Jane's Blog - Page 69 of 93 - Jane Porter | New York Times & USA Today Bestselling Author

Flirting Movie’s Hunky Hero

March 19, 2008 by Jane · View all 15 comments

We have a Kai.

Robert Buckley as Kai in Flirting with Forty Last Friday Surfer Ty and I met Lucy Mukerjee, one of the Flirting with Forty film producers, and her partner Shelley in West Hollywood for lunch at the Mondrian Hotel, home of the famous Sky Bar, a cool celeb and wanna-be hang out. Lucy arrived a few minutes late as she’d been on the phone with Sony who is casting the movie and they had news that the role of Kai has been finalized. The actor’s name is Robert Buckley and he’s quite the young hottie on t.v. at the moment, playing Nico’s love interest on Lipstick Jungle.

Now I haven’t watched Lipstick Jungle yet (I did read the book and I loved it…it’s by far my favorite Candace Bushnell novel) but apparently my boys saw a snippet at their dad’s and both immediately knew who I was talking about when I said, “he’s this young guy on Lipstick Jungle”. My 12 year old said, “Oh yeah, he’s probably the one that keeps taking his shirt off.”

It’s funny how kids are so much more aware of who is up and coming on t.v. Jake thinks it’s great that I have a up-and-coming star matched with Heather Locklear. This way I’ll have viewers my age tune in to see Heather, and younger viewers will tune in to watch Robert Buckley walk around shirtless in board shorts and hopefully that will constitute a Lifetime hit.

Speaking of Heather, yesterday when I opened my newest issue of People, there was a half page article about Heather and the recent 411 crisis at her house, and towards the end of the piece it mentioned that Heather will soon be filming Flirting with 40.

It’s kind of cool and odd at the same time to see the movie mentioned in People. It’s cool because it’s People, but it’s odd because it’s not really mine anymore. It’s not my book we’re talking about now, but a movie adaptation that makes a u-turn away from the story I wrote and has taken on a life of its own.

Maybe that’s the cool but odd feeling I get in my stomach. I started with the idea but someone else is finishing it.

I guess my baby’s grown up.

Flirting with Forty in People Magazine

Weekend in LA

March 13, 2008 by Jane · View all 10 comments

I’m at the airport waiting for my flight to LA after a particularly stressful few days trying to get ready for Megan’s wedding.

That’s right. I’m a guest at Megan Crane’s Dana Point wedding this weekend and I’m stressed. Pitiful, isn’t it?

First, I haven’t attended a big fancy first wedding in a long time. I do divorces now, and those are more like wakes. Definitely not celebratory in my crowd. Now I know there must be happy divorcees somewhere, but they aren’t my friends. My friends don’t trade up. If the marriage ends, they’re definitely worse off financially and they’ve got the kids and jobs to juggle, too.

But this blog isn’t about divorce, it’s about a beautiful Orange County celebration kicking off with a Friday night BBQ on the beach, a Saturday night wedding with reception in the ballroom, and then a Sunday morning brunch. So I do need clothes, and not Hawaii surfer girl clothes, and not booktour clothes (after all, this is Megan’s wedding and her soon-to-be-groom is an artist) but pretty and nice clothes, and I have those, too, but in the Seattle style which is heavy and dark, and too heavy and dark for ocean front mid-March.

So I went shopping. Twice. A light new coat to wear over my cocktail dress Saturday night in the event that the ceremony is outside (they’re reporting scattered showers and 58 degree high on Saturday), and then a proper purse, not a briefcase or battered bag the way I do. That also meant shoes that aren’t Reef flip flops to go with the dress, and after buying heels, nice heels from Nordstroms, my shoes were nicer than my dress and I thought maybe I need a new dress, too.

Once the wedding outfit was finally sorted out, I began to doubt my brunch outfit for Sunday. What if my dress was too bare? What if the brunch place is more casual? What if everyone is in fun slacks and cute little skirts and I’m wearing a matronly dress?

Maybe this is why I don’t get invited more places. Maybe everyone knows I’m a tad neurotic and spend four days packing for a three day event.

