#navbar-iframe { display: none !important;} The Naked Page: April 2005

The Naked Page

Author Jamie Sobrato's Diary

4.29.2005

Oh Constantine!

Somehow, through weeks and weeks of watching American Idol, I never noticed that Constantine Maroulis would be a perfect cover model for my upcoming July book, Sexy All Over (same one I mentioned yesterday that has been cursed with perm guy on the cover). Until yesterday, while I was moping over the stupid voting results Wednesday night.

He's got the scruffy, unshaven look, the shoulder-length brown hair, the smoldering brown eyes, the tall, lean build. And now that he's been so unjustly voted off American Idol, I just want to let him know, if he's out there reading this, that he could have a promising future as a romance novel cover model. Maybe someday when I'm a bestseller and my books are being reprinted, I can demand a new cover with him on it.

Well, actually, I think he has an even more promising career as a musician, and I hope he goes on to become a huge star. Screw AI. Screw dumb American voters who for reasons I cannot begin to fathom, are keeping in the badly dressed, bad-taste-in-music Anthony and the sluglike, expressionless, personality-impaired Scott.

Constantine, you rock. But even if you didn't, you smolder so well, who the heck cares about the music?

4.28.2005

The Next Big Thing: Guys with Perms

I'm usually a pretty laid-back girl about things I have no control over. Like cover art, for instance. Most readers don't realize that authors have little control over how our books look. We fill out a cover art questionaire, and months later we get a cover that may or may not look anything like we'd hoped it would.

I've been lucky with the covers I've gotten before. No one's had three arms, or a misplaced breast, or body parts arranged in impossible positions, so I've just smiled and caressed all my books (perhaps occasionally stripped naked and wallowed around in a big pile of them), happy that they've spelled my name correctly.

A few covers, I've even drooled over. Pleasure for Pleasure is my favorite, but As Hot As It Gets is a close second (check out the books page on my website if you don't remember them).

But the cover for my July book, Sexy All Over (sorry, not posted on my website yet) is another ball of doodoo altogether. After a few minutes of feeling ill over this cover that shows a guy who looks like Richard Gere with a perm looking at himself in a mirror and smiling, I just had to laugh.

I emailed my editor and asked her if it's too late to change the title of the book to "I'm Too Sexy for My Perm." Forget spikey, highlighted Josh Duhamel hair. Here's hoping tight curly 'dos becomes the latest style trend for guys between now and July. I need my book to sell!

4.27.2005

Good Luck Thongs, Booty Calls and Other Bad Ideas

I know I’m engaging in hardcore procrastination when I start thinking up book titles and story ideas just to amuse myself—ideas that I know will never fly, that are completely weird or goofy or off the wall or just plain wacked.

Yesterday my editor asked me to send her a list of potential titles for the book I just turned in. She’ll then take the title list to a meeting with the senior editor, and they’ll come up with the best title for the book. When I’m asked for a title list, I’m always tempted to throw in one of my joke titles just to give them a good laugh, but I’m afraid no one will get the joke but me, and so, with nothing else to do with them, today I’ll share a few of my favorite wacko story ideas and titles. Feel free to use them yourself if you want to ensure yourself a flat and immediate rejection:

A Booty Call to Remember (This one’s kind of self-explanatory)

A Long Time Coming: Book 1 in the 24 Hour Orgasm Series

I Want Your Sex (Also self-explanatory)

The Wrong Hole (I’m envisioning this as an ongoing Blaze series title, kind of like how Temptation had The Wrong Bed…)

The Good Luck Thong: Four friends take turns wearing a pair of thong panties that magically brings them luck in the bedroom

4.26.2005

Where's the Afterglow?

I finished a book late Sunday night and put it in the mail to my editor yesterday morning. It was the first book I've been able to write without pulling any all-nighters since my kids were born. Major accomplishment. I'm actually a person with relatively normal sleeping patterns again after enduring my daughter's first two years of sleepless nights. (Her nickname should be Pop-Up Baby, because that's what she did every time we put her in her crib.)

But anyway, life is good. I sleep, I write, I have a life. And so now with my latest book done, I should be basking in the afterglow. I should be thrilled with my well-restedness and my sense of accomplishment. Instead, I'm in a weird funk, so overwhelmed by all the stuff that needs to get done--stuff I had to put off while finishing the book--that I've sat hunched in front of my laptop all day catching up on email.

Bleh. I feel like a slug. I need to get off my butt and do something else.

4.25.2005

On Being Naked

It’s the inaugural blog. The blog that will set the tone for all future blogs. I should explain the name of this page first. I’m calling it The Naked Page for several reasons.

For one, like every writer I start out usually staring at a naked page on my computer every morning, trying to figure out how to fill it with words. But not just any words. These must be words that don’t suck. Words that tell a story. A story other people will want to read.

Gack.

It’s a little scary. But no, what’s scarier still is when the page isn’t naked—when I’ve already written a bunch of crap on it that I have to fix. So if I have a choice, I’ll always choose the naked pages over the crap-filled ones.

Also, this is where I’ll come to let it all hang out daily. It’s my naked time. Just me--unedited, raw, in the pink, uncensored, etc. It’s my daily nod to exhibitionism.

Oh, and my characters are often naked too. Or at least in some state of partial undress. And then there’s the fact that I have a total Beavis and Butt-head sense of humor and never cease to find words like naked amusing.

Want to see how many more times I can use the word “naked” in this entry? We’d better not.