Well, the Bo’sun left me in charge of hotties this week and as I don’t have her interviewing skills *ahem* I figured I would focus in on the theme of the day:  Dad.  So, I thought we could check in on some of our favorite celebrity daddies.

  Here’s Ben Cohen with his daughter.  I love chubby babies, don’t you?  What, that isn’t what you were looking at?

And here’s Jude Law with his kids.  It’s good to practice the basic safety rules, like holding hands when you cross the street.  Oh, that’s not what you noticed?  Truly, though, teaching safety starts at home, no matter how hot you are. 

  I hope these two are wearing sunscreen.  Did you know that more than 1 million Americans will be diagnosed with skin cancer this year?  Use your Banana Boat, people.  Hugh Jackman has decided to sport the beard as a UV blocking device.  Smart man.  What, you weren’t looking at the beard?

Patrick Dempsey’s twins are incredibly sweet, but I do hope that they don’t sleep in this fashion very often.  Though, my son had to sleep elevated for the first 8 months of his life (acid reflux), I can’t imagine it is comfortable.  You didn’t even notice there were babies in this picture, did you?  Seriously…. 

 And our crew’s favorite papa, the Captain, with his daughter Lily-Rose.  I am certain there is more than one wench on the boat who would play peak-a-boo with Captain Jack.  Though, I would advise against offering.  Our Hellion can be, well, a hellion when it comes to sharing her darling.

So, to all the hottie dads out there, including my favorite hubby, Happy Father’s Day!!

Kimberly Killion will be joining us on July 1st to hype up her debut, the historical novel, Her One Desire.  We have an escaped Scottish warrior, an executioner’s daughter out to clear her father’s name, and bad guys to make you bite your nails to the quick. We’ll be interviewing her and she’ll be letting us in on how it feels to finally be published!  Don’t miss it!

When I started reading romance some twenty-*cough* years ago, there was no hopping on the internet to see what was next from my favorite author.  No website where I could find a quick list of the author’s backlist or read about her life with her husband, three crazy kids and two rambunctious dogs.  At the most I had a picture inside the back cover and the words between the pages as my only link to the source of the wonderful stories.

Today is very different.  Now it’s unheard of for an author not to have her own website.  Even a blog or bulletin board is necessary, and perhaps the most important tool for an author.  You see, I’ve found countless new authors through these public forums and in many cases, I was more moved to buy their work simply from their personality and generosity than through the blurb for their book. 

There are authors who make you laugh, authors who inspire you with their real life story, and authors who are just so dang nice you can’t help but root for them.  Even if the Captain hadn’t raved about Leslie Langtry, reading her blog would have convinced me to buy her books.  She is sarcastic, witty and funny as Hell.

 There’s Anna Campbell who wrote for 27 years (which makes her 29!) before selling her first book and what a book that was.  She’s now a double RITA nominee for her first two novels and I can think of no one more deserving of the honor.  So glad I’ll get to be there to cheer her on at the awards ceremony.  If you’re reading this Anna, I promise we won’t embarrass you TOO much.

Then there’s Toni Blake.  She’s one of those authors that is just so sweet and generous and always comes across as down to earth be it on blogs, bulletin boards or in email.  Even if you don’t like your romance hot enough to melt your bookmark, you want to buy her books just to support her.

But there can be a negative to all this.  You see, you can lose a reader just as quickly as you can gain ten.  I’ve had authors completely ignore me in a blog conversation and that’s enough for me not to buy or read their books.  I’ve seen an author leave a comment that seemed insulting or somehow condescending.  This is a deal breaker for me as well.

Anyone who has been communicating electronically for any period of time knows it’s a tricky business.  Tone doesn’t always convey in a few quick words typed on a screen.  The joke can be lost, the sarcasm not clear, or the response taken completely wrong.  It’s one thing when it’s two friends talking and it can eventually be cleared up.  It’s totally different when you’re an author and your virtual words mean just as much as the words you put in your books.

For you readers, do you get upset if your favorite author doesn’t have a website or doesn’t update their site very often?  Have you found authors in cyberspace you might not have picked up before?  Have you been turned off by an author based on something they did or didn’t do on a forum? (No names, please!)