Just when I thought I was finally done, just when I thought it was safe to get a proper blow out so my hair will at least look styling, I realized I had nothing to wear to lunch with Lucy Mukerjee Friday in Hollywood. We are meeting at the Mondarin Hotel, too, home of the famous celebrity studded Sky Bar, to talk about the Flirting with Forty movie as well as the options on Odd Mom Out and Mrs. Perfect. I was at a loss all over again. What should I wear to a lunch in Hollywood? What would make me look slim and smart and not Seattle but a little LA?

This morning I finally gave up realizing I’ve read far too many People Magazines’ style columns. I’m a writer and a mom, not a celebrity. I don’t have to look like a celebrity. I don’t have to do anything but be there for Megan this weekend.

With my blown out hair.

Cool Thoughts

March 12, 2008 by Jane · View all 3 comments

I think I’ve shared this site before, I have to share it again. Talent Development Resources is such an incredible place for writers, creative thinkers, and curious, positive people. It’s probably my favorite place on the web.

In one of the current articles, Embracing Our Positive Abnormality, (of course that would appeal to me!!), there’s a couple paragraphs I have to include here:

Psychologist Timothy So notes in his article Positive Abnormality that “many great names in history, such as Benjamin Franklin, Ludwig van Beethoven, Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo Galilei, George Bernard Shaw, Winston Churchill, and still many others, all recognized their own strength and interests, believed they are unique and enjoyed being unique.”

He adds that they “put extra efforts to make their dreams come true, to impact society positively. They are as ordinary as any Tom, Dick, and Harry in many ways. The only way they are different from others is that they believe that they are unique and daring enough to stand out from the crowd, think outside the box, and choose to go on a path that those with a self-limitation are afraid to choose.

I love that. I love the encouragement to be great, to stand out from the crowd, to embrace that which is different. I’ve always believed that our happiness comes from being unique and not conforming. We writers, and we women, don’t have to fit in to any mold of box. We don’t have to please. We just have to be ourselves.

So be yourself. And I’ll be myself. And I know it will make the world a better place.

Launch Poll

March 10, 2008 by Jane · View all 15 comments

I need some advice, especially from those of you who live in the Greater Seattle area and get the million postcards and invites to my different events.

Here’s the question: Should I have a book release party after the Bellevue Barnes & Noble event for Mrs. Perfect? Or have I become excessively annoying? I feel excessively annoying.

The facts: It looks like the Mrs Perfect book launch at Barnes & Noble has been moved from Monday the 5th to Tuesday, May 6th, because Monday is Cinco de Mayo and according to bookstore data, Monday nights can be tricky for drawing a crowd.

The worry: Say we’re now on for Tuesday. Do I do the party? Do you think I need a after party? I’ve done them at Ooba’s for every 5 Spot book but am wondering if doing a second party in one year (since Odd Mom Out was just in late Sept) is too much, or if the women here in Bellevue like the parties?

The idea: If I did a party I was thinking it’d be a fun Hollywood theme with chocolate-tinis and yummy little desserts to celebrate the Flirting movie now being made (and just because I look Hollywood theme parties because I love movies and the idea of Hollywood). I could go to Shindig.com and order cool film cut outs and cute little cocktail napkins (I so love to order party essentials) and make it fabulous, darling.

The decision: Would those of you in the area want to come? Or do you think I take a hiatus until the July ’09 book comes out. Or should we just go for it and figure whoever comes, comes, and not worry about numbers…?

The truth: You see, for all my bravery, I get nervous about an empty audience and a restaurant full of cocktails and nibbles and no bodies.

I honestly don’t know what to do, and if my friend Lisa Johnson will scream if I go back to her and say, hey Lisa, I’ve got another book coming out in less than two months. Want to work really hard, for little pay, to host a party where I can be the star? (And in real life she’d probably be cool, but in my head she’d be screaming, No, no, no, you ungrateful wretch, no.)

The need: Input so I can make a less neurotic decision. So advise me! Be my guru! Make up my mind!

Prayers

March 7, 2008 by Jane · View all 12 comments

Two days after arriving in Hawaii, three days after learning the in-vitro didn’t work, I got whacked by something pretty brutal. That something had the power to reach into my chest and rip my heart right out. For days I felt like a vampire from a Feehan or Ward novel.

