Tracey Alvarez's Blog, page 4

Studying Reality TV – or, Would You Like a rose with that?

Snippet of conversation between me and Miss 16 the other day.
Scene setting: Miss 16 walks in the door after a day at school and immediately comes and gives me a hug.
Me: What’s wrong?!
Miss 16: I had a horrible, horrible day.
Me: What happened?! *thinking Mama Bear (which Miss 16 cutely calls me) thoughts of rampaging the school for poor daughter*
Miss 16: *gut-wrenching sigh* We had media studies this afternoon and we had to watch…The Bachelor. UGH! It was sooo embarrassing.
Me: Seriously? That is SO cool! When I was at high school we didn’t get to…
Miss 16: *glazed eyes appear and she reaches for her phone*

 

Whatever. I’ve tried for the last year or so to share the long-held mother/daughter bonding tradition of watching 20 something women make fools of themselves over one really-not-worth-it-in-most-cases guy (and in the Bachelorette, 20 something guys) but Miss 16 isn’t buying what I’m selling. Yes, she’d rather watch The Flash (her current favorite featuring my future son-in-law) or action movies with her dad. I’m all alone with my weekly guilty dose of pleasure watching the Bachelor.
Before you roll your eyes – I know how fake it is. And I know it’s not high quality, intellectually stimulating viewing. But, dammit, although it’s kinda cringy, a little voyeuristic , and some of the morals and ethics are a little dubious, it’s fun and fascinating as a romance author to watch the male-female dynamics – and even more fun to watch the female-female or male-male dynamics, play out. And yes, sometimes I get a little teary eyed at the end of the season with the proposal…for all of 5 minutes until I Google and find out the happy couple lasted about 2.5 weeks after the show finished.

Anyway, I liked the show enough to have it inspire part of one of my books, Playing For Fun. My poor hero, Ford, ends up in the crosshairs of the island’s oldest matchmaker (probably also a Bachelor fan by now I’m guessing). A local TV station gets wind of Ford’s dating escapades and suddenly Oban’s most reluctant bachelor becomes Oban’s THE Bachelor. Sort of. But without the roses and mega-expensive dates and cameras in his face.

Here’s an exclusive little excerpt from Playing For Fun, where Ford meets a couple of women who’ve come to Oban to ‘meet’ the bachelor:

 

“Hellooo?” Trilled a high-pitched, female voice from the front of the workshop. “Are you Ford Komeke?”
Ford let the new cam belt hang off the crank shaft and ducked out from under the hood. Ben stared toward the front roller doors with a WTF expression and his coffee frozen halfway to his mouth. Once Ford glimpsed the three women stepping daintily around the sawdust-sprinkled oil spill at the front of the workshop, he understood why.
Sky high heels, miles of ironed-flat hair, enough foundation between them to conceal every one of Ford’s tatts. And a predatory look in their made-up eyes—eyes that skipped from Ben’s stunned silence to Ford as he moved around the car.
“I’m Ford. Can I help you?”
The pint-sized blonde a few steps in front of the other two women pinned her glossy-pink lips back in a smile. “I hope so. Wow. He does look like his brother, doesn’t he, girls?”
Just as inappropriately attired in a goose-pimple-displaying short skirt, the brunette behind her smirked. “Emily’s blog post didn’t do the younger twin justice, though. He’s much cuter.”
Rocks dropped from a height into the pit of Ford’s stomach.
Emily’s blog post? Emily, who hadn’t left Oban as his number one fan, wrote about him and Harley? What the serious fuck?
Ben cut him a glance, perfectly reflecting Ford’s bafflement.
“What blog post would that be?” Ford asked.
“She called it Forecast—Muddy with a Chance of Dating a Douche. On her blog, Emily Envisaging.” The brunette’s fake eyelashes narrowed until they looked a helluva lot like two black spiders stuck to her face. “She said you were a bit of a dick.”
“A giant bag of dicks, were her exact words,” the blonde supplied, her smile not slipping a millimetre. “But I’m into that.”
©Tracey Alvarez 2015

If you haven’t read Ford and Holly’s story, check out the Playing For Fun book page with all the links here.
 