For you as yet unpublished authors, do you have an internet presence (wenches – here’s your chance to promote your other web activities), are you counting on a web presence helping you sell both to an agent or editor and eventually to readers?  Published authors, what role does the internet play in your career and do you ever long for the days when all you had to do was write the books, make a couple of appearances and the occasional acceptance speech?

Disclaimer: There are countless authors I could have used in this blog including but not limited to the Original Squawkers (who gave us all the play book for this group blog thingy), the Romance Banditas, The Goddesses, and many more.  Special honorable mention goes out to Eloisa James who is solely responsible for getting me into this whole mess. *g*

When we were designing this new ship, one of the things we insisted upon was good plumbing.  I realize running water on a pirate ship probably sounds rather odd, be we’re very progressive pirates.  And the water is right there.  A very high-tech filtering system (we could tell you how it works if we knew but we don’t so we can’t) and an even higher-tech water heater (again who knows how this works) combine to provide the Romance Writers Revenge with working showers, a hot tub and a sauna.  All essential for writing pirates to stay motivated.

But having plumbing means we needed someone to take care of the new systems.  Regular tests, filter changes and some other, high-tech, tool requiring tasks have to be done.  And to be honest, when you have a plumber that looks like this, you don’t really mind those plumber pants.

This is Pete the Pirate Plumber.  He’s very thorough.  And he’s such a giver, he doesn’t mind letting us test the showers with him.  And he doesn’t ask questions when our shower head massagers have to be replaced monthly.

Thanks to everyone who came by last week to visit with Colette Gale. This week, we have another great author on the schedule.  Wednesday, May 14, the crew welcomes Harlequin Presents/Mills & Boon author Annie West to take the helm and sail us into Billionaire, Greek Tycoon, and Sheikh infested waters.  Let me tell you, if you’re looking for some major Alpha males, Annie writes them.  So mark your calendar now.

And don’t forget next week we bring back one of our favorite guest wenches, Santa O’Byrne on Friday, May 23.  Now, everybody in, the hot tub is open for business!  Oh, and Pete is already in checking the water temp.

Hey, you don’t have to knock me down, you trampy lushes…..

This ship is a mess.  What with all us Pirates jetting off to conferences and booksignings, workshops and historical sites.  We’ve just been to dang busy to polish the hoistings or dry clean the sails or swab the decks.  I really have no idea if those are things you do on a ship (except that swabbing thing) but you get my point.  We need a maid. 

But with this crew, I knew I couldn’t hire just any maid.  A maid for this ship has to be special.  Highly qualified.  In other words…..HOT.  And I do believe I found the perfect applicant.

This is Christian the Cleaning Boy.  I realize boy might not be the appropriate term, but he doesn’t seem to mind what I call him as long as I call it out loud and clear.  I never thought of myself as a screamer but let me tell you…..errrr…….nevermind.

Don’t forget this Tuesday the RWR crew is proud and excited to welcome Colette Gale to the ship.  Ms. Gale is the Erotica author of the much acclaimed, Unmasqued, a sensual and sexy new take on The Phantom of the Opera.  Her latest is Master, a powerful retelling of the story of The Count of Monte Cristo.  We hope you’ll come by and help us give Ms. Gale a warm Pirate welcome!

Now, anybody else suddenly feeling the urge to polish a knob?

I had a very schizophrenic reaction to being asked to blog with the pirates today.  Terri responded to one of my comments hinting that she may ask me to guest blog someday and then Hellion chimed in saying “Yeah, Irish should guest blog”.  I read their posts and thought… Yea, this is cool.  The cool kids want me to come out and play with them.  This is so awesome.  Sure I can blog.  This’ll be fun!  So I posted that sure I’d love to come be a guest blogger. 

