Lisa Roecker's Blog, page 25

Another week, Another Celeb Round Up

OK, I'll admit it. There are days when I feel like the Solange to Laura's Beyonce.



The caption that went along with this photo is the best:

Justin Bieber -- with a tarantula in hand -- left a doctor's office in L.A. Monday.

There are just so many questions I find myself asking...What kind of doctor? Why the tarantula? When is the last time the Biebs had a good meal?

I am concerned, people.

HUGE round of applause to Pink for actually looking like a woman who has recently given birth. Normal people do not do runway shows in bikinis or attend movie premiers wearing size 2 evening dresses weeks after having a baby. THIS is what normal moms look like and man, I'd love to see more of them.



Really, Rachel? You go from Ryan Gosling to this guy? I'd like to think that he has fantastic personality, but he's carrying something that looks suspiciously like a man purse. And I think we can all agree that a girl should NEVER trust a man with his own purse.


Note to self K. Cavs: When alerting the paps to the fact that you're going jogging wearing nothing but a bra and some tight ass pants, at least remember to put your hair up in a pony tail so you look semi-natural.













I should mention that I wrote this entire post at 11 PM on a Tuesday night wearing the exact same yoga pants I wore to bed last night. So, yeah, I've officially turned into THIS girl:



Bitches, PLEEZ have a fab weekend.

Bookanistas: Are You Going To Kiss Me Now?

[image error] Before we begin, I'd like to state for the record that there is absolutely no way I'll be able to do this book justice. My reviews are just never that good. Just know this will be the funniest book you will read all year. I say that with the utmost confidence. Moving on...

What the back cover has to say:

Being marooned on an island somewhere off the coast of Madagascar with five celebrities sounds romantic and glamorous, right?


Wrong.

You couldn't find people with fewer survival skills if you tried. Seriously. Cisco may have centerfold abs, but he can't even spell SOS. At least super-sexy Jonah seems to have a clue (too bad about the purity ring). If I'm stuck here much longer, these self-involved head cases might drive me crazy-assuming they don't insult each other to death first. It's like a group therapy edition of Survivor.

At this point, I'm pretty convinced that all celebrities should be caged in Hollywood and confined to the pages of US magazine. And, btw, if you're there, God, it's me, Francesca, and I really want to go home.

Help!

What Lila has to say:

Oh, you guys, this book was written for us. And it pretty much cemented the fact that we need to become best friends with Sloane Tanen because she is freaking HILARIOUS. I can't count the number of times I laughed out loud--many times with tears in my eyes. And I think things are funny, but rarely do I ever think things are this funny. It's on the same level of Lisa and I seeing Bridesmaids and crying because we laughed so hard. But do not be mistaken. This book isn't just made up of hilarious one-liners. There's a solid plot, which keeps the pages turning (I mean, how are they going to make it through this???) and extremely well-fleshed out characters (some you might recognize from Us Magazine) especially one incredibly witty, red-headed main character, Fransesca, who has the ability to send the best text messages EVA throughout the course of the book.

Exhibit A: When is my mother going to LEAVE??? She's so obviously stalling. Next she'll ask me if I have a boyfriend or if I'm doing drugs. Isn't it obvious that I'll never have a boyfriend? And wouldn't I be in a good mood at least some of the time if I were doing drugs?
 
Page marked, line read aloud to Lisa who wants to kill me because I keep taunting her with the hilarity. The premise is what also launches this book into best-book-ever land. Fransesca manages to get herself stranded on an island with celebrities. For us Us Magazine-obsessed nobodies, this is best case scenario. And then comes her hilarious descriptions of said celebrities.
 
Exhibit B: A moment later I heard a loud crash. As I opened the lavatory door, in the aisle, sprawled out on the floor in front of me was what I assumed was Milan Anderson. She was facedown, encircled by long, fried platinum hair. From where I was standing, I could see a good two inches of dark brown roots. She was wearing leggings, a fur vest, and three-inch heels, one of which was broken off and in her left hand. The contents of her bag were splayed all over the place: pills, gum, little bottles of vodka, tampons, an iPod, a latex glove, Purell, two half-empty water bottles, condoms, three tabloids (two of which she was on the cover of), a few loose cigarettes, a lunch cup of tapioca pudding, cereal, mascara, an umbrella, a few stray credit cards, receipts, super glue, and about fifteen dollars in loose change.
 
