Janette Rallison's Blog, page 56

Doll Wrecks

Anyone who's ever been to my house knows that I have a thing for dolls. Baby dolls, fashion dolls, American Girl Dolls. Truth be told, my daughter's Magic Attic dolls have better wardrobes than I do—and more expensive too. But that's a completely different subject.

The point is, I occasionally look at dolls on the Internet. You can find some dolls that are works of art on eBay, and they fetch artwork prices. For example, take a look at this one of kind "reborn" doll that is currently going for 820.00

Amazing right? Or how about this one?

I'm convinced some of the artists are just snapping pictures of their kids and posting them as dolls. But some of the one-of-a-kind dolls aren't as charming as the first two I've shown you. In the constructive spirit of the Cake Wreck blog I'd like to offer some don'ts to the doll artists of the world.


Don't make your baby doll look like it is posing for a mug shot. This doll brings to mind all of those pictures of celebrities who are being carted off to jail for drunken behaviour. Is that the role model we want for Junior? I think not.

Don't make your dolls look like they are some sort of half-human half-alien cross breed. One can't help but think that these dolls might come to life sometime during the night and zap you back to their mother ship.


Crying dolls can be cute, but there is a difference between a few pleasantly pouty tears and a face that is scrunched up like the doll is suffering from a ruptured spleen. Really, this is not a moment in childhood that I would want to capture and keep.

My cousin once told me that all babies looked cuter if they had hair. Sadly, this is not true with dolls. There are some things hair is not going to fix. Like this next one.

And sometimes hair can actually make a doll look worse. Take for example, this one:
Yeah, he sort of looks like the Little Dutch Boy who has been seeing far too much of Little Debbie, Betty Crocker, and Captain Crunch.

And for the next doll . . .

All I can say is, "What the heck?!!" What is this even supposed to be? An impressionistic version of a baby doll? A broken mold? A method to scare young women into not having children?

And speaking of those horrible nightmares you have when you're pregnant where you dream you give birth to a goat, or kitten, or some other creature you weren't supposed to have--we don't need this sort of thing doll artists, we really don't, so stop with the reborn monkeys. They're just creepy. That's why the makers of the Wizard of Oz gave monkeys wings and used them to terrorize Dorothy and generations of young viewers.

Okay pregnant women, look away, breathe deeply and tell yourself that you will give birth to a beautiful baby, not a furry creature or a half-alien spawn. I promise you it won't happen. And just so that you can get those images out of your mind, I'll post a picture of my one-of-a-kind artist created doll. But sorry eBay shoppers. He's not for sale.

In which I get interviewed in wings

Tucson Book Signing & author YAllapalooza

For any of you in the Tucson area, I'll be doing a signing 1-3, Friday, January 28th at

Latter Day Cottage
7012 East Broadway Boulevard
Tucson, AZ 85710
(520) 885-2635

And I'll be hanging out with other cool authors at this year's YAllapalooza on Saturday, January 29th, at 4pm with a bunch of cool authors. There will be game-show type games and pizza. Mmmmmm. You know you want some!

Here's more info:

Changing Hands Bookstore presents YAllapalooza 2011, a literary extravaganza for tween and teen readers featuring free pizza, games, prizes and chance to mix and mingle with your favorite YA authors! We'll have a live game show that tests contestants' knowledge of young adult and middle-grade literature with games guaranteed to amaze and amuse. Attending authors include Lisa Mangum, Bree Despain, Karen Hoover, Cameron Stracher, Jessica Day George, Obert Skye, Janette Rallison, James Owen, Angela Morrison, Tom Leveen, Jon Lewis, Adam Rex, Laurie Brooks, Lisa McMann, and Kofi O. Okyere.


6428 S McClintock Dr, Tempe, AZ 85283

Come if you can!

Singing Lady Gaga, caught in a bad romance novel.

Maybe I'm just getting old (okay, there's no maybe about it) but the last few paranormal romances I've read have really bugged me.

I'm not going to name names here—and I'm not bashing the paranormal genre. After all, one of the stories I'm working on is a paranormal romance. But I swear certain authors just took the Twilight characters, put a coat of varnish on them, and dropped them into their own novels. Hey, if it worked once, it's bound to work again, right?

And okay, I can enjoy a Where-Have-The-Twilight-Characters-Popped-Up-Now book as well as anybody else. But there is one aspect of these novels that drives me crazy. I can buy paranormal beings and their assorted powers: vampires, werewolves, fairies, dragons, your basic undead sorts of guys and gals, whatever. The romance in these books, however, is too unbelievable. Here is the romance plot of these books in an ultra condensed version.

