Caitlyn Duffy's Blog, page 2

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Hello, everyone!

I’ve been hunkered down with the flu for the past week, but I wanted to send you guys some Valentine’s Day love from snowy Brooklyn.

Here are some photos of my block from taken this morning after our all-night Franken-thunder-snow storm.

Brooklyn’s so pretty right now it almost makes up for how freezing cold it’s been, how sniffling and sick everyone is, and how tired everyone in the general New York area everyone is of looking at the walls of their apartment.

I’m bundling up today to make it to the post office to ship off some cards and candies for my two most special Valentines: my niece and nephew.

The Emma book – finally here!

I’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting to make this announcement for ages, and have been holding off until the book’s been made available on Amazon as well as iTunes.

The Tycoon’s Daughter, aka The Emma Book, is finally available! You may remember the first mention of Emma in The Rock Star’s Daughter, when Taylor wanders into a mall and finds comfort in seeing the familiar face of her high school adversary in a window display at a Hunter Lodge store.

To all of her classmates at The Treadwell Academy, Emma appears to have everything a girl could want. She’s gorgeous and filthy rich, and if that weren’t enough, her father made her the face of the campaign for his iconic clothing brand. She’s on the cover of Hunter Lodge’s sexy catalog, and every teenage boy in America knows who she is.

But the tricky thing about having everything is that it can’t last forever. When Emma gains weight the summer before her junior year and her father’s creative team ever-so-gently removes her from the upcoming holiday catalog, her self-confidence is crushed.  What begins as a diet manifests into a dangerous obsession with losing weight, and as Emma pursues a high fashion modeling career to get revenge on her father, she quickly learns that everyone wants something from her, and rarely are other people’s intentions in her own best interest.

It took me quite a while to finish this book because I know from exchanging emails with my readers that body image obsession and self-harming behaviors are very, very common among this generation of teen girls. It seems like for the last ten years or so, young women have been force-fed even more unrealistic images of what the “ideal” body looks like by the media than when I was a teenager – back when Kate Moss’s Eternity ads launched a “heroin chick” wave of anorexia (not that Kate Moss should be personally blamed for that).  I’m not ashamed to say that I think the Victoria’s Secret Angel fashion show is about the most Satanic thing televised, ever, and I find it not surprising that there is no equivalent annual broadcast to send men into dizzy tailspins of dieting and exercise. However, times are changing. It delights me to see new faces on television and in movies of more diverse women being presented as “normal.” Lena Dunham’s a bit of a hero in this space, and I consider Ireland Baldwin (6’2!), Gabourey Sidibe, Demi Lovato, and Lorde to be refreshing role models for young women. Girls who say “this is who I am and how I look, deal with it” rather than publicly conforming to unhealthy standards, and women who have been vocal about their own struggles with body image so that young women feel less alone.

While Cameron Diaz isn’t a nutritionist or a psychiatrist, sometimes it’s more interesting for young women to get advice from someone who’s internationally famous for her beauty and talent, so I’m going to go ahead and plug her book, The Body Book. Cameron comes right out and states a simple fact that a lot of girls need to hear: when your body is hungry, you have to feed it. You have to feed it the right stuff and take care of it, because you’ve only got one life, and it’s a shame to go through it spending all of your time worrying about how other people view you.

Check out The Tycoon’s Daughter on Amazon and on iTunes.

On celebrities and eating disorders

I’m now just *days* away from the release of The Tycoon’s Daughter, the Treadwell book about Emma’s struggle with an eating disorder in the modeling industry. The book is very close to my heart, maybe more than all of the other Treadwell books in the series, because I think body image is such a profoundly important issue for young girls.

I’m sure this may be perceived as a bit of an inflammatory post because Little Monsters are quick to defend Lady Gaga, but knowing that, I’m going to post anyway.

Ke$ha

Pop star Ke$ha, who landed her own record deal and became a star in her own right after singing backup for Britney Spears, just announced that she checked into Timberline Knolls, an eating disorder treatment center (oddly enough) in the town where my father lives outside Chicago. I can’t clap my hands loudly enough for her, because she’s let her fans know that this is an issue with which she personally struggles, and she’s demonstrating total girl power by getting help for it. THIS is setting a good example.