I mean...COME. ON. Just take my word for it. Buy the book. You'll die laughing. It is the absolute perfect summer read and I've already purchased this for multiple friends as it has huge crossover appeal. If you are even semi-interested in the insane lives of celebrities (especially making fun of them) or reality TV, you need this book. Once you have it, please, please, please email us with your favorite lines. They are just begging to be discussed.



Check out what the other Bookanistas are up to this week!


Elana Johnson adores A Need So BeautifulLiLa Roecker is gaga for Are You Going to Kiss Me Now?Christine Fonseca interviews YA Fiction for Dummies author Deborah Halverson – with giveawayBeth Revis interviews A Scary Scene in a Scary Movie author Matt BlackstoneCarolina Valdez Miller is wowed by Wildfire – with giveawayShana Silver gushes over HourglassJen Hayley delves into DivergentRosemary Clement-Moore thinks Chime is divineStasia Ward Kehoe has applause for Trauma QueenP.S. Be sure to join The Bookanista Book Club over at The Reading Room. We're going to be working very closely with them to bring you even more Bookanista awesomeness that you will not want to miss.

Cover Lovin'

Some cover eye candy for your viewing pleasure. Look! Drool! Pre-order! [image error] [image error] [image error] [image error] [image error] [image error]
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Tell The Truth Tuesday: The Race Issue

t all began with stickers. It's a paperdoll concept in the form of stickers and my daughter LOVES to play with them. There are shirts and skirts and shoes and dresses--all stickers. And the girls come in every nationality...also cool. But what I thought wasn't so cool was when my three-year-old daughter pointed to the African American girl and asked for the "chocolate" one. She requested "vanilla" next.

Lydia loves sweets. LOVES. So it didn't surprise me that when noticing differences, she made a connection to food, specifically chocolate and vanilla--her favorites. But, I wasn't comfortable with her terminology, so I explained that every person in the world comes in all different shades. There's brown and dark brown and beige and light beige, etc., etc.--all different colors. But it's not nice to refer to people as chocolate or vanilla. End of story, moving on, let's choose a skirt.

This was all well and good until we were out in public and Lydia pointed out an African American person. "What color skin do they have, Mommy?" I told her again that all people have different colors of skin. She then proceeded to say, "It's not nice to call people chocolate face." And I wanted to crawl into a corner of the store and die of humiliation. My goal was to raise colorblind children. And now, my daughter was saying "chocolate" and "face" in the same sentence. We were past the point of ignoring, of hoping that if we didn't talk about it, it would just go away. In fact, it became apparent that we needed to talk about it. That apparently Lydia was beginning to notice differences and that this would continue--and not just with skin color, but with heavy and thin and boy and girl and glasses and hair (or lack thereof) and any and all differences out there. And I was responsible for helping to guide her through the process to understanding.

So, I began the search for picture books. Because skin color was the particular difference she had landed on, I decided to start with that issue. And you know what? I didn't find a whole lot out there. There were a few picture books, one even by a tried and true author Lydia loves, but after reading the description of the book, I wondered if it would send the right message. There were all sorts of comparisons to skin and food! Granted, the comparisons were to yummy food, but still! Call me crazy, but I don't want my daughter walking around comparing people to melted chocolate. I did, however, find a few new favorites. ALL THE COLORS OF THE EARTH, SHADES OF PEOPLE, and THE SKIN YOU LIVE IN (what a beautiful message!) are at the top of the list.

When Lisa and I talked about it, we realized we struggle with essentially the same issue in our own writing. As we were writing THE LIAR SOCIETY, we wanted race to be a non-issue. We created Pemberly Brown as a diverse school, but when describing the diversity, we seemed to fall short. There's nothing worse than reading a book and not properly imagining a main character. Ditto to book covers  that features a character completely different than described in the book, it drives me crazy. If a main character is black, I want to see them that way in my head. If a main character has red hair, I want to imagine it. If a main character is a boy, I want to know. But here, as writers, we lacked the right words. We used words like "caramel" and "mocha" to describe Bradley Farrow and explained that Grace Lee's eyes were shaped like "almonds." Here we go with food again. WHO AM I TO JUDGE?

What's the answer? How do I raise a child who ignores differences, but instead focuses on what makes us the same? Or is it okay to embrace our differences? After all, those differences are what make us unique. The world would be an awfully boring place without them. Obviously, this isn't just a hot topic in parenting, but in publishing as well. With cover-controversies like LIAR, MAGIC UNDER GLASS and the re-designed SILVER PHOENIX cover (to name just a few), it's clear that our differences aren't always handled very graciously. But we'd love to get YOUR opinion today. Any advice for an embarrassed mom?

