker in the “locker corridor” in my large public high school. It was where all of the important and popular kids had lockers. It was too crowded to try to get to my locker between classes, but it allowed me to learn where the locker of the boy I had a crush on was, and he knew where mine was. We spoke to each other occasionally in passing, and I hoped he liked me, too.
Surely now it would be my turn. By lunch time on Valentine’s Day, the first time I was able to get back to my locker since before first period, almost all of the lockers surrounding mine had some kind of flower—some were roses, some were carnations—stuck by the stem into the vents on the locker doors. Mine did not.
I consoled myself with the thought that maybe my turn would come later. After three and a half years of not having my turn in college, I went into the work world and realized that the chances at getting my turn were becoming fewer and fewer.
The next thing I know, my thirtieth birthday had come and gone and I’m still waiting for my turn. During the days before Valentine’s Day, I avoid the Seasonal Products aisle at Kroger between January 1 and February 14. I change the channel when Hallmark commercials come on. I try to refrain from making the finger-down-the-throat motion when the girl in the next cubicle at work talks about the romantic evening her boyfriend has planned for her. I roll my eyes and change the subject when someone mentions Valentine’s Day. I turn my head when the flowers and balloons are delivered. I camp out at home rather than endure the humiliation of attending the church Valentine’s Day Banquet alone.
Valentine’s Day is the holiday that feels like it was designed specifically to remind me of everything I don’t have instead of giving me the hope that someday it will be my turn.
So what can I do to save myself the cycle of negativity and anxiety that I associate with Valentine’s Day?
When I asked my pastor this, he pointed me to John 15:18-19: “‘If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated Me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.’” (NIV)
At first, I thought, Gee, thanks for reminding me that the world hates me, but then I read further and deeper. The point wasn’t that the world hates me, but that, in fact, I have been chosen. My turn came almost two thousand years before I was born.
Therefore, this Valentine’s Day when I see the red hearts, I will think of Jesus’ heart that was broken for me. When I see the beautiful roses, I will think of the crown of thorns He wore for me. When I see others receiving boxes of chocolate, I will think of how sweet my Savior’s love is for me.
Thank you, Jesus, for giving me my turn.
Fun Friday: My Favorite Celebrity Chefs
First things first, congratulations to Faith McLellan, who suggested the name Phoebe for Zarah’s sister in Love Remains. Faith will receive the first signed copy of the book when it comes out later this year! Final results of the poll can be found here.
Now, for anyone who’s been hanging around this blog for a while, you know that I have a “thing” for Food Network and certain celebrity chefs. So I thought today (since I’ve promised a few people that I won’t spend all the the Fridays this spring blogging about this week’s episode of LOST—either because they aren’t caught up and don’t want the spoilers or they don’t care) I would count down my top five favorite celebrity chefs.
5. Rick Bayless—This chef entered my consciousness first as a guest judge on my absolute favorite cooking show, Top Chef (Bravo TV) and then as a contestant himself on the Top Chef: Masters season. Rick Bayless, unlike a lot of celebrity chefs, is very soft-spoken and quiet, unusual in a career that seems to draw big personalities and even bigger egos. Raised in Oklahoma, Bayless majored in Spanish and Latin American studies in college—even pursued his Ph.D. in Anthropological Linguistics. He and his wife lived in Mexico for six years, which is where Bayless developed his passion for cooking traditional Mexican cuisine. For the past two decades, Bayless has championed traditional Latin flavors while creating a unique cuisine that I would love the chance to sample one day at one of his restaurants.
4. John Besh—As a premiere chef in New Orleans, John Besh’s name is one that I’d heard for several years before he showed up on my TV as a contestant in the first Next Iron Chef competition in 2007. Besh grew up in Slidell, Louisiana (on the northeast side of Lake Ponchartrain from New Orleans), and enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserves after graduating from high school. He saw ten months of active duty in 1990–1991 during Desert Storm and participated in the capture of Kuwait International Airport. After he returned, he enrolled in the Culinary Institute of America. In 1999, he was named one of the Ten Best New Chefs in America by Food & Wine magazine, and in 2006, he was named the Best Chef in the Southeast by the James Beard Foundation. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Besh returned quickly to New Orleans and, in addition to helping coordinate efforts to clean up and rebuild his and other restaurants, he cooked and served food to relief workers and participated in several fundraisers around the country to support the relief efforts. Besh came in second on Next Iron Chef and didn’t make it to the final round of Top Chef: Masters, but he’s definitely a Top Iron Chef to me.