The day wound down, I scrolled back over the posts for the day and thought… Holy #$%&, what the hell did I agree to?!  I don’t blog.  That’s not who I am.   I have nothing interesting to say.  I read.  I comment.  Every once in a while I say something semi-noteworthy.  I’m not a blogger.  I’m a poster.  Actually, I’m a weenie lurker most of the time.  When I get my courage up I post (and let’s face it - how much courage do you really need to anonymously state your opinion while sitting comfortably at your desk in your home, who knows where, wearing bunny slippers and drinking tea?).

Then a thought hit me…  I can be a blogger.  Why not?!  There was a time I didn’t think I could ever leave home, but I did.  I moved 2,000 miles away and lived in a different city, living with people I’d never met before, doing a job I knew nothing about and survived a riot and an earthquake.  There was a time I didn’t think I could be in a healthy relationship and I’m a happily married woman now.  There was a time I didn’t think I had what it took to be a mother and I’m a mother of two happy, fairly healthy, semi-intelligent children seemingly headed for college and not the State Penn. 

There was a time I didn’t think I could write anything beyond a grocery list and … you guessed it… I’m writing.  Nothing monumental, but the snippets I have are coherent and make sense.   My 43 year old self is capable of so much more than my 18 year old self because I’ve changed.  I’m not the same person I was then, but every now and then, the insecurities and doubts surface.  So much of who we are and what we think we can accomplish is formed in our childhood and stays with us in some form for most of our life.

I grew up the sixth child of seven in an Irish Catholic middle class family.  My therapist could tell you with very impressive words and lots of examples why I am the way I am, or to be more accurate, why I was the way I was.  But basically the upshot is that I have baggage.  Most of us have baggage and most of it we accumulated between birth and 18 years of age.  Good or bad, the people and experiences in our lives form us.  We all grow up with a perception of who we are. 

We’re all familiar with the typical stereotypes – jock, cheerleader, druggie, geek, the quiet one, the outgoing one, the nerd, the brain (and just so you all know I’m not completely out of the loop, we now have the goth girl and the skateboarders).  In families it can be the caretaker, the screw-up, the controller, the baby, the negotiator, the black sheep, and my personal favorite – the enabler.  That last one actually sounds like a super hero, doesn’t it?  Anyway, you get the idea.  Whether it’s an image given to us or one earned, it defines us until we decide to be more than the labels put upon us. 

I know I could pull a couple of the descriptions from above and slap them right on my forehead.  The funny thing is that some of them applied to me once and no longer do and vice versa.  I could have stayed the way I was and let my baggage define me, but chose instead to travel a different path.  Even with that being said, so many times when asked if I’m capable of a certain task I don’t look at my confident 43-year-old-woman self, I look at my insecure 18-year-old-girl self, and respond accordingly.  A more accurate description would be I’m a little bit of both and depending on the day one is stronger than the other.  Today I’m the happy, well adjusted wife, mother, writing, BLOGGING woman.  There was a time none of that description seemed possible.

My husband once told me a story about a classmate of his that has always stuck with me.  This guy was from a pretty messed up family and acted out a lot.  He ditched school, vandalized things, but his favorite thing to do was set things on fire.  When he was 17 his family moved out west.  He came back to his 10 year high school reunion a changed man.  He, basically, grew up.  He’d identified the problems in his life and fixed them.  Wore a suit, had a steady lucrative job and couldn’t wait to come back and catch up with all his old friends. 

Except no one saw the grown up man, all they saw was the kid who liked to set things on fire.  By the end of the evening he was pretty weary of everyone’s attempt to put that old label back on him.  He hasn’t been back since and I’m guessing he won’t be.   I went to my grammar school reunion about ten years ago and I had the strangest reaction to the greeting “Wow, you haven’t changed a bit!”  I felt like giving a PowerPoint presentation on how much and in which ways I’ve changed since they saw me last.

It’s corny and simplistic in a sense, but I truly and with all my heart believe one of life’s greatest gifts is our ability to change.  Our past does not have to define who we are or where we’re going.  And nothing touches or moves me more than a novel that drives that point home.  One of the things I love most about the romances I read (apart from the obligatory HEA) is that the redemption or growth of the hero or heroine plays such a huge part in so many of my favorites.   It does something wonderful to the human spirit to read about someone just like yourself, who isn’t perfect, or is as far from perfect as you can get, that learns and grows and ends up with their own HEA.