Tell me about your secret TV shame in the comments – what do you love to watch that kinda makes you blush a little to admit?
Have a great weekend,

Monday Morning Mumblings

Fire fighters, right? What’s not to love. Brave, dedicated, often heroic. They go above and beyond the call of duty. This weekend I heard/read a lovely story about a firefighter trying to rescue a Wellington woman’s cat. It actually happened near my cousin’s house a few hours before we arrived for a visit. You can read the article by clicking here. In a nutshell, a fire fighter climbed a tree to try and get a cat down, but the cat wasn’t so happy about being rescued. Long story short, both he and the not-so-friendly-feline fell out of the tree. A helicopter had to be called in to winch the guy to safety, but luckily, the reports are he’s okay (and the cat took off), but the sweetest awwww moment? First thing the fire fighter asked when he regained consciousness was whether he’d “got the cat”.
And the other thing about fire fighters…at least the ones I like thinking about, ha ha, are the ones who look like the guys in the below clip:

 

Our New Zealand fire fighters also do a calendar, and I’ll be doing some giveaways of those calendars in the next month or so. Make sure you’re signed up to my newsletter to hear about the giveaways. Sign up to my non-spammy-’cause-I’m-too-lazy newsletter here.
Hope this was a fun start to your week – it certainly cheered me up.
Tomorrow, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) starts, so I will be, along with thousands of others, attempting to write 50,000 words in November. I want to keep blogging during this time, but my posts may end up being funny cat pictures and random caffeine fueled craziness – but that’s cool, right?
Have a safe and Happy Halloween!

The Walking Dead & Wounding the Muse…

Alternative title: When a TV show rips your heart out and stomps all over it, the end.
Earlier this week, I had my heart broken. And yeah, once again, it was from a fictional character. As many of you know I’m a big Walking Dead fan, so if you haven’t seen the Season 7 premiere, you might want to skip this post because there are SPOILERS ahead. If you’re not a Walking Dead fan, bear with me. This post isn’t just about the zombie apocalypse, it’s about our intimate relationship with story.

In the Season 6 finale of The Walking Dead, we were left with the certain knowledge that some was going to die. Horribly. There was a certain amount of deliciously-awful speculation and anticipation among TWD fandom, and I wasn’t exempt. In fact, when DH and I visited Senoia in Georgia this year where a lot of TWD is shot, there was a fever pitch of excitement palpable in town, with the local TWD tourist shop telling us that everyone was buzzing about the cast keeping everything so hush-hush. Who would die? One of my favorite characters, or a secondary one that while I was fond of, wouldn’t be terribly missed?

I diligently avoided spoiler sites, and on the day of the premiere, kept away from social media in the afternoon NZ time (which was when TWD screened in the US). Still, someone managed to accidentally ruin it by letting it slip that two characters apparently died. That’s when I knew, from a storyteller’s point-of-view, that TWD writers would probably kill off one minor and one major character. A double, unexpected whammy. 
I admit, I’ve become pretty desensitised to violence after watching so many horror movies in my time, and shows like TWD and Supernatural. This episode, however, profoundly upset me. Unlike horror movies, where as a viewer I’ve never really connected with the characters, or in Supernatural (at least the first 11 seasons) where it’s an insider’s joke how many times Sam and Dean Winchester have come back from the dead (FYI, I still cried every time they died!), this episode was different. Yes, TWD is set in a post-apocalyptic world and characters (sometimes main characters) have died horribly – both by walkers (zombies) and by other people.
But Abraham and Glenn’s death? God, it crushed me and wounded my muse’s sensitive heart. So horrifically violent – and to those who called their death’s ‘epic’, IMO there’s nothing epic about being beaten to death with a baseball bat and showing it explicitly…just because they have the special effects and can. It made me feel physically and spiritually sick, because of its realism. With all the real life violence in this world, books and movies and TV are my escape. I watch for the characters stories. I don’t love TWD or Supernatural because of the special effects and realism, and even the coolness of a zombie apocalypse. I don’t want to watch the ‘people’ I’ve come to love have amazing character arcs and then die horribly. And yes, I know, in these sorts of genres sometimes people do die–but I don’t want to see their deaths rendered so graphically that it gives me nightmares. But bravo to the writers and the director if that their goal was to make a fandom both love and hate them, because they succeeded.
But onto Glenn Rhee, for a moment. Secretly, Glenn was my favorite character. I never told my fellow family & friend TWD fans – because it always seems to come down to ‘Do you love Darryl or Rick more?’. But Glenn was everything a hero should be. IMO, he was the glue that kept Rick’s motley crew on the straight and narrow. Even after all he’d been through, he never lost hope, never lost his heart for his ‘family’, never lost his goodness. Never lost his love for Maggie.

The pizza delivery boy that became a warrior…and a husband.

