I know what you are thinking, what is there beyond boobs and buttocks? Truly there isn’t, but one must occasionally lift oneself out of the puddle of shallowness to contemplate such things as lips and eyes and elegant fingertips. Or–gasp–emotions!

That’s what I did in a guest blog at Plot Monkeys on physical desirability, or the successful, non-clichéd portrayal of it. Go have fun with it.

Also, if you live in or near Austin, Texas, I am giving a little talk on query letters at Barnes & Noble Arboretum at 2:00 pm this afternoon, followed by a quick signing. I’d love to have more than just my mother in the audience!

Have a lovely weekend!

A couple of days ago Michelle Buonfiglio dropped me an e-mail.

I’d come across her name a couple of times before–she gave the cover blurb on Eve Kenin’s Driven, and Lisa Lleypas thanked her in the acknowledgment section of one of her contemporaries–but I didn’t really know who she was. Well, she is a great advocate for the genre, lifetimetv.com’s romance columnist, and the marquee name at Romance B(u)y the Book.

And she picked up PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS out the hundreds of ARCs she receives every months, read it, liked it, and wants to feature it. (Can you tell how thankful I am that my publisher gave PA a distinctive cover?) I feel like Lana Turner, discovered at a drugstore soda fountain.

And the woman works fast. She’s already posted a fun tease for PA.

Really, I’m a little overwhelmed with the attention PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS is getting. Maybe I should fly up to Hayden Christensen’s farm up north and have a chat with him about how to deal with sudden fame. Oh, look. Here’s another stack of 1065 tax returns. Okay, that will do too.

I think I’m in love.

Yesterday, I made my usual visits to the gossip blogs and came across this.

“Douchebag.”
“What a douchebag.”
It feels good to say, “douchebag.” It’s got two different plosive sounds, the “D” and “B”, and nicely wedged between is a wonderful “sh” sound (technically known as a voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant, at the risk of coming off douchey) that, when preceded with “oooooh”, give your lips the sensation of sliding on a hardwood floor in a pair of woolen socks.

It was someone quoting John Mayer, on his dissection of that ever-useful, ever-in-vogue term after he learned by googling himself that he is considered a douchebag by many. I didn’t know anything about John Mayer, other than he dated Jessica Simpson for a while and he’s a weird-looking musician of some sort–the tragedy of our times is that all too easy a man becomes better known for whom he bangs than what he does–but after I read a hundred words of his writing my interest spiked higher than the price of milk.

I read the paragraph again, aloud, lolling like a pig in mud in the texture and weight and sound of his words, and shivered as I recited “the sensation of sliding on a hardwood floor in a pair of woolen socks.” And then I immediately went to read as much of his blog as I had time for.

I still haven’t tried his music, but what a gorgeous writing voice the man has.

If you are bored, or suffer from blog-itis as I do, here are links to a bunch of blog entries I have up at various places around romancelandia.

Old Dudes I’d b–date, I mean.

Turn of the Century means people bathed.

Please don’t read this if your name is Anne Stuart. (Ha, like Anne Stuart cares. But I’m still scared of her.)

I hate heart-warming unless it has Hayden Christensen in the shower.

In other news–though I could be eating those words in two weeks–I think DELICIOUS will turn out to be a superior book to PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS. Now everybody pray hard that I’m right.

A safe and fun New Year’s Eve to everyone. And a happy and healthy 2008 to all. Should be an interest year for me.