For ten days I struggled. I hurt. I woke up in the middle of the night and stared at the ceiling. I tried to sleep but woke up before dawn and couldn’t sleep again. I dragged myself through the day, trying to function, forcing myself to write even as my heart swung this way, slammed by shock, and then pounded that way by fear, until all I was doing was swinging wildly in the wind. Thank God I managed to keep writing. Thank God this week I wrote a couple of chapters even though I couldn’t eat or sleep. The writing took my mind off things, including the crazy whatever-was-happening-in-my-heart.

In the event you don’t know, I’m a chick with some serious faith, not the faith of ‘oh dear God, let me find a parking spot’, but the kind of faith that believes we can move mountains, that miracles are always possible, that all things come together for good. I believe love conquers fear, hands down.

And so this week I prayed. I prayed as my teeth chattered. I prayed as I drove. I prayed as I set up my little office at Tully’s with my alphasmart and my music and my folders of research. I prayed that love wins. I believe that love wins. I believe that fear can kill love if you let it. But love, freed, love, empowered, trumps all. I prayed for change. I prayed for calm. I prayed to let everything go–all fear, all doubt, all sadness, all pain–so that I could hold on to the one thing that truly mattered. Love.

Yes, I talk to God, and sometimes I stop talking long enough that God might be able to get a word in edgewise. Today He got a word in edgewise. Today, finally, the peace came. The heart stopped its crazy hot-heart-on-fire-dance. My stomach calmed. I might even be able to eat something more than little bits of crackers.

I don’t know why things happen the way they do. But they do. And we can be okay if we just believe.

Love, love, love.

All we need is love.

From The Bookshelf

March 4, 2008 by Jane · View all 7 comments

I read a couple books while in Hawaii and I read them slowly. The first was Twilight by Stephanie Meyers, a NY Times bestseller for the young adult market, but a book so well written it had my friend Megan Crane raving about the series while I was in LA on my Odd Mom Out book tour.

My new nanny (yes, I finally have one and her name is Summer and she’s wonderful) loaned me her copy for my Hawaii trip and it took me a few pages to get into it but once I hit chapter 2, I was hooked. Twilight is set here in the Pacific Northwest in the Olympic National Forest with its pools of dense mossy trees and endless rain–a place I love, not just vampires–and I can’t wait to read the second book in the series but won’t let myself until I get some writing done.

The second book I read was Seeing Me Naked by Liza Palmer, a fellow 5 Spot author and friend so talented it makes my teeth ache. I love the way she writes. Liza is so smart and this new book, her second book, hooked me right from the beginning. I wouldn’t call Seeing Me Naked chick lit. The texture of it is richer, thicker, the prose crisp and sharp. It’s just fabulous fiction.

The third book I started, and continue to read, is Eat, Pray, Love, the one Oprah made her book pick in October while I was in the middle of my California book tour and saw in the book stores in enormous piles. I didn’t want to read it because I was jealous. Eat, Pray, Love became an instant bestseller and every store had fifty, sixty copies on the front table while some stores had only four or five of mine. But that was months ago and the Hawaii Costco had copies of Eat, Pray, Love for sale so I bought one and am loving the book. It’s one to read slowly, one to think about carefully and it’s good. It’s a perfect read for where I am right now.

I’ve more books stacked next to my bed and filling the bookshelf, but won’t start them, not until I get some hardcore writing done, but I am writing again. And it feels surprisingly good.

It’s the kind of writing where I just relax into it. Where words come and they’re neither awful or wonderful, just words that create the foundation of the new story. I’m discovering my characters. Fleshing out plot. Learning things I didn’t know. I love this part of the writing. It’s quiet and smooth and seductive. The hard writing will come later when I cobble 350+ pages of scenes together, creating something taut and interesting from weeks of free writing, and junking fifty to one hundred pages and writing two hundred new ones instead.

But that’s later, not now, and right now I’m happy to be writing. I’m looking forward to writing every day. It’s probably the best thing I could do for myself right now besides exercise.

And I’m doing that, too. But that hurts a lot more.

Small Pleasures

February 29, 2008 by Jane · View all 14 comments

Joe has the boys for the weekend so I woke up to a quiet house and this morning it was nice. I’m still jet-lagged from Hawaii time and sorting out yesterday morning’s mayhem.