3. Chef Bobby Flay—Are you ready for a Throwdown? It wasn’t so long ago that Bobby Flay was some redheaded upstart with a grilling show on during the midday segment. Then, all of a sudden, he had three or four shows going. Then he became an Iron Chef—and he was indestructible. Flay started early in the restaurant industry, getting his first restaurant job at seventeen. In 1984, he was a member of the first graduating class of the French Culinary Institute (NYC). He opened his first restaurant, Mesa Grill, in 1991, and it was named Best New Restaurant in 1992 by New York Magazine restaurant critic Gael Green. In 1993, he earned the Outstanding Graduate Award from FIC and the Rising Star Chef award from the James Beard Foundation, recognizing him as one of the country’s most accomplished chefs under 30. With more than half a dozen restaurants across the country (and the Bahamas), and almost as many shows on Food Network (it seems), Bobby Flay is one of the most recognizable chefs in the United States. And even though he does have the big personality and big ego that are typical for big-time executive chefs and restaurateurs, he has a good sense of humility to go with it—which makes him seem like he’d be a fun person to hang out with. And there are very few things I’ve seen him make on TV that I wouldn’t want to eat.
2. Chef Tyler Florence—For anyone who’s looked at the casting post or heard me talk about the inspiration for Menu for Romance, I know you’ll be shocked that he’s not the #1 chef on this list. A 1991 graduate of Johnson & Wales University in South Carolina, Florence worked in Charleston for a couple of years, then moved to New York City to work as an executive chef in a succession of acclaimed restaurants, winning awards and acclaim for himself. While working at Cibo restaurant, he had his first opportunity to appear on a program on the fledgling Food Network. By 1999, he was employed full-time by the network, hosting the shows How to Boil Water and Food 911 (the show which led me to start thinking about a certain character named Major O’Hara). Katie Couric once called Florence “the sexiest man to ever pick up a chef’s knife.” At one time, I agreed until . . .
1. Chef Robert Irvine—My favorite celebrity chef started his culinary career at age fifteen when he enlisted in the Royal Navy. He served as a cook aboard Her Majesty’s Royal Yacht Brittania. His first “Dinner Impossible” happened when the yacht was called to provide relief efforts during an uprising in Yemen in 1986, when he was twenty-one years old. He was informed that more than 4,000 evacuees were waiting for transport on the beach and needed to be fed. With no mobile kitchen and only the food stores available on the yacht, Irvine had to improvise. “There were undisguised elements of the story of the loaves and fishes in this challenge, and I took some of my cues from the similarities.” After taking inventory of the food available, and pulling out what he could cook in bulk (beans and rice) he needed something to cook them in. “In those moments, it helps to break your problem down to the absolute basics. Need very big pots. Metal. What’s big, can hold lots of food, and is made of metal? Wait for it . . . garbage cans.” Yes, he found half a dozen brand-new aluminum garbage cans in the hold of the ship and used those to cook all that food and feed those people. And these kinds of challenges seem to have been the theme of his life, leading him to finally find recognition and fame as the chef who takes on impossible catering challenges every week on Dinner Impossible. Aside from the fact that he’s the sexiest man to ever pick up a chef’s knife (gotta love those tight black T-shirts!), and despite the British accent, what I love about Chef Robert Irvine is the way that he can get things done without alienating people.
Sure, he yells, sometimes, but then he makes sure the non-professionals helping him understand what he needs done without making them feel stupid or belittled (unlike how Gordon Ramsay does it on Hell’s Kitchen, which is why I won’t watch that show and why Gordon Ramsay isn’t on this list, even though I love his shows on BBC-A). Plus, Chef Irvine has a great sense of humor, about himself and about life in general, it seems. He also has a big heart to go along with those big “guns.”
Addendum: I can’t believe I didn’t think to add this video last night when I wrote this. After watching the following video last fall, I sent my mom an e-mail telling her I wanted to go to Robert’s house for Thanksgiving instead of home:
What Is Zarah’s Sister’s Name?
Wow! What a great list of suggested names for Zarah’s older sister in Love Remains.
Before you vote, here’s a little bit about the character. Born in 1976 to Walter Mitchell (then a major in the U.S. Army) and Bettina Breitinger-Mitchell (an Army Wife). Walter and Tina’s marriage was somewhat rocky, but finding out they were expecting their first child brought them closer together. At least for a while.