We watched Glenn’s story arc over 6 seasons – from smart-assed pizza delivery boy whooping it up in a stolen Dodge, to falling in love with the beautiful Maggie, to nearly dying from a disease, to taking on the Governor and his horror and guilt over not being able to protect Maggie.  Once we were even convinced he was a gonner and devoured by walkers. But. The scrappy guy still survived! Only to be left helpless and then beaten to death in front of the woman who was carrying his baby. 

Doesn’t it sound as if one of my friends were just murdered? Well, that’s the visceral feeling that comes over us when we become deeply invested in character. We laugh when they laugh, we love when they love, we hurt when they hurt, and we die a little when they die–or when a book/movie/TV series comes to an end.  
To move away from TWD for a moment, and onto one some of my favorite books, the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. I’ve read all of her books, most of them twice, and I’m dreading the end of the novels if Diana chooses to let either Jamie or Claire die. I totally get her right to do this as a fellow author, but I won’t be reading any more of the series if she does.
I love these people, they are real to me. Jamie and Claire’s love for each other gives me hope and I don’t ever want them to be separated by death. Yes, in life one spouse outliving the other happens more often than not. This is why I don’t consider The Notebook to have a tragic ending–sad, yes, tragic no. Allie and Noah had a lifetime of love together and died peacefully in each other’s arms. What more could you ask for?
And so this circles around to why I love the romance genre. Why I continue to read it, why I’ll always write it. Love is death-defying. Friendship and family are death-defying. Love and family and friendship in fiction are death-defying too–watching/reading it gives us hope for the future. 
Will I keep watching the series? Yeah, I will. Because I’m absolutely invested in the characters’ remaining story. Will I continue to get my heart broken? Most likely. I just hope TWD writers will throw their viewers a little hope for Rick and his band of survivors.
I’ll leave you with one more screenshot from TWD.

I know how Darryl and Beth felt, and I choose to believe Glenn and Maggie will one day have their happily-ever-after, even if it’s only in my imagination. He will find her. (And now I’m crying again!!!)
Let me know your thoughts below. If you’re a TWD fan, what did you think of the premiere? If you’re not a fan, what are your thoughts about emotional investment in fictional characters? I love hearing from you!

 

 

Monday Morning Mumblings

Earlier in the week my Miss 15 turned into Miss 16, and the first thing she did this weekend was get her learner driver license. DH, of course, made her drive home and took her around one of the city’s busy roundabouts. Fortunately, (or unfortunately?!) she wasn’t put off by the experience. Later that day, when it was just her and I in the car after dropping one of her BFFs home, she asked if she could drive the two of us back the 2 minute drive to our place. Pulling up my big Mama panties, I said, “Sure.” However, it’s a totally different ball game from the time I went with her and DH when she practised driving in an abandoned sub-division with NO other traffic. I climbed into the passenger seat for the first time and we took the obligatory mother/daughter selfie.

 

We set off (slowly, because she’s a very cautious and conscientious driver) and after 2 minutes sitting at the stop sign waiting for the right time to pull into traffic (this is good!!) we got on the main street that leads to our house. Totally different perspective when your precious baby is driving and— OMG dude, get off of our bumper can’t you see the Learner plates and so what if she’s going 20 kph below the speed limit she’s LEARNING —there’s suddenly traffic everywhere. We made it home in one piece and Miss 16 turns to me and says, “Mum, you should teach me to drive! You’re soooo much calmer than dad.”
Apparently, I have a better poker face than I thought!
Any suggestions for the mum of a brand new driver, let me know in the comments!

P.S FYI it won’t be me teaching Miss 16 the intricacies of driving, I don’t think my heart could take the strain!

Gym Bunnies and Wicked Witches…

I had a very detailed dream this morning. Don’t worry, I won’t bore you with the details – we all know how own dreams are fascinating, while listening to someone else’s is akin to staring at white-washed walls while trapped in a straight jacket. But in this dream, I was trying to escape the Wicked Witch of the West (I stole her broomstick, because I’m bad-ass like that) and in trying to hide from her, I thought, “What’s the one place she’ll never think to look for me?” So I rode my bad-ass broomstick-stealing self straight to the nearest gym.

That’s right – there were people doing cross-fit classes (at least I think that’s what they were doing, they looked pretty damn miserable) and guys puffing out their massive muscles in front of mirrors, and chicks in painted on lycra sweating on spin cycles. While I wandered around this massive torture chamber building and tried to look inconspicuous. 

FYI the Wicked Witch didn’t catch me, or at least, she hadn’t by the time I woke up. 
But here’s the thing about gym bunnies (and gym bucks?!). I have no problem with people wanting to be fit and healthy and yadda-yadda-yadda. Good for them. Yay, you guys. But I have a problem about being lectured, even in the most *loving* way from gym converts.

