Julia London's Blog, page 92

FAVORITE HALLOWEEN MEMORIES AND A BOOK GIVEAWAY!

When I was a kid, Halloween was my second favorite day of the entire year (only better one was Christmas).  Me and the neighborhood kids couldn't wait to go out trick or treating.  The BEST was when Halloween fell on a Saturday–you could trick or treat ALL DAY!!!  I loved that we got to wear our costumes to school during those elementary school years.  My favorite was the year I dressed as a princess. 

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This isn't me but you get the idea

 

My mom had given me this white chiffon skirt of hers–tons of tulle under the skirt. I put it on and was a princess.  It didn't matter that because it was cold I had to wear a coat with my costume—I was still a princess!  In contrast, the worst year was the year I was sick (pretty sure it was 3rd grade) and couldn't go trick or treating.  I couldn't go to school either, so I also missed out on the parade.  The horror!  I was devastated.

Another favorite was the year I dressed as Jingles the Clown in a lavender clown costume my mom made me.  There was a parade outside at school so everyone could show off their costume.  Then the minute we got home from school, it was trick or treating time!  Of course there was always a contest to see who came home with the most loot. I'd fill up my bag, come home, dump out my loot, then dash back out again.  I did learn, however, that after I'd leave again, my parents would check out my candy (for safety purposes only, of course).  This is why I'd come back and there wouldn't be any Almond Joys (my mom's favorite) or Mr. Goodbars (my dad's favorite) left in the pile.  I finally wised up and started carrying a pillow case so I didn't have to stop back home to dump my loot!

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The Dinner of Champions!

As I got older Halloween eventually lost that kid magic, but it picked up again after I had a child.  Our son spent his first three Halloweens in New York, but by his fourth one we lived in Georgia, and trick or treating is completely different here!  I was shocked to discover that kids in our neighborhood didn't trick or treat right after school.  They didn't go out until after dinner!  That's right–trick or treating didn't begin until around six pm.  Are you kidding me?? When I was growing up, you already had three prime trick or treating hours under your belt by six, AND you were eating Twizzlers and Milk Duds for dinner! (since there were no Almond Joys or Mr. Goodbars left–thanks, Mom and Dad!) And in Georgia, on those years when Halloween falls on a weekend?  The kids STILL don't start trick or treating until six pm.  Which left me with the Halloween candy ALL DAY LONG.  This is not a good thing–at least not for the trick or treaters.

So tell me–what are some of your favorite Halloween memories?  Your favorite costume?  Did you have Halloween parties?  Do you still have them?  Did you trick or treat right after school, or wait until after dinner?  What was your favorite candy to get?  

Leave a comment today (or any day this week) and you're eligible to win a signed copy of my upcoming release A Harlequin Christmas Carol–a holiday anthology with stories by Betina Krahn, me, and Hope Tarr. 

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You can win a copy and be the first on your block to have one!!!!

This book won't be on the shelves until mid-November, so you'll be the first to have a copy!  Good luck!

Touch Me

Pleasing a man is something former mistress Genevieve Ralston does very well. But after her lover callously dumps her, she's definitely off men…until she meets Simon! He's brooding. Sexy. And she can't keep her hands off him…

But Simon Cooperstone, Viscount Kilburn, is a spy. His mission: retrieve a mysterious letter in Genevieve's possession. Intent on seducing her secrets from her, he forgets to guard one thing: his heart.

Each stroke of Genevieve's talented fingers unleashes his deepest desires. Too late, he realizes that while he may be a master of the art of seduction, he's no match for a sensual mistress…

Book Spotlight: Year of Living Scandalously

The Year of Living Scandalously is the first book in a new series, The Secrets of Hadley Green.   In 1792, the village of Hadley Green executed a man for stealing the Countess of Ashwood's historic jewels. Fifteen years later, questions still linger. Was it a crime of greed—or of passion?

When Declan O'Connor, Earl of Donnelly, arrives at Hadley Green to meet with Lily Boudine, the new countess of Ashwood, he immediately recognizes the lovely woman who welcomes him. Pretending to be her cousin Lily in an attempt to avoid an unwanted marriage, Keira Hannigan is staying at the estate while Lily is abroad. When Declan threatens to expose her, Keira convinces him to guard her secret, then enlists him in her investigation of the missing jewels, for she now believes an innocent man was hanged.

Unable to deny the beautiful, exasperating Keira—or their simmering passion—Declan reluctantly agrees. But neither is prepared for the dangerous stranger who threatens to reveal Keira's lies . . . and Declan knows he must protect Keira at all costs, for she is the woman who now owns his heart.   Read an excerpt here.

And now for the good part:  The winner of an autographed copy of BOOK OF SCANDAL is BarbaraElness!  Thanks to everyone who has commented here.  Barbara, please email me at julia@julialondon.com with your address and I will get the book out to you ASAP.

I AM SOOOO LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS!!

I'm on deadline, which means I'm wearing ratty sweats, look like hell, am grumpy, sporting electrocuted hair, and eating crap that's going to take me eight years to work off my ass.  Such is the life of a writer.

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This deadline is killing me!

One thing that helps me get through these periods which I call Deadline Hell are carrots.  And I don't mean the sort that Bugs Bunny eats.  No, I mean the sort that are dangled in front of me and used as incentive to keep me going.  Rewards for getting the job done.  And earlier this week my DH presented me with a FABULOUS carrot–something wonderful to look forward to that will make Deadline Hell a little easier to bear.  And what did he give me?  He gave me The First Boy I Ever Loved.

 Donny Osmond.

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The First Boy I Ever Loved

My DH knows that Donny was my first love.  He also knows that Donny is the first (and only) boy I ever wrote a fan letter to (in 5th grade).  And that the Osmond Brothers were the first concert I ever attended (in 4th grade).  No one who knows me finds it in the least bit strange that the man I've been married to for nearly 25 years looks enough like Donny to be mistaken for him upon occasion. 

Is it Donny--or my DH?

As it happens, the DH and I are going to New York in December because I'm a guest author on the 6th at Lady Jane's Salon (check it out at www.LadyJaneSalon.com It's very cool, and if you're in the area, I hope you'll attend!).  Anyhow, the DH found out that Donny and his sister Marie are doing a limited Christmas Broadway show at the Marquis Theatre, running from December 9th (which is Donny's birthday, btw) thru December 19th.  So, as my deadline carrot (and early b'day present), he bought us tickets to opening night!!  We'll go to dinner and then the show and I'll get to see The First Boy I Ever Loved with The Boy I've Loved For Half My Life.  Pretty perfect way to spend the evening if you ask me.

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Donny and Marie

 

So—what are you looking forward to?  What would work as a carrot/incentive for you?  And who was your first (or current) celebrity crush?  (And don't forget that by leaving a comment you're entered to win this week's giveaway which is a signed copy of Julia London's Book of Scandal!  Winner will be announced tomorrow!) Have a great weekend!

The Great No Cable Initiative…update!

[image error]So a few days (weeks? months? it's all such a blur…) I posted about how we decided to do Internet only and ditch cable. I thought I'd give you all an update.

On the whole, we love it, and don't miss cable At All. But there have been a few glitches in the system. For one, our $99 Apple TV box ended up costing us over a thousand dollars. You see, the new Apple TV has this thing called HDMI–it's a cord that does audio and sound, high def, all together. Our old television (6 years) had a DVI input and regular RCA jacks. Thinking this is no problem, I buy a DVI to HDMI adapter, and it works beautifully—except that there's no sound.

Bummer, man.

So we try to buy an optical audio (the only other plug on the Apple TV) to RCA adapter. Apparently, this thing doesn't exist. I even called Apple, and asked about a fix, and the new Apple TV is so new that I think I was the first to call in. He found a few ways to adapt, but it required more than a simple cord. Thus, a trip to Best Buy. (To be fair, we were planning on doing this all along, but for Christmas. Guess Santa came early this year).

The HDMI rocks. We bought a Samsung television (love it) with an external Samsung Sound Bar (really, really love it) and a Sony Blu Ray player (until that moment, I thought BR players only played BR discs, and so we hadn't bought one. D'oh!)

We put the new TV in the living room, hooked up Apple TV, and were jamming in minutes. Yay!!! Life was good. We checked out movies, got iTunes to stream (okay, that was glitchy for a day–took a call to Tech support to get home sharing turned on after the iTunes upgrade, but now its seamless), and spent a lovely weekend watching As Time Goes By streaming on Netflix.

And then, the weirdness happened. We watched all of Seasons One & Two of ATGB (an old British show, in case you're not familiar) and then started Season Three. Suddenly, the sound is out of sync!!! It's like watching Speed Racer or something! We figure we've pushed a button–some setting on the television–but much troubleshooting reveals that it's Netflix, and apparently just British television (Fawlty Towers and The Office had the same trouble). A later Google search revealed others with similar problems outside of the British stuff, but all with the new Apple TV. Can we all say "glitch in the Netflix software"?

At any rate, this is a problem, as streaming Netflix was a Major Part of the no-cable plan. But our TV is internet compatible, so I pull out the manual…and realize it's in Greek. (Not really, but SERIOUSLY??? Can't they hire technical writers who can actually make the non-technical stuff for the masses?). I wade through it and discover that we need a wireless LAN adapter. I'm all set to buy one when I realize something else: Wii streams Netflix.

[image error]So we pulled the Wii out of the box where it's been since the move (with The Culdesac, the kids have not begged for it), hooked it up, got Internet, got Netflix, and watched the next ATGB in under 20 minutes (only then realizing that our Blu Ray player is also wireless and can get Netflix and a gobzillion other apps.

What a world we live in….

On the other end of the spectrum, my husband, who said he'd just go to a sports bar to watch football, got over that real quick when he decided, the day before the UT-Nebraska game, that Life Just Really Sucked because he couldn't watch in the comfort of his own home. Enter the low tech solution: Rabbit Ears.

Actually, it was more complicated than that because of the digital conversion, but a trip to Radio Shack (they call themselves The Shack now, how hip! how cool!) solved that right away. We got it hooked up, and suddenly there was television!! Did y'all know that TV is actually free to the masses? Astounding! (Seriously, our local channels come in as clear as they did over cable, and we have about nine PBS channels we're picking up, plus the CW. Pretty cool…)

So downstairs we're high tech, and upstairs we're low tech. And hubby got his weekend of football.

Life is good.

Anybody else have any techno-wrangling stories to share?

Live from New York…

It's Saturday Night! [image error]

The first time I saw Saturday Night Live, I was in 5th Grade. Young, yes, but it wasn't a school night and Mom let us (my older sister and me) stay up late. We were all restless on a Saturday night for some reason, I don't know why. Cable was new to us, and I was the remote control. I clicked through the stations with the rotary dial, stopping now and then to see what was on, and I paused at Gilda Radner doing a sketch with a Barbie doll. It was ridiculous– and we were all entranced. That was it. We watched the whole show and laughed like crazy, even though my mom felt a little odd to let us watch something with lots of inappropriate references.

Mom shouldn't have felt too bad. I wasn't alone. I suddenly understood a lot of playground references that had been flying over my head. "Are you from Jersey?" "Candygram!" "Cheeseburger cheeseburger cheeseburger, Pepsi." "Ohhh nooo Mr. Bill!"

[image error]SNL was all the rage among my classmates. Years later? I still stay up to watch. I'm often disappointed, and occasionally pleasantly surprised. There have been good years and bad. Some hosts handle comedy much better than others. Alec Baldwin and Justin Timberlake usually deliver. Tina Fey is one of my favorites, and I'm sorry she left the cast (but all good things for Tina now).

The recent cast? Bill Hader is adorable and I love him. He has a chemistry with Seth when he makes Weekend Update appearances that reminds me of Jimmy Fallon and Horatio Sans– when both of them would lose control of the script and burst out laughing. The best moments for me on SNL are when the cast can't stay in character and start laughing along.

Witness Bill Hader in his role as Stefon, the club-hopping hipster. Early on, he starts to laugh when speaking his lines, and he eventually can barely make it through the sketch. Seth starts to lose it, too. The character, Stefon, and his lines are just too ridiculously awful– but so what one might expect from the club scene. Outrageous! And funny (but sort of inappropriate, so you've been warned).

Click here to view the embedded video.

When was the last time you watched Saturday Night Live? Do you have a favorite cast or favorite cast member? Favorite skit? Favorite show? Who is your dream host/musical guest combination?

The Road Not Taken

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

 

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

 

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

 

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

–Robert Frost

 I know, starting the morning with poetry—really?   Yes, really.  This is a favorite of mine and for some reason it always pops into my head in the fall.  My roads I guess are covered with red and gold fallen leaves.  But I think about that other road a lot.   I've always been an introspective sort.  And as I look back over the decisions made and those left untouched, I'm hit by the thought that if I'd a chosen a different path, I'd have a different life.  And there is in that some odd sense of comfort.  Because like Frost, though I often wonder about the paths not chosen, I am basically contented with the path I walk—even when it is bumpy and raining and I'm grumpy and lost.   It's my path.  My choice.   My life.

 Okay, that's my musing for the morning.

What about you?  Do you lament the paths untaken?  Or remember them with fondness, but love the road you've taken as your own?  Do you veer off or try to get from point a to b as quickly as possible?   Hint:  There are no wrong answers!

The Year of Living Scandalously

[image error] In 1792, the village of Hadley Green executed a man for stealing the Countess of Ashwood's historic jewels. Fifteen years later, questions still linger. Was it a crime of greed—or of passion?

When Declan O'Connor, Earl of Donnelly, arrives at Hadley Green to meet with Lily Boudine, the new countess of Ashwood, he immediately recognizes the lovely woman who welcomes him. Pretending to be her cousin Lily in an attempt to avoid an unwanted marriage, Keira Hannigan is staying at the estate while Lily is abroad. When Declan threatens to expose her, Keira convinces him to guard her secret, then enlists him in her investigation of the missing jewels, for she now believes an innocent man was hanged.

Unable to deny the beautiful, exasperating Keira—or their simmering passion—Declan reluctantly agrees. But neither is prepared for the dangerous stranger who threatens to reveal Keira's lies . . . and Declan knows he must protect Keira at all costs, for she is the woman who now owns his heart.

Read an Excerpt right here

Love Me Some Scandal

I was going through some books this week trying to decide what to read next.  I'm sort of in a historical mood right now, and recently finished the White Queen and the Red Queen by Philippa Gregory (both excellent, by the way).  She really knows how to make history scandalous and fun.  My first Philippa Gregory book was Wideacre, written years ago, but Oh. My. God.  Talk about scandal.  She has a trio of books set in 18th century England that are astoundingly scandalous.  I am not kidding.  If you haven't read Wideacre, and you like a little scandal in your history, you should definitely check it out.

I like writing about scandal, too, obviously.  My last series, Book of Scandal, Highland Scandal, and Courtesan's Scandal, are all about a true scandal that happened in early 19th century England.  The Prince of Wales wanted to divorce the Princess of Wales, whom he loathed.  When she adopted a poor orphan, ala Madonna (only it can't be ala Madonna since Madonna came so much later, but you get my drift), the Prince said that she'd born the child out of wedlock and therefore had committed treason by virtue of her obvious adultery, and he wanted a divorce.  The Princess of Wales shot back with some are-you-freaking-kidding-mes (given that he had littered London with his bastard offspring) and told the king she'd written a pamphlet about all of the prince's misdeeds that she would make very, very public.  The pamphlet was known simply as "The Book."

The prince didn't get to divorce the princess.  She never "published" the pamphlet, but naturally, it got out.  And I built three books around that very public royal scandal.

It was so much fun, I did it again.  In the Secrets of Hadley Green, my new series, everyone has a secret.  Some secrets involve murder.  Some involve adultery.  Some involve thievery.  All of them spark romance.  Not that there is any cause and effect going on, but, you know, people come together in strange ways.

The first book, THE YEAR OF LIVING SCANDALOUSLY, goes on sale tomorrow.  We start with a theft, an imposter and end with a hint of murder.  But just look at this guy and tell me you couldn't put up with a little hint of murder for him to look at you like that.

I am so happy about my new release that I will be giving away BOOK OF SCANDAL at the end of the week to one lucky commenter this week!  All you have to do is comment on one post through the week, or as many as you want, and voila, your name is in the hat to win that copy.  And in the meantime, please GO PICK UP A COPY OF THE YEAR OF LIVING SCANDALOUSLY!!

And the Winner Is…. (drumroll!)

The winner of the $25 Amazon gift certificate is LauraR. Laura, you can either contact me at kathleenoreilly@earthlink.net or I'll be sending you the email certificate later this afternoon!

YAY, you! Happy reading and pick something awesome!

Kathleen