Guy walks in. Girl seems him. He's hot. Really, really hot. Other girls are drooling but hot guy likes our heroine. In fact, he instantly loves her, which works out well, because she instantly and passionately loves him too. Why? We don't know. Neither of these characters knows anything about the other except that they are eternally and irrevocably in love with each other. Oh, and at some point the girl learns that the guy has a dark, tormented side. This may or may not involve killing things. No matter, it's love. They make-out a lot.

The guy buys the girl expensive gifts, watches her when she doesn't know he's there, and does other things that could classify him as a stalker. But it's okay because he's really, really hot.

Their love is so certain that a bad paranormal character wants to destroy the girl to hurt the guy. At this point in the book, I'm wondering why he cares since it's very easy for him to fall in love with near strangers.

Villain is conquered, but all is not well because guy and girl are sort of different species.

Maybe I'm just cynical in my old age, but that all-consuming-love-even-though-I-hardly-know-you just doesn't seem believable to me.

I should probably go back and study Twilight and see why the love story worked for me in that book and doesn't in the Almost-Twilight books.

Either that, or I need to incorporate that sort of love story into my paranormal romance. Come to think of it, the Almost-Twilight books have done pretty well . . . You and me, baby, we could write a bad romance.

Just wondering . . . and a Changing Hands Event

So I was looking through my daughter's latest Scholastic flyer and I saw this book by Stuart Gibbs. Is it just me, or did the rest of you suddenly wonder whether George and Martha had wandered into a bad neighborhood?



I bet it was George. He did, after all, have that gold tooth.

On a completely unrelated note, I'm going to be at this year's YAllapalooza on January 29th, at 4pm with a bunch of cool authors. Here's more info:

Changing Hands Bookstore presents YAllapalooza 2011, a literary extravaganza for tween and teen readers featuring free pizza, games, prizes and chance to mix and mingle with your favorite YA authors! We'll have a live game show that tests contestants' knowledge of young adult and middle-grade literature with games guaranteed to amaze and amuse. Attending authors include Lisa Mangum, Bree Despain, Karen Hoover, Cameron Stracher, Jessica Day George, Obert Skye, Janette Rallison, James Owen, Angela Morrison, Tom Leveen, Jon Lewis, Adam Rex, Laurie Brooks, Lisa McMann, and Kofi O. Okyere.


6428 S McClintock Dr, Tempe, AZ 85283

Come if you can!

Which reality show should your favorite princess be on?

A lot of reality shows have a sort of train wreck appeal to them. It's like a view into the underside of society.

But it occurred to me that it isn't just the Maury Povich Show rejects who end up on these shows. In fact, some people that you know, love, and grew up with could qualify as candidates. The Little Mermaid: Sure, her voice could put her on American Idol, but she's also got a dirty little secret that could land her on Hoarders.
Yeah, Ariel, your collection is more than complete.

Or how about Snow White? That frantic rush through the forest as she ran away from the Queen's huntsman could have been an episode of ManTracker. Or maybe she could do a spin off of Kate Plus Eight.
Snow Plus Seven. It could work.

Here are some other likely pairings.

Aladdin: Cops
Sleeping Beauty: Mystery Diagnosis
Jasmine: The Bachelorette
Beauty: Mr. Personality (Okay, probably most of you never watched this TV show, but I actually liked the premise, even if those dorky masks did make all the guys look like super villains.)
So who are your pics for the best celebrity pairings with reality TV?

What you could have gotten for Christmas

One of the harsh realities about Christmas is that you always end up getting something that you would never have bought for yourself. If you're really lucky, it's some decorative thing that you have to put up in your house somewhere because the giver will visit and wonder where it is.

But don't fret. It could always be worse. For example, your loved ones could have gotten you an Obama Chia Pet. Isn't America great? Where else could children dream about growing up to have their face on a Chia Pet?

Or how about these lovelies:

They're Worry Kitties. You're supposed to whisper your worry to one of the sympathetic Worry Kitties and then tuck the adorable critter 'neath your pillow before you go to sleep, and in the morning your worry will be gone!

Is it just me, or do the rest of you think that if you put one of these underneath your pillow, it would come to life sometime during the night and gnaw your ear off? That's what I'd worry about.

Need something even creepier? How about skeleton yard gnomes. Really, I am trying to imagine the new-product-meeting where some genius came up with this idea.

And who doesn't need a solar powered waving queen figurine? (At least they didn't make her into a chia pet.)