I get it. You may not believe it, but about ten years ago I was a gym bunny convert, trotting off to sweat and strain and suck down protein shakes, the whole works. Six days a week I went to church I mean, the gym. And yeah, I saw results – massive results. I was in better shape than I had been since high school. So, I get it. Being able to fit a size 10 skirt feels super-awesome and you just want to tell every-freaking-body how super-awesome exercise is and-why-aren’t-you-doing-it-too-so-you-can-be-super-awesome-like-me? 

Was I happier being a gym bunny? Nope.Because suddenly things that I loved were taboo. Like coffee. And cookies. And if you can pretend a plate of yogurt with a few almonds is a delicious alternative to ice cream, than you’re a better person/actor/robot than I am.  Then there was the juggle of organising baby sitters for my then young children, and EVERY SINGLE THING in my life having to be organised around the Mon-Sat gym treks.  It was a battle I just couldn’t win and like all obsessions, this one faded when it got just too damn hard and when it no longer resembled anything like fun.

I don’t do gyms any more, I walk. And I’ll admit, I’m not particularly great at doing that regularly. I’m fortunate, though, that my friends aren’t gym bunnies (or bucks) and don’t make me feel like crap for being a slacker. I have one particularly good friend who this year took up ballroom dancing and she’s also started going to a gym. Do we talk about it? Sometimes, but she rarely mentions it to me because her results speak for themselves. She looks good and she’s having loads of fun with her DH dancing. And she still eats the occasional cookie and chocolate. #Winning 

 Today is also my Miss 15’s birthday – she’s now to be known as Miss 16 for the next 365 days. Being that I do want to be around to see my Miss 16 become Ms. 26 and Ms. 36…today I’ll go for a walk in the sunshine.
And then I’ll eat some birthday cake and enjoy it…

Monday Morning Mumblings

There’s a reason why I call my Monday Morning blog mumblings. That’s right, Monday mornings are the worst. Ever.
I don’t know why, but this morning I woke up like this:

Maybe it’s due to working a seven day week for the last, I don’t know, past six years. Okay, slight exaggeration, I do have some down time. But here’s a classic conversation between me and DH on the subject.
DH: Over Christmas, you’ll take some time off to just read and relax?
Me: Of course. Maybe I’ll even finish that Stephen King book you bought me last Christmas.
DH: No writing, no editing, no book stuff, for a month, right? 
Me: Bwhahaha. *sideways glance at DH, sees that he’s serious* Bwhahahahahahahaha! 
DH: Three weeks then.
Me: Hello, do you know me at all? Best I can do is from my birthday (Christmas Eve) to New Years.
DH: So, two weeks then.
Me: Something like that.
 
Of course, if you take into consideration the size of my TBR pile of books, I may be off until Easter! 
Anyone else have trouble winding down and just relaxing? How do you cope with balancing your work, family time and you-time? Let me know in the comments below.
Have a great week, peeps!

6 Reasons Why I’m Part of the Supernatural ‘Family’

It’s no secret that this is my favorite TV show, and I admit to being proud when one of my readers e-mailed to tell me they started watching it after the mentions of it in PLAYING FOR FUN and how they LOVED it.

 

So here’s the 6 top reasons why I love the Winchester Brothers and their adventures in their 1967 Chevy Impala…
1.
The cast really are like a family and they treat their fans with such genuine kindness.

2. The show is really about family. (And Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki consider themselves brothers in real life, awwww)

3. The brothers drive a seriously cool car.

4. The show’s writers are brilliant and I still pick up new things (Ah…I see what you did there!) re-watching the seasons.

5. The actors do a lot of charity work. My favorite is Jared Padalecki’s ‘Always Keep Fighting’ campaign to beat depression (which he suffers from).

6. This one is obvious. I mean, c’mon. Look at them! Just LOOK. AT. THEM. !!

 

And there you have it. 6 reasons to start watching Supernatural from Season 1, episode 1. You’ll thank me. (Or maybe not…)  
Season 12 starts tomorrow. I can’t wait.
 

 

Monday Morning Mumblings

This weekend I decided to do something a little crazy. Well, crazy for me. I didn’t, you know, go bungee jumping or anything.
This is what I did:

In case you haven’t heard of it, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) or NaNo for short, is when a bunch of writers start out all bushy-tailed and bright-eyed on November 1st and write, write, write the novel that’s burning a hole in their fingertips, hoping to end up with 50,000 words by November 30th. There are no hard and fast rules, and really, it’s all about the journey. No one shows up at your house with baseball bats if you don’t meet the 50K goal by the end of the month; you’re really competing with yourself. And the vicious inner critic that all writers have to learn to deal with.

