An Interesting Coincidence!
So, last night, the mister and I met with a sales rep from a home-improvement-company to discuss some home improvements. After arriving quite late and apologizing profusely, the talk got going with the sales guy and the mister going back and forth in the initial exchanges. As a wife-of-a-certain age, I’ve noticed that during most discussions about home improvements (a new fence, fixing the garage door, installing a swing-set for the kids) end up being between the men involved. THAT is the subject for another blog, but as they talked and asked and answered questions, I did what any writer would do — I noticed the sales rep.
C’mon! It’s my responsibility as a writer to notice details about people around me. Right, writers?
What did I notice? Well. . . (and I explained this all to my hubby after the guy left and the coincidence was revealed)… his face was definitely photogenic. Very masculine, bright blue eyes, dark wavy hair, very much hero material there. And his physique was. . . noticeable too! LOL! Tall, muscular, strong arms, nicely built. Because of the lack of a light behind him, I couldn’t really assess all his attributes, but I gave it a try! LOL!
When the discussion was done, the guy was glancing around, talking about the size of the room, and he saw my bookshelves. That led to some comments about all those books, all those romance novels, my romance novels and then the coincidence happened. The guy reveals that about 20 years ago (!?!?!) he was a cover model! For romance novels!
He couldn’t remember which titles he’d appeared on, but he said his mom still had copies of them! Wild, huh?
After he left, I started looking at some of my classic romance novels and remembering all the various cover models from the heyday of the late 80s-and 90s like Fabio, John DeSalvo, Steve Sandalis, Mike O’Hearn, Mark Consuelos (yes, Kelly Ripa’s hubby!) and more recently Nathan Kamp. I actually got to meet many of them — um….may have oiled one famous chest at a certain fan convention dressing room!
Just for fun — here’s a link to a site all about romance novel covers — with a list of a bunch of the cover models, past and present — some fun to look at.
Now, of course, I wouldn’t buy a book just for the cover model (well, not usually!) but it was kind of cool to meet this one and to take a moment to look back at the ‘classics’. How about you? Do you know who the guys are on the the romance novel covers? Do they (or the coverart) matter to you when you buy or browse?
Share this:
