Apr22

The TV Character Bloodbath: Not White? Not Male? Not Safe!

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Two weeks ago I was spitting nails about the horrible season ender of Sleepy Hollow. Yeah, yeah, spoiler alert. Everyone should know this by now: Abbie Mills, the main character, was killed off. You can read my reaction to it here—I can’t bear to go through it all again.

As is probably apparent in my previous blog post, I was livid at not only the actual choice to kill Abbie off, but also the sheer ineptitude with which it was done. As a writer, I boggled at the ham-fisted fashioning of the season finale (series finale? at this point I hope so)…actually, at the entire trajectory of the show after the creators left at the end of the first season.

I’m still pissed—yes, still! it was that poorly done!—but once I started thinking about the why of it all, my rage got even hotter. So here’s another blog post, rant No. 2. Buckle up, and don’t say I didn’t warn you. Read the rest of this entry →

Apr12

Trainwreck TV: The Untimely Demise of Sleepy Hollow; or, Who Wrote This Sh*t?

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I should have known something bad was going down with one of my favorite TV shows, Sleepy Hollow, when my literary agent sent me a tweet about the season finale. With three red angry faces in the tweet. Not a good sign.

Unfortunately, I can’t say I didn’t expect to be kicked around by the show. I’d been watching this season with shoulders tensed and eyes squinted, like a kid forced to share the back seat of the family car with a sibling prone to punching my arm at unexpected intervals. Sleepy Hollow had been punching the daylights out of my enjoyment of the series for the past two of its three seasons; why should it change its tune with the season 3 finale?

Sure enough, the last episode was far from pretty, culminating in (do I still have to say “spoiler alert”? okay: spoiler alert) the death of…oh, nobody special, just Abbie, the main character. That was several days ago, and the fandom hasn’t calmed down yet. Nor should it. Not only was it an untimely death, it was…hm, how to put this…a stupid, stupid move.

Why did it happen? The accusations are still flying: Read the rest of this entry →

Apr5

Happy Blogiversary, Hello Chick Lit!

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Yay! It’s Hello Chick Lit’s blogiversary month, and I’m part of the celebrations all week!

Today I have a guest post about…letters. The honest-to-post-office kind. When was the last time you received a handwritten letter in the mail? Or wrote one? I got one a few weeks ago, and it was a doozy.

So stop by Hello Chick Lit and check it out and, while you’re there, be sure to enter the contest to win digital copies of all three of my Marsden books! See you over there!

Mar29

Okay, Now What?

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Gather ’round, kids—I’m going to let you in on a secret. Okay, it’s not really a secret, because I’m not one to hide this sort of thing: On January 2 of this year, I turned 50.

I KNOW!! Shocked me too!

So I guess I’m an old lady according to some (like my 12-year-old son, who won’t get anywhere close to middle-aged himself if he doesn’t stop calling me that), although I don’t feel very old.

However, whether I feel 50 or half that, it’s still a milestone, so I thought I’d do a little soul searching, a little assessment, to figure out how I’ve been doing so far. What did I dream of doing when I was a kid? Did I achieve any of my goals? Or should I be downright ashamed of myself for squandering these fifty years (so far)?

(Psst…I did have a drink. Quite a few of them, in fact, over the years.)

So let’s check on Jayne’s Life So Far… Read the rest of this entry →

Feb24

In Which Jayne Gives the Hell Up

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Okay, you know what? I’ve got nothing today. No blog topic. No big idea. Nothing. I’m tired—exhausted, really.

r2d2
• From finishing the draft of my sixth romcom and consequently wrestling the manuscript to get the word count down to a respectable number that won’t make potential publishers faint dead away.

• From the winter blahs as we drag ourselves out of February and into March, knowing full well March in the Northeast US is always made up of thirty-one days that look remarkably, depressingly like February.

• From dieting to get rid of my holiday poundage. (Why do I do that to myself every year?) Read the rest of this entry →

Dec14

When Your Christmas Tree Is a Rat Bastard

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I never thought I’d say this in reference to a Christmas tree, but I did yesterday: “I’m scared.”