The sister was cute and precocious as a child, and when Zarah came along two years later, was a very loving and helpful big sister. But by then, their parents’ marriage was starting to fall apart again. When Zarah was eight, her sister ten, their mother was diagnosed with Stage IV ovarian cancer and died six months later. After their mother’s death, their father drove a wedge between the two girls, berating Zarah for not being more like her “perfect” sister, and motivating the older sister to strive for perfection by warning her that she didn’t want to end up being like Zarah.
Seven years before the story began, Zarah and her sister had little contact—until the sister was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in a routine annual exam. It was caught early and she was given a good prognosis with surgery and chemo. Zarah reached out to her sister and they started rebuilding their relationship.
So now that you know that much, here are the names. Vote for your favorite, and if you nominated one of them and you really want to win that signed copy of Love Remains when it comes out (and maybe have your name mentioned in the book, too), recruit everyone you know to come over and vote for your name as well.
Another Contest!
Can you believe it? Another contest this week???
Yep, that’s right. Another contest this week!
But first, the winners of the five copies of Little Whispers for Busy Women are:
MaryAnn
Adrienne
Patricia
Kate
Regina
Ladies—e-mail me your mailing information and I’ll get those out in the mail this week!
Now, for the new contest . . .
I need a first name for the older sister of my heroine in Love Remains. The heroine’s name is Zarah. Her best friends’ names are Flannery and Caylor. Other names I’ve already used in this book are Lyssa, Stacy, Madeleine, Katrina, Melinda, Celeste, Esther, and Maureen.
I posted this on my Facebook author page. The suggestions started rolling in almost immediately, and I wondered how I’d be able to choose. Then I thought . . . I don’t have to choose. I’ll make my blog readers do it for me!
Click over to my Facebook author page (and become a fan while you’re there, if you aren’t already!) and post your name suggestion as a response to that status update. Whatever names are nominated there, I’ll post here on blog on Thursday and let y’all vote for your favorite. Whoever initially proposed the winning name (such as Faith for Phoebe or Cassie for Leah) will WIN A SIGNED COPY OF LOVE REMAINS when it comes out in August. One name suggestion/entry per person. But you can recruit others to stop by and vote for your name! (On the blog, on Thursday.)
The name that gets the highest number of votes will win and be used in the book (as long as it isn’t vulgar, the name of a person of ill-repute, or the name of a character from a previous book—such as Anne, Meredith, Alaine, Julia, Charlotte, etc.) and the nominator of that name will be the first person on the list for a signed copy of the book . . . and they might even get mentioned in the book, too.
So what’s Zarah’s sister’s name? Click here to enter a nomination!
Know a Busy Woman?
I had just set my bowl of soup down on the table beside my chair. The local news broadcast informed me that all of the schools in Nashville and all surrounding areas are closed again tomorrow. And someone knocked on the front door. My heart hammered a little bit. Who would be knocking on my front door at dinnertime—and after dark? (Well, it was almost completely dark.)
As it turned out, it was my very cute, very sweet UPS guy, running about three hours late (he’s almost always here by 3 p.m. whenever he has something for me—maybe once or twice a week) because of the icy road conditions. I was very surprised, because I wasn’t expecting anything from any of the publishing houses I write/freelance for, and the only thing I’ve ordered recently is a new office chair—and I only ordered that yesterday. And from the size of the box, I knew it definitely wasn’t the 50-lb.-shipping-weight chair.
As soon as I bade Mr. UPS good-bye and entreated him to be careful, I brought the box in, extremely curious as to what was inside—especially once I saw it was from Barbour.
To my very great astonishment, I opened the box to see this:
A case of Little Whispers of Comfort for Busy Women, a gift book I compiled for Barbour last year!
LWCBW is one of those projects that comes along every so often that’s not only fun to work on but an uplifting experience at the same time. I thoroughly enjoyed the hours I spent at the library surrounded by huge books of quotations and poetry, lyrics, and prose as I found those that were both inspirational and comforting to me personally. Here are just a few samples:
So I’d like to do another drawing (unfortunately, the three lovely ladies who just won the previous contest are going to have to sit this one out, just to be fair to everyone else—you can still participate by posting a comment, your names just won’t be included in the drawing).
Share one of your favorite inspirational/comforting quotes—one that you have posted on your mirror or beside your computer or written down on a piece of paper stuck in your Bible—by midnight tonight (Central time, of course), and I’ll draw FIVE names to receive a signed copy of Little Whispers of Comfort for Busy Women. Be sure to let us know where the quote comes from (who said/wrote it, what the Bible reference is, etc.) and why it means so much to you.
KayeDacus.com 