{"id":159,"date":"2008-07-26T16:27:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-26T22:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/2008\/07\/26\/would-you-buy-a-book-from-this-woman\/"},"modified":"2012-02-18T08:21:47","modified_gmt":"2012-02-18T14:21:47","slug":"would-you-buy-a-book-from-this-woman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/2008\/07\/26\/would-you-buy-a-book-from-this-woman\/","title":{"rendered":"Would You Buy a Book from This Woman?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of hosting <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bettiesharpe.com\/\">Bettie Sharpe<\/a> when she and her husband drove through Austin on their way to Dallas for a family reunion.<\/p>\n<p>It is always an interesting experience meeting an author in person.  I&#8217;m a <a href=\"http:\/\/dearauthor.com\/wordpress\/2008\/01\/18\/guest-review-ember-and-like-a-thief-by-bettie-sharpe\/\" class=\"broken_link\">huge fan<\/a> of Bettie&#8217;s, who writes spectacularly badass heroines before whom the likes of us lesser mortals could only cower in fearful admiration&#8211;and sometimes just plain fear.  If I&#8217;d only ever read Bettie&#8217;s fiction, my impression of her would be &#8220;awesome and badass.&#8221;  But I&#8217;d also been reading her blog, so while the awesome part remained, the badass part has been, bit by bit, revised.<\/p>\n<p>Well, she arrived in a cute little minivan&#8211;which held, among other things, a darling floral parasol and a large-brimmed straw hat pretty enough for the Ascot&#8211;and brought with her a polka-dot valise.  And badass-ery is deader than Caesar, after Brutus was through with him.<\/p>\n<p>(His Hawtness, looking over what I was writing, said, &#8220;Bettie?  Badass?  But she&#8217;s such a lady!&#8221;)  \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>So that made me think.  I&#8217;ll be meeting people at RWA.  RT is going to do a video interview with me in SF.  And I&#8217;ll be meeting even more people when I go on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.novelevents.com\/event_details.php?event_id=238\" class=\"broken_link\">Levy\/Meijer authors tour<\/a>.  What impressions will I shatter will I show up in person?<\/p>\n<p>My guess, sophistication.<\/p>\n<p>I like the idea of sophistication, of being devastatingly witty, and able to charm men and women alike with my worldly charisma.  You know, kinda like this woman,<\/p>\n<p><a onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_Pe1iAq-tH98\/SIuuI7p7QII\/AAAAAAAAAHQ\/IUZhYI_fi9c\/s1600-h\/Thomas_red_blog.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_Pe1iAq-tH98\/SIuuI7p7QII\/AAAAAAAAAHQ\/IUZhYI_fi9c\/s400\/Thomas_red_blog.jpg\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5227463260969320578\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><br \/>She looks very, very sophisticated.  She looks like she&#8217;d know what to do with a pound of Beluga caviar when she flies on a Gulfstream G550 to Davos.  Not sure that she necessarily looks like an author, but if someone tells me that she is one, I&#8217;d believe it.<\/p>\n<p>But I don&#8217;t know that I&#8217;d buy a book from <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">this<\/span> woman.<\/p>\n<p><a onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_Pe1iAq-tH98\/SIuzU9gsU-I\/AAAAAAAAAHY\/dLWrj3C7Njw\/s1600-h\/Thomas_blog.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_Pe1iAq-tH98\/SIuzU9gsU-I\/AAAAAAAAAHY\/dLWrj3C7Njw\/s400\/Thomas_blog.jpg\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5227468965184033762\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><br \/>In fact, you&#8217;d have a hard time convincing me I haven&#8217;t seen that girl waiting for the school bus.  She looks like she still needs to finish her trig homework before she can sneak out to meet her boyfriend.<\/p>\n<p>On top of not looking very sophisticated, I&#8217;m afraid I don&#8217;t sound very sophisticated either.  Bettie Sharpe had this idea that I had an &#8220;expat-in-a-smoky-Parisian-cafe&#8221; voice, until she heard my voice on the phone for the first time.  Then she turned to her husband and said that she&#8217;d bet I probably got whatever I wanted from people.<\/p>\n<p>That was such an intriguing opinion that after she left I taped myself saying &#8220;Hi, my name is Sherry Thomas.  I write historical romance.&#8221;  Perfectly serious, harmless words, right?  When I played back the tape, I sounded like an adolescent Minnie Mouse propositioning her sugar daddy.<\/p>\n<p>So&#8230;you have been warned.  Partially, that is.  You must still throw in some general silliness and empty-headedness and a bit of occasional lewdness.  And that would finally begin to approximate what I&#8217;m like in person.<\/p>\n<p>And it&#8217;s like people say, don&#8217;t judge a book by its author.  \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of hosting Bettie Sharpe when she and her husband drove through Austin on their way to Dallas for a family reunion. It is always an interesting experience meeting an author in person. I&#8217;m a huge fan of Bettie&#8217;s, who writes spectacularly badass heroines before whom the &#8230; <a title=\"Would You Buy a Book from This Woman?\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/2008\/07\/26\/would-you-buy-a-book-from-this-woman\/\" aria-label=\"More on Would You Buy a Book from This Woman?\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[48,17],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1341,"href":"https:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159\/revisions\/1341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}