Today is the Day...

Ben is 3 days away from his 9 month birthday.

And today is his first day at daycare.

Now, when I say daycare, I should mention that I was incredibly lucky to find the single most amazing childcare center in the world less than a mile from my house. Laura went there with me for the first time almost 6 years ago. We took the tour, talked with the owner and Laura instructed me to sign Jack up. And even though I like to pretend to be the bossy, older sister, when Laura tells me to do something, I always listen. And she's always right.

Jack went there for 3 years, Mia went there for 3 years and now it's finally Ben's turn.

And I'm so torn.

On one hand I know it's going to be really good for him to be around other children. And it's only part time. And I'm really, really excited to have a quiet house to work in.

But I'm going to miss my baby.

I'll miss his ridiculous attempts at crawling. His endless supply of drool. How happy he is to see me when he wakes up from one of his marathon naps.

So, yeah. If you see a semi-crazed woman sobbing in a bright red Mom-mobile, it will be me. But don't feel too sorry for me, 10 minutes later that same semi-crazed woman is going to be sipping a latte and takin' care of business on her laptop in a completely silent house.

*Sob* *Cheer* Repeat.

It's Friday! Let's Celeb-brate

Wow, do you see what I did there with that title? Hilarious, right? Fine, maybe not. But I'm out of good blog post titles, so you'll just have to humor me.

Moving right along....

Here's what caught our eye on US Weekly this week.





I'm not gonna lie, every time I see a pic with Madonna and her adopted son I think to myself, "Oh, right. There's Madonna and that kid she stole."







This girl looks like the robot version of Megan Fox and it's totally freaking me out. I've never once seen her use a facial expression. Not. Once.



Oh Tom, you do realize this hat only makes you look MORE crazy, right?


I think this might be one of the most uncomfortable pictures I've ever seen in my life. JT has that constipated, "I'm going to $*#&%*& kill my publicist" look on his face. So awesome.










Cutest. Babies. Ever.












Feel free to chime in with your own commentary in the comments. Happy Friday!

The Awkward Tween Challenge: LiLa vs. L'Adele

As some of you may or may not have noticed, we recently updated our Twitter profile picture to THIS:



Thanks to Stacey, we have an entire flash drive FULL of awkward childhood pics and we're not afraid to use it. Our goal in this instance was to find one of the most awkward and humiliating and post it for public consumption. Please note the virgin brows, matching letter jackets and most tragic of all, Lisa's clear braces and mock turtleneck with tiny little leaves painted on.

Adele Griffin (who may or may not be a long lost Roecker christened L'Adele) claimed on Twitter that she could out awkward us with THIS:



Admittedly, she's sitting on Santa's lap wearing plastic earrings and a Mona Lisa smile. Awkwardness abounds, but I honestly think our triangle hair cuts have her beat.

We agreed to put it to a vote, dear readers and that's where you come in:

Who was the most awkward Tween?


And for the record, we have PLENTY of awkward in our archives and we'd love to make this a regular feature. SO...if you have a childhood pic that you think can outawkward LiLa send your picture here . We'll feature you on the blog and let the readers decide.

The Awkward Tween Challenge: LiLa vs. L'Adele

As some of you may or may not have noticed, we recently updated our Twitter profile picture to THIS:
Thanks to Stacey, we have an entire flash drive FULL of awkward childhood pics and we're not afraid to use it. Our goal in this instance was to find one of the most awkward and humiliating and post it for public consumption. Please note the virgin brows, matching letter jackets and most tragic of all, Lisa's clear braces and mock turtleneck with tiny little leaves painted on.Adele Griffin (who may or may not be a long lost Roecker christened L'Adele) claimed on Twitter that she could out awkward us with THIS:

Admittedly, she's sitting on Santa's lap wearing plastic earrings and a Mona Lisa smile. Awkwardness abounds, but I honestly think our triangle hair cuts have her beat.We agreed to put it to a vote, dear readers and that's where you come in:Who was the most awkward Tween?


And for the record, we have PLENTY of awkward in our archives and we'd love to make this a regular feature. SO...if you have a childhood pic that you think can outawkward LiLa send your picture here . We'll feature you on the blog and let the readers decide.

THIS is why I haven't written my chapter...

Does this make anyone else laugh as hard as it makes me laugh? It's okay to tell me I'm weird. I had tears. Actual tears.



It's even funnier the 23rd time you watch it. In your double pajamas (pajamas you never changed out of from the previous night). Without your teeth brushed. Or hair combed. Scratch that. Those are tears of shame.

Celebrating A Need So Beautiful with Random Acts of Kindness and EPIC Giveaways

I fell in love with A Need So Beautiful. Suzanne Young has a completely fresh, heart wrenching take on paranormal romance. Instead of dangerous love triangles or damsels in distress rescued by the bad boy du jour, A Need So Beautiful focuses on love and sacrifice and the inevitable collision of the two.

Charlotte is one of the Forgotten, an angel who sacrifices herself to help people, only to disappear when her work on Earth is done. But she's also a teenage girl with a best friend and a boyfriend she loves. And she's forced to choose: Embrace her Need to help others or partner with dark forces to fight her destiny and stay with her loved ones.

Charlotte's choice left me thinking about the strangers in our lives who have gone out of their way to help us. People who didn't know us at all, but took the time to give us a helping hand and a little bit of encouragement when we needed it the most. And you know who we thought of? 

Literary agents.

As you may or may not remember we queried over 100 agents with our first doomed manuscript. Every morning we'd wake up and refresh our Hotmail account, praying for good news. We'd stare at our cell phones willing them to ring with THE CALL. We hung out on the Absolute Write and Query Tracker forums drooling over success stories and obsessing over writers who heard back from agents before we did. 

We had the same conversation every single day:

Lisa: Did you see that rejection from [Insert Pretty Much Any Literary Agent Who Reps YA here]?Laura: Yeah. That blows.Lisa: Yeah.Laura: Are you refreshing our email right now?Lisa: Sure am. You?Laura: Yup.Lisa: This sucks.Laura: Yes. Yes it does.Lisa: I'm not sure we're cut out for this.Laura: Me neither.Lisa: We could just give up?Laura: Nah, let's just send some more queries.Lisa: OK.

And so we sent more queries and the cycle started all over again. Eventually we would have just given up. I mean, there's only so much rejection a couple of sister writers can take, right? But we didn't. And the reason we never gave up is because we got one rejection that looked like this:



Dear Lisa and Laura,







So I've finally had a chance to review THE NORTH SHORE in full. You guys really know YA voice and some of your narrative is so strong, and I especially enjoyed the excerpts from the Modern Socialite's Handbook. All of that being said, I think that this story needs too much work at this time.





Although flippant POV and long backstory really worked for Jane Austen, it does not work in today's market and especially not in YA. Flipping from the parent's POV to one of the kids back and forth, from Lauren's to Mr. Bennet's...it completely keeps the reader from connecting with your main, YA characters. It also takes too long to get to the real story, which is when the Bingley's show up. You're trying to set the reader up with too much back story on the Bennet's and their lifestyle. Although it's all written well and even really funny at parts, it just isn't necessary.





I did really enjoy THE NORTH SHORE and I'm sorry to be passing. But I would look at future work from you two...there is definitely something there in your writing. If you decide to revise NS to make it from only a couple POVs and the pacing is picked up, I'd like to take another look as well.





I'm sorry I don't have better news at this time. Good luck with all of your submissions and keep me posted on its progress!



So, instead of giving up, we kept on writing. And because one very busy literary agent took some extra time out of her day to encourage a couple of newbie writers, we're now published writers. That agent had a profound impact on our lives and we will never, ever forget her.The contest will run June 21 - 28. There will be 1 winner per item, and then three people will also be chosen to win a signed copy of A Need So Beautiful in addition to their other prize. The signed A Need So Beautiful copies will be US only. 

Here's how you can earn entries:

Earn one extra entry for each of the following:Take a picture of an author's book in the wild and tweet it to us and the author

Post a positive Amazon review for a book you loved

Donate a book to a library or classroom

Tweet a good deed you plan to do this week, using the #ANeedSoBeautiful hashtag



Earn 10 extra entries for each of the following:Take a picture of A NEED SO BEAUTIFUL in the wild and tweet it to us and Suzanne YoungPost an Amazon review for A NEED SO BEAUTIFULDonate a copy of A NEED SO BEAUTIFUL to a library or classroom

Click here to enter the contest and please wait until you have completed all of your entries to enter. Multiple entries will be deleted.









Good luck and have fun!!!!

 

And today to celebrate A Need So Beautiful and random acts of kindness we've partnered with bloggers and authors across the country to give away a chapter critique. There are TONS of other amazing prizes including 3 signed copies of A Need So Beautiful and signed books and critiques from Kimberly Derting, Daisy Whitney, Lisa Schroeder and Keri Mikulski. Check out A Good Addiction to see the full list of AMAZING prizes.