My last aren't-you-glad-you-didn't-get-it-gift will need a bit of explanation. I love dolls and spend far too much time on eBay perusing through doll listings. I especially love looking at the reborn dolls. This is not a religious movement, but a way of painting dolls into one of a kind masterpieces that could pass for real children. Take a look at the next picture for an example of what some artists can do:
Gorgeous, right? (It's on eBay right now for 125.00. I'm so tempted.)
Well, for some reason that is beyond me, people can't leave well enough alone, and this apparently applies not only to yard gnomes, but also to reborn dolls. Because the horrible new trend in the reborn dolls is--get this--reborn orangutans.

Yes, let's take something precious and make it creepy. Here's a reborn orangutan on eBay right now.

I am pretty sure this would frighten small children.

So then, your Christmas stash really wasn't all that bad, was it? And hey, if you need to go out and buy yourself a gift, I know of some great books you could buy. Just saying . . .

Far Fetched? I think not.

I've heard on more than one occasion that my plot lines are far fetched. Take My Double Life. A girl meets another girl who looks just like her, and thereby figures out that they share a father--a famous singer.

Couldn't ever happen in real life, right?

Apparently, wrong. My friend just sent me a link to Liv Tyler's biography and that is exactly how she figured out her father was Aerosmith's lead singer, Steven Tyler.

Here's the excerpt from People's biography:

Discovering Daddy Tyler
When Liv sees Mia (Steven's daughter with his first wife Cyrinda, who is a splitting image of Liv) at an Aerosmith concert in 1988, she realizes Steven is her biological father.

Yeah, that must have been some ride home with her mom after the concert.

Mia's a plus size model now, but I still think she looks a lot like Liv.


It's weird really, how even when you think you're being original, you're not.

interview and free books

A few blogs are giving away ARCs of My Double Life right now so I thought I'd let my blog readers know so they can enter. I'll update the list this week if google tells me of more blog giveaways. There's also a blog that's doing an interview, and since I know you're all memorizing Janette Rallison trivia and crave these sorts of details, I thought I'd add three of the questions here--sort of a teaser that will make you want to read the whole thing.

If you could travel in a Time Machine would you go back to the past or into the future?

Well, according to the latest novels (and we know authors are always right) the future is populated by dystopian societies that will do things like make you fight to the death in hunger games, choose your spouse for you, or put you in a deadly maze. Whereas the past was populated by numerous hot dukes, lords, and viscounts who were always looking for spunky heroines to settle down with. Taking that into consideration, I think I would visit the past.


If you could invite any 5 people to dinner who would you choose?

That depends whether my choices were limited to the living or if I could invite the dead too. (Although really, the dead don't usually make good dinner guests.) It's too hard to choose just five, because George Washington gets all bent out of shape if you invite Abraham Lincoln and not him. So I'll tell you which five writers I'd choose to have to dinner. Jane Austin, James Herriot, J.M. Barry, Ellen Conford (she was my favorite author growing up) and Charles Dickens

(Janette's note: I just finished reading The House of the Seven Gables and I can tell you right now that Nathaniel Hawthorne will never be invited to one of my chic and exclusive dead-author-dinner-parties because that man just drones on and on and on about the most pointless things.)


What is one book everyone should read?

Mine. Definitely. Just pick one—everybody should read it.

To read more of the interview, and a chance to enter the book giveaway go to:

http://iamareadernotawriter.blogspot....

You can find other book giveaways at:

http://fireandicephoto.blogspot.com/2...
http://areadersramblings.blogspot.com...
http://www.bookscompleteme.com/2010/1...

The Next Worry: Printing Mistakes

I just sent off the galleys for My Unfair Godmother--which basically means I will not see that manuscript again until it shows up on my doorstep as a hardback novel. You would think my worries about the book would be over.

But alas, no. Because now I get to worry about printing mistakes.

This deep seated worry probably had its origins back when I worked in a bookstore. We got a shipment of Bill Cosby's book Fatherhood and proudly set them up in a display case. Not long afterward, a customer came up and showed me one of the books. It was completely full of blank pages. The customer wanted to know if it was supposed to be some sort of gag book--as in, this is all I know about fatherhood--nothing.

Nope. It was just a printing error.

That would be a bad mistake, but there are much worse.

Take for example Penguin's recent mistake in a cook book where instead of calling for freshly ground black pepper, the recipe instructed cooks to add freshly ground black people to the dish.

As you can imagine, this caused a costly recall and reprinting of books.

Although at least if you get that sort of mistake, people will understand it was a typo.

But take Anne McCaffrey's collection of short stories called Get of the Unicorn (as in, offspring of the unicorn). The publisher misspelled the title, calling it: Get off the Unicorn. They never fixed it, and a generation of readers has read it wondering: Was someone on a unicorn? And why were they supposed to get off?

Still, it probably is good advice. If you're on a unicorn, get off!

Here's crossing my fingers that there won't be any embarrassing printing mistakes in My Unfair Godmother . . .