So, tell me how you’ve morphed into the person you are today.  Are you the same person you were in your teens, twenties, thirties?  Do you like where you are in life more than where you’ve been?  Do we have any head cheerleader/valedictorians who dated the football quarterback out there?  What book contains your favorite redemption/metamorphosis storyline or character?  What type of character do you think is harder to write - a flawed character or a perfect, larger than life character?

I watched it all float in front of my eyes. Memories not so distant and years ago, reminding me of where I’d been and where I was yet to go. Stuck with you just like a shadow, following you wherever you may roam. I couldn’t get away. I couldn’t run fast enough. Hide away until they floated by. I couldn’t deny them. No matter how far I tried to shove them down in that deep dark corner of my heart, they’re always lurking. Haunting you like your long lost conscience. Whispering. Taunting. Making you out of your mind as you try to lie down to sleep. There was no rest to be found. Closure was something of a dream- an afterthought, something I wanted to obtain but never found a way.

There is no denying it. Memories are your own. You can’t run. You have to face them. Eventually.

There’s nothing like reminiscing about days passed. I mean, memories are what keep you going when you’re stuck in a rut. They make you laugh. They make you cry. They bring back feelings you wish you could forget and the emotions you wished you still had. There is something about memories that if you didn’t have them, you’d be empty inside even when you think you’d be better off.

I’m sure this comes as no surprise to most of you, that I wasn’t always a pirate. Being a pirate is just something that happens. I didn’t fall off the turnip truck as one. I didn’t thumb my way across the world. I didn’t swim across the seven seas and come out of the water all Bond girl-ish with perfect hair and in a white swimsuit with no nipples showing. (Because let’s face it wenches and pirates, you wear white in the water and it turns see-through. And yes I know this to be a fact.) It’s all the experiences along the way that turn you into a pirate. A pirate of your own life.

I use memories in my writing. Sometimes it’s just a glimmer of things that have happened, conversations gone haywire, situations gone bad. Fun times. Crazy times. Use rough outlines of my favorite girlfriends for secondary characters. For me, it makes it fun to write. Besides, who hasn’t thought about the time someone burned you and you couldn’t think of something to say until two days after? It’s all about rewriting it to get your revenge. It’s about reliving a dream you always wanted to share. A life you always wanted but could never have. Taking the chances through a character and forgoing the consequences. Seeing how much they can take before they break. Or you. Depends on the memory.

Memory writing can be tough. It can also be like therapy. We’ve talked about that on the ship before so I’m not going into it again. A good example of writing from memories can be writing high school scenes with your characters. Everyone has a high school memory they’d like to tweak. Rewrite. Fix for the better. But for me, it’s like writing sex. Sex is hard to write. Hands down. I can write torture. I can write blood dripping from the edge of a bathtub. I can write evil bad guys- murder in their eyes, cruel smiles twisted on their lips, without a problem. But writing a sex scene is sheer agony. I spend most of my time while writing a sex scene running through my head (this goes here, that goes there, insert here, do this, touch that) it’s completely nerve wracking. I suppose for me, it’s like that first time together. It’s supposed to be this beautiful moment, and really it ends up being this massive clus– *ahem* mess where you bump heads right as your about to have that sweet moment. It ruins it.

I have no problem with people reading what I write. No. I couldn’t care less if someone reads a sex scene I wrote where it’s reverse cowgirl and she’s waving the cowboy hat in the air like she’s in the rodeo. It’s the intimacy of the scene between me and my reader. It’s like being a voyeur in my own world. Mostly because you write what you know. So when I write sex, it feels like I’m spilling the dirty details of my bedroom romps. I’m not… really. To me, writing certain things reminds me of memories whether they are or not. And sex happens to be one of those memory things that no matter how hard you try to stray from experience, you end up writing exactly how it goes in your mind. Except you make it a little more… perfect.

So I can’t be the only one. Spill it pirates and wenches. Have you ever had a memory that you put into book form? For readers, have you ever read a book that mirrored something that happened in your life or something like it? Care to share?