Yesterday was our annual trip to the Christmas tree farm near our house to cut down a tree. The place is called Stokoe’s, and it does a bang-up job, with food, activities, decorations, wreaths, petting zoo, tractor rides out to the fields…you name it. We’ve gone there for our tree every year for the past decade. We go there to get pumpkins, too. I love it so much I modeled Bowen Farms, hero Casey’s pumpkin patch/inn/conference center/etc., in my Marsden books, on it. I got to interview a member of the Stokoe family and everything!

This one might have been a little ambitious...

This one might have been a little ambitious…

Anyway, back to the tree. Clan Denker has a size problem. Namely, Casa de Denker has 11 ft. ceilings and a bay window in the living room, and the space must. be. filled. We tend to get monster trees—not just tall, but also fat. Every year, we seek out the biggest, gnarliest tree we can find and nearly kill ourselves cutting it down and getting it into the house.

But this is the first year the tree fought back. Read the rest of this entry →

Oct28

Pumpkin This

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Credit: MomminItUp.com

Credit: MomminItUp.com

I like pumpkin stuff.

Yeah, I said it. I’m so far from a basic bitch I don’t even own one pair of yoga pants, but I never turn down a good pumpkin spice latte if I can help it. What’s more, I’ll have a slice of pumpkin loaf or a pumpkin muffin with cream cheese frosting right along with that latte and not even bat an eyelash.

It goes deeper than that, however. I love sweater weather. I own, and frequently wear, many garments made of fleece. I fire up the woodstove way too soon. I put up “black” strings of lights for Halloween. I regularly devote hours upon hours to making my son’s costume fabulous (while he’s thinking it’ll be good enough to cut something out of cardboard). Read the rest of this entry →

Sep30

Rereads Are Good for the Soul

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You know how it is with us authors, always having to keep up with the latest in our chosen genre (in my case, it’s romance/romcoms/chick lit). Like that’s a chore or anything, right? I’m regularly up to my eyeballs in love stories with strong heroines and guaranteed HEAs, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. But there are other times when even this romcom author has to go just a little farther afield. It starts as a little niggling thought in the back of my head, and whether it’s triggered by a random thought or the time of year or something in my subconscious that completely escapes my notice, the result is the same: “Time for a reread.” Read the rest of this entry →

Sep12

Meet My Feline Overlord

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So the Happy Ever After blog at USAToday has this nifty little series going called “Authors and Their Pets.” I would have named it “Authors and Their Masters,” but hey, whatever we need to believe that lets us sleep at night, you know?

Anyway, I was honored to have the opportunity to talk about my feline overlord, Jasmine, this week. She’s one heck of a taskmaster, even though she’s an old lady (19). Plus I talk a little bit about Jordan, the main character of my latest romcom, Lucky for You (Marsden 3), who adopts stray cats…a little too zealously. Head on over to my little piece at USAToday‘s HEA to find out more!

Aug26

Parenting: Level – Top Secret

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My son is 11 years old, just a couple of months shy of 12 as I write this. In those 11-plus years, I have of course loved him with all my heart, as well as done my parental due diligence: fed him, clothed him, hugged and kissed him, dried his tears, caught his barf, wiped his butt. Took him to preschool where parent volunteering was required, and thus spent an inordinate amount of time wiping complete strangers’ kids’ butts. (If that isn’t dedication, I don’t know what is.) Read to him, then helped him learn to read. Took him to see Santa and the Easter Bunny. Assisted a couple of days a week in his elementary classes. Schlepped him to innumerable birthday parties and even hosted one, his seventh, at our house. (Once was quite enough, thank you. After that, Chuck E. Cheese was my homie.)

Of course, now that my son is closing in on the teen years, my job has changed somewhat. Once the driving force behind the Cub Scouts pack, moms like me are not quite as welcome in the Boy Scout troop. I now merely wave goodbye and remind him to take his phone as he leaves the house instead of driving him to his friends’ houses. I’m supposed to honor his request that I don’t embarrass him in front of other kids. (Yeah, like that’s going to happen while I have breath in my body.)

But there is one element of his preteen life that I must direct in order for my child to develop into any sort of well-rounded adult—Okay, wait. Let’s bring this in; we don’t want it getting out to just anybody. This is top-level, double-secret-probation type parenting here. Not the kind of thing you read about in parenting books. You ready? Read the rest of this entry →