Last year, when Lady Gaga was called out by the press for gaining weight before her European tour, she made a big deal about informing her fans that she suffered from an eating disorder, then didn’t publicly make any statement about seeking treatment, and suddenly appeared 30 lbs slimmer in photos again once her tour ended. I’m a fan of Lady Gaga’s music, but I felt that this behavior of hers was completely counter-intuitive to her “Born This Way” platform and sent an indisputably negative message to fans, male and female, about body weight.

Jennifer Lawrence recently caused a stir when she told Barbara Walters that she thinks it should be illegal for the media to call people fat, and while I’m a big supporter of freedom of speech, I do think that there should be fines for making derogatory statements that impact how youth view themselves and their peers. Ms. Lawrence’s point that radio stations and networks are fined for cuss words is a valid one: who do cuss words really hurt, anyway? Do they inspire healthy kids to go on diets, find ways to get their hands on drugs to stimulate weight loss, and manifest in ways to cause other negative behaviors, like cutting? If more celebrities were forthright about their own personal struggles with body image, they might inspire more young fans to seek help and get serious about getting healthy.

Kudos to Ke$ha for her honesty and courage. I hope the lovely people of Lemont, Illinois take good care of her. For anyone struggling with this issue who could use some good advice, here’s one of my absolute favorite stars, Demi Lovato, addressing kids in treatment at Timberline Knolls, where she, herself, received treatment:

http://www.mtv.com/videos/news/746211/demi-lovato-stay-strong-visiting-timberline-knolls.jhtml

Farewell, 2013!

Finding words to describe this last year is proving to be quite a challenge! It feels like it flashed by in a matter of seconds, thankfully without any major personal tragedies!

Some highlights of 2013:

Jamaica, Jamaica
Meeting Narciso Rodriguez (so nice)!
Completing The Tycoon’s Daughter (coming soon)!
Contributing to The Rock Gods of Romance book bundle
Powering through Seasons 1 – 3 of Damages
Sticking with Insanity and not being a wuss (thank you, Shaun T)!
Spending lots of time in my beloved Los Angeles

I also can’t express enough how very much all of the emails and reviews I’ve received on The Treadwell Academy series have meant to me this year. Writing is my passion, and while I don’t always get to devote as much time as I’d prefer to it, you guys make it ever so much worth the effort.

Resolutions for 2014?

Continue doing Insanity – no mercy!
Run a 10K (preferably somewhere warm and sunny)
Finish editing the sequel to The Rock Star’s Daughter – everyone keeps asking about Taylor!
Finish the first book in the Allison Burch series

Best wishes for a happy and healthy 2014 to all of you!

Rock Gods of Romance Book Bundle – 99-cents!

Today’s the day -

The Rock Gods of Romance book bundle is available on Amazon for Kindle for a limited time for 99-cents!

If you’re into rock star romances, this is six novellas in one book by USA Today & NY Times best-selling romance authors:

Liliana Rhodes – The Ballad of Jude
Marian Tee – The Rockstar I’ve Loved for So Long
Ava Lore – Record, Rewind
Mina Esquerra – Playing Autumn
K.T. Fisher – Heat
and ME

Since most of my readership is under the age of 18, the romance in my story is a bit tame… but if sexy is what you’re after, the other authors do not hold back! It’s a pretty scintillating holiday read.

 

Reasons to be thankful this year

Today when I called home to wish my family a Happy Thanksgiving (work obligations have kept me in New York this weekend), my three-year-old nephew. Declan, proudly informed me that he is “wearing khakis” and for Christmas would like a “whacker.” My sister explained that he is very enthusiastic about the sound of the word “khaki” and likes to announce his choice in clothing–even to strangers–if doing so offers him an opportunity to say it. A “whacker” is apparently his own term for a spatula, which he routinely uses to march around the house and thwack furniture.

Recently, when I was out to lunch with my three-year-old niece, Maggie, I tried to teach her how to say the world “quesadilla.” With an eye roll, she stated, “My mouth isn’t big enough to say that word.”