 

So I signed up to NaNo 2016. Because, apparently, I have too much time of my hands. What with fixing my editor’s changes for Teach Your Heart, then my proofreaders changes, formatting, marketing, plus Miss Almost-16 with her first major school exams in November and Christmas–oh my goodness, let’s not go there. But no worries, mate, as we say Down Under. 
Somehow I also ended up starting a FB group for other like-minded New Zealand romance authors who want to have a crack at NaNo, and I think we’ll keep each other motivated. Nothing like the combination of a little peer pressure, healthy competition, cheer-leading and butt-kicking as required to keep one’s butt in a chair in front of a computer.

 

Why am I telling you this? Accountability. ‘Cause I know I’ll have to fess up to you guys at the end of November if I haven’t written my 50K on Saying I Do. I’m pretty sure there’s a few of you who’re looking forward to Joe and MacKenna’s story! Now I have 3 weeks to get myself organised.
I’ll keep you updated.

Simply…Thank You…

I don’t want to do a Big Bang Theory, Howard Walowitz, here and keep banging on about the USA Today Bestseller list (remember Howard slipping ‘I was an astronaut’ into every conversation?!) it’s not in my nature.

And if you know any Kiwis (New Zealanders) it’s a national trait. Yeah, nah, we’re pretty humble on the whole! So before I shut-up-about-it-already…

23 years ago I was this young woman. Tapping away on a hand-me-down computer with one cat on my knee and another perched behind me, dreaming that one day a book of mine would get published. Never, ever daring to dream that I’d have a book that reached the USA Today Bestseller list. In fact, I don’t think I was even aware of the big lists then, I just wanted to write.

Some things don’t change. I still write with cats, and I still just want to write. But now I have two kids, an elderly father who needs taking care of, and a very supportive husband. And a laptop – God bless my laptop! Finding out my Due South Boxed set reached the USA Today Bestseller list didn’t quite go as planned. Nothing in life ever does, does it? I’d been refreshing the list and saw the same books in the same rank over and over. I was going a little nuts wondering why it hadn’t updated when a friend and fellow author texted me with ‘OMG!!! You’re number #63!!’ For a second I thought she was making it up to make me feel better, because, dammit, my book was nowhere to be seen. Then she sent me a screen shot of the USA Today website.

It was true, but I still couldn’t quite believe it, even when my Facebook page started going nuts with notifications of congrats from other authors – did I tell you what a wonderful incredibly supportive bunch romance authors are?!
Wow. Somehow in the last 23 years I’d come from pipe dream to reality. All the years of writing and editing and writing and editing more and then rejection after rejection. Of pulling up my big girl panties and deciding to self-publish my first book at the end of 2013. Wow. I still can’t quite get my head around it.
I am so grateful for all my readers, I really can’t tell you how much – weird for a writer to be lost for words, but there you go. I appreciate each of you for reading my work and allowing me to do what I love most.
And now, I’ll get back to work. There are books to write and the many facets of love to explore.
So, simply, mihi (thanks). 

 

Funny, Flirty Texts!

If I had to pick my favorite movie genre, it would be comedies – and I’m definitely a big fan of the Rom-Com. My DH and DD, not so much. They’re more into action flicks with car chases and explosions, or sci-fi flicks with aliens in cars causing explosions and chasing people. That sort of thing. But I love to laugh, and man, once the giggle-stick hits me there’s no holding back.
Take, for example, the below clip featuring Jimmy Fallon and Sting. They’re singing flirty texts – singing! DH and I watched it together the other night in fits of laughter. We must’ve been pretty loud as we had our Miss 15 hammering on the wall telling us to stop all the laughing she was trying to sleep!
Fortunately the only flirty text I’ve sent to DH that accidentally got delivered to one of my male friends was message calling him darling and asking him to pick up some milk. (See how romantic I am?) My friend replied with an ‘okay, sweetheart’ followed by: ROTFLMAO (Rolling on the Floor Laughing my Ass off – in text speak). It could’ve been worse…much worse.

 

I hope Jimmy and Sting gave you a smile for today!
But as I keep telling my DD, once you hit that send button there’s no taking a text or photo back.
Have you ever sent the right message to the wrong person? Maybe the wrong message to the right person? Or has auto-correct caused you to wish the earth would open up and swallow you whole. I’d love to hear some of your G-Rated embarrassing text moments, let me know in the comments below.