Yesterday morning as I hustled my 12 year old out the door to drive him to school in my pjs, I discovered the garage door was broken and I wouldn’t be able to get my car out, hence no transportation for him. Panicked he dashed through the house and out the front door to try to find a ride to school. I went into the house to call a garage door repair man then remembered that Abi was still in the car. I retreated to the garage to haul our bulldog out, but she wouldn’t budge. She wanted her morning car ride (its her routine, she’s quite serious about it, as though its her morning cup of coffee) so I left her there and headed back to the house only to find I was locked out.

Crawling beneath the broken garage door I discovered every door was locked and window locked and cell phone and house phone and keys inside. Along with shoes, clothes, coat. In my pajamas I flagged down a neighbor I’ve never really spoken with and asked to use their cell phone. I made one call–to my ex-husband and left him a voice message asking him to call our babysitter as she had a key to the house and I didn’t know her number by heart.

I waited an hour outside. No one appeared. I went to other neighbor’s houses and finally found one home. They let me call for a locksmith. Locksmith arrived an hour later. Couldn’t get me in the house without drilling through the doorknob. Fortunately replaced doorknob. Finally was in house. And you know, I was happy. Now all I needed was the garage repairman.

Today is easier. I’ve already been to Tully’s with my bulldog for a morning coffee and I’m back at my desk to write. This morning the air is soft, making one think of early Spring and pink-tinted mornings. I love the way Summer burns into Fall and how each day gets cooler and crisper, but the warming of Spring is even better. It’s so surprising after all the cold and rain and snow. It’s hopeful and encouraging, a reward for the months of dark mornings and short days.

Despite my last two tattered and bruised blogs, I am grateful for many many things, and at the very top of my list is Friends. I am lucky. Blessed. I am surrounded by good friends and great people. A couple of years ago I might have said that I don’t deserve such good friends, but that’s silly. Of course I deserve them, and my friends deserve great friends, too. We should all be surrounded by great people. Money doesn’t make life interesting and rich. People do.

I am grateful for the stack of books always next to my bed, and the piles of magazines that are always waiting to be read. I am painfully in love with my boys–all three of them, big and small, even when they are good and bad and threaten to break my heart.

I am grateful readers like my stories. I am grateful my author friends who have had a chance to read Mrs. Perfect love the new book. I am grateful I have an agent and an editor willing to go to bat for me to make sure we are publishing the best possible book in the best possible format for my readers.

I am grateful I can write, even on the days when the writing doesn’t flow and the words stumble onto the page all herky jerky like pimply 7th grade boys at a middle school dance. There’s always hope for herky jerky words, just as there’s hope for those not-quite-men-boys.

I am grateful to have won and lost, succeeded and failed, because otherwise, how would I ever know where to aim my arrow?

I am grateful for all the small pleasures and big pleasures, but mostly the small pleasures because those can be found anywhere, anytime, even on the short dark days when all it seems to do is rain.

White Water

February 27, 2008 by Jane · View all 10 comments

I’m not a kick ass surfer. In fact, on this trip out to Hawaii I couldn’t seem to stand on a wave. I spent all my time in the water fighting white water.

I did everything I knew how–looked for a channel, waited for a calm between sets, sat back on my board, you name it. But the big waves, the relentless sets, and the endless white churny water grabbed my board and me and tossed us both around.

I haven’t really tried to surf in a long time. For one, I had a year long shoulder injury that has (finally!) healed. And for another, working on getting pregnant meant lots and lots of drugs and lots and lots of gentle activity resulting in a rounder, less fit Jane.

The problem with a less fit Jane is that my mind seems to have gone soft, too.

In Waikiki I took a look at those big waves arching high in front of me, and I just wanted to run. Or paddle. Away, far away. Instead I kept getting stuck in the impact zone and spent whatever time I had on the outside, underneath, board flipping, flying, yanking my leg, dragging me down.

This was not the easiest week in Hawaii and the white water and my inability to catch any waves seem to be a pretty good metaphor for what’s happening personally, physically, professionally. Just when I thought I couldn’t feel more beaten, I got a call this morning from New York and apparently I’ve ‘done it’ again. Stepped on more toes. Failed to properly communicate. Upset folks in the Timbuktu department. And not being fit, mentally tough Jane, I just started crying. “I’ve done my best,” I said. “I’ve given you everything. I don’t know how to be less, or do anything different.”

By the time I hung up, it was time to go to the airport and I felt like I’d been smashed by yet another big set of Hawaii waves.

Out in the ocean, when it’s big, Surfer Ty tells me to paddle my hardest. Charge it, he tells me, don’t give up.

Damn. He makes it sound–and look–easy. Of course he can paddle through huge waves. He has mile wide shoulders and seize-the-balls confidence. I don’t. No, I just have heart. A lot of heart. But I’m learning there are times when heart isn’t enough.

Maybe it’s good I’m going home. I’ll stop paddling for awhile. Stop trying so hard. Maybe just being quiet little writer girl is what I need now.

The Longest Day

February 16, 2008 by Jane · View all 16 comments

I had said I wouldn’t write anything more about doctors and shots until I had something definite to say, and I’d meant that in a definitely positive sort of way, but hey, things change.

The long and short of it: the in-vitro didn’t work.

I took the blood test this morning at 9:15 am and the nurses said the lab guy came in at 11 am and it would take an hour or so so they’d call me as soon as they knew.

I was nervous and wanted to take my mind off the wait, especially as my boys flew out this morning to Hawaii without me so I went and got a pedicure to help pass the time. I was done before noon, and drove around Bellevue for a half hour thinking the call could come anytime soon. Then I went to Barnes & Noble and studied the magazine racks, along with home design magazines, and then the baby magazines like Fit Pregnancy but then I panicked that I’d get ‘the call’ in the magazine aisle, and returned to my car, cell phone cradled in my hand.

I drove like that home, cell phone in hand, in the event the call came. I was at home by one and still no call. I made myself lie down, put hands on belly, envisioned baby, as hell, I was pretty damn sure there was a baby in there.

I dozed off, woke up at the phone ringing but it was my son Jake calling to say they’d landed in Honolulu. I looked at the clock. 1:28 pm.

I ate cereal (Special K with Strawberries), flipped through the new Vanity Fair and its the Hollywood issue, wondered if I should pack–just in case–, decided against it, tried to lay back down, ended up pacing, ended up at 2:00 pm driving to the drug store to buy a home pregnancy test.

Didn’t take the test right away because blood test at this point is the right test.

Called the doctor’s office but no one answered.

It’s 2:44 pm. I feel sick waiting. I just need to know. I just need to know I’m pregnant.

Start to pack. Take the home test. Home test says I’m not pregnant but tell myself it could be wrong. It could be wrong. It’s only right 58% of the time this early on.

Nearly three thirty, the phone finally rings. Anita the nurse does it quick, just like she administers the shots. “Jane, I don’t have good news.”

And that’s it.

I’m jumping on a plane and going to Hawaii.

Home Wrecker

February 11, 2008 by Jane · View all 14 comments

First of all, the title home wrecker does not apply to my guest author over at my bulletin board this week. Jenny Gardnier is not a home wrecker. She’s a very respectable, very pretty and likable woman who writes incredibly funny books like her just released bestseller, Sleeping with Ward Cleaver, which is doing wonderful things over at the Barnes & Noble bestseller list.

Do visit her over at my board, (you have to know how to get to my bulletin board by now…)and not just because I like her, but because this is my very own sweeps week! That’s right, hanging out on my b-board this week means you’ll have lots of chances to win prizes. Fabulous prizes. Why? 1) Jenny’s joining us 2) You know I love February 3) You know I think Valentine’s Day should be an entire week long not just a day 4) And I’m about to turn a year older but MySpace still thinks I’m 39 which is cool. Winners will be drawn every day so come play.

And now that I’ve tackled the sweet stuff, let me give you the dirt.

I am the home wrecker.

Seriously. I broke up a marriage. Well, I didn’t, but the author Jane Porter did with her books.

This is a true story and it happened to some one I know. Or to the brother of someone I know.

I will make this short because its a tawdry tale. But this man we know told Surfer Ty his brother’s wife just left him. Apparently the wife in question changed after she started reading these romance novels. It seems the books gave this wife ideas and she saved all the books by this one romance author (the author’s name was Jane Porter) and then one day she just up and left. She ran away with the plumber. And it’s all my fault.

This incident troubles me at a number of levels because my books are about love and happiness, not about destroying marriages and lives. But also, and this is a small but important point, my romance novels featured Greeks, sheikhs, Italians…but alas, never a plumber. Not even a Latin Lover plumber.

Not that a Latin Lover plumber wouldn’t be great in bed.