This year, I am thankful for all the little kids in my life, and for the laughs they bring me. I am also profoundly grateful not only for the readers who take the time to read my work, but for the time I’ve been able to spend working on new stories. Time really is a blessing, I’m realizing increasingly as I get older. Prioritizing ways to spend it isn’t much fun because there are never enough hours to get everything accomplished. For this reason, it means so very much to me every single time a reader downloads one of my books and invests a few hours going on a journey with me.

Thanks, guys. I hope you’re all enjoying peaceful and memorable days with your loved ones today, even if you’re not in the U.S!

Rock Gods of Romance – Contributing Writer!

It feels like it’s been ages since the last time I blogged, but the reason for my absence from this site is that I was asked to contribute a short romance story for a New Adult compilation of rock star romances, available December 2nd on Amazon. It’s called the Rock Gods of Romance, and it features stories from authors including Ava Lore, Marian Tee, Mina V. Esguerra, K.T. Fisher and Liliana Rhodes.  I’m pretty excited since this is my first venture into New Adult writing, especially because I’ve resurrected one of my favorite characters, bad boy rock star Brice Norris, from The Rock Star’s Daughter. 

Here’s the official blurb and cover art! But please keep in mind – while my story contribution is PG13, the other stories in the book bundle are likely to be intended for readers over the age of 18.

The Rock Gods of Romance book cover reveal!

My story: Hometown Hook-up

Brice Norris, lead singer of the critically acclaimed new rock band on the scene, Sigma, knows his life is spinning out of control after the band’s first world tour comes to an end. Losing himself in a whirlwind of late nights, fast women, and paparazzi, he decides to ditch West Hollywood to visit his parents and gain a little perspective before returning to the studio to work on the band’s second album. Back at home in Massachusetts, he’s overwhelmed by the mess he’s left behind on the West Coast. He can’t figure out how success has managed to become so complicated in just one year. But after a chance encounter with his older sister’s best friend, Meredith, Brice starts to remember what life was like before he had the world at his fingertips…

The official reason that Meredith Markley’s back in town is to care for her ailing mother, but only Meredith knows the true reason for her return to Danvers: she’s hastily quit her prestigious job with a law firm in New York because of an office romance gone awry. With the legal career she worked so hard to achieve now in ruins, she’s never before felt more like she’s hit rock-bottom. That is, until she catches the eye of her best friend’s little brother and rekindles his smoldering high school crush on her… and these days, he just happens to be a rock star… 

 

Halloween in Brooklyn!

I am in some serious denial that it’s the end of October! And yet, there are Caramel Apple Milkyway bars on the shelves at CVS, and my neighbors have outdone themselves this year with spooktastic decorations… it’s definitely Halloween time!

I’ve been insanely busy since the summer finishing the Emma book, finishing the Allison book, and jetting off to LA for work-related stuff. I love Los Angeles, and it’s painful leaving every time I travel there, but lucky all of my time spent strolling around Beverly Hills is inspiring me to keep working on the sequel to The Rock Star’s Daughter. You haven’t heard the last of Taylor Beauforte just yet! I can’t announce release dates just yet, but the Emma book and Allison book will be available on Amazon and iTunes before Christmas.

Here’s a peek at the craziness going on in my neighborhood right now.

I seriously love this!

The Rock Star’s Daughter Review by 1Book1Review

I am so in love with this book review by Wiebke at 1Book1Review, I wanted to share it with all of you guys!

Recipe for a perfect Brooklyn morning

I feel so, so lucky that I’ve had the opportunity to spend more time in Brooklyn this summer instead of in my office! Here are just a quick few things that I adore about my borough, and my neighborhood, in particular.

 

1) I live close enough to the Brooklyn Heights promenade that it’s within walking distance. Here’s a snapshot on kind of a gloomy morning, but the New York City skyline always makes me nostalgic and reminds me why I love living here.

2. Squirrels are the real kings of Brooklyn. Their cousins, rats, rule the night. But these chubby acorn bandits are everywhere during daylight hours, and they aren’t afraid of anything!

 

3. When the sun peeks through the clouds after a rainstorm in Brooklyn, it feels like you’re stepping back in time 100 years. The brownstones are so beautiful, and my neighbors put a lot of effort into decorating their stoops with plants and their window boxes